ing camp ordered, 446-Conference concurs in independence, 446-Unanim- ity of Maryland, 446-Activity of Chase, 447-County meetings, 447-Its convention votes for independence, 447-Orders a constituent convention, 447. THE RESOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE. The first and second of July, 1776. 449-Meeting of members of congress, 449-Their longevity, 449—All are instructed, 449-Washington's return of his army, 450-Letters from Lee, 451-News from Maryland, 451-The order of the day, 451-Speech of John Adams, 451-Dickinson's position, 452-His speech, 452-Opposes resolution of independence, 453-America ought first to consult France, 453-To form governments, 454-To confederate, 454-To provide for internal peace, 455— To settle claims to western territory, 455-To fix boundaries of colonies, 456 -Wilson opposes Dickinson, 456-Other speakers, 457-Vote in committee, 457--Vote in congress deferred, 457-News of Howe's arrival, 458-Wash- ington's equanimity, 458-Reed's despondency, 458-Enthusiasm of congress, 458—John Adams, 458-Vote on the second of July, 459-Excitement of John Adams, 459-His meditations, 459-His triumphant joy, 460-The end THE DECLARATION OF THE UNITED STATES. July 2—4, 1776. Reason for declaring independence to be set forth, 462-Jefferson desig- nated to draft the paper, 462-His sympathetic nature, 462-His character, 463-An idealist, 464-His mastery of details, 464-Always prepared, 464— No orator, 464-Free from envy, 464-Intimacy between John Adams and Jefferson, 464-Jefferson no visionary, 465-The draft altogether his own, 465-The criticisms of congress, 465-Clause on the slave trade and slave insurrections, 465-The passage stricken out, 466-Slave trade branded as a piracy, 466-Pendleton regretted the omission, 467-The declaration, 467— The principles, 467-The facts, 468-Abuse of the prerogative, 467-Usur- pation of powers of legislation, 469-Acts of hostility, 470--Petitions re- jected, 471-Appeal to the people of Britain unheeded, 471-Solemn declara- tion, 472-The character of its bill of rights, 472-Its theory in politics, 472 -It is written for all humanity, 472-Its effect on the nations, 473—Its re- conciliation of right and fact, 474-It made no war on all kings, 473-It re- nounced George the Third as a tyrant, 474-No wish to revolutionize Eng- land, 474-The republic a godsend, 474-Why America is not proselytizing, 474-The declaration formed a government, 476—War no more a civil war, 475-Domestic relations unchanged, 475-Formation of a union, 475-Decla- ration not signed on the fourth, 475-Why the fourth of July is the great AMERICA DECLARES ITSELF INDEPENDENT. CHAPTER XLI. THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS IN MIDSUMMER, 1775. JUNE 17-JULY, 1775. CHAP. XLI. 1775. June IDLE refugees in Boston, and even candid British officers, condemned Howe's attack on the New England lines as a needless exposure of his troops to carnage. By landing at the Charlestown isthmus, they 17. said, he should have cooped the rebels within the peninsula; or by aid of a musket proof gunboat he should have dislodged the party near the Mystic; and, even at the last, by concentrating his force at the rail fence, he might have taken Prescott in the rear. During the evening and night after the battle, the air trembled with the groans of the wounded, as they were borne over the Charles and through the streets of Boston to hospitals, where they were to waste away from the summer heat and the scarcity of CHAP. proper food. The fifth regiment suffered most; the XLI. eighteenth and the fifty ninth, which had long been June very weak, were utterly ruined; and, to the end of 17. the war, the courage of the insurgents in this battle 1775. of the people, and their skill as marksmen, never wore out of mind. The loss of officers was observed to be disproportionately great; and the gloom in the quarters of the British was deepened by the reflection, that they had fought not against an enemy, but against their fellow-subjects and kindred; not for the promotion of civil or religious freedom, but for the supremacy of one part of the empire over another. Those who, like Abercrombie, died of their wounds, wanted consolation in their last hour, for they had no hope that posterity would mark their graves or cherish their memory. On the day of the battle, the continental congress elected its four major generals. Of these, the first, from deference to Massachusetts, was Artemas Ward. Notwithstanding his ill health, he answered: "I always have been, and am still ready to devote my life in attempting to deliver my native country." The American people with ingenuous confidence assumed that Charles Lee,-the son of an English officer, trained up from boyhood for the army,-was, as he represented himself, well versed in the science of war, familiar with active service in America, Portugal, Poland, and Turkey, and altogether a soldier of consummate ability, who had joined their cause from the purest impulses of a generous nature. In England he was better understood. "From what I know of him," wrote Sir Joseph Yorke, then British minister at the Hague, "he is the worst present which could be made to any army." |