DECLARING INDEPENDENCE

A well-worn subject in expert hands.

Larsen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, reminds readers that 1776 began with the majority of America’s establishment opposed to independence. Leading the minority were figures like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry—noisy, rabble-rousing types hard to admire and not, like our core Founding Fathers, deep thinkers. January arrived with the shocking news that George III had rejected all the Second Continental Congress’s petitions, proclaimed the colonies in rebellion, and vowed to crush them. To rouse spirits, February saw publication of perhaps history’s greatest piece of political propaganda, Tom Paine’s Common Sense, which made a vivid case for monarchy as a ridiculous form of government and Britain as the worst possible monarchy. The king’s denunciation, followed by Paine’s wildly popular polemic, put opponents of independence on the defensive. On May 15, Congress, pushed by John Adams, sent a resolution asking the colonies to adopt republican constitutions. Larsen agrees with contemporaries who considered it a declaration of independence, but Congress didn’t propose a formal declaration until June. It came at a perfect time. Britain’s evacuation of Boston in March 1776 had convinced patriots that the Continental Army was a credible fighting force. Larsen does not ignore the irony that the epic July signing of the Declaration occurred simultaneously with the beginning of Washington’s disastrous New York campaign that damaged his reputation and persuaded patriots that a hard slog lay ahead. The author concludes with details of that campaign and the remaining odds and ends of politics. Colonial assemblies concentrated on easy work (constitutions, legislation, elections) and neglected the tedious business of managing the war. The Articles of Confederation were not ratified until 1781. “In the meantime, without an official confederation, the thirteen sovereign states coordinated the war effort through a jerry-rigged Second Continental Congress.”

Insights on America’s iconic if bumpy year.