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to the army, in which Washington had procured him CHAP. the high office of adjutant-general.

June.

On the eighteenth Thomas Mackean was chosen 1776. president of the conference. On the nineteenth, one hundred and four members being present, the resolution of congress of the fifteenth of May was read twice, and after mature consideration was unanimously approved; the present government of the colony was condemned as incompetent; and a new one was ordered to be formed on the authority of the people only. Every other colony had shunned the mixture of questions of internal reform with the question of the relation to Great Britain; but here, a petition was read from Germans, praying that all associators who were taxable might vote. In the old election to the assembly the possession of fifty pounds proclamation money was required as the qualification of a voter, both in the city under its charter and in the counties; and the foreign born must further have been naturalized under a law which required an oath of allegiance to the British king: the conference revived the simple provision of "the Great Law" of December 1682, and endowed every taxpayer with the right to vote for members of the constituent convention. So neither poverty nor place of birth any more disabled freemen; in Pennsylvania liberty claimed for the builders of her house the rich and the poor, the German, the Scot, the Englishman, the Irishman, as well as the native. Thus the Germans were incorporated into the people, and made one with them; the emigrants who spoke the language of Lessing and Kant, became equal members of the new city of humanity.

СНАР.

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June.

While in this manner the divisions of nationalities were broken in pieces, the conference, at the instance 1776. of Christopher Marshall, who had been educated among the Friends and had left the society, because he held it right to draw the sword in defence of civil liberty, resolved that the members elected to the convention should be required to declare their faith in God the Father, Christ his eternal Son, and the Holy Spirit; and in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. For this interference he was much censured; but the pure minded mystic would not perceive that he was justifying the exclusiveness of the Catholic and the Anglican church.

It had not been the intention of the conference to perform administrative acts; yet to repair the grievous neglect of the assembly, they ordered a flying camp of six thousand men to be called out, in conformity to the vote of the continental congress.

One thing more remained; on the afternoon of the twenty fourth, on the report of a committee composed of Mackean, Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, and James Smith of York county, the conference, with perfect unanimity, all its members giving their voices one by one, pronounced in behalf of themselves. and their constituents their willingness to concur in a vote of congress, declaring the United Colonies to be free and independent states; and a copy of their vote, having been signed at the table, was, by Mackean, the president, delivered directly to congress.

Far happier were the people of Maryland, for they acted with moderation and unanimity; their counsels sprung from a sense of right and from sym pathy with their sister colonies, especially Virginia.

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June,

Chase, now the foremost civilian in Maryland, the CHAP. ablest of their delegates in the continental congress, a friend to law not less than to liberty, ever attracted 1776. towards the lovers of established government, had always, on the question of independence, kept ahead of men who otherwise agreed with him. Guided by his clear understanding and vehement will, the patriots of all classes, the most eager and the laggards, joined hands. In May and the early part of June, the people, in county meetings, renounced the hope of reconciliation; listening to their voices, the committee of safety called a convention; and that body, assembling on the twenty first of June, placed itself in the closest relations with its constituents. On the request of any one delegate, the yeas and nays might be taken and entered in its journal; its debates and proceedings were public. Its measures for calling its militia into active service were prompt and efficient. On the afternoon of the day on which Moultrie repelled the British squadron from Charleston, it concurred with Virginia on the subject of independence, a confederation, treaties with foreign powers, and the reservation of the internal government of each colony to its own people; and five days later, while the continental congress was still considering the form of its declaration of independence, it directed the election of a new convention to create a government by the authority of the people only.

July.

CHAPTER LXIX.

THE RESOLUTION OF INDEPENDENCE.

CHAP.

LXIX.

THE FIRST AND SECOND OF JULY, 1776.

On the morning of the first of July, the day set apart for considering the resolution of independence, 1776. John Adams, confident as if the vote had been taken, July

2. invoked the blessing of heaven to make the new-born republic more glorious than any which had gone before. His heart melted with sorrow at the disasters and sufferings of the army that had been in Canada; he knew that England having now recovered that province, commanded the upper lakes and the Mississippi; that she had a free communication with all the numerous tribes of Indians, extending along the frontiers of all the colonies, and would induce them to take up the hatchet, and by bloodshed and fire drive in the inhabitants upon the middle settlements, at a time when the coasts might be ravaged by the British navy, and a single day might bring the army before New York. Independence could be obtained only by a great expense of life; but the greater the danger, the

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stronger was his determination; for a free constitu- CHAP. tion of civil government could not be purchased at too dear a rate. He called to mind the fixed rule of 1776. July the Romans, never to send or receive ambassadors to treat of peace with their enemies while their affairs were in a disastrous situation; and he was cheered by the belief that his countrymen were of the same temper and principle.

At the appointed hour the members, probably on that day fifty one in number, appeared in their places; among them the delegates lately chosen in New Jersey. The great occasion had brought forth superior statesmen; none of them passionate revolutionists, but men who joined the power of moderation to energy. After they had all passed away, their longevity was remarked as a proof of their calm and temperate nature; full two thirds of the New England representatives lived beyond seventy years; some of them to be eighty or ninety. Every colony was found to be represented, and the delegates of all but one had received full power of action. Comprehensive instructions, reaching the question of independence without explicitly using the word, had been given by Massachusetts in January, by South Carolina in March, by Georgia on the fifth of April. North Carolina, in the words of Cornelius Harnett, on the fourteenth of April, was the first to direct expressly its representatives in congress to concur in a declaration of independence. On the first of May, Massachusetts expunged the regal style from all public proceedings, and substituted the name of her "government and people;" on the fourth, Rhode Island more explicitly renounced allegiance, and made its delegates the rep