The Continental Congress and its Doings: John Adams and Declaration
The first speaker was John Adams, who had seconded Lee's resolution, and who recapitulated the arguments in favor of a declaration of independence. He was replied to by Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, who, though patriotic, thought the movement injudicious. A long and impassioned debate followed, after which action was postponed till the following day. On putting the resolution to vote, it was passed by a majority of the delegates of all the colonies, with the exception of New York, which had lacked time to express its wishes. The sanction of New York was given a week afterwards.
John Adams, writing to his wife at Boston, on the 3d of July, to communicate to her the grand event in which he had acted so important a part, hailed that second day of July, 1776, as the most memorable epoch in the history of America. "I am apt to believe," he said, "that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, for evermore. You will think me transported by enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this declaration and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even though we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.". .
The committee for drawing up the Declaration of Independence had intrusted that task to Thomas Jefferson, who, though at that time only thirty-three years of age,--between seven and eight years younger than John Adams, and a mere juvenile as compared with Franklin, both of whom were on the committee,--was chosen for a work of great difficulty and importance, because he was held to possess a singular felicity in the expression of popular ideas (as evinced in previous state papers), and because he represented the province of Virginia, the oldest of the Anglo-American colonies. Jefferson, having produced the required document, reported it to the House on the 28th of June, when it was read, and ordered to lie on the table. After the conclusion of the debate on the resolution of independence on the 2d of July, the Declaration was passed under review. During the remainder of that day and the two next, this remarkable production was very closely considered and shifted, and several alterations were made in it.
Several changes had been made in the original draft by the committee, though just what they were is not known. The principal changes made by Congress were the omission of those sentences which reflected upon the English people, and the striking out of a clause which severely reprobated the slave-trade.
The debate on the proposed Declaration came to a termination on the evening of the 4th of July. The document was then reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except Dickinson.
The signature of New York was not given till several days later, and a New Hampshire member, Matthew Thornton, was permitted to append his signature on November 4 four months after the signing.
It will not at this day be denied by many, even on the English side of the Atlantic, that the Declaration was a work of greater power, that it had a large basis of truth, that it appealed, in noble and strenuous language, to the very highest principles of political right and virtue. Its crowning glory is that it did this in no utopian spirit, in no mood of wild and vindictive change, but with decorum, with dignity, with tenderness, and with sense. Englishmen, who regret the quarrel out of which this supreme act of renunciation arose, may yet reflect, with a just satisfaction and no ungenerous pride, that the root of all these principles is to be found in the traditions of a thousand years of English political life. Jefferson did but apply to novel circumstances the general ideas of popular freedom which had long been illustrated in the old country. George III. had endeavored to introduce into the administration of affairs a species of German absolutism, distasteful alike to Englishmen at home and to their descendants in America. The Declaration of Independence was the final reply of Americans to the ill-judged and ignorant attempt. Its effect on Europe was immense. It helped, in a very considerable degree, to make the French Revolution; it even influenced England. Doubtless it is an exaggeration to say that, but for the success of the Americans, England would have been enslaved. . But the example of America strengthened the liberal party in the mother-country, and guaranteed the certainty of reform. This is why the great production of Jefferson should have as much interest for English as for American minds. .
Undoubtedly, no more important act has ever been performed. From that day forward--from that memorable 4th of July, 1776--the Republic of English America assumed a distinct and tangible existence. The United Colonies became the United States. George III. was formally deposed in thirteen provinces of his empire, and some millions of his subjects became foreigners. A new chapter in the annals of the human race had been opened, and it was as yet too early to forecast with any certainty whether that chapter was to be mainly characterized by weal or woe.