§ 255]

LEXINGTON AND CONCORD

213

existing anarchy. In form, their acts were still recommendations; but the local committees enforced them as law.

Of course the "Tories" had refused to pay any attention to the "illegal" elections of such provincial conventions. Indeed, in some cases, they were even excluded from voting by test oaths. In this way the Radicals came to control the only governments in existence.

255. These second con

ventions in most of the colonies appointed delegates to the Second Con

tween the election of that body and its meeting (May 10), General Gage, commander of the British troops in Boston, tried to seize Massachusetts military stores at Concord, and so called from " embattled farmers" "the shot heard round the world" (April 19, 1775). Gage had sown dragon's teeth. From New England's soil twenty thousand volunteers sprang up to besiege him in Boston. War had come.

In consequence, the Second Continental Congress swiftly be

Under this tree
Washington

first took command

of the American army

July 3, 1775.

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Across the stream, in a curve of the stone fence, is the grave of two British soldiers, over which have been carved the lines from Lowell:

They came three thousand miles and died,

To keep the Past upon its throne.

came a government, to manage the continental revolution; and, during the summer, a third lot of provincial conventions openly avowed themselves governments for their respective colonies, — appointing committees of safety (in place of the royal governors, who had been set aside or driven out), and themselves assuming even the forms of legislative bodies.

256. The members of the Second Continental Congress, like those of the First, had been elected, not as a legislature, but to formulate opinion, and to report their recommendations back to their colonies for approval. The war changed all that. A central government was imperative; and the patriot party everywhere recognized the Congress as the only agent to fill that place.

For the first five weeks, that body continued to pass recommendations only. But June 15 it adopted the irregular forces about Boston as a continental army, and appointed George Washington commander in chief. A year later it proclaimed the Declaration of Independence. Between these two events it created a navy, opened negotiations with foreign states, issued bills of credit on the faith of the colonies, and took over (from the old English control) the management of Indian affairs and of the crude post office system.

257. But the Revolution in governments was not one movement. It was a whirl of thirteen State revolutions within this Continental revolution. The development of the State govern

ment of Virginia is fairly typical.

County gatherings in December and January (1774-1775) approved the Continental Congress and set up the Association, so that a second convention was not necessary until it came time to appoint delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Meantime, many counties, on their own initiative, organized and armed a revolutionary militia (Source Book, No. 132). The First Convention (August, 1774) had authorized its chairman to call a second when desirable. The Second Convention met March 20, 1775. It passed only "recommendations" in form; but it did organize the revolutionary militia into a state system. It sat only eight days; but it recommended the counties at once to choose delegates to a Third Convention to represent the colony for one year.

Governor Dunmore forbade the elections to this Third Convention as "acts of sedition"; but they passed off with

§ 258]

AS IN VIRGINIA

215

regularity. Meantime, the governor called an Assembly, to consider a proposal from Lord North, intended to draw Virginia away from the common cause. Instead of this, the Assembly gave formal sanction to all the acts of the Continental congresses and of the Virginia conventions. In the squabbles that followed, Dunmore took refuge on board a British man-ofwar. The Assembly strenuously "deplored" that their governor should so "desert" the "loyal and suffering colony," and adjourned, June 24. This ended the last vestige of royal government in Virginia.

Three weeks later, the Third Convention gathered at Richmond (out of range of guns from warships), and promptly assumed all powers and forms of government. It gave all bills three readings, and enacted them as ordinances; and it elected an executive (a "committee of safety "), and appointed a colonial Treasurer and other needful officials. In the winter of 1776, it dissolved, that a new body, fresher from the people, might act on the pressing questions of independence and of a permanent government (§ 261).

258. The Loyalists early began to accuse the Patriots of aiming at independence. But, until some months after Lexington, the Patriots vehemently disavowed such "villainy," protesting enthusiastic loyalty to King George. They were ready to fight, -but only as Englishmen had often fought, to compel a change in "ministerial policy."

Otis, Dickinson, Hamilton, in their printed pamphlets, all denounced any thought of independence as a crime. Continental congresses and provincial conventions solemnly repeated such disclaimers. In March, 1775, Franklin declared that he had never heard a word in favor of independence "from any person drunk or sober." Two months later still, after Lexington, Washington soothed a Loyalist friend with the assurance "that if the friend ever heard of his [Washington's] joining in any such measure, he had leave to set him down for everything wicked"; and June 26, after becoming. commander of the American armies, Washington assured the

New Yorkers that he would exert himself to establish "peace and harmony between the mother country and the colonies." In September, 1775, Jefferson was still "looking with fondness towards a reconciliation," and John Jay asserts that not until after that month did he ever hear a desire for independence from "an American of any description." For months after Bunker Hill, American chaplains, in public services before the troops, prayed for King George; and, for long, Washington continued to refer to the British army merely as the "ministerial troops." Even in February, 1776, when Gadsden in the

South Carolina convention expressed himself in favor of independence, he roused merely a storm of dismay, and found no support. And a month later still, Maryland instructed her delegates not to consent to any proposal for independence (Source Book, No. 139).

259. All this was honestly meant; but the years of agitation had sapped the ties of loyalty more than men really knew, and a few months of war broke them wholly. In the fall of 1775, the King refused contemptuously even to receive a petition for reconciliation from Congress; and soon afterward, he sent to America an army of "Hessians" hired out, for slaughter, by petty German princelings. Moreover, it became plain that, in order to resist England, the colonies must have foreign aid; and no foreign power could be expected to give us open aid while we remained English colonies.

Thus, unconsciously, American Patriots were ready to change

§ 260]

66

THOMAS PAINE'S COMMON SENSE" 217

front. Then, in January, 1776, came Thomas Paine's daring and trenchant argument for independence in Common Sense. This fifty-page publication, in clarion tone, spoke out what the community hailed at once as its own unspoken thought. One hundred and twenty thousand copies sold in three months, one for every three families in America.

At first the author's name was not given, and the booklet was commonly attributed to one of the Adamses or to Franklin. Paine was a poor English emigrant, of thirteen months before, whom Franklin had befriended for the "genius in his eyes." A few lines may represent his terse style.

"The period of debate is closed. Arms . . . must decide. . . . By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era in politics is struck. ... All plans prior to the nineteenth of April are like the almanacs of last year..

...

"Where, say some, is the king of America? I'll tell you, friend. He reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind, like the royal brute of Britain. .. A government of our own is our natural right... Freedom has been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger; and England has given her warning to depart. O, receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind."

260. Meantime, the growth of independent State governments was going on. Several colonies had applied to Congress for counsel, in the disorders of the fall of 1775. In reply, Congress "recommended" the provincial convention of New Hampshire "to call a full and free representation of the people. [to] establish such a form of government as in their judgment will best produce the happiness of the people and most effectually secure peace and good order in that province, during the continuance of the present dispute between Great Britain and the colonies."

Under such advice, early in 1776, New Hampshire and South Carolina set up provisional constitutions. These documents, however, did not imply independence. They declared themselves temporary, and referred always to the commonwealths not as States, but as "colonies."