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The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment," as a Postscript. Here he discusses the intense, nation-wide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution. This detailed study of the persistence of the nation's ideological origins adds a new dimension to the book and projects its meaning forward into vital current concerns.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
Bernard Bailyn
125 books121 followersBernard Bailyn is an American historian, author, and professor specializing in U.S. Colonial and Revolutionary-era History. He has been a professor at Harvard since 1953. Bailyn has won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice (in 1968 and 1987). In 1998 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.
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September 25, 2012
The road to the writing of this Pulitzer Prize winning book began when Bailyn was asked to prepare a collection of pamphlets of the American Revolutionary War era. In doing so he began to see connections, common sources, and particularly how the American colonial experience transformed a strand of British libertarian opposition thought into a uniquely American ideology that caused an intellectual revolution as to the basis for sovereignty, rights and representation and consent that led not only to the colonies declaring independence but shaped our constitution and led to the undermining of slavery, the disestablishment of religion and an entirely new and radical social relationship.
I have my doubts that a general readership would find this book interesting: although I sure did. But for someone who has enough interest in American political thought this is illuminating. I have to concur with the New York Times reviewer who said that one "cannot claim to understand the American Revolution without reading this book." Or at least, it would be much harder: you'd have to undertake the same study Bailyn did and read thousands of 18th century pamphlets--which would be formidable enough.
The book is logically organized and lucidly written and I found that even for someone like myself who thought I knew a lot about the founding, who has read Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Hamilton, Madison and Jay's Federalist Papers there are some surprises. I took for granted the influence of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, it's not really surprising to learn that a tradition of covenant theology was one strand of thinking nor classical Latin works of or about the Roman republic such as by Cicero, Livy and Tacitus. It was a bit surprising to learn the British common law tradition had a large part in this political thinking--but particularly surprising was learning the role of relatively obscure opposition Whig writers. And Bailyn also examines how the practical experience of colonial government, from charters to town halls to provincial legislatures shaped the way the founders saw and used this legacy to create a new kind of government. If you want to go deeper into the foundation of American political thought, I'd say this book is invaluable.
I have my doubts that a general readership would find this book interesting: although I sure did. But for someone who has enough interest in American political thought this is illuminating. I have to concur with the New York Times reviewer who said that one "cannot claim to understand the American Revolution without reading this book." Or at least, it would be much harder: you'd have to undertake the same study Bailyn did and read thousands of 18th century pamphlets--which would be formidable enough.
The book is logically organized and lucidly written and I found that even for someone like myself who thought I knew a lot about the founding, who has read Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Hamilton, Madison and Jay's Federalist Papers there are some surprises. I took for granted the influence of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, it's not really surprising to learn that a tradition of covenant theology was one strand of thinking nor classical Latin works of or about the Roman republic such as by Cicero, Livy and Tacitus. It was a bit surprising to learn the British common law tradition had a large part in this political thinking--but particularly surprising was learning the role of relatively obscure opposition Whig writers. And Bailyn also examines how the practical experience of colonial government, from charters to town halls to provincial legislatures shaped the way the founders saw and used this legacy to create a new kind of government. If you want to go deeper into the foundation of American political thought, I'd say this book is invaluable.
June 17, 2021
The Power Of Ideas In Forming America
Why did the American colonies declare their Independence from Great Britain?Bernard Bailyn's classic study, "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" argues that American Independence had its roots in the power of ideas -- of a rethinking of the proper role of government and a willingness to put thought into action with what became the uniquely American combination of idealism and realism. Bailyn's approach rejects certain types of other plausible explanations of the Revolution -- such as economic rivalry with the mother country or personal ambition on the part of colonial leaders --to tell his story of the origins of American ideas.
Bailyn finds the ideas that shaped the Revolution stated and debated in the ubiquitous pamphlets that appeared in the colonies between, about, 1760 -- 1776. But the source of the ideas are much deeper. Bailyn traces these ideas to the ancient Roman orators, through philosophical figures such as Locke and Vattel. The immediate source of the ideas which became America was in dissenting political thought in Great Britain in the later Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century following the Glorious Revolution. The concern was political corruption in the Britain of the time and the fear that the monarchy would reassert its dominance over British life. Early in the 18th century, well before the French-Indian War, these concerns found their way to the American colonies and prepared the intellectual groundwork for independence. The colonists had a real fear that what they perceived as arbitrary British actions would reduce them to slavery or vassalage.
Bailyn discusses in detail how the colonists took English political thought and applied it to the nature of representative government, constitutional thought, and the nature of divided sovereignty. He then explains how the manner in which the colonists transformed thinking about the nature of government had ramifications in the colonists' view of slavery, the disestablishment of religion, a classless society, and the nature of democracy. The intellectual transformation required for an independent United States thus occurred well before the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers.
Bailyn's book is a work of detailed scholarship and not easy to read. It is a major achievement of intellectual history and will more than repay the effort. John Adams is among the major heroes of this book. Readers that want to follow-up McCollough's popular biography and learn about the ideas of the time might well explore this book. Bailyn's study affirms the power of thought and of the American experiment. In our troubled times, it may help take us back to the origins of our country to learn where we have been so that we may intelligently decide where we are going.
Robin Friedman
Why did the American colonies declare their Independence from Great Britain?Bernard Bailyn's classic study, "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" argues that American Independence had its roots in the power of ideas -- of a rethinking of the proper role of government and a willingness to put thought into action with what became the uniquely American combination of idealism and realism. Bailyn's approach rejects certain types of other plausible explanations of the Revolution -- such as economic rivalry with the mother country or personal ambition on the part of colonial leaders --to tell his story of the origins of American ideas.
Bailyn finds the ideas that shaped the Revolution stated and debated in the ubiquitous pamphlets that appeared in the colonies between, about, 1760 -- 1776. But the source of the ideas are much deeper. Bailyn traces these ideas to the ancient Roman orators, through philosophical figures such as Locke and Vattel. The immediate source of the ideas which became America was in dissenting political thought in Great Britain in the later Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century following the Glorious Revolution. The concern was political corruption in the Britain of the time and the fear that the monarchy would reassert its dominance over British life. Early in the 18th century, well before the French-Indian War, these concerns found their way to the American colonies and prepared the intellectual groundwork for independence. The colonists had a real fear that what they perceived as arbitrary British actions would reduce them to slavery or vassalage.
Bailyn discusses in detail how the colonists took English political thought and applied it to the nature of representative government, constitutional thought, and the nature of divided sovereignty. He then explains how the manner in which the colonists transformed thinking about the nature of government had ramifications in the colonists' view of slavery, the disestablishment of religion, a classless society, and the nature of democracy. The intellectual transformation required for an independent United States thus occurred well before the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers.
Bailyn's book is a work of detailed scholarship and not easy to read. It is a major achievement of intellectual history and will more than repay the effort. John Adams is among the major heroes of this book. Readers that want to follow-up McCollough's popular biography and learn about the ideas of the time might well explore this book. Bailyn's study affirms the power of thought and of the American experiment. In our troubled times, it may help take us back to the origins of our country to learn where we have been so that we may intelligently decide where we are going.
Robin Friedman
Want to read
August 9, 2020The author has died a month before his 97th birthday.
This book was required reading in my American History course in college. It was a darn good read.
This book was required reading in my American History course in college. It was a darn good read.
May 2, 2021
There are a few things Bailyn does really well here:
1. He writes with structure.
There is a clear and cogent outline. You can almost see the outline as you read from paragraph to paragraph. This makes the dense topic easy to follow.
2. He recaps his main points.
He will string together a series of points and arguments and explanations, and then he will write a summarizing paragraph that restates each of them. He does this frequently. It both crystallizes the thoughts and makes following the course of thinking quite navigable.
3. He deftly weaves in source material.
The subject requires heavy use of quotes—we want to read the words of the men themselves. But too often I've read authors who stitch together quotes without offering any insight, analysis, clarification, or explanation and it ends up reading like a poorly done high school book report (e.g. He said, '.....' And then He added, '.....' This was countered by Smith who said, '.....'). Bailyn is seamless. His synthesis of the material transforms what would be a dull patchwork quilt into a brilliant tapestry.
The lasting impression I was left with was that of Bailyn's authority. He knows this stuff and he communicates it effectively. Good read.
1. He writes with structure.
There is a clear and cogent outline. You can almost see the outline as you read from paragraph to paragraph. This makes the dense topic easy to follow.
2. He recaps his main points.
He will string together a series of points and arguments and explanations, and then he will write a summarizing paragraph that restates each of them. He does this frequently. It both crystallizes the thoughts and makes following the course of thinking quite navigable.
3. He deftly weaves in source material.
The subject requires heavy use of quotes—we want to read the words of the men themselves. But too often I've read authors who stitch together quotes without offering any insight, analysis, clarification, or explanation and it ends up reading like a poorly done high school book report (e.g. He said, '.....' And then He added, '.....' This was countered by Smith who said, '.....'). Bailyn is seamless. His synthesis of the material transforms what would be a dull patchwork quilt into a brilliant tapestry.
The lasting impression I was left with was that of Bailyn's authority. He knows this stuff and he communicates it effectively. Good read.
September 21, 2010
This text is simply one of the greatest accomplishments of Bernard Bailyn's career. Bailyn has been synonymous with editing primary source documents from the American Revolution, but "Ideological Origins," marks one time where he takes his expertise on the subject of the Revolution and applies it to a more narrative text. Keep in mind, being a historical text, this is not a narrative in the typical sense, but it does take historical events, which in many cases are uninteresting, and meshes them together to form a coherent, interesting, and factually correct story.
As a writer, and especially one who writes about historical events, I am always looking for new ways to deliver my writing. While McCullough was truly groundbreaking, Bernard Bailyn's brilliance in drawing connections between seemingly unrelated categories (women, slavery, economics), shows readers a side of the American Revolution they had not previously known. When the studies for my Honors in the Major course began, I was nervous and scared to connect two seemingly unrelated events. After reading "Ideological Origins," however, I found myself comfortable drawing some conclusions I would have previously thought to be sweeping.
In his writing, Bailyn stresses the academic dimension of history. McCullough stresses the narrative being told throughout his texts. Ellis reflects facts in a way that demands the reader's undivided attention. The difference between Bailyn, McCullough, and Ellis is the way Bailyn is able to explicitly note assumptions he carries throughout his texts. As a Harvard Professor, Bailyn has great leverage in making assumptions. With this leverage, we see great deference shown by both McCullough and Ellis to Bailyn, citing his works frequently, while also adopting many of his beliefs.
As a writer, and especially one who writes about historical events, I am always looking for new ways to deliver my writing. While McCullough was truly groundbreaking, Bernard Bailyn's brilliance in drawing connections between seemingly unrelated categories (women, slavery, economics), shows readers a side of the American Revolution they had not previously known. When the studies for my Honors in the Major course began, I was nervous and scared to connect two seemingly unrelated events. After reading "Ideological Origins," however, I found myself comfortable drawing some conclusions I would have previously thought to be sweeping.
In his writing, Bailyn stresses the academic dimension of history. McCullough stresses the narrative being told throughout his texts. Ellis reflects facts in a way that demands the reader's undivided attention. The difference between Bailyn, McCullough, and Ellis is the way Bailyn is able to explicitly note assumptions he carries throughout his texts. As a Harvard Professor, Bailyn has great leverage in making assumptions. With this leverage, we see great deference shown by both McCullough and Ellis to Bailyn, citing his works frequently, while also adopting many of his beliefs.
January 21, 2019
A thoughtful and insightful review of pre- and post-revolution literature to discern the ideologies underlying the revolution. The book started with a cataloging of pamphlets, broadsides and newspapers of the era. This major effort is a very well documented explanation of the arguments pro and con of an almost exhaustible list of topics. Much of the book is from quotations of the sources examined and the footnotes are voluminous and detailed. He examines the theories of governance, religion, economics, trade, and topics like slavery, royalty and the duty of man to God (as it relates to living in a commonly governed community). For anyone who has studied American history there is not much new here in terms of the substantive arguments; however, the close and tight analysis of the extant literature was a phenomenal effort, deserving of respect, admiration and utmost credibility of its intellectual (and actual) honesty.
This book is still very relevant as it touches on topics of governance which will always be pertinent. Many of the ideas and topics deserve more study and discussion now. Ideas such as term limits, responsiveness to the common good, preference to those with great wealth, and the privileges of the "nobility" are all relevant today as they were in the 1700's and indeed in ancient times.
Many references to early writers on government are mostly lost on us except for the pure academics of today. A reminder that we need to hear from upper level professors and heed them more than have in recent generations (IMHO).
This book is still very relevant as it touches on topics of governance which will always be pertinent. Many of the ideas and topics deserve more study and discussion now. Ideas such as term limits, responsiveness to the common good, preference to those with great wealth, and the privileges of the "nobility" are all relevant today as they were in the 1700's and indeed in ancient times.
Many references to early writers on government are mostly lost on us except for the pure academics of today. A reminder that we need to hear from upper level professors and heed them more than have in recent generations (IMHO).
December 2, 2009
One of the few best books I have ever read, and one of the few most influential in my life. That's hardly a reason for anyone else to read it. I can only say that everything I ever wanted to believe about the development of the Founders' political philosophy - about the nature of liberty, sovereignty and consent - is all supported in this book. The book can't and isn't meant to adequately grapple with the stain of slavery and its shocking existence side-by-side with high-minded declarations of liberty. For what the book does intend to grapple with, it's simply the best.
January 11, 2021
This classic work provides a history of ideas from the Revolutionary generation. The larger considerations of the departure from the old European regimes and improvements to the English constitution are covered by Bailyn. He also goes into the contradiction between pursuing liberty and keeping slavery as an institution. His approach may be considered mild in the 21st century, but I appreciate why it is such an important book for understanding the intellectual initiatives, dilemmas, and arguments of the time.
Read
September 29, 2015Classic study of the ideology of the Revolution.
September 8, 2010
The corpus of the book is set on informing the reader that there were plenty of other writers who were active during the revolutionary period (1760-1774). Most know the influence of Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Paine, etc.; however, others published their sermons, rants, commentaries, and analyses that continued the revolutionary theme that many of the known writers were artfully addressing. Bailyn notes that these writers, while prolific, lacked tact and artful argumentation, therefore, their writings were relegated to the unforgotten stacks of revolutionary literature. Unfortunately, as Bailyn attempts to shine the light on these crude, yet insightful writers, he continues to trumpet the major thinkers of the day -- seeing to it that the heralded writers of the Revolution remain so. Nonetheless, the work is a valued addition to gaining a full understanding of the issues behind the American Revolution.
Want to read
October 17, 2015I'm mostly interested into what extent are these ideologies are replicated in today's political spectrum, all in my quest to understand those strange people on the other side of the political divide and the even stranger things that they think. I heard about this book via the JuntoCast podcast:
The JuntoCast, Episode 12
(iTunes).
July 9, 2007
It is the book that made me love history. I return to it every year or two to remind myself that not all history must be badly written and that there exist beautiful and big things in one digestable package.
December 29, 2010
If you're a true history buff, you have read this book. Not exactly an easy read, but well worth it in the end. I would not recommend it if you aren't truly very interested in the early history of the USA.
June 29, 2022
Summary: A study of the ideas conveyed through pamphlets that led to the revolution of the colonies against England.
The original edition of this work, published in 1967, won both Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes for Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn. What Bailyn does is to study the literature that preceded the revolution, much of it in pamphlets ranging from the more religiously based ones of Jonathan Mayhew to the more radical Thomas Paine. He identifies key themes that led to conflict and the Declaration of Independence.
Much of this was rooted in British pamphleteers including John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who protested what they saw as corruption in which royal ministers usurped the power of parliament. It was framed as a conflict of power versus liberty. The colonists began to seem themselves caught up in this conspiracy of power versus liberty, exemplified when the British quartered troops in Boston. Indeed, this conspiracy thinking, mirrored by the British acquired a kind of inevitability that led ineluctably to conflict. In one of his most sobering passages for our present moment, Bailyn writes:
“But the eighteenth century was an age of ideology; the beliefs and fears expressed on one side of the Revolutionary controversy were as sincere as those expressed on the other. The result, anticipated by Burke as early as 1769, was an ‘escalation’ of distrust toward a disastrous deadlock: ‘The Americans,’ Burke said, ‘have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them: we have made a discovery, or think we have made one, that they intend to rise in rebellion against us. . . we know not how to advance; they know not how to retreat. . . Some party must give way.’ “
The colonists took this basic opposition of liberty to power and transformed it to fit their context. Their cry of “taxation without representation” was a protest against the purported virtual representation they received in Parliament, in which measures could be decided in which they had no voice. Likewise, they challenged the abstract constitution of sovereign and Parliament, contending for a written constitution that clearly set the boundaries of government. Finally, in a colonial situation far removed from Parliament, they challenged its absolute authority, especially in matters of “internal” versus “external” taxes.
Bailyn then concludes with showing how this “contagion of liberty” spread to concerns about slavery, religious liberty, and the shape of their government, the idea of a democratic republic–one with no sovereign. Bailyn discusses the early deliberations including the fears that democracy could easily degenerate into anarchy, the developments of the ideas of bicameral legislatures, an executive, and of independent courts–designed to protect against both autocrats and anarchy.
Bailyn helps us understand not only the ideas that led to revolution but that led to how we constituted the United States, and the concern to uphold liberty against both absolute power and absolute disorder. It seems to me that what the early thinkers failed to anticipate was the partisan abyss that has developed that exacerbates the inefficiencies of a democratic republic resulting in a descent into disorder matched by the appeal of an authoritarian government that works. Ben Franklin, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was asked, “What kind of government have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” The question of our day seems to be “will we keep it?” Bailyn’s book can’t answer that for us, but it does trace the ideological heritage that led to the inception of our democratic republic.
The original edition of this work, published in 1967, won both Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes for Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn. What Bailyn does is to study the literature that preceded the revolution, much of it in pamphlets ranging from the more religiously based ones of Jonathan Mayhew to the more radical Thomas Paine. He identifies key themes that led to conflict and the Declaration of Independence.
Much of this was rooted in British pamphleteers including John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who protested what they saw as corruption in which royal ministers usurped the power of parliament. It was framed as a conflict of power versus liberty. The colonists began to seem themselves caught up in this conspiracy of power versus liberty, exemplified when the British quartered troops in Boston. Indeed, this conspiracy thinking, mirrored by the British acquired a kind of inevitability that led ineluctably to conflict. In one of his most sobering passages for our present moment, Bailyn writes:
“But the eighteenth century was an age of ideology; the beliefs and fears expressed on one side of the Revolutionary controversy were as sincere as those expressed on the other. The result, anticipated by Burke as early as 1769, was an ‘escalation’ of distrust toward a disastrous deadlock: ‘The Americans,’ Burke said, ‘have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them: we have made a discovery, or think we have made one, that they intend to rise in rebellion against us. . . we know not how to advance; they know not how to retreat. . . Some party must give way.’ “
The colonists took this basic opposition of liberty to power and transformed it to fit their context. Their cry of “taxation without representation” was a protest against the purported virtual representation they received in Parliament, in which measures could be decided in which they had no voice. Likewise, they challenged the abstract constitution of sovereign and Parliament, contending for a written constitution that clearly set the boundaries of government. Finally, in a colonial situation far removed from Parliament, they challenged its absolute authority, especially in matters of “internal” versus “external” taxes.
Bailyn then concludes with showing how this “contagion of liberty” spread to concerns about slavery, religious liberty, and the shape of their government, the idea of a democratic republic–one with no sovereign. Bailyn discusses the early deliberations including the fears that democracy could easily degenerate into anarchy, the developments of the ideas of bicameral legislatures, an executive, and of independent courts–designed to protect against both autocrats and anarchy.
Bailyn helps us understand not only the ideas that led to revolution but that led to how we constituted the United States, and the concern to uphold liberty against both absolute power and absolute disorder. It seems to me that what the early thinkers failed to anticipate was the partisan abyss that has developed that exacerbates the inefficiencies of a democratic republic resulting in a descent into disorder matched by the appeal of an authoritarian government that works. Ben Franklin, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was asked, “What kind of government have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” The question of our day seems to be “will we keep it?” Bailyn’s book can’t answer that for us, but it does trace the ideological heritage that led to the inception of our democratic republic.
June 12, 2015
I read this just after finishing Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution, which is much more engaging and expansive. Bailyn's book is a bit stuffier and the overall argument is harder to grasp, but it is still a worthwhile read for students of American history and the American Revolution as a whole.
Bailyn traces the ideological origins of the American Revolution to the Commonwealthmen/Whig philosophers of the late 17th and early-mid 18th century in Great Britain. These ideas provided the inspiration for the revolution but were also transformed by the revolution. The ideas of these figures shaped the lens through which the revolutionaries interpreted the post 1763 British expansion of power over the colonies. Whereas the British, and many today, might have seen only an incremental and thoroughly merited standardization of imperial rule and a modest increase in revenue gathering, the colonists saw a power grab by a corrupted British elite who would only continue to oppress if the colonists did not oppose them. They believed it was the nature of power to increase itself indefinitely and that power was always the enemy of liberty. To some extent their thinking could be called conspiratorial because they believed that British encroachments were bound to continue and that whatever the British were doing was only the tip of the iceberg. However, this kind of thinking made sense within the Whiggish worldview. Bailyn does a great job getting the reader into the mindsets of the people at the time. For example, it might seem outrageous today that the revolutionaries accused the British of wanting to reduce them to slavery, but according to their much more expansive definition of slavery (pretty much any situation where one person exhibits arbitrary power over another, this actually made sense at the time.
Bailyn shows how the revolution transformed the heritage of British political thought into a uniquely American creation. The British, for instance, conceived of representation as "virtual" rather than direct. This meant that the representatives of a particular area were not representing the interests of that area but of the nation as a whole. This meant that the British believed the Americans were being represented even if they had no direct representatives. By the 1760's the colonists were starting to reject this notion in favor of a representation that more openly sought out the best for its constituents while not being totally averse to the common good. The colonists also rethought rights. The British thought of rights as emanating from natural law and the common law but contended that they did not need to be enumerated to have effect. Again, the colonists revised this belief, arguing that rights existed above the law, that the purpose of the law and government is to serve those rights, and that those rights must be written down if they are to be protected. Bailyn is simply outstanding at explaining these kinds of intellectual transformations.
While the ideas is this book are interesting, it's somewhat hard to follow and large sections of it are quite dry. The most interesting sections are probably the first two sections of the "Contagion of Liberty" chapter. Bailyn explains how the ideas of the revolution, especially equality and rights, challenged many different normal structures in society, such as slavery or the establishment of a Church. The revolutionary period witnessed the first major push against slavery in American history and started a wave of agitation that eventually undid Northern slavery and the slave trade. Obviously it was difficult to justify the continuation of slavery in the era of liberty, freedom, and enlightenment, but slave-owners came up with weak defenses away. Bailyn's treatment of slavery is much better than Wood, so simply states that the principles of the revolution doomed slavery. Bailyn more subtly argues that the revolution put slaveholders on the defensive and for the first time compelled them to justify the holding of slaves in bondage. In this telling, slavery was not doomed by the revolution, but the way many Americans talked and thought about slavery changed in ways that opened up its eventual containment, mitigation, and elimination.
Bailyn traces the ideological origins of the American Revolution to the Commonwealthmen/Whig philosophers of the late 17th and early-mid 18th century in Great Britain. These ideas provided the inspiration for the revolution but were also transformed by the revolution. The ideas of these figures shaped the lens through which the revolutionaries interpreted the post 1763 British expansion of power over the colonies. Whereas the British, and many today, might have seen only an incremental and thoroughly merited standardization of imperial rule and a modest increase in revenue gathering, the colonists saw a power grab by a corrupted British elite who would only continue to oppress if the colonists did not oppose them. They believed it was the nature of power to increase itself indefinitely and that power was always the enemy of liberty. To some extent their thinking could be called conspiratorial because they believed that British encroachments were bound to continue and that whatever the British were doing was only the tip of the iceberg. However, this kind of thinking made sense within the Whiggish worldview. Bailyn does a great job getting the reader into the mindsets of the people at the time. For example, it might seem outrageous today that the revolutionaries accused the British of wanting to reduce them to slavery, but according to their much more expansive definition of slavery (pretty much any situation where one person exhibits arbitrary power over another, this actually made sense at the time.
Bailyn shows how the revolution transformed the heritage of British political thought into a uniquely American creation. The British, for instance, conceived of representation as "virtual" rather than direct. This meant that the representatives of a particular area were not representing the interests of that area but of the nation as a whole. This meant that the British believed the Americans were being represented even if they had no direct representatives. By the 1760's the colonists were starting to reject this notion in favor of a representation that more openly sought out the best for its constituents while not being totally averse to the common good. The colonists also rethought rights. The British thought of rights as emanating from natural law and the common law but contended that they did not need to be enumerated to have effect. Again, the colonists revised this belief, arguing that rights existed above the law, that the purpose of the law and government is to serve those rights, and that those rights must be written down if they are to be protected. Bailyn is simply outstanding at explaining these kinds of intellectual transformations.
While the ideas is this book are interesting, it's somewhat hard to follow and large sections of it are quite dry. The most interesting sections are probably the first two sections of the "Contagion of Liberty" chapter. Bailyn explains how the ideas of the revolution, especially equality and rights, challenged many different normal structures in society, such as slavery or the establishment of a Church. The revolutionary period witnessed the first major push against slavery in American history and started a wave of agitation that eventually undid Northern slavery and the slave trade. Obviously it was difficult to justify the continuation of slavery in the era of liberty, freedom, and enlightenment, but slave-owners came up with weak defenses away. Bailyn's treatment of slavery is much better than Wood, so simply states that the principles of the revolution doomed slavery. Bailyn more subtly argues that the revolution put slaveholders on the defensive and for the first time compelled them to justify the holding of slaves in bondage. In this telling, slavery was not doomed by the revolution, but the way many Americans talked and thought about slavery changed in ways that opened up its eventual containment, mitigation, and elimination.
October 31, 2012
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution gives a unique, and innovative (for its time) perspective on the causes and ideology of the patriots before the American Revolution. Published in 1967, Bernard Bailyn makes a significant contribution to the study of the Revolution as an intellectual historian. The thesis for the book in his own words is, “that the American Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, political struggle and not primarily a controversy between social groups undertaken to force changes in the organization of the society or the economy” (vi). In order to prove his thesis, Bailyn organizes the book into six topically organized chapters.
In “The Literature of Revolution” Bailyn explains the basis for his research by introducing the pamphlets that were passed through society to argue ideas. Some sparks for the use of those pamphlets included the Stamp Act, the Townsend Duties. There were three types of pamphlets: those in response to public events, individual exchanges or arguments, and orations that spoke of the remembrance of events such as the Stamp Act and the Boston Massacre. Bailyn explains that colonists identified mostly with ideological writers of the early eighteenth century. Chapter II, “Sources and Traditions” deals with some of the same but adds the point that the origins of the Revolution were derivatives of, “inconclusive ideas about the world and America’s place in it were fused in a comprehensive view, unique in its moral and intellectual appeal (22). In essence, the colonists revolted for these reasons and not just those traditional grievances.
“Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics” deals with the distribution of power and the eighteenth century belief about it and its relationship of those who have it to others. He writes that power meant the dominion of some men over other and the control of human life (56). Those in power were supposed to look out for their people and liberty was based on the ability of the people to check power. Of course, this is completely opposite from living in a monarchy. In essence, they wanted a three branch system with checks and balances. In “The Logic of Rebellion,” Bailyn explains that the patriots started the Revolution on the basis that they “they were faced with conspirators against liberty determined at all costs to gain ends which their words dissembled” (95). In other words, the patriots did not agree that those in power were standing in the interests of liberty in the American colonies.
Chapter V, “Transformation” details the three goals of the patriots. First, they wanted local representation, second, a constitution that protected rights to liberty and finally, sovereignty. “The Contagion of Liberty” ends the book by explaining the issues that they newly liberated people had to deal with including: slavery, religion, and respect of supposed superiors.
Bailyn’s book is known as a classical study of the American Revolution and he does an excellent job of proving his thesis with the use of pamphlets extensively as primary sources. The book is organized sufficiently into different topics where he develops his evidence for his thesis throughout the book. It is not an overly easy read due to its wordiness but does a good job of explaining the details of his evidence; this could be seen as being oversimplified. All of his resources are cited with footnotes, and there are many on each page but the book does not contain a bibliography, perhaps because of the large number of resources that he used. There are no charts or maps for clarification, but because of the content and style they are not needed. The book is obviously a significant contribution because it has been around for so long and because of its perspective of the Revolution.
In “The Literature of Revolution” Bailyn explains the basis for his research by introducing the pamphlets that were passed through society to argue ideas. Some sparks for the use of those pamphlets included the Stamp Act, the Townsend Duties. There were three types of pamphlets: those in response to public events, individual exchanges or arguments, and orations that spoke of the remembrance of events such as the Stamp Act and the Boston Massacre. Bailyn explains that colonists identified mostly with ideological writers of the early eighteenth century. Chapter II, “Sources and Traditions” deals with some of the same but adds the point that the origins of the Revolution were derivatives of, “inconclusive ideas about the world and America’s place in it were fused in a comprehensive view, unique in its moral and intellectual appeal (22). In essence, the colonists revolted for these reasons and not just those traditional grievances.
“Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics” deals with the distribution of power and the eighteenth century belief about it and its relationship of those who have it to others. He writes that power meant the dominion of some men over other and the control of human life (56). Those in power were supposed to look out for their people and liberty was based on the ability of the people to check power. Of course, this is completely opposite from living in a monarchy. In essence, they wanted a three branch system with checks and balances. In “The Logic of Rebellion,” Bailyn explains that the patriots started the Revolution on the basis that they “they were faced with conspirators against liberty determined at all costs to gain ends which their words dissembled” (95). In other words, the patriots did not agree that those in power were standing in the interests of liberty in the American colonies.
Chapter V, “Transformation” details the three goals of the patriots. First, they wanted local representation, second, a constitution that protected rights to liberty and finally, sovereignty. “The Contagion of Liberty” ends the book by explaining the issues that they newly liberated people had to deal with including: slavery, religion, and respect of supposed superiors.
Bailyn’s book is known as a classical study of the American Revolution and he does an excellent job of proving his thesis with the use of pamphlets extensively as primary sources. The book is organized sufficiently into different topics where he develops his evidence for his thesis throughout the book. It is not an overly easy read due to its wordiness but does a good job of explaining the details of his evidence; this could be seen as being oversimplified. All of his resources are cited with footnotes, and there are many on each page but the book does not contain a bibliography, perhaps because of the large number of resources that he used. There are no charts or maps for clarification, but because of the content and style they are not needed. The book is obviously a significant contribution because it has been around for so long and because of its perspective of the Revolution.
February 10, 2020
One of the best history books I've read in a while. It's not a simple narrative of the revolution, but an analysis of what the participants thought, as evidenced by what they wrote and read. Bailyn wrote the book as a response to editing a collection of pamphlets, and this book is largely seen in the historiography as challenging Beard's Progressive School of revolutionary history.
Many of the themes explored in this book would be expanded on by the work of Gordon Wood, Bailyn's student, but it's still worth reading this book. In particular, I liked learning about the popularity of "country whig" opposition literature in the united states. In Britain, a certain fringe literature developed in opposition to the perceived corruption of parliament by the ministers (through grants of pensions), as well as the centralization of power, in particular in response to Walpole administration as well as the fallout of the collapse of the South Sea bubble. Demonstrative of these writings were Cato's letters, a series of political writings that were reprinted and quoted from Zenger's case to Franklin's Silence Dodgewood as well as shorter works like Trenchard's polemic against standing armies. While the writings were not particularly ever mainstream in Britain, they made an impact on the united states (perhaps because of its provincial status as a backwater periphery), as evidenced by the various re-printings and citations. Bailyn argues that while the revolutionaries were fluent in the Greco-Roman classics as well as the popular enlightenment figures of the day, most citations to those sources were really window dressing, the frame of the thought was this country whig opposition that feared concentration of power and corruption.
Bailyn traces an almost conspiratorial thinking that convinced the revolutionaries that a conspiracy lead by British ministers (including the Earl of Brute) were seeking to squash American liberties (somewhat ironically, many loyalists and British officials had the sense that there was an American conspiracy to gain independence). The revolutionaries were at first self conscious of their provincial nature, but later came to see their rustic ways as closer to the virtue that is needed for liberty to flourish. They watched with dread as London seemed corrupt, with fighters for liberty such as Wilkes repressed. This sinister plan to strip the colonials of its liberties seemed to be reinforced by colonial policies such as the Stamp Act and the Coercive Act.
Particularly interesting, was the colonials rejection of the British political conception of parliament. The colonials actually looked towards an older medieval conception of the parliament where members were sent by their constituents with instructions to extract concessions in return for tax revenues. But by the time of the revolution, members of parliament were seen by the British as representing the whole British people, and not just their electors, a concept known as virtual representation. The revolutionaries rejected this concept, because they argued that while the British people may have been .virtually represented because their interests were tied to electors, the colonials were not. It was an accepted axiom of politics that there must be in any polity one supreme sovereign, that has no superior. After the glorious revolution, the British had lodged this sovereignty with parliament. But the colonists were used to ruling themselves (helped by the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean), and tried to draw distinctions between parliaments and their own legislature's powers. First the the colonists argued that parliament controlled the external, while the colonists controlled the internal. When this distinction fell apart because of customs and duties (which seemed both external and internal), the colonists argued that the powers depended on the purpose of parliament's act (whether to raise revenue, not okay, or to regulate trade). Eventually, the colonists suggested that the colonies are actually not under the sovereignty of parliament but of the crown (an early commonwealth like idea). The Tories tore these distinctions, claiming that either the colonial legislatures or parliament was sovereign perhaps unintentionally reinforcing the movement towards independence. While British political theory considered the government itself, the constitution, the revolutionaries with their experience with charters started to conceive of the constitution as a more fundamental law that bound even legislatures. James Otis first argued that while parliament was supreme, it was still bound by some natural laws (misciting Bonham's case, which Otis had read to stand for the proposition that judges could strike down acts of parliament against natural law, when in fact the case was more about reading acts of parliament with a presumption that parliament intended to be rational), which it would itself correct, but the revolutionaries soon moved to the conception of the constitution we have today, that of the supreme law.
The revolution had also unleashed other unintentional forces, including serious criticism of slavery (even many revolutionaries noted the hypocrisy of calling a two cent tax on tea slavery while holding chattel slaves), movements to disestablish state churches, the concept of social superiors in wealth being natural leaders (instead of an internal meritocracy), and democratic impulses. Many revolutionaries had considered the British system (uncorrupted) to be liberty preserving because it mixed the three orders of society, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Too much democracy lead to anarchy, too much monarchy, tyranny and too much aristocracy to oligarchy. The crown, which was executive and tended towards power, would be checked by the house of lords (the aristocracy), from abusing the commons (the house of commons). Independent life tenure judges would also protect the commons from the crown stepping over the line. America had no nobles (which lead some revolutionaries to propose making nobles, or at least life appointed officials and others to celebrate this social fact, which they related to a golden Saxon age) so this framework never totally fit. Some thought that the upper house of the legislature could act for property or the intellectual elite, or that legal structures could replace the mixed structure of the British system. The great struggle was trying to fit new models of republicanism, and a leveled social structure with the inherited admiration for the British system.
The last chapter, is a short one on the federalists' challenge in overcoming all the inherited fear of centralized power, which was what 1776 seemed to many to be about. Bailyn argues that the federalists did so by drawing distinctions and downplaying fears while also inventing political concepts like federalism, state-federal concurrent powers over the military, and extended republics (Madison's famous federalist 10, arguing contra to Montesquieu that large republics meant it was harder to cobble together majorities of the same interest to oppress minorities). All sides feared that people's evil natures would cause government to be repressive, but the federalists argued that there must be some minimal virtue for any free people to survive, and hoped that the constitution designed would channel the selfish impulses away.
The book is a great read for those who like Gordon Wood and this school of thought. The first chapter, explaining in detail the context of pamphlets (the different types, the number of them) can be a bit of a drag but I feel like the book is very much worth reading. It is seminal in starting the idealogical school and does a great job of placing the revolution in the context of the imperial crisis, which should be fascinating for any American.
Many of the themes explored in this book would be expanded on by the work of Gordon Wood, Bailyn's student, but it's still worth reading this book. In particular, I liked learning about the popularity of "country whig" opposition literature in the united states. In Britain, a certain fringe literature developed in opposition to the perceived corruption of parliament by the ministers (through grants of pensions), as well as the centralization of power, in particular in response to Walpole administration as well as the fallout of the collapse of the South Sea bubble. Demonstrative of these writings were Cato's letters, a series of political writings that were reprinted and quoted from Zenger's case to Franklin's Silence Dodgewood as well as shorter works like Trenchard's polemic against standing armies. While the writings were not particularly ever mainstream in Britain, they made an impact on the united states (perhaps because of its provincial status as a backwater periphery), as evidenced by the various re-printings and citations. Bailyn argues that while the revolutionaries were fluent in the Greco-Roman classics as well as the popular enlightenment figures of the day, most citations to those sources were really window dressing, the frame of the thought was this country whig opposition that feared concentration of power and corruption.
Bailyn traces an almost conspiratorial thinking that convinced the revolutionaries that a conspiracy lead by British ministers (including the Earl of Brute) were seeking to squash American liberties (somewhat ironically, many loyalists and British officials had the sense that there was an American conspiracy to gain independence). The revolutionaries were at first self conscious of their provincial nature, but later came to see their rustic ways as closer to the virtue that is needed for liberty to flourish. They watched with dread as London seemed corrupt, with fighters for liberty such as Wilkes repressed. This sinister plan to strip the colonials of its liberties seemed to be reinforced by colonial policies such as the Stamp Act and the Coercive Act.
Particularly interesting, was the colonials rejection of the British political conception of parliament. The colonials actually looked towards an older medieval conception of the parliament where members were sent by their constituents with instructions to extract concessions in return for tax revenues. But by the time of the revolution, members of parliament were seen by the British as representing the whole British people, and not just their electors, a concept known as virtual representation. The revolutionaries rejected this concept, because they argued that while the British people may have been .virtually represented because their interests were tied to electors, the colonials were not. It was an accepted axiom of politics that there must be in any polity one supreme sovereign, that has no superior. After the glorious revolution, the British had lodged this sovereignty with parliament. But the colonists were used to ruling themselves (helped by the vast expanse of the Atlantic ocean), and tried to draw distinctions between parliaments and their own legislature's powers. First the the colonists argued that parliament controlled the external, while the colonists controlled the internal. When this distinction fell apart because of customs and duties (which seemed both external and internal), the colonists argued that the powers depended on the purpose of parliament's act (whether to raise revenue, not okay, or to regulate trade). Eventually, the colonists suggested that the colonies are actually not under the sovereignty of parliament but of the crown (an early commonwealth like idea). The Tories tore these distinctions, claiming that either the colonial legislatures or parliament was sovereign perhaps unintentionally reinforcing the movement towards independence. While British political theory considered the government itself, the constitution, the revolutionaries with their experience with charters started to conceive of the constitution as a more fundamental law that bound even legislatures. James Otis first argued that while parliament was supreme, it was still bound by some natural laws (misciting Bonham's case, which Otis had read to stand for the proposition that judges could strike down acts of parliament against natural law, when in fact the case was more about reading acts of parliament with a presumption that parliament intended to be rational), which it would itself correct, but the revolutionaries soon moved to the conception of the constitution we have today, that of the supreme law.
The revolution had also unleashed other unintentional forces, including serious criticism of slavery (even many revolutionaries noted the hypocrisy of calling a two cent tax on tea slavery while holding chattel slaves), movements to disestablish state churches, the concept of social superiors in wealth being natural leaders (instead of an internal meritocracy), and democratic impulses. Many revolutionaries had considered the British system (uncorrupted) to be liberty preserving because it mixed the three orders of society, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Too much democracy lead to anarchy, too much monarchy, tyranny and too much aristocracy to oligarchy. The crown, which was executive and tended towards power, would be checked by the house of lords (the aristocracy), from abusing the commons (the house of commons). Independent life tenure judges would also protect the commons from the crown stepping over the line. America had no nobles (which lead some revolutionaries to propose making nobles, or at least life appointed officials and others to celebrate this social fact, which they related to a golden Saxon age) so this framework never totally fit. Some thought that the upper house of the legislature could act for property or the intellectual elite, or that legal structures could replace the mixed structure of the British system. The great struggle was trying to fit new models of republicanism, and a leveled social structure with the inherited admiration for the British system.
The last chapter, is a short one on the federalists' challenge in overcoming all the inherited fear of centralized power, which was what 1776 seemed to many to be about. Bailyn argues that the federalists did so by drawing distinctions and downplaying fears while also inventing political concepts like federalism, state-federal concurrent powers over the military, and extended republics (Madison's famous federalist 10, arguing contra to Montesquieu that large republics meant it was harder to cobble together majorities of the same interest to oppress minorities). All sides feared that people's evil natures would cause government to be repressive, but the federalists argued that there must be some minimal virtue for any free people to survive, and hoped that the constitution designed would channel the selfish impulses away.
The book is a great read for those who like Gordon Wood and this school of thought. The first chapter, explaining in detail the context of pamphlets (the different types, the number of them) can be a bit of a drag but I feel like the book is very much worth reading. It is seminal in starting the idealogical school and does a great job of placing the revolution in the context of the imperial crisis, which should be fascinating for any American.
July 26, 2013
Interesting Quote:
"By July of 1776 much had already been done to extend the reign of liberty to the enslaved Negroes. In Massachusetts, efforts had been made as early as 1767 to abolish the slave trade, and in 1771 and 1774 the legislature voted conclusively to do so but was rebuffed by the governor's veto. In the same year the Continental Congress pledged itself to discontinue the slave trade everywhere, while Rhode Island, acknowledging that 'those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves should be willing to extend personal liberty to others,' ruled that slaves imported into the colony would thereafter automatically become free. Connecticut did the same; Delaware prohibited importation; and Pennsylvania taxed the trade out of existence. There, too, in 1775, the Quakers, long the most outspoken advocates of emancipation through not leaders in the Revolutionary movement, formed the first antislavery society in the Western world. In the South there was at least a general acquiescence in the Congress' inclusion of the slave trade in the nonimportation program and satisfaction on the part of many when in April 1776 Congress fulfilled its earlier pledge and voted 'that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen colonies.'
"The institution of chattel slavery was not dead, even in the North, nor would it be for many years to come; critics of the Declaration of Independence would continue to join with Thomas Hutchinson in condemning the apparent hypocrisy of a people who declared that all men were created equal, endowed with inalienable rights, and yet deprived 'more than an hundred thousand Africans of their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in some degree to their lives.' But it had been subjected to severe pressure as a result of the extension of Revolutionary ideas, and it bore the marks ever after. As long as the institution of slavery lasted, the burden of proof would lie with its advocates to show why the statement 'all men are created equal' did not mean precisely what it said: all men, 'white or black.'"
-Bernard Bailyn, the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
"By July of 1776 much had already been done to extend the reign of liberty to the enslaved Negroes. In Massachusetts, efforts had been made as early as 1767 to abolish the slave trade, and in 1771 and 1774 the legislature voted conclusively to do so but was rebuffed by the governor's veto. In the same year the Continental Congress pledged itself to discontinue the slave trade everywhere, while Rhode Island, acknowledging that 'those who are desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves should be willing to extend personal liberty to others,' ruled that slaves imported into the colony would thereafter automatically become free. Connecticut did the same; Delaware prohibited importation; and Pennsylvania taxed the trade out of existence. There, too, in 1775, the Quakers, long the most outspoken advocates of emancipation through not leaders in the Revolutionary movement, formed the first antislavery society in the Western world. In the South there was at least a general acquiescence in the Congress' inclusion of the slave trade in the nonimportation program and satisfaction on the part of many when in April 1776 Congress fulfilled its earlier pledge and voted 'that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen colonies.'
"The institution of chattel slavery was not dead, even in the North, nor would it be for many years to come; critics of the Declaration of Independence would continue to join with Thomas Hutchinson in condemning the apparent hypocrisy of a people who declared that all men were created equal, endowed with inalienable rights, and yet deprived 'more than an hundred thousand Africans of their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in some degree to their lives.' But it had been subjected to severe pressure as a result of the extension of Revolutionary ideas, and it bore the marks ever after. As long as the institution of slavery lasted, the burden of proof would lie with its advocates to show why the statement 'all men are created equal' did not mean precisely what it said: all men, 'white or black.'"
-Bernard Bailyn, the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
December 3, 2008
I am not sure how much I liked this book. It was really lyrical and fascinating in some places, but in others I felt I was banging my head against a brick wall. Oh Bernard, the first horrible pamphlet chapter has got to be rewritten. And tone down those footnotes! In some places they take up half the page! Still, there was much to be gleaned from these pages and follows the thought process of the colonial revolutionaries quite well. I just can't decide whether I sell the book back to the campus bookstore or hang onto it. If I think about the first chapter though, this book will be first in line for the selling...
April 7, 2012
The title explains the book's subject sufficiently. All that I can contribute is that this book is highly academic and not suitable to a reader with little prior knowledge of the American Revolution and early republic periods. The content of the book is amazing but its readability is quite rough, more so than I expected. I'm relieved to have finished it, but know I'll have to revisit it later in the future..
August 18, 2015
Excellent for understanding the political background of the American Revolution. What influences shaped the American colonists' rebellion and formation of new governments are clearly explained. A classic in American revolutionary studies
October 17, 2010
This book gets three stars not because it's bad, but because it's boring. And now I'm done and get to move on to something else. Unfortunately, that something else is Gordon Wood.
August 12, 2011
Bailyn is a masterful writer who makes his point without going over the top in the implications.
August 30, 2014
whew...that took a lot of effort...
November 1, 2017
Honestly, I love love love history, but history textbooks are painful.
April 30, 2018
Reading this was only slightly more interesting than reading a bibliography.
November 26, 2020
This is a very scholarly book. Not at all interesting to casual readers. Obviously well researched, but not an enjoyable read.
January 14, 2018
Preface
The background of this work is Bailyn's project selecting pamphlets of the Revolutionary Period for publication. In the process of assembling the pamphlets, he realized that the explanations included in these pamphlets were the "ideological origins" of the Revolution. Taking issue with the Progressives, who tended to cast the Revolution in terms of social and economic "interests" jockeying for position, he confirms the "old fashioned view" that the revolution was about ideology and politics. Couched in the logic of religion, and steeped in natural rights philosophy, the Patriots partook of the Enlightenment world but retained a decidedly religious frame of mind. Most importantly, these men were influenced by the thought of Whig politicians in the age of Walpole -- an anti-authoritarian strain of political thought that first arose in the context of the English Civil War. When they spoke of slavery, corruption and conspiracy, they meant something entirely different than the modern propagandist might take the terms to mean. Their use has to be understood in light of what was know as the "Country Whig" ideology. It was in the transfer from England of this literature of political opposition that provided the foundation upon which the pamphlet literature of the American Revolution grew.
The Literature of Revolution
Starts by noting the wide range of print media used for the public debates leading up to the Revolution. Newspapers, broadsides, almanacs and -- above all -- pamphlets were filled with polemics and political commentary. A document that was small enough to fit in your pocket, the pamphlet also allowed enough room for an author to fully develop an idea or concept in 5-25,000 words. Driven by the great events of the time, flurries of pamphleteering were prompted by the Stamp Act, Townshend Duties, Boston Massacre, Tea Party, and the Meeting of the First Continental Congress.
Placing the pamphlet literature in the context of European pamphleteering of the time, Bailyn finds that all of the standard rhetorical strategies and literary devices of the time were present in the American pamphlets. Considered as literature, however, they were comparatively crude. Written by lawyers, ministers, merchants and planters, they were primarily intended to persuade rather than to stand on their merits as literature. The decorous and restrained tone of the literature reflects the limited goals of the Revolution itself.
For the primary goal of the American Revolution, which transformed American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty. (p. 19)
As Americans debated the questions surrounding the power of Parliament to tax, they worked out a whole new political ideology. It is in the pre-Independence pamphlet literature that he finds the wellspring of the Revolution's ideological creativity.
Sources and Traditions
Though the colonists peppered their pamphlets with allusions to classical antiquity, these allusions primarily served as window dressing and in the instance they were used strategically Bailyn is impressed by the selectivity and narrowness of the way in which they were used. They were interested primarily in the decline and fall of Rome. As with the classics, so too the Enlightenment literature. Mostly used as window dressing, the selectivity with which it was deployed is revealing. Primarily interested in the natural rights philosophy of Locke, the key to their thinking is not to be found in a broader imbibing of the Enlightenment literature. More of an influence was the British Common Law.
To the colonists it was a repository of experience in human dealings embodying the principles of justice, equality, and rights; above all it was a form of history - ancient indeed immemorial, history; constitutional and national history; and, as history, it helped explain the movement of events and the meaning of the present. (p. 31)
Covenant theology also played a role, but not a large one.
What was the real source of their ideas seems to Bailyn to be the "country" politics of the British opposition to Walpole's leadership in Parliament. John Trenchard (1662-1723) and Thomas Gordon (d. 1750) were amongst the writers who had the greatest impact on the colonists. Publishing the Independent Wig and Cato's Letters, Trenchard and Gordon were as important (or more important) to the political ideology of the colonists as Locke. Joining T & G were the liberal Anglican bishop Benjamin Hoadley and the leader of the 18th century's freethinking Whigs Robert Viscount Molesworth and the Viscount Bolingbroke. The next generation, closer to the time of the Revolution included Richard Price, Joseph Priestly and John Cartwright. The most recent and up to date translation of Sallust and Tacitus available to the Patriots was by Thomas Gordon. Under his pen, Tacitus became an English Whig. And the patriots not only read the literature of Whig dissent, they devoured it:
So popular and influential has Cato's Letters become in the colonies within a decade and a half of their first appearance, so packed with ideological meaning, that, reinforced by Addison's play Cato and the colonists' selectively Whiggish reading of the Roman historians, it gave rise to what might be called a "catonic" image, central to the theory of the time, in which the career of the half-mythological Roman and the words of the two London journalist merged indistinguishably. (p. 44)
Railing against the government of Robert Walpole, the "Country" Whigs decried ministerial corruption and called for reforms. The conspiratorial and corrupt ministry was destroying the country for its own narrow interests and for its own enrichment. Largely ignored in England, the Country Whigs found a real audience in the American colonies. In the land of solid yeoman farmers, this rhetoric rang true. This radical Whig ideology was to be the glue that held all other strands of Revolutionary ideology together.
Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics
The colonists' view of the way the world works was similar to that of our own time, as for them power lay behind all other pretenses. They noted that power has a tendency to grow and if left unchecked to become despotic. Increasingly they saw the world divided into the realms of power and of liberty. What turned power against liberty was man's inherent corruption and lust for self aggrandizement. (p. 59) From this understanding of power and its corrosive effects, sprang the colonists' fear of standing armies. Looking at the Turkish janissaries as the worst of standing armies, they pointed to other despotic governments supported by standing armies. Molesworth pointed to the importance of vigilance against tyranny, explaining the end of liberty in Denmark as the direct result of failed vigilance. Amongst all the nations with a history of resistance to tyranny, England ranked the highest for the colonists.
The colonists saw the balance of powers in the unique mixed government of England as the foundation of English liberty. The English constitution, they felt, undergirded this liberty, but it was over the interpretation of this English Constitution that the conflict arose. How would the powers of crown, nobility and democracy counter-balance each other? Vigilance was called for, vigilance to protect the natural rights of citizens guaranteed by this constitution. Viewing liberty as constantly imperiled by Jacobite remnants, they feared effeminacy and weakness in the country's moral fiber. Vanity, luxury and the pursuit of self-interest were the marks of the Walpole ministry. Colonial visitors to London decried the corruption of vote buying and the corruption of the treasury under Walpole.
The Logic of Rebellion
At the heart of the logic of rebellion was the belief that an active conspiracy was afoot in both England and America to destroy liberty. Episodes such as those surrounding the attempts to install an Anglican bishop in America only reinforced the belief in a conspiracy of "mitre and scepter." In this environment, the Stamp Act was seen as evidence of a much larger conspiracy to deprive the colonists of their property, and thereby to undermine the basis upon which rested their liberty. And the colonists believed that the conspirators were amongst them. In Massachusetts it was Thomas Hutchinson and in Rhode Island it was the Newport junto headed by Martin Howard, Jr. in collaboration with James Otis.
Following on with the Townshend Duties, the colonists saw other reasons to fear the growing conspiracy. In the growth of the customs office, full of placemen and other idle sorts of "baneful harpies" who grew fat off the labors of hard working colonists, the patriot cause saw a clear attempt of the conspirators against liberty to spread their people about the New World. Add to this the move to have judges paid by the ministry in England instead of out of local coffers and all that was needed was the added measure of re-imposing the authority of vice-admiralty courts and you had the formula for a full-blown compromise of the judiciary as well. Then Governor Bernard called in the British troops (1768) to reinforce his authority in Boston. In light of Trenchard's tract on standing armies, it is hardly surprising that the colonists viewed this act with extreme anger. With the repeal of the Townshend Duties, a detente developed. This detente was destroyed by the Tea Act (Dec 1773), the defiance of which at the Boston Tea Party, prompted the passage of the Declaratory Acts (1774).
Amongst the many explanations proffered for this conspiracy, the evolution of a "court party" of corrupt ministers vying for the King's attention rang most true. Drawing upon biblical images, the colonists cast the court party as a "prostituted ministry" that sought to bring upon the colonists the bondage of a Persian despot. The essential balance in Britain's mixed government had been thrown off by this corrupt ministry that usurped the prerogatives of Parliament. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, condemned the "Asiatic despotism" arising in Britain. John Adams too decried the Asiatic luxuries, effeminacy and venality that had beset the English nation. With the British nation descending into tyranny, who would be left to defend Liberty when Britain finally fell? America was the last best hope for liberty in the world!
In the section entitled "A Note on Conspiracy," Bailyn explores the ways in which the British magistrates also believed that there was a conspiracy afoot leading the colonists to disloyalty. Both Governor Barnard of Massachusetts and Thomas Hutchinson took this view, Hutchinson continuing to write on this topic once he returned to England. Various colonial governors wrote about the former colonies in this vein after independence. And it is this line that the "progressive" historians (John C. Miller) adopted in describing the patriots as rabble rousers stirring up the people for their own interests.
Transformation
In Three sections Bailyn describes in intimate details key ideological transformations that happened in the period leading up to the Revolution. "Representation and Consent" describes the transformation from virtual representation, via the delivery of binding instructions to elected representatives to the final incarnation of government by the people -- the radical idea that government derives from the consent of the governed. "Constitutions and Rights" describes the move from the traditional notion of the English constitution, via the rights described in proprietary charters to the documents which eventually stood as state constitutions -- written documents that describe and codified obligations, rights and prohibitions (p. 197). Finally turning in "Sovereignty" to a discussion of the evolution of a doctrine of imperium in imperio, or a definition of federalism from the unitary model of state authority. The initial contradiction of colonial governments highly dispersed but in theory totally subordinate to Parliament sparked debate over the relationships between superior and inferior political authorities. The torturously convoluted debate over internal vs. external taxation was an attempt by some of the colonials (here B. Franklin) to deal with the paradox without breaking overtly and completely with the authority of Parliament. Others, such as John Dickinson, argued that taxation powers are not divisible in this manner -- either Parliament could tax the colonists without their consent or not! Bailyn doesn't believe that the colonists worked out all the details of the federative state, obviously that was a task for succeeding decades (and perhaps generations).
The Contagion of Liberty
Begins on p. 230 with a highly concise summary of the Transformations chapter. The ramifications of these transformations are considered in three areas: Slavery, Establishment of Religion and the social impact of the revolution (The Democracy Unleashed and "Whether Some Degree ...).
Under "Slavery," Bailyn considers the growing influence of Revolutionary ideology on a nascent anti-slavery movement. The use of the term "slavery" was extremely important in colonial rhetoric, as it connoted "other-directedness". One could not be a moral personality if one's actions were directed by another. From this basic insight sprang criticism of the colonists as hypocritical. The language of politics made some measure of condemnation of chattel slavery inescapable. Yet the patriots at the south, such as Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, relied upon the labor of slaves for their own independency. How could they be financially secure without the labor of their slaves? Less dependent upon slave labor, advocates of liberty at the North and in the Middle Colonies increasingly saw their way clear to adopting an abolitionist stance. James Otis of RI arrived at an anti-slavery position out of the conviction that slavery degraded both slave AND master. Yet the vast majority of those who decried the political slavery of British rule had nothing to say about the chattel slavery that was right in front of their noses. The harshest criticism came from Baptists like John Allen who was quick to point out the hypocrisy of other patriots (who it might be noted were mostly Congregationalists). Under the pressure of anti-slavery ministers, the slave trade was largely abolished in the Revolutionary era (starting in the North), but slavery as an institution would emerge largely unscathed from the Revolution. Bailyn points out, however, that the ideological forces released by the Revolution put the proponents of chattel slavery on the defensive.
In considering the impact of the ideology of the Revolution on the Establishment of Religion, he begins with a consideration of the complexity of the American religious scene. Indeed, though the Anglican church was established everywhere outside of New England (where Congregationalists ruled), the Anglican establishment was weak. Butler has a slightly more developed thesis, though he doesn't differ in the essentials. According to Butler the Anglicans failed to establish the same infrastructure as other faiths. Ultimately Butler and Bailyn would agree that disestablishment resulted not from an assault upon religion, but rather from sectarian infighting over multiple establishment and other issues. He sees the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) as just such a union of sectarian and idealistic rationalism. Bailyn then returns again to the role of the Massachusetts Baptists. This time focusing on Isaac Bacchus as a thorn in the side of the Congregationalist establishment of Boston. The Separate Baptists of Western MA were amongst the most ardent advocates of religious disestablishment, even taking their issue to the First Continental Congress where they worked with the PA Quakers to confront the Congregationalists of Boston with their pleas for liberty. It would be, in the end, the very diversity of religious practice in America that lead to disestablishment.
Not all colonial leaders agreed with Tom Paine's call for an end to aristocratic rule in Common Sense. In fact, many feared the result of "Democracy Unleashed." Tracing the success of the British constitution to mixed governmental form, which included aristocracy as one of the three forces, they wondered where that counter ballast would come from that would prevent the government from inclining toward anarchy. Among those who voiced this concern, John Adams was one of the most articulate critics. Gradually as they groped toward a way to deal with democracy, they developed an ideal of balance of institutional powers that replaced the estates-based concept of mixed government.
In the section entitled "Whether Some Degree of Respect be Not Always Due to From Inferiors to Superiors," he points out again that the Revolution was not intended as a social revolution and that many conservative attitudes toward hierarchy persisted. Yet the ideology of the Revolution which developed out of the lived experience of late colonial life, worked to the detriment of hierarchical society. The disobedience toward the government of England, like the disobedience of the child toward its parents, was corrosive of good order. One let out of the box, the genie of equality was hard to put back into it.
The background of this work is Bailyn's project selecting pamphlets of the Revolutionary Period for publication. In the process of assembling the pamphlets, he realized that the explanations included in these pamphlets were the "ideological origins" of the Revolution. Taking issue with the Progressives, who tended to cast the Revolution in terms of social and economic "interests" jockeying for position, he confirms the "old fashioned view" that the revolution was about ideology and politics. Couched in the logic of religion, and steeped in natural rights philosophy, the Patriots partook of the Enlightenment world but retained a decidedly religious frame of mind. Most importantly, these men were influenced by the thought of Whig politicians in the age of Walpole -- an anti-authoritarian strain of political thought that first arose in the context of the English Civil War. When they spoke of slavery, corruption and conspiracy, they meant something entirely different than the modern propagandist might take the terms to mean. Their use has to be understood in light of what was know as the "Country Whig" ideology. It was in the transfer from England of this literature of political opposition that provided the foundation upon which the pamphlet literature of the American Revolution grew.
The Literature of Revolution
Starts by noting the wide range of print media used for the public debates leading up to the Revolution. Newspapers, broadsides, almanacs and -- above all -- pamphlets were filled with polemics and political commentary. A document that was small enough to fit in your pocket, the pamphlet also allowed enough room for an author to fully develop an idea or concept in 5-25,000 words. Driven by the great events of the time, flurries of pamphleteering were prompted by the Stamp Act, Townshend Duties, Boston Massacre, Tea Party, and the Meeting of the First Continental Congress.
Placing the pamphlet literature in the context of European pamphleteering of the time, Bailyn finds that all of the standard rhetorical strategies and literary devices of the time were present in the American pamphlets. Considered as literature, however, they were comparatively crude. Written by lawyers, ministers, merchants and planters, they were primarily intended to persuade rather than to stand on their merits as literature. The decorous and restrained tone of the literature reflects the limited goals of the Revolution itself.
For the primary goal of the American Revolution, which transformed American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty. (p. 19)
As Americans debated the questions surrounding the power of Parliament to tax, they worked out a whole new political ideology. It is in the pre-Independence pamphlet literature that he finds the wellspring of the Revolution's ideological creativity.
Sources and Traditions
Though the colonists peppered their pamphlets with allusions to classical antiquity, these allusions primarily served as window dressing and in the instance they were used strategically Bailyn is impressed by the selectivity and narrowness of the way in which they were used. They were interested primarily in the decline and fall of Rome. As with the classics, so too the Enlightenment literature. Mostly used as window dressing, the selectivity with which it was deployed is revealing. Primarily interested in the natural rights philosophy of Locke, the key to their thinking is not to be found in a broader imbibing of the Enlightenment literature. More of an influence was the British Common Law.
To the colonists it was a repository of experience in human dealings embodying the principles of justice, equality, and rights; above all it was a form of history - ancient indeed immemorial, history; constitutional and national history; and, as history, it helped explain the movement of events and the meaning of the present. (p. 31)
Covenant theology also played a role, but not a large one.
What was the real source of their ideas seems to Bailyn to be the "country" politics of the British opposition to Walpole's leadership in Parliament. John Trenchard (1662-1723) and Thomas Gordon (d. 1750) were amongst the writers who had the greatest impact on the colonists. Publishing the Independent Wig and Cato's Letters, Trenchard and Gordon were as important (or more important) to the political ideology of the colonists as Locke. Joining T & G were the liberal Anglican bishop Benjamin Hoadley and the leader of the 18th century's freethinking Whigs Robert Viscount Molesworth and the Viscount Bolingbroke. The next generation, closer to the time of the Revolution included Richard Price, Joseph Priestly and John Cartwright. The most recent and up to date translation of Sallust and Tacitus available to the Patriots was by Thomas Gordon. Under his pen, Tacitus became an English Whig. And the patriots not only read the literature of Whig dissent, they devoured it:
So popular and influential has Cato's Letters become in the colonies within a decade and a half of their first appearance, so packed with ideological meaning, that, reinforced by Addison's play Cato and the colonists' selectively Whiggish reading of the Roman historians, it gave rise to what might be called a "catonic" image, central to the theory of the time, in which the career of the half-mythological Roman and the words of the two London journalist merged indistinguishably. (p. 44)
Railing against the government of Robert Walpole, the "Country" Whigs decried ministerial corruption and called for reforms. The conspiratorial and corrupt ministry was destroying the country for its own narrow interests and for its own enrichment. Largely ignored in England, the Country Whigs found a real audience in the American colonies. In the land of solid yeoman farmers, this rhetoric rang true. This radical Whig ideology was to be the glue that held all other strands of Revolutionary ideology together.
Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics
The colonists' view of the way the world works was similar to that of our own time, as for them power lay behind all other pretenses. They noted that power has a tendency to grow and if left unchecked to become despotic. Increasingly they saw the world divided into the realms of power and of liberty. What turned power against liberty was man's inherent corruption and lust for self aggrandizement. (p. 59) From this understanding of power and its corrosive effects, sprang the colonists' fear of standing armies. Looking at the Turkish janissaries as the worst of standing armies, they pointed to other despotic governments supported by standing armies. Molesworth pointed to the importance of vigilance against tyranny, explaining the end of liberty in Denmark as the direct result of failed vigilance. Amongst all the nations with a history of resistance to tyranny, England ranked the highest for the colonists.
The colonists saw the balance of powers in the unique mixed government of England as the foundation of English liberty. The English constitution, they felt, undergirded this liberty, but it was over the interpretation of this English Constitution that the conflict arose. How would the powers of crown, nobility and democracy counter-balance each other? Vigilance was called for, vigilance to protect the natural rights of citizens guaranteed by this constitution. Viewing liberty as constantly imperiled by Jacobite remnants, they feared effeminacy and weakness in the country's moral fiber. Vanity, luxury and the pursuit of self-interest were the marks of the Walpole ministry. Colonial visitors to London decried the corruption of vote buying and the corruption of the treasury under Walpole.
The Logic of Rebellion
At the heart of the logic of rebellion was the belief that an active conspiracy was afoot in both England and America to destroy liberty. Episodes such as those surrounding the attempts to install an Anglican bishop in America only reinforced the belief in a conspiracy of "mitre and scepter." In this environment, the Stamp Act was seen as evidence of a much larger conspiracy to deprive the colonists of their property, and thereby to undermine the basis upon which rested their liberty. And the colonists believed that the conspirators were amongst them. In Massachusetts it was Thomas Hutchinson and in Rhode Island it was the Newport junto headed by Martin Howard, Jr. in collaboration with James Otis.
Following on with the Townshend Duties, the colonists saw other reasons to fear the growing conspiracy. In the growth of the customs office, full of placemen and other idle sorts of "baneful harpies" who grew fat off the labors of hard working colonists, the patriot cause saw a clear attempt of the conspirators against liberty to spread their people about the New World. Add to this the move to have judges paid by the ministry in England instead of out of local coffers and all that was needed was the added measure of re-imposing the authority of vice-admiralty courts and you had the formula for a full-blown compromise of the judiciary as well. Then Governor Bernard called in the British troops (1768) to reinforce his authority in Boston. In light of Trenchard's tract on standing armies, it is hardly surprising that the colonists viewed this act with extreme anger. With the repeal of the Townshend Duties, a detente developed. This detente was destroyed by the Tea Act (Dec 1773), the defiance of which at the Boston Tea Party, prompted the passage of the Declaratory Acts (1774).
Amongst the many explanations proffered for this conspiracy, the evolution of a "court party" of corrupt ministers vying for the King's attention rang most true. Drawing upon biblical images, the colonists cast the court party as a "prostituted ministry" that sought to bring upon the colonists the bondage of a Persian despot. The essential balance in Britain's mixed government had been thrown off by this corrupt ministry that usurped the prerogatives of Parliament. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, condemned the "Asiatic despotism" arising in Britain. John Adams too decried the Asiatic luxuries, effeminacy and venality that had beset the English nation. With the British nation descending into tyranny, who would be left to defend Liberty when Britain finally fell? America was the last best hope for liberty in the world!
In the section entitled "A Note on Conspiracy," Bailyn explores the ways in which the British magistrates also believed that there was a conspiracy afoot leading the colonists to disloyalty. Both Governor Barnard of Massachusetts and Thomas Hutchinson took this view, Hutchinson continuing to write on this topic once he returned to England. Various colonial governors wrote about the former colonies in this vein after independence. And it is this line that the "progressive" historians (John C. Miller) adopted in describing the patriots as rabble rousers stirring up the people for their own interests.
Transformation
In Three sections Bailyn describes in intimate details key ideological transformations that happened in the period leading up to the Revolution. "Representation and Consent" describes the transformation from virtual representation, via the delivery of binding instructions to elected representatives to the final incarnation of government by the people -- the radical idea that government derives from the consent of the governed. "Constitutions and Rights" describes the move from the traditional notion of the English constitution, via the rights described in proprietary charters to the documents which eventually stood as state constitutions -- written documents that describe and codified obligations, rights and prohibitions (p. 197). Finally turning in "Sovereignty" to a discussion of the evolution of a doctrine of imperium in imperio, or a definition of federalism from the unitary model of state authority. The initial contradiction of colonial governments highly dispersed but in theory totally subordinate to Parliament sparked debate over the relationships between superior and inferior political authorities. The torturously convoluted debate over internal vs. external taxation was an attempt by some of the colonials (here B. Franklin) to deal with the paradox without breaking overtly and completely with the authority of Parliament. Others, such as John Dickinson, argued that taxation powers are not divisible in this manner -- either Parliament could tax the colonists without their consent or not! Bailyn doesn't believe that the colonists worked out all the details of the federative state, obviously that was a task for succeeding decades (and perhaps generations).
The Contagion of Liberty
Begins on p. 230 with a highly concise summary of the Transformations chapter. The ramifications of these transformations are considered in three areas: Slavery, Establishment of Religion and the social impact of the revolution (The Democracy Unleashed and "Whether Some Degree ...).
Under "Slavery," Bailyn considers the growing influence of Revolutionary ideology on a nascent anti-slavery movement. The use of the term "slavery" was extremely important in colonial rhetoric, as it connoted "other-directedness". One could not be a moral personality if one's actions were directed by another. From this basic insight sprang criticism of the colonists as hypocritical. The language of politics made some measure of condemnation of chattel slavery inescapable. Yet the patriots at the south, such as Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, relied upon the labor of slaves for their own independency. How could they be financially secure without the labor of their slaves? Less dependent upon slave labor, advocates of liberty at the North and in the Middle Colonies increasingly saw their way clear to adopting an abolitionist stance. James Otis of RI arrived at an anti-slavery position out of the conviction that slavery degraded both slave AND master. Yet the vast majority of those who decried the political slavery of British rule had nothing to say about the chattel slavery that was right in front of their noses. The harshest criticism came from Baptists like John Allen who was quick to point out the hypocrisy of other patriots (who it might be noted were mostly Congregationalists). Under the pressure of anti-slavery ministers, the slave trade was largely abolished in the Revolutionary era (starting in the North), but slavery as an institution would emerge largely unscathed from the Revolution. Bailyn points out, however, that the ideological forces released by the Revolution put the proponents of chattel slavery on the defensive.
In considering the impact of the ideology of the Revolution on the Establishment of Religion, he begins with a consideration of the complexity of the American religious scene. Indeed, though the Anglican church was established everywhere outside of New England (where Congregationalists ruled), the Anglican establishment was weak. Butler has a slightly more developed thesis, though he doesn't differ in the essentials. According to Butler the Anglicans failed to establish the same infrastructure as other faiths. Ultimately Butler and Bailyn would agree that disestablishment resulted not from an assault upon religion, but rather from sectarian infighting over multiple establishment and other issues. He sees the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) as just such a union of sectarian and idealistic rationalism. Bailyn then returns again to the role of the Massachusetts Baptists. This time focusing on Isaac Bacchus as a thorn in the side of the Congregationalist establishment of Boston. The Separate Baptists of Western MA were amongst the most ardent advocates of religious disestablishment, even taking their issue to the First Continental Congress where they worked with the PA Quakers to confront the Congregationalists of Boston with their pleas for liberty. It would be, in the end, the very diversity of religious practice in America that lead to disestablishment.
Not all colonial leaders agreed with Tom Paine's call for an end to aristocratic rule in Common Sense. In fact, many feared the result of "Democracy Unleashed." Tracing the success of the British constitution to mixed governmental form, which included aristocracy as one of the three forces, they wondered where that counter ballast would come from that would prevent the government from inclining toward anarchy. Among those who voiced this concern, John Adams was one of the most articulate critics. Gradually as they groped toward a way to deal with democracy, they developed an ideal of balance of institutional powers that replaced the estates-based concept of mixed government.
In the section entitled "Whether Some Degree of Respect be Not Always Due to From Inferiors to Superiors," he points out again that the Revolution was not intended as a social revolution and that many conservative attitudes toward hierarchy persisted. Yet the ideology of the Revolution which developed out of the lived experience of late colonial life, worked to the detriment of hierarchical society. The disobedience toward the government of England, like the disobedience of the child toward its parents, was corrosive of good order. One let out of the box, the genie of equality was hard to put back into it.
November 28, 2020
There is a government-wide conspiracy aimed at destroying our ancient and god-given liberties. We must form armed militias to defend ourselves for when the government troops come. But the head of the government is on our side, and will save us from the slavery that these rogue elements want to impose on honest, loyal Americans.
Trump Era conspiracy theory, or mainstream colonial thought? Hey, it’s both!
This is just one of a number of themes that Bailyn teases from the decades of colonial political thought he researched. There are startling direct connections between the rebellious colonists and our modern-day militia movements and anti-government activists. The strongest of these are the conspiracy theories that the government wants to deprive citizens of their rights. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes. More to the point, it shows us where we came from, which is always informative and useful.
Another connection is the idea that only a small, weak government is necessary or desirable. This was the view of the anti-federalists, whose intellectual descendants are alive and well today. And it was the anti-federalists who wanted a bill of rights.They strongly felt that it was a must against a federal government that would otherwise oppress its citizens. But ironically, by the 20th century that bill of rights had to be imposed on the states because the political heirs of the anti-federalists were unrestrainedly enforcing Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation, voter suppression, and many other loathsome policies. In 1789 the states were the defenders of people’s liberties. After the civil war, they were the violators.
But there is less connection between certain of the founders’ problems and some we face today. For example, the founders were focused on federal power as a potential enemy of individual liberty. Our modern conservatives are also in favor of protecting individual liberty by limiting government power. But the difference today is the existence of large, wealthy, and powerful corporate entities--unforeseen by the founders-- that threaten not only individual liberty, but societal health, wealth, and safety. Left unchecked, large corporations would become private, de facto, governments, unanswerable to the citizens of now powerless, irrelevant governments. If you think your vote doesn’t count now, wait until the corporations are the complete masters of the politicians.
Now the only check on corporations is government. Or so it seems. Liberals today wish to empower government to limit the “liberties” of corporations; but at least some of today’s conservatives do not trust the government with any power, and also do not seem to view corporations as a threat to individual liberty. And here lies another connection between our world and the founders’: as Bailyn well describes, the founders were struggling to shed ancient, ingrained ideas to create a new system of government, a project that required persuasion of enough citizens in the face of a horde of skeptical opponents, many of whom were learned, skilled, and persuasive. Today we have the beginnings of a new struggle, one that will require today’s reformers, like the founders, to think beyond accepted ideas and not only devise new solutions, but also find a way to convince enough people to implement them. We are just as much in the dark about our constitutional and political future as the founders were about theirs.
As an aside related to the pre-1776 debates among the colonists, it is odd to read a seminal work on the underpinnings of the American Revolution and feel that the loyalists and British usually had the better arguments. Until, that is, Tom Paine published Common Sense, which, in my view, freed the republicans from some true theoretical millstones that had been sinking them.
OK, that is the good stuff. The bad is that this is another academic history through which to plod. Bailyn may be a touch easier than Gordon Wood (his pupil), but not anywhere near Morgan and far from Ellis. One day I’ll keep count of the number of sentences that must be read twice, three times, or even four (!). This book sure has a lot of them. I may only be an average bear, but if I have to reread even one sentence (forgivable as one may be), it is the author’s fault, or at least the editor’s. Take that, Pulitzer committee! Some of Bailyn’s sentences are so stiff you could pick one up off the page, knock on his door with it, and beat him over the head. But I see I am too late, as he passed a few months ago. Now I feel bad. (And if you don’t believe me, read the first three paragraphs of chapter 4. I think a good edit there could have cut 80% of it. That passage is by no means unique, but rather representative.) So start this book forewarned.
Trump Era conspiracy theory, or mainstream colonial thought? Hey, it’s both!
This is just one of a number of themes that Bailyn teases from the decades of colonial political thought he researched. There are startling direct connections between the rebellious colonists and our modern-day militia movements and anti-government activists. The strongest of these are the conspiracy theories that the government wants to deprive citizens of their rights. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes. More to the point, it shows us where we came from, which is always informative and useful.
Another connection is the idea that only a small, weak government is necessary or desirable. This was the view of the anti-federalists, whose intellectual descendants are alive and well today. And it was the anti-federalists who wanted a bill of rights.They strongly felt that it was a must against a federal government that would otherwise oppress its citizens. But ironically, by the 20th century that bill of rights had to be imposed on the states because the political heirs of the anti-federalists were unrestrainedly enforcing Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation, voter suppression, and many other loathsome policies. In 1789 the states were the defenders of people’s liberties. After the civil war, they were the violators.
But there is less connection between certain of the founders’ problems and some we face today. For example, the founders were focused on federal power as a potential enemy of individual liberty. Our modern conservatives are also in favor of protecting individual liberty by limiting government power. But the difference today is the existence of large, wealthy, and powerful corporate entities--unforeseen by the founders-- that threaten not only individual liberty, but societal health, wealth, and safety. Left unchecked, large corporations would become private, de facto, governments, unanswerable to the citizens of now powerless, irrelevant governments. If you think your vote doesn’t count now, wait until the corporations are the complete masters of the politicians.
Now the only check on corporations is government. Or so it seems. Liberals today wish to empower government to limit the “liberties” of corporations; but at least some of today’s conservatives do not trust the government with any power, and also do not seem to view corporations as a threat to individual liberty. And here lies another connection between our world and the founders’: as Bailyn well describes, the founders were struggling to shed ancient, ingrained ideas to create a new system of government, a project that required persuasion of enough citizens in the face of a horde of skeptical opponents, many of whom were learned, skilled, and persuasive. Today we have the beginnings of a new struggle, one that will require today’s reformers, like the founders, to think beyond accepted ideas and not only devise new solutions, but also find a way to convince enough people to implement them. We are just as much in the dark about our constitutional and political future as the founders were about theirs.
As an aside related to the pre-1776 debates among the colonists, it is odd to read a seminal work on the underpinnings of the American Revolution and feel that the loyalists and British usually had the better arguments. Until, that is, Tom Paine published Common Sense, which, in my view, freed the republicans from some true theoretical millstones that had been sinking them.
OK, that is the good stuff. The bad is that this is another academic history through which to plod. Bailyn may be a touch easier than Gordon Wood (his pupil), but not anywhere near Morgan and far from Ellis. One day I’ll keep count of the number of sentences that must be read twice, three times, or even four (!). This book sure has a lot of them. I may only be an average bear, but if I have to reread even one sentence (forgivable as one may be), it is the author’s fault, or at least the editor’s. Take that, Pulitzer committee! Some of Bailyn’s sentences are so stiff you could pick one up off the page, knock on his door with it, and beat him over the head. But I see I am too late, as he passed a few months ago. Now I feel bad. (And if you don’t believe me, read the first three paragraphs of chapter 4. I think a good edit there could have cut 80% of it. That passage is by no means unique, but rather representative.) So start this book forewarned.
October 27, 2024
At the middle of the twentieth century, the historiographical consensus position around the American Revolution was firmly cemented by Progressives like Arthur Schlesinger and Charles Beard: the driving factors of the Revolution were associated with class and socioeconomic conflict. The role of ideas – or ideology to use Bailyn’s word – rarely received any attention. To the extent that ideas were important, the ones that got the most traction in standard histories argued that the Revolution was the exclusive product of Enlightenment ideas like natural rights. Bailyn’s “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution” (1967), which won him a Pulitzer Prize and a Bancroft Prize, pushes back against both assumptions.
In 1763, most colonists were comfortable identifying themselves as subjects of King George III. Just a dozen years later, the first shots at Lexington and Concord were evidence of a sea change in that relationship. Of course, the Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Tea Act, and eventually the Coercive Acts all played an important role in this shift but knowing that doesn’t provide a means to understand why these pieces of legislation were so hated by colonists. This is where ideology – the ways in which ideas coalesce to provide a framework for meaningful behavior - comes in.
In his book, Bailyn turns his eye to pamphlets – by far the most popular method of spreading news at the time - that were being circulated in this period to look for driving patterns, concerns, and motives that appeared to push the logic of revolution forward. At the time Bailyn was writing, these pamphlets were usually dismissed by historians as unimportant rabble, “mere propaganda,” and therefore unworthy of study. Bailyn takes a different approach by seriously considering the ideas they contain. One of his big takeaways is that the republicanism of the radical English Whigs and their deep suspicion of entrenched power structures were most important in swaying the colonists toward their break with England.
Analysis of the English Whigs wasn’t new when Bailyn wrote the book. Historians like Caroline Robbins, whose “The English Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies” (1959) would be out of print today if it weren’t for the Liberty Fund, had already detailed their influence even if not in relation to the Revolution. In excavating the ideas going back to the earliest republicans like Algernon Sidney, James Harrington and later Joseph Addison, Bailyn’s book is one of the first efforts by a major American historian to discuss Whiggish republicanism within the broader context of the American Revolution.
Republican ideas exploded in the last third of the seventeenth century between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Republican theorists declared that liberty was corrupted by power and that it was the civic duty of citizens to mitigate this corruption. The predominant republican sentiment that became so popular in the colonies drove a feeling of mutual distrust, leading colonists to think the English crown and Parliament were conspiring to dismantle colonial liberties. At the same time, this fear and distrust drove what Bailyn calls a “contagion of liberty,” which pushed the bounds of freedom in new ways, including an increased voting franchise, the abolition of slavery, and the separation of church and state.
Bailyn’s thesis fails to address some important points. For example, surely ideas weren’t the only impetus in the revolution. To what degree were the causes proposed by consensus Progressive historians (the socioeconomic and class-based causes) to blame? Bailyn also doesn’t account for the huge diversity in colonial opinion, with a significant portion of colonists remaining on the Loyalist side even throughout the war. Whatever the merits for his argument or how it has withstood the gauntlets of the cultural turn, Bailyn gives ideas their due place in a debate where they had previously been sidelined. For that alone, this deserves to be read not only by graduate students of history, but anyone who wants a more fleshed out understanding of the revolution’s precipitating causes.
In 1763, most colonists were comfortable identifying themselves as subjects of King George III. Just a dozen years later, the first shots at Lexington and Concord were evidence of a sea change in that relationship. Of course, the Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Tea Act, and eventually the Coercive Acts all played an important role in this shift but knowing that doesn’t provide a means to understand why these pieces of legislation were so hated by colonists. This is where ideology – the ways in which ideas coalesce to provide a framework for meaningful behavior - comes in.
In his book, Bailyn turns his eye to pamphlets – by far the most popular method of spreading news at the time - that were being circulated in this period to look for driving patterns, concerns, and motives that appeared to push the logic of revolution forward. At the time Bailyn was writing, these pamphlets were usually dismissed by historians as unimportant rabble, “mere propaganda,” and therefore unworthy of study. Bailyn takes a different approach by seriously considering the ideas they contain. One of his big takeaways is that the republicanism of the radical English Whigs and their deep suspicion of entrenched power structures were most important in swaying the colonists toward their break with England.
Analysis of the English Whigs wasn’t new when Bailyn wrote the book. Historians like Caroline Robbins, whose “The English Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies” (1959) would be out of print today if it weren’t for the Liberty Fund, had already detailed their influence even if not in relation to the Revolution. In excavating the ideas going back to the earliest republicans like Algernon Sidney, James Harrington and later Joseph Addison, Bailyn’s book is one of the first efforts by a major American historian to discuss Whiggish republicanism within the broader context of the American Revolution.
Republican ideas exploded in the last third of the seventeenth century between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Republican theorists declared that liberty was corrupted by power and that it was the civic duty of citizens to mitigate this corruption. The predominant republican sentiment that became so popular in the colonies drove a feeling of mutual distrust, leading colonists to think the English crown and Parliament were conspiring to dismantle colonial liberties. At the same time, this fear and distrust drove what Bailyn calls a “contagion of liberty,” which pushed the bounds of freedom in new ways, including an increased voting franchise, the abolition of slavery, and the separation of church and state.
Bailyn’s thesis fails to address some important points. For example, surely ideas weren’t the only impetus in the revolution. To what degree were the causes proposed by consensus Progressive historians (the socioeconomic and class-based causes) to blame? Bailyn also doesn’t account for the huge diversity in colonial opinion, with a significant portion of colonists remaining on the Loyalist side even throughout the war. Whatever the merits for his argument or how it has withstood the gauntlets of the cultural turn, Bailyn gives ideas their due place in a debate where they had previously been sidelined. For that alone, this deserves to be read not only by graduate students of history, but anyone who wants a more fleshed out understanding of the revolution’s precipitating causes.
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