love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight."" The arguments of the imperialists were set aside by Paine with scorn. "Much has been said of the united strength of Britain and the colonies, that in conjunction they might bid defiance to the world. What have we to do with setting the world at defiance? Our plan is commerce and friendship with the world." ... All these arguments were what America wanted to hear. It was hard to find a printer bold enough to print them; but once out, the pamphlet sold by the hundred thousand copies. Paine himself got none of the proceeds of the sale, and, though he was glorified for the time, he lived to be hooted years later by an American mob as he drove past placards showing the devil flying away with him. The reason for this change of popularity was his late deistical book, The Age of Reason, differing in no wise from the religious views of Franklin and Jefferson. There were unlovable things about Paine, vain and egotistic as he was at times, but "the man who had genius in his eyes," and who was ever busy trying to soften the lot of the oppressed, is not unworthy of respect. 1 John Adams, Familiar Letters, 174. CHAPTER V THE CAMPAIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE (1775-1776) FTER the people had been trained to look with composure upon the idea of independence, there still remained the task of getting each colony to give its approval of a formal declaration. Paine had pointed out that the colonies had now "travelled to the summit of inconsistency." They were in full rebellion, had an army and navy of their own, and governments that ignored Parliament or the king, but still they asserted their aversion to independence. They had, Paine warned them, acquired an "autumnal ripeness"-"now your rotting time comes on." More careful men, however, thought matters not so ripe, insisting that Congress, a mere advisory body, should take no such radical step as independence without first receiving explicit instructions from each of the colonies. The five middle colonies, however, had instructed their delegates against independence; and the month of March, 1776, was gone before any state gave its approval. To North Carolina, impelled by the trend 1 Conway, Thomas Paine, I., 75. 1 of local events, belongs the honor of first instructing her delegates for independence. Governor Martin, of that province, was a plain, honest, but impolitic man, inclined to be jealous of his predecessor, Governor Tryon. The latter, in 1771, had overthrown a rebellion, in the western part of the state, of frontiersmen known as "Regulators." Governor Martin, taking up the administration a few months later, curried favor with the late rebels, while by his criticism of Tryon he lost the esteem of the lawyers and prominent public men in the coast towns.' He quarrelled with the colonial assembly over the state's western boundary, and over the taxes to pay for the expense of quelling the late rebellion. Another serious dispute closed the courts and threw the lawyers out of business. All the forces thus antagonized turned against him, and his personality not only prevented his stemming the tide of revolution but tended alarmingly to increase that movement. When Boston appealed to the other colonies in 1774, the speaker of the North Carolina assembly called a Provincial Congress in spite of the threats of the governor. Many of the members of that congress proved to be members also of a regular assembly called by the governor. The governor protested in vain against the irregular body, dissolved the regular assembly, and fortified his palace; but the 1 Sikes, Transition of North Carolina from Colony to Commonwealth (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XVI., Nos. 10, 11). local revolutionary committee seized his cannon, and he was obliged to flee to Fort Johnson, near Wilmington. The wrath of the people soon drove him on board a British man-of-war, whence, in August of 1775, he issued what was called "the Fiery Proclamation," which was promptly ordered to be burned by the common hangman.' Relying on the loyalty of the central and western counties, which had in the spring sent Governor • Martin a loyal address signed by one thousand five hundred men, he had already urged that the British troops be sent to co-operate with the loyal citizens in overthrowing the rebellion. Accordingly, Sir Henry Clinton left Boston in December, 1775, planning to meet Sir Peter Parker with two thousand men and eight frigates at Cape Fear. Meanwhile, Donald McDonald, who had once been punished for rebellion on the field of Culloden, was commissioned by the governor, and collected an army of one thousand six hundred men from the loyal counties. He marched towards the coast to meet the British forces, but was met (February 27, 1776) by a patriot force at Moore's Creek and signally defeated, the patriots taking quantities of gold and arms and nine hundred prisoners.3 Within a fortnight ten thousand militia were ready to repel Clinton, who was delayed until the 'N. C. Col. Records, IX., 1125, 1145, 1178, X., 141–150. 'N. C. Col. Records, X., 41-50, 482. |