Independence by John Ferling Read Free Book Online

PREFACE
    Nearly all of us at times fall into the trap of looking back on history’s pivotal events as inevitable. Were not the differences between the North and South destined to end in the American Civil War? Surely, Hitler’s coming to power was unavoidable. Was not the collapse of the Soviet Union inescapable?
    Well, perhaps not. Great events in history, and their outcomes, are seldom bound to happen. They hinge on happenstance, on complex twists and turns, and on choices made or unmade. Make one choice and history goes in one direction. Don’t make that choice and events may well veer in another direction.
    But once the end of the story is known, there is always a temptation to read history backward. Knowing how things turned out makes it easy to assume that the ending was foreordained.
    That may be especially true for many Americans with regard to the declaring of independence in 1776. In recent years popular culture—and not a few writers—has so lionized America’s Founding Fathers that many may see them as leaders whose indomitable will set them on an inexorable course toward independence.
    History is more complicated. It seems certain that most Americans did not favor independence when what we now know as the War of Independence broke out in April 1775. Even after the war had raged for several months, many Americans—again, probably most—still did not want American independence. At the beginning of 1776 a majority of those who served in the Continental Congress preferred reconciliation with the mother country to American independence. Had the Continental Congress voted on independence in January or February 1776, no more than five of the thirteen colonies would likely have favored a final break with Great Britain.
    This is a book about the evolution of the idea of American independence and about the events and decisions that ultimately led Congress, with the backing of most colonists, to set America free of the British Empire. The book’s subtitle contains the word “struggle,” and in fact those who favored severing all ties with Great Britain faced a long, difficult battle before, at last, they succeeded in declaring independence. Eleven years elapsed between Britain’s first attempt to tax the colonists and the Declaration of Independence. What we today call the War of Independence, or the Revolutionary War, had gone on for fifteen months before the Continental Congress declared independence. For more than a year the colonists fought, and died, not for American independence, but to be reunited with Great Britain on America’s terms.
    A struggle over Great Britain’s policy toward the colonies was played out in London as well. Battles were fought in Parliament and within the ministry at every turn, from the passage of the first American tax in 1765 to the decision a decade later to use force rather than to engage in peace negotiations with the Americans. Powerful and articulate members of Parliament always opposed the American policies of their government, fearing that additional provocations would only push the colonists toward independence. Some proposed solutions to the Anglo-American crisis that, if adopted, might have stanched the drift to American independence.
    This book is about the struggle in America over how best to resist British actions and secure American interests, and to secure the prevailing interest of individual colonies. It is also about the battles in London over how best to deal with, and respond to, the recalcitrant American colonists. It is a story filled with irony, for in the end the Americans opted for an independence that most of them had wished to avert, while Britain’s leaders were confronted with a declaration of American independence that they had sought to prevent, first by peaceful means, later through strident measures.
    The choices that were made on both sides were made by individuals, and this book evaluates the key players, important members of the Continental