01:06 AM EDT on Saturday, June 3, 2006

The late Harvard historian Allen French has written that Nathanael Greene was apparently the first person to use the phrase "a Declaration of Independence."

Greene first made use of the term on Oct. 23, 1775, in a long letter to Samuel Ward Sr., a Rhode Island delegate to the Continental Congress. In this letter, Greene also used an argument for independence later put forth by Thomas Paine in his famous pamphlet "Common Sense:" if America were an independent nation, then France could come to its aid with badly needed supplies of every sort, chiefly gunpowder.

The French will never agree to furnish us with Powder as long as there is the least probability of Accomodation between us and Great Britain. . . .

Greene next used the phrase in a letter to his brother, Jacob, on Dec. 20, 1775. Greene had just read King George III's speech in which the king pledged to send mercenary Hessian soldiers against his own subjects. In this letter, Greene presaged Thomas Jefferson's preamble to the Declaration of Independence by appealing to a wider audience -- heaven -- to witness the need for independence.

Greene wrote to his brother, We can no longer preserve our freedom and continue the connection with her [England]. With safety we can appeal to Heaven for the necessity, propriety, and rectitude of such a measure.

Greene again used the phrase in a remarkably prescient letter to Ward on Jan. 4, 1776, in which he wrote that a break with England was no more than common sense.

Greene predicted that German aggression in the Mediterranean would soon force France to attack Germany, which would bring England into a European war on Germany's side. Then France and Spain would align themselves with a newly independent America against England -- all of which did happen.

Let us embrace them as Brothers, Greene wrote of the French. We want not their Land Forces in America; their Navy, we do. . . . Their military stores we want amazingly. . . . Permit me then to Recommend from the Sincerity of my Heart, ready at all times to bleed in my Countrys Cause, a Declaration of Independance and call upon the World and the Great God who Governs it to Witness the Necessity, propriety and Rectitude thereof. . . .