Franklin shot back, “Forces have been sent out and towns have been burnt. We cannot now expect happiness under the domination of Great Britain. All former attachments have been obliterated.” Each colony had “gone completely through a revolution,” Adams added, stripping authority from the Crown and empowering Congress and local assemblies. There could be no return to the old imperial ways. Rutledge suggested that Britain seek alliances with the independent states “before anything is settled with other foreign powers,” a thinly veiled reference to American overtures to France.
