Excerpt from War of Lies: Independence
Happy Independence Day Weekend!
To celebrate Independence this July 4 weekend, I want to share with you a free chapter excerpt, chapter 9, about independence from one of my new books: War of Lies: When George Washington Was the Target and Propaganda Was the Crimes. This history-mystery book reveals four suspects behind a dozen counterfeit letters that were published in George Washington’s name and dated in 1776. These forged letters falsely accused Washington of opposing independence.
The videos sprinkled throughout this article explain how I wrote about the Declaration of Independence in my three new books about the American Revolution. You can’t write a book about the Revolutionary War without discussing the Declaration of Independence!
Enjoy the videos and the chapter excerpt! All of my new books are available on Amazon and signed copies are available on janecook.com/shop. Promo code Independence gets you a discount on my website.
Video about the Declaration of Independence in The Submarine and the Spies.
Chapter 9: Independence
After Boston’s March 1776 Battle of Dorchester Heights, the Redcoats fled to Canada to regroup. Washington concluded that General Thomas Gage’s successor, General Howe, would seek to make New York his headquarters because of its strategic location as a port city. Likewise, New York’s governor had promised to make New York City a haven for loyalists.
While Washington and his men went to New York in the spring of 1776, members of the Continental Congress prepared for their next meeting in Philadelphia. The topic on everyone’s mind was simple: independence. Was it time to declare independence from England? Were the people ready for it? What did Washington believe?
The author of the forged letters portrayed the patriot Commander-in-Chief as a conflicted man who opposed independence and secretly sought reconciliation with his king.
“I do not really wish for independence. I hope there are few who do,” Washington had allegedly written to Custis. “What you say on the subject of independency is perfectly judicious . . . I have no reluctance to confess to you, that the measure (independence) is diametrically opposite to my judgment.”
Would Americans believe that Washington really didn’t want independence from England? Would they view him as a man who wasn’t honest with himself or the public? Did he secretly desire reconciliation with the British, as he appeared to believe in this paragraph?
“For I have not yet despaired of an honorable reconciliation; and whilst I can entertain but a hope of that, both interest and inclination lead me to prefer it to everything else upon earth,” he supposedly declared.
Video: How the culprit felt about independence was a clue in War of Lies.
In contrast, the real Washington wanted independence and a new government for America. In late May and early June 1776, Washington expressed his hope that Congress would declare independence to one of the other Jacks in his life, his brother Jack. He wrote him after learning that Virginians had gathered at the Virginia Convention in May 1776.
Authorizing new delegates to the Continental Congress on May 15, the Virginians voted to give their delegates permission to propose that Congress declare independence from England. The next day, they had a parade and launched fireworks. The Virginians were the first colonists to launch fireworks for independence. Washington was pleased. “I am very glad, to find that the Virginia Convention have passed so noble a vote, with so much unanimity,” Washington wrote Jack between May 31 and June 4, 1776 after hearing the news.
Not only did Washington approve of the Virginia Convention’s support for independence, but he also gave his brother advice as he and other Virginians met to write a new Constitution for the state of Virginia. “To form a new government, requires infinite care, and unbounded attention; for if the foundation is badly laid, the superstructure must be bad,” he wrote Jack. “Every man should consider, that he is lending his aid to frame a constitution which is to render millions happy, or miserable, and that a matter of such moment cannot be the work of a day.”
By the time he’d written Jack this letter, Washington had left New York for a temporary sojourn in Philadelphia to meet with the Continental Congress about the preparations to bolster and defend New York. In this authentic letter to Jack, he declared that “things have come to that pass now, as to convince us, that we have nothing more to expect from the justice of Great Britain—also, that she is capable of the most delusive arts.” Those last words referred to the rumors that Britain was sending peace commissioners while also hiring foreign fighters from Germany. The king’s actions were contradictory.
Believing that these peace negotiators were a pretense or an effort to fool the colonists into thinking that King George III wasn’t going to war against them, Washington showed he didn’t buy the tactic. “The idea was only to deceive, and throw us off our guard.” Washington was worried that the ruse had worked and some members of the Continental Congress were “still feeding themselves upon the dainty food of reconciliation.”
There was nothing dainty about what Washington, and all of New York, witnessed a month later.
“The colony of New York is said not only to be hearty, but zealous in the cause—I wish, and I hope it may be so, but . . . I will suspend my opinion till the arrival of the troops there,” Washington had genuinely declared in 1775. Though he knew patriots lived in New York, he strongly believed that the Howe brothers would bring the British fleet to New York City. When this happened, he concluded that it would be hard for patriots living in Manhattan and Long Island to openly support the Continental Army.
For weeks in the spring of 1776, snippets of news sailed into America’s colonial ports. British ships carrying hundreds of soldiers had been sighted leaving places like Ireland, Scotland, and Amsterdam. Most were bound for Canada and then somewhere else in the colonies after that.
The sight of British ships was as ominous as it was frequent. On Saturday, June 29, 1776, hundreds of ships carrying thirty-two thousand British fighters arrived at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, across from New York’s Staten Island. “The fleet from Halifax, we informed our readers in our last, was arrived at Sandy Hook (New Jersey) . . . we suppose it does not exceed 130 sail,” the Pennsylvania Evening Post reported.
Led by the British brothers Admiral Richard Howe and General William Howe, this caravan of ships began to move between Staten Island and Long Island. “Monday (July 1) it came up into Yank’s Bay below the narrows.”
Each day the sight of more British ships made news. “Tuesday several ships came to at the Watering Place (Staten Island) -- Wednesday more followed -- and by Thursday noon the whole fleet was at anchor in a line from Kill van Kull to Simonson’s ferry on the Eastside of Staten Island.”
The fleet included forty battleships and three hundred support vessels, according to the reports at the time. With hundreds of vessels filling the three-mile long and thousand-foot-wide Kill van Kull strait, no wonder the newspaper described the sight of Redcoats as a “swarm of locusts escaped from a bottomless pit.”
The final ship met with some interference. “The Asia brought up the rear of the fleet, and in the narrows was fired at from a small battery on Long Island, which complement was returned by about forty 24 pounders, one of which was lodged in the wall of the house of Mr. Bennet, but did no hurt to the family.”
On the same day that the entire British fleet lined Staten Island’s strait of Kill van Kull, the Continental Congress made even bigger news. They issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
The Pennsylvania Evening Post published the entire document two days later on the front page of their Saturday edition. The length of each issue of this newspaper was shorter than most newspapers, but it was printed more often at three days a week instead of once a week. This frequency gave the Pennsylvania Evening Post an advantage, making it one of the first newspapers to publish the Declaration of Independence.
Their headline was larger than usual and put the news this way: “In Congress, July 4, 1776. A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress assembled.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Under the belief that government derived its “just powers from the consent of the governed,” the Declaration cited twenty-seven bullet points of how the king of England had become a tyrant.
“The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”
Among the many abuses, “he has dissolved representative houses repeatedly . . . obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.”
“He has made judges dependent on his will alone . . . He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislators.”
Referring to martial law, the Declaration pointed out that: “He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.”
Without the consent of the people, the king had allowed laws for “cutting off our trade with all parts of the world . . . Depriving us, in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury . . . (and) taking away our charters.”
As the residents of Falmouth and Norfolk could testify: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”
Not knowing that the British and their hired German fighters had already arrived in New York, the Declaration proclaimed, “He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death.”
Proving that a nation could be born in a day, this document not only declared independence but it also declared that the colonies were no longer colonies but states. In all capital letters, the Declaration proclaimed: “We, therefore, the representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of their colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES.”
The date July 4, 1776, marked the first use of the phrase United States of America, which makes July 4 the origin and birth of this country. Gone were Britain’s American colonies. Replacing them were independent states united together. Gone was allegiance to royalty. Replacing it was representation. Gone was God Save the King. Replacing it was long live the people. A new nation under a new philosophy was born.
As free and independent states, the Americans dissolved all political connections between them and the British crown. As free and independent states, the Declaration asserted that they had the power to levy war and conclude peace. As free and independent states they could contract alliances, establish commerce, and do everything else a nation might do.
What did this newspaper editor print next, immediately after the Declaration of Independence? Did he publish an analysis of the Declaration by journalists or a reaction from local residents? A set of interviews with the author, Thomas Jefferson? An interview with the humorous retired newspaper editor, Benjamin Franklin, who predicted that if they didn’t hang together, they’d all hang separately?
No. Instead, immediately after printing the Declaration of Independence, this grand document that became a beacon to the world, the next article in the Pennsylvania Evening Post was this advertisement: “A few hog heads and barrels of Jamaica sugar, of the best quality to be sold by David Sproat.”
This sales pitch was followed by ads from an upholsterer, who sold custom furniture, and a tailor named Amelia Taylor, who specialized in “children’s robes, jams, frogs, vails, tunics, gentlemen shirts, and all kinds of needlework in the very neatest manner.”
What better way to follow the Declaration of Independence than by publishing examples of people who were pursuing happiness through making a living?
How long did it take for George Washington to receive the Declaration of Independence?
Video about independence from First Fireworks for Independence
Washington couldn’t have been happier to announce the Declaration of Independence in his General Orders five days later on July 9.
“The Honorable the Continental Congress, impelled by the dictates of duty, policy and necessity, having been pleased to dissolve the connection which subsisted between this country, and Great Britain, and to declare the United Colonies of North America, free and independent STATES.”
Not only that, but Washington was so pleased with the Declaration that he also decided his men should hear it right away. “The several brigades are to be drawn up this evening on their respective parades, at six o’clock, when the declaration of Congress, shewing the grounds and reasons of this measure, is to be read with an audible voice.”
In contrast to the lies that would be spread about him later, a thrilled Washington believed the Declaration of Independence would motivate his troops. He knew they needed a boost after the arrival of British troops. The sight of the “red sea” had intimidated them.
“The general hopes this important event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms: And that he is now in the service of a state, possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest honors of a free country,” Washington ordered his troops on July 9.
“The brigade majors are to receive, at the adjutant general’s office, several of the declarations to be delivered to the brigadiers general, and the colonels of regiments.”
Also included in his general orders was the encouraging news that Congress had approved the inclusion of chaplains in the Continental Army. “The Honorable Continental Congress having been pleased to allow a chaplain to each regiment, with the pay of thirty-three dollars and one third month.”
Understanding that some of his men would die in battle, General Washington attended to the spiritual and emotional needs of his soldiers by bringing chaplains into the corps. “The colonels or commanding officers of each regiment are directed to procure chaplains accordingly; persons of good characters and exemplary lives.”
Washington wanted all officers and soldiers to respect the chaplains and “attend carefully upon religious exercises: The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger.”
He also wove faith into the cause. “The General hopes and trusts, that every officer, and man, will endeavor so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.”
The beheading that happened later that night was quite a contrast to Washington’s instructions on proper behavior for soldiers.
The most raucous show on Broadway in 1776 took place that night. No, it wasn’t a performance of Romeo and Juliet or Julius Caesar. Many of Washington’s troops were so thrilled at the Declaration of Independence that they got carried away in a frenzy. On the Bowling Green, at the south end of the street known as Broadway, was a large, gilded lead statue of King George III. Mounted on a horse, the king was dressed like a Roman emperor.
“Last night, the statue of George the Third was tumbled down and beheaded—the troops having long had an inclination so to do, thought this time of publishing a Declaration of Independence, to be a favorable opportunity—for which they received the check in this day’s orders.” So one of Washington’s soldiers, who was an assistant to Washington’s military secretary, recorded the theatrics of July 9 in his diary.
This check wasn’t a monetary payment or a ticket to the performance on New York’s Broadway. Rather it was a rebuke for their lack of order and mob-like behavior. The next day on July 10, Washington issued these General Orders.
“Though the General doubts not the persons, who pulled down and mutilated the statue in the Broadway, last night, were actuated by zeal in the public cause; yet it has so much the appearance of riot and want (lack) of order, in the army, that he disapproves the manner, and directs that in future these things shall be avoided by the soldiery, and left to be executed by proper authority.”
The news of melting His Royal Highness made its way to London, as the St. James Chronicle and Evening Post later reported, noting that the Declaration of Independence was “received with loud huzzas, and the utmost demonstrations of joy.”
Reporting that “the sons of freedom laid prostrate (King George III’s statue) in the dirt,” this British article pointed out that the monument’s lead “is to be run into bullets to assimilate with the brains of our infatuated adversaries, who to gain a pepper corn, have lost an Empire.”
Missing from this British report, of course, was news about Washington’s orders and his disapproval of mob tactics. They would soon learn that the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army found an unusual way to stand up to Lord Howe.
War of Lies: When George Washington Was the Target and Propaganda Was the Crimes.