Tuesday morning, June 25, 1776, was taken up with military affairs mainly: letters from General Washington (he wrote daily) and other generals (referred to the Board of War), a compensation request, a large batch of marine appointments, a secret committee order for gunpowder for a privateer, and recommendation to encourage “the making of musquets.”

Thomson doesn’t specify when Congress “[a]djourned to 4 o’clock” but they resumed business beginning with a very interesting communication from – Pennsylvania! One of the ironies of the June push toward independence is that Pennsylvania, as late as November 1775, was officially, firmly opposed to independence – even though Philadelphia was also the first publishing site for Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in January. In short, Pennsylvania, like many of the middle colonies, was quite conflicted on the matter, yet it also was hosting the Second Continental Congress. To complicate matters, the existing governing body, the Pennsylvania Assembly, was supposed to be meeting on the floor above where the Congress met, in the State House.

But of course, all of that was undergoing swift and tumultuous change, in resistance to both the Proprietors, the colonial establishment, and even Quakers. One of the first steps was the formation of a Provincial Conference to take the place of the Provincial Assembly and begin formulating the process for a new constitution and governing body. The Provincial Conference began meeting on June 18 and met until June 25, only a week. Much of its work was in the form of organization and appointments, as well as responding to communications and directives from the Second Continental Congress. But on June 23, it was “unanimously Ordered, That the chairman [Thomas M’Kean], Dr. [Benjamin] Rush, and Col. [James] Smith be a committee to draft a resolution declaring the sense of the conference with respect to an independence of this province from the crown and parliament of Great Britain, and report to-morrow morning.”

I’m here drawing from The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, vol. 9: 1776-1779 (Wm. Stanley Ray, 1903). But you can also read it in one of its first newspaper publications, in the Pennsylvania Evening Post for June 25, p. 3, col. 1. (Oddly, I don’t know that any “original” manuscript or copy survive.)

I.e., a drafting committee parallel to that of the Declaration – with a less-than-24-hour deadline! I haven’t hunted far and wide, but I haven’t come across a dramatic rendering of this committee’s work, nor have I found the Pennsylvania Declaration of Independence on display. Although shorter than the Declaration, it is a boldly expressed document that of course overlaps in many ways, in terms of principles, grievances, and actions. Since I think that Jefferson’s Declaration draft must have been largely formed by this point, it is doubtful that the Pennsylvania Declaration could have exercised much direct influence – but then, maybe.

I would draw attention to a couple of details in it. Like the Jefferson document, the Pennsylvania Declaration organizes the grievances as a series of parallel statements, signaled by “whereas.” It opens by directly singling George III out as “in violation of the principles of the British constitution, and of the laws of justice and humanity, by an accumulation of oppressions, unparalleled in history, excluded the inhabitants of this, with the other American colonies, from his protection.”

The second half of the second grievance overlaps significantly with a particular part of the Jefferson document, but in a particularly pungent way. After noting that George has ignored “numerous and dutiful petitions for a redress,” he “hath lately purchased foreign troops to assist in enslaving us, and hath excited the savages of this country to carry on a war against us, as also the negroes to imbrue their hands in the blood of their masters, in a manner unpractised by civilized nations …”

All three grievances will show up in the Jefferson draft, although not so directly in the final Declaration – indeed, one might wonder whether the Pennsylvania drafters had gotten a glimpse of Jefferson’s draft somewhere along the way. But we should note the Pennsylvania Declaration’s description of being enslaved by the British, now with the assistance of foreign mercenaries. This rhetoric of enslavement is a constant among Whigs and patriots throughout the Revolutionary period, going back to the Stamp Act crisis and even before. Let’s just say that the resisters had no readier language at hand – or at least not no readier visceral language – to describe the oppression being foisted upon them from England.

But then they could, often without the slightest notice, turn to people actually and literally enslaved with seemingly no concern for their enslavement. Here, for instance, the document asserts that George “has excited … the negroes to imbrue their hands in the blood of their masters, in a manner unpracticed by civilized nations.” This complaint stems fairly specifically from a November 7, 1775, proclamation by Virginia’s Governor Dunmore that, among other things, promised that “all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His Majesty’s Troops as soon as they, may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper sense of their Duty, to His Majesty’s Crown and Dignity.” That news set off exceedingly loud alarm bells among slaveholders in Virginia and throughout the Southern colonies – and throughout all the colonies as well. In fact, allusions like this to the Dunmore proclamation – which wound up a tragic story in itself – show  up often enough in instructions, declarations, and other documents of 1775 and later.

The logic, to the extent that there is any, is strained, to say, the least, and we can see it on clear and prolonged display in Jefferson’s submitted draft of the Declaration. Here the “insult” seems to be the idea that enslaved people, encouraged by George (by way of Dunmore), would have the boldness to rise up against their masters and murder them – even though the “masters” themselves were claiming to be enslaved, and so were rising up in revolution.

One last element to note, too. Like the Jefferson Declaration, the Pennsylvania Declaration closes on an action item, which was “to concur in a vote of the Congress, declaring the united colonies free and independent states” – i.e., the Conference drastically did reversed the instructions to delegates; instead of opposing independence, they were now to vote yes. More importantly, however, they explicitly noted they would vote to declare “the united colonies free and independent states” – i.e., they explicitly and clearly echoed the wording of the Lee resolution, presently tabled until July 1.

Countdown to Semiquincentennial: Number 19, June 23
By Michael G. Ditmore