The prime movers in the patriot cause continued to be the main workers for it, and gradually reinforced themselves by new and effective aiders. Astute and able men, well read in history and by no means without knowledge of international law and the methods of diplomacy, surveyed the field before them, provided for contingencies, and found full scope for their wits and wisdom. When we consider the distractions of the times, the overthrow of all previous authority, the presence and threats of anarchy, the lack of unanimity, and the number and virulence of discordant interests, and, above all, that Congress had only advisory, hardly instructive, powers, even with the most willing portion of its constituents, we can easily pardon excesses and errors, and heartily yield our admiration to the noble qualities and virtues of those who proved their claim to leadership. When we read the original papers and the full biographies of these men, we are impressed by the balance and force of their judgment, their power of expressing reasons and convictions, their calm self-mastery, and the fervor of their purposes.
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
THE source to which naturally we should first apply ourselves for the fullest information on the development of the purpose of independence would be the Journals of Congress. But our disappointment would be complete. The same reasons which enjoined on the members secrecy as to the proceedings seem to have deprived the record even of some things that were done and of almost every utterance in debate. We have to look to other sources, the most scattered and fragmentary, to learn the names even of the principal leaders in the debates, and from beginning to end we have not the report, scarcely a summary, of a single speech. Our reasonable inference from such hints is that some ten, or at most fifteen, members were the master-spirits in securing the adoption of measures, while they were opposed by some as earnest as themselves, but not as numerous. But whatever may have been written in the original Journals was subjected to a cautious selection when they were printed by a committee. It is only from Jefferson himself, for instance, that we learn (Randall's Jefferson, i. 15) how, somewhat to his chagrin, "the rhetoric" of his draft of the Declaration was toned down. Especially do the Journals, as printed, suppress all evidences of strong dissension, of which we have abundant hints in fragments from John and Sam. Adams, Franklin, Dickinson, Galloway, Jefferson, Jay, and Livingston. But the Journals do spread before us at length sundry admirable papers, drawn by able and judicious committees.[689]
The reader must turn to the notes appended to chapter i. of the present volume for an examination of some of the leading pamphlets occasioned by the Congresses of 1774 and 1775, and for an examination of their opposing views, with more or less warning of the inevitable issue of independence.
One may easily trace in the writings of Franklin, extending through the years preceding the Revolution, and through all the phases of the struggle, seeming inconsistencies in the expression of his opinions and judgment. But these are readily explicable by changes in time and circumstance. We must pause, however, upon the strong statement made by Lecky in the following sentence: "It may be safely asserted that if Franklin had been able to guide American opinion, it would never have ended in revolution."[690]
Opportune in the date of its publication, as well as of mighty cogency in its tone and substance, was that vigorous work by Thomas Paine, a pamphlet bearing the title "Common Sense." If we take merely the average between the superlatively exalted tributes paid to his work as the one supremely effective agency for bringing vast numbers of the people of the colonies to front the issue of independence, and the most moderate judgments which have estimated its real merit, we should leave to be assigned to it the credit of being the most inspiriting of all the utterances and publications of the time for popular effect. The opportuneness of the appearance of this remarkable essay consisted in the fact that it came into the hands of multitudes, greedy to read it, a few months before the burning question of independency was to be settled. The papers issued by Congress might well answer the needs of the most intelligent classes of the people, in reconciling them to the new phase of the struggle. But there were large numbers of persons who needed the help of some short and easy argument, homely in style and quotable between plain neighbors. And this eighteen-penny pamphlet met that necessity. It appeared anonymously. John Adams says it was ascribed to his pen. Paine had been in confidential intercourse with Franklin, and the sagacious judgment of that philosopher doubtless suggested the form and substance of some of its contents, and may have kept out of it some things less apt or wise. Washington, Franklin, and John Adams welcomed it as a vigorous agency for persuading masses of simple and honest men that their rights must now be taken into their own hands for vindication. The character of the writer alienated from him the regard of those who could and who would willingly have advanced his interests, and made him to multitudes an object of horror and contempt. Though his pamphlet bore the title of "Common Sense", Gouverneur Morris says that that was a quality which Paine himself wholly lacked. Posterity, however, may well accord to him as a writer the high consideration given to him by his contemporaries, of having happily met by his pen a crisis and a pause in the state of the popular mind. Franklin wrote that "the pamphlet had prodigious effects."[691]
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published in the same year. Wise men have often affirmed that if it had appeared a generation earlier, and if the doctrines and principles which it advocated had passed into the minds of statesmen and economists, peaceful rather than warlike measures would have disposed of the controversy. It required the lapse of twoscore years to convince English statesmen and economists of the practical wisdom of the leading principles advanced by this college professor. He maintained the general viciousness and folly of the English colonial administration; that while even the restricted commercial monopoly was more generous than the colonial rule of any other governments, the prohibition of manufactures was mischievous and oppressive. He agreed with Dean Tucker, that a peaceful separation of the colonies would benefit rather than harm the mother country. Yet, under existing circumstances, such a separation was impracticable, because neither the government nor the people of the realm would seriously entertain the proposition.[692]
One of the best expositions of the views held by some of the Tory writers, that the seeds of independency were sown with the early settlements and nurtured through their history, is given in a tract by Galloway,[693] which was published in London in 1780, as Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the American Rebellion. In which the Causes of that Rebellion are pointed out, and the Policy and Necessity of offering to the Americans a System of Government founded in the Principles of the British Constitution, are clearly demonstrated. By the Author of Letters to a Nobleman on the Conduct of the American War. He pleads that the rebellion has been encouraged by the assertion "of the injustice and oppression of the present reign by a plan formed by the administration for enslaving the colonies", and asserts that the mother country had fostered the infancy and weakness of the colonies, had espoused their quarrels, and, at an enormous cost of debt, had defended them. "The colonies are very rich and prosperous, with more than a quarter of the population of Great Britain, and should share its burdens. The rebellion did not spring from a dread of being enslaved." The writer then ably and justly traces its origin to the principles of the Puritan exiles, from whose passion for religious freedom has grown that for civil independence. He attributes much influence helpful to rebellion to the organization among the Presbyterians at Philadelphia, in 1764, which united by correspondence with the Congregationalists of New England. The other sects were generally averse to measures of violent opposition to authority. The measures of government are vindicated, and all trouble is traced to a faction in New England, sympathized with and led on by a similar faction at home. The "Circular Letter", bringing the colonies into accord, wrought the mischief. Two sharply divided parties at once were formed, or proved to exist: the one defining and standing for the right of the colonies with a redress of grievances, on the basis of a solid constitutional union with the mother country, and opposed to sedition and all acts of violence; the other resolved by all means, even though covert and fraudulent, to throw off allegiance, appeal to arms, run the venture of anarchy, and assert, and if possible attain, independence. The latter party, acting with some temporary reserve and caution, opposed all peaceable propositions, and covertly worked for their own ends. They used most effectively a system of expresses between Philadelphia and the other towns, Sam. Adams being the artful and diligent fomenter of all this mischief. By his guile, Congress was brought to approve the Resolves of the Mass. Suffolk Conference, which declared "that no obedience is due to acts of Parliament affecting Boston", and provided for an organization of the provincial militia against government. He proceeded to argue that "the American faction", as in the fourth resolve of their Bill of Rights, explicitly declare their colonial independence. This was followed by an address to his majesty,—not calling it a petition,—and which the writer proceeded to analyze with much acuteness, as being vague and evasive in its professions, and suggestive of conditions which would prove satisfactory. Finally, "the mask was thrown off", and the casting vote of the "timid and variable Mr. Dickinson" carried the Declaration of Independence. "Samuel Adams, the great director of their councils, and the most cautious, artful, and reserved man among them, did not hesitate, as soon as the vote of independence had passed, to declare in all companies that he had labored upwards of twenty years to accomplish the measure." Mr. Galloway closes with sharp strictures upon the bewildered and vacillating policy which the government has heretofore pursued, and pleads for a firm and generous "constitutional union" between the realm and the colonies. The growth of the spirit of independence necessarily makes a part of all general histories of the war, which are characterized in another place.
