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Rh of the estimates for the army and navy, the employment of German auxiliaries for service in America. Preparations were made to send a large military and naval force against the colonies the following season, and that it should operate in part against the insurgents in New York and the southern colonies and in part through Canada. New England was no longer to be the direct object of attack. The Howes, as commanders of the royal army and navy, were appointed commissioners to grant assurance of peace and pardon and the repeal of the obnoxious acts, provided submission was made and some way could be found by parliament in which an imperial revenue for purposes of defence could be secured from the colonies. Military operations, meanwhile, should be directed against points of least resistance, and in that way, if possible, the union of the colonies should be broken. The trend of British policy indicated that an invasion from Canada might be attempted and the effort be made to hold Charleston, Philadelphia, and especially New York as strategic points on the coast.

62. The course of events in the colonies by which this situation was met was the erection of a system of feeble defences about New York and the removal thither of the army of about 9000 men in the spring of 1776; the fitting out of privateers to prey on British commerce and of a few small armed vessels by the colonies and the general government to watch the coast and procure supplies; the disarming of loyalists; the opening of American ports to the trade of all peoples who were not subject to the British Crown; and the tentative opening of relations with France. As the result of a combination of ill luck, bad management and American energy the British suffered a repulse at Charleston, South Carolina, in June, which was analogous to the affair of the year before at Bunker Hill, and which necessitated a postponement of their plans in the South. The Congress and the various revolutionary bodies in the colonies were forced to carry on War upon a constantly increasing scale. They had to assume powers of government and gradually to perfect their organization for the purpose. Committees in Congress became more permanent. Conditions approximating to those which existed the year before in New England extended through the colonies generally. On the 15th of May 1776, as the result of various earlier applications on the subject, and especially of one from certain Whigs in New York, the Congress recommended to the assemblies and conventions of the colonies where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs had been established, “to adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness of their constituents in particular and of America in general.” The preamble to this resolution set forth as facts the statements that the colonies had been excluded from the protection of the Crown, that no answer had been given to their petitions for redress, and that the whole force of the kingdom was to be used for their destruction, and therefore that it was no longer reasonable or honest for the colonists to take the oaths or affirmations necessary for the support of government under the Crown.

Though the preamble was warmly debated, it was adopted. And this act marked a turning-point, for the progress of events from that time to the declaration of independence was rapid and decisive. The colonies—now becoming states—one after another, in response to letters from Philadelphia, empowered their delegates to concur in declaring independence. On the 7th of June R. H. Lee of Virginia introduced in Congress a resolution “that these United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states,” that it was expedient forthwith to take effectual measures for securing foreign allies, and that a plan of confederation should be formed. John Dickinson and others, speaking for the Middle Colonies, argued that the order of procedure should be reversed. But John Adams and the more aggressive party insisted that the proposed declaration would simply state the facts and would open the way for foreign alliances; that it was useless to wait for unanimity. The debate showed that the delegates from the Middle Colonies and South Carolina could not act, and so the decision was postponed

for three weeks. In the interval steps were taken to draft a plan of treaties and articles of confederation. A board of war and ordnance, the earliest germ of an executive department, was also created by Congress. At the end of the three weeks the delegates from all the colonies except Georgia, South Carolina and New York had received instructions favourable to independence. The two former left their delegates free, and under the influence of the British attack on Charleston they voted for independence. News had just come that Howe had landed with a large force at Sandy Hook—as events proved, it was an admirably equipped army of 30,000 men, supported by a fleet. Under the impression of these stirring events Dickinson and his leading supporters ceased their opposition, and the Declaration, substantially in the form given to it by Thomas Jefferson, was agreed to (July 4, 1776), only three adverse votes being cast. The delegates from New York took no part, but a few days later the act was approved by the convention of that state. The signing of the document by the members took place at a later time. Thus triumphed the tendencies toward self-government which had been predominant in the continental colonies from the first, and which the system of imperial control had only superficially modified and restrained. But the most significant part of the document for the future was the preamble, in which the democratic aspirations of the new nation were set forth, the spirit to which Thomas Paine had just made so powerful an appeal in his Common Sense. Governments, it was said, derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and when any system becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to abolish it and to institute a new government, establishing it upon such principles and under such forms as seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. (See .)

63. Viewed from one standpoint, the declaration of independence was apparently an act of the utmost recklessness. The people were by no means a unit in its support, and in several of the states widespread indifference to it, or active sympathy with the British, prevailed. In New York, South Carolina and Georgia a condition of civil war came sooner or later to exist. The United States, as yet, had no international status, and it would seem that that must be secured, if at all, by a series of victories which would ensure independence. But how could these be won against the greatest naval power on the globe, supported by Veteran armies of continental and British troops? The colonies had no money; the few vessels which, as a collective body, they did send out, were more like privateers than anything else. Their army was an undisciplined throng of militiamen, serving on short enlistments, without organized commissariat, and for the most part under inexperienced officers. Its numbers, too, were far inferior to those of the British. Taxation by the

Continental Congress for the support of the war was not among the possibilities of the case. The colonies were struggling against taxation by one imperial body, and it was not likely that they would submit to similar impositions at the hands of another. The Congress, moreover, as has truly been said, was little more than a general committee or interstate council of safety, and had to proceed largely by way of advice. A strong tendency also toward the provision for immediate needs by the issue of bills of credit had been inherited from the period of the French wars, and resort was again had to that device. The battle of Bunker Hill had been immediately followed by an order of Congress for the issue of $2,000,000 in that form of currency. Issues followed in rapidly increasing amounts, until by the close of 1779 $241,000,000 had been authorized. The states put out nearly as much ($209,000,000), Virginia and the two Carolinas issuing the largest amounts. All that Congress could do to secure the redemption of its issues was to recommend to the states to provide the means therefor; but this they failed to do, or even to provide for the redemption of their own issues. The continental paper money depreciated until it became