Independence was a central keyword of politics in the eighteenth century. For in dividuals as well as the United States in 1776, independence—the ability to dictate one's own course without outside reference—was a goal that in theory was worth striving for, but in reality was difficult to attain.
Personal independence was an important concept for many eighteenth-century Americans. Independence was the notion that a person was entirely free from all entangling obligations, the ability to be selfsufficient in all political, economic, and social relationships. A person free from any dependence on another, most Americans agreed, epitomized an ideal citizen, the perfect guarantor of liberty. Independence was synonymous with happiness, comfort, ease, a trouble-free life. Eventually—although not easily—the concept of individual or personal independence would become a national ideal as well; independence, in other words, became the model for Independence.
True independence, though, was built on contradiction. Although self-sufficiency was the goal, this end was highly compromised. Gendered male, the "independent" patriarch was in fact actually reliant on the labor of those in his household who were by definition dependents, including women, children, and slaves. Also, the social standing of elites depended on the consumption of an increasing variety of consumer goods, and as a result many so-called independent Americans were rarely free of debts owed to British merchants. As members of an empire ruled by a monarchy, Americans were politically dependent on the king. Although they did not view this as complete dependence—colonists insisted the relationship was reciprocal and that their allegiance was contingent on the king's ability to provide for their protection—they were still subjects of the crown.
Personal independence, then, was largely evanescent. Although the concept was consensually agreed upon as the goal for happy individuals and a healthy community, it was seldom realized. Still, aspiring Americans believed the freedom to pursue independence, as Jefferson intimated, to be a closely guarded right, one that sat at the epicenter of the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. Throughout their controversy with Great Britain, colonists protested that their ability to achieve independence was under increasing assault by an insidious and grasping imperial administration. Their reaction reflected the desire to eliminate all forms of dependence. Economic boycotts, political maneuvering to control imperial agents, and the promotion of virtue all addressed the issue of American independence.
One of the primary tactics Americans employed to protest British policies was to boycott imported goods. Seeing their purchasing power as a lever with which to pressure Parliament, American leaders administered nonimportation boycotts to varying degrees of success in response to the Stamp Act (1765), Townshend Duties (1767), and Coercive Acts (1774). Americans' concept of personal independence lay at the heart of the boycott movement. Because nonimportation naturally reduced consumption, the measure also had a side benefit of limiting debt. With the nonimportation boycott, personal independence from consumer debt suddenly became a patriotic act; personal virtue and the public display of political principles were now one and the same. Americans who protested British policies further drove home the connection between economic independence and political resistance by labeling virtuous the consumption of domestic manufactures, such as homespun clothing. Wearing a suit of clothes stitched by a person in one's own household played on many different levels of independence: it reduced the influence of British merchants; it rejected the notion that Britain could take away individual liberties; and it served as a totem that this individual was his own person not beholden to anyone.
Ideas about the dangers of dependence also fed into American concerns about the arrangement of political power in the British Empire. While they nominally declared their dependence on the crown (albeit with reserved rights), colonists worried about the independent status of the king's agents in America. Throughout the eighteenth century, imperial officials had depended on American assemblies to pay their salaries and expense accounts. This leverage, colonial leaders argued, was a vital check that safeguarded American rights. When Parliament attempted to consolidate its authority in the years after the Stamp Act, one of its most pressing concerns was the wrestling away of the ability to control the livelihood of British colonial officials. Parliament, in other words, wanted to ensure that its representatives in the colonies would be dependent on its authority only. Colonists, especially in Massachusetts, reacted in horror; they protested that if the interests of imperial agents were independent of the colonies they administered, tyranny would directly ensue, followed, inevitably, by slavery.
Concepts of personal independence—whether political, economic, or social—mobilized increasing numbers of Americans to resist British policies. But the incorporation of ideas about personal or individual independence did not naturally or easily lead to calls to cut all ties with Britain. The road from independence to Independence was indeed long and tortured.
With the Treaty of Paris in 1763, American feelings of patriotism and attachment to the British Empire overflowed. Believing they were fully vested partners in the defeat of France, Americans saw themselves as belonging to a "Greater" Britain. Independence from Britain and the king was far from their minds at the beginning of the imperial crisis. Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, even as they protested British policies as an abridgment of their rights, American petitions continually pledged allegiance to the king. The major statements that underscored the American position, from the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 through Thomas Jefferson's Summary View of the Rights of British Colonies in 1774 to the Olive Branch Petition of 1775, each denied that the colonies desired their own independence. They begged the king to take up his role as protector and act on their behalf by reining in a runaway Parliament and ministry. While they insisted that colonial legislatures should have sovereignty over provincial laws, most revolutionaries adamantly denied that they should cut ties with the British monarchy as well.
Common Sense (1776) in large part changed this. Thomas Paine's pamphlet spoke directly to the possibilities of Independence. Paine argued that continued attachment to Britain would drag America into war, destruction, and tyranny. The first to "kill" the king, Common Sense became a literary phenomenon throughout the colonies in the early months of 1776; the forty-six page pamphlet convinced thousands of Americans that hereditary monarchy was corrupt and that an immediate declaration of national independence was in their best interest. But as powerful as the argument was, even Paine's sensational rhetoric did not spur Congress to action. Even after news reached America in early 1776 that the king had withdrawn his protection from the colonies, the question of Independence remained controversial. By the first anniversary of the Battle of Lexington of April 1775, only a few colonial assemblies had authorized their representatives to concur if Congress were to hold a vote on Independence. As of May 1776, no delegate had permission to initiate debate on the issue.
The deepening exigencies of war, however, would ultimately trump the colonists' attachment to the monarch. In the spring of 1776, war continued throughout the colonies from Canada to the Caroli-nas. Rumors of British efforts to supplement their invasion force with foreign mercenaries, from either Russia or the German principalities, had been rampant throughout America since the previous fall. Throughout the first two weeks of May 1776, American newspapers were filled with reports from ship captains that testified to seeing a transport fleet filled with British and German soldiers en route to New York. The simultaneous arrival of official transcripts of the king's treaties with the German states for mercenaries confirmed the reports. Congress reacted immediately. On 15 May 1776, it ordered a de facto independence by instructing every colony that had not yet done so to draft its own republican constitution. At the same time, proponents of Independence dispatched Richard Henry Lee to Virginia to secure instructions from that critical province to bring up the issue on the floor of Congress. Lee returned on 7 June with a resolution from Virginia that instructed Congress to vote on whether "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." Congress agreed to consider Lee's resolution and, on 11 June, appointed a committee of five delegates—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman—to draft a declaration of independence.
After taking a three-week recess for the remainder of June, Congress debated Independence on 1 and 2 July, a huge step made only more difficult by word that the vanguard of the impending British invasion fleet had indeed arrived off New York City a few days previously, on 29 June. With twelve colonies supporting the measure (New York lacked instruction and therefore abstained), the vote for Independence passed on 2 July. Congress spent the next two days editing the language of the draft declaration of independence written by Jefferson and the other members of the "Committee of Five." On 4 July 1776, Congress approved the final version of the Declaration of Independence and sent the copy to Philadelphia printer John Dunlap for its publication. The concept of independence—the republican ideal of complete self-sufficiency—had finally come full circle. Ideas about personal independence into which the revolutionaries had tapped in order to mobilize support for resistance to British policies had become national Independence.