<P> Adams wrote to a friend, stating that the petition served no purpose, that war was inevitable, and that the colonies should have already raised a navy and taken British officials prisoner . The letter was intercepted by British officials and news of its contents reached Great Britain at about the same time as the petition itself . British advocates of a military response to the colonists used Adams' letter to claim that the petition itself was insincere . </P> <P> On August 21, Penn and Lee provided a copy of the petition to Lord Dartmouth, the colonial secretary, followed with the original on September 1 . Penn and Lee reported back on September 2: "we were told that as his Majesty did not receive it on the throne, no answer would be given ." In response to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the King had already issued the Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition on August 23, declaring the North American colonies to be in a state of rebellion and ordering "all Our officers...and all Our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion ." The hostilities which Adams had foreseen undercut the petition; the King had answered it before it even reached him . </P> <P> The King's refusal to consider the petition gave Adams and others the opportunity to push for independence, and it characterized the King as intransigent and uninterested in addressing the colonists' grievances . It polarized the issue in the minds of many colonists, who realized that the choice from that point forward was between complete independence and complete submission to British rule, a realization crystallized a few months later in Thomas Paine's widely read pamphlet Common Sense . </P>

What effect did the olive branch petition have
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