A very great wrong having been done me in the memoir, I needed to see the letters from Mr. Grahame to Mr. Ellis, which Mr. Quincy thus acknowledged to have received from Mr. Ellis, and in general terms wrote to Mr. Ellis for a sight of them. He would not suffer me to peruse them, and gave this as his excuse for refusing my request: MY DEAR SIR, Charlestown, February 2d, 1846. I have not in my possession either of the letters of Mr. Grahame to me relating to the matter of Clarke. I loaned them all to you soon after my return from Europe, and have never seen them since, though I have frequently, as you may remember, asked them of you. GEO. E. ELLIS. Now at the time when he wrote this, a letter of Mr. Grahame to him, dated sixth of November, 1839, "relating to the matter of Clarke," was either in the possession of Mr. Ellis himself, or in the hands of Mr. Quincy from Mr. Ellis himself, as appears by Mr. Quincy's publications. On receiving the note of Mr. Ellis, I returned to him the letter from Mr. Grahame to himself, which he had given me. I did not send back the extract of Mr. Walsh's letter; the original was then in Mr. Quincy's hands, and known to be there. I now renewed my request, specifying one letter in particular from Mr. Grahame to Mr. Ellis, describing it as to date as well as I could from distant recollection, but most precisely as the letter on which I had, in December, 1839, based a letter to Mr. Prescott, to be communicated to Mr. Grahame. To this second request he made answer: MY DEAR SIR, Charlestown, March 12th, 1846. After a thorough examination of my files of foreign letters, I cannot find that one of Mr. Grahame's for which you ask. I think you must have it, as I loaned all his letters to you at the same time that I put into your hands the one you have just returned to me. GEO. E. ELlis. The exact date of the letter for which I had asked, was, as I afterwards ascertained, November sixth, 1839. It was therefore written several months after the time fixed by Mr. Ellis himself as the time of his loaning it to me; and moreover it was then either in his own hands, or by his own act in those of Mr. Quincy, by whom a large part of it was soon afterwards printed, with the manifest concurrence of Mr. Ellis himself. THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS ACKNOWLEDGED. CHAPTER I. THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES. JULY, 1776. July. THE American Declaration of Independence was the CHAP. beginning of new ages. Though it had been invited, expected, and prepared for, its adoption suddenly 1776. changed the contest from a war for the redress of grievances to an effort at the creation of a selfgoverning commonwealth. It disembarrassed the people of the United States from the legal fiction of owning a king against whom they were in arms, brushed away forever the dreamy illusion of their reconcilement to the dominion of Britain, and for the first time set before them a well-defined, single, and inspiring purpose. As the youthful nation took its seat among the powers of the earth, its desire was no longer for the restoration of the past, but turned with prophetic promise towards the boundless I. CHAP. future. Hope whispered the assurance of unheardof success in the pursuit of public happiness through faith in natural equality and the rights of man. 1776. July. Before receiving the declaration, the convention of Maryland, on the sixth of July, yielded to "the dire necessity" of renouncing a king who had violated his compact, and "conjured every virtuous citizen to join cordially in maintaining the freedom of Maryland and her sister colonies." Two days later, the committee of safety and that of inspection at Philadelphia marched in procession to the state-house, where the declaration was read to the battalions of volunteers and a vast concourse of the inhabitants of the city and county; after which the emblems of royalty were taken down from the halls where justice had hitherto been administered in the king's name, and were burnt amidst the acclamations of the crowd, while merry chimes from the churches and peals from the statehouse bell proclaimed liberty throughout the land. The ravages of immediate war that overhung New Jersey were distinctly foreseen by her statesmen, who dared not trust "that their numbers, union, or valor, or anything short of the almighty power of God could save them;" but the congress of that state, in presence of the committee of safety, the militia under arms, and a great assembly of the people, having faith in "an interposing Providence," and an inward witness to the vitality of their political principles, published simultaneously at Trenton the declaration of independence and their own new constitution. |