Michael Hattem

And as part of that, the two leaders, the naval leader and the army leader, the brothers Howe, right?

Richard and William Howe, are empowered on a sort of a reconciling mission, a treaty mission.

And they arrange a meeting with Adams and Franklin in New Jersey to say, look, the king is willing to pardon everything that you've done.

Right.

But, you know, you have to you have to and we will rescind the previous legislations, all the things that they had complained about.

But you have to sign these oaths and you have to and the Congress has to rescind the declaration.

And by that point, even just a few weeks later, it was not a possibility.

Well, right.

And if you think back to that King's proclamation for suppressing rebellion, that is that arrives in the colonies in December of 1775, right before Payne's pamphlet.

In it, he says that the leaders, but also all the others who persist in this disobedience to the crown are going to be held guilty of treason.

And of course, the punishment for treason is death by hanging.

It does harken back to that.

franklin being you know one of the earliest proponents of colonial unity yes and the congress was not a site of much colonial unity for much of its life until this moment of independence when they do vote essentially unanimously for independence and so you know in some sense franklin's statement is an expression of okay we have this this moment of unity but it needs to last now yeah

I mean, the sense in England is one of... They see the Declaration as an expression of insolence, right?

Like, there are a lot of people in England who...

had been annoyed with the colonists for a very long time at this point, but also a good number of them who never really thought that they would actually go this far.

And we have a couple of pamphlets that were written in 1776 in England, you know, criticizing the Declaration of Independence.

And one is by John Lynde, who was a barrister.

And he in the pamphlet, he refers to the Congress as a gathering of simple individuals.

And he said that he tries to make the declaration seem like an affront to all Britons when he says that the declaration is an insult offered to everyone who bears the name of Britain.