Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, Part I: Context

Having ranged somewhat far afield with the previous series – in which the history of performed Shakespeare, 18^th century English theatre, Orientalism, and Caesar Augustus were all discussed to a greater or lesser extent – it would seem fitting to next explore a rather more…compact…subject. This is not to say that the aforementioned digression in any way constitutes a mistake for which a penance must be made. I, for one, found the experience quite stimulating, and hope to revisit something similar in the weeks and months to come. That being said, such lengthy and complex departures can sometimes verge on overwhelming. A periodic return to form would therefore seem an appropriate salve. We are perhaps not all of us conversant in, say, 18^th century Anglo-American popular culture – myself very much included – but I should hope that those who lay their eyes upon these words are by this time familiar with the personalities and ideologies that shaped the American Founding. In that spirit, let us turn to a document issued by the 2^nd Continental Congress in July of 1775 entitled Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms for the purpose of once more reflecting on the importance of process – see: our previous discussion – when recalling the history of a given event, movement, or trend.

As stated above, the Declaration was a product of the second iteration of the Continental Congress, a body first convened September 5^th, 1774, adjourned October 26^th of that year, and reconvened May 10^th, 1775. The document was itself issued approximately two months into this second term, July 6^th, a little less than a year prior to the declared formation of the United States of America. Its authors – though who contributed what remains somewhat hazy – were one John Dickinson (1732-1808), moderate critic of British policy in America and author of the various editions of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania published between 1767 and 1768, and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), a somewhat more radical Virginian lawyer and polemicist who had seen his seminal denunciation of the contemporary actions of Parliament – A Summary View of the Rights of British America – first printed and distributed in 1774. Both of these men were serving as delegates to Congress from their respective states at the time their joint work was penned and issued, and were in fact assigned the task by a committee of their peers convened for the purpose of drafting a public justification for the decision of the united colonies to resist Britain’s armed attempts to bring them to heel.

While these details doubtless seem plain enough, the significance of the Declaration to the narrative of the American Founding is hardly that. Indeed, a person possessed of a general knowledge of the American Revolution might fairly ask what makes this document different than the more famous Declaration of Independence. One could even be forgiven for conflating the two, in light of the ostensible commonality of their subject matter and authorship. To that end, let it be stated here unequivocally that the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms represents something other than the formal separation of the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire. Strange as that may seem in light of the purpose for which said document was written, it was issued at a moment in time when reconciliation was still the preferred objective of the united colonies of British America. The Founders of what was soon to become the United States did not seek that outcome from the beginning, after all, but rather arrived at it via a process of internal and external negotiation. The Declaration thus denotes an intermediate step between the petitions, resolves, and remonstrances of the various colonial legislatures or inter-colonial assemblies that sought relief from British policies like the Stamp Act (1765), Townshend Duties (1767), and the Tea Act (1773) and the complete dissolution of the accustomed relationship between the thirteen aggrieved colonies and the British Crown. By studying it, therefore, one may gain a deeper appreciation for the slow, often meditative process by which resistance transformed into rebellion, and the way that the Founders conceived of their actions along the way.

To perhaps put a finer point on this notion of process – that the Declaration represents a very specific moment within the narrative of the Revolution between remonstrance and revolt – consider certain details of the timing and manner of its publication. The final draft – completed by Dickinson after a first draft by Jefferson – was issued July 6^th, 1775. Not only, as mentioned above, was this just short of a year before Congress declared the United States of America wholly independent of the British Empire, but it was also approximately two months after the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19^th 1775), as many days into the Siege of Boston April, 1775 – March, 1776), and a scant three weeks after the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17^th, 1775). The Thirteen Colonies were thus already engaged in an armed conflict with British forces under the command of General Thomas Gage (1718-1787), Commander-in-Chief of North America and Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay when Congress commissioned this formal justification for their continued resistance. Almost two hundred colonists had been killed, along with about half as many British soldiers, and an untold amount of property damage had been inflicted upon the residents of Boston and the surrounding countryside. In spite of these losses – the blood shed and property destroyed – the Declaration manifestly proceeds from the position that no actions had yet been committed which could not be forgiven.

Putting aside – for the present, at least – the rationale provided in the text for this rather generous stance, evidence of it can be located in something as simple as the manner by which it refers to its issuers. The precis which introduces the Declaration, for example, calls the entities represented by the Continental Congress, “The United Colonies of North-America.” This nomenclature is subsequently observed throughout the document in question – always “These Colonies,” “The United Colonies” – to the total exclusion of the terms “state” or “states.” The symbolism of this choice is not to be overlooked. In spite of having literally taken up arms in defiance of British parliamentary and ministerial authority, the various delegates to the inter-colonial assembly tasked with coordinating a united response to British intransigence remained steadfast in their conviction – publicly, if not privately – that they and their constituencies remained subjects of the Crown. To that end, it also bears noting that Great Britain’s reigning monarch – George III (1738-1820) – was referred to very respectfully in the text of the Declaration as either, “Our Sovereign” or “His Majesty.” Far from attempting to distance themselves from an attachment to Britain, therefore, the delegates to the Continental Congress – and their chosen scribes, Dickinson and Jefferson – seemed intent on affirming their continued membership in the larger British Empire amidst an increasingly volatile socio-political crisis.

Though the exact nature of that crisis, circa July, 1775, has been discussed at length in previous entries in this series, a few points ought nonetheless to be reiterated here. As mentioned above, British legislation like the Stamp Act, the Townshend Duties, and the Tea Act were met with widespread discontent upon their attempted enforcement in the colonies of British America in the 1760s and 1770s. Though the taxes levied by these acts of Parliament were in fact often quite low, they nonetheless became flashpoints for social and political unrest because of the manner in which they were authorized. Whereas the reigning governments in London – led by the likes of George Grenville (1712-1770) and Lord North (1732-1792) – asserted the supremacy of Parliament in all matters pertaining to the British Empire, large segments of the colonial populations countered that any attempt to tax subjects of the Crown in America by a body in which they were not represented constituted a violation of certain guarantees enshrined in the British Constitution. The relationship between these duelling perspectives constitutes the first point which ought to be kept in mind, namely that the seeds of the American Revolution were born out of differing interpretations of the same core principles. Supporters of the “Patriot” or “Whig” cause thus did not reject the basis of British authority out of hand, but rather held that the position nurtured by those who supported the Stamp Act, Townshend Duties, etc., was fundamentally misguided or misinformed.    

While inter-colonial efforts to encourage a British retraction were initially successful – the Stamp Act Congress, for example, adopted a boycott of British goods which eventually convinced the government of the Marquess of Rockingham (1730-1782) to repeal the offending legislation – the passage of the Declaratory Act (1766) also made it clear that subsequent British efforts to make law for the colonies would not be so easily defeated. The resulting tension – caused by a kind of mutual intractability – resulted in any number of violent confrontations between supports and detractors of British policy in North America. Tax collectors were hounded, assaulted, and made to flee their homes and possessions. Demonstrations were held in major urban centers, campaigns of property damage and intimidation became increasingly common, and British fears of open rebellion slowly began to mount. Colonial governments meanwhile took to publishing resolves and petitions decrying perceived abuses and requesting relief while colonial governors requested and received British military protection – seen as particularly necessary in hotbeds of dissent like Whig-dominated Boston. Fatal encounters like the Boston Massacre of March, 1770 – in which five bystanders were killed when British sentries fired into a riotous crowd – were the arguably inevitable results of this steady escalation.

Subsequent efforts by both sides to reassert their positions seemed only to heighten tensions further – on the American side: more property destruction, the formation of the 1^st Continental Congress, another boycott, and another petition; for the British: the passage of a series of laws intended to punish those colonists perceived to have conspired against British authority in North America. More protests followed, more petitions, and more discussion among the delegates to what was now the 2^nd Continental Congress as to what their position going forward ought to be. The length and breadth of this chain of events constitutes the second point which one ought bear in mind going forward, that the social and political upheaval which precipitated the armed phase of the American Revolution took place over the course of at least a decade and witnessed numerous attempts at reconciliation and rapprochement. Armed resistance was never the first response of any of those who rejected British attempts to assert the authority of Parliament over the colonies, and quite a number of efforts were made by the aggrieved colonists – bringing social, political and economic pressure to bear – to secure a peaceful resolution of the ongoing crisis.

 These efforts ultimately failed, of course. The passage of the Massachusetts Government Act (1774) – one of the so-called “Intolerable Acts” viewed by many in the colonies as designed to compel submission to Parliamentary authority through blunt intimidation – converted the ruling council of the province from an elected to an appointed body and placed far greater power at the disposal of the executive branch than the existing charter – in place since 1691 – would have allowed. Governor Thomas Gage subsequently dissolved the elected colonial assembly, seeking to consolidate all decision-making authority under a core of magistrates and officers appointed solely by the Crown. The Whig members of the assembly responded on October 7^th, 1774 by reorganizing themselves as the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and asserting their continued control over taxation, appropriations, and the militia. The six months that followed witnessed these competing governments – one located in Boston, the other migrating from town to town in order to avoid the arrest of certain of its members – attempt to seize weapons and ammunition in a series of raids and expeditions intended to either deny military advantage to their rival or seek it for themselves. Towns allied to the Provincial Congress accordingly began to reorganize and drill their militia companies so they could respond at a moment’s notice in defence of their gunpowder stores. When Governor Gage readied the forces under his command in Boston for an expedition to the town of Concord planned for April, 19^th, 1775, the appropriate militia forces were notified – thanks to the remarkably effective intelligence network serving the Provincial Congress – alarms were sounded, and the appropriate defences were prepared.  

The subsequent engagement – more a series of skirmishes than a battle – saw approximately four thousand Massachusetts militia square off against fifteen hundred British regulars, allowed Patriot leaders Samuel Adams (1722-1802) and John Hancock (1737-1793) to evade capture, and culminated in a fighting retreat by the British and the beginning of what was to become the ten month-long Siege of Boston. The assembled Massachusetts militias that surrounded the provincial capital and seat of its now isolated and beleaguered royal government – supplemented since April by the arrival of forces from New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut – were thereafter adopted by the 2^nd Continental Congress on June 14^th, 1775 as the Continental Army, to be joined by additional riflemen drawn from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. Virginia delegate George Washington (1732-1799) – a farmer, surveyor, and veteran of the Seven Years War – was unanimously chosen as the Commander-in-Chief of this force. By the time he arrived in Cambridge to take up his new office on July 2^nd, 1775, however, the first major engagement of the campaign had already taken place. Made aware of British plans to fortify certain of the hills overlooking Charlestown as a means of securing their control of Boston Harbor, a force of twelve hundred colonial troops under Massachusetts Col. William Prescott (1726-1795) set out on the night of June 16^th to occupy and fortify Bunker Hill and the adjacent Breed’s Hill. The British attacked the following morning with three thousand men under Col. Robert Pigot (1720-1796). While inflicting significant casualties upon the colonial defenders – one hundred fifteen dead in all, including noted Patriot leader and Major General Joseph Warren (1741-1775) – and forcing the rest to flee back to Cambridge, the British victory at what has since become known as the Battle of Bunker Hill was hardly cause for celebration. Over two hundred British soldiers had been killed in a single day of fighting, nineteen officers among them, and British hopes of a swift victory over poorly-trained and poorly-disciplined colonials were severely shaken.

What occurred next was largely a matter of rhetoric and timing. Seeking to use the loss to their advantage – and chiefly the sympathy that might have been elicited by the image of British regulars slaughtering backwoods citizen-soldiers – the Massachusetts Committee of Safety authorized a report on the battle to be sent to Britain and presented to the government of Lord North, Parliament, and the Crown. Meanwhile, the Continental Congress – at this time still dominated by those who favored reconciliation – commissioned Pennsylvania delegate John Dickinson and a committee of four others to draft a so-called “Olive Branch Petition” addressed to George III which rejected any ambition of American independence and suggested a number of possible remedies to the ongoing crisis. Not to be caught unawares in case this effort was rejected, Congress had also granted permission on June 27^th to New York landowner and Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler (1733-1804) to plan and lead and expedition into British Quebec for the purpose of capturing its capital city and thereby prevent a possible British invasion. This pro-active manoeuvre was joined by the commissioning of second document – the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms – intended to explain the decision of the united colonies to resort to a campaign of armed resistance. The Olive Branch Petition was approved by the Congress on July 5^th and despatched to Britain on July 8^th. The Declaration was issued in the interim on July 6^th.

Thus, we come to the third point whose significance bears remarking upon at the outset of our discussion – i.e. that colonial military decision-making at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, while often thorough and effective, was at no point directed either at a wholly offensive war or the separation of America from the British Empire by force of arms. The first attempt by either Britain or the Patriots of Massachusetts to seize a store of gunpowder came at the behest of the former when, on September 1^st, 1774, Governor Gage sent a force of two hundred sixty regulars to empty the Powder House at Somerville. The expedition moved in secret, made a detour to take possession of two artillery pieces in Cambridge, and deposited the lot on heavily-fortified Castle Island in Boston Harbor. The reaction of colonists across New England when word reached them that British troops were marching covertly through the countryside was understandably anxious. Local militias were readied accordingly so as to prevent similar incidents from taking place without resistance to British efforts, and a number of centralized powder stores in Rhode Island and Connecticut were removed and dispersed. When Governor Gage next dismissed the colonial assembly in October, colonists once more reacted accordingly by forming an alternative government in the form of the aforementioned Massachusetts Provincial Congress. This body then assumed responsibility for coordinating further militia preparations, thus helping to ensure a more vigorous response to the British attempt mentioned above to seize gunpowder stored in Lexington in April, 1775.

Observe, at every step, a British action and a colonial reaction. Governor Gage sought to pre-empt colonial unrest by taking control of the local supply of gunpowder. The resulting expedition to Somerville, however, had something of the opposite effect. Rather than cut off the Patriot ability to offer substantial resistance to British authority, the so-called “Powder Alarm” of September 1^st, 1774 in fact increased the likelihood of organized opposition. Similarly, when Gage endeavored to more effectively enforce the terms of the Intolerable Acts in Massachusetts by dissolving the quarrelsome provincial assembly, the Patriot members thereof responded by forming a government wholly free of his influence or control. Even the Battle of Bunker Hill and the planned Invasion of Quebec – both ostensible examples of offensive decision-making by colonial authorities – arguably represent defensive reactions to British behavior. Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill were only fortified and defended by the Continental Army in response to intelligence that British forces planned to do the same, while Gen. Schuyler’s expedition into Canada followed upon the efforts of Quebec governor Guy Carleton (1724-1808) to fortify Fort St. Johns on the Richelieu River – less than thirty miles from the border with New York – and rally the local Iroquois to the British cause. By the time the Olive Branch Petition and the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity were adopted by the Continental Congress in July, 1775, the united colonies were most certainly in the midst of preparing for further military operations against British forces in North America. They were, in essence, at war. But it was not a war they seemed at all eager to win. Rather – as they had since Governor Gage made the first move in September 1774 – they seemed intent only on seeing to the defence of what they had come to think of as their accustomed role within the Anglo-American relationship.