Finally, to all petitions and appeals the English government replied that it would not abate any of its demands, and that it would accept from us nothing short of entire submission and obedience.
=174. Independence slowly but surely becomes a Stern Necessity.=--Now, if we recall all the wrongs as to taxation that we have read of in a previous chapter, and add to them this list of subsequent outrages, the preparations for a long war, the hiring of Hessians, and the incitement of Indians to fight us, we must see that our forefathers were compelled to regard England as their determined enemy. Such were the successive steps by which the old feeling of loyalty to the mother country gradually vanished, and bitter hostility took its place.
What should the colonies do to protect themselves? This was the all-important question. The people had been tending toward the conviction that the only remedy was to break off all connection with England and to be independent.
But it was a long while before this feeling became general. It was a steady and natural but slow growth. The public indignation, constantly strengthened by repeated British outrages, at last culminated in mature conviction--a conviction that the only course left us was to be wholly free, and to stand by ourselves among the nations of the earth.
As this conviction became stronger and stronger among the good people all along the narrow coast line from Boston to Charleston, it soon found expression in many ways. The few newspapers spoke out; public meetings were called to discuss it, and conventions dared to announce it.
People learned at last that their chief enemy was the king. They saw that the controversy which began merely as a colonial struggle for their rights as British subjects had grown broader and deeper, till it became a contest for our rights as MEN and for the freedom of our entire country from British control. A pamphlet entitled "Common Sense," written by Thomas Paine, an Englishman who had recently arrived in America, had an enormous sale and exerted a powerful influence. It abounded in ready wit, sharp reasoning, and rough eloquence. It stimulated the longing for independence and the determination to be free or die. In May, 1775, the people of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina were the first to pass resolutions advocating independence. They sent them to their delegates in Congress; but these at that early day did not dare present them.