This Day in Revolutionary War History (Moderates, Radicals Unite to Present Case for Fighting)

July 6, 1775—Nearly one year before the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, it took the first step at airing the grievances of the 13 colonies over British depredations.

Two delegates who locked horns in the debate leading to independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, took turns in creating Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, which sought to assure the public—and, in far-off Great Britain, King George III—that their problems were not with the monarch but with his ministers imposing coercive measures on the colonies.

Years later, John Adams recalled that during the American Revolution, one-third of the colonists supported the cause, one-third were opposed, and one-third were neutral. If anything, non-supporters of independence were still in the ascendant one year earlier, but events were assuming a momentum that many feared could not be controlled.

This latter group is not as celebrated as the radicals, who won the vote for independence in the Second Continental Congress and, in the end, the war itself. They come off especially badly in the musical 1776.

But the moderates’ stance was not without merit, and they marshaled compelling arguments for the colonists’ rights before the Declaration of Independence and contributed to the republic afterward.

The most prominent moderate delegates from two large middle colonies, including New York’s John Jay, who became the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court; Pennsylvania’s James Wilson, among the keenest legal minds of the revolutionary and Federalist periods; and Robert Morris, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who earned the nickname “Financier of the Revolution” through his crucial infusion of money when the Continental Army was at its most desperate.

But the leader of the group in the debates already convulsing the Second Continental Congress was Dickinson, a wealthy lawyer who, by refusing to sign the Declaration of Independence—even though he promptly joined the Continental Army as a private—immediately forfeited much of the credit he deserved for mobilizing American opinion against British policies in his pamphlet Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768).

In devastating critiques of the Stamp and Townshend Acts, Dickinson crafted one of the first known strategies for nonviolent protest in American history, preferring to call on economic pressure and appeals to the Mother Country’s longstanding care of its faraway offspring (“where is maternal affection”?: he wondered) to bring Britain’s ministers around.

Unlike fellow Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Galloway, who wanted the colonists to be brought more tightly under the British umbrella, Dickinson preferred that the colonists be allowed to administer something more akin to home rule.

Yet his reluctance to accept the inevitability of independence might have resulted from internal divisions within his own extended clan. His in-laws included not just independence firebrands but also loyalists and others whose allegiance could be swayed to and fro—an example in microcosm of the split that Adams saw in the nation at large.

On a committee that the Continental Congress designated to respond to Britain, Dickinson found himself working with a Virginia delegate less inclined to speak up but every bit his equal as a penman: Thomas Jefferson, whose Summary View of the Rights of British America attracted wide notice within his colony and among the other politicians gathered that year in Philadelphia.

The case that the panel would present had assumed greater importance with the outbreak of hostilities at the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Dickinson read the first draft by Jefferson—and blanched over its fierce statements.

Jefferson read Dickinson’s revisions, nodded—and mostly accepted only his minor suggestions.

Dickinson reviewed Jefferson’s “fair copy,” made a few other suggestions—and, after some more changes, Congress had in its hands a document that slammed the “Legislature of Great-Britain” for being “stimulated by an inordinate Passion for a Power.” (To track the intense revision process behind Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, see this "Editorial Note" on the "Founders Online" Website.)

At the same time, it pledged to readers that, while committed to defending their lands and freedoms, “we mean not to dissolve that Union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.”

What a difference a year would make. King George III’s high-handed refusal even to consider the “Olive Branch Petition” adopted that same weekend in Philadelphia undermined the warnings of Dickinson, its primary proponent, that the colonies were incurring enormous risks by fighting Britain without a powerful ally or an effective central government.

In the end, the defiance of the Continental Congress brought on the violence and the assault on privilege that concerned Dickinson. But the cause won out and even a conservative reformer like Dickinson accommodated the new order by serving in the governments of Pennsylvania and Delaware. At his death in 1808, Jefferson hailed his onetime "moderate" opponent in the Continental Congress:

"Among the first advocates for the rights of his country when assailed by Great Britain, he continued to the last the orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government, and his name will be consecrated in history as one of the great worthies of the revolution.”

Song Lyric of the Day (From “1776,” The Tune That Richard Nixon Nixed)

“To the right, ever to the right

Never to the left, forever to the right

We have gold, a market that will hold

Tradition that is old, a reluctance to be bold.”—“Cool, Cool, Considerate Men,” from 1776, book by Peter Stone, music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards (1969)

For a long time, I remembered incorrectly the title of this song, substituting “Conservative” for “Considerate”—but you really can’t blame me.

First, there are those lyrics—which, the intention of the Second Continental Congress delegates who sing it in the musical to the contrary, are less about reason than about reactionary tendencies.

Second, though I’ve seen the film 1776 a half-dozen times since its release in 1972, it was only about a year ago, when I caught it again on Turner Classic Movies, that I saw this song performed. It had been included in the original Broadway show, but didn’t make it into the finished film. And therein lies a tale in itself, exciting equal parts dark humor, pathos and terror, because it involves an American President at the height of his power: Richard Nixon.

Wary Warner and Tricky Dick

The film adaptation of 1776 was the last major production to be associated with Jack L. Warner, perhaps the most colorful member of the siblings that ran Warner Brothers in its glory years in the Thirties and Forties. On Broadway, the musical ran for more than 1,200 performances, netting a Tony as best musical.

The 79-year-old Warner, now an independent producer, saw a chance to burnish credits that already included such triumphs as Yankee Doodle Dandy, My Fair Lady, and Camelot. He did everything he could to duplicate the play’s success, hiring just about every member of the original cast (with the notable exception of Betty Buckley as Martha Jefferson, replaced by Blythe Danner) and sticking as close as possible to the original book of the musical by Peter Stone.

With one exception…

Warner took the film to the White House, where he previewed it for his friend Richard M. Nixon. (Remember that Warner was a throwback to the days when studio heads tended to be politically conservative, unlike today.)

Previously, Nixon had gotten a special performance at the White House of the stage version—the first time a Broadway musical had ever been staged at the President’s mansion in its entirety. At that time, much to the astonishment of cast members, he stood up and applauded at the end of “Cool, Cool Considerate Men.”

At some point, though, either while watching the film or very shortly afterward, Tricky Dick itched, glowered, and got that puss on his face that bothered so many viewers when he debated Jack Kennedy in 1960.

What had happened? Maybe prior objections of some members of his administration and Secret Service detail to this song and to the anti-war “Mama, Look Sharp” (songwriter Sherman Edwards had turned them down) had finally begun to register.

But in the commentary for the DVD release a few years ago, Peter Stone suggested an alternative that makes more sense—at least because it involved more immediate cause and effect. It involved a pain-in-the-neck cast member whose politics annoyed the President.

A Not-So-Fun-Loving Ben Franklin

Though most original cast members had been retained, producers had given serious thought to getting another Ben Franklin. Howard Da Silva had been wonderful in the role on Broadway, but behind the scenes he had given the show’s creators all-around agita.

The actor’s heart attack, suffered at the time of the recording of the original-cast album, could have given the producers an out had they wished. They could have said that uncertainty about his health was spelling trouble with the insurance companies who made filming possible. But the ruse would have been too transparent.

Da Silva caught onto their unease and implored them to cast him. He loved his great part, of course, but he also saw his appearance on film as a vindication of sorts for his refusal to “name names” before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which had resulted in his blacklisting by Hollywood. Even his appearances onscreen in the 1960s, when the blacklist was lifted, had been infrequent and low-profile.

In short, Da Silva couldn’t bear to pass up a plum role. He promised to be on his best behavior, and, throughout the filming, he was as good as his word.

But fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, and Da Silva, liberal/leftist that he was, couldn’t abide the idea of the current occupant of the White House. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he believed, Nixon wasn’t just a politician with views that differed from his own, but the demagogue who had whipped up Californians and the nation into hysteria about Communism.

In other words, Da Silva concluded, Nixon was directly responsible for his unemployment during the blacklist era.

And so, the day after the performance at the White House, there was Da Silva, bound and determined that the President wouldn’t ruin other lives as he had his own, joining a line of anti-Vietnam picketers outside the executive mansion, where Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and their whole gang could see him.

Nixon’s appointments calendar shows that he dined with Warner two months before the film’s release on November 7. By this time, the President’s paranoia had been ramped up to a fever pitch by the effort to win a second term and to silence critics of his Vietnam policy (not to mention two inquisitive young whelps from the Washington Post asking questions about a third-rate break-in at the Watergate Hotel). As a favor to Nixon, Warner edited out the scene.

Fat White Guys in Wigs: A Formula for Success?

If he had wanted to, I suppose, Warner could have reasoned that the scene, featuring a minuet among the anti-independence forces in the Continental Congress, was terribly slow, not helped much by chunky middle-aged actors in wigs.

This was not a formula for success in a film that, unlike most musicals in the genre’s golden age, leaned far more heavily on words than moving images. You can bet your bottom dollar that he must have wondered if 18th-century feminine attire could allow for the likes of Cyd Charisse.

But in reality, Warner’s move was nothing but a cave-in to a powerful man. Or, as he put it: “He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day."

There the matter would have ended, with the footage irretrievably lost. But Warner’s loss of his former might and power in the industry (a situation that would be paralleled within two years by Nixon’s fall from grace) actually ensured that the scene would not be destroyed.

You see, in his salad days, as head of his family-run studio, Warner had customarily destroyed unused footage. A prime example of this was George Cukor’s sterling 1954 version of A Star is Born, starring Judy Garland. Despite ecstatic previews, Warner Brothers execs felt that the long running time would limit showings of the film and, thus, box office.

It was bad enough that the consequent cuts—two musical numbers and some crucial dramatic scenes—probably deprived Judy Garland of a Best Actress Oscar. But much of the footage fell permanently by the wayside, too. Years later, when the film was restored, much of this footage could not be re-inserted as originally shot, but had to feature dialogue running over production stills that represented the only visual record of what had been deleted.

I’m not going to argue here that “Cool, Cool Considerate Men” is a golden find compared with Garland’s show-stopping “Lose That Long Face.” But it did represent the one point in the film where the other side of the story of independence was told (even though that side was treated satirically).

Now, no longer heading a studio, Warner had no say on what happened to the footage—which, in this instance, the film’s editor put into unmarked boxes and buried in what Dick Cheney (a later “cool, cool considerate man”) might call “a secure, undisclosed location.” That location turned out to be 645 feet below ground in a salt mine warehouse near Lyons, Kansas. It was eventually rediscovered in readying the DVD release.

Today's GOP Reenacts Discarded Continental Congress Scenario

Today, on Capitol Hill, the GOP seems hell-bent on staging its own contemporary version of “Cool, Cool Considerate Men.”

Again, there’s a mystical, misplaced faith in “the market.”

Again, the leaders of the right-wing would rather go “never to the left,” no matter the circumstances affecting the country nor the real risk to their survival as a national party.

Most shamefully, there is “a reluctance to be bold,” even though the virtually unprecedented challenges facing the nation often require nothing less.

The irony in all of this is that the leader of the “Cool, Cool Considerate Men” in the Second Continental Congress, John Dickinson, later left by the wayside his “reluctance to be bold.” It wasn’t just, as 1776 indicated, that even though he couldn’t sign the Declaration of Independence, he joined the Continental Army to fight the British government he had once loyally believed in.

No, after the war—when he went back to Philadelphia, this time as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Delaware—Dickinson showed that he was a Burkean conservative—opposed to “change” but not to “reform.”

The convention almost foundered because of the split between large states, who wanted proportional representation in Congress, and small states, who wanted an equal number of votes for each state.

Then Dickinson advocated a solution that had never been tried before, but proved a brilliant solution to the problem at hand. It was a bicameral, or two-house, legislature in which the House of Representatives would be apportioned by population while the Senate would contain equal numbers for each state.

The idea came to be eagerly embraced not just within the federal branch or even by the individual states (Nebraska remains the lone holdout for a unicameral legislature) but even among foreign governments.

Today’s Republicans would do well to think how, for instance, they might embrace the Dickinson approach by formulating their own innovative yet practical approach to health care, rather than simply saying no all the time.

Sometimes, “a reluctance to be bold” only loses a revered “tradition that is old.”