Independence (16 page)

After walking three blocks to Carpenters’ Hall in a heavy gray mist that clung to the city, the delegates rapidly got down to business. They chose Virginia’s Peyton Randolph to be the president of Congress and appointed Charles Thomson, a nonmember but a Philadelphia activist and longtime foe of Galloway, as secretary. Thomas Cushing proposed that this urgent assembly commence with a prayer. When Congress assented, Samuel Adams took the floor and asked that Jacob Duche, an Anglican priest in Philadelphia, be permitted to deliver the invocation. The pious Adams may have genuinely wished to appeal for divine guidance, but, as was usually true with everything he did, there was a political component to his entreaty. He hoped to show that the New England Puritans not only were “no bigot[s]” but also were more moderate than many suspected. Adams’s gesture was a “Masterly Stroke,” gushed a Delaware congressman, as it led some in his delegation, and some Pennsylvanians as well, to grow “more favourable” toward Massachusetts. Duche prayed with “fervour,” one delegate declared.
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Carpenters’ Hall. The First Continental Congress met here in September and October 1774. Congress moved to the larger Pennsylvania State House in 1775. An 1896 lithograph from
Harper’s
magazine. (http://www.harpers.org/archive)

One additional hurdle had to be cleared before Congress could proceed. What would be the voting procedure in this assembly? The smaller provinces, wanting an equal voice, naturally pushed for giving each colony one vote. If these proceedings led to war, Samuel Ward of tiny Rhode Island candidly asserted, the smallest colony “would suffer as much as the greatest.”
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The larger colonies argued for basing voting strength on population. Patrick Henry of Virginia, the most populous American colony, was the chief spokesman for their cause. As he had so often done before Virginia juries and in the House of Burgesses, Henry resorted to histrionics, leading one observer to compare him to “a Presbyterian clergyman, used to haranguing the people.”
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Henry contended that the colonies had ceased to exist and that all Americans were “in a State of Nature.” Though he would steadfastly defend Virginia’s interests during the next several weeks, on this day, and in this cause, Henry declaimed: “I am not a Virginian, but an American.” He added that Congress must be structured in what he called a “democratical” manner. A majority of those present and voting should decide every question.
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It was a magnificent, though futile, speech. In truth, the larger colonies never had a chance. The smaller colonies had no intention of being led where they did not wish to go, and Massachusetts, one of the larger colonies, needed all the help it could get in resisting the Coercive Acts. In short order, Congress decided that each colony would have one vote, a procedure that remained in effect through the next fifteen years.
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This critical choice would color the proceedings of Congress on every substantive issue. Throughout the American Revolution the members of Congress represented colonies or states, not people. Down to its final day, the members of the Continental Congress were never popularly elected. They were always chosen by the provincial assemblies, which almost everywhere were malapportioned. The conservative eastern counties were nearly always overrepresented at the expense of the usually more radical western counties. Sentiment in Congress often lagged behind popular opinion. That, and the pressing need for unity and the ever-present necessity of securing the approval of at least seven provinces in order to pass any measure, would not only pose roadblocks to the independence movement but also make the American Revolution more conservative than most modern revolutions.

Congress immediately agreed to meet in secret, a practice from which it also never varied. Its members wished to speak as they pleased, free from intimidation by noisy spectators. More important, they realized that there would be times when it was imprudent for London or the American people to be privy to matters under consideration. They also wished to hide from North’s government all evidence of differences within Congress. In keeping with this, the delegates opted to publish a journal of their proceedings, but one that often contained only the scantiest record of what had transpired.

After only three sessions, the Massachusetts delegates knew for certain that next to no one in Congress was willing to bow to the demands of North’s ministry. “A Tory here is the most despicable Animal in the Creation. Spiders, Toads, Snakes, are their only proper Emblems,” John Adams concluded, and with some exaggeration he wrote to his wife that Massachusetts was seen by most congressmen as the “Saviours and Defenders of American Liberty.”
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While the Massachusetts delegates had reason to be hopeful, they, like other perceptive congressmen, rapidly discerned two distinct factions within Congress. It was hardly unexpected that there would be divisions. Some degree of discord had existed in every colony since the onset of the imperial crisis. While most Americans were indignant at parliamentary taxation, they had never seen eye to eye on how—and how far and how hard—to push back against those policies. There was always uneasiness over how Great Britain might respond to their protests. Moreover, breaches had developed in the colonists’ attitudes toward the mother country. Some had grown suspicious of the motives of Crown and Parliament, and wary of a mother country they believed to be in the thrall of decadence.

But alongside those reservations, a deep and abiding love, even adoration, of Great Britain remained strong. Americans felt an ingrained allegiance to Britain, and many were unable to shake the age-old belief that, like it or not, dependence on the parent state remained unavoidable and essential. Britain not only safeguarded the colonists from Europe’s predatory powers, but the most timorous and conservative colonists felt safer knowing that as a last resort, London could also be depended on to maintain social and political order in America. By the second half of the eighteenth century, moreover, America was flooded with English consumer goods, changing the colonists’ consumption patterns in ways that only increased their appreciation of the British Empire. Finally, the political culture in the colonies had fostered a profound devotion to the British monarchy. Each year numerous scheduled celebrations of British kings and their families were held, including remembrances of their deeds and linkage to the founding of the various provinces, as well as frequent reminders of the triumph of these Protestant monarchs over their Catholic rivals.
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The question facing this congress was how to respond to the Tea Act and Coercive Acts. But behind that question lay myriad emotions, ambitions, certitudes, unknowns, and apprehensions.

One faction in Congress consisted of what might be called the hard-liners, those whom Galloway privately referred to as the “violent party.”
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They were united by a belief that Parliament possessed no authority over the colonies and that the monarch alone had jurisdiction throughout the empire. For some delegates of this persuasion, constitutionalism was the heart of the matter. A quest for personal advancement, or the dream of pecuniary gain for themselves or their province, drove others. Some were incensed by the colonists’ unshakable second-class status within the British Empire. At a minimum, they desired greater American autonomy. The belief that the colonies had matured and were able to stand alone inspired others, a conviction abetted by the defeat and removal of France from North America, lessening the need for British protection. Many felt betrayed. After sacrificing to help the mother country win the Seven Years’ War, the colonists’ recompense had been taxes, standing armies, and coercion.

Most members of this hard-line faction were bent on making London not only repeal the Tea Act and Coercive Acts but also retreat from the new colonial policies it had sought to impose since 1763. They did not come to Philadelphia seeking a compromise with the mother country. Although notoriously tight-lipped, the members of this faction had almost certainly concluded that America could not have its way short of war, and some, including Samuel Adams, probably already believed that only independence could solve America’s problems with London. Delegates from three New England colonies—Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut—banded with a majority of Virginia’s congressmen to make up the heart of this contingent.

The other, more moderate, faction consisted chiefly of delegates from the four mid-Atlantic colonies—Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. Dominated by mercantile interests with deep economic ties to the empire, these colonies longed for reconciliation and the survival of the Anglo-American union. Their economies were thriving. Businessmen in New York and Philadelphia profited handsomely through extensions of credit from London’s bankers, and their ships and cargoes were secured by marine insurance acquired in England and protected by the Royal Navy. They had no financial reasons for protesting. Indeed, as one Philadelphia merchant remarked, protest was “unnatural, and will assuredly prove unprofitable.” But, in addition, these colonies featured heterogeneous populations of English, Scotch-Irish, and German immigrants, topped off by large numbers of African slaves. Of all the colonies, those in the mid-Atlantic region were thought to be the most likely to experience internal unrest during a revolutionary upheaval.
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Almost to a man, the deputies from the mid-Atlantic colonies hoped for a restoration of the placid relationship between the colonies and mother country that had existed before 1763. Nevertheless, the moderates also felt that London’s recent colonial policies posed dangers to American rights and had to be resisted, and nearly every one of them came to Philadelphia prepared to support a trade embargo. But they favored a more tempered defiance than their counterparts, and some were convinced that both the colonies and the mother country had to give ground if war was to be averted. Above all, most members of this faction still believed that Britain’s leaders were wise and prudent. If Congress responded with a mixture of firmness and moderation, most of these deputies confidently believed that Great Britain would back down short of war.

Some congressmen were not hard-and-fast members of either faction. This was especially true of some deputies from Maryland and the Carolinas, who now and then sided with one faction and from time to time with the other. Rhode Island’s voting pattern was the most unique of all. Its two delegates often took contrary stands. Samuel Ward usually sided with other New England hard-liners, while Stephen Hopkins was drawn to more conciliatory proposals. With its two congressmen often deadlocked, Rhode Island had a voice, but not a vote, on many matters.

Whether hard-liners or moderates, or somewhere in between, most delegates were prepared to ride the whirlwind to destinations unknown. On the eve of this historic gathering, John Adams doubtless captured the feeling of most: “the die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon; swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country, was my unalterable determination.”
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Samuel Adams walked a tightrope. He favored a hard-line approach, but he knew that Massachusetts could ill afford to frighten away the moderates. It was crucial that America respond with a unified voice. Adams also knew that while each colony had a single vote, each delegation consisted of numerous congressmen, ranging from a high of nine (New York) to a low of two (New Hampshire and Rhode Island). Often, the members of these delegations differed in outlook. By winning over one swing voter here and another there—or by losing one here and there—a colony’s final vote could be altered.

Adams arrived in Congress with a reputation as a violence-soaked incendiary, and, by dint of coming from Massachusetts, the three other members of that delegation were similarly, if unfairly, tainted. Led by Samuel Adams, the delegation set out to palliate the fears of the other congressmen, adopting what John Adams called a strategy of “great Delicacy and Caution.” He and his Bay Colony colleagues, John Adams remarked, had “been obliged to keep [them]selves ought of Sight, and to feel Pulses, and Sound the Depths—to insinuate our Sentiments, Designs and Desires by means of other Persons, Sometimes of one Province and Sometimes of another.” Keeping a low profile, the Massachusetts delegates permitted every procedural resolution offered at the outset of Congress to be made by delegates from southern colonies, mostly by Virginians. Those steps almost surely came after private consultation with Samuel Adams, but they were not associated with the Massachusetts delegation. Furthermore, the three other congressmen from Massachusetts—Cushing, John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine—seldom spoke in the congressional debates, and Samuel Adams appears to have been virtually stricken mute. The Massachusetts delegates turned instead to their newfound comrades from Virginia, and especially to Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry, to walk the point for them on the floor of Congress. But Samuel Adams was active behind the scenes, planning and scheming and orchestrating the machinations of radical activists from Massachusetts. He and his comrades back in Boston kept Paul Revere on horseback so often to bring in news designed to sway Congress that the poor dispatch rider must have developed saddle sores.