Plan for a Treaty with France: “There Shall be a firm, inviolable, and universal Peace”
The declaration written by Lord Howe on June 20 finally reached the Continental Congress on July 18, six days after Howe had arrived at Sandy Hook. Howe’s letter to Benjamin Franklin was delivered along with it, and Franklin, rather than having it appear that he was secretly corresponding with the enemy, asked that the letter be read to the whole Congress. A committee of three — Thomas Jefferson, Robert Treat Paine, and Charles Carroll — was appointed to review Howe’s declaration and the accompanying letters to several of the colonial governors. But other business in Congress underscored the fact that Howe was too late: that same day, another Congressional committee presented a plan, composed by John Adams, for “treaties to be entered into with foreign states or kingdoms”. Although the title was generic, the plan was really for a treaty with France, and it began with this:
There Shall be a firm, inviolable, and universal Peace, and a true and Sincere Friendship between the most Serene and mighty Prince, Lewis the Sixteenth, the most Christian King his Heirs and Successors, and the united States of America; and the Subjects of the most Christian King, and of the Said States; and between the Countries, Islands, Cities, and Towns Situate under the Jurisdiction of the most Christian King and of the Said united States, and the People and Inhabitants thereof of every degree; without Exception of Persons or Places; and the Terms hereinafter mentioned Shall be perpetual between the most Christian King, his Heirs and successors, and the Said united States.
The fact that the Congress was planning to appeal to Britain’s age-old enemy for help clearly showed that they had no intention of giving up their newly-declared independence.
Sources
- Journals of the Continental Congress, 5:574-575.
- “I. A Plan of Treaties, 18 June 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0116-0002. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 4, February–August 1776, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 265–278.]