| The fighting had only broken out years after the Declaratory Act was passed, and the Declaration made clear that the colonists had been pleading for change for a decade:
“We, for ten years, incessantly and ineffectually besieged the Throne as supplicants; we reasoned, we remonstrated with Parliament, in the most mild and decent language.”
In response to their pleas to end these measures, they noted that the Administration didn’t back down. It instead “sent over fleets and armies to enforce them.”
Despite the Colonists’ professed loyalty – Jefferson and Dickinson made clear that loyalty to liberty must supersede loyalty to any nation:
“We have pursued every temperate, every respectful measure; we have even proceeded to break off our commercial intercourse with our fellow-subjects, as the last peaceable admonition, that our attachment to no Nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.”
From there, the Declaration addressed the violence actually happening.
Passed just over two months after the “shot heard ‘round the world,” it was also a direct and vehement rejection of Gen. Gage’s “peace” offer: Give up your guns and give up your friends – and the fighting can end.
The response, of course, shouldn’t be a surprise
NO DEAL!
On June 12, 1775, Gage publicly offered near-blanket amnesty in exchange for disarmament:
“I do hereby, in His Majesty’ s name, offer and promise his most gracious pardon to all persons who shall forthwith lay down their arms, and return to their duties of peaceable subjects, excepting only from the benefit of such pardon, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offences are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment.”
But Jefferson, Dickinson and the entire Continental Congress knew all-too-well how gun-grabbers work. Gage had made a similar promise previously, but went back on his word.
Shortly after the Siege of Boston began, Gage ordered all residents to turn in their firearms “temporarily.” After nearly 2,700 were turned in, the guns were never returned to them, and many of those promised with safe passage out of the city were prohibited from leaving.
The Declaration lambasted Gage for his attacks on the colonists under military occupation:
“The General, further emulating his Ministerial masters, by a Proclamation, bearing date on the 12th day of June, after venting the grossest falsehoods and calumnies against the good people of these Colonies, proceeds to ‘declare them all, either by name or description, to be rebels and traitors; to supersede the course of the common law, and instead thereof to publish and order the use and exercise of the law martial.’ His troops have butchered our countrymen; have wantonly burnt Charlestown, besides a considerable number of houses in other places; our ships and vessels are seized; the necessary supplies of provisions are intercepted, and he is exerting his utmost power to spread destruction and devastation around him.” [Emphasis added]
The Declaration also made it clear that, though the siege was still ongoing, word of Gage’s gun confiscation measures had gotten out, and left an indelible impression on Americans whom Gage now demanded turn in their arms as well.
They knew the fix was in:
“The inhabitants of Boston, being confined within that Town by the General, their Governour, and having, in order to procure their dismission, entered into a treaty with him, it was stipulated that the said inhabitants, having deposited their arms with their own Magistrates, should have liberty to depart, taking with them their other effects. They accordingly delivered up their arms; but in open violation of honour, in defiance of the obligation of treaties, which even savage nations esteemed sacred, the Governour ordered the arms deposited as aforesaid, that they might be preserved for their owners, to be seized by a body of soldiers; detained the greatest part of the inhabitants in the Town, and compelled the few who were permitted to retire, to leave their most valuable effects behind.” [Emphasis added] |
