Chapter 24

INDEPENDENCE AND THE NEW STATES

[1775]

The thought of independence in the minds of the colonists was of surprisingly slow growth. The feeling of dependence on the mother-country and of loyalty to the king was deep-rooted and died hard. Even union, which was a pre-requisite to a successful struggle for independence, came slowly. The old New England Confederation, in 1643- 84, between Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, for defence against Indians, Dutch, and French, ended without ever having manifested the slightest vigor. In the latter half of the seventeenth century Virginia had alliances with some sister colonies for protection against Indians; but there was no call for a general congress until the French and Indian attack on Schenectady, in 1690, during King William's War. Representatives from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Plymouth met that year at New York; letters came from Virginia, Maryland, and Rhode Island. But no permanent union was proposed here, nor at any of the similar meetings, seven at least, which occurred between 1690 and 1750.

The Albany Convention, which met in 1754 to prepare for the French and Indian War, adopted a plan for union presented by Franklin, providing for a president-general appointed and supported by the Crown, and for a grand council of delegates elected triennially by the colonies according to population, and empowered, within limits, to lay taxes and make laws for the common interest of English America. Franklin believed that the adoption of this scheme would have postponed the Revolution a century. But, as it gave so much power to the king, it was rejected by the people in every colony.

Even after English oppression and the diligent agency of committees of correspondence had brought union, and delegates from the colonies had met again and again in Congress, the thought of breaking away from the mother-land was strange to the minds of nearly all. The instructions to the delegates to the first Congress, in September, 1774, gave no suggestion of independence. On the contrary, colony after colony urged its representatives to seek the restoration of "harmony and union" with England. This Congress branded as "calumny" the charge that it wished "independency." Washington wrote, from the Congress, that independence was then not "desired by any thinking man in America."

The behavior of the Gaspe officers in Narragansett Bay, their illegal seizures, plundering expeditions on shore, and wanton manners in stopping and searching boats, illustrate the spirit of the king's hirelings in America at this time. At last the Rhode Islanders could endure it no longer. Early on the morning of June 9, 1772, Captain Abraham Whipple, with a few boatloads of trusty aides, dropped down the river from Providence to what is now called Gaspe Point, six or seven miles below the city, where the offending craft had run aground the previous evening in giving chase to the Newport-Providence packet-boat, and after a spirited fight mastered the Gaspe's company, put them on shore, and burned the ship. There would be much propriety in dating the Revolution from this daring act.

[1774]

Nor was this the only case of Rhode Island's forwardness in the struggle. December 5, 1774, her General Assembly ordered Colonel Nightingale to remove to Providence all the cannon and ammunition of Fort George, except three guns, and this was done before the end of the next day. More than forty cannon, with much powder and shot, were thus husbanded for service to come. News of this was carried to New Hampshire, and resulted in the capture of Fort William and Mary at New Castle, December 14, 1774, which some have referred to as the opening act of the Revolution. This deed was accomplished by fourteen men from Durham, who entered the fort at night when the officers were at a ball in Portsmouth. The powder which they captured is said to have done duty at Bunker Hill.

[1776]

Most potent of all as a cause of the resolution to separate was Thomas Paine's pamphlet, "Common Sense," published in January, 1776, and circulated widely throughout the colonies. Its lucid style, its homely way of putting things, and its appeals to Scripture must have given it at any rate a strong hold upon the masses of the people. It was doubly and trebly triumphant from the fact that it voiced, in clear, bold terms, a long-growing popular conviction of the propriety of independence, stronger than men had dared to admit even to themselves.