The Second Continental Congress.Though blood had been shed and war was actually at hand,the second Continental Congress,which met at Philadelphia in May,1775,was not yet convinced that conciliation was beyond human power.It petitioned the king to interpose on behalf of the colonists in order that the empire might avoid the calamities of civil war.On the last day of July,it made a temperate but firm answer to Lord North's offer of conciliation,stating that the proposal was unsatisfactory because it did not renounce the right to tax or repeal the offensive acts of Parliament.
Force,the British Answer.Just as the representatives of America were about topresent the last petition of Congress to the king on August 23,1775,George III issuedGeneral Howe's Peace and Order Proclamation for Bostona proclamation of rebellion.This announcement declared that the colonists,"misled by dangerous and illdesigning men,"were in a state of insurrection;it called on the civil and military powers to bring "the traitors to justice";and it threatened with "condign punishment the authors,perpetrators,and abettors of such traitorous designs."It closed with the usual prayer:"God,save the king."Later in the year,Parliament passed a sweeping act destroying all trade and intercourse with America.Congress was silent at last.Force was also America's answer.
American Independence
Drifting into War.Although the Congress had not given up all hope of reconciliation in the spring and summer of 1775,it had firmly resolved to defend American rights by arms if necessary.It transformed the militiamen who had assembled near Boston,after the battle of Lexington,into a Continental army and selected Washington as commanderinchief.It assumed the powers of a government and prepared to raise money,wage war,and carry on diplomatic relations with foreign countries.
Events followed thick and fast.On June 17,the American militia,by the stubborn defense of Bunker Hill,showed that it could make British regulars pay dearly for all they got.On July 3,Washington took command of the army at Cambridge.In January,1776,after bitter disappointments in drumming up recruits for its army in England,Scotland,and Ireland,the British government concluded a treaty with the Landgrave of HesseCassel in Germany contracting,at a handsome figure,for thousands of soldiers and many pieces of cannon.This was the crowning insult to America.Such was the view of all friends of the colonies on both sides of the water.Such was,long afterward,the judgment of the conservative historian Lecky:"The conduct of England in hiring German mercenaries to subdue the essentially English population beyond the Atlantic made reconciliation hopeless and independence inevitable."The news of this wretched transaction in German soldiers had hardly reached America before there ran all down the coast the thrilling story that Washington had taken Boston,on March 17,1776,compelling Lord Howe to sail with his entire army for Halifax.
The Growth of Public Sentiment in Favor of Independence.Events were bearing the Americans away from their old position under the British constitution toward a final separation.Slowly and against their desires,prudent and honorable men,who cherished the ties that united them to the old order and dreaded with genuine horror all thought of revolution,were drawn into the path that led to the great decision.In all parts of the country and among allclasses,the question of the hour was being debated."American independence,"as the historian Bancroft says,"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 along the coast and the backwoodsmen of the West;in town meetings and from the pulpit;at social gatherings and around the camp fires;in county conventions and conferences or committees;in colonial congresses and assemblies."
Paine's "Commonsense."In the midst of this ferment of American opinion,a bold and eloquent pamphleteer broke in upon the hesitating public with a program for absolute independence,withoutfears and without apologies.In the early days of 1776,Thomas Paine issued the first of his famous tracts,"Commonsense,"a passionate attack upon the British monarchy and an equally passionate plea for American liberty.Casting aside the language of petition with which Americans had hitherto addressed George III,Paine went to the other extreme and assailed him with many a violent epithet.He condemned monarchy itself as a system which had laid the world "in blood and ashes."Instead of praisingthe British constitution under which colonistshad been claiming their rights,he brushed itThomas Paineaside as ridiculous,protesting that it was "owing to the constitution of the people,not to the constitution of the government,that the Crown is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey."
Having thus summarily swept away the grounds of allegiance to the old order,Paine proceeded relentlessly to an argument for immediate separation from Great Britain.There was nothing in the sphere of practical interest,he insisted,which should bind the colonies to the mother country.Allegiance to her had been responsible for the many wars in which they had been involved.Reasons of trade were not less weighty in behalf of independence."Our corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe and our imported goods must be paid for,buy them where we will."As to matters of government,"it is not in the power of Britain to do this continent justice;the business of it will soon be too weighty and intricate to be managed with any tolerable degree of convenience by a power so distant from us and so very ignorant of us."