Episode 10: The Final Steps To American Independence: Dunmore's Proclamation, the Olive Branch Petition and Common Sense
Just Enough History of America series
Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, General George Washington, watched with pleasure as the last Royal Navy ship departed the port of Boston. It had taken seven days for the British Army to load up thousands of soldiers, Loyalist allies who had fled to the occupied city seeking refuge, and anything of military value onto his Royal Highness’ ships. As the last mast disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean, the Continental Army burst into Boston and was shocked at what they found.
The British evacuation of Boston; Public domain. Library of Congress
While the city had not been burned down, as many inhabitants had feared, the 11-month siege had destroyed countless homes and public buildings. Boston Commons had hosted over 1,000 British soldiers in tents, and their refuse littered the popular public area; the Old South Church, from which the American Patriots had left to throw tea into the harbor in 1773, had been used as a riding school for British officers and was covered in horse manure; Fort William was torched by the retreating British to ensure that the military installation, which lay strategically at the mouth of Boston Harbor, could not be used by the Americans; and the 129-year old Liberty Tree, planted in 1646 and witness to many Sons of Liberty activities, had been chopped down. Nevertheless, the Americans were victorious and “Evacuation Day” is still celebrated in Boston every March 17th. As Americans cheered, however, the looming question remained; where were the thousands of British Army troops and ships headed and what should the Americans do next?
The Liberty Tree. Planted in 1646 and chopped down by the occupying British. Public domain. Library of Congress
Background:
After the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775 things moved quickly. Thousands of Minutemen, American militia created during the upheavals over British tax policy, flooded into Massachusetts and trapped the British Army in the port of Boston where they would remain for the next 11 months. Colonel Benedict Arnold had taken off alone in May through western Massachusetts recruiting men as he went on his mission to seize artillery holed up in the British military fort of Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain that could be used to fire upon Boston (see last article). And the Second Continental Congress, still meeting in Philadelphia had decided to create the Continental Army out of the motley crew of American Minutemen stationed outside Boston and appointed George Washington of Virginia to lead it (see last four articles).
With all of these military steps having been taken, the political question of what the 13 colonies were hoping to get out of all this chaos was as yet unanswered. Some delegates to the Second Continental Congress, including many Pennsylvanians like the London-educated lawyer and pamphleteer, John Dickinson, were not ready to declare independence. The congress thus simultaneously dispatched Washington in June to take charge of the newly created Continental Army outside of Boston while they debated an entreaty to London called “the Olive Branch Petition,” which was penned in July 1775.
In the appeal, the American colonists reiterated their loyalty to King George III, blamed his ministers for all of the troubles and requested that the king personally revoke the Intolerable Acts (1774), which had been passed after the Boston Tea Party (1773) and had shuttered the port of Boston, curtailed local government, and increased the powers of the king’s ministers in America.
King George III was still a young man in 1775. He had come to the throne in 1760 at the age of 22 when his grandfather, George II had passed away. Known as the Hanoverian Dynasty the series of Georges had been ruling Great Britain since 1714 when George I, a distant relative of the British King James I and VI and prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire’s western German province of Hanover, ascended to the British throne. While George I had been 52nd in line for the British crown, he was the nearest Protestant relative that could be found and since Parliament in 1701 had passed a law removing all Catholics from the line of succession, the German-born and German-speaking George I was crowned in London.
King George III at his coronation in 1760. Public Domain. Library of Congress
The first Georges were viewed as foreigners by many in Britain (indeed the first two spoke hardly any English) but the growth of the British Empire in the mid 18th century, including the massive victory over their arch-enemy the French in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) combined with a growing economy gradually endeared George II to his subjects. His devout Anglican grandson, George III (who would have 15 children with his wife Charlotte to whom he was absolutely dedicated), was determined to continue the economic growth and imperial expansion that had flourished under his grandfather.
Queen Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz. Public Domain. Library of Congress
When he received the Americans’ Olive Branch Petition in September of 1775 George III refused to even read it and in an opulent speech before both houses of Parliament in full regal dress declared all 13 colonies to be in rebellion and announced that German mercenaries had been hired. The king claimed that the Americans were part of a “conspiracy” aimed at creating “an independent empire” despite the Americans’ repeated petitions, affirmations of loyalty to the king and requests for Parliamentary redress over the last 10 years.
Even the shock of the king’s rejection, his bellicose speech before Parliament and his hiring of thousands of foreign troops to enforce his royal directives in America did not yet move the Second Continental Congress to declare independence in late 1775. It would take events on the ground in America over the next six months to convince the delegates that the time had come to formally break with Britain.
Even before the king had declared the colonies in rebellion the British had begun to move militarily in America. The Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, who in April 1775 just a day after the Battles of Lexington and Concord (although word had yet to reach as far south as Virginia), had ordered the removal of a large cache of gunpowder from the colonial capital of Williamsburg to a nearby Royal Navy ship. Dunmore ostensibly argued he was trying to prevent a slave rebellion from breaking out, rumors and fears of which frequently occurred in the southern colonies where the numbers of enslaved were tragically high. In reality, however, Dunmore was trying to keep large amounts of weapons and ammunition from falling into the hands of his increasingly irate Virginian constituents.
The local Virginia Minutemen responded quickly to Dunmore’s seizure of the colony’s gunpowder. Led by Patrick Henry, who just a few months earlier in the Virginia House of Burgesses (the lower house of the colonial government) had issued his famous, “give me liberty or give me death speech” marched on Williamsburg on May 2nd demanding the gunpowder be returned to the colonists. While cooler heads prevailed at this time, including that of George Washington who counseled patience, Lord Dunmore kept possession of the gunpowder and ordered it guarded around the clock.
In June two American Minutemen were wounded trying to break in to seize the contested gunpowder and as the colonists erupted in anger over this failed attempt, Lord Dunmore took refuge on a Royal Navy ship floating in the Chesapeake. From his watery fortress the Royal Governor declared Virginia to be in rebellion (even before the king had declared all 13 colonies to be mutinous) and began to launch raids against his constituents on coastal plantations within easy reach of the British Navy.
The Flight of Lord Dunmore. Public Domain. Library of Congress
In November 1775 to try and regain control of the Commonwealth of Virginia, he issued the “Dunmore Proclamation,” which declared martial law and offered freedom to all enslaved of Americans in rebellion (cynically Lord Dunmore did not offer freedom to those enslaved by Loyalists). Thousands of enslaved men, women and children flocked to Dunmore’s ships that would increasingly struggle to house, clothe and feed the multitude. Lord Dunmore also created an “Ethiopian Regiment” of formerly enslaved men (though it was led by white British officers) that terrified Virginia residents and further estranged them from their governor.
John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore and the last Royal Governor of Virginia. Public Domain. Library of Congress
Word of Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation quickly spread throughout the colonies. Maryland even boycotted all news arriving from the Commonwealth so as not to allow word to reach and incite the enslaved on Maryland plantations. In 1776 Thomas Jefferson would immortalize the proclamation by including in the Declaration of Independence the charge that King George III had incited “domestic insurrections” against his American subjects, a direct reference to Dunmore’s proclamation.
Skirmishes continued throughout the Commonwealth and in December 1775 after being defeated at the Battle of Great Bridge by Virginia militia, Lord Dunmore ordered the shelling and burning of Norfolk. To outraged colonists, Lord Dunmore’s activities seemed to prove radical patriots like Samuel Adams correct; the British would stop at nothing to reclaim their authority over the American colonies. Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation and raids, as well as the rejection of the Olive Branch Petition by King George III were three more steps on the long path towards the Declaration of Independence.
While Dunmore raided coastal Virginia, and the Second Continental Congress debated the Olive Branch Petition, and Washington drilled American Minutemen into the Continental Army outside Boston, Benedict Arnold was busy invading Canada for the second time in six months.
Unbeknownst to Arnold, the Continental Congress had already sanctioned an invasion of Canada, convinced that the Canadians were natural allies and would want their independence from Britain as well. Philip Schuyler, a third -generation Dutch settler and large Hudson Valley plantation owner, as well as the future father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton, was given command of the “Northern Army.” Arnold saw an opportunity and when he met General Washington for the first time outside of Boston in the fall of 1775 he pitched a plan for a two-pronged invasion of British Canada.
Arnold proposed to take a small detachment of the Continental Army currently besieging Boston and using unmapped trails through the Maine wilderness to launch a surprise attack on the Canadian capital of Quebec; leaving Schuyler’s Northern Army to focus on taking the more southern and less fortified city of Montreal. Washington immediately agreed and 1,000 volunteers joined Colonel Arnold and his second invasion of Canada (including the future vice-president and murderer of Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr).
Unlike the easy victories at Ticonderoga and St. John’s the previous summer, Arnold’s second invasion of Canada was a disaster; thwarted by a combination of the brutal Canadian winter and stiff British resistance to hold on to its northernmost outposts, almost all of which it had recently acquired from the French in 1763. By the time Arnold and his men reached the outskirts of the great citadel of Quebec, which lay atop Cape Diamond and was surrounded by both strong fortifications and the St. Lawrence River, it was November and winter conditions and lack of food had severely weakened Arnold’s force. Nevertheless, on December 31st through a torrential blizzard, Arnold led his men on an attack of the fortified city and was shot in the leg.
Benedict Arnold’s attack on Quebec. Public Domain. Library of Congress
The assault faltered, the Americans retreated and took up siege positions around the city, which they maintained for over six months until June of 1776 when smallpox further weakened the Americans and British reinforcements arrived en masse from England. Despite his wound, indeed Arnold would limp the remainder of his life, he remained outside Quebec until February of 1776 when he was forced to crawl his way south to convalesce in Montreal, which had been seized by the American’s Northern Army in November 1775.
As the British received reinforcements throughout the summer of 1776, they went on the offensive and chased Arnold and the entire Northern Army out of Canada and southwards towards Lake Champlain where Arnold decided to halt and try and stop the British from advancing further. There were great fears that the British would sail down the waterways from Canada and cross over to the Hudson River from which they could sail all the way to the Atlantic, cutting off New England from the rest of America. It was the summer of 1776 and as the Declaration of Independence was being written in Philadelphia, Colonel Arnold and his men began to build a fleet of boats by hand chopping down the great forests surrounding Lake Champlain. This makeshift navy (America’s first!) was going to try and stop the most powerful navy in the world.
While Arnold was being chased out of Canada, Washington greeted the arrival of the guns of Fort Ticonderoga outside Boston that Colonel Henry Knox had dragged 300 miles on sleds over the Berkshire Mountains. Within a few weeks those guns were mounted onto the hills of Dorchester Heights just south of the city. When General William Howe, who had replaced the British General Thomas Gage in October 1775, saw the guns pointing ominously down upon the city, the order to evacuate went out. On March 17, 1776 the British loaded up thousands of soldiers, Loyalist allies and war material onto ships and sailed away.
Victorious, General Washington pondered where the British were headed. His best guess was the fantastic port city of New York from where the British could use their naval supremacy to raid the interior of America and eventually try to link up with a Canadian Army moving southwards. Hardly stopping to rest and savor the victory, Washington and the Continental Army immediately marched south to New York City, which they began to fortify in anticipation of a British attack. It was during the occupation of New York that Washington and the army would learn of the Declaration of Independence.
The last step towards declaring the final break with Britain occurred when an anonymous pamphlet written by “an Englishman” rocked all 13 colonies (although Thomas Paine’s identity would become public knowledge within three months of its January 1776 publication). “Common Sense” was a publishing bonanza with over 120,000 copies sold in just those three months alone and many more undoubtedly read aloud. Not just an attack on the British governance of America, which it pilloried, Thomas Paine’s pamphlet was an assault on monarchy as a governing institution. In it, Paine pointed out the absurdity of a small island governing a large landmass in perpetuity, the inanity of hereditary succession, and encouraged Americans to overthrow British rule and establish a republic to safeguard their natural right to rule themselves. “Common Sense” provided many Americans the language of revolution and independence that had been missing.
Ad for “Common Sense.” Public Domain. Library of Congress
All the pieces were now in place and in June 1776 as Washington waited in New York, Arnold was frantically building a fleet on Lake Champlain, Virginians chafed under the small-scale but brutal attacks by Lord Dunmore’s floating fleet, and Americans in all 13 colonies debated “Common Sense,” the Second Continental Congress created a committee of five delegates; including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin to draft a formal Declaration of Independence. As John Adams would later remark, it was like getting 13 clocks to strike all at once. 13 very different colonies were about to become 13 states, pledging their lives, fortunes and futures to one another.