Why did the colonists revolt?

We are approaching our 250^th anniversary of Independence Day. In the 1770s, American colonists were comparatively prosperous, lightly taxed, and their safety was protected by the military might of the British Empire. The American colonists were relatively well-fed, sheltered, literate, unthreatened by war, with land and opportunity just over the horizon for the industrious. So, why did the colonists revolt? 

Because they believed in God-given rights.

American colonists were far more educated than most of the world. In 1776, the American colonies had nine well-established colleges. These included Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, William and Mary, the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia University), Queen's College (Rutgers), and College of Rhode Island (Brown University). Beyond formal education, life-long self-learning was fashionable, and most of the Founders were familiar with the teachings of Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Our people … were observed by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.” Ben should know. He built an enormous fortune selling products that required a literate audience.

The Declaration of Independence lists the particulars for the revolt, but the overarching reason was that the British monarchy believed the colonists were mere subjects. Under English common law, anyone born within the King’s dominions was a natural-born subject, not a citizen, of the British Crown. This lack of British citizenship chafed the American colonists. They viewed themselves as English and took the Enlightenment's definition of “natural rights” seriously. As Boston tour guides are fond of saying, the colonists never yelled, “The British are coming,” because they believed themselves to be British.

Almost three years prior to the Declaration, the Boston Tea Party made rebellion the topic of conversation at the dinner table, in taverns, and in churches. The battle cry was “No taxation without representation!” Today, we naively assume the colonists were angry about taxes, but the operative part of that slogan was the last two words. That’s what got their ire up.

The British were on top of the world. The popular patriotic song of the day, Rule Britannia, made that clear. Englishmen had rights, limited at the time, but those rights were sacrosanct. Even these limited rights were not bestowed upon the colonists. Propertied English males could vote for a person to represent them in the halls of government, but the powers-that-be refused to bestow that same right to colonists. Thus, no representation.

The irony is that even without representation in Parliament, the colonists enjoyed more personal liberty than their English counterparts. To have properly functioning colonies three thousand miles away from the mother country, the colonists were allowed to make many of their own rules through locally elected legislatures. The colonists had developed a taste for self-government and preferred to be somewhat independent of the rulers of the British Empire. Edicts that sailed in from across the Atlantic were more than annoying. The colonists grew increasingly enraged with the palpable disrespect they received from London. Two examples illustrate this point.

The view was different from London, of course. The rulers of the British Empire saw the colonists as getting a free ride. The great British Navy kept the seas safe for New England ships, and the mercantilist Parliament regulated trade, allowing the American maritime industry to prosper. To keep the colonies safe from foreign invasion, England built forts and posted troops throughout their North American holdings. The French and Indian War caused a major drain on the British treasury. Parliament looked at these costs and saw colonials acting like ungrateful, spoiled children who had grown large enough to pay their own way.

Were the colonists’ feelings hurt because the English refused to allow them to join their club as full members? Not exactly. Their belief in self-governance was heartfelt and part of their character. The American Revolution may have been sparked by an overbearing crown, but the fuel was an educated populace that was experienced in home rule. The edicts from England rubbed the colonists the wrong way because they were used to making decisions for themselves and had adopted Enlightenment teachings, which held that self-governance was a natural right.

Or as Thomas Jefferson powerfully put it, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Read all about it!

The Anti-Constitution Mercenaries

In the past, I blogged at What Would The Founders Think? One of my articles was titled, “The Founders Fear.” The article asserted that the Founders architected a limited government because they feared unrestrained power. This was written way back in 2011, but I received a scolding from a troll last week. Reeve wrote: 

Why did the colonists revolt?

In the five centuries following the Magna Carta (1215), Englishmen had gradually gained individual rights, so that by the late eighteenth century, the English were beginning to exercise a degree of self-government. The King and nobility still wielded substantial power, but Parliament had gained increasing authority, especially the elected House of Commons. 

Toward the end of this period, the opinions of those outside the aristocracy were increasingly influenced by the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of the seventeen and eighteenth centuries. Enlightenment thinkers began to challenge existing religious, government, and social norms, and pushed for additional individual liberty and the free exercise of natural rights. They argued that mankind not only had a capacity for self-government, but that it was a natural right. Through an evolutionary process, Englishmen grew to enjoy an ever-increasing say over who made the laws that governed their lives. That is, those Englishmen who lived in England. If an Englishman happened to live in one of the British colonies, he was still a mere subject of the crown with no representation in Parliament.

Benjamin Franklin  before Lords in Council in Whitehall Chapel

Our American Heritage

The colonists did not only revolt against taxes; they revolted to stop the British from taking away the self-governance they already had been exercising since the earliest colonization. The crown appointed governors for the colonies, but over three thousand miles of ocean in the day of wind-powered ships gave ordinary Americans more freedom than a minor noble living in Bristol, England. (Connecticut and Rhode Island even elected their own governors.) Americans bristled over dictates from Parliament because colonial legislatures had been exercising substantial power for well over a century.

Plymouth Plantation Today

What happened in those secret meeting in 1787?

“Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?”—James Madison

Fifty-five men came to Philadelphia in May of 1787 to secretly plot the overthrow of the United States government. At first, a coup was not subscribed to by all the participants, but most of them soon acquiesced to framing an entirely new form of government. At the time, this conclave was called the Federal Convention; today we refer to it as the Constitutional Convention.

James Madison, circa convention

One of the first acts of the convention was to declare the proceedings secret. There was a general fear that newspapers would excite Congress and the populace against abandoning the Articles of Confederation. The windows were nailed shut and guards posted at the doors. Delegates were lectured by George Washington never to whisper a word to anyone about what was happening inside the chamber. The official minutes are scanty, recording little beyond an official tally of the votes. A few delegates made private notes, but of those, only one attended every day and wrote everything down. James Madison purposely sat in front so he could take extensive notes of all the deliberations. He recorded the proceedings in his own shorthand, and then transcribed his daily notes into longhand. When finally published in 1840, Madison’s notes exceeded 230,000 words—all written with a quill pen.

Book Review: Mastermind

Mastermind

The many faces of the 9/11 architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

by Richard Miniter

Some like to dismiss our Constitution by saying that it’s too old to deal with things like modern-day terrorism. The Founders had to handle unrest, political intrigue, and treason. Benedict Arnold almost turned over West Point to the enemy. The Newburgh Conspiracy tested Washington’s mettle as a military commander. Shay’s Rebellion is only the best known of the violent protests that spread throughout the newly formed states. James Wilson and about thirty armed friends held off a riot in Philadelphia that could have ended his life before he helped launch a constitutional republic. The Whiskey Rebellion threatened to upend the fledgling republic operating under the newly enacted Constitution. Barbary pirates kept our first three presidents awake at night. The Aaron Burr Conspiracy showed that political intrigue could undermine a budding republic.

These were only some of the more prominent violent protests and near insurrections. The Founders not only understood the frailties of man, they also had personal experience with a few that actually harbored evil intent. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would not have been foreign to their experience.