The Loyalists of America and Their Times Volume I Part 46

It has indeed been represented by some American historians, that the vote of Congress for Independence was _unanimous_; but the fact is far otherwise. As the vote was taken by _colonies_, and not by the majority of the individual members present, as in ordinary legislative proceedings, the majority of the delegates from each colony determined the vote of that colony; and by a previous and very adroit proposal, an agreement was entered into that the _vote of Congress should be published to the world as_ UNANIMOUS, however divided the votes of members on the question of Independence might be; and on this ground the signatures of those who had opposed it, as well as of those who voted in favour of it, were ultimately affixed to the Declaration, though it was published and authenticated by the signatures of the President, John Hanc.o.c.k, of Ma.s.sachusetts, and Charles Thompson, of Philadelphia, as Secretary.

The Declaration of Independence, as thus adopted, is as follows:

"A Declaration by the Representatives of the United _States_ of America, in Congress a.s.sembled:

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to a.s.sume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's G.o.d ent.i.tle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to such separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are inst.i.tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to inst.i.tute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, would dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more inclined to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolis.h.i.+ng the forms to which they are accustomed; but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations; all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States: to prove this, let facts be exhibited to a candid world.

"He has refused his a.s.sent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

"He has forbidden his Governours to pa.s.s laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his a.s.sent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

"He has refused to pa.s.s other laws, for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the rights of representation in the Legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

"He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depositories of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasion on the rights of the people.

"He has refused, for a long time after such dissolution, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise--the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pa.s.s others to encourage their migrations. .h.i.ther, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

"He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his a.s.sent to laws for establis.h.i.+ng judiciary powers.

"He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

"He has erected a mult.i.tude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to hara.s.s our people and eat out their substance.

"He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.

"He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Const.i.tution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his a.s.sent to their pretended acts of legislation.

"For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

"For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States.

"For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

"For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

"For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury.

"For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offences.

"For abolis.h.i.+ng the free system of English laws in a neighbouring Province, establis.h.i.+ng therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies.

"For taking away our Charters, abolis.h.i.+ng our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments.

"For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

"He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

"He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the work of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circ.u.mstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

"He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

"He has excited domestick insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is undistinguished destruction of all ages, s.e.xes, and conditions.

"In every stage of these oppressions we have pet.i.tioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated pet.i.tions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

"Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us; we have reminded them of the circ.u.mstances of our emigration and settlement here; we have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connection and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

"We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress a.s.sembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rect.i.tude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States; and that they are absolved from allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour."

_Note_.--This Declaration will be discussed in the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 386: "The theory that the popular leaders were playing a game of hypocrisy may be tested in the case of Was.h.i.+ngton, whose sterling patriotism was not more conspicuous than his irreproachable integrity.

The New York Provincial Congress, in an address to him (June 26th, 1775), on his way from Philadelphia to the American camp around Boston, say that accommodation with the mother country was 'the fondest wish of each American soul.' Was.h.i.+ngton, in reply, pledged his colleagues and himself to use every exertion to re-establish peace and harmony. 'When we a.s.sumed the soldier,' he said, 'we did not lay aside the citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy hour when the establishment of American liberty on the most solid and firm foundations shall enable us to return to our private stations, in the bosom of a free, peaceful, and happy country.'[387] There was no incompatibility in the position of military leader of a great uprising with a desire to preserve the old political ties. When the Barons of Runnymede, surrounded by their retainers, wrested from King John the great Charter, they meant not to renounce their allegiance, but simply to preserve the old government. Though an act of apparent rebellion, yet it was in the strictest sense an act of loyalty. So the popular leaders, in their att.i.tude of armed resistance, were loyal to what they conceived to be essential to American liberty. They were a.s.serting the majesty of const.i.tutional law against those who would have destroyed it, and thus were more loyal to the Const.i.tution than was George III. There really is no ground on which justly to question the sincerity of declarations like those of Congress and Was.h.i.+ngton. They aimed at a redress of grievances; and the idea was quite general, of a Bill of Rights, or an American Const.i.tution, embodying the conditions on which the integrity of the empire might be preserved. This was their last appeal for a settlement on such a basis." (Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, Chap. xi., pp. 438, 439.)]

[Footnote 387: "The London Chronicle of August 8th, 1775, has the speech of the New York Provincial Congress, and the reply of Was.h.i.+ngton of the 26th of June, 1775."]

[Footnote 388: Mr. Bancroft, writing under date of October, 1775, says: "The Americans had not designed to establish an independent government; of their leading statesmen it was the desire of Samuel Adams alone; they had all been educated in the love and admiration of const.i.tutional monarchy; and even John Adams and Jefferson so sincerely shrank back from the attempt at creating another government in its stead, that, to the last moment, they were most anxious to avert a separation, if it could be avoided without a loss of their inherited liberties." (History of the United States, Vol. VIII., Chap. li., p. 161.)]

[Footnote 389: Allan's American Revolution, Vol. I., pp. 342, 343.

"The interval was employed in unceasing exertions by the friends of independence to prepare the minds of the people for the necessity and advantages of such a measure. The press teemed with essays and pamphlets, in which all the arts of eloquence were used to ridicule the prejudices which supported an attachment to the King and Government of England. Among the numerous writers on this momentous question, the most luminous, the most eloquent, and the most forcible was _Thomas Paine_.

His pamphlet ent.i.tled 'Common Sense' was not only read, but understood, by everybody; and those who regard the independence of the _United States_ as a blessing will never cease to cherish the remembrance of _Thomas Paine_. Whatever may have been his subsequent career--in whatever light his religious principles may be regarded--it should never be forgotten that _to him, more than to any single individual, was owing the rapid diffusion of those sentiments and feelings which produced the act of separation from Great Britain_."--_Ib._, pp. 343, 344.]

[Footnote 390: Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 512.]

[Footnote 391: Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, Chap. xi., pp. 513-517.]

[Footnote 392: Allan's American Revolution, Chap, xii., pp. 344, 345.

"The question before the Committee was the portion of the _motion relating to independence_, submitted by the Virginia delegates on the 7th of June. The New York members read their instructions, and were excused from voting. Of the three delegates from Delaware, Rodney was absent, Read in the negative, and thus the vote of that colony was lost.

South Carolina was in the negative; and so was Pennsylvania, by the votes of d.i.c.kenson, Willing, Morris, and Humphries, against those of Franklin, Morton, and Wilson. Nine colonies--New Hamps.h.i.+re, Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia--voted in the affirmative. The Committee rose, the President resumed the chair, and Harrison reported the resolution as having been agreed to. Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, said that were the vote postponed till next day, he believed that his colleagues, though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the sake of unanimity. The final question, in accordance with this request, was postponed until the next day; but it was agreed to go into Committee on the draft of the Declaration.

"On the 2nd July, probably fifty members were present in Congress. After disposing of the business of the morning, it resumed the resolution _on independence_, and probably without much debate proceeded to vote.