America's Foreign Relations (Volume 1)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill INDEPENDENCE DECLARED AMERICAN independence is commonly dated from July 4, 1776. The rise of the irresistible spirit of independence, and the practical commitment of the colonies to that policy, had a somewhat earlier date. We have seen that in 1772, in a Boston town meeting, Samuel Adams secured the appointment of a Committee of Correspondence, for communication and cooperation with other towns. Four months later the Virginia House of Burgesses adopted the same idea and extended it to intercolonial scope. A year and a half later still that system bore its richest fruition in the assembling of the first Continental Congress. This body met at Philadelphia on the fourth of September, 1774. It has been pronounced, and probably was, the ablest legislative body of equal numbers ever assembled in the world. That it opened the way for independence, and made it practically certain that the colonies would pursue that way, is not to be doubted. At the same time it is equally beyond doubt that it made no overt move toward independence, but on the contrary scrupulously avoided any mention of such a thing. All the members of the Congress were land-owners, and therefore conservatively inclined. Some of them were among the richest men in the colonies. Some of them came under explicit instructions from their constituents to use all their efforts for restoring amicable relations with the mother country, though on a basis of liberty; that is, the same liberty in the colonies that was enjoyed in England. Others were specially instructed to seek an improvement of commercial conditions. Still others were unin- strueted, and were left free to act according to their own judgment. It does not appear that a single one was instructed or desired by his colleagues to vote either for submission to E...