D CHAPTER IV SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE (1775-1776) URING the weary months of the siege of Bos ton, from the spring of 1775 to the following midwinter, the work of overthrowing old opinions, weakening traditions, and destroying American faith in Great Britain went on. Vigorous persecution cowed the Tory opposition in America, the Whig party was strengthened by organization, and the advanced faction of that party gave up urging reform of the British colonial policy and set a new goal, a demand for independence of England. The misunderstanding between the two parts of the empire increased, and the efforts of Parliament to overcome the rebellious colonies only stiffened the resistance and deepened the hate. The mistaken zeal or impolitic action of the colonial governors increased the area of rebellion, and lent powerful arguments to the public agitators, both speakers and pamphleteers. One of the first signs of the increased ill feeling after Concord and Lexington was the strife between the Whigs and the Tories in America. As the cer tainty of declared war with the mother-country increased the louder grew the protests of those who opposed it. Men who held office under the crown, the Anglican clergy, and many of the friends and relatives of such men had, as a rule, opposed the agitation from the first. Now they were joined by the conservative citizens, men of wealth, of social position, those who "feared God and honored the king," and men of certain factions in the colonial politics whose old ties drew them to the loyal side. Many of the latter had been hot for reform in the British colonial policy, but balked at a Continental Congress and a war that seemed to lead logically to independence. They refused to act with the patriots, and in a few instances tried to organize bands of loyal militia, but they did little else except to protest against the work of the agitators and to send loyal addresses to the king or his representatives. These protests and addresses, however, were very hateful to the intolerant masses who in the early days formed an active part of the Whig party. It required little agitation to bring out a mob ready to hoist a Tory on a liberty pole and jeer at him for his loyalty. In the spirit of the ancient Inquisition the Whigs tried to convert their political opponents by terrorizing them. They fired musket-balls into Tory windows. They burned loyal pamphlets at the stake, tarred and feathered them, or nailed them to a whipping-post, with a threat of treating the author in a like manner.1 The pulpits of the loyal clergy were found nailed up, and Tory merchants saw the word "tea" painted out of their signs. Loyal farmers found their cattle painted fantastic colors or the tail and mane of a horse close cropped. One noted Tory was hoisted upon a landlord's sign and exposed in company with a dead catamount. Another was "smoked to a Whig" by being shut up in a house with the chimney closed. All this persecution increased in violence as the action of Congress and the British government made undisguised war ever more inevitable. It might seem that society was getting ready for such revolutionary excesses as were witnessed in France some fifteen years later. In America, however, firmly established local governments saved the people from anarchy after the central government lost its control; and long-established representative assemblies stood ready to organize and direct the activities of the people. Where the assemblies were too conservative to launch the revolution, the Whig leaders resorted at first to committees of correspondence, which had no place in the legally organized government. The loyalists, with some reason, declared that the country was "cantoned out into new districts and subjected to the jurisdiction of these committees, who, not only without any known law, but directly 1 Van Tyne, Loyalists, chap. iii. 'Boucher, A View of the Revolution, 319–321. in the teeth of all law whatever, issue citations, sit in judgment, and inflict pains and penalties on all whom they are pleased to consider as delinquents." It was these committees, or, in some cases, mere voluntary meetings of private citizens, that suggested the calling of conventions to elect delegates to the Continental Congress, to sanction associations for non-importation, and to provide for armed opposition to the British measures. When the royal governors prorogued or refused to summon the reg ular assemblies, these elective conventions, fresh from the people, made and executed the necessary laws, appointing committees or councils of safety to act during their adjournment.' Because of a natural selection of radicals to do this revolutionary work, and a greater extension of the franchise, which Congress early advised,' new men appeared in these provincial conventions-moredemocratic men than had ordinarily attended the regular colonial assemblies. As a result the resolutions of these conventions were often drawn up, wrote a Tory, "by some zealous partisan, perhaps by some fiery spirit ambitiously solicitous of forcing himself into public notice." . . . "The orator mounts the rostrum, and in some preconceived speech, heightened no doubt with all the aggravations which the 1 Agnes Hunt, Provincial Committees of Safety, chap. iv. 'Journals of Congress, November 3 and 4, 1775. (See the instructions to the S. C. convention.) Lincoln, Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania, 234. X fertility of his genius can suggest, exerts all the power of elocution to heat his audience with that blaze of patriotism with which he conceives himself inspired.1 . . . The threat of tyranny and the terror of slavery are artfully set before them." These were revolutionary methods as they appeared to a loyal citizen. The whole revolutionary system looked like anarchy. The patriot excused it all on the new political theory that the people were the basis of all legitimate political authority. The regular and constitutional forms of government having been taken away, the right to establish new forms reverted to the people. For many months all the powers of government were in the hands of these temporary assemblies, conventions, and committees, which "composed a scene of much confusion and injustice," " causing men like John Adams to fear that the system would 3 2 injure the morals of the people, and destroy their habits of order and attachment to regular government." Congress resolved, therefore (June 9, 1775), in reply to a letter from the Massachusetts convention, that no obedience being due to Parliament, the governor and his lieutenants were to be considered as absent, and as the suspension of government was intolerable, the provincial convention was recommended to write letters to the places entitled to |