The Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America
288
The Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America
288eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
The American Revolution is widely understood—by schoolchildren and citizens alike—as having ushered in “freedom” as we know it, a freedom that places voting at the center of American democracy. In a sharp break from this view, historian Barbara Clark Smith charts the largely unknown territory of the unique freedoms enjoyed by colonial American subjects of the British king—that is, American freedom before the Revolution. The Freedoms We Lost recovers a world of common people regularly serving on juries, joining crowds that enforced (or opposed) the king’s edicts, and supplying community enforcement of laws in an era when there were no professional police.
The Freedoms We Lost challenges the unquestioned assumption that the American patriots simply introduced freedom where the king had once reigned. Rather, Smith shows that they relied on colonial-era traditions of political participation to drive the Revolution forward—and eventually, betrayed these same traditions as leading patriots gravitated toward “monied men” and elites who would limit the role of common men in the new democracy. By the end of the 1780s, she shows, Americans discovered that forms of participation once proper to subjects of Britain were inappropriate—even impermissible—to citizens of the United States.
In a narrative that counters nearly every textbook account of America’s founding era, The Freedoms We Lost challenges us to think about what it means to be free.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781595585974 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New Press, The |
| Publication date: | 08/13/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Common Ground of Colonial Politics
In 1768, the Reverend George Micklejohn of North Carolina described what happened when colonists voted for representatives to their provincial legislatures: "We not only yield our consent beforehand to whatever laws they may judge it expedient to enact, but may justly be said to have had a principle share in enacting them ourselves, inasmuch as they are framed by their wisdom, and established by their authority, whom we have appointed for that very purpose." In Micklejohn's account, the consent that took place through elections was essential to colonial governments' claims of rule — and their expectations that the people would obey the law, pay what taxes were levied, and abide by decisions of the court system that carried their statutes into execution. Equally important (and here was the reverend's main point), Micklejohn claimed that consent through legislative elections was sufficient. Having chosen representatives, or "appointed" them to pass laws, the people had had their say. Now they should recognize that the law had binding force.
This logic would make sense to later Americans, for the act of consenting through the vote would be central to their political lives. Our government can claim to be "by the people" precisely because the electorate has chosen representatives to make and execute the law for us. Yet modern Americans' focus on the ballot box — on what Micklejohn called "before-hand" occasions of consent — can make it difficult for us to understand the freedoms that mattered to many colonists in eighteenth-century British North America. For voting was not the only form of political participation in that era, and Micklejohn's view of political obligation was not the only one. When we consider the farmers, tradesmen, and shopkeepers of colonial America as voters, we grasp only one element of their political identities.
Indeed, Micklejohn spoke before the governor of the colony and some 1,400 assembled militiamen, a group that had gathered precisely because hundreds of North Carolina farmers disputed the notion that they were obliged to submit to decisions of the legislature. They did not feel obligated to pay taxes levied by their representatives or to allow the court of law in their county to bring suspected criminals to trial. Some of these farmers, too, had had the opportunity to vote for representatives to the North Carolina legislative assembly. Yet they apparently believed that they had not thereby consented "before-hand" to its acts; or else that such consent was insufficient to make the law binding; or perhaps that, having given consent before, they might go on to withdraw their consent afterward. These farmers were unusual in the extent of their disaffection from provincial government, but not in many of their basic tenets and assumptions. Their position won sympathy from many New Englanders who read about it in the press, for example, and from time to time colonists in every province acted according to the same principles, as if obedience to the law were in some respects, or on some occasions, optional rather than mandatory. Throughout the colonies, people responded to the official summons of authorities selectively; they routinely evaded or mitigated various laws, not infrequently challenged courts, and openly disobeyed magistrates who sought to inform them of what the law required. Put differently, many colonists sometimes claimed a right to consent after their representatives created legislation. They were accustomed not only to being represented "before-hand," but also to being present in the execution of the law that had been passed.
This chapter explores popular representation and the popular presence in colonial British America. It surveys an arena that I call the "common ground" of colonial politics, defined as the institutions in which, and the terms on which, those common men who qualified as political agents were accustomed to act. In these institutions, ordinary status was acknowledged to be sufficient and ordinary knowledge acknowledged to be enough. On this ground, colonists acted in at least three ways. First, they were subjects of the king, mere commoners who (alongside their social inferiors) filled a role as spectators of the drama of state. Second, they acted as Micklejohn described them, as voters in provincial affairs who selected legislators to play an increasingly significant consenting and governing role. Finally, they constituted a presence "after the fact," in processes of executing the law. Through these varied political forms, common men made their notions of fairness and right felt within their society.
The People as Subjects
The men who lived in the American colonies were subjects, not citizens. They lived in a system that located power and authority at the top. Thus, "Rulers are Gods," said the Reverend Ebenezer Pemberton in 1710, and if other colonists in Massachusetts Bay might have dissented, the clergyman probably pleased some of his audience, which included the royal governor, lieutenant governor, council, and lower house of the provincial legislature. In colonies less known for piety, officials less concerned with religion similarly tied secular power to God's will. In 1741, South Carolina Chief Justice Benjamin Whitaker explained why colonists should obey the commands of government and the provisions of the law. "Let every man in a private Station ... 'be subject to the higher Powers because there is no power but of God.'" These were the sentiments of Christian monarchy, which focused power in the being of the king and the symbol of the crown.
The model for this idea was the English monarch, and it had to be admitted that, in normal times at least, God indeed determined the English succession by blessing specific kings and queens with specific offspring in specific birth order. Monarchs were the Almighty's vice-regents on earth, even if some of them ruled poorly or conducted themselves vilely. Indeed, the idea that authority came from God might not excuse monarchs' misdeeds but rather limit their transgressions. Being God's vice-regent was a responsibility — how onerous only rulers themselves were likely to know — and English theorists and parliamentary leaders used that fact to recall monarchs to their duty. When, as happened rather often under the reign of the Stuarts, the king adopted a policy that parliamentary leaders considered oppressive, they responded by endorsing his divinity and attacking his plans. After all, God's vice-regent could not wish to be oppressive of the people. Surely, then, designing courtiers or ministers had misinformed the king or hidden their own ambitions behind his name, so that true loyalty to the monarch required subjects to oppose these new and oppressive policies. By this logic, the association between rulers and God's will was not always permissive but sometimes prescriptive: rulers should be gods, or approximate them at least. It was a high standard of behavior. A good ruler would be merciful and just, rule in kindness to his people, and do God's will. The Stuarts were not the only ones who might have difficulty measuring up to that.
Whether or not they were successful at acting like gods, rulers put effort into appearing godlike, or at least dignified, authoritative, and impressive. Not televised in their subjects' living rooms or even represented by likenesses in the press, rulers of the early modern era might appear to their subjects in two significant ways. First, their images were cast on coins, conferring value on the money and receiving it back in turn. Second, monarchs themselves circulated. They appeared in person on a variety of public occasions, formal presentations, celebrations, and anniversaries. Elizabeth I was particularly fond of doing this. She "progressed" her realm, from one to another urban center, providing her subjects with a glittering and dramatic pageantry. In January of 1559, for example, she traveled through London, bedecked in gold cloth and jewelry and carried on an open litter attended by one thousand horsemen. Here was the dramatic power of artistic representation deployed to create charismatic effect. Other actors, too, took the stage on such occasions, as local lords, gentlemen, and officials of varying ranks recognized and responded to the queen's majesty in heavily ritualized interactions. Large numbers of spectators of different social classes had the opportunity to watch the proceedings, as their social superiors symbolically laid claim to status at the center of power. Subjects enjoyed the opportunity to observe the majesty of the crown, to recognize and acknowledge the monarch and subordinate officials. Cobblers who lined the streets or stood at nearby windows were able to tell that they were being splendidly governed. Although monarchs could not be everywhere, in provincial towns local officials enacted similar ceremonies, celebrating monarchy and grandeur in the absence of the king or queen. Even those who were unable to attend such events could read in cheap published ballads, broadsides, and chapbooks detailed accounts of processions, coronations, and other ceremonies.
Colonists lacked the opportunity to view monarchs in the New World, but they made the most of occasions when they could view the lesser figures that they had. All the colonies were ruled by a governor, and though a couple of these were elected, most were appointed by a proprietary lord or the king himself. These governors generally arrived in capital cities armed with papers stamped with the royal seal and with written instructions that expressed the will of the Crown, establishing their status as vice-regents of God's vice-regent. When they arrived in colonial capitals they expected due ceremony, so that towns such as Annapolis, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were the scene of processions from time to time. In 1758, for example, Francis Bernard landed in Trenton, New Jersey, to take up the government, and the inhabitants provided a proper reception: "His Excellency was received at this antient Seat of Government with great Demonstration of Joy, and having received the Compliments of numbers of Gentlemen of Distinction, the Evening was concluded with Bonfires, Illuminations, ringing of Bells, &c." Elements of the festivities were reserved for the elite of the city, but processions to "the large Meeting-House," where the governor's commission was read, and to "the House of Mr. Shaw," provided the populace at large the opportunity to observe the new governor and local worthies. The mass of people could approve the occasion by attending bonfires in the streets or setting lights in their windows as demonstrations of joy. Custom decreed that the Jersey governor travel to Burlington and Perth Amboy for public ceremonies as well. Two years later, Bernard traveled overland to become governor of Massachusetts, and inhabitants along his route took the occasion to show their respects. "The people had conceived a favourable opinion of him, and evidenced it by publick marks of respect, as he traveled through the province, and upon his arrival at the seat of government." Transitions in government needed to be publicly marked by processions of the few and the great, and the processions needed to be observed by the many and the small.
On these and similar occasions, colonial governors and other high officials were expected to make efforts to be dignified and charismatic. The first governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, encouraged the colony's legislative and judicial leaders to exert conscious efforts to make a proper entrance: "Magistrates shall appear more solemnly in public, with attendance, apparel, and open notice of their entrance into court." When well done, it would excite admiration. "The Superior Court met yesterday and made a Good Figure," wrote a merchant approvingly. Again, those who missed the exciting spectacle might read about it in the press. Governors in particular should live, dress, and act like king's vice-regents. The governor's house in Williamsburg, Virginia, was impressive, and the North Carolina legislature agreed to spend thousands of pounds sterling to create a "palace" for the governor's residence in the town of New Bern. In Connecticut, Governor Gurden Saltonstall acknowledged that some people considered him "too strict, severe, and lordly," but noted that his office entitled him "to deserve submission and accordingly to expect it." Indeed, it disrupted right order when rulers and officials failed to set themselves apart and above, or when ordinary people failed to recognize their superiority. In York County, Pennsylvania, a man named William Hatton was found guilty of contempt of court when he insulted justices of the county by "calling them Coopers, hogg trough makers, Pedlars, Cobblers, tailors, weavers, & saying they are not fitting to sit where they doe sit." Hatton's case testifies to the expectation that magistrates should be more august than such lowly tradesmen, as well as to their willingness to use the force of law to punish aspersions on their dignity. Kings, governors, judges and magistrates were supposed to be superiors. There were occasions when a qualified voter himself stood above the lesser members of his society; nonetheless, in the face of the king and his officials, voters and nonvoters alike served as audience for the great pageantry of state.
The People as Voters
On the face of it, such a system left little for the people to do but serve and submit, for rulers were exalted far above the ordinary people. Citizens have a dignity; subjects were, after all, subjected. This mode of thinking logically had an impact on ideas about government, as those that informed the plans of proprietors and lords who shaped New World colonies. Thus, having seized New Netherlands from the Dutch in 1666, the Duke of York appointed a governor and a council to rule his province; he required nothing of the rest of the people in the settlement "but obedience and submission to the Lawes" those authorities would proclaim. Some years later, William Penn planned his colony of Pennsylvania to afford greater participation for the common people. He began with first principles of Whig political philosophy. "It has been the judgment of the wisest men and practice of the most famous governments in all ages, as well as that it is most natural, reasonable, and prudent in itself, that the people of any country should be consenting to the laws they are to be governed by." Yet consent did not necessarily amount to very much; Penn, too, imagined ruling chiefly through and with his appointed councilors. His Second Frame of Government — the plan that first took effect in the colony — gave legislative initiative to the governor and council. Only once these gentlemen had agreed among themselves on desirable policies would they refer the matter to the "freemen of the province," who might concur with their leaders' policies through the medium of representatives elected from each county. The representatives' prerogatives were narrowly hedged: they would spend eight days conferring, send proposals for changes back to the governor and council, then on the ninth day either accept or reject the bills the council and governor proposed. This arrangement barely approximated the situation that Rev. Micklejohn described, in which ordinary freemen "had a principle share" in legislation. Here, the people's power to consent boiled down to the right of freemen to vote for representatives, who in turn had little power beyond saying yes or no to policies devised by their superiors.
The Proprietors of Carolina similarly envisioned elected representatives who would be "mere witnesses" to the actions of their betters. In early New Jersey, proprietor Sir George Carteret declared that the governor and his council would decide what measures to introduce into the assembly for the representatives' consideration. And English officials of the 1670s and 1680s, seeking to consolidate control over their growing empire, hoped to govern all the North American colonies with legislation that took shape only at the top. The British Lords of Trade ruled Ireland under a law called Poynings' Act, which reserved initiative over legislative bills to themselves and provided for the Irish parliament to assent or withhold assent. Royal governors in both Virginia and Jamaica received instructions to secure legislative enactment of several bills that had already been drawn up in England. In future, moreover, governors were to draft bills in collaboration with their councils, secure approval from the Privy Council in London, and only then submit the bills to the provincial assembly. The House of Burgesses in Williamsburg seemed amenable to the limited initiative powers they would enjoy under the new arrangement, but Jamaican legislators strongly protested being reduced to the position of Irishmen. Their opposition scuttled English plans to extend the practice to other royal colonies. Despite that, it remained an underlying principle of much political thinking: men at the top would formulate policy, after which the lesser sort would respond.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Freedoms We Lost"
by .
Copyright © 2010 the Smithsonian Institution.
Excerpted by permission of The New Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
PREFACE,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
1. The Common Ground of Colonial Politics,
2. The Commitments They Brought,
3. Declarations of Interdependence,
4. The Patriot Economy,
5. The Freedoms They Lost,
NOTES,
INDEX,
