Even the Boston radical Joseph Warren, who would die just a few months later at Bunker Hill, maintained that "an independence on Great Britain is not our aim. No, our wish is, that Britain and the Colonies may like oak and ivy grow and increase in strength together." As late as November 1775 Thomas Jefferson wrote that "there is not in the British Empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do." And George Washington continued to toast George III at dinners with his officers"
From Kaye's book on Paine