William Smith's Catonian Loyalism, Race, and the Politics of Language

Abstract

In early 1776, all Philadelphia knew where Rev. William Smith's loyalties lay. That February, at the behest of the Continental Congress, the Anglican clergyman and provost of the College of Philadelphia presided over an elaborate memorial service for Richard Montgomery, the American general killed in the failed invasion of Quebec. The city's notables packed the new German Reformed Church to hear Smith venerate the man he called the "Proto-Martyr to your rights" (Oration 23).1 After comparing Montgomery's and Cincinnatus's devotion to "virtue, liberty, truth, and justice," Smith no doubt surprised many in the audience by praising Montgomery's "loyalty to his sovereign" (24, 31–). Quoting the Olive Branch Petition, a six-month-old last-ditch effort to avert the Revolution, Smith boldly declared, "the delegated voice of the continent . . . supports me in praying for a restoration 'of the former harmony between Great Britain and these Colonies'" (33). But the king had refused even to read Congress's olive branch, and the delegated voice of the continent no longer saw reconciliation as a viable possibility. Privately, John Adams seethed at the "insolent Performance." New Jersey delegate William Livingston moved that the Congress thank Smith for his service and publish his speech, but the motion was withdrawn after Adams and other radicals objected that Smith had "declared the Sentiments of the Congress to continue in a Dependency on G Britain which Doctrine this Congress cannot now approve" (R. Smith 505). Undeterred, Smith published An Oration in Memory of General Montgomery (1776) himself, ignoring counsel from Livingston and Benjamin Franklin to omit the reference to the Olive Branch Petition and his reflections on Montgomery's loyalty to the king (Franklin 376). Indeed, Smith did just the opposite, adding a preface declaring, "whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a good Citizen or Friend to Liberty" must rest on his efforts to prevent American independence (Oration 4).

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