Published: July 03, 2008 02:10 pm            

Arguments against independence were many, but the colonies voted ‘yes’

Would you have signed your name to the Declaration of Independence? Those who did were in strict legal terms committing treason against the established government of England.

They were standing up for a cause that a sizeable minority of Americans weren’t yet ready to embrace, breaking away from the comforts and traditions of the country that had sent many of them across the Atlantic Ocean. And loyalists to the king, or “Tories,” weren’t necessarily bad people. In some instances, they were neighbors with the “separatists,” that is, until somebody was run out of town.

They were forging new ground, calling a collection of 13 semi-independent territories by a new name, the “united” states. Some were concerned that hot-headed New Englanders like Samuel Adams would be ordering Carolina residents what to do.

The people of Delaware and Rhode Island did not want to lose their voices to colonies with big populations, like Virginia and Massachusetts. Just who was in charge, anyway? If you were a planter of corn in Virginia, you weren’t automatically interested in what they were doing with tea in Boston Harbor. On the other hand, if you could afford to buy some of that tea, you didn’t want the government in London heaping huge taxes on it. But was that enough reason to risk certain war?

They knew that their colonies faced more than enough troubles from outside and from within. Relations with the Native Americans, restricted from land that had been theirs for generations, were spotty at best, and Indian raids were a real concern on the frontier. Corps of British troops were deployed all over the colonies, always ready, it seemed, to harass and oppress people fed up with laws that had been enacted without their input.

As just another example, New York and her neighbors couldn’t agree for years who had claim to what came to be known as Vermont.

Beyond the frontier were Spaniards in Florida, French outposts in the Midwest, and several other nationalities that potentially could hem in the 13 states to the Atlantic seaboard. The members of the Continental Congress, in Philadelphia, had not received word as to whether France would enthusiastically come to their aid in a fight with England. Even if the French did, it would take months after the decision before ships, armaments and troops or officers would arrive in the New World to help.

The delegates in Congress were constantly negotiating, plugging leaks in their tentative confederation. Some states had sent delegates with instructions not to vote for independence, period. There were threats that a “declaration of independence” would result in immediate secession from the “united” states by some mid-Atlantic colonies — a disastrous thing to contemplate.

Thomas Jefferson and others argued that there could never be such a thing as “perfect unanimity” in these decisions. The Congress sent him and a committee off to write up a document, then spent day after day nit-picking it, line by line, in the sweltering heat of a Philadelphia summer — with no air conditioning, of course.

They threw out a reference censuring the people of England, not just its king and Parliament. They deleted phrases condemning African slavery.

In Jefferson’s autobiography, quoted at ushistory.org, he reported this was done “in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”

New York’s delegates, according to ushistory.org, were for the declaration themselves, but said they were under year-old orders from their state convention to do nothing that would block “reconciliation” with England. They temporarily withdrew, leaving 12 delegations to vote.

Each delegate faced the prospect, if the declaration passed, of arriving back home and explaining to friend and opponent alike just why the states were now united and independent of the British Empire. The questioners no doubt included prominent businessmen and landowners who had piled up considerable wealth by cozying up with the British and working the system that had been in effect. Their fortunes and livelihoods, too, were now to be thrown into chaos by this thing called “independence.”

Despite all these roadblocks of politics, personalities, economics and fear of change, by the evening of July 4, each delegation voted “yes” to go on record with a “unanimous declaration” that set forth the rights due to a free people.

To refresh our memories about why we celebrate Independence Day, we really ought to go back and read that declaration.

The words can still stir our minds with their ringing defenses of fairness, humanity and patriotism. Those words should cause us to be grateful that 56 men, including seven from Virginia, risked their lives to sign and support it.

Tom Bone is a Daily Telegraph columnist, sports writer, and editorial cartoonist. Contact him at tbone@bdtonline.com.

        

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