What Happened in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776?

Spirit of 76'

Although the origins of the American Revolution are subtle and complex, even historically controversial, there is less excuse for being muddled about what happened on July 2, 1776, proclaimed in public two days later. The Thirteen Colonies stated they had now changed their goals in the controversy with the British monarchy. For a year before that, the Continental Congress had been corresponding and meeting in Carpenters Hall with the goal of achieving representation in the British parliament -- "No taxation without representation". But the appearance of seven hundred British warships in American waters showed that not only was Parliamentary representation out of the question, but King George III was going to play rough about any colonial challenge. The restructured goal was no longer just representation, it was independence. If we were going to resist a military occupation at the risk of being hanged as traitors, we might as well do it for something more substantial than representation. The meeting had a number of Scotch-Irish Princeton graduates, whose basic loyalty to England was small. Pacifist Pennsylvania, chief among the wavering hold-outs, was mostly won over by its own Benjamin Franklin, who was confident the French could be enlisted to help us. He was promptly dispatched back to Paris to make it happen; Washington was dispatched to hold off that British fleet in the meantime. Jefferson was designated to write a proclamation of righteousness, which even after editing is still pretty unreadable beyond the first couple of sentences. Meeting adjourned. This brief account may not qualify as a serious examination of the causes of the American Revolution, but it comes close to the way it seemed to the colonist in the street.

Colonist's Complaint

The rebels then spent eight years convincing the British they were serious, and have been independent ever since. But, just a minute,here. Reflect on the fact that fighting had been going on for a year in Massachusetts, and that Lord Howe's fleet had set sail a month before the Declaration, actually landing on Staten Island at just about the same time as the Fourth of July. Add the fact that only John Hancock actually signed the document on July 4th, and some of the signers even waited until September. You can sort of see why John Adams never got over the idea that Thomas Jefferson had a big nerve implying the whole thing was his idea. What's more, there's a viewpoint that New England subsequently had to endure a President from Virginia for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of the new nation because loud talk from New England made the rest of the country nervous. Philadelphia may have been the cradle of Independence, but that was not because it was a colony hot for war, dragging the others along with it. Rather, it was the largest city in the colonies, centrally located. It had a strong pacifist tradition, and it had the most to lose from a pillaging enemy war machine. When Independence was finally stated as the goal, many of its leading citizens moved to Canada.

New England was in the position of having started hostilities, and was about to be subdued by overwhelming force. The Canadians were not going to come to their aid, because they were French, and Catholic, and enough said. What New England and the Scotch-Irish needed was WASP allies, stretching for two thousand miles to the South. By far the largest colony was Virginia, which included what is now Kentucky and West Virginia; it even had some legal claims for vastly larger territory. The rest of the English colonies had plenty of assorted grievances against George III, and almost all of them could see that America was rapidly outgrowing the dependency on the British homeland, without any sign that Parliament was ever going to surrender home rule to them. Perhaps it was unfortunate that New Englanders were so impulsive, but it looked as though a confrontation with the Crown was inevitably coming. Without support, New England was likely to be subdued like Carthage.

And the last hope for flattery and diplomacy, for guile and subtlety, had recently stepped off the boat. Benjamin Franklin, our fabulous man in London, had finally had it "up to here" with the British ministry. He finally was saying what others had been thinking. It was now, or never.

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