Young John Adams: A State of Rebellion

by CATHERINE DRINKER BOWEN

1

IN the afternoons when Congress rose early, John Adams was relieved to get away by himself, stroll out Chestnut Street to the Common or westward along the green slopes above Schuylkill River. His was a nature that needed solitude as it needed food and drink. His mind was extraordinarily sensitive to intellectual impressions, almost painfully so. He knew what a man would say before the words left his mouth. But he required time, release of pressure to let the ideas, the arguments sink in, arrange themselves, become part of him. Some men — Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee—achieved this process in company. John envied them their ability to think and write in a smoky, aromatic roomful of talking, argumeniative humanity. They seemed to reach conclusions as well or better with the pressure, the movement of actual flesh and blood about them. It stimulated them, put spark to their tinder, caused the bright cruption of their best and fullest thoughts.

It was not so with John. “At home without company, thinking, pondering” — his diary said it very often. John would always have this necessity. And when pressure became inescapable he fell sick, caught cold, lost his voice, ran a fever, was forced to his chamber and his bed until solitude renewed him. Here in Philadelphia he took care to slip from Carpenters’ Hall a little early or a little late, walking quickly so none would see him go. He had not covered four blocks when the pressure began to lift and peace stole down — lighting on his shoulder, John thought smiling, like a dove. Beneath the bright uncrowded sky he could move at his own pace, blissfully aware that among these passing strangers no eye would seek his in sympathy or in anger.

The fall days wore fine now, neither hot nor cold; Philadelphia lived its life sociably on the streets. Along the brick footways, boys played pitch-penny. Housewives, their work done, sat on benches placed before their doors, exchanging gossip, stitching at their shellwork, and enjoying the air. On warm afternoons, men and boys still swam in the Delaware. John liked to sit on the bank and watch them. There was one Quaker, a broad, fat, jolly man, who tied a big paper kite to his wrist and let it pull him across the river while he floated grandly on his back. Whenever he appeared a crowd gathered, betting enthusiastically on how long it would take him.

John stopped at a draper’s shop and bought Abigail a silk camlet mantua of a pretty blue color he knew would become her. He toyed also with the notion of taking her a red capuchin cape, but decided to wait until cold weather made the choice wider. Abby loved bright colors, but she was timid about wearing them. Once he had told her quite sharply that the colors of a mouse did not become her. Slate-gray worsted, he had said, suited neither her face nor her spirit. Abby had surprised him by blushing with pleasure like a girl. John remembered it now, and his heart twisted in sudden, almost painful longing, He thought morosely that if he were in Spain he could not be farther from his wife. The scene here was so foreign he could not attempt to describe it, nor repeat again and again how continual business, continual company kept him from writting the long letters he composed in his thoughts. The dinner parties continued, and the evening meetings in tavern and club. John spent much time with the Virginia men, and with the radicals from Delaware, Thomas McKean and Caesar Rodney. The next move must be for a commercial blockade against Britain. No one spoke of it as a boycott; the word was not yet invented. (Captain Boycott would not raise his Irish head for another century.) Non-consumption, non-exportation, non-importation were the words used. To put through such a plan was imperative. No lesser move would force the ministry to back down — and to force them to back down was the whole purpose of this Congress. Declarations of Rights and Humble Petitions, Parliament could throw in the scrap heap unread. But neither Lords nor Commons would dare ignore an arbitrary sudden cessation of the American trade. More than seventy members of Parliament owned plantations in the West Indies; these men would not sit by and see themselves ruined. British merchants had large interests in Virginia tobacco, Carolina rice, and naval stores. John Adams, who in August had scoffed at commercial non-intercourse as being too mild a measure, saw it now as the only hope of the colonies, short of war.

The southern colonies would be first to suffer from a blockade. Virginia and the Carolinas had scarcely any market beyond England, whereas the northern colonies traded with all Europe. The nonexportation men decided to split the scheme, not ask Congress to swallow it all at once. They put through a preliminary measure for non-importation. Even Joseph Galloway, the archconservative, voted for it and for a mild plan to distribute handbills “requesting” people to order no more goods until Congress settled its policy.

But Galloway had no intention of letting the thing go further. He was ready with a plan of his own. If his scheme succeeded, there would be no more talk of a blockade, and the extreme liberty party would look very silly indeed. Galloway was neither a traitor nor a fool; he was an experienced politician who knew what worked and what did not work. An intimate friend of Dr. Franklin, he was in close correspondence with the provincial agents in London, understood the point of view on both sides of the water.

What Galloway desired was some kind of American constitution that would unite the colonies without separating them from Britain. Everyone in Congress knew that such a plan had been proposed at Albany in ‘54; everyone regretted its failure. Congress would welcome any workable plan for colonial union. The sticking point would come at the union with Britain and the terms that must necessarily be its condition. For no matter how vehemently it was denied, Galloway knew there existed in the Congress — and therefore in the colonies — a strong and desperate conviction that should Britain not back down in her demands, independence was the only answer, even if it brought total ruin. Fifty-six men were met in order to avert that ruin if they could. They were ready for suggestions. The field lay fallow, awaiting the seed.

2

ON the 28th of September, Joseph Galloway rose and asked leave to present two Resolves for a Political Union between the Colonies and the MotherState. Producing a sheaf of papers, he stood up and began to read. His voice was agreeable; in his smooth, light-gray coat and powdered wig he bore himself easily, with confidence. His thin face was delicate, alert. Even John Adams, who at the word Mother-State had bristled angrily, acknowledged to himself the man could talk.

The room gave strict attention as the plan unfolded. Each colony was to retain its present constitution, the whole to be administered by a Grand Council of Representatives, chosen every three years by the people of each colony, and a PresidentGeneral appointed by the King.

So far, so good. Massachusetts herself did not object to a crown-appointed President, and still desired George III as sovereign. But what a cold-looking man this Galloway was! John reflected. The long upper lip was stubborn, haughty. There was no candor here, no frankness, but a thinness of spirit, some pale note of caution.

“The Grand American Council,” Galloway was saying, “shall hold and exercise all the like rights, liberties, and privileges as are held and exercised by and in the House of Commons of Great Britain.” Heads nodded, glances were exchanged. The New York delegation smiled openly, looking about them. Should this plan go through, they could go home and tell their constituents the danger of financial ruin was over, and the danger of war.

“The President-General and the Grand Council,” Galloway continued in the same even voice, “shall be an inferior and distinct branch of the British legislature, united and incorporated with it. All general acts and statutes shall be transmitted to the Parliament of Great. Britain. The assent of Parliament and Council shall be requisite to the validity of such acts or statutes.”

The assent of Parliament. John almost cursed outright. The four words invalidated the whole plan, showed it for what it was — a farce, a sham, a most dangerous illusion. How clever Galloway was! The way he put it, the thing had seemed an equable arrangement altogether — a step forward, not back. Gadsden of South Carolina cleared his throat, loudly and rudely. Colonel Washington, his grave face impassive, shifted in his seat. The Virginia men looked hopefully at Patrick Henry.

Galloway laid down his neat sheaf of papers, but went right on talking. In the last war, the colonies had come near to being destroyed by France. And why? Because the colonies were disunited. “There must be a union of wills and strength. I am as much a friend to liberty as any that exists. No man shall go further in point of fortune or in point of blood. But we are totally independent of each other. A State must be animated by one soul. Every government— patriarchal, monarchial, aristocratical or democratical, must have a supreme legislature.” Galloway leaned forward, the tone of his voice changed: “Resolved,” he said, reading from a paper, “That the Congress will apply to his Majesty for a redress of grievances under which his faithful subjects in America labour; and assure him, that the colonies hold in abhorrence the idea of being considered independent communities of the British government, and most ardently desire the establishment of a Political Union, not only among themselves but with the Mother-State.”

Galloway sat down. There was a murmur of approval. Duane and Jay rose to express their support ; Edward Rutledge, the South Carolina conservative, seconded them. “I think it an almost perfect plan,” he said. Old Stephen Hopkins applauded. (He had been at Albany in ‘54, and this plan was very like Franklin’s.) But Hopkins’s colleague from Rhode Island, Governor Ward, opposed it. So did Patrick Henry, with his usual vehemence.

John himself did not rise to speak. And as the day wore on and the debate continued, hot and rapid, he saw that the room was about evenly divided, pro and con. There was great danger Galloway might actually prevail, his plan win a majority of votes. If that happened, the New England men, the Virginia men could go on home, defeated.

Yet words were useless now, John told himself, and logic was useless. Galloway’s own logic had been clearer than anything the opposition was putting forward. They had come too far for talk. This matter was not to be settled by logic and reason. The division was deeper — a matter of emotional bias, of a man’s outlook toward government and toward life, predetermined, unalterable. When the count was taken, six colonies against five voted, not for repudiation, not for acceptance, but to let the plan “lie on the table for future consideration.”

3

THE shelving of Galloway’s plan, while it did not entirely settle the danger, at least made way for the great question of commercial boycott. This came up in Congress next day, September 29th, and again on the 30th. Unless every colony agreed, unless every port and customhouse were closed, the thing would not work. It must be continent wide. The Continental Association, the plan was called.

As the plan grew, difficulties grew with it. The pockets of every American were touched, his bread and livelihood threatened. Nothing but a miracle could resolve these complications of trade. For three weeks the bargaining continued, sometimes in committee, sometimes on the floor of the house. Rice and tobacco . . . lumber, flaxseed. Ireland could not exist without American flaxseed; the linen industry would be paralyzed, three hundred thousand Irish laborers thrown out of work. . . . So much the better, someone said. Britain would be forced to listen. . . . Tar, pitch, turpentine. England desperately needed our naval stores. . . . Oil, potash. . . . Each colony fought for its especial product. . . . Molasses, sugar, coffee. . . . Without the West Indian trade, our fishing towns would starve. “Thousands of New England families,” a voice shouted, “will be flung into the arms of famine.”

In the square, bright room there was anger, and fear. . . . Tea! Here agreement came quickly; no one desired to resume trade in tea. . . . Clothing. Could the colonies possibly manage without clothing from England? Two thirds of the people were clothed in British manufacture. . . . Guns! Every instrument of war, down to the very saltpeter for gunpowder, came from England. How in God’s name could an arsenal be collected if there was nonimportation on instruments of war?

Slaves. This was easily settled. (The question of freeing the slaves did not arise; it was not part of the matter at hand.) “After the first day of December next” — so ran Section 2 — “we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities nor manufactures to those who are concerned in it.”

Rice! said South Carolina for the twentieth time. South Carolina could not live without exporting rice. Her entire planter’s economy depended on it. For two days, rice and indigo usurped the floor. The deputies from South Carolina walked out, all but Christopher Gadsden. They would sign no Continental Association, they swore, that excluded commerce in rice. In the end, rice was allowed lor export to Europe, though not to England, Ireland, or the West Indies.

There were fourteen sections in the Continental Association and two thousand words. On October 18th, after three weeks of debate, it was finally voted on and passed by a majority. What had been impossible was now achieved. Twelve colonies had constructed the first instrument of their union. A fair copy of the whole was ordered for the individual signatures of Congress.

On the 20th of October, members, entering the hall, saw the document lying on the big table below the window, pens and ink conveniently placed. The delegates walked forward, some with obvious reluctance. A gentleman’s signature, the liberty men said soothingly, would not commit him personally. After all, the Speaker of an Assembly signs measures he doesn’t like, if they are passed by a majority.

Galloway’s fingers shook, taking up the pen. To him this neatly written document changed the Congress from a mere deliberative body to a revolutionary government. The provisions for enforcement were absolute; they bound a continent. “That, a committee be chosen in every county” to watch the wharves and customhouses, report anything suspicious, “to the end that such foes to the rights of British-America may be publicly known and universally contemned.”

The words stared up at Galloway. He bent his head, and almost weeping with rage and frustration, wrote his name.

4

ONLY six days of Congress remained, to be spent entirely on various addresses, testimonials, and petitions for Britain and the colonies. If the world was to be informed of what the Congress had done, the members themselves must do the informing. But they felt a growing impatience, a desire to be done and go home. On October 23rd the Virginia men left to attend the opening of their own House of Burgesses. Only Washington and Lee remained, and even Washington’s patience was growing thin. These bright frosty mornings were fox-hunting weather. At home his horses were spoiling in the stables, and if the Congress did not presently finish its business, Fairfax County would be overrun with foxes.

John himself prayed earnestly that he might never again be so long from home. Congress had agreed to reconvene in the spring if Britain did not meet the American demands. In such case, John told himself that other men must carry the burden. He himself would not stir an inch from Boston and Braintree. The first excitement was gone; John was very tired. The actual daytime business of Congress, he told himself, was necessary and must be done. The evening performance was what irked. Why must it be? In New England, men managed without this perpetual ceremony. “We have dined out enough for a lifetime,” John told his cousin Sam morosely. His own skin, he added, was turning green from eating turtle, and the amount of good Madeira he had consumed would make even a Rhode Island smuggler squint-eyed with envy.

John felt anxious about the sentiments of New England — and even more anxious as to how Massachusetts was to govern itself, now that the Province had repudiated the royal authority. A Provincial Congress was sitting at Watertown, a sort of pro tem body composed of representatives from some two hundred towns. For lack of a Governor they had granted executive powers to their Committee of Safety — a body of about nine patriots who had actually no more credentials than so many members of volunteer fire companies. No courts of law were functioning. So far, the Province had not disintegrated into anarchy and rioting, but there was no telling at what point it might occur.

He had been too long away, John told himself, deeply uneasy. He had lost touch with Massachusetts; it was his business to reach home as fast as possible, see how affairs really stood. As for his own family, it seemed incredible that Abby had managed as well as she had, with four children and a farm to look after quite by herself. Their little savings would soon be used up; if he could not get back to the law, they would be reduced to a diet of potatoes and water.

On Wednesday, October 26th, Congress perceived with a sigh of relief that its business was actually concluded. Thanks were voted “to the honourable House of Representatives of the Colony of Pennsylvania for their politeness to the Congress.” Then — wrote Charles Thomson in the minutes — “the Congress dissolved itself.”

That evening there was feasting at the City Tavern. The tone was buoyant, optimistic. Parliament would capitulate entirely, everyone said, repeal the coercive acts, resume the old easy policy that had prevailed before 1763. The ministry could not possibly stand out against the Continental Association. The merchants of London and Bristol would bombard Parliament with petitions to resume trade.

Against this flood of cheerful prophecy the brace of Adamses stood glum and somehow increasingly depressed. The others rallied them, booming out reassurance. Richard Henry Lee shook John’s hand warmly, told him Massachusetts would be relieved of all her troubles by June.

John and Sam walked silently home across the darkened city. If the Congress, John said finally, was so egregiously mistaken, what could be expected from the people at large? The real test was yet to come when the Continental Association was voted on by the separate colonial assemblies. As for Britain’s reaction, that would of necessity be slow. England would not feel the pinch of commercial boycott for a year or more. Her merchants, fearing some such move, had been pouring goods into America. There was enough to supply a two years’ market. Trade flourished. In the southern colonies people were buying as if they would never buy again.

Friday, October 28th, dawned dark and stormy; a cold rain fell. John rose early, groped his way to the window and threw open the shutters. Arch Street was a narrow, dismal sight. But to John, standing in his nightshirt with his nose against the damp pane, the prospect was the brightest in months. . . . The rain water gurgled down the gutters in a song of pure triumph. Today he was going home! No matter what he found there of anarchy or of danger, no matter what problems must be wrestled with, or what defeats or triumphs might occur, home was where he longed to be.

The journey home took thirteen days; to John it was interminable. At Elizabethtown Point the coach and horses were loaded on flatboats and rowed six miles to Staten Island. It was a Sunday, and John’s birthday; he was thirty-nine. Watching the men at their oars he was sure they dawdled purposely; he had all he could do not to seize an oar himself and pull away. At New York next day, Morin Scott, Alexander McDougall, and the others were waiting at the battery; they seemed depressed. “The Sons of Liberty here are in the horrors,” John wrote. “They think they have lost ground since we passed through this city.” It was true; the Continental Association was not popular in New York colony.

Robert Paine left his companions and took the packet boat to Newport. Once the other three crossed the Connecticut border they were overwhelmed with festivities and welcome. New Haven stationed couriers twenty miles ahead, to gallop home and warn that the delegates were coming so the bells could peal, the cannon boom, and proper reception be prepared. Middletown sent word that a gala dinner was ready. “We excused ourselves with great earnestness,” John wrote.

The documents of Congress had already been printed and circulated. The Tories were very busy. John saw pamphlets hawked on the streets of Connecticut, written by hands he knew well, and very violent against the Continental Association.

Patriotic Committees of Inspection and of Safety, patriot Subcommittees of Selectmen were everywhere combated by counter-Committees and counter-Associations of Tories. Neighbor spied on neighbor for both sides. In Falmouth, one Thomas Coulson received sails from England for a new vessel he was building. He refused to give them up; he had waited six months for them, he said. At Marblehead, a Mr. Lilly bought a pound and a half of tea from a Boston dealer, was forced to sign a public apology. Down in Charlestown, South Carolina, a shipload of nearly three hundred slaves was returned by the consignee. Household furniture, even horses were refused at the wharf; sometimes entire cargoes were thrown into the harbor. Itinerant peddlers gave the Committees the most trouble. Women bought British cloth, laces, gloves at the door, then hid them and would not confess.

Short of tar and feathers, it was extremely difficull to punish the offenders. In Massachusetts, Paul Revere and the Boston distillers, Chase and Avery, headed the Committee of Inspection. Yet even with such strong partisans in command, John wondered how, lacking courts of law, violators could be held to account. Public condemnation was, actually, the only penalty. All the way from Philadelphia, John listened to tales of violators caught or violators suspected.

John did not drive to Boston with the others, but left the coach at Cambridge and rode home to Braintree on a hired horse. And when at last he reached Penn’s Hill and home, he found the parlor, the kitchen with its roaring November fire, filled with people waiting to talk politics. John’s brothers with their wives, his mother and her husband, Mr. Hall, were there, eager to congratulate the returned delegate, hear the news from Philadelphia. Abby herself looked splendidly. She had written that she was getting fat, and indeed she had never seemed so vigorous. Her eyes sparkled with health. She had on a dress John had not seen before, a full skirt of russet brown wool, a blue shawl crossed over her breasts, pinned primly at the neck; it became her vastly. Little Abby and John Quincy followed their father up the stairs and down. Had he got their letters in Philadelphia? they asked. Charles, four, gazed wonderingly at the returned stranger as at an apparition. The baby, nearly two, had learned to walk. John lifted him, held him high in his stiff kilts while all the others laughed.

5

HE HAD scarcely time to get his breath and see his family for a few days of comparative peace, when the Provincial Congress at Watertown sent a messenger asking urgently for his attendance. They needed him at once, they said; they were to sit only until December 10th. John was desperately tired, his eyes badly inflamed; it hurt him to read or write. But he got on his horse and rode to Watertown, just outside Boston. He found two hundred and sixty men gathered in the Meeting House, with John Hancock in the chair. They had already voted on a delegation for the next Continental Congress, due to sit in May of ‘75 — the two Adamses and Paine, with John Hancock and Elbridge Gerry added.

Their main business was the organization of an army — “for defense,” the reports were careful to add. It was agreed to raise if possible a force of twelve thousand men from Massachusetts. Where arms and powder could not be bought, they must be seized from government stores. And if blacksmiths would not forge musket barrels, cast cannon balls, then ways must be found to overcome their reluctance. Expresses were sent to New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, asking support to the tune of twenty thousand additional troops if called for. A circular letter went out also to gospel ministers, requesting their help in raising this volunteer army. Let preachers exhort and instruct their congregations as to the immediacy, the full meaning of the British threat.

On the 10th of December the Watertown Congress dispersed. John rode home, very thoughtful, and profoundly moved by what he had witnessed. This Congress had not been made up of lawyers, landowners, men of the caliber and background ol Colonel Washington, Mr. Dickinson, John Jay of New York. Here, two hundred and sixty blacksmiths, bakers, fishermen, tailors, small shopkeepers had convened, some of them representing towns of perhaps a few hundred inhabitants. Entirely without legislative authority, they had organized the raising of an army, formulated a policy of emergency government.

At Watertown he had witnessed, John told himself, a great Province governed not by police and penally but by, as it were, two hundred and sixty volunteer consciences. The towns seemed deeply to desire government, restraint, order.

Tory propaganda flowed up to Massachusetts from every colony. It seemed unending, all-pervasive. John wondered if the Contmental Association could stand against it. The fact that South Carolina was allowed to export rice stuck in the radical craw. Why this one favored exception? Why, then, couldn’t New England send fish to Jamaica?

The Tories were furious with their own “weak members” who had permitted themselves to be so egregiously “tricked” at Philadelphia. “Adams and the haughty Sultans of the South” had “juggled the whole Conclave of the Delegates.”

“You had all the honors, you had all the leading cards of every sute in your hands,” said “Grotius” to his Tory friends by way of the Massachusetts Gazette. “And yet you suffered sharpers to get the odd trick.” Everywhere, “men of the baser” sort had seized the reins of government. It was not to be endured. These new Committees of Inspection, Committees of Safety and Commerce, these Subcommittees of Selectmen were made up of blacksmiths, cowherds, leather-apron men. There wasn’t a ruffled shirt to be seen among them.

“If I must be enslaved,” wrote one indignant gentleman, “let it be by a KING at least, and not by a parcel of upstart lawless Committee-men. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin.” When a Tory preacher was dismissed by his South Carolina congregation for saving that “mechanics and country clowns had no right to dispute about politics,” the Newport Mercury retorted angrily that “all such divines should be taught to know that mechanics and country clowns (infamously so-called), are the real and absolute masters of king, lords, commons and priests.”

6

LONDON had the papers of Congress just before Christmas. Franklin hurried to Lord Hillsborough with the Petition to the King. But the great Lord H. was at his Irish castle, and when he returned, Franklin visited him five times before he was admilted. Meanwhile the documents were given wide circulation. During the holidays all London read them, discussed them, waiting for Parliament to assemble in January.

Poor Josiah Quincy, walking the London streets, dizzy with fever, spitting blood in his handkerchief, heard America scoffed at as a half-grown bully, a child screaming threats at his father. “The people here have got an idea,” Quincy wrote home despondently, “that Americans are all cowards and poltroons.” Josiah had come to London as mediator; in utmost seriousness he had crossed the ocean to interpret New England to old England — and to discover what support America could actually count among the British people. He visited everywhere, called on the Lords North and Dartmouth, talked with Franklin and the other colonial agents, sat in coffeehouses trying to make friends for his country and his country’s cause. He had brought his best clothes; he was very attractive, his manner modest. People liked him at once, smiled at his squint, the air of desperate seriousness it gave to his peering, troubled gray eyes. “Impossible that you arc an American!” they cried.

The remark threw Josiah into further desperation. He could not make himself understood. Political words had different meanings here. The word representation, for instance. At home it was a word sacred, symbolizing British freedom, the British constitution itself. Here the word meant nothing at all. How could it, when seats in Parliament were bought outright? “Mr. Rose Fuller told me,” Josiah wrote his wife in Boston, “that his election cost him ten thousand pounds sterling and more. The commonalty in this country are no more like the commonalty in America than if they were two utterly distinct and unconnected people.”

And what an illusion, for New England men to persist in calling this strange island “home”! The British knew nothing about America and did not wish to know. Their ignorance would have been laughable had it not been so frightening.

Yet there were trumpet voices ready to speak for America. In the House of Lords old William Pitt, Lord Chatham, advised his peers to read the documents of the American Congress. “When your Lordships consider their decency, firmness and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause and wish to make it your own. For my self, I must avow that in all my reading—and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master states of the world — for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general Congress at Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose servitude upon such a mighty continental nation must be vain.”

Recall the troops from Boston, Chatham urged. By a vote of sixty-eight to eighteen, his motion was defeated. Quite obviously, William Pitt did not speak for England. “The whole landed interest,” Lord Camden wrote, “is almost altogether antiAmerican.” In Parliament and out, everyone had his notion of how to manage the Americans. Dean Tucker of Gloucester Cathedral, a high Tory, was all for granting independence. England would be well rid of the Americans, he said. Adam Smith was for independence too, sans feeling, as became a great economist — merely as expediency. Why should Britain carry this huge annual expense? Free trade might well be more advantageous than the present disastrous monopoly.

When it came to the actual count, every measure against the Americans passed Parliament by large majorities. New England was declared in a state of rebellion, forbidden to fish on the Newfoundland Banks, forbidden to trade not only with the outside world but from colony to colony. All food and supplies must henceforth come from the mother country; now, surely, that stubborn spirit would bend!

For three months, Parliament debated. On March 22nd, Edmund Burke rose, pleading for conciliation in words America would get by heart two centuries later. Burke was an Irishman in his middle forties; nine years of Parliament had not rid him of his Dublin accent. He wore steel-mounted spectacles; they slid down his nose while he was speaking. The House settled down, knowing well that Burke would talk for five hours if it took five hours to say what was in his mind.

Absurd, he began now in his rapid, urgent voice — absurd to talk of “punishing” two and a half million people! Besides, while Britain deliberated methods for subduing these two million, they were grown to three! The trade of these people, Burke went on, covered the globe, their ships rode the deep from pole to pole. “No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries, no climate that is not witness to their toils.” Could any fleet, any army subdue such a nation? Moreover its people had a peculiar education, one that fitted them for independent action. Even their blacksmiths read law, and the greater number of the delegates at Philadelphia had been practicing lawyers. “I hear the colonists have sold nearly as many of Blackstone’s Commentaries in America as in England,” Burke said. “Such men are acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.”

Give the Americans what they ask! said Burke at the end. “We cannot falsify the pedigree of this fierce people. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.” Comply with the American spirit. Return to the former policy of “a wise and salutary neglect” — and this people could be retained without coercion and without conquest.

Every word Burke said only hardened the Tory resolution. Should Britain yield now, the rebellion might spread to Canada, Jamaica, Ireland, India. Moreover, every time a group of miserable colonists found themselves dissatisfied, must Parliament be disturbed for three mortal months? On March 30th Parliament passed the Act to Restrain New England, and the King began signing commissions for generals and admirals to lead this new war. Gage’s forces in Boston must be enlarged to twenty thousand, a fleet dispatched as soon as practicable.

Vice Admiral Kcppel of the Fleet refused to go. He would fight a European army, he said, but not an American one. Lord Effingham resigned his commission when he discovered that his regiment was intended for America. The King called personally on Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the great soldier, offered him a peerage. Amherst shook his head. He could not serve against the Americans, “to whom he had been so much obliged.” (Did he remember the hills behind Worcester, his kilted troops dancing for the people, and his own long walks over a peaceful New England farm?) The old Highland Watch, stationed now in Ireland, balked completely at the word Boston. They “would not go and fight against their brethren, who last war fought and conquered by their side.” William Pitt withdrew his son from the army rather than see him fight the Americans.

Sir William Howe, youngest of the three military brothers, agreed reluctantly to take over Gage’s command at Boston. When his Nottingham constituents heard of it, they reproached him bitterly. What a choice for commander-in-chief in America! Richmond told the House of Lords scornfully. The first thing Howe would see, landing in Massachusetts, was the monument to his brother, George Augustus, Viscount Howe, who had died fighting side by side with the Americans against the French at Ticonderoga.

Dr. Franklin never ceased his efforts. It was of no use. The ministerial group set him down as the “most malicious and dangerous enemy Britain possessed.” Master of mischief, Samuel Johnson called him. On March 20th, Franklin sailed secretly for home. Josiah Quincy sailed for home too, terribly ill but pathetically eager to get to Boston and lay before his friends the messages, the news, the grave advices from England.

Long before their two ships sighted land, something occurred to make ambassadors superfluous. General Gage sent troops to capture the powder and muskets stored at Concord, seventeen miles northwest of Boston. The patriots got wind of it; Revere rode out to warn the militia. Lexington lay between Concord and Boston. And in the town of Lexington, on a clear, cold day of April, war with England was begun.

(To be continued)