Conceived in Liberty (237 page)

The Declaration of Independence had been proclaimed and the colonies were now united states. But New York had not yet signed! Surely it would not hold out against all the other American colonies; and yet, its ruling landed oligarchy—the Livingstons, Jays, Duanes, Schuylers et al.—were set against independence. The New York Left had been effectively silenced, and as late as April 1776 archconservatives, a large bloc of whom strongly opposed independence, swept the New York elections, defeating radicals selected by the New York Committee of Mechanics.

The revolutionary cause was fortunate in having the Continental Army stationed in New York from mid-April on to defend New York City from the expected British attack. In the course of his stay, Washington was able to cow the province’s Tories and to pressure the Central Committee of Safety into prohibiting supplies to British ships.

Congress’s antiking resolution of May 15 made little impression on New York. However, in early June the New York Provincial Congress approved Congress’ plan for an enlarged army to fight the war and pledged its support to Washington. The provincial congress also appointed the Committee of Seven to investigate, prosecute, convict, and imprison suspected Tories aiding the enemy. This committee was eminently conservative, including as it did Philip J. Livingston, John Jay, and Gouverneur Morris, but the very imminence of the British military threat necessarily drove them to more radical anti-Tory measures. New York was faced with the specter of a mighty British invasion fleet carrying nearly 35,000 troops, which appeared off New York in mid-June. And on June 22 David Mathews, the royally appointed mayor of New York City, was arrested for being
secretly in league with Governor Tryon, recruiting Tories for enlisting in British arms, and plotting to kidnap Washington. The action against the Tory Mathews implied recognition of American independence. Furthermore, New York collaborated with Washington in arresting Tories in Ulster, in suppressing armed Tories on Long Island, in raising a patriot militia to cow the Tories of Dutchess County, and in billeting 500 troops on the numerous Tories of Queens County.

Even so, an outright move for independence was extremely difficult for most of the New York aristocracy. Their Whig peers, however, displayed here, as on later occasions, a shrewd ability to compromise with the spirit of the times in order to keep control of affairs at home; by the end of May, Jay, Morris, Livingston, and John Morin Scott were beginning to move cautiously toward independence.

On the other hand, the New York Committee of Mechanics was ardently for independence from Great Britain. On May 27, the provincial congress began cautiously by decreeing the dissolution of the old royal government in New York. Still the Congress dallied, refusing to hurry its instructions to their delegates on the burning issue of independence. New province-wide elections at the end of June secured a large majority of supporters of independence, and on July 9, the Fourth New York Provincial Congress, meeting at White Plains, sedately voted unanimously to join the Continental Declaration of Independence. New York’s acceptance was read to the Continental Congress on July 15 and occasioned the angry resignation of New York’s John Alsop, an arch-conservative, irreconcilable to the last.

In the course of providing for June elections to the Fourth Provincial Congress, the conservatives in control of the third congress had made sure that any new constitution written by the new congress would not have to be ratified by the people, but would go automatically into force. This decision provoked a heated protest from the New York Committee of Mechanics, which pioneered in America in asserting the right of the people to vote on any constitution in a referendum; such a referendum was “the only characteristic of the true lawfulness” of government, a requirement that derived from a God-given right of all men.

If New York moved in measured steps toward independence, affairs were not nearly so placid in New York’s proclaimed northeast, the New Hampshire Grant Lands that were to become Vermont. The first flush of common enthusiasm for the war against Britain could not long obscure the basic conflict between New York land monopolists and Vermont settlers. New York continued to claim the Vermonters’ land, and the presence of Duane, Livingston, and other New Hampshire grantees in the Continental Congress did nothing to allay Vermont’s suspicions. On January 16,
1776, representatives of westside Vermont towns met at a convention in Dorset; the meeting agreed to petition the Continental Congress to agree that their loyalty to the American cause did not include fealty to New York as well. The westsiders asked Congress to tell New York to refrain for the duration of the war from imposing its authority on the New Hampshire Grant Lands. The petition was presented to the Congress in early May by Capt. Heman Allen, brother of Ethan. The congressional answer was to counsel the Grant region to submit loyally to New York rule until the end of the war, with all land quarrels to remain meanwhile in abeyance. This recommendation greatly alarmed Allen, for he and his brother Ira had already quietly conceived a grand design for preserving the settlers’ property intact against depredations: the creation of a free and independent republic of the Grant Lands. To advance this goal, the Grants must not acknowledge New York rule; agilely Allen withdrew his petition on the suddenly invented ground that he had neglected to bring various vital documents. Thanks to this strategem, the Vermonters retained freedom of action.

Meanwhile, the Vermont eastsiders were also growing restive, and a meeting of eastside committees of safety at Westminster at the end of June hinted that they might prefer shifting their allegiance from New York to Massachusetts. A westside convention received news of the Declaration of Independence at the end of July with great interest. The Declaration, coming after Congress’ resolution of May 15, was so clearly applicable to the Vermonters’ own conditions that they could not fail to get the idea. Led by Ira and Heman Allen, Dr. Jonas Fay, and the canny farmer Col. Thomas Chittenden, the Dorset meeting moved slowly toward independence by pledging loyalty to the new United States, but also expressing its distinct lack of enthusiasm for association with New York. The meeting then proclaimed the Grant area a “separate district.” These sentiments were embodied in the articles of association which were sent to all the towns of the Grant district for endorsement.

It was now unanimous; all the states were united on independence. The Declaration of Independence was proclaimed throughout the land; toasts rang out to liberty and to the union of states, to freedom and independence; the royal arms were everywhere stripped and burned. An effigy of the king was paraded through Baltimore, and a lead statue of King George in New York City was happily toppled and melted down into bullets.

Predictably, the Declaration of Independence gladdened libertarians in Europe and deeply angered the conservatives. The French government warmly approved of the fact of independence, but the French people were enthusiastic over the libertarian philosophy as well. The great French
liberal Marquis de Condorcet put the case well. Here was theory put into practice: it is not enough that the rights of man “be written in the books of philosophers and in the hearts of virtuous men; it is necessary that... men should read them in the example of a great people—America has given us this example. The act which declares its independence is a simple and sublime exposition of those rights so sacred and so long forgotten.”
*

English reaction to the Declaration was predictably hostile; although the brilliant young liberal Charles James Fox declared that the Americans “had done no more than the English had done against James II.” The virtually official reply to the Declaration was written by the barrister John Lind, who largely devoted himself to refuting the “calumnies” against the king. As for the philosophy of the Declaration, Lind thought it sufficient to make the penetrating observation that these doctrines “put the axe to the root of all government,” since every existing or conceivable government alienates some of these supposedly inalienable rights—in short, that the logical conclusion of the natural rights philosophy was anarchism.

*
See Carl L. Becker,
The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas
(New York: Vintage Books, 1958), pp. 230–31. Sir George Otto Trevelyan wrote of the reaction of the European masses to the Declaration: “The depressed and underprivileged classes in a feudal society... hailed with delight from across the ocean that audacious proclamation of their own silent hopes and lurking sympathies.” George Otto Trevelyan,
The American Revolution
(New York: McKay), p. 301.

The decision of the colonies for independence came at the beginning of a severe military crisis. Until then, there had been no organized or regularized fighting on the soil of the thirteen states other than the siege of Boston. By the end of June, Lee and the army of the Southern Department had beaten off the invasion of Charleston by General Clinton; but in July the main British army was ready to invade New York. The long-range British strategy was to invade friendly New York City and then conquer the Hudson Valley in a two-pronged thrust from Canada and the city, isolating radical New England from the softer and more pliable middle colonies. This strategy posed a formidable threat to the American cause.

The mighty British invasion force began to assemble off New York City in late June 1776. It was headed by the Howe brothers, Gen. Sir William Howe in charge of land forces and his brother Admiral Richard Lord Howe, newly appointed overall commander-in-chief of the American theater. By the end of June, 130 British ships were stationed in New York Bay, and General Howe quickly seized an undefended and strongly pro-Tory Staten Island to use as his base of operations. By mid-August, a truly formidable force of over 32,000 regular soldiers, including 8,000 Hessians, was poised on Staten Island; it was the greatest expeditionary force that the world’s strongest military power, Great Britain, had ever mounted. The army was supported by a fleet of thirty warships and hundreds of transports, manned by more than 10,000 seamen. Floating the expedition had cost the British treasury the vast sum of 850,000 pounds.

To oppose this vast force, Washington had a largely untrained army of
19,000 men. Surely the prime necessity for the American force was to pursue guerrilla war and avoid open contact with the British. Yet Washington decided on conventional resistance from fixed positions and elected to hold a city that Charles Lee had correctly warned could not be defended. First to urge Washington to abandon New York—and to irritate him in the process—was the brilliant young Maj. Aaron Burr, aide-decamp to General Putnam.

Compounding his blunders, Washington chose to divide his forces between Manhattan and the southwestern tip of Long Island. The idea was to fortify Brooklyn Heights, commanding the city from the East River, but both Long Island and Manhattan were death traps. The mighty British fleet need only have sailed up the East River to cut off the force on Long Island, and up the Hudson to land troops in northern Manhattan to surround and annihilate the American force there.

If the British commanders had applied even moderate intelligence or devotion to their task, they could probably have wiped out Washington’s army then and there and perhaps have won the war on the spot. The British, including General Howe, realized that to win on land they would have to mobilize their superior armed forces quickly and destroy the American army in one blow. Speed was of the essence; the strike had to come before the Americans had a chance to mobilize their resources and before France and Spain could send full-scale aid. Furthermore, the Howes and their commanders realized that the key, especially in conducting counter-revolutionary warfare against a hostile populace, was not so much to gain territory, which could turn out to be futile, but to destroy the enemy army. Washington’s absurd decision to dig in at New York provided the Howes a golden opportunity for a smashing victory.

Yet they failed notably to take up this opportunity to crush the American forces. This and later failures were so enormous as not to be put down as mere blunders. Historians have generally recognized that a deliberate policy must have been involved, and have concluded it was based upon a general British desire to avoid annihilating the American forces so as not to preclude a peaceful political reconciliation. Yet it should be clear that the government—especially King George and Lord Germain, the colonial secretary—were out to crush the Americans militarily, and as quickly as possible. They put no stock in peaceful negotiations or a political solution.

The deliberate policy, it appears, was the choice, not of Great Britain, but of the Howe brothers themselves. Both ardent Whigs, and both strongly opposed to the war with America, the Howes took it upon themselves, in a move tantamount to treason, to avoid crushing the Americans and to hold out the olive branch of peace. Admiral Howe apparently convinced his brother of this policy upon his arrival off New York in mid-July, and from then on General Howe pursued continuous acquisition
and possession of territory rather than decisive blows against the Continental Army. Happily, Washington’s stupidity was partially offset by the Howes’ virtual treason to the British counter-revolution.
*

On arriving off New York, Lord Howe delayed military action while offering peace terms to Washington, even though he was authorized by the Crown only to accept surrender by the rebels. For over a month, he tried to negotiate with the rebels, but the Americans, happy in their independence, were long past conciliatory terms.

General Howe was finally ready to launch his attack against New York in late August. But the important failure by the Howes was not the delay, which was used to build up British forces, but the strategy employed in the attack itself. General Sir Henry Clinton sensibly urged a landing in northern Manhattan to cut off nearly the entire American army; yet Clinton’s suggestion was ignored. Instead, General Howe virtually refused to entrap and decimate the American troops, electing only to push them out of New York City. On August 22, Howe and a force of 20,000 landed on Long Island across the Narrows from Staten Island. Their landing was unopposed, the Americans sensibly taking their stand behind a ridge, the Heights of Guan, defending the approaches to the fortifications at Brooklyn Heights on the East River. The only competent American general in the area, Nathanael Greene, had fallen ill and could not command the 8,000 or so troops stationed on Long Island. Washington had replaced Greene with Gen. John Sullivan, who by his rashness had turned the retreat from Canada into a virtual rout. As the British landed, Washington had second thoughts and flightily replaced Sullivan with the still more incompetent General Putnam, leaving Sullivan in command of the American center. The confusion was compounded by Washington’s failure to clearly allocate command authority between Putnam and Sullivan. Major Aaron Burr again only succeeded in irritating Washington by having the temerity and wisdom to urge that the troops be pulled out of Brooklyn while there was still time.