LXII.

CHAP. do their duty, neither knowing nor regarding consequences; but trusting that the Almighty arm, which 1776. has been so signally stretched out for our defence, Apr. will deliver them in a righteous cause.

"The eyes of the whole world are on America; the eyes of every other colony are on this; a colony, whose reputation for generosity and magnanimity is universally acknowledged. I trust it will not be diminished by our future conduct; that there will be no civil discord here; and that the only strife amongst brethren will be, who shall do most to serve and to save an injured country."

The word which South Carolina hesitated to pronounce, was uttered by North Carolina. That colony, proud of its victory over domestic enemies, and roused to defiance by the presence of Clinton, the British general, in one of their rivers, met in congress at Halifax on the fourth of April, on the eighth appointed a select committee, of which Harnett was the head, to consider the usurpations and violences of the British parliament and king, and on the twelfth, after listening to its report, unanimously "empowered their delegates in the continental congress to concur with the delegates of the other colonies in declaring independency and forming foreign alliances." At the same time they reserved to their colony the sole right of forming its own constitution and laws.

North Carolina was the first colony to vote an explicit sanction to independence; South Carolina won from all patriots equal praise by her "virtuous and glorious example of instituting a complete government." When, on the twenty third of April, the courts of justice were opened with solemnity at

LXII.

Charleston, the chief justice, after an elaborate deduc CHAP. tion, charged the grand jury in these words: "The law of the land authorizes me to declare, and it is my 1776 Apr. duty to declare the law, that George the Third, king of Great Britain, has abdicated the government, that he has no authority over us, and we owe no obedience to him.

"It has been the policy of the British authority to cramp and confine our trade so as to be subservient to their commerce, our real interest being ever out of the question; the new constitution is wisely adapted to enable us to trade with foreign nations, and thereby to supply our wants at the cheapest markets in the universe; to extend our trade infinitely beyond what has ever been known; to encourage manufactures among us; and to promote the happiness of the people, from among whom, by virtue and merit, the poorest man may arrive at the highest dignity. Oh, Carolinians! happy would you be under this new constitution, if you knew your happy state.

"True reconcilement never can exist between. Great Britain and America, the latter being in subjection to the former. The Almighty created America to be independent of Britain; to refuse our labors in this divine work, is to refuse to be a great, a free, a pious, and a happy people!"

The great abilities of Rutledge were equal to the office which he had fearlessly accepted; order and method grew at once out of the substitution of a single executive for committees; from him the officers of the regiments as well as of the militia, derived their commissions; to prepare for the British army and

Apr.

CHAP. naval squadron which were known to be on the way, LXII. the mechanics and laborers of Charleston, assisted by 1776. great numbers of negroes from the country, were employed in fortifying the town. When in April, under the orders of the continental congress, the veteran Armstrong arrived to take the command of the army, he found little more to do than receive the hospitalities of the inhabitants.

Mar.

The designs against the Carolinas left Virginia free from invasion. Lee, on his arrival at Williamsburg, took up his quarters in the palace of the governor; querulous as ever, he praised the provincial congress of New York as "angels of decision" compared with the Virginia committee of safety. Yet his Apr. reputation ensured deference to his advice; and at his instance, directions were given for the removal of all inhabitants from the exposed parts of Norfolk and Princess Anne counties; an inconsiderate order which it was soon found necessary to mitigate or rescind.

May.

Letters, intercepted in April, indicated some concert of action on the part of Eden, the governor of Maryland, with Dunmore: Lee, though Maryland was not within his district, and in contempt of the regularly appointed committee of that colony, directed Samuel Purviance, of the committee of Baltimore, to seize Eden without ceremony or delay. The interference was resented as an insult on the authority which the people had constituted; the Maryland committee, even after the continental congress directed his arrest, still avoided a final rupture with British authority, and suffered their governor to remain at liberty on his parole.

The spirit of temporizing showed itself still more

LXII.

May.

clearly in Philadelphia. The moderate men, as they CHAP. were called, who desired a reconciliation with Great Britain upon the best terms she would give, but 1776. at any rate a reconciliation, held many meetings to prepare for the election of the additional burgesses who were to be chosen in May; and when the day of election came, the friends of independence carried only Clymer; the moderate men, combining with the proprietary party, the officers of the provincial government, the avowed tories, and such of the Roman Catholics as could not control their antipathy to the Presbyterians, elected the three others. The elections in the country were also not wholly unfavorable to the interests of the proprietary. Yet as independence was become inevitable, the result only foreboded a bitter internal strife. Neither was the success of the proprietary party a fair expression of public opinion: the franchise in the city was confined to those possessing fifty pounds; Germans, who composed a large part of the inhabitants of the province and were zealots for liberty, were not allowed to give their votes unless they were naturalized, and could not be naturalized without taking the oath of allegiance to the king; moreover, of the natives of Pennsylvania, many hundreds of the warmest patriots had been carried by their public spirit to the camp on the Hudson, and even to Canada; leaving power in the hands of the timid who remained at home.

The despondency and hesitation of the assembly of Pennsylvania was in marked contrast with the fortitude of Rhode Island, whose general assembly, on the fourth day of May, passed an act discharging the inhabitants of that colony from allegiance to the king

CHAP. of Great Britain. The measure was carried in the

May.

LXII. upper house unanimously, and in the house of depu1776. ties, where sixty were present, with but six dissentient voices. The overturn was complete; the act was at once a declaration of independence, and an organization of a self-constituted republic. Its first exercise of independent power authorized its delegates in congress to join in treating with any prince, state, or potentate for the security of the colonies. It also directed them to favor the most proper measures for confirming the strictest union; yet at the same time they were charged "to secure to the colony, in the strongest and most perfect manner, its present established form and all powers of government, so far as they relate to its internal police and the conduct of its own affairs, civil and religious."

The interest of the approaching campaign centred in New York, to which place Washington had repaired with all his forces that were not ordered to Canada. At New York the British government designed to concentrate its strength, in the hopes of overwhelming all resistance in one campaign. Meantime the British general, who had fled from Boston so precipitately that he had been obliged to remain several days in Nantasket Road, to adjust his ships for the voyage, was awaiting reënforcements at Halifax; and during the interval he was willing that the attempt on the Southern colonies should be continued. That expedition had been planned in October by the king himself, "whose solicitude for pursuing with vigor every measure that tended to crush the present dangerous rebellion in the colonies, excited in him the most exemplary attention to every object of advan