et again and again in Congress, the thought of breaking away from the
mother-land was strange to the minds of nearly all. The instructions to
the delegates to the first Congress, in September, 1774, gave no
suggestion of independence. On the contrary, colony after colony urged
its representatives to seek the restoration of "harmony and union" with
England. This Congress branded as "calumny" the charge that it wished
"independency." Washington wrote, from the Congress, that independence
was then not "desired by any thinking man in America."

[Illustration: Flag, a pine tree below "AN APPEAL TO HEAVEN".]
Pine Tree Flag of Massachusetts.

[Illustration: Flag, a rattlesnake above "DON'T TREAD ON ME".]
Rattlesnake Flag of South Carolina.

The feeling was much the same in 1775. Pennsylvania "strictly" commanded
her representatives to dissent from any "proposition that may lead to
separation." Maryland gave similar instructions in January, 1776.
Independence was neither the avowed nor the conscious object in
defending Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. Washington's commission as
commander-in-chief, two days later, gave no hint of it. And the New
Hampshire legislature so late as December 25, 1775, in the very act of
framing a new state government, "totally disavowed" all such aim. In the
fall of 1775 Congress declared that it had "not raised armies with the
ambitious design of separation from Great Britain."

The swift change which, a little more than six months later, made the
Declaration of Independence possible and even popular, has never yet
been fully explained. In May, 1775, John Adams had been cautioned by the
Philadelphia Sons of Liberty not to utter the word independence. "It is
as unpopular," they said, in "Pennsylvania and all the Middle and
Southern States as the Stamp Act itself." Early in 1776 this same great
man wrote that there was hardly a newspaper in America but openly
advocated independence. In the spring of 1776 the conservative
Washington declared, "Reconciliation is impracticable. Nothing but
independence will save us." Statesmen began to see that longer delay was
dangerous, that permanent union turned upon independence, and that,
without a government of their own, people would by and by demand back
their old constitution, as the English did after Cromwell's death. "The
country is not only ripe for independence," said Witherspoon, of New
Jersey, debating in Congress, "but is in danger of becoming rott