s, that the contest
would soon be over, was shaken, yet as a body they remained firm and
hopeful. At the same time, on the advance of Lord Cornwallis through
the Jerseys, they fled for safety from Philadelphia to Baltimore, in
Maryland. On reassembling here, however, they betrayed no despondency
or any lack of spirit. The hope of obtaining their grand
object,--independence and separation from Great Britain,--seemed to
sustain them in the midst of all their reverses. They now materially
enlarged the powers of Washington. They authorised him to raise sixteen
additional regiments; furnished him with all the money they could, and
promised him a great deal more; and finally conferred upon him, for six
months, a sort of dictatorship. They further voted a loan of 8,000,000
of dollars; they made more paper-money; they threatened all who would
not receive it in payment for goods or labour; and they adopted all
possible means, by force, intimidation, and enticement, to get money
into the treasury, and to inspire courage into the hearts of the people.
As for their committee of correspondence, they laboured ardently to
induce France and Spain openly to espouse their quarrel, and to threaten
England with an invasion, while the flower of its troops were engaged
in America. It was proposed in congress that their commissioners at
Versailles should be authorised to transfer to France the same monopoly
of their trade which had been possessed by Great Britain. This, however,
was relinquished as a measure which would strike a mortal blow at
some of their leading arguments in favour of independence. It was next
proposed that France should be offered a limited monopoly, and, this
failing, it was suggested that France might be gained over by the offer
of an alliance offensive and defensive. The more prudent among them
represented that if France would venture into the war at all, it would
not be by any treaty, or compact, or promises of congress, but out of
her old rivalry and hatred of England. All the assurances she would
want, they said, was an expression of their determination never again
to submit to the mother country, but to persist in their present course,
though all the world should be merely lookers-on. Resolutions were
printed to this effect, and sent all over the union, and then to the
principal courts of Europe, with agents appointed to impress upon
those courts the sincerity of this declaration, and to solicit their
friendship for