Chapter 6
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT
Now let us turn to the other side of the Atlantic. As stated previously, the French and American Revolutions were both part of a titanic wave of change that played out on two different continents. An in-depth examination of the views of our Founders will reveal that, as in France, the American Revolution was composed of two quite divergent schools of thought that at times came to consensus but more frequently exhibited sharp irreconcilable differences. Moreover, the same Moderate–Radical Enlightenment categorization becomes apparent when exploring the major distinctions in thought among our Founders and thereby serves as a useful framework to better understand the divergent impulses of the American Revolutionary Era. Thus, both the French and American Revolutions were essentially battlefields "between rival democratic and aristocratic variants of a single Atlantic revolution."
The names discussed in the following will be very familiar to the reader; we all learned about these historical figures as early as first or second grade. We most likely continued to read or hear about them throughout the formative years of our education and perhaps even well into our adult lives. Yet I hope that exploring these familiar figures through the novel lens of the two opposing poles of Enlightenment thinking will provide an illuminating, clarifying, and perhaps even surprising perspective.
One of the fascinating aspects of the American Revolution is how the revolutionary undercurrent oscillated back and forth from Moderate to Radical and back to Moderate again, like a pendulum. In fact, the tidal shifts around our nation's birth provide an exemplary microcosm of the overall theme of this book. As we will explore, the fifteen-year period between 1775 and 1790 provides a fascinating contextual backdrop against which the tensions, impulses, and motivations underlying the two competing visions for the country are richly illustrated.
In the years leading up to the revolutionary conflict, despite an outpouring of protest, most colonists expected that their grievances against the Crown would ultimately be addressed without needing to resort to a complete break from England. Some of these protests, mostly boycotts, did grow increasingly boisterous in response to newly imposed British burdens like the Stamp Act (1765), which required colonists to place government-issued stamps on all printed matter as a mechanism to levy duties for the Crown.
As described in Bernard Bailyn's now classic analysis of the American Revolution, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), the colonists developed a "logic of rebellion" not immediately, but gradually. As the effects of British actions accumulated (such as Parliament's vengeful enactment of the coercive actions of 1774) and progressively demonstrated to the colonists the reality of what was becoming a methodical assault on their liberties, support for rebellion grew. The revolutionary leaders increasingly began to suspect that a deliberate conspiracy was at play to eliminate colonial freedom and force the colonists' submission to the Crown's tyranny, in effect "enslaving the colonies, or bringing them under arbitrary government."
Nevertheless, many loyalists proceeded with plans for reconciliation with the Crown. Radicals like Benjamin Franklin were among the first to propose independence in opposition to their loyalist colleagues. Franklin wrote in 1775:
When I consider the extreme corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this old rotten state [Britain], and the glorious public virtue so predominant in our rising country, I cannot but apprehend more mischief than benefit from a closer union. I fear they will drag us after them in all the plundering wars which their desperate circumstances, injustice, and rapacity may prompt them to undertake . . . I apprehend, therefore, that to unite us intimately will only be to corrupt and poison us also.
Of course, from the British perspective, the situation looked utterly different. As the world's leading hegemonic empire solidified its power, Britain's costs of administering and securing her spreading domain increased markedly. England's financial problems were particularly acute in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, a global conflict between the British and French Empires that played out across many territories. Although Britain skirmished with the French on many continents and eventually emerged as the leading colonial power, the massive accumulation of wartime debts represented an immense burden for the Crown. Consequently, the only viable solution for Britain was to extract greater financial returns from her overseas assets through the imposition of taxes and duties.
As the appeal of revolt amplified among the colonists, the revolutionary leaders were put in a delicate situation because they faced homegrown peacekeeping challenges in addition to dealing with British tyranny. True, the revolutionary leaders' primary focus was developing and coordinating an effective response to the Crown's aggressions; however, at the same time, colonial leaders had to maintain civic law and order within their own territories while sustaining their individual influential and powerful leadership positions.
The need to balance these two loci of activity became particularly grave after the Stamp Act, which had a broader and deeper reach than previous duties and consequently provoked the most furious reaction yet seen. The colonial leaders were also irate at this hefty Crown imposition, but at the same time, they had to rein in the public response and keep it from turning into anarchy. In Massachusetts, "subversive local cliques . . . like the Sons of Liberty, [started] pillaging and wrecking" property. These violent actions concerned Massachusetts' ruling elite, like brewer Sam Adams, his cousin John Adams, and John Hancock, a leading merchant and patriot.
Paradoxically, in many ways the political structure of the Thirteen Colonies closely resembled the aristocratic model in place in England. Long-standing colonial governments were controlled by powerful families that had been ruling for decades. In the Virginia Assembly, for example, since the establishment of the colony, Benjamin Harrison I, Benjamin Harrison II, and Benjamin Harrison III, IV, and V had all served in governing positions. "These were men with a century of governing behind them. America was already old before she got a chance to be 'born' from an idea."
One of the resulting ironies of this established family-controlled rule is that the same colonial leaders who began to coalesce around their grievances against "tyrannical treatment" from the Crown were hardly egalitarian in the administration of their own colonies. As a result, these colonial ruling "aristocratic" elites had to strike a fine balance between criticism of authoritarian rule by King George and the maintenance of law, order, and firm jurisdiction in their own backyards. As we will see, this tension between the elite political leaders in the colonies and the common people was in fact an antecedent to a more manifest and enduring political division between the moderate and radical revolutionary leaders that would follow. From the perspective of the colonial leaders, the need to balance their rebellious spirit toward the Crown with the more conservative decorum within their own dominion was quite challenging. The tension inherent in this balance motivated many of the colonial aristocrats to critique with some anxiety the more populist, antiaristocratic expressions of the soon-to-be Radicals.
In any case, at the start of the American Revolution in 1774–1775, "hardly anyone intended to replace the highly elitist political systems in the Thirteen Colonies with more democratic and representative legislatures and constitutions." The objections of the colonists, as illustrated in the writings of John Adams, were firmly contextualized within the existing British Parliamentary governing framework. Ever since England's Glorious Revolution in the late 17th century, Britain was transformed from a near absolute monarchy to a more progressive constitutional monarchy. Accordingly, a new British constitution was adopted that established clear lines of authority preventing abuses and limiting any overreach by the monarch without explicit approval from the aristocratic elite (today's House of Lords).
English Enlightenment thought underpinning the new British constitution had evolved all through the English Civil Wars and Commonwealth period. For example, political writers from the early 18th century such as John Trenchard (1662–1723) and Thomas Gordon (1691–1750) wrote searing critiques of British politics, advocating libertarian ideals. Many of their works had reached the colonies and were quite widely distributed. "The writings of Trenchard and Gordon ranked with the treatises of Locke as the most authoritative statement of the nature of political liberty." Many of Trenchard's and Gordon's themes, such as repudiation of the British monarch's use of standing armies to intimidate the populace throughout the British empire, undoubtedly stuck a chord with the colonists as their own conflict with the Crown escalated.
It was from this point of view, with deep knowledge and appreciation of the multifaceted issues underpinning the development of Britain's own constitutional monarchy, that the aristocratic leaders of the colonies enumerated their grievances in the mid-1770s. The major Enlightenment thinkers reviewed in the previous chapters provided the colonial leaders with philosophical and conceptual frameworks for governing (along with the classical Greek and Roman texts with which they were unarguably familiar). But also, the prolific writings on British historical events in the 17th and early 18th centuries provided a more textured landscape of practical considerations upon which John Adams and the other leaders were forced to maneuver. The consequence of this blend of influences was that initial colonial complaints were not formulated with an eye toward independence, but instead attempted to redress specific injustices resulting from Britain not abiding by the spirit of its own mixed-government constitution on the colonial side of the Atlantic.
Thus, in the mid-1770s, while Adams and many other colonial leaders were striving for a higher level of autonomy for the colonies, they were doing so fully under the auspices of this existing British constitution, which had well-defined provisions for governing the remote parts of the British Empire. This was the colonial leaders' existing frame of reference. Interestingly, in interpreting the writings of John Adams, many modern readers have confounded references to "violations against the Constitution," believing Adams was referring to the Constitution of the United States, which of course had not yet been written. In fact, Adams was referring to violations against the British constitution that had been established after the 1688 Glorious Revolution. Similarly, in Adams's writings, many mentions of "The Revolution" referred to the same English Glorious Revolution, not the American Revolution, as many modern-day readers suppose. Therefore, since colonial leaders had the British mixed-government model as their frame of reference, the accusations against the Crown for which they demanded redress emphasized a failure to apply the principles of Britain's own constitutional monarchy to the American colonies.
Adams was also patently inspired by the Enlightenment writings of Locke and Montesquieu. As the American Revolution progressed, his vision for what needed fixing was based on the concept that the established elite political leaders in the colonies (a group of which he was part) could self-govern and replicate the very "English gentry republicanism" on the other side of the ocean. Many of the colony leaders, Adams's peers, were of a similar mindset, striving for more autonomy from Britain with a vision of developing a colonial mixed-government model with a Montesquieuian separation of powers.
While expressing their repugnance at the development of Britain's stance vis-à-vis the colonies, the elites in this colonial ruling class were also cognizant of their need to ensure that the popular protests associated with the grievances against British actions (mainly of the agricultural and mercantile class) did not boil over into chaos. Colonial leaders were quite concerned lest they replace the tyranny of a man (the king) with the tyranny of a mob. As the great historian Carl Becker has written, the American Revolution was as much about "who should rule at home" as it was about "home rule" (independence from Britain).
However, this more moderate approach for redress within the existing stability of the colonial structure was about to be considerably challenged by voices advocating for a more dramatic and expansive solution. At this same point in 1774–1775, three radical leaders emerged and coalesced around a much more sweeping and what would become consequential point of view, forever changing the course of world history.