2.2 Revolutionary Ideas

In the 1760s, Benjamin Rush, a native of Philadelphia, recounted a visit to Parliament. Upon seeing the king’s throne in the House of Lords, Rush said he “felt as if he walked on sacred ground” with “emotions that I cannot describe.”¹ Throughout the eighteenth century, colonists had developed significant emotional ties with both the British monarchy and the British constitution. The British North American colonists had just helped to win a world war and most, like Rush, had never been more proud to be British. And yet, in a little over a decade, those same colonists would declare their independence and break away from the British Empire. Seen from 1763, nothing would have seemed as improbable as the American Revolution.

The Revolution built institutions and codified the language and ideas that still define Americans’ image of themselves. Moreover, revolutionaries justified their new nation with radical new ideals that changed the course of history and sparked a global “age of revolution.” But the Revolution was as paradoxical as it was unpredictable. A revolution fought in the name of liberty allowed slavery to persist. Resistance to centralized authority tied disparate colonies ever closer together under new governments. The revolution created politicians eager to foster republican selflessness and protect the public good but also encouraged individual self-interest and personal gain. The “founding fathers” instigated and fought a revolution to secure independence from Britain, but they did not fight that revolution to create a “democracy.” To successfully rebel against Britain, however, required more than a few dozen “founding fathers.” Common colonists joined the fight, unleashing popular forces that shaped the Revolution itself, often in ways not welcomed by elite leaders. But once unleashed, these popular forces continued to shape the new nation and indeed the rest of American history.

Revolutionary ideas

There were both long and short-term causes of the American Revolution. The French and Indian War was really just the culmination of these many causes and set the stage for the implementation of many revolutionary ideas.

Being occupied by tumultuous politics at home, between 1688 and the middle of the 18th century, Britain had failed to define the colonies’ relationship to the empire. As the American Yawp argues,

Constant war was politically consuming and economically expensive. Second, competing visions of empire divided British officials. Old Whigs and their Tory supporters envisioned an authoritarian empire, based on conquering territory and extracting resources. They sought to eliminate Britain’s growing national debt by raising taxes and cutting spending on the colonies. The radical (or patriot) Whigs based their imperial vision on trade and manufacturing instead of land and resources. They argued that economic growth, not raising taxes, would solve the national debt. Instead of an authoritarian empire, “patriot Whigs” argued that the colonies should have equal status with the mother country.²

 

Colonists had their own understanding of their place within the empire, and their vision was arguably even more diverse. While they believed themselves Englishmen and demanded their rights as such, they also believed that their economic and demographic prosperity was due to their own hard word and Great Britain’s hands-off approach to governing the colonies, a practice called salutary neglect by historians today.

The colonies had largely developed their own political institutions separate from England. Additionally, there was little consistency between the colonies themselves. In general, all the colonies practiced some form of representative government via the creation of colonial assemblies. In some of the colonies, it was these colonial assemblies who passed taxation, managed colonial revenue, and paid the salaries of royal officials such as the royal governors.

Having a political voice in Great Britain and the colonies was based on land ownership, “but because land was more easily obtained in the colonies, a higher proportion of male colonists participated in politics.”³ This is ideology of republicanism. This ideology focuses on the nature of power as a corrupting force and calls upon political representatives to work in the best interest of the public good, and not their own self-interests. While this ideology was radical in Great Britain, in the colonies it was widely accepted.

Notes

1. Benjamin Rush to Ebenezer Hazard, October 22, 1768, in L. H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), vol. 1, 68.
2. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, eds., “Chapter 5,” The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), II. The Origins of the American Revolution, at http://www.americanyawp.com/text/05-the-american-revolution/.
3. Locke, “Chapter 5,” II. Origins of the American Revolution.