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The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]». Краткое содержание книги:
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 01
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 02 / (From the Rise of Greece to the Christian Era)
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 04
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 05 / (From Charlemagne to Frederick Barbarossa)
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06 / (From Barbarossa to Dante)
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 / The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 09
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 10
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 14
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 17
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21 / The Recent Days (1910-1914)
Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, which had been reported and laid on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it.
Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. The debates, having taken up the greater parts of July 2d, 3d, and 4th, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and signed by every member present except Mr. Dickinson.
JOHN ANDREW DOYLE
Before this it had become evident that to defer any longer the formation of an independent government was to keep up an unnecessary source of weakness. Already the voice of the nation had protested unmistakably against the longer continuance of anarchy. The first definite step toward such a change had been taken in 1775 by New Hampshire. On October 11th their delegates had petitioned Congress to allow them to establish a government, but Congress, having still hopes of the success of the petition, had deferred answering their appeal. The majority of Congress saw at last that independence was only a question of time. An answer was sent to the Convention of New Hampshire, recommending it to form a government. Similar advice was sent the next day to South Carolina, and a little later to Virginia. Yet New Hampshire shrank from so decisive a step, and coupled the formation of their new government with a studious expression of their allegiance. Virginia showed a nobler spirit.
In January the convention passed a motion, instructing their delegates to recommend Congress to throw their ports open to all nations, and thus to cast off the commercial supremacy of England. But the mere establishment of independent State governments was not enough. An imperial government, also independent of England, was essential. To establish independence without confederation would be only doing half the work. In the words of Franklin, "We must all hang together, unless we would all hang separately." About this time Franklin's scheme for a confederation was laid before Congress. The scheme did not include, but it evidently implied, independence. Franklin had been throughout a strenuous advocate of reconciliation, as long as reconciliation was possible, and his opinion ought to have convinced all that the time for separation had come. But the timid counsels of his colleague, Dickinson, overruled the motion, and the scheme of a confederation was not even formally considered. On February 16th the question of opening the ports was formally laid before Congress. In the next month measures were taken which clearly showed that independence was at hand. A private agent was sent to France by the authority of the committee of secret correspondence, and the instructions of the commissioners sent to Canada contained a clause inviting the people of Canada to "set up such a form of government as will be most likely in their judgment to produce their happiness." The clause was objected to as implying independence, and gave rise to a debate, but was ultimately carried. At last, after seven weeks' deliberation, the Congress resolved to emancipate the colonies from all commercial restrictions, and on April 6th the ports of America were thrown open to the world.
On March 27th South Carolina proceeded to construct a government. They asserted as their principle of action that the good of the people is the origin and end of all government, and they set forth the misconduct of the King, the Parliament, and the officers of the English Government. At the same time they introduced no change into the system of representation or the qualification of voters. On May 4th the Assembly of Rhode Island passed an act discharging the inhabitants of the colony from allegiance to the King, and at the same time authorized its delegates in Congress to conclude a treaty with any independent power for the security of the colonies. On May 6th the Assembly of Virginia met at Williamsburg. After a declaration that all pacific measures were useless, and that "they had no alternative left but an abject submission to the will of those overbearing tyrants, or a total separation from the Crown and Government of Great Britain," they passed two resolutions; the first empowering their delegates at the convention to propose a declaration of independence and a confederation of the colonies; the second appointing a committee to draw up a declaration of rights and a scheme of government for the colony. On June 12th the Declaration of Rights was laid before the Assembly, and on the 29th a constitution was produced.
The Assembly then proceeded to elect a governor. The choice fell on Patrick Henry. Rightly was he, who had first foreseen independence and bidden his countrymen look the danger of it in the face, deemed worthy to be the first to govern the State which he had called into being. All the colonies except Pennsylvania and Maryland followed the example of Virginia, and when, on July 1st, the motion for independence was laid before the Congress, the delegates of nine colonies were pledged to vote in its favor. The delegates of Pennsylvania and Maryland were divided, those of South Carolina unanimously opposed independence. The New York delegates were all in favor of independence, and represented the opinion of the colony, but could not vote, as their convention had not yet been duly elected. When the question came forward for decision next day, Dickinson, who had opposed it on the first day with great earnestness, stayed away, as did one of his colleagues, and the vote of Pennsylvania was altered. Another delegate arrived from Delaware, whose vote turned the scale, and South Carolina, rather than stand alone, withdrew its opposition. New York alone was unable to vote, and on July 2d, by the decision of twelve colonies, without one adverse vote, it was resolved "that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." Seldom was the irony of history more strikingly illustrated than when Hancock, a rebel specially selected for proscription by the English government, put the question to the vote, and declared the American colonies forever independent.
Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, was selected to draw up the Declaration which had been resolved upon. His pen had already served his country. In 1774 he had published A Summary View of the Rights of British America, setting forth the dangers which menaced the country, and encouraging the people in defence of their liberties. He had signalized himself in his own colony by his opposition to slavery. "Wherever he was, there was found a soul devoted to the cause of liberty, power to defend and maintain it, and willingness to incur all its hazards."
On July 4th the Declaration was produced. It declared the abstract principles on which their secession was justified; it then drew up an indictment against the King, in eighteen heads, setting forth the various ways in which he had proved himself "a tyrant unfit to be the ruler of a free people." Finally it declared that the united colonies were free and independent states; that the connection with Great Britain was and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as free and independent states, they had full power to "levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do."