Asserting Versus Demanding

The Declaration of Independence Was About Self Recognition, Something You Have to Assert

As I write this I have the luxury of having the fan on and the windows open and the house to myself. What a contrast in comfort modern convenience is compared to the same day on July 2nd 1776, where a room full of men, hot and sweating from the heat of Philadelphia and the weight of their wigs and heavy clothing, debated ideas of liberty. if those ideas had been misunderstood or people too impatient from the discomfort of the heat of day, it would have prevented our world from coming into being. Today most Americans can’t think straight if the AC isn’t working. And can we function without our phones and Internet? It is a testament to the alacrity of the Founding Fathers that they could withstand the elements and present cogent and coherent reasoning. After all they were at war, despite the hopes of reconciliation entertained by some of the delegates of the Second Continental Congress.

For those who are kind enough to attend our Sunday Nights Radio live streams on OZFest, you will know that I am a fan of the series John Adams that depicts the epic struggles our Founding Fathers faced. Sadly to many today, the arguments which formed the foundation of our society are remote and abstract. When you see the circumstances and the duress of daily colonial life, with the disease depicted in the John Adams series and the scene where a masectomy is performed with a carving knife, you have to admire the strength people required back then. We talk about being frozen in inaction today and how being distracted robs you of the focus required to preserve your own liberty, but when you realize all the things we DON’T need to concern ourselves with when compared to daily life of the American colonists, their achievement is all the more worthy of praise and respect. During the time, losing children to disease was a daily occurrence for all strata of society. Many of the colonists had to truly worry about where they would get enough food, while we debate paleo vs vegan diets. And being “mindful”.

We view our freedom through a different lens than our ancestors of 250 years ago for the very reason that we are removed from the harsh realities of the world. For us, it is established that we have a right to self determination, and it is common for us to hear that what was accomplished by war for independence was not a special event. One exchange that I had recently regarding self determination and Natural Law included some false assertions:

“Many recognize their failure to collectivize and properly order their affairs, from home to civilization, results in punishment by God.”

Most interesting is the assertion:

“All that to say, there is no such thing as independent rights, even endowed from on high. Any semblance of such relies entirely on maintaining your affairs and civilization sensibly. To say it again, civilizations do not grow out of the plebeian demand for rights.”

What is the difference between demanding that your rights be recognized by an authority that has power over you with asserting your right to self determination? The arguments presented above are made ignoring the facts and context of the age that formed our country. At first the colonies demanded to be heard, they pleaded for King George to view their loyality and sacrifice as proof that the colonists were British subjects in good, faithful standing. And as British subjects who obeyed the contract with their king, they should be authorized to exercise certain rights.

So it wasn’t until the colonies asserted their rights, as individuals, that our society was formed. As we’ll see, the colonists had to stop demanding and pleading and needed to act. What they created was unique during that age. It was not a nation formed from conquering a culture and establishing new mores and language.

It was something far different.

July - December 1775

We take it for granted that the Founding Fathers were of a single mind and that they somehow possessed a single dispensation from above that gave us 250 years of liberty and prosperity which would be unfathomable to them at the time of our country’s founding. We see our segment of western civilization as the result of a natural progression and evolution. Indeed it was an evoluation in thinking, but it was not guaranteed.

The process of forming the ideals of the Declaration of Independence were, naturally, a long process of disagreement, reasoning, introspection and harsh debate. If we trace back a few years and read the documents that Dickinson, Adams and others wrote during the First and Second Continental Congresses, we can see many threads from contemporaries and events that shaped Thomas Jefferson’s most famous writing.

And even more fascinating is that those who influenced Jefferson stood in opposition to declaring independence. It wasn’t set in stone that the ideals of American liberty would take root. In fact, John Dickinson, who crafted the petition The Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms with Jefferson in July 1775, stood in opposition to separation with England. But he and Jefferson agreed upon the circumstances that brought the colonies to writing a petition to their king. The ideas expressed should be of no suprise.

Parliament adopted an insidious manoeuvre calculated to divide us, to establish a perpetual auction of taxations where colony should bid against colony, all of them uninformed what ransom would redeem their lives; and thus to extort from us, at the point of the bayonet, the unknown sums that should be sufficient to gratify, if possible to gratify, ministerial rapacity, with the miserable indulgence left to us of raising, in our own mode, the prescribed tribute. 

It is fascinating to me that Dickinson and Jefferson, both possessing fairly dissimilar views on the role of government and the sovereignty of individual versus the primacy of the British monarchy, collaborated and wrote The Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. It reflects the different stages in both their thinking, and it is here that the appeal is made to King George that the colonies were defending themselves as British citizens who had no designs of breaking free from King George’s rule.

Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that Union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.-Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them.-We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain, and establishing independent states.

If the colonists remained of the mindset held by John Dickinson that the colonies continue to demand their rights be honored by Parliament and the King, and continue pleading for a phase of reconciliation, then we most likely would not have a country. Dickinson was loyal to the King and believed that a British citizen had a social contract with the King, yet not with Parliament. Since Parliament was the initial offender and overstepped its bounds by claiming absolute authority in making binding law, Dickinson had hoped petitioning King George would appeal to the King’s sense of fairness and love for his faithful subjects.

You might say that the colonists at this point were demanding, almost pleading to be heard. As you read Dickinson and Jefferson’s letter, you can see the underpinnings of what would become Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: protection of property, relationship of man to God, the right for representation and ability to redress grievances in a court of justice and not within the military tribunal. The pride of hard won struggles to establish the American colonies is presented to King George, and these struggles are cited as the high price the colonists paid in service to their king and country. Parliament’s attempt to ignore these facts with administrative decrees and enforcing the decrees with no ability for the colonists to present their case in appeal violated the colonists rights as British citizens. The colonists valued that British citizenship too much to be treated as what they called slaves.

“We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.”

But despite the justification of colonies’ right to self defense, the petition asks for King George to intercede on their behalf. The phrasing is strong, but it is still an appeal to mercy of the King.

To further emphasize the need for reconciliation and in attempt to gain favor from King George, the Continental Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition and submitted it to the king on July 5th 1775. King George refused to accept the document. Dickinson’s hopes were dashed further when King George formerly decreed that the colonies were in a state of rebellion on October 26th, 1775.

Despite the escalation of tension by the British with the refusal to acknowledge the position of the colonies, the “revolutionaries” Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and others were in the minority regarding the colonies formerly breaking free from British rule. The colonies of New York and the southern colonies opposed independence.

In Pennsylvania, there was significant opposition from conservative patriot leaders who were against the new radical state constitution adopted in 1776. Key figures like John Dickinson, James Wilson, Robert Morris, and Frederick Muhlenberg led a long fight against the more radical Constitutional party.

Interestingly enough, Delaware broke away from Pennsylvania and declared that it was it’s own independent entity.

On December 23rd, 1775, Britain officially banned trade with the colonies and authorized ceasing colonial vessels. The colonies were dependent on the English for goods and trade, as the mercantilism system that was in place precluded the colonies from trading directly with other colonies in the British empire. This was a stranglehold as inflation jumped.

An Acceleration and Change of Thinking

In 1776 you can see events accelerating and somehow coalescing with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. What strikes me as I researched the timeline below is how accustomed I as a modern American to my age of instaneous communication, and how that shapes decisions. And too much information inspires indecision. 250 years ago one waited for weeks to hear news of acts of aggression and deaths. Perhaps that made threats seem less imminent - the King was across the ocean and only so many ships and troops could be sent to control colonial activity.

The other striking fact was that we were essentially at war in 1775 yet the majority of the colonists didn’t realize the full implications. A year had transpired after the battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill. Yet a majority of the colonists hoped to return to the stability of the colonial system they knew. The Continental Congress had formed an army, they issued a currency, and sanctioned the attack by private ships on British vessels. Yet officially the Continental Congress sought reconciliation. The American people resisted the British while it seemed that the American leadership was reluctant to fully accept the circumstances. Delays in communication resulted in misunderstanding and escalation by both the British and Amercians. Would that have been avoided in this day and age?

Founding Fathers Rutledge and Dickinson urged caution, remaining resolute that independence from the Crown would bring even more violence and destruction upon the colonies. Dickinson, who framed the rights of the colonists in terms of English law, was unwilling break with the society which formed the foundation of his concepts of freedom. Clearly Dickinson believed in liberty as granted to him from the monarchical system, stating the he found the source of his freedom not in Natural Law but within English law.

Massachusetts and Virginia were in the minority regarding adopting measures for independence as soon as possible. Massachusets was the focal point of the British aggression, and Adams was the primary force behind pushing for the colonies to take action as there was no other choice. The battles at Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill only illustrated what the British felt about the rights of the colonists.

“Powder and artillery are the most efficacious, sure and infallible conciliatory measures we can adopt”

John Adams

This timeline shows how quickly the minority convinced Dickinson and others that they had no other recourse but to assert their right to self determination. Making demands of the King were pointless as this stage.

First came the Lee Resolution, it accelerated the process of asserting our right to self determination quite plainly, if not tersely:

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.

While the Lee Resolution stated what the colonies intended, the Declaration Of Independence clearly galvanized Americans as to WHY they needed to establish their own nation. Jefferson, with the help of Franklin’s edit, clearly articulated what everyone could acknowledge as a fact. Facts matter. Truth matters.

It was the ultimate assertion.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Below are the events leading to our official creed as nation being adopted.

• June 7, 1776: Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presents the resolution for independence to the Continental Congress. The Lee Resolution provided the “What We Intend To Do” in response to British escalation of hostilities.

• June 10, 1776: Consideration of the resolution is postponed until July 1 to allow moderates to build a coalition. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and South Carolina opposed declaring independence and it was resolved to delay the vote 20 days.

• June 11, 1776:

  • Congress appoints a committee (the "Committee of Five") to draft a declaration of independence.

  • The committee consists of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston.

• June 12-27, 1776: Jefferson drafts the declaration, which is then reviewed by the committee.

• June 28, 1776: A fair copy of the committee draft is read in Congress.

• July 1, 1776: Congress votes on the resolution for independence. Nine colonies vote in favor, two against (Pennsylvania and South Carolina), one abstains (New York), and one is deadlocked (Delaware).

• July 2, 1776:

  • 12 of the 13 colonies vote for the resolution, with New York abstaining.

  • Congress officially declares the resolution to be in effect.

• July 2-4, 1776: Congress debates and revises the Declaration of Independence.

• July 4, 1776: Congress approves the final text of the Declaration of Independence.

• July 19, 1776: Congress orders the Declaration to be engrossed (officially inscribed) for signatures.

• August 2, 1776: The majority of delegates (likely 50 of the 56) sign the engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence.

• After August 2, 1776: The remaining signers add their signatures at later dates, with Thomas McKean being the last to sign sometime after January 1777.

What We Settle For

Reviewing the events leading up to the Declaration of Independence it strikes me to be at odds with a common phrase we use everyday “Great minds think alike”. Surveying all the various personalities and ideas of the Founding Fathers, clearly great minds don’t think alike. John Dickinson, a key contributor to formulating the ideas of colonial rights, was successful in delaying the formation of our country. He held to his beliefs, he didn’t compromise his ideals. But the delay could have resulted in a permanent disarray. It certainly gave the British time strategically. I don’t say that to lay blame at Dickinson’s feet, I admire his writing and his adherence to what he thought was right. Without him I don’t think we would have had the Declaration written by Jefferson, as Dickinson clearly influenced many in the Continental Congress. Later Dickinson would work on the Articles of Confederation, so obviously he accepted to significance of the colonies situation. He could have, as he threatened Adams in anger, broke off with Pennsylvania to petition King George while abandoing Massachusetts. In many ways that could have been easier for Pennsylvania in the short term. And that would have been disastrous for our country at that precarious stage.

Adams, Franklin and Jefferson understood that the status quo would lead to the ruin that Dickinson feared if they pursued separating from the Empire. They were in the minority, yet the didn’t settle for middle of road, peacemeal action.

Today we are different - we need plans, we need time tables, we need demographics before we make decisions. We have heroes presented to us that we willingly accept. But ask yourself, what would Adams or Jefferson think of those heroes, of our need for data based decision making? Is waiting for more information settling, does it prevent you from asserting what is self evident, or are you demanding to be heard and waiting?

.