Note (in a note) — Chapter XXIII

[370] As late as May, 1775, after the bloody affair of Concord and Lexington, Mr. Bancroft remarks:

"The delegates of New England, especially those from Massachusetts, could bring no remedy to the prevailing indecision (in the Continental Congress), for they suffered from insinuations that they represented a people who were republican in their principles of government and fanatics in religion, and they wisely avoided the appearance of importunity or excess in their demands.

"As the delegates from South Carolina declined the responsibility of a decision which would have implied an abandonment of every hope of peace, there could be no efficient opposition to the policy of again seeking the restoration of American liberty through the mediation of the King. This plan had the great advantage over the suggestion of an immediate separation from Britain, that it could be boldly promulgated, and was in harmony with the general wish; for the people of the continent, taken collectively, had not as yet ceased to cling to their old relations with their parent land; and so far from scheming independence, now that independence was become inevitable, they postponed the irrevocable decree and still longed that the necessity for it might pass by." (History of the United States, Vol. VII., Chap. xxxvi, pp. 376, 377.)