Note 685 — Chapter III

There is something very significant as well as comical in the following entry in John Adams's Diary in Congress, in 1775, when he had made his way to a full deliverance: "When these people began to see that independence was approaching, they started back. In some of my public harangues, in which I had freely and explicitly laid open my thoughts, on looking round the assembly, I have seen horror, terror, and detestation strongly marked on the countenances of some of the members, whose names I could readily recollect; but as some of them have been good citizens since, and others went over afterwards to the English, I think it unnecessary to record them here" (Works of John Adams, ii. p. 407). Mr. Sparks has gathered (Washington, Appendix x. vol. ii.) the expressed opinions of such typical patriots as Washington, Franklin, Henry, Madison, Jay, etc., utterly and emphatically disavowing all thoughts or purposes of independence till the crisis made it a matter of necessity, not of choice. It is but candid, however, to note an anticipation of that acute observer Joseph Galloway, whether it was but a surmise or a reasonable inference. In a letter addressed by him, Jan. 13, 1766, to Dr. Franklin, in London, he writes: "A certain sect of people, if I may judge from all their late conduct, seem to look on this as a favorable opportunity of establishing their republican principles, and of throwing off all connection with their mother country. I have reasons to think that they are forming a private union among themselves from one end of the continent to the other" (Sparks's Franklin, vii. 305). The assertion of John Jay is most explicit and emphatic: "During the course of my life, and until the second petition of Congress, in 1775, I never did hear any American of any class, or any description, express a wish for the independence of the colonies" (Life and Writings of John Jay, ii. p. 410). Mr. Jay probably referred to the contemptuous treatment of that second petition, "Dickinson's Letter", not to its transmission.