Volume 4, Chapter 30, The Drive Toward Independence
As we have already learned, although New England was ready for independence from Great Britain,
Torpor reigned in the Continental Congress through February.
Cushing retained his steed until February so that the Massachusetts delegation
was not yet under control of the pro-independence faction.
And Virginia, the great mainstay of radicalism outside New England, was torn with dissension on this issue.
Furthermore, the radical leaders, Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson, were temporarily back home,
and the other independent stalwarts, George Washington and Patrick Henry, were serving in the armed forces,
so that the majority of the Virginia delegation remaining in Philadelphia were arch-conservatives.
In late February 1776, opinion in the Continental Congress shifted sharply leftward toward independence.
The shift was spurred by news of the British Prohibitory Act as well as the proclamation
of rebellion and the impact of common sense, and was quickened by the arrival in Philadelphia
of Elbridge-Garry, an arrival which swung the opportunistic Hancock back to the radical
line. Furthermore, Lee returned to his seat at Philadelphia to lead the Virginia Radicals
and the conservative Virginia oligarch, Benjamin Harrison, shifted into the Radicals camp,
thus giving them the vital majority of their delegation. The Continental Congress then
Washington had a probable majority for independence, a majority intensified by the good news of
the British evacuation of Boston.
On March 20, Congress urged Canada to set up a new government and join the united colonies,
and significantly, there was no mention of eventual reconciliation.
This was a move hinting strongly of independence.
The hint became stronger still in the Great April decisions, including winning French
aid and throwing open American ports to all countries, all of which did everything up
to the brink of a Declaration of Independence itself. Beyond this, Congress could not go,
for it could not bind the separate colonies to independence. Indeed, some of the provincial
delegations were instructed against independence by their constituencies. The final push for
After New England, the next region where independence came to the fore was the South. Paradoxically,
the first virtual authorization came from Georgia, once the most laggard of all the
colonies. Reacting to Lexington and Concord against its former indifference, Georgia had
established a Revolutionary Provincial Congress and a Subordinate Council of Safety.
Urged by the Continental Congress in November to step up military resistance to royal arms,
the merchants and artisans of Savannah led the Georgia rebels to establish more formal
government by the end of January 1776.
The government fulfilled the crucial radical requirements, a unicameral elected legislature
to which the Executive Council of Safety, the courts and the militia were strictly subordinate,
and the legislature was selected by universal taxpayer suffrage.
The President of the Council of Safety, in turn, was strictly subordinate to the Council
and could not act without its consent.
The stalwart, militant Archibald Bullock was chosen for this position, and five radicals
were soon selected as delegates to the Continental Congress.
In April, the Georgia rebels adopted a temporary constitution formalizing this regime, and
on April 5, the Provincial Congress authorized its delegates to vote in whatever way they
wished on independence.
Thus, Georgia was the first colony to explicitly authorize its delegates to vote for independence,
and considering the composition of its delegation, this itself was tantamount to an affirmative
vote. By April, there were no worries about Georgia's readiness for independence. Georgia,
however, was very small and one of the least significant colonies.
More and more important was North Carolina. As was the case in most of the other provinces
in 1775, North Carolina was run by a spontaneous network of county committees capped by a provincial
congress. Several factors served to embolden North Carolina opinion in the spring of 1776.
One was the rebel triumph of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge on February 27, where
The Tories of the province were crushed. Another was the threat of invasion by General Sir
Henry Clinton's fleet off Cape Fear and the inspiration provided by General Charles Lee.
Lee's assumption of an independent southern command that March had a vital military as
well as political impact. This scourge of the Tories was as well-versed and radical
in Political Warfare, as he was in military matters.
His arrest of Maryland's royal governor, the popular Robert Eden, galvanized the struggle.
And this was followed by his sending an aide, General Robert Howe, to a convention of North
Carolina radicals meeting in Halifax in early April, chaired by the ordinarily cautious
and conservative Samuel Johnston, the political leader of the colony, and influenced by General
You know how the convention took a noteworthy and climactic step, sending positive instructions on April 12 to its congressional delegation to vote for independence and for any necessary foreign alliances.
Here was the first frank instruction for independence in America, albeit the instruction was to concur in independence rather than take the initiative.
Lee warmly congratulated North Carolina on this promising step.
While the North Carolina Instruction for Independence passed without difficulty,
the April Convention for Writing a Constitution rent the province in bitter ideological conflict.
The first local resolution for independence had been made as early as May 31, 1775,
2005 in Mecklenburg County in the far western frontier of North Carolina. The Mecklenburg
Resolution had declared all British laws and commissions, as well as the royal government
of the province, to be null and void, and coupled this early call for independence with
the establishment of a county-wide court as the local government elected by universal
Manhood Suffrage.
The following August, Mecklenburg County spelled out its comprehensive domestic radicalism
in its instructions to its representatives at the Provincial Congress.
They called for suffrage by all free men, the abolition of property qualifications for
members of the assembly, and the correction of apportionment in the assembly in accordance
with population.
Plural office holding was to be prohibited, and local officials elected by the people,
and there was to be no oligarchical veto over the decisions of the elected legislature.
True to its democratic liberal position, the county urged disestablishment of the Anglican
Church, but they were able to go only so far in their libertarianism, and pagan or papal
religions were decried as false and could not be tolerated in the province.
At the Constitutional Convention in April 1776, the pro-independence forces split sharply
on the issue of domestic democracy versus conservatism. A furious struggle ensued over
bicameralism, popular election of local judges and suffrage restrictions, with Samuel Johnston,
and his brother-in-law James Iredell and William Hooper leading the conservative forces.
A deadlock between the two factions forced postponement of the attempt to write a constitution for North Carolina.
The road to independence was not nearly so smooth in the neighboring colony of South Carolina.
Throughout 1775, this province had a formidable block of conservatives deeply opposed to any
hint of independence.
Even the Provincial Council of Safety, dominated by conservatives, rejected the plea of the
radicals to fortify Charleston Harbor against the expected British attack that finally came
in June 1776.
In early November, the Continental Congress suggested that South Carolina establish a
It's a new government for the duration of the conflict, a suggestion that it had also
made to New Hampshire.
At the February meeting of the South Carolina Provincial Congress, the conservatives and
radicals battled furiously.
The right wing, led by the influential planter Rollins-Lounds, even objected to any new government
as a possible step toward independence.
The New Government was finally adopted at the end of March, spurred by news of the hard-line British Proclamation of Rebellion and the Prohibitory Act.
Even then, the South Carolinians took pains to dissociate this step from independence.
Heard by news of the hard-line British Proclamation of Rebellion and the Prohibitory Act.
Even then, the South Carolinians took pains to dissociate this step from independence,
and the irrepressible Gadsden was rebuked by the bulk of the Provincial Congress when
he read passages from Common Sense to the Assemblage.
The South Carolina Constitution of March 1776 was, unsurprisingly, a highly conservative
instrument.
The representative assembly was to choose an upper house, and both houses would in turn
select the third body, the privy council, to exert administrative and judicial authority
in place of the old royal council.
Both houses would also choose a president who would have veto power over the legislature.
Before the revolution, South Carolina had had perhaps the most badly apportioned representation
in the colonies.
Three-quarters of the white population of the province living in the back country were
unrepresented in the assembly.
The new constitution allowed the back country 40 representatives out of 184, but while a
considerable improvement, this representation was still weighted outrageously on behalf
of the lowland areas.
This constitution was severely criticized by the democratic forces for its hasty adoption
without explicit approval by the people, for the presidential veto which smacked strongly
of the Royal Prerogative, and for the oligarchic Upper House.
The outlook for independence in South Carolina was not bright, but the radical actions of
the Continental Congress, the news of the victory at Boston, and the bold move of North
Carolina for independence strongly influenced the province.
As Chief Justice of the new government, William Henry Drayton selected a new judicial structure
Free of Royal Authority, and at the end of April, he took it upon himself in a charge
to a Charleston grand jury to proclaim South Carolina's independence of Great Britain.
He declared that the colony was pursuing its right to revolution against a tyrannical government.
Treating the temporary constitution of South Carolina as an act of permanent separation,
He defended it as a reflection of the laws of nature and reason.
South Carolina's President, John Rutledge, who had shifted to the side of independence
along with other moderate conservatives, officially sent Drayton's printed statement to the Continental
Congress.
This act was properly received as tantamount to a call for independence by the province
itself.
The Southern accession to the cause of independence meant little, of course, without the adherence
of Virginia, the preeminent province of the South.
This province, despite its leadership in the resistance movement to Great Britain, would
not be an easy mark.
While it had been eager to resist Great Britain and had thrown itself into battle against
Lord Dunmore's raids, its revolutionary bodies were in the hands of thoroughgoing conservative
of Oligarchs, who balked strongly at independence, especially Edmund Pendleton, President of
the Virginia Committee of Safety, and Robert Carter Nicholas, the Committee's treasurer.
Patrick Henry, leader of the Radical Forces, was repeatedly humiliated by the Committee
of Safety, in his post as Commander-in-Chief of the Virginia Militia, and, embittered,
Henry temporarily retired to private life at the end of February 1776. One of the reasons
for this treatment of Henry was his belief in an individualistic and democratic army.
The Conservative Committee of Safety realized in dismay that he did not seem too conscious
of the importance of strict discipline in the army, but regarded his soldiers as so
So many gentlemen who had met to defend their country and exacted from them little more
than the courtesy that was proper among equals. The attitude of the Virginia Conservatives
toward independence may be gauged by their vituperative reaction to common sense. The
eminent planter Landon Carter was at no loss for words to vent his spleen. It was dangerous,
absurd, scandalous, rascally, nonsensical, and brutish.
Like so many arch-conservative sins, he raised a social argument against Paine's individualism.
Realizing that Paine grounded his doctrine on the individualistic theory of natural law,
he wrote, This man writes for independency, and is under the necessity of stating an independence
is in man at his creation when it is evident he must be a social being.
In early 1776 Pendleton, Nicholas and the conservative forces of Virginia managed to
send as a delegate to the Continental Congress the extremely wealthy planter and merchant
Carter Braxton of the Carter family who was the Virginia associate in Robert Morris's
his rapidly burgeoning financial empire. Braxton's mission was to block independence, and this
he set out to achieve with great diligence. During April, however, sentiment in Virginia
veered ever more toward independence. The news of the victory at Boston, the bold moves
of the Continental Congress, and the decisions for independence by the rest of the South
all played their part. Added to this were pressures for independence by Richard Henry
Lee and by George Washington through his brother John, the fact of Washington's being a Virginian
being highly important in attracting the patriotism of fellow Virginians. Finally, at the end
of March, Charles Lee took up his post at Williamsburg as head of the Southern Military
Department and added his determined and fiery personality to the pressure upon the Virginians.
Indeed, Lee stayed at Williamsburg largely to rouse the inhabitants and press for independence.
His presence was especially needed for the crucial April elections for the critical meeting
of the provincial convention starting on May 6, elections that hinged on the issue of independence.
So overwhelming was the sentiment of the new Convention for Independence that on May 15,
Virginia unanimously instructed its delegates to urge the Continental Congress to declare
the United Colonies free and independent states absolved from all allegiance to or dependence
upon the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain.
Here significantly was not simply an agreement, as in most of the other provinces, to concur
in any congressional resolution for independence.
Here was an instruction for actually proposing the final break with Great Britain.
Congress was also urged to form whatever foreign alliances or confederation of the erstwhile
colonies that might be necessary.
The conservatives of the convention bent easily with the wind and endorsed the resolution.
Having opted for independence, the Virginians believed they had to settle on a constitution
for the province, and upon its nature furious battles ensued.
The internal struggle was not, however, as it was in such provinces as Massachusetts,
between pain-type Democrats on the left and Adams-like adherents to mixed government on the right.
So conservative were all the leaders of Virginia that the debate shifted sharply rightward.
The Virginia left held views similar to the Massachusetts right.
Of its leaders, Patrick Henry hailed thoughts on government as fully expressing his own
views and Thomas Jefferson's doctrines were quite similar.
Other leaders of the Virginia moderates were Richard Henry Lee and the eminent lawyer George
Mason.
Bitterly opposing these moderate forces were the ultra-conservatives headed by Pendleton,
Nicholas and their chief theoretician, Carter Braxton.
Braxton quickly published in An Address to the Convention of Virginia, specifically designed
is a reactionary rebuttal to Adams' thoughts on government.
The pamphlet brusquely hailed the current British constitution as ideal and urged on
Virginia a similar government.
Braxton insisted that the popularly elected assembly choose a governor and members of
an upper house of the legislature, both of these to hold their positions for life.
that they might possess all the weight, stability and dignity due to the importance of their
office. In this way both the governor and the upper house would be totally independent
of the people and hence avoid the evils, the tumult and riot of democracy. Braxton was
here simply taking the concept of Adams, Jefferson and Mason of some independent governing bodies
and pushing it to its logical conclusion, life terms for everyone outside the lower house.
The Virginia moderates, however, did not see the connection between Braxton's plan and
theirs and they dismissed his pamphlet as silly and contemptible.
Patrick Henry, leading the moderates of the committee appointed to draft of Virginia Constitution,
Despaired for a time of triumphing over the great bias to aristocracy among most of our
opulent families, when he poured out his worries to his friend John Adams, Adams answered with
an eloquent and thundering denunciation of Virginia's ultra-conservative and highly aristocratic
Nabobs.
The Dons, the Bashaws, the Grandees, the Patricians, the Soccums, the Nabobs, curse, but all in
The decree has gone forth and it cannot be recalled that a more equal liberty than has prevailed in other parts of the earth must be established in America.
That exuberance of pride which has produced an insolent domination in a very few, opulent, monopolizing families will be brought down nearer to the confines of reason and moderation.
Dominating the committee drafting the Virginia Constitution was Henry's right-hand man in leading the Virginia moderates, George Mason. Mason, who had drafted the Fairfax Resolves, put through the Fairfax County meeting by Washington, had played an important role in leading the Revolutionary Forces in Virginia.
The Constitution, as submitted by the Committee and adopted unanimously on June 29, signaled a victory for the moderates.
An elected lower house would consist, inequitably, as in colonial days, of two members from each county.
An upper house, or Senate, would also be elected annually by the people.
A Governor would be elected annually by joint ballot of both Houses of the Legislature, as would a Privy Council or Council of State, to assist the Governor.
To check entrenchment of an Executive in power, no more than three terms in succession were allowed a Governor, and he could not act without the consent of the Privy Council.
Studies, which had larger plantations and fewer eligible voters than the Piedmont and
Valley areas. Thus, tiny Warwick County in the Tidewater, with a few hundred voters,
had a delegation in the lower house equal to large Western counties containing a few
thousand voters each. As time went on and emigration continued westward, this disproportion
would grow still greater. Virginia's restrictive qualifications for voting were retained intact
despite proposals by Mason and Jefferson to broaden the suffrage. In their desire to demonstrate
that A, Colonial Virginia was thoroughly democratic except for the impositions of Great Britain
and B, that the American Revolution was in no sense an internal social revolution, Robert
R.D. and B. Katherine Brown became mired in a grave inner contradiction. If, for example,
representation was wholly undemocratic because of British coercion, then how is it that this
imposition was cheerfully continued in the new Constitution by the supposedly democratic
Virginia leadership? One cannot pin the responsibility for aristocracy in colonial Virginia upon
on Great Britain insist with some justice that there was no internal revolution in Virginia
and then conclude that Virginia was democratic before and after the revolution.
In his brilliant review of the Browns' work, Stephen Saunders Webb writes that they insist
that the prevalence of appointive office in Virginia was owing to imperial control rather
than to aristocratic dominance.
They fail to consider that the appointive system was not significantly altered by the revolution,
which eliminated imperial control.
As for the absence of an internal revolution in Virginia, this is a fact which they attribute
to a general acceptance of democracy.
It is at least as logical and more consistent with the fact that almost every revolutionary
leader in Virginia was an aristocrat to conclude that this remarkable quietude was the result
of a continuing aristocratic hegemony.
He justly adds that to take such quietude and lack of widespread public protest as a
sign of democracy would mean that Louis XIV of France was not undemocratic either.
Due to a determined fight by the Henry forces, the power of the governor was set as subordinate
to the legislature. Only the House could originate legislation, and the Senate could not amend
an appropriations bill. In selecting the governor, the moderates put up Patrick Henry, while
the arch-conservatives selected the virtually outright Tory Thomas Nelson. Henry was elected
by a vote of 60 to 45, the Council of State chosen to aid him was dominated by the conservatives.
As a preamble to the Constitution, the Provincial Convention inserted a list of bitter charges
against the person of King George III, sent by Jefferson from his post in the Continental
Congress. On the basis of these charges, leveled squarely and boldly against the King, Virginia
Virginia repeated its assertion of independence and declared its connection with the British
Crown totally dissolved. If the Virginia Left was middle of the road on the structure of
government, the same caution and moderation were not shown on another critical struggle
waged in the provincial convention. In one of the monumental libertarian advances of
In the political history, the Virginia Left decided to enact a declaration of rights committing themselves, at least in theory, to protect and not to invade the natural rights of each individual.
Thus was born the monumental concept of a Bill of Rights designed to prevent government from invading the rights of the individual.
On this issue, the Virginia Left proved to be radical indeed.
The Convention had assigned to the Committee, with the job of drawing up a Declaration of
Rights, the man best suited to the task, George Mason, who threw himself into the work with
a will aided by Thomas Ludwell Lee.
In an effort to prepare the climate for the Declaration, numerous county petitions were
circulated, vaguely calling for democratic and liberal measures.
Drafted almost completely by Mason, the Declaration of Rights was introduced by the Committee
and Modified by the Convention. Some of the changes strengthened the Declaration, but
the central struggle grew out of the determined attempt by the arch-conservatives led by Nicholas
to weaken or block it altogether. Patrick Henry's disquieting defection on forbidding
ex post facto laws and bills of attainder cut these clauses from the Declaration, but
The major battle was waged over its magnificent first clause. Mason had there written that
all men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights,
of which they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity, among which are
and which are the enjoyment of life and liberty with the means of acquiring and possessing
property and pursuing and attaining happiness and safety.
Here in a scintillating and compact form was the essential statement of the radical libertarian
theory of natural rights.
The conservatives, possessed of the clarity given to them by their vested interest, saw
How immediately the main danger of this clause, if every person has a natural right to be
equally free and independent, what happens to the institution of slavery on which rested
the power and pelf of the Virginia planter aristocracy?
Undoubtedly Mason knew what he was about for as early as 1765.
He had criticized the institution of slavery on moral and economic grounds.
Nicholas and his set of aristocrats and masters, in the words of Thomas Ludwell Lee, fought
the clause fiercely.
To declare all men created free and independent would invite a slave revolt, they argued.
The conservatives were able to force modifications of the clause.
Individual was excised from inherent rights and God in nature was excised from another
important clause, namely was substituted for among which are to restrict the scope of individual
rights, but most important the clause when they enter into a state of society was inserted
between Of Which and They Cannot.
This made it possible for the conservatives to rest content with interpreting natural
rights as belonging only to those men who had entered into a state of society.
Clearly, the slaves had never been given a chance to make this entrance.
Despite these modifications, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, unanimously adopted
by the Convention on June 12, 1776 is one of the great documents in American history.
It set the pattern for all future state and national and foreign bills of rights and stamped
the libertarian doctrine of natural rights, at least in theory, upon the American Republic.
The Preamble of the Declaration stated that the representatives of the people of Virginia
assert a body of rights which do pertain to them and their posterity as the basis and
foundation of government. Following the first clause, the declaration included democracy,
that all power is originally by God and nature vested in and consequently derived from the
of People, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times answerable
to them.
The right of revolution, when government fails to secure or violates proper aims, a majority
of the people have an indubitable, inalienable and indefensible right to reform, alter or
abolish it.
No right of special or hereditary privileges, separation of the judiciary from the other
functions of government, rotation of office in the legislative and executive branches,
free and frequent elections, no taxation without representation, the traditional rights of
a defendant to know the nature of the charges against him to confront his accusers to have
have a speedy trial by jury which must be unanimous to convict him of a crime, not to
be forced to give evidence against himself, and to be free of excessive bail and cruel
or unusual punishments. The prohibition of general warrants, searches and seizures by
government must be named in advance in special warrants and supported by advance evidence.
Freedom of the Press, one of the great bulwarks of liberty, no standing armies, which are
in time of peace dangerous to liberty, a people's militia as the proper form of defense, strict
subordination of the military to the civil power and freedom of religion. Religion can
be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and violence, and therefore all
All men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.
On this last point, the phrase free exercise of religion had been substituted for a far
weaker stress on religious toleration at the suggestion of Mason's young colleague on the
drafting committee, James Madison.
Emboldened by the march of Southern opinion and action as well as by its own deeds of
In the preceding months, the Continental Congress in mid-May took the penultimate steps toward
a final state of independence.
On May 10, led by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, it resolved to recommend to those legislatures
of the United Colonies, which had not done so, to adopt suitable new governments of their
own.
No phrases hinting at eventual reconciliation with Great Britain appeared in this resolution
as in the advice to New Hampshire six months before, but it was still sufficiently bland
to win the support of the conservatives in Congress.
The big battle was waged immediately afterward over the preamble to the resolution.
Drawn up by John Adams and backed by Richard Henry Lee, the preamble began with a list
of Grievances against Great Britain, directed against the King as well as Parliament, and
then concluded with this crucial and devastating passage.
It appears absolutely irreconcilable to reason and good conscience now to take the oath necessary
for the support of any government under the crown of Great Britain, and it is necessary
that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed,
and all the powers of government exerted under the authority of the people of the colonies.
Here the Continent was hurled at Great Britain. This preamble, attached to a call for new
government, was nothing less than a de facto declaration of independence. Opposition to
The Preamble was led by James Duane of New York, Carter Braxton and the brilliant young James Wilson.
Wilson warned prophetically that passage of the preamble would put his province of Pennsylvania into an anarchic state of nature and dissolve its existing proprietary government.
Congress, however, overrode the objections of the conservatives and adopted the preamble
on May 15. The vote has been reported as six or seven to four, and assumedly among the
four colonies in the negative were Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland. Adams was understandably
jubilant writing that Congress had passed the most important resolution that ever was
was taken in America, one that was total, absolute, independence, independence itself.