any

to the delay, but with the further condition that, to prevent loss of time, a committee should in the meanwhile prepare a declaration in harmony with the proposed resolution. On the next day Jefferson, John Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were chosen by ballot for that office.

On the twelfth the duty of digesting the form of a confederation was assigned to one member from each colony; and, as if the subject had not been of transcendent importance, their appointment was left to the presiding officer. Among those whom Hancock selected are found the names of Samuel Adams, Dickinson, and Edward Rutledge; it could have been wished that the two Adamses had changed places, though probably the result would at that time have been the same; no one man had done so much to bring about independence as the elder Adams, but his skill in constructing governments, not his knowledge of the principles of freedom, was less remarkable than that of his younger kinsman. In the committee, Dickinson, who, as an opponent of independence, could promote only a temporary constitution, assumed the task of drafting the great charter of union.

The preparation of a plan of treaties with foreign powers was intrusted by ballot to Dickinson, Franklin, John Adams, Harrison, and Robert Morris; and between John Adams and Dickinson there was no difference of opinion, that the scheme to be proposed should be confined to commerce, without any grant of exclusive privileges, and without any entanglement of a political connection or alliance.

On the thirteenth a board of war, of which Washington had explained the extreme necessity, was appointed, and John Adams was placed at its head.

On the twenty-fourth congress "resolved, that all persons abiding within any of the united colonies, and deriving protection from its laws, owe allegiance to the said laws, and are members of such colony ;" and it charged the guilt of treason upon "all members of any of the united colonies who should be adherent to the king of Great Britain, giving to him aid and comfort." The fellow-subjects of one king became fellowlieges of one republic. They all had one law of citizenship and one law of treason.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE PEOPLE OF EVERY AMERICAN COLONY DEMAND

INDEPENDENCE.

JUNE-JULY 1776.

AMERICAN independence was not an act of sudden passion, nor the work of one man or one assembly. It had been discussed in every part of the country by farmers and merchants, by mechanics and planters, by the fishermen and the backwoodsmen; in town-meetings and from the pulpit; at social gatherings and around the camp fires; in newspapers and in pamphlets; in county conventions and conferences of committees; in colonial congresses and assemblies. The decision was put off only to ascertain the voice of the people. Virginia, having uttered her will, and communicated it to her sister colonies, proceeded, as though independence had been proclaimed, to form her constitution. More counsellors waited on her assembly than they took notice of: they were aided in their deliberations by the teachings of the law-givers of Greece; by the line of magistrates who had framed the Roman code; by those who had written best in English on government and public freedom. They passed by monarchy and hereditary aristocracy as unessential forms, and looked for the self-subsistent elements of liberty.

The principles of the Virginia declaration of rights remained to her people as a perpetual possession, and a pledge of progress in more tranquil days; but for the moment internal reforms were postponed. The elective franchise was not extended, nor was anything done to abolish slavery beyond the prohibition of the slave-trade. The king of England pos

sessed the crown by birth and for life; the chief executive of Virginia owed his place to an election by the general assembly, and retained it for one year. The king was intrusted with a veto power, limited within Britain, extravagant and even retrospective in the colonies; the recollection that "by an inhuman use of his negative he had refused them permission to exclude negroes by law" misled the Virginians to withold the veto power from the governor of their own choice.

The governor, like the king, had at his side a privy council; and, in the construction of this body of eight men, the desire for some permanent element of government is conspicuous. Braxton, in the scheme which he forwarded from congress, would have had the governor continue in authority during good behavior, the council of state during life. But Patrick Henry, Mason, and the other chief members of the convention, did not share this dread of the power of the people; and nothing more was conceded than that two only of the eight councillors should be triennially changed, so that the body would be completely renewed once in the course of twelve years. The governor, with their advice, had the appointment of militia officers and of justices of the peace; but the general assembly by joint ballot elected the treasurer, the judges, and the officers of the higher courts. The general assembly, like the British parliament, consisted of two branches, an annual house of delegates and a senate of twenty-four members, to be chosen from as many districts, and to be renewed one fourth in each year.

The convention recognised the territorial rights of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas, and the limit set by the peace of 1763; otherwise it claimed jurisdiction over all the region, granted by the second charter of King James I. The privilege of purchasing Indian titles was reserved to the state; but a right of pre-emption was secured to actual settlers on unappropriated lands.

In framing the constitution, George Mason was aided by Richard Henry Lee and George Wythe; a form of government, sent by Jefferson, arrived too late; but his draft of a preamble was adopted. Virginia became a republic. The convention, having on the twenty-ninth of June unanimously

adopted the constitution, transformed itself into a temporary general assembly, and made choice by ballot of a governor and a privy council. Patrick Henry became the chief magistrate in the commonwealth which, he said, had just formed “a system of government wisely calculated to secure equal liberty,” and to take a principal part in a war "involving the lasting happiness of a great proportion of the human species." "If George III.," wrote Fox, "should for a moment compare himself to Patrick Henry, how humiliated he must be!"

On the fourteenth of June, Connecticut, urged by the invitation and example of Virginia, instructed its delegates in favor of independence, foreign alliances, and a permanent union of the colonies; but the plan of confederation was not to go into effect till it should receive the assent of the several legislatures. That Puritan commonwealth, which had in fact enjoyed a republican government more than a hundred years, then first conducted its administration in its own name.

On the same day and the next the Delaware assembly, at the instance of Mackean, unanimously approved the resolution of congress of the fifteenth of May, overturned the proprietary government within her borders, substituted her own name on all occasions for that of the king, and gave to her delegates new instructions which left them at liberty to vote respecting independence according to their judgment.

On the fifteenth the council and assembly of New Hampshire, in reply to a letter from Bartlett and Whipple, their delegates in congress, unanimously voted in favor of "declaring the thirteen united colonies a free and independent state; and solemnly pledged their faith and honor to support the measure with their lives and fortunes."

On the first day of May 1776, Joseph Hawley wrote to Elbridge Gerry in congress: "There will be no abiding union without a declaration of independence and a course of conduct on that plan. My hand and heart are full of it. Will a government stand on recommendations? It is idle to suppose so. Nay, without a real continental government, people will, by and by, sooner than you may be aware of, call for their old constitutions as they did in England after Cromwell's death. For God's sake let there be a full revolution, or all has been done

in vain. Independence and a well-planned continental government will save us." The assembly of Massachusetts advised the people in their town-meetings to instruct their representatives on the question; and a very great majority of the towns, all that were heard from, declared for it unanimously.

The choice of all New England was spontaneous and undoubted. Its extended line of sea-coast, with safe and convenient harbors, defied the menace of a blockade; its comparatively compact population gave it a sense of security against the return of the enemy.

Far different was the position of New York, which was the first of the large central colonies to mark out irrevocably her line of conduct. Devoted to commerce, she possessed but one seaport, and, if that great mart should fall into the hands of the British, she must, for the time, resign all maritime intercourse with the world. The danger was close at hand, distinctly perceived, and inevitable. On the twenty-fourth of May the vote of the continental congress, recommending the establishment of a new government, was referred to John Morin Scott, Haring, Remsen, Lewis, Jay, Cuyler, and Broome; three days later Remsen reported from the committee that the right of creating civil government is, and ought to be, in the people, and that the old form of government was dissolved. On the thirty-first resolutions were proposed by Scott, Jay, and Haring, ordering elections for deputies, with ample powers to institute a government which should continue in force until a future peace with Great Britain. But early in June the New York congress had to pass upon the Virginia proposition of independence. This was the moment that showed the firmness and the purity of Jay; the darker the hour, the more ready he was to cheer; the greater the danger, the more promptly he stepped forward to guide. He had insisted on a second petition to the king, with no latent weakness of purpose. The hope of obtaining redress was gone; he could now, with perfect peace of mind, give free scope to his convictions and sense of duty. Believing that the provincial congress then in session had not been vested with power to dissolve the connection with Great Britain, he held it necessary first to consult the people themselves. For this end, on the eleventh of June,