Perhaps the single most
compelling aspect of the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up
Arms – in light in the context from which it emerged – is just how carefully
its authors endeavored to walk the line between loyalty to and rebellion
against Britain, its government, and the institutions thereof. As mentioned in
the previous entry in this series, the majority in Congress at the time of its
publication still very much believed that reconciliation between the colonies
and the mother country was both possible and desirable. A written proposal
seeking exactly that result – the aforementioned Olive Branch Petition – had
been issued only a day prior (July 5th, 1775) to the Declaration
itself (July 6th, 1775), and it therefore stood to reason that
Congress had no interest in antagonizing Britain or otherwise casting doubt
upon the intentions of its American subjects. Nevertheless, shots had been
fired. American militiamen had killed British soldiers, and vice versa, and
some form of explanation was surely felt to be necessary by those authorities
who supported the American cause. Enter John Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, and
the Declaration, by which the Continental Congress hoped to explain why a
resort to arms had been called for in such a way as to avoid casting aspersions
upon the trans-Atlantic relationship that Congress itself was simultaneously
attempting to salvage.
The challenge presented by such an
effort was surely a stiff one. Jefferson and Dickinson were somehow supposed to
justify the killing of British soldiers by their fellow subjects in America,
laying siege to the capital of a British Crown colony, and generally waging war
upon the British administration of North America while at the same time
expressing the depth and sincerity of the affection and loyalty that the people
of British America continued to feel towards Britain and its monarch. The
evident paradox of such an approach required a deft touch, and something other
than orthodox thinking about the nature of the Anglo-American relationship. In
consequence, the Declaration seems to engage in a high degree of
compartmentalization. As taken up by Jefferson and Dickinson, the grievances
nurtured by their fellow colonists were not directed against the Crown,
Parliament, or even a particular government thereof. Rather, their concern was
with certain individuals within or adjacent to these institutions – corrupt
ministers, royal favorites, or ruthless officers – whose influence over the
mechanisms of administration had allowed them to twist the economic, political,
and military priorities of the British Empire to suit their petty ambitions. It
was a rather delicate case to make, relying as it did upon the separation of virtuous
from venal intention within the actions of Parliament and its agents and the
demarcation of a category within the British ministerial elite whose selfish
aims rendered resistance to their dictates not only legitimate but moral. Jefferson
and Dickinson attempted it all the same, however, and in so doing revealed a
great deal about the way they – and likely no small number of their countrymen
– understood contemporary British political culture and its relationship to
British policy in America.
Chief
among the evidence offered by Jefferson and Dickinson – whom I refrain from
referring to as Jeff & Dick by only a tremendous act of will – for the
affection they and their countrymen had every reason to feel for Great Britain were
the mutually beneficial relationships which they argued had existed and
continued to exist between the people of America and certain individuals within
or elements of British society and government. Both the produce of America and
its capacity to supply British manufacturers with a market for their goods, for
example, had long been of substantial benefit to the British economy, and in
particular to the merchants and industrialists of certain jurisdictions thereof.
Thus, in laying out the various voices within contemporary British society from
which the united colonies had garnered support during their petitions for
redress in the early 1770s, the Declaration made specific mention in its eighth
paragraph of, “The interference of the City of London, of Bristol, and many
other respectable Towns, in our favor.” And while Jefferson and Dickinson
rightly portray this later attempt at intercession as having been “fruitless,”
the campaign undertaken in 1766 by a coalition of chiefly London merchants to
see the Stamp Act (1765) repealed had met with marked success. By thus
referring to the advocates that the colonists possessed among a particular
segment of the British economy – whether they were effective or not – the
Declaration thus recalled the nature of the ties that bound Britain and the
colonies together. Over a century of trade had enriched individuals, trading
firms, and entire municipalities on both sides of the Atlantic, creating
alliances of mutual interest that the colonists had benefited from directly
and had no reason to seek to disrupt.
The eighth paragraph of the Declaration also made mention of
another group within contemporary British society from whom the beleaguered
colonies had enjoyed support and concern during the years of crisis in the
1760s and 1770s. Described by Jefferson and Dickinson as, “An illustrious band
of the most distinguished Peers and Commoners, who nobly and strenuously
asserted the justice of our cause,” this group was almost certainly intended to
include the likes of Edmund Burke (1730-1797), the Duke of Richmond (1735-1806),
and, most notably, William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778). Each of these men, and
others like them, had spoken or acted in support of the colonies at some point
during the fifteen year period that preceded the beginnings of armed conflict
in 1775, and in so doing had powerfully endeared themselves to their fellow
subjects in America.
Burke, for instance, had helped organize the aforementioned
coalition of London merchants whose lobbying efforts succeeded in securing the
repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, and in 1774 delivered an eloquent rejoinder to
the attempts of successive governments to lay taxes directly upon the colonies
of British America during a debate over the repeal of the Tea Act (1773). “Leave
America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself,” he implored his fellow
MPs,
Leave the
Americans as they anciently stood […] If intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you
sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle
deductions […] from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme
sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself
in question […] No body of men will be argued into slavery.
Burke also keenly noted in a
subsequent address, in a manner that surely pleased those in the colonies who
stressed much the same sentiments in their resolves and petitions, that, “The
people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen [...] They are therefore
not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on
English principles.” He additionally developed a series of strenuously-reasoned
arguments against British military involvement in the Anglo-American crisis and
a set of proposals – including an admission of wrongdoing, a formal apology,
and the election of a general assembly for America – by which he believed the
conflict between Britain and the colonies might be settled indefinitely. While
Burke found himself largely ignored by a government – led by aforementioned
Lord North – entirely fixated upon seeking a military solution to the American
problem, he spoke with a quality of passion that surely gratified his colonial
devotees and affirmed their faith in his efforts and intentions.
The Duke of Richmond proved himself
a similarly steadfast ally of the American colonies within the halls of
Britain’s ministerial elite. A former Secretary of State for the Southern
Department – an office which, until 1768, oversaw British interests in North
America – Richmond spoke frequently and tirelessly against what he perceived to
be his government’s heavy-handed approach to American affairs. To that end, he
notably introduced a series of conciliatory resolutions in August, 1770
intended to normalize relations between Britain and the increasingly
quarrelsome American colonies, and during the December, 1775 debate over the
Prohibitory Act – authorizing a naval blockade of American ports – declared
that the course of action thus far undertaken by Britain’s subjects in America
constituted, “Neither treason nor rebellion, but is perfectly justifiable in
every possible political and moral sense [.]” Combined with his advocacy for
parliamentary reform – universal manhood suffrage, equal apportionment of
ridings, etc. – and his support for the creation of a civil government in
British Canada, Richmond enthusiastically lived up to his popular moniker, “the
Radical Duke.” And though, as with Burke, his pleas fell on the deaf ears of
the North Ministry and wholly failed to alter or mitigate British conduct in
America, the very fact of his support – as a member of the House of Lords, a
former government minister, and a Field Marshall in the British Army – speaks
to the quality of aid that Americans enjoyed among even the highest echelons of
British society.
Curiously
enough, the British political personality most often viewed with sympathy and
affection in late 18th century America – and which Jefferson and
Dickinson praised in the second paragraph of their 1775 Declaration – was also
perhaps one of the greatest advocates in British history for empire,
colonialism, and the global preeminence of the British nation. While this might
appear something of a contradiction – particularly if one understands the
repeated American rejection of Parliamentary authority in the 1760s and 1770s
as an inherent rejection of the very concept of empire – Jefferson and Dickinson’s
account of the man’s career tribulations portray it as anything but. Referred
to with admiration and esteem as “The Great Commoner” prior to his elevation to
the House of Lords as Earl of Chatham in 1766, William Pitt the Elder was – as
Secretary of State for the Southern Department in the cabinet of the Duke of
Newcastle (1693-1768) – the principle strategist behind Britain’s victory over
France in the Seven Years War (1754-1763). In that capacity, Jefferson and
Dickinson asserted, Pitt not only led the British Empire to, “The summit of
glorious prosperity,” but publicly declared while doing so that, “These
Colonies enabled [Britain] to triumph over her enemies.” By citing these ideas
together – Pitt’s role in burnishing the strength and prestige of the Empire
and his praise of America’s role therein – the 1775 Declaration both affirmed
the pride which the united colonies continued to invest in the glories of the
British nation and asserted – through the medium of one of the most respected
statesmen in contemporary Britain – their place in making those glories
manifest.
The
people of British America identified so closely with Pitt, it seemed – pegged
their own fortunes to his efforts on behalf of the Empire – that Jefferson and
Dickinson went so far as to pinpoint his resignation in 1761 amidst the rise of
men like the Earl of Bute (1713-1792) and George Grenville (1712-1770) as the
seed of the Anglo-American crisis. “Towards the conclusion of [the Seven Years
War]” they asserted, “It pleased our Sovereign to make a change in his
Councils. From that fatal moment, the affairs of the British Empire began to
fall into confusion, [and] are at length distracted by the convulsions that now
shake it to its deepest foundations.” In point of fact, the “change in his
Councils” occurred as a result of Bute’s influence over the newly-crowned
George III, the former’s perception of Pitt as an impediment to his
advancement, and the debate occasioned by the revelation in 1761 that Spain was
preparing to enter the war in aid of France. The former tutor of then-Prince
George, Bute favored an end to hostilities on the European continent and sought
to manipulate the situation within the cabinet to simultaneously favor this
position and isolate Pitt. To that end, he first convinced Pitt’s collaborator
Newcastle of the folly of widening the scope of the war at a time when
Britain’s financial resources were stretched increasingly thin. Then, when
Pitt’s arguably inevitable call for a pre-emptive attack on Spain’s colonial
possessions arrived, Bute simply prevailed upon his colleagues in the Newcastle
Ministry to turn upon their former collaborator. When Pitt’s proposal was accordingly
rejected by a majority in cabinet, he felt it necessary to tender his
resignation. Newcastle was himself removed from office in 1762, with Bute
appointed Prime Minister in his place. Alongside the aforementioned George
Grenville – Secretary of State for the Northern Department, First Lord of the
Admiralty, and Bute’s successor as PM – he then proceeded to bring the war to
its conclusion, negotiate the accompanying Treaty of Paris (1763), and
undertake the military and financial planning that made policies like the Stamp
Act (1765) and the Townshend Duties (1767) appear both necessary and proper to
the maintenance of Britain’s global empire.
Begging
the reader’s indulgence for the length and complexity of the explanation
offered above, said passage in fact represents a severely abridged account of
the relationship between the fall of William Pitt in 1761 and the beginnings of
the Anglo-American crisis in 1765. There were many more participants in the
game of ministerial musical chairs that took place over those years, each a
member of any number of factions and splinter groups within a political culture
that remained as malleable as ever. Not only that, but certain events which
occurred between 1761 and 1775 would seem to at least call into question the
soaring talents and liberal sympathies attributed by Jefferson and Dickinson to
their beloved Pitt. Consider, for example, his return to prominence as Prime
Minister between 1766 and 1768 at what would appear to have been a critical
moment in the events leading to the formation of the Continental Congress and
the beginning of armed hostilities between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies.
In evident contradiction to his avowed sympathies for and understanding of the
Crown’s subjects in America, Pitt allowed his Chancellor of the Exchequer
Charles Townshend (1725-1767) to introduce a series of duties on goods like
tea, glass, lead, and paper upon their sale in the colonies for the express
purpose of raising revenue. The resulting “Townshend Duties” became yet another
flashpoint for protest and political and civil resistance in British America, both
in terms of their obvious significance and the manner by which they were
enforced. Granting that Pitt was reportedly afflicted with both physical and
psychological maladies during the majority of his term in office, took to
frequently sequestering himself as a result, and so was likely often unaware of
the measures his own cabinet was pursuing, the fact remains that both his ability
and his inclination to act in a manner favorable to the people of British
America was at times a great deal more limited than his advocates in that part
of the world often believed.
In the context of Jefferson and Dickinson’s
1775 Declaration, however, this rather sobering truth hardly seems to matter.
For whatever reason, by whatever means, the scribes chosen by the Continental
Congress to express the position of the united colonies vis-à-vis armed
hostilities between themselves and Great Britain perceived nothing but the best
of intentions in the career of William Pitt, and little else but the worst
kinds of corruption and avarice in the deeds of his contemporaries. Whereas, to
their reckoning, Pitt had strengthened the British Empire by his conduct of the
war with France, heralded the role of British America therein, and spoke out
against the “unconstitutional” taxation of the colonists via Parliamentary
fiat, his successors, “Finding the brave foes of Britain, though frequently
defeated, yet still contending, took up the unfortunate idea of granting them a
hasty peace, and then of subduing her faithful friends.” What the latter claim
amounted to was the rather conspiratorial accusation that the likes of Bute and
Grenville had determined continued war with France too expensive for the
rewards it would generate, sought an expedient settlement of the same, and then
set their sights upon British America as a far more compelling source of wealth
and patronage. Thus, Jefferson and Dickinson asserted, “These Colonies were
judged to be in such a state as to present victories without bloodshed, and all
the easy emoluments of statutable plunder.” These scheme was carried out, they
further declared, despite the colonists’, “Dutiful, zealous, and useful
services during the war, though so recently and amply acknowledged in the most
honorable manner by His Majesty, by the late king, and by Parliament [.]” From
this signal betrayal allegedly flowed the many injuries visited upon the
American colonies in the 1760s and 1770s – unjustified taxation, judicial
abuses, legislative interference, and economic warfare – ultimately leading to
the state of armed resistance commenced in 1775.
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