March 4th Lecture Notes
The Political Culture of Pre-Revolutionary America
EARLY AC HOMEPAGE | LECTURE NOTES
1760 - 1776
1759 -- Wolfe's defeat of Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham above
Quebec City
1761 -- Coronation of George III
1763 -- Treaty ending French & Indian War
Who governed? / who decided on Revolution??
Unruly urban mobs, litigious scribblers, conspirators and/or
propagandists??
The Historiographical Debate in this century:
The Anglophiliac/proto-Loyalist position -- 1880s/Henry Cabot Lodge/TR/Charles McLean Andrews-- Was the Revolution a good idea?? Wouldn't we be better one with Britain? Were the causes sufficient to break the bonds?? Weren't the revolutionaries pretty nasty/disreputable chaps? Look who's/what's followed in their wake?
Progressives -- 1910-1940s -- Charles A.
Beard and his mates --Political scientists --> political
cynics -- not what they say but what they do
Colonists tricked into Revolution by political manipulatives --
shrewd propagandists/yellow journalists/demagogues/
Real motives were mercenary -- repudiation of debts/perpetuation
of slavery/holding one's place with urban mobs (Sam Adams)
Idealist interpretation -- Bernard Bailyn -- The revolution's intellectual leaders were genuinely (if exageratedly) frightened by England's moves to reduce colonies to colonies -- bekieved their lives were were threatened by first parliamentary and then royal despotism; in mounting an opposition argument they transformed politically liberal practices into political principles -- The revolutionary as articulate, educated pamphleteer/ later constitution-writer
Reaction to Bailyn and his elitist/ articulate revolutionaries -- Jesse Lemisch's "Jack Tars" and "Inarticulates"; Revolution brought on by the economic discontents of an urban proletariat [English godfather of this interpretation -- EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class [1962/]; Gary Nash, Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution (1976)
Current attempts to merge/blend these interpretations -- Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution
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My remarks today --
Link interpretively with earlier lectures -- with Ben
Franklin's irresistible rise...
And with the unanticiapted fall of King's College -- despite
linking its fortunes to the Crown -- even to its naming -- and to
the King's fellow churhmen and magistrates...
Inferences to be drawn about the American scene:
Substantial social/economic and political mobility --
Absence of a dominant Establishment -- either religious or
political
England's fitful attention to its NA colonies -- "benign
neglect"
Sources of American Political Culture:
I. Material Considerations
Distance -- and Time -- from
acknowledged political authority; 15 weeks minumum turnaround?
England's greater concern with domestic turmoil (Scots in early
18th C); continental struggle with France..;
NA colonies of greater interest to English merchants than politicians; their interest economic not imperialistic.
Space -- capacity of uncivil/anti-social settlers to get out from under both imperial and local political authorities
Resources -- abundance of land; much of its cultivatable; abundance of water transport; abundance of wood/fuel; abundance of gamne/fish -- the banishment of hunger as a pressing fact of life
--> all encourage early self-sufficiency (to those ready to move to the edge of settlement); early marriages; large families
--> shifts primacy from land and capital to labor/human productivity
B Franklin (1751) "Observations
Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries,
etc."
NA population doubling every 23 years or so -- "American
multiplication table"
II. Demographic Diversity
The peopling of American colonies with other than
English -- The Dutch/Swedes/French of 17thC settlements;
not exiled upon coming of English -- invited to stay and
prosper... [exception -- The French Acadians in Nova Scotia in
1755; dispersed]
Germans into Pennsylvania in early 18thC...
Africans throughout the Colonies -- what loyalty to Crown??
Scotch and Scotch-Irish into South -- Unwilling political subjects of England; differed in religious beliefs; no affection for crown
Colonies populated by Dissenters rather than upholders of the Religious Establishment -- Congregationalists and Presbyterians and Quakers in NE -- later Methodists and Baptists [Contrast with Spanish imperial policy in SAmerica] -- In no English colony were members of the Church of England in a majority; in several colonies dissenters enjoyed government support and C of E did not...
Crevecoeur -- "What Is an American?" has only doubts about the acculturative potential of the Irish...
III. Political Inclusiveness
Lots of colonists participated directly in local
politics -- suffrage extended to those who owned property;
difference in economic realities produces a political difference
(as compared with England, for example); women didn't vote;
slaves didn't vote; substantial numbers of urban workers didn't
vote, either -- But lots did -- and often
All colonies had annually elected Assemblies wherein some
measure of popular power resided --
Counterpoised against
Most governors appointed from England -- who in turn appointed
his Governor's Council
Gov'rs with extensive formal powers -- but generally obliged to "get along by going along" with local leadership
Colonial politics not DEMOCRATIC in sense that representatives were a cross section of the community; tended to be the wealthiest and the better educated -- considerable continuity in holding of leadership positions
But one wealthy. familied aspiring politician needed to call upon voters to displace a seated wealthy familied office holder -- "just folks" choosing among "their betters" -- who made it their business to acknowledge such support on election day...
Colonial courts equally viewed as places where "just folks" brought some collective political clout; local judges beholden to local sentiments as reflected in juries...// local advocates...; Courts not staffed with English judges, but judges drawn from the local elites... never too far from the community's wishes
Colonial newspapers/magazines/almanacs --
Boston News-Letter -- 1704
Philadelphia -- American Mercury -- 1719
New York Gazette -- 1725
John Peter Zenger -- 1734 -- New-York Weekly Journal
critical of Gov. Cosby and NYGazette;
charged with seditious libel; acquitted in closely followed jury
trial (1736);
-- second paper in town -- take on first and its patrons....
Independent Reflector -- NYC - 1753
A literate political community -- closely followed political controversies in England; generally better read in English political journalism critical of the standing government.... Religious dissenters --> Political dissenters
IV. Colonial Mobs
Recurrences of popular opposition to established
authority manifesting itself in mob activity against the
political leaders;
Thrusting out of Governor Harvey in Virginia in 1630s...
Leisler's Rebellion in NY in 1680s
Existence of crowd organizers/coordinators/leaders --
MLKing/Saul Alinsky/Al Sharpton/Mark Rudd.
Certain groundrules developed over time -- self-imposed limits on
street ploitics; but a vehicle for political protest by the
non-franchised, esp. in the towns -- Sam Adams //
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The Question perhaps less how did the colonists learn their
revolutionary ways than why they called upon them when they did?
Why then?
-- The twelve years after 1763??
1. The colonies now at long last had England's
attention
-- War had given English chance to observe colonial prosperity --
and some colonial dealing with the enemy
-- War had strapped England's coffers -- Crown and Parliament see
Colonies a likely source of heretofore overlooked tax revenue --
Time for colonies to begin to pay for the benefits of Empire...
which had hetetofore fallen to the colonists for free
-- Crown prepared to put in place some "King's men" in
the colonies to look after England's interests
-- Army -- More England-beholden governors and judges --
Admiralty courts -- an Anglican bishop or two??
To demand more expressions of loyalty (less winking) from
colonists assigned Crown positions
2. Colonists read into Parliamentary/Crown initiatives a plot to deprive them of basic political and economic privileges they had long enjoyed without ever having to provide them with an ideological or economic defence; the process of making these previously enjoyed privileges as English subjects into the unalienable rights of mankind
Effective home rule
No standing army in peacetime
Local courts to decide local matters
Governors "getting along by going along"
Taxes self-imposed by local governments in which they were
represented
Right to their local religious practices -- no oversight of
English bishop
[Extensive listing in Declaration of Independence]
A free ride within the imperial economy -- all the benefits of membership; few of the costs (Navigation Acts easily skirted) Stamp Act/Townshend Act/Quartering Act/Port of Boston Act
As Parliament/King put squeeze on, colonists react in an
institutionally protective/conservative matter -- protecting what
they have had
But also in am ideologically radical way -- with arguments for
why they ought BY RIGHT have what they have had -- and their
English cousins didn't...
Arguments -- In newspapers/pamphlets/broadsides/ -- the new
secular medium
Not only secular -- but anti-clerical
Opening for lawyers. polemicists, journalists
And in political resistance -- those ready to engage in
parliamentary activities
And in mob actions -- those ready to lead or constitute mobs