Carlisle Peace Commission

The Second Continental Congress, aware that British troops were about to be withdrawn from Philadelphia, insisted on demanding full independence, which the commission was not authorised to grant.

The commission was empowered to offer a type of self-rule that Thomas Pownall had first proposed a decade earlier and later formed the foundation of British Dominion status.

[1] The fact that the commission was authorised to negotiate with the Continental Congress as a body also represented a change in official British government policy, which had been to treat only with the individual states.

Walpole remarked that Carlisle, then a young man, was "very fit to make a treaty that will not be made"[5] and that he "was totally unacquainted with business and though not void of ambition, had but moderate parts and less application.

[10] Congress replied by insisting for American independence to be recognised or all British forces to withdraw first from the states, terms that the commission was not authorised to accept.

[11] Johnstone tried to bribe some congressmen, and the Marquis de Lafayette challenged Carlisle to a duel over some anti-French statements that he had made.

[4] The British, being unable to bring General George Washington's Continental Army to a decisive engagement, resumed the military campaign and turned to a Southern Strategy as their next attempt to win the war in North America.