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the sacred feast of freedom, he wrote to his wife on July 3rd:

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival."

Yet Adams could also say in 1822, "There is not an idea but what had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before." 12 To which Jefferson witheringly replied that R. H. Lee traced it still further back-to Locke's treatise on Government, indeed; and that though he "turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it," he did not consider it as any part of his charge "to invent new ideas altogether and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before." 18

Hamilton said: "The sacred rights of man are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature." 14

But Fitzpatrick designates the Declaration as peculiarly "a Virginia product, for George Mason's Bill of Rights was adopted June 12, 1776; Jefferson's Preamble was adopted (with the Constitution) May 29th, and Lee's resolution of independence closely approximates the language of Virginia's resolutions of independence which were passed by the Convention May 15th, the authorship of which rests. jointly in Patrick Henry, Thomas Nelson, Edmund Pendleton and Meriwether Smith."

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Though that other Virginian, Washington, contributed to it nothing of philosophy or literature, all of its authors depended on him to confirm it with his generalship.

In Virginia Doctor, now lieutenant, George Gilmer, had put it vigorously: "A good soldier is now the most important character in the state."

Piety as usual adapted itself to war, and many agreed with him in granting a vacation to the inconvenient portions of the creed: "Give thy cloak to him that took thy coat; Turn the other cheek, are proverbial expressions which are not applicable to the present contest. The Scriptures do not, in general, require any acts of kindness to our enemies which are confessedly prejudicial to our own interests."

The call now was: "Let us pray for Washingtons, Putnams, Schuylers, to spring up from the wilds of America."

He regretted that "Gold and wealth, in these degenerate days, may be of service to gain a Ruffian to a Villian's aid," but he called upon the people to face privation boldly, and the women to "animate your husbands to the field of battle. . . .

"Ye tender fair! ye Virgins, whose hearts are on the brink of yielding to the fond one's wish, boldly postpone the mingling Joys, and spurn the lover that would linger in this hour of danger." 16

These were the Virginians who had sent Washington to Congress to restore England to her old motherliness. Now Thomas Jefferson's pen wrote new duties for his willing sword.

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It occurred to no one that Washington was foredoomed to a vital duel with Jefferson. But Jefferson was what Van Tyne " calls him, "the life enemy of the tide-water aristocracy," to which Washington belonged. He could not know how literally Jefferson meant some of his grandiose phrases about freedom and equality; that the two would lock horns in later years on those very phrases; and that Washington would be overthrown, along with Adams and the whole school. They were radicals now, but would in due time be rated as hidebound Tories and the enemies of all that they subscribed to in 1776.

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Washington's own spiritual biography is written in the history of the Declaration.

The signers of it had forgotten, or chose to seem to forget, what he also had already forgotten: the real causes of the Revolution. As Carl Becker notes: "These 'causes' which the Declaration sets forth are not quite the same as those which a careful student of history, seeking the antecedents of the Revolution, would set forth. The reason is that the framers of the Declaration were not writing history but making it." 18

He comments on this amazing fact: "In all the controversy leading up to the Revolution the thing chiefly debated was the authority of the British Parliament. . . . Nevertheless, the Declaration does not mention the British Parliament. So striking an omission must have been intentional."

The King bears all the brunt of the war now, and almost the only allusion to Parliament is the word “others”—the King "has combined with others."

The sacred "rights of British subjects," which Washington rose to defend, were also things forgotten, and out of date.

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The sacred rights of all American citizens were, in the eyes of many of them, similarly tossed into the dust bin. "The Declaration of Independence proclaimed," says Van Tyne,1 "not only war with England but a civil war between the Whigs and Tories in America."

The loyalists, who still abhorred what Washington had recently abhorred, rushed to arms to defend from him the very principles that had called him to arms. There grew up a loyalist militia, which was as fickle as the rebel militia, and as apt in shifting its allegiance and changing its perjuries according to the changing fortunes of the British and the rebels. There were regiments of loyalist regulars who en

listed for the duration of the war as well as the Continentals.

Some authorities say that there were actually more American-born soldiers and officers in the loyalist troops than on the other side. It has been alleged that the colony of New York alone furnished more loyalist troops than all the other colonies furnished patriot troops.

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Fortescue says that the loyalists made better soldiers and officers than the patriots, and wisely comments that therefore "our admiration is increased for such men as Washington and Greene."

The Tories could honestly declare that they were generally what the rebels had boasted of being, Englishmen; and that "the non-English strains of the back country lent great propulsive force to the movement for independence and republican government." Quoting Joseph Galloway's statement that in the patriot army "there were scarcely onefourth natives of America, about one-half Irish, the other fourth were English and Scotch," Schlesinger goes on to say: "This statement fails to do justice to the other foreign-born soldiers who fought in the War of Independence." "

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On the other hand, many English-born officers fought for the patriots and the influence of the recent English immigrant, Thomas Paine, can never be overestimated as a persuasive force in convincing the multitude that anything except independence was an outrage on common-sense.

And now Independence had been declared. All that was necessary was for General Washington to secure it.

As if the Declaration of July 2nd had summoned the spirits, and only evil ones, from the vasty deep, on that same evening, Sir William Howe's transports, after gathering for days in the offing, drew up to Staten Island.

On July 2nd, while Congress was passing the Declaration unbeknownst to Washington, he had issued this order to his troops:

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be Freemen, or Slaves, whether they are to have any property they can call their own, whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unknown millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this Army. Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most Abject Submission; this is all we can expect- We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die...

"Evening Orders.-'Tis the General's desire that the men lay upon their Arms in their tents and quarters, ready to turn out at a moments warning, as there is the greatest likelihood of it."

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The next day he wrote to Congress:

"Several ships more arrived within the Hook making the number that came in then, 110, and there remains no doubt of the whole of the Fleet from Hallifax being now here. Yesterday Evening 50 of 'em came into the Bay and anchored on the Staten Island side. Their views I cannot precisely determine but am extremely apprehensive as a part of 'em only came, that they mean to surround the Island [Long Island] and secure the whole stock upon it. I had consulted with a Committee of the Provincial Congress on the subject, and a person was appointed to superintend the business and to drive the stock off..

"Our reinforcements of militia are but small yet-their amount I can not ascertain, .

"I must entreat your Attention to an application I made some time agoe for Flints we are extremely deficient in this necessary article and shall be greatly distressed if we cannot

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