Zubly's oft-repeated assertion that
Congress must speedily obtain one of two things--"a
reconciliation with Great Britain, or the means of carrying on
the war."
Reconciliation OR war! This was surely a new antithesis. Had not
arms been taken up for the purpose precisely of disposing their
adversaries "to reconciliation on reasonable terms"? Does Mr.
Zubly mean to say then that war is an alternative to
reconciliation--an alternative which will lead the colonies away
from compromise towards that which all have professed not to
desire? Is Mr. Zubly hinting at independence even before the King
has replied to the petition? No. This is not what Mr. Zubly
meant. What he had in the back of his mind, and what the Congress
was coming to have in the back of its mind, if one may judge from
the abbreviated notes which John Adams took of the debates in the
fall of 1775, was that if the colonies could not obtain
reconciliation by means of the non-intercourse measures very
soon--this very winter as Mr. Zubly hoped--they would have to
rely for reconciliation upon a vigorous prosecution of the war;
in which case the non-intercourse measures were likely to prove an
obstacle rather than an advantage, since they would make it
difficult, if not impossible, to obtain the "means of carrying on
the war.
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