It happened, that at this time, while Washington was considering the expediency of sending this expedition, the Congress had under consideration the subject of disarming the Tories in Queen's County, Long Island, where the people had refused to elect members to the Provincial Convention.[78] Two battalions of minute-men had been ordered to enter that county, at its opposite sides, on the same day, and to disarm every inhabitant who had voted against choosing members to the Convention.[79] A part of these orders were suddenly countermanded, and in place of the minute-men from Connecticut, three companies were ordered to be detailed for this service from the command of Lord Stirling. This change in the original plan was made on the 10th of January; and when Washington received notice of it from Lee, he seems to have understood it as an abandonment of the whole scheme of the expedition,—a course which he deeply regretted.[80] He thought, that the period had arrived when nothing less than the most decisive measures ought to be pursued; that the enemies of the country were sufficiently numerous on the other side of the Atlantic, and that it was highly important to have as few internal ones as possible. But supposing that Congress had changed their determination, he directed Lee to disband his troops so soon as circumstances would in his judgment admit of it.[81] Lee was at this time at Stamford in Connecticut, with a body of about twelve hundred men, whom he had raised in that colony, preparing to march to New York to execute the different purposes for which he had been detached. On the 22d of January,—the day before the date of General Washington's letter to him directing him to disband his forces,—he had written to the President of Congress, urging in the strongest terms the expediency of seizing and disarming the Tories;[82] and he immediately communicated to Washington the fact of his having done so. Washington wrote again on the 30th, informing Lee that General Clinton had gone from Boston on some expedition with four or five hundred men; that there was reason to believe that this expedition had been sent on the application of Tryon, the royal Governor of New York, who, with a large body of the inhabitants, would probably join it; and that the Tories ought, therefore, to be disarmed at once, and the principal persons among them seized. He also expressed the hope that Congress would empower General Lee to act conformably to both their wishes; but that, if they should order differently, their directions must be obeyed.[83]
General Washington was mistaken in supposing that Congress had resolved to abandon the expedition against the Tories of Queen's County. That expedition had actually penetrated the county, under Colonel Heard, who had arrested nineteen of the principal inhabitants and conducted them to Philadelphia. Congress directed them to be sent to New York, and delivered to the order of the Convention of that Colony, until an inquiry could be instituted by the Convention into their conduct, and a report thereon made to Congress.[84]
This destination of the prisoners had become necessary, in consequence of the local fears and jealousies excited by the approach of General Lee to the city of New York, at the head of a force designed to prevent it from falling into the possession of the enemy. The inhabitants of the city were not a little alarmed at the idea of its becoming a post to be contended for; and the Committee of Safety wrote to General Lee earnestly deprecating his approach.[85] Lee replied to them, and continued his march, inclosing their letter to Congress. It was received in that body on the 26th, and a committee of three members was immediately appointed to repair to New York, to consult and advise with the Council of Safety of the Colony, and with General Lee, respecting the defence of the city.[86] The Provincial Congress of New York were in session at the time of the arrival of this committee,[87] and, in consequence of the temper existing in that body and in the local committees, the Continental Congress found themselves obliged to recede from the course which they had taken of disarming the Tories of Queen's County by their own action, and to submit the whole subject again to the colonial authorities everywhere, by a mere recommendation to them to disarm all persons, within their respective limits, notoriously disaffected to the American cause.[88]
Thus, after having resolved on the performance of a high act of sovereignty, which was entirely within the true scope of their own powers, and eminently necessary, the Congress was obliged to content itself with a recommendation on the subject to the colonial authorities; not only because it felt itself, as a government, far from secure of the popular coöperation in many parts of the country, but because it had not finally severed the political tie which had bound the country to the crown of Great Britain, and because it had no civil machinery of its own, through which its operations could be conducted.
Another topic, which illustrates the character of the early revolutionary government, is the entire absence, at the period now under consideration, of a proper national tribunal for the determination of questions of Prize;—a want which gave General Washington great trouble and embarrassment, during his residence at Cambridge and for some time afterwards. As this subject is connected with the origin of the American Navy, a brief account may here be given of the commencement of naval operations by the United Colonies.
When General Washington arrived at Cambridge, no steps had been taken by the Continental Congress towards the employment of any naval force whatever. In June, 1775, two small schooners had been fitted out by Rhode Island, to protect the waters of that Colony from the depredations of the enemy; and in the same month, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts resolved to provide six armed vessels; but none of them were ready in the month of October.[89] In the early part of that month, the first movement was made by the Continental Congress towards the employment of any naval force. General Washington was then directed to fit out two armed vessels, with all possible despatch, to sail for the mouth of the St. Lawrence, in order to intercept certain ships from England bound to Quebec with powder and stores. He was to procure these vessels from the government of Massachusetts.[90] The authorities of Massachusetts had then made no such provision; but in the latter part of August, General Washington had, on the broad authority of his commission, proceeded to fit out six armed schooners, to cruise in the waters of Massachusetts Bay, so as to intercept the enemy's supplies coming into the port of Boston. One of them sailed in September, and in the course of a few weeks they were all cruising between Cape Ann and Cape Cod.[91]
On the 17th of September, 1775, the town of Falmouth in Massachusetts (now Portland in Maine) was burnt by the enemy. This act stimulated the Continental Congress to order the fitting out of two armed vessels on the 26th of October, and of two others, on the 30th. It also stimulated the Massachusetts Assembly to issue letters of marque and reprisal, and to pass an act establishing a court to try and condemn all captures made from the enemy, by the privateers and armed vessels of that Colony.
In the autumn of this year, therefore, there were two classes of armed vessels cruising in the waters of Massachusetts: one consisting of those sailing under the continental authority, and the other consisting of those sailing under the authority of the Massachusetts Assembly. Captures were made by each, and some of those sailing under the continental authority were quite successful. Captain Manly, commanding the Lee, took, in the latter part of November, a valuable prize, with a large cargo of arms, ammunition, and military tools; and several other captures followed before any provision had been made for their condemnation,—a business which was thus thrown entirely upon the hands of General Washington.
The court established by the Legislature of Massachusetts, at its session in the autumn of 1775, for the trial and condemnation of all captures from the enemy, was enabled to take cognizance only of captures made by vessels fitted out by the Province, or by citizens of the Province. As the cruisers fitted out at the continental expense did not come under this law, General Washington early in November called the attention of Congress to the necessity of establishing a court for the trial of prizes made by continental authority.[92] On the 25th of November, the Congress passed resolves ordering all trials of prizes to be held in the court of the colony into which they should be brought, with a right of appeal to Congress.[93] But these resolves do not seem to have been, for a considerable period of time, communicated to General Washington; for, during the months of November, December, and January, he supposed it to be necessary for him to attend personally to the adjudication of prizes made by continental vessels,[94] and it was not until the early part of February that the receipt of the resolves of Congress led to a resort to the jurisdiction of the admiralty court of Massachusetts. When, however, this was done, an irreconcilable difference was found to exist between the resolves of Congress and the law of the Colony respecting the proceedings; the trials were stopped for a long time, to enable the General Court of Massachusetts to alter their law, so as to make it conform to the resolves; and in the mean while, many of the captors, weary of the law's delay, applied, without waiting for the decisions, for leave to go away, which General Washington granted.[95] As late as the 25th of April, 1776, there had been no trials of any of the prizes brought into Massachusetts Bay. At that date, General Washington wrote to the President of Congress, from New York, that some of the vessels which he had fitted out were laid up, the crews being dissatisfied because they could not obtain their prize-money; that he had appealed to the Congress on the subject; and that, if a summary way of proceeding were not resolved on, it would be impossible to have the continental vessels manned. At this time Captain Manly and his crew had not received their share of the valuable prize taken by them in the autumn previous.[96]
Another remarkable defect in the revolutionary government was found in the mode in which it undertook to supply the means of defraying the public expenses. It was a government entirely without revenues of any kind; for, in constituting the Congress, the colonies had not clothed their delegates with power to lay taxes, or to establish imposts. At the time when hostilities were actually commenced, the commerce of the country was almost totally annihilated; so that if the Congress had possessed power to derive a revenue from commerce, little could have been obtained for a long period after the commencement of the war. But the power did not exist; money in any considerable quantity could not be borrowed at home; the expedient of foreign loans had not been suggested; and consequently the only remaining expedient to which the Congress could resort was, like other governments similarly situated, to issue paper money. The mode in which this was undertaken to be done was, in the first instance, to issue two millions of Spanish milled dollars, in the form of bills, of various denominations, from one dollar to eight dollars each, and a few of twenty dollars, designed for circulation as currency. The whole number of bills which made up the sum of $2,000,000 was 403,800.[97] The next emission amounted to $1,000,000, in bills of thirty dollars each, and was ordered on the 25th of July.[98] When the bills of the first emission were prepared, it would seem to have been the practice to have them signed by a committee of the members; but this was found so inconvenient, from the length of time during which it withdrew the members from the other business of Congress, that, when the second emission was ordered, a committee of twenty-eight citizens of Philadelphia was appointed for the purpose, and the bills were ordered to be signed by any two of them.[99] At this time, no continental Treasurers had been appointed.[100]
Such a clumsy machinery was poorly adapted to the supply of a currency demanded by the pressing wants of the army and of the other branches of the public service. The signers of the bills were extremely dilatory in their work. In September, 1775, the paymaster and commissary, at Cambridge, had not a single dollar in hand, and they had strained their credit, for the subsistence of the army, to the utmost; the greater part of the troops were in a state not far from mutiny, in consequence of the deduction which had been made from their stated allowance; and there was imminent danger, if the evil were not soon remedied, and greater punctuality observed, that the army would absolutely break up. In November, General Washington deemed it highly desirable to adopt a system of advanced pay, but the unfortunate state of the military chest rendered it impossible. There was not cash sufficient to pay the troops for the months of October and November. Through the months of December and January, the signing of the bills did not keep pace with the demands of the army, notwithstanding General Washington's urgent remonstrances; and in February his wants became so pressing, that he was obliged to borrow twenty-five thousand pounds of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in order that the recruiting service might not totally cease.[101]
These facts show significantly, that, before the Declaration of Independence, scarcely any progress had been made towards the formation of a national government with definite powers and appropriate departments. In matters of judicature, and in measures requiring executive functions and authority, the Congress were obliged to rely almost entirely upon the local institutions and the local civil machinery of the different colonies; while, in all military affairs, the very form of the revolutionary government was unfavorable to vigor, despatch, and consistent method. There were also causes existing in the temper and feelings of many of the members of that government, both before and after the Declaration of Independence, which, at times, prevented the majority from acting with the decision and energy demanded by the state of their affairs. Many excellent and patriotic men in the Congress of 1775-6, while they concurred fully in the necessity for resistance to the measures of the British ministry, and had decided, or were fast deciding, that a separation must take place, still entertained a great jealousy of standing armies. This jealousy began to exhibit itself very soon after the appointment of the Commander-in-chief, and was never wholly without influence in the proceedings of Congress during the entire period of the war. It led to a degree of reliance upon militia, which, in the situation of the colonies, was too often demonstrated to be a weak and fatal policy.[102]
ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
The Declaration of Independence was drawn by Thomas Jefferson; and the circumstances under which he was selected for this honorable and important task have been for more than a quarter of a century somewhat in doubt, and that doubt has been increased by the recent publication of a part of the Works of Mr. John Adams. The evidence on the subject is to be derived chiefly from statements made by both of these eminent persons in their memoirs, and in a letter written by each of them. We have seen, in a former note, that in 1822 Mr. Adams declared, that had it not been for a conversation which occurred in 1775, before the meeting of the Congress of that year, between himself and his Massachusetts colleagues and certain of the Philadelphia "sons of liberty," in which the Massachusetts members were advised to concede precedence to Virginia, from motives of policy, and but for the principles, facts, and motives suggested in that conversation, many things would not have happened which did occur, and among them, that Mr. Jefferson never would have been the author of the Declaration of Independence. In regard to the same speculation, concerning the election of Washington as Commander-in-chief, I have ventured, on Mr. Adams's own authority, to suggest doubts whether that election ought now to be considered to have turned upon motives which Mr. Adams made so prominent in 1822. In regard to the authorship of the Declaration of Independence, I shall only endeavor to state fairly and fully the conflicting evidence, in order that the reader may judge what degree of weight ought to be assigned to the cause, without which Mr. Adams supposed Mr. Jefferson would not have been selected to draft it.
Mr. Jefferson, as it appeared when his writings came to be published in 1829, wrote in 1821, when at the age of seventy-seven, a memoir of some of the public transactions in which he had been engaged. At this time, he had in his possession a few notes of the debates which took place in Congress on the subject of Independence, and which he made at the time. These notes he inserted bodily, as they stood, in his memoir, and they are so printed. (Jefferson's Works, I. 10-14.) They are easily distinguishable from the text of the memoir, but they do not appear to throw any especial light upon the fact now in controversy; although, as Mr. Jefferson, in 1823, when writing on this subject, supported his recollection by "written notes, taken at the moment and on the spot," it is proper to allow that those notes may in some way have aided his memory, although we cannot now see in what way they did so. He made this latter reference in a letter which he wrote to Mr. Madison, in reply to the statements in Mr. Adams's letter to Timothy Pickering, under date of August 6, 1822. (Jefferson's Works, IV. 375, 376.)
At or near the beginning of the present century, Mr. Adams, then about sixty-six, wrote an autobiography, which has recently been published [1850], and in which he gave an account of the authorship of the Declaration. In 1822, when about eighty-six, Mr. Adams wrote the letter to Mr. Pickering, which called forth Mr. Jefferson's contradiction in his letter to Mr. Madison, under date of August 30, 1823. (Adams's Works, II. 510-515.) Mr. Jefferson, in his memoir written in 1821, states simply that the committee for drawing the Declaration desired him to do it; that he accordingly wrote it, and that, being approved by the committee, he reported it to the Congress on Friday, the 28th of June, when it was read and ordered to lie on the table; and that on Monday, the 1st of July, the Congress, in committee of the whole, proceeded to consider it. "The pusillanimous idea," he continues, "that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren, also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates having taken up the greater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed." (Jefferson's Works, I. 14, 15.)
In Mr. Adams's autobiography, the following account is given:—"The Committee of Independence were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Mr. Jefferson had been now about a year a member of Congress, but had attended his duty in the house a very small part of the time, and, when there, had never spoken in public. During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together. It will naturally be inquired how it happened that he was appointed on a committee of such importance. There were more reasons than one. Mr. Jefferson had the reputation of a masterly pen; he had been chosen a delegate in Virginia, in consequence of a very handsome public paper which he had written for the House of Burgesses, which had given him the character of a fine writer. Another reason was, that Mr. Richard Henry Lee was not beloved by the most of his colleagues from Virginia, and Mr. Jefferson was set up to rival and supplant him. This could be done only by the pen, for Mr. Jefferson could stand no competition with him or any one else in elocution and public debate.... The committee had several meetings, in which were proposed the articles of which the Declaration was to consist, and minutes made of them. The committee then appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to draw them up in form, and clothe them in a proper dress. The sub-committee met, and considered the minutes, making such observations on them as then occurred, when Mr. Jefferson desired me to take them to my lodgings, and make the draft. This I declined, and gave several reasons for declining: 1. That he was a Virginian, and I a Massachusettensian. 2. That he was a Southern man, and I a Northern one. 3. That I had been so obnoxious for my early and constant zeal in promoting the measure, that any draft of mine would undergo a more severe scrutiny and criticism in Congress than one of his composition. 4. And lastly, and that would be reason enough if there were no other, I had a great opinion of the elegance of his pen, and none at all of my own. I therefore insisted that no hesitation should be made on his part. He accordingly took the minutes, and in a day or two produced to me his draft. Whether I made or suggested any corrections I remember not. The report was made to the committee of five, by them examined, but whether altered or corrected in any thing, I cannot recollect. But, in substance, at least, it was reported to Congress, where, after a severe criticism, and striking out several of the most oratorical paragraphs, it was adopted on the 4th of July, 1776, and published to the world." (Adams's Works, II. 511-515.)
The account in Mr. Adams's letter to Mr. Pickering is as follows:—"You inquire why so young a man as Mr. Jefferson was placed at the head of the committee for preparing a Declaration of Independence? I answer, it was the Frankfort advice to place Virginia at the head of every thing. Mr. Richard Henry Lee might be gone to Virginia, to his sick family, for aught I know; but that was not the reason of Mr. Jefferson's appointment. There were three committees appointed at the same time. One for the Declaration of Independence, another for preparing Articles of Confederation, and another for preparing a treaty to be proposed to France. Mr. Lee was chosen for the Committee of Confederation, and it was not thought convenient that the same person should be upon both. Mr. Jefferson came into Congress in June, 1775, and brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent of composition. Writings of his were handed about, remarkable for their peculiar felicity of expression. Though a silent member in Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive upon committees and in conversation,—not even Samuel Adams was more so,—that he soon seized upon my heart; and upon this occasion I gave him my vote, and did all in my power to procure the votes of others. I think he had one more vote than any other, and that placed him at the head of the committee. I had the next highest number, and that placed me second. The committee met, discussed the subject, and then appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to make the draft, I suppose because we were the two first on the list. The sub-committee met. Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft. I said, 'I will not.' 'You should do it.' 'O, no.' 'Why will you not? You ought to do it.' 'I will not.' 'Why?' 'Reasons enough.' 'What can be your reasons?' 'Reason first,—You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second,—I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third,—You can write ten times better than I can.' 'Well,' said Jefferson, 'if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.' 'Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.'
"A meeting we accordingly had, and conned the paper over. I was delighted with its high tone and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose. There were other expressions which I would not have inserted, if I had drawn it up, particularly that which called the King tyrant. I thought this too personal; for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature; I always believed him to be deceived by his courtiers on both sides of the Atlantic, and in his official capacity only, cruel. I thought the expression too passionate, and too much like scolding, for so grave and solemn a document; but as Franklin and Sherman were to inspect it afterwards, I thought it would not become me to strike it out. I consented to report it, and do not now remember that I made or suggested a single alteration.
"We reported it to the committee of five. It was read, and I do not remember that Franklin or Sherman criticized any thing. We were all in haste. Congress was impatient, and the instrument was reported, as I believe, in Jefferson's handwriting, as he first drew it. Congress cut off about a quarter of it, as I expected they would; but they obliterated some of the best of it, and left all that was exceptionable, if any thing in it was. I have long wondered that the original draft has not been published. I suppose the reason is, the vehement philippic against negro slavery.
"As you justly observe, there is not an idea in it but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before. The substance of it is contained in the declaration of rights and the violation of those rights, in the Journals of Congress, in 1774. Indeed, the essence of it is contained in a pamphlet, voted and printed by the town of Boston, before the first Congress met, composed by James Otis, as I suppose, in one of his lucid intervals, and pruned and polished by Samuel Adams."
Mr. Jefferson, on the contrary, in his letter to Mr. Madison, says:—"These details are quite incorrect. The committee of five met; no such thing as a sub-committee was proposed, but they unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draft. I consented; I drew it; but, before I reported it to the committee, I communicated it separately to Doctor Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting their correction, because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit, before presenting it to the committee; and you have seen the original paper now in my hands, with the corrections of Doctor Franklin and Mr. Adams interlined in their own handwritings. Their alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered, to Congress. This personal communication and consultation with Mr. Adams he has misremembered into the actings of a sub-committee. Pickering's observations, and Mr. Adams's in addition, 'that it contained no new idea, that it is a commonplace compilation, its sentiments hackneyed in Congress for two years before, and its essence contained in Otis's pamphlet,' may all be true. Of that I am not to be the judge. Richard Henry Lee charged it as copied from Locke's Treatise on Government. Otis's pamphlet I never saw, and whether I had gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before. Had Mr. Adams been so restrained, Congress would have lost the benefit of his bold and impressive advocations of the rights of revolution. For no man's confident and fervid addresses, more than Mr. Adams's, encouraged and supported us through the difficulties surrounding us, which, like the ceaseless action of gravity, weighed on us by night and by day. Yet, on the same ground, we may ask what of these elevated thoughts was new, or can be affirmed never before to have entered the conceptions of man?
"Whether, also, the sentiment of Independence, and the reasons for declaring it, which make so great a portion of the instrument, had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before the 4th of July, 1776, or this dictum of Mr. Adams be another slip of memory, let history say. This, however, I will say for Mr. Adams, that he supported the Declaration with zeal and ability, fighting fearlessly for every word of it. As to myself, I thought it a duty to be, on that occasion, a passive auditor of the opinions of others, more impartial judges than I could be of its merits or demerits. During the debate I was sitting by Doctor Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts; and it was on that occasion, that, by way of comfort, he told me the story of John Thomson, the hatter, and his new sign." (Jefferson's Works, IV. 376.)
The substantial point of difference in these two accounts of the same transaction, relates to the action of the committee in designating the person or persons who were to prepare the draft of a Declaration. Mr. Adams states that Mr. Jefferson and himself were appointed a sub-committee to prepare it; Mr. Jefferson states that he alone was directed by the committee to write the Declaration. This question is not important, since Mr. Adams's version does not in the least impair Mr. Jefferson's claim to the authorship of the instrument. The latter, it must be allowed, gracefully parries the criticisms of Mr. Adams, by a noble allusion to the eloquence which sustained his compatriots in the difficulties and embarrassments that surrounded them, and which they did not think of analyzing, for the purpose of tracing the exact originality of its sentiments.
It is proper to add, that Mr. Jefferson's account is confirmed by the original manuscript draft of the Declaration, a fac-simile of which was published in 1829, in the fourth volume of his Works, exhibiting the corrections and interlineations made by Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams in their respective handwritings. These emendations were not important.
The reasons assigned by Mr. Adams for the selection of Mr. Jefferson as the writer of the Declaration are so numerous, that it is difficult to determine which of them he intended should be regarded as the principal or decisive one. In the autobiography, he states that there were more reasons than one why Mr. Jefferson was appointed on a committee of such importance. He assigns two reasons: one, Mr. Jefferson's reputation as a writer, and the other, the desire of his Virginia colleagues to have Mr. Jefferson supplant Mr. Richard Henry Lee. In his letter to Mr. Pickering, Mr. Adams gives as the reason why Mr. Jefferson was placed at the head of the committee, that it was "the Frankfort advice to place Virginia at the head of every thing"; but he also adds, that Mr. Jefferson brought with him to Congress "a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent of composition," and that this reputation had then been sustained by writings "remarkable for their peculiar felicity of expression." As in the case of Washington, therefore, it would seem that there were reasons of eminent fitness and qualification for the duty assigned; and certainly the Declaration of Independence itself fully justifies the selection. Few state papers have ever been written with more skill, or greater adaptation to the purposes in view. Whether its sentiments were purely original with its author, or were gathered from the political philosophy which had become familiar to the American mind, through the great discussions of the time, it must for ever remain an imperishable monument of his power of expression, and his ability to touch the passions, as well as to address the reason, of mankind. It would be inappropriate to apply to its style the canons of modern criticism. Its statements of political truth, taken in the sense in which they were manifestly intended, can never be successfully assailed. With regard to the passage concerning slavery, we may well conceive that both Northern and Southern men might have felt the injustice of the terrible denunciation with which he charged upon the King all the horrors, crimes, and consequences of the African slave-trade, and in which he accused him of exciting the slaves to insurrection, and "to purchase the liberty of which he had deprived them by murdering the people upon whom he had obtruded them." Mr. Jefferson, in drawing up the list of our national accusations against the King, obviously intended to refer to him as the representative of the public policy and acts of the mother country; and it is true that the imperial government was, and must always remain, responsible for the existence of slavery in the colonies. But this was not one of the grievances to be redressed by the Revolution; it did not constitute one of the reasons for aiming at independence; and there was no sufficient ground for the accusation that the government of Great Britain had knowingly sought to excite general insurrections among the slaves. The rejection of this passage from the Declaration shows that the Congress did not consider this charge to be as tenable as all their other complaints certainly were.
July, 1776—November, 1777.
Consequences of the Declaration of Independence.—Reorganization of the Continental Army.—Flight of the Congress from Philadelphia.—Plan of the Confederation proposed.
When the Declaration of Independence at length came, it did not in any way change the form of the revolutionary government. It created no institution, and erected no civil machinery. Its political effect has already been described. Its moral effect, both upon the members of the Congress and upon the country, was very great, inasmuch as it put an end alike to the hope and the possibility of a settlement of the controversy upon the principles of the English Constitution, for it made the colonies free, sovereign, and independent states. Men who had voted for such a measure, and who had put their signatures to an instrument which the British Parliament or the Court of King's Bench could have had no difficulty in punishing as treasonable, could no longer continue to feed themselves on "the dainty food of reconciliation."[103] Thenceforward, there was no retreat. The colonies might be conquered, overrun, and enslaved; but this, or the full and final establishment of their own sovereignty, were the sole alternatives. The consequence was, that the Declaration was followed by a greater alacrity on the part of the whole body of the Congress to adopt vigorous and decisive measures, than had before prevailed among them.
But there was one feeling which the Declaration did not dispel, and another to which it immediately gave rise, both of which were unfavorable to concentrated, vigorous, and effective action on the part of the revolutionary government. The Declaration of Independence did not dissipate the unreasonable and ill-timed jealousy of standing armies, which gave way, at last, only when the country was in such imminent peril that Washington felt it to be his duty to ask for extraordinary powers, to be conferred upon himself. It was followed, too, as an immediate consequence, by that jealousy with regard to State rights, and that adhesion to State interests, which have existed in our system from that day to the present, and are not entirely separable from it. As the Declaration made the colonies sovereign and independent, and was followed by the formation of State governments, before the creation of any well-defined national system, State sovereignty became at once an ever-present cause of embarrassment to the Congress, in whose proceedings entire delegations sometimes made the interests of the country bend to the interests of their own State, to a mischievous extent.
To explain these observations, we must recur again to the history of the army, and to the efforts of Washington to have the military establishment put into a safe and efficient condition.
After the evacuation of Boston by the British forces, General Washington proceeded, at once, with the continental army to the city of New York, where he arrived on the 13th of April, 1776. The loss of the battle of Long Island on the 27th of August, and the extreme improbability of his being able to hold the city against the superior forces by which it had been invested through the entire summer, made it necessary for him to appeal once more to the Congress for the organization of a permanent army, capable of offering effectual resistance to the enemy. The establishment formed at Cambridge in the autumn previous was to continue for one year only; it was about to be dissolved; and in the month of September General Washington was compelled to abandon the city of New York to the enemy. Before he withdrew from it, he addressed a letter to the President of Congress, on the 2d of September, in which he told that body explicitly that the liberties of the country must of necessity be greatly hazarded, if not entirely lost, should their defence be left to any but a permanent standing army; and that, with the army then under his command, it was impossible to defend and retain the city.[104] On the 20th of the same month, he again wrote, expressing the opinion that it would be entirely impracticable to raise a proper army, without the allowance of a large and extraordinary bounty.[105]
At length, when he had retreated to the Heights of Haerlem, and found himself surrounded by a body of troops impatient of restraint, because soon to be entitled to their discharge, and turbulent and licentious, because they had never felt the proper inducements which create good conduct in the soldier, he made one more appeal to the patriotism and good sense of the Congress. Few documents ever proceeded from his pen more wise, or evincing greater knowledge of mankind, or a more profound apprehension of the great subject before him, than the letter which he then wrote concerning the reorganization of the army.[106]
Before this letter was written, however, urged by his repeated requests and admonished by defeat, the Congress had adopted a plan, reported by the Board of War, for the organization of a new army, to serve during the war. A long debate preceded its adoption, but the resolves were at length passed on the 16th of September, 1776.[107] They authorized the enlistment of a body of troops, to be divided into eighty-eight battalions, and to be enlisted as soon as possible. These battalions were to be raised by the States; a certain number being assigned to each State as its quota. The highest quota, which was 15, was assigned to the States of Virginia and Massachusetts, respectively. Pennsylvania had 12; North Carolina, 9; Maryland and Connecticut, 8 each; South Carolina, 6; New York and New Jersey, 4 each; New Hampshire, 3; Rhode Island, 2; and Delaware and Georgia, 1 each. The inducements to enlist were a bounty of twenty dollars and one hundred acres of land to each non-commissioned officer or soldier; and to the commissioned officers, the same bounty in money, with larger portions of land.[108] The States were to provide arms and clothing for their respective quotas, and the expense of clothing was to be deducted from the pay.[109] Although the officers were to be commissioned by the Continental Congress, each State was to appoint the officers of its own battalions, from the colonel to those of the lowest grade, inclusive. A circular letter was addressed by Congress to each State, urging its immediate attention to the raising of these troops; and a committee of three members of the Congress was sent to the head-quarters of General Washington, to confer with him on the subject.[110]
Two serious defects in this plan struck the Commander-in-chief, as soon as it was laid before him; but the resolves had been passed, and passed with difficulty, before he had an opportunity specifically to point out the mistakes. In the first place, by giving the appointment of the officers to the States, any central system of promoting or placing the officers then serving on the continental establishment according to their characters and deserts was rendered impossible. The resolutions of Congress did not even recommend these officers to the consideration of their respective States. They were left to solicit their appointments at a distance, or to go home and make personal application. Those who chose to do the latter were more likely to get good places than those who remained at their posts; but they were also less likely to be deserving of important commissions than those who stayed with the army. To expect that a proper attention would be paid to the claims of men of real merit, under such a system,—whether they had or had not been in service before,—or that the army when brought together would be found to be officered on a uniform principle, exhibiting an adaptation of character to station, was, in Washington's view, to expect that local authorities would not be influenced by local attachments, and that merit would make its way, in silence and absence, against personal importunity and bold presumption.
But Washington saw no remedy for these evils, except by opening a direct communication with the States, through which he might exert some influence over their appointments. He immediately suggested to the Congress, that each State should send a commission to the army, with authority to appoint all the officers of the new regiments. Congress passed a resolve recommending this step to the States, and advising that the Commander-in-chief should be consulted in making the appointments; that those officers should be promoted who had distinguished themselves for bravery and attention to their duties; that no officer should be appointed who had left his station without leave; and that all the officers to be appointed should be men of honor and known abilities, without particular regard to their having been in service before.[111] This was but a partial remedy for the defects of the system. Several of the States sent such a commission to act with the Commander-in-chief; but many of them were tardy in making their appointments, and finally the Congress authorized General Washington to fill the vacancies.
Another and a dangerous defect in this plan was, that the continental pay and bounty on enlistment were fixed so low, that some of the States, in order to fill up their quotas, deemed it expedient to offer a further pay and bounty to their own men. This was done immediately by the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts. The consequence was likely to be, that, if the quotas of some States were raised before the fact became known that other States had increased the pay and the bounty, some regiments would, when the army came together, be on higher pay than others, and jealousy, impatience, and mutiny must inevitably follow. Knowing that a different pay could not exist in the same army without these consequences, General Washington remonstrated with the Governor of Connecticut, arrested the proceedings of the commissioners of that State and of Massachusetts, and prevented them from publishing their terms, until the sense of the Congress could be obtained.[112] That body, on receiving from him another strong representation on the subject, passed a resolve augmenting the pay.
Still, the system, notwithstanding these efforts to amend it, worked ill. The appointment of the officers by the States was incapable of being well managed; the pay and bounty, even after they were increased, were insufficient; and the whole scheme of raising a permanent army was entered upon at too late a period to be effectually accomplished. As late as the middle of November, so little had been done, that the whole force on one side of the Hudson, opposed to Howe's whole army, did not exceed two thousand men of the established regiments; while, on the other side, there was a force not much larger to secure the passes into the Highlands.[113] "I am wearied almost to death," said the Commander-in-chief, in a private letter, "with the retrograde motion of things, and I solemnly protest that a pecuniary reward of twenty thousand pounds a year would not induce me to undergo what I do; and after all, perhaps, to lose my character, as it is impossible, under such a variety of distressing circumstances, to conduct matters agreeably to public expectation, or even to the expectations of those who employ me, as they will not make proper allowances for the difficulties their own errors have occasioned."[114]
There are few pages in our history so painful as those on which are recorded the complaints extorted from Washington, at this period, by the trials of his situation. That he, an accomplished soldier, who had retired with honor from the late war with France to his serene Mount Vernon; who had left it again, to stake life, and all that makes life valuable, on the new issue of his country's independence; who asked no recompense and sought no object but her welfare, should have been compelled to pass into the dark valley of the retreat through New Jersey, with all its perplexities, dangers, and discouragements,—its cruel exertions and its humiliating reverses,—without a powerful and energetic government to lean upon, and with scarcely more than Divine assistance to which to turn, presents, indeed, to our separate contemplation, a disheartening and discreditable fact. But no trials are appointed to nations, or to men, without their fruits. The perplexities and difficulties which surrounded Washington in the early part of the Revolution contributed, undoubtedly, to give him that profound civil wisdom, that knowledge of our civil wants, and that influence over the moral sense of the country, which were afterwards so beneficently felt in the establishment of the Constitution. The very weakness of the government which he served became in this manner his and our strength. Without the trials to which it subjected him, it may well be doubted whether we should now possess that tower of strength,—that security against distracted counsels and clashing interests,—which exist for us in the character and services of that extraordinary man.
It is not necessary to sketch the scene or to follow the route of General Washington's retreat through New Jersey, except as they illustrate the subject of this work,—the constitutional history of the country. Its remarkable military story is well known. On the 23d of November, four days after the date of the letter to his brother above quoted, he was at Newark, with a body of troops whose departure was near at hand, and for supplying whose places no provision had been made. The enemy were pressing on his rear, and in order to impress upon Congress the danger of his situation, he sent General Mifflin to lay an exact account of it before them.[115] On the 28th, he marched out of Newark in the morning, and Lord Cornwallis entered it on the afternoon of the same day. On the 30th, he was at Brunswick, endeavoring, but with little success, to raise the militia;—the terms of service of the Jersey and Maryland brigades expiring on that day. On the 1st of December, his army numbered only four thousand men, and the enemy were pushing forward with the greatest energy.[116] On the 5th, he resolved to march back to Princeton; but neither militia nor regulars had come in, and it was too late to prevent an evil, which he had both foreseen and foretold.[117] On the 8th, he crossed the Delaware.[118] On the 12th, he saw his little handful of men still further decrease, and now, without succors from the government, or spirited exertions on the part of the people, the loss of Philadelphia—"an event," said he, "which will wound the heart of every virtuous American"—rose as a spectre in his path.[119] On the 16th, as he moved on, gathering all the great energies of his character to parry this deep disgrace, concentrating every force that remained to him towards the defence of the city, and animating and directing public bodies, in a tone of authority and command, he once more urged the Congress to discard all reliance upon the militia, to augment the number of the regular troops, and to strain every nerve to recruit them.[120] Finally,—being still in doubt whether Howe did not intend an attack on Philadelphia, before going into winter quarters,—with less than three thousand men fit for duty, to oppose a well-appointed army of ten or twelve thousand, and surrounded by a population rapidly submitting to the enemy,—he felt that the time had come, when to his single hands must be given all the military authority and power which the Continental Union of America held in trust for the liberties of the country. On the 20th of December, therefore, he wrote to the President of Congress a memorable letter, asking for extraordinary powers, but displaying at the same time all the modesty and high principle of his character.[121]
To this appeal Congress at once responded, in a manner suited to the exigency. On the 27th of December, 1776, they passed a resolution, vesting in General Washington ample and complete power to raise and collect together, in the most speedy and effectual manner from all or any of the United States, sixteen battalions of infantry, in addition to those already voted; to appoint the officers of these battalions; to raise, officer, and equip three regiments of artillery and a corps of engineers, and to establish their pay; to apply to any of the States for such aid of their militia as he might judge necessary; to form such magazines of provisions, and in such places, as he should think proper; to displace and appoint all officers under the rank of brigadier-general; to fill up all vacancies in every other department of the American army; to take, wherever he might be, whatever he might want for the use of the army, if the inhabitants would not sell it, allowing a reasonable price for the same; to arrest and confine persons who should refuse to receive the continental currency, or were otherwise disaffected to the American cause; and to return to the States of which such persons were citizens their names and the nature of their offences, together with the witnesses to prove them. These powers were vested in the Commander-in-chief for the space of six months from the date of the resolve, unless sooner revoked by the Congress.[122]
The powers thus conferred upon General Washington were in reality those of a military dictatorship; and in conferring them, the Congress acted upon the maxim that the public safety is the supreme law. They acted, too, as if they were the proper judges of the exigency, and as if the powers they granted were then rightfully in their hands. But it is a singular proof of the unsettled and anomalous condition of the political system of the country, and of the want of practical authority in the continental government, that, in three days after the adoption of the resolves conferring these powers, the Congress felt it necessary to address a letter to the Governors of the States, apologizing for this step. Nor was their letter a mere apology. It implied a doubt whether the continental government possessed a proper authority to take the steps which the crisis demanded, and whether the execution of all measures did not really belong to the States, the Congress having only a recommendatory power. "Ever attentive," their letter declared, "to the security of civil liberty, Congress would not have consented to the vesting of such powers in the military department as those which the inclosed resolves convey to the continental Commander-in-chief, if the situation of public affairs did not require, at this crisis, a decision and vigor which distance and numbers deny to assemblies far removed from each other and from the seat of war." The letter closed, by requesting the States to use their utmost exertions to further such levies as the general might direct, in consequence of the new powers given him, and to make up and complete their quotas as formerly settled.[123]
Strictly examined, therefore, the position taken by the Congress was, that a crisis existed demanding the utmost decision and vigor; that the measures necessary to meet it, such as the raising of troops and the compulsory levying of supplies, belonged to the States; but that, the State governments being removed from each other and from the seat of war, the Congress confers upon the continental general power to do things which in reality it belongs to the States to do. In this there was a great inaccuracy, according to all our present ideas of constitutional power. But still the action of the Congress expresses and exhibits their real situation. It contains a contradiction between the true theory of their revolutionary powers and the powers which they could in fact practically exercise. Upon principle, it was just as competent to the Congress to take the steps required by the exigency, as it was to adjudge them to the States; and it was just as competent to the Congress to do any thing directly, as to confer a power to do it on their general. But the jealousies of the States, the habits of the country, and the practical working of the existing institutions, had never permitted the full exercise of the revolutionary powers which properly resided in the hands of the Congress. The true theory of their situation was limited by practical impossibilities; and an escape from contradictions became impossible. It was perceived that the States would neither pass laws or resolves for the summary raising of forces and levying of supplies, nor allow this to be done by committees or commissioners of Congress; but it was believed that they would acquiesce in its being done by General Washington, out of respect for his character, for his abilities and his motives, and from conviction that he alone could save the country.
The expectations of the Congress were not disappointed. It was felt throughout the country, that such powers could be lodged in the hands of Washington without danger. The States in general acquiesced in the necessity and propriety of this measure, and there was little disposition to encroach upon or to complain of the authority conferred. To this acquiescence, however, there were exceptions.[124]
The period which now followed was a part of the interval during which the Articles of Confederation were pending in Congress. We have seen that the plan of a confederation was reported to that body in July, 1776, and finally adopted for recommendation to the States in November, 1777. But soon after the extraordinary powers had been conferred upon General Washington, the attendance of the members began to diminish, and several of the most eminent and able men, who had hitherto served, retired from Congress. In January, 1777, there were no delegations present from the States of Delaware and New York;[125] and in February, the absence of many distinguished men, whose counsels had been of vast importance, made a striking deficiency. The formation of the State governments, and the local affairs of the States, absorbed for a time, with a few important exceptions, the best civil talent in the country.[126]
While the personal efficiency and wisdom of the Congress thus sensibly declined, no change took place in the nature of their powers, or in their relations to the States, that would impart greater vigor to their proceedings. The delegations of many of the States were renewed in the winter of 1776-7; but there was a great diversity, and in some cases a great vagueness, in their instructions.[127] In such a state of things,—with no uniform rule prescribing the powers of the Congress, and with some uncertainty in that body itself with regard to its authority to confer upon the Commander-in-chief the powers with which he was now invested,—however general might be the readiness of the country to acquiesce in their necessity, it is not surprising that State jealousy was sometimes aroused, or that it should have been unreasonable in some of its manifestations.
A striking instance of this jealousy occurred upon the occasion of a proclamation issued by General Washington at Morristown, on the 25th of January, 1777. Sir William Howe had published a proclamation in New Jersey, offering protection to such of the inhabitants as would take an oath of allegiance to the King. Many of the substantial farmers of the country had availed themselves of this offer, and had received protections from the British general. The English and Hessian troops, however, made no distinction between friends and foes, but frequently committed great outrages both upon person and property. The resentment of the population would have restored them to the patriot side; but many who had taken the oath of allegiance felt, or affected, in consequence, scruples of conscience.
General Washington therefore issued a counter-proclamation, commanding all persons who had received the enemy's protection to repair to head-quarters, or to some general officer of the army, and to surrender their protections and take an oath of allegiance to the United States;—allowing thirty days for those who preferred to remain under the protection of Great Britain to withdraw within the enemy's lines. This was considered in some quarters as an undue exercise of power. The idea of an oath of allegiance to the United States, before the Confederation was formed, was regarded by many as an absurdity. Allegiance, it was said, was due exclusively to the State of which a man was an inhabitant; the States alone were sovereign; and it was for each State, not for the United States, which possessed no sovereignty, to exact this obligation. The Legislature of New Jersey were disposed to treat General Washington's proclamation as an encroachment on their prerogatives: and one of the delegates of that State in Congress denounced it as improper.[128]
This feeling was shared by other members; but it is not to be doubted, that the proceeding was a legitimate exercise of the authority vested in the Commander-in-chief. He had been expressly empowered to arrest and confine persons disaffected to the American cause; and the requiring them to attend at his head-quarters was clearly within the scope of this authority. Moreover, although no confederation or political union of the States had been formed under a written compact, yet the United States were waging war, as a government regularly constituted by its representatives in a congress, for the very purpose of carrying on such war. They had an army in the field, whose officers held continental commissions, and were paid by a continental currency. They were exercising certain of the attributes of sovereignty as a belligerent power; and in that capacity they had a complete right to exact such an obligation not to aid the enemy, as would separate their friends from their foes. It was a military measure; and the tenor of the proclamation shows that General Washington exacted the oath in that relation. To pause at such a moment, and to consider nicely how much sovereignty resided in each of the States, and how much or how little belonged to the United States, was certainly a great refinement. But it marks the temper of the times, and the extreme jealousy with which all continental power and authority were watched at that period.[129]
We have seen that the powers conferred upon General Washington authorized him to raise, in the most speedy and effectual manner, sixteen battalions of infantry, in addition to those before voted by Congress, three regiments of artillery, and a corps of engineers; and also to apply to any of the States for the aid of their militia when wanted.[130] At the period when he addressed himself to this great undertaking of forming a new army, for the third time, the existing force which he had with him in and around New Jersey was about to be dissolved. The additional regiments of the regular line were to be raised by the States, and upon them alone could he depend for the supply of a new army, with which to commence the campaign in the spring of 1777. He had labored, he said, ever since he had been in the service, to discourage all kinds of local attachments and distinctions of country, denominating the whole by the greater name of American; but he had found it impossible to overcome prejudices.
Two causes especially embarrassed his efforts in the formation of the new army; and both of them show how powerful were the centrifugal forces of our system at that period, and how little hold that great central name had taken upon the people of the different States. One of these causes was the persistence of some of the States in giving extra bounties to encourage enlistments into their quotas of the original eighty-eight battalions not yet raised. The bounty allowed by Congress was twenty dollars to every soldier enlisting into the new establishment for three years or during the war. The additional bounty offered by Massachusetts was sixty-six dollars and two thirds. There was thus an inducement of eighty-six dollars and two thirds offered to the men then in the service of the United States, not to reënlist in their old regiments, as fast as their time of service expired, but to go to Massachusetts and enlist in the fresh quotas which were forming in that State, and which were to be afterwards mustered into the continental service. The same inconsiderate and unpatriotic policy was pursued in all the Eastern States, and before the spring opened, the consequences began to be felt in the state of the new continental battalions which General Washington was endeavoring to procure from some of the Middle States, and in which he would not sanction the allowance of an extra bounty, regarding it as an indirect breach of the union, and of the agreement entered into by the delegates of the States in Congress to give a bounty of twenty dollars only for service in the continental army.[131] The month of April arrived, and he had not received a man of the new levies, except a few hundreds from Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, while the few old regiments which remained, after the dissolution of the army in January, were reduced to a handful of men, the enemy being in great force, and making every preparation to seize upon Philadelphia.
Nor did the allowance of these irregular bounties help the States, in raising the old levies, as had been anticipated. They rather caused the soldiers to set a high price upon themselves, and to hold back from enlisting; while the second cause, to which I have alluded, as embarrassing the Commander-in-chief, was a great hinderance to his efforts to plan and carry out a campaign, having for its object the general benefit of the whole Union.
This cause was the inability of many local authorities to comprehend the necessity of such a campaign. General Washington was, at this period, harassed by numerous applications to allow the troops, which had been raised in the States for the service of the continent, to remain for the defence of particular neighborhoods against incursions of the enemy. Nothing, he said on one of these occasions, could exceed the pleasure which he should feel, if he were able to protect every town and every individual on the continent. But as this was a pleasure which he never should realize, and as the continental forces were wanted to meet and counteract the main designs of the enemy on the principal theatre of the war, he could not consent to divide them and detach them to every point where the enemy might possibly attempt an impression; "for that," he added, "would be in the end to destroy ourselves and subjugate our country."[132]
From the operation of these and other causes connected with the political system of the country, the army with which Washington was obliged to take the field, in the spring of 1777, did not exceed five thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight effective men, exclusive of a small body of cavalry and artillery.[133] The consequence was, a necessary reliance upon militia, to a great extent, throughout that summer. The battle of the Brandywine, fought with an effective force of only eleven thousand men, including militia, against a thoroughly disciplined army of fifteen thousand British and Hessian troops, and fought for the city of Philadelphia as a stake, was lost on the 11th of September.[134] The Congress broke up on the 18th. Sir William Howe took possession of the city on the 26th; and on the 27th, the Congress reassembled at Lancaster. In a few days, they removed to Yorktown, where their sessions continued to be held for several months.