American Political History, Topic 3: The Patriot Press and Thomas Jefferson s A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

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Karen Bradford
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1 Background: The real American Revolution was not the shooting war that occurred between 1775 and That War of not for American Independence merely protected by force of arms seeds that had been growing in the British colonies of North America since 1760, ones that would not flower until 1791, when a constitutional republic, complete with an adopted Bill of Rights, became a reality. As John Adams observed, The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of 15 years, before a drop of blood was shed. Minds and hearts are the real seedbeds of change. They nurture the ideas that grow into choices and events, and the choice to leave the Empire of Liberty, with its storied tradition of English rights and law, and the events that reaffirmed a new collective identity as Americans (instead of as Englishmen), had been planted by the patriot press. This group of writers included the sharp minds of James Otis, Daniel Dulany, Richard Bland, John Dickinson, Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson, as well as anonymous contributors such as Rusticus and Brutus, who sowed the seeds of liberty in colonial minds and hearts through newspapers, letters, speeches, sermons, broadsides, and pamphlets before the shooting started. These seeds, watered by the power of the Holy Ghost as it washed over the land, began sprouting with the emergence of nonimportation agreements and other boycotts, physical and written protests and willful disobedience to English instruments of authority, committees of safety and correspondence, a new public identity and its attendant social pressure and moral suasion against conservative neighbors, recommitted militia units and stockpiles of materiel for war, and extralegal shadow governments, such as provincial and continental congresses, whose only authority came from the American people. Before the people would be willing to die for the cause of American independence, they needed to be willing to live for it, which they did with increasing understanding and vigor from the end of the French and Indian War to the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The seeds of American liberty had blown across the Atlantic from England. English colonizers crossed the ocean with the Bible: the single most influential textbook of liberty for the Americans. Through its pages, colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia learned in their homes and congregations to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free and be not entangled with the yoke of bondage (Galatians 5:1) and that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17). Americans looked to the Magna Charta and English Bill of Rights, and to the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution, for their heritage of liberty, rights, law, and government by popular sovereignty and consent. The words of English political philosophers from the 1600s and 1700s fleshed out their own understanding of republics, democracies, constitutions, and commonwealths. As Josiah Quincy, Jr., said in his will, I give to my son Algernon Sidney s works, John Locke s works, Lord Bacon s works, Gordon s Tacitus, and Cato s Letters. May the spirit of liberty rest upon him. Americans cited Edward Coke on law, John Milton on tyrannicide, James Harrington on property, Algernon Sidney on revolution, John Locke on contract theory, and John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon on freedom of speech. These country (pro-people) politicians and philosophers opposed

2 their court (pro-king) counterparts as proponents of natural rights, the contractual nature of society and government, and mixed constitutionalism. They championed old ideas such as state of nature; social contract; government s role as a protector of life, liberty, and property; consent of the governed, and popular sovereignty leading to a right to revolution in fresh ways, and the American people were even more conversant with their arguments than with those of the classical Greek and Roman philosophers, Enlightenment thinkers, and Puritan expounders of the covenant theology, which they also quoted frequently. The patriot press grasped these seeds of liberty and planted them throughout the American colonies between 1760 and After the passage of Grenville s Sugar Act of 1764, James Otis s The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved declared that sovereignty came from God and resided originally and ultimately in the people, which made taxation without representation an abomination. When the Stamp Act of 1765 continued to ignore Otis s complaints, Daniel Dulany, in Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, argued that external taxation (regulating trade) by Britain was permissible, but internal taxation (to raise a revenue from the colonies) was not. Following the passage of the Townshend Acts of 1767, which were ostensibly external taxes to regulate trade but which were intended to raise a revenue, John Dickinson s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania asserted that any British taxes whether internal or external for the purpose of raising a revenue violated the colonists right to consent and that sovereignty can be divided. In 1774, after the passage of the Coercive Acts as a response to the Boston Tea Party, James Wilson s Considerations on the Authority of Parliament severed Americans allegiance to Britain s legislature, stating, The American colonies are not bound by the acts of the British parliament because they are not represented in it. In the same month, Thomas Jefferson, in A Summary View of the Rights of British America, went a step further with a radical warning: George III had been guilty of a wanton exercise of power and, if he persisted, then the colonies might be driven to separate. Though Jefferson s views were too extreme to be accepted by either the Virginia Convention or the First Continental Congress in 1774, they were important in indicating the course of the American mind and heart over the next two years, which would bring the shooting war that began with Lexington and Concord in 1775, the severing of the last link the English king with Thomas Paine s Common Sense in 1776, a national declaration of independence in July 1776, and the growth of state and national governments, which would occur between 1776 and 1781 and, on the national level, find fulfillment in the U. S. Constitution. Questions to Consider as You Read: What comparisons does Jefferson make between the Saxon migration to Britain and the English migrations to North America that created the American colonies?

3 What do Jefferson s comparisons have to do with John Locke s ideas about a state of nature and the social contract? What does Jefferson say about the English king as a central link? What does he say about King George III s actions? What veiled threat does Jefferson make? Research: Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774) As you read, don t forget to mark and annotate main ideas, key terms, confusing concepts, unknown vocabulary, cause/effect relationships, examples, etc. In order that these our rights, as well as the invasions of them, may be laid more fully before his Majesty, to take a view of them from the origin and first settlement of these countries. To remind him that our ancestors, before their emigration to America, were the free inhabitants of the British dominions in Europe, and possessed a right which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed them, of going in quest of new habitations, and of there establishing new societies, under such laws and regulations as to them shall seem most likely to promote public happiness. That their Saxon ancestors had, under this universal law, in like manner left their native wilds and woods in the north of Europe, had possessed themselves of the island of Britain, then less charged with inhabitants, and had established there that system of laws which has so long been the glory and protection of that country. Nor was ever any claim of superiority or dependence asserted over them by that mother country from which they had migrated; and were such a claim made, it is believed that his Majesty s subjects in Great Britain have too firm a feeling of the rights derived to them from their ancestors, to bow down the sovereignty of their state before such visionary pretensions. And it is thought that no circumstance has occurred to distinguish materially the British from the Saxon emigration. America was conquered, and her settlement made, and firmly established, at the expense of individuals, and not of the British public. Their own blood was spilt in acquiring lands for their settlements, their own fortunes expended in making that settlement effectual; for themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold. That settlements having been thus effected in the wilds of America, the emigrants thought proper to adopt that system of laws under which they had hitherto lived in the mother country, and to continue their union with her by submitting themselves to the same common Sovereign, who was thereby made the central link connecting the several parts of the empire thus newly multiplied. [Jefferson then recounted a long list of grievances against Parliament and Crown: grievances he felt they had committed from 1764 through 1774.] That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate: Let those flatter who fear, it is not

4 an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the third be a blot in the page of history. You are surrounded by English counsellors, but remember that they are parties. You have no minister for American affairs, because you have none taken up from among us, nor amenable to the laws on which they are to give you advice. It behooves you, therefore, to think and to act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counsellors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the inordinate desires of another; but deal out to all equal and impartial right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature which may infringe on the rights and liberties of another. This is the important post in which fortune has placed you, holding the balance of a great, if a well poised empire. This, sire, is the advice of your great American council, on the observance of which may perhaps depend your felicity and future fame, and the preservation of that harmony which alone can continue both in Great Britain and America the reciprocal advantages of their connection. It is neither our wish nor our interest to separate from her. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them. 1 Notebook Questions: Reason and Record What comparisons does Jefferson make between the Saxon migration to Britain and the English migrations to North America that created the American colonies? What do Jefferson s comparisons have to do with John Locke s ideas about a state of nature and the social contract? What does Jefferson say about the English king as a central link? What does he say about King George III s actions? What veiled threat does Jefferson make? 1 SOURCE: Ford, Paul Leicester, ed. The Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 2. New York: G. P. Putnam s Sons, 1905.

5 Notebook Questions: Relate and Record How does the document relate to FACE Principle #6: How the Seed of Local Self- Government Is Planted: Christian self-government begins with salvation and education in God's law and love and flows to governing oneself, one's home, one's church and one's community? How does the document relate to Alma 31:5? Record Activity: Multiple Choice Comprehension Check 1. Background: Which one of the following was not true about the real American Revolution? a. It occurred in the hearts and minds of the people. b. It was effected by the newspapers, letters, speeches, sermons, broadsides, and pamphlets of the patriot press. c. James Otis, John Dickinson, and Thomas Jefferson helped to cause it. d. It was encouraged by the power of the Holy Ghost. e. It included nonimportation agreements and other boycotts, physical and written protests and willful disobedience to English instruments of authority, committees of safety and correspondence, a new public identity and its attendant social pressure and moral suasion against conservative neighbors, recommitted militia units and stockpiles of materiel for war, and extralegal shadow governments, such as provincial and continental congresses, whose only authority came from the American people. f. It was the shooting war for independence that occurred between 1775 and Background: The seeds of American liberty came from all of the following sources except which one? a. the Bible b. England

6 c. the English Bill of Rights d. the Glorious Revolution e. a heritage of English rights and law f. English country philosophers, such as Sidney, Locke, and Trenchard and Gordon g. German Romantic philosophers, including Goethe, Hegel, and Schiller h. classical Greek and Roman philosophers i. Enlightenment thinkers j. Puritan theologians 3. Source: In which one of the following did Jefferson not believe? a. Colonies were distinct and independent governments bound to Britain only by allegiance to a common monarch. b. Kings are servants not proprietors of the people. c. George III had been sacrificing the rights of the American colonies to the inordinate desires of the British Isles. d. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. e. If George III did not shape up, then the American colonies might be driven to separation. f. The American colonists ancestors had left England and returned to a state of nature in the New World. They chose to come back (governmentally speaking) to England as part of a new social contract in which the king was their central link to the empire, and, if George III violated his part of the contract, then they could choose to leave again! g. George III had a liberal, expanded view of the world.

Chapter 5. Decision. Toward Independence: Years of

Chapter 5. Decision. Toward Independence: Years of Chapter 5 Toward Independence: Years of Decision 1763-1820 Imperial Reform, 1763-1765 The Great War for Empire 1754-1763 led to England replacing salutary neglect with. Why? The Legacy of War Disputes