Common People with Common Sense
To the Editor:
In 1776, declaring independence, in the parlance of March Madness, was not a slam dunk. What were the odds of success? Boston experienced the brunt of transactional colonialism: closed harbor, taxes on British trade, British troops. Other colonies were less harmed. The Continental Congress made unsteady progress, but resistance to Britian increased. Declaring independence was treason. Ben Franklin, or other Patriots, said, “We must all hang together or all hang separately.” Patriots wanted to correct the injustices they suffered. Loyalists wanted to protect what benefits they received.
Virginia contributed substantially to independence, despite its favorable economic, political and cultural climate. The template of British colonialism, the Virginia Company was chartered as a private, profit-seeking enterprise. It became organized, and crops, especially tobacco, were paying off. But Virginia provided patriotic sons to the cause of independence: Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Madison, and others. Its House of Burgess functioned as well as a colonial legislature could, but the King and Parliament retained the right to veto acts they did not approve. Once Britain closed Boston’s harbor with the 1774 Coercive Acts, following the Tea Party, Virginia recognized that could be its fate.
On June 7, 1776, the Second Continental Congress formally raised the issue of independence. A month later the Declaration was approved and circulated. In close association with Boston, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island supported the Declaration. Philadelphia’s port welcomed immigrants seeking better lives and religious freedom and fostered trade. Pennsylvania’s Quaker population preferred reconciliation to war, as did Delaware. Both, and New Jersey, realized their rights could be taken away and ports closed.
New York Loyalists benefited from colonial mercantilism, bustling harbors and robust trade; its population believed it had a lot to lose if independence was achieved. But it was where Washington had the Declaration read to his troops, some of whom physically attacked and toppled the equestrian statue of George III.
Early to support independence, North Carolina Patriots agreed with Virginians. South Carolina followed, but cautiously. Scots-Irish, western Carolinians, brought anti-British sentiments with them. Georgia relied on Britain for security and prosperity. It faced hostile Spanish and Indigenous people in its southern and western regions but changed opinion after Concord and Lexington.
Patriots justified independence on moral and political grounds. John Dickinson’s “Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer” (1767-1768) argued that the Townshend Acts violated colonists’ rights of selfdetermination; King and Parliament should not tax colonial trade without consent.
Dickinson was reinforced by Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” published in 1776. Paine’s moral and political arguments pushed independence across the finish line. He championed egalitarian government, something supported by Patriots and opposed by elitist Loyalists. When Paine arrived from England in November 1774 the shock of bloodshed at Concord and Lexington was in the air. Reconciliation was one option but could not be trusted. Independence could. The British government interpreted criticism as treason. Traitors could be hanged. Paine embraced the Enlightenment argument that common people had the common sense needed to govern themselves according to laws granted by nature and God. These authors embraced the option posed by Patrick Henry, of Virginia, in 1775: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Patriots hurried to declare independence in the spring of 1776 when they learned that King George was negotiating with German princes to have German troops fight the colonists; 30,000 arrived. After the war, 5,000 stayed, tired of being abused by thankless service to princes’ vanity. Eventually, Patriots formalized these charges against George III in the Declaration: He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
For protecting them (troops), by a Mock trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these states.
He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.
He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of Foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized Nation.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.