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MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN k HISTORY lOughton Mifflin
Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1
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Major Problems
Era of the American Revolution, I 760-1 7 U in the
(
MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES GENERAL EDITOR
THOMAS
G.
PATERSON
Major Problems Era of the
in the
American Revolution, 1760-1791
DOCUMENTS AND ESSAYS SECOND
EDIT1
RICHARD r\i\
i
Rsrn
oi
DITION
I
VA
I)
BROWN
1).
onni
i
OMPAOT
HOI GH TON Mil FLINi 'nil
\
(
w
> i
t
ncui
i
'I
k
Editor in Chief: Jean L.
Woy
Senior Associate Editor: Frances Project Editor: Rebecca Bennett
Gay
Associate Production/Design Coordinator: Jodi O'Rourke
Associate Manufacturing Coordinator: Andrea
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Cover Image: John Trumbull, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker June 1775, Yale University Art Gallery, Trumbull Collection.
Hill,
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Copyright
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For
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in
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xiii
Preface
CHAPTER Interpreting the
1
American Revolution Page
1
ESSAYS Barbara Clark Smith
E
for
The Revolution Preserved
4
Social Inequality
The Revolution Destroyed Monarch} and Paved the 8 Democracy
Gordons. Wood
Way
•
H. Breen
•
Made
Boycotts
•
the Revolution Radical
CHAPTER Society
and
Politics
on the Eve
13
2
o) the
Revoluti
Page 27
DOCUMENTS 1.
2. 5.
a
John Adams,
College Graduate, Views Rural Massachusetts, 1760
a
Anna Green Winslow, Boston, 1771
4.
a
Earns His
slave-.
Schoolgirl,
I
Jack
S P.
AY
earns Ahmii (,m\\ Ing
p in
37
The Preconditions of the American Revolution
•
R Beeman
•
The! mergenceol Populaj
DO i
I
M
I
i.mk
I
in,
(•/
Benjamin
'..
Ordei
l.
Rev.
in
V
/
i
(
a/
I
17
,v)
Politics
CHAPTER The British
2.
I
^2
S
Greene
Richard
i
reedom, 1729- 1766
I
Philip Vickers Fithian, a Nevt Jersey tutor, Admires the Tidewatei 40 Gentry, 1773 S
/
Connecticut
Venture Smith,
*
mi
TS Devise Albany Plan of Colonial Union
rank 1 in Predicts the Plan ouncil on the Reform
rhomas Barnard
i
ooks
lo
i
ol
ol
the
i
(
nion Will
ustoma
uturc Glories
§
I
i
all
6
Contents
Vlll
ESSAYS Friction
Fred Anderson
•
Regulars
79
P. J.
Marshall
•
Between Colonial Troops and
Britain Defined
by
Its
Empire
British
88
CHAPTER
4
and Colonial Resistance
British Reforms
Page 98
DOCUMENTS 1.
Stamp Act Resolutions, 1765
Virginia
99
2.
Governor Francis Bernard Describes the Boston Riot, 1765
3.
The Declarations
4.
"William Pym" Asserts Parliamentary Supremacy, 1765
5.
The House of Commons Questions Benjamin Franklin, 1766
of the
Stamp Act Congress, 1765
100
102 103
6.
Lord Camden (Charles 1766 110
7.
Parliament Repeals the Stamp Act but Declares 1766 112
8.
John Dickinson Exhorts the Colonists
9.
Charleston Merchants Propose a Plan of Nonimportation, 1769
Pratt)
105
Exhorts Parliament to Change Direction,
Its
Authority,
to Opposition,
1767-1768
113
117
ESSAYS Edmund S. and Helen M. Morgan and
Its
Significance
Pauline Maier
•
The Assertion of Parliamentary Control
•
119
The Townshend Acts and the Consolidation
of Colonial
128
Resistance
CHAPTER The Imperial
Crisis:
From
5
the Tea Act to
the Declaration of Independence Page 138
DOCUMENTS 1.
John Adams Reflects on the Boston Tea
2.
Parliament Debates the Coercive Acts, 1774
140
Party, 1773
140
3.
The Coercive
4.
Thomas
5.
Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, 1774
6.
King George Proclaims America
7.
Thomas Paine
8.
The Declaration
Acts, 1774
143
Jefferson Asserts American Rights, 1774
Calls for
146
154
in Rebellion, 1775
Common
Sense, 1776
of Independence, 1776
170
155
152
1\
ESSAYS Thomas M.
Doerflinger
Pauline Maier
•
The Mixed Motives of Merchant Revolutionaries
•
Declaring Independence
173
180
CHAPTER
6
Fighting for Independence Page 189
DOCUMENTS 1.
John Adams Discusses Military Preparations, 1776
2.
General George Washington Asks Congress 194 1776
3.
Congress Calls on States
to
4.
A
Among American
5.
Soldier Views Mutiny
A
7.
Two Views
Remembers
Veteran
,-\n
191
Effective
Troops, 1780
Army Problems
the Battle of Saratoga, 1777
of the Battle of
Army,
Support Continental Army, 1776
General George Washington Explains 1780 200
6.
for
Yorktown, 1781
197 198
anil Calls for Help,
201
202
ESSAYS John W. Shy
•
Hearts and Minds: The Case of "Long Bill" Scott
Don Higginbotham
The Strengths and Weaknesses
•
CHAPTER Outsiders
205
212
of the Militia
7
and Enemies: Native Americans an Page 224
DOCUMENTS 1.
2.
Oneida Indians Declare
John Adams Reports on Congress's Strategy Tow an! 1775 226
3.
Chickasaw Indians Seek Help, L783
4.
Patriots Intimidate a
5.
a
6.
i
i
.
8.
225
Neutrality, 1775
New
Urges Congress
Pairioi
Newspaper Attack on
Thomas Hutchinson
me more than they imagine about teaching and about histOT} through I
their questions, their smiles, their frowns,
the
at
them because they make
it
a
and even
their blank stares.
1
dedicate
pleasure to walk into the classroom.
R
D B
Major Problems
in the
Era of the
American Revolution, 1760-1791
.
CHAPTER 1
Interpreting the
American
Revolution
The meaning of the American Revolution, and even a pn was, can never be established with absolute finality. The dence and tor the creation of the national republic which front about 1 763 to about 1 789 was too rich in its variety it
—
—
in
its
workings, and too heterogeneous in
its
was the crucial event
U .
participant
allow for a single incontestable and definitive the Revolution
n
interpreter.
for the format:,
our current sense of the l 'uited States must always influence the we see and understand the Revolution. Americans, who ha\ thoroughly investigated the Revolution, cannot view it with We can and do learn more about what happened, but we
wee,
s
in :
.
meaning of events permanently. coherent schools ofgeneral re
Yet certain
accepted during the past two centuries
tinuing vitality of some themes in perspective.
It is
reasonable
and to
w
helps
begin with th
was the earliest, most durable viewpoint Hon from the era of its first appearance in The Whig view was initially articulated pendence movement like David Ramst i
\
otis
Warren, the Massachusetts write'
r
.
writings presented the Revel u tie
tyranny
In the
Whig
interpreter,
expression, the historian
am
Revolution as a heron strug* chants andplantei they fashioned a
dem
the rest of the
American nation, beginning of the twent
1
2
Major Problems
in the
Era of the American Revolution
Although the Whig view has never been wholly swept away from popular culit was effectively challenged at the turn of the twentieth century by university scholars such as George Louis Beer and Charles McLean Andrews, who, together with their students, most notably Lawrence Henry Gipson, formulated a new "imperial" interpretation based on British archival sources. They "discovered" that Britain had never intended to impose tyranny in the colonies, and they agreed with eighteenth-century British officials that in fact the colonists were a free people flourishing under imperial rule. Independence, these scholars explained, resulted from transatlantic misunderstandings and bureaucratic and parliamentary mismanagement. Although Britain was generally well intentioned, its system was haphazard, and its officials were clumsy. This interpretation did not erase notions of patriotic idealism or heroics, but it made them incidental. The key to underture,
standing the Revolution, according
to this school,
lay in grasping British political
and the inadequacies of the imperial system for responding to changing issues and demands. About the same time that the imperial school took root among American scholars, a new, critical viewpoint was articulated by political scientists, essayists, and historians, among them Charles A. Beard, CarlM. Becker, and Arthur M. Schlesinger. Their views, which came to be labeled "Progressive, "focused on economic and political self-interest as the central motives propelling the Revolution. Indeed, the dynamic forces that shaped the movement for independence and the formation of state and national government were conflicts between merchants and farmers, easterners and westerners, city dwellers and country folk, aristocrats and democrats, creditors and debtors. Pulling patriotic icons like Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson down from their pedestals, Progressive interpreters maintained that the same kinds offlesh- and-blood political contests characteristic of culture on both sides of the Atlantic
own era were also operating at the nation 's founding. During the 1930s and 1940s this interpretation became widely established, in both academe through the writings of such scholars as Merrill M. Jensen and popular culture, where the novelist Kenneth Roberts used Progressive ideas in several best-selling novels about the Revolution. This interpretation made the Revolution relevant to contemporary political struggles. Like the older Whig interpretatheir
tion, it has retained vitality and is particularly attractive to critics of national complacency and the status quo. But during the generation following World War 1 1 and in the 1950s especially, it was effectively challenged by scholars such as the political scientist Louis M. Hartz and the historian Richard E. Hofstadter. Their works, influenced by a more global perspective and by a comparison of the American Revolution with the revolutions of France, Russia, and China, emphasized the broad republican consensus that the Revolutionaries shared, their commitment to pragmatic politics, and their affinity for practical compromises. Here there was no significant right-wing party that favored a hereditary system, just as there was no substantial support for social leveling and attacks on private property. American Revolutionaries might argue over tactics, but they were, it was said, generally united around the liberal, Lockean idea of a republic grounded on widespread property ownership and a state committed to fostering individual rights and opportunities. Because a mood of national unity prevailed during the postwar and cold war eras, this "consensus " interpretation had an appeal that made it popular far beyond the campus. As with the older Whig interpretation, it was popular among journalists, politicians, and schoolteachers. During the past generation, starting in the 1960s, various scholars have challenged this consensus view. One group, whose criticism of the consensus interpretation is oblique, has been labeled "neo-Whig. " In the neo-Whig view, both the
ItU:
1
'
and consensu failed to take Revolution Both regarded ideas as secondary, as mere propaganda or ration* to manipulation in a political struggle where th and political advantages were settled by pragmati Progressive
—
whom
Bernard Bailyn has been most inflm material interests and practical politics but emphasize thi Ideas, they maintain, shaped the Revolutionary* thus guided their actions, hike the first Whig interpi Whigs regard its rhetoric as expressing the actual belli the historian
!
a "public relations
"
smokescreen intended
mask
to
their
A second challenge to the consensus school has been targeted the neo-Whigs as well. Labeled 'neo-Pi historian Gary B. Wish has most powerfully articulaU a republican consensus in the Revolutionary era and an But the crux of the Revolution. neo-Progressives rooted in the material interests
first
identify
-
influential
belii
.
When it came to mobilizing common men and women, not suffice. And the movement for republicanism, they m. Jensen.
ongoing battle between democratic and consensus interpretation
too placid
is
rately the blood, sweat, tears,
the
/:.
and hard interests that Wood proposed an in
Cordon S. combined themes
In the 1990s,
that creatively
elitist
and
front both
the
/'
neo-Whig and neo
p relations. His synthesis re-cast the time span of the Re. the IToos to the IS ids. Wood's fw argumentdemocracy was thai longed immediately as being
—
men and
winners. Yet final word,
There to
I
inasmuch as it was constn a measure of \\ ood's achievement
too provincial, it is
it
serves as the point of departure
no agreement about
is
new perspectives,
how
th
'
best to interpret the R
elements of all the earlier interp
xpressedin books, speeches, anddramatu not only information, shape
and judgment,
own
hion their
interpretation of the
documents and essays that
follow.
ESSAYS (
iordon s Wood,
professoi
a
at
Brown
synthesis, The Radicalism oj th praised, bui n has also been
celebrator) vie* ol
.1
University,
won
American
mse,
in the
judgment
revolution thai laid the foundation
history, the
H
eral scholars ol V\
Clark Smith.
from
thai
torian
.1
curatoi
publication
who heads
.11
1
the National
Museum
he tm.il
the Centei foi the
Humanity
fresh interpretation ol the independei
and economic
1
I
criti
of seeing
points out. adopted a radical!)
themselves and their world. Born
men
American Revolution
society that reserved political authority tor
in a
of birth and breeding, the) imagined and dared to embrace the notion that
of humble origins might merit political
Within pages, however, those
rule.
.
.
achievement melts into
patriots'
men
.
Readers learn
air.
Revolution was not republican at all. ... In the aftermath of the Revolution, with the coming o\ the Jacksonian age. Americans faced the limits o( human virtue,
that the
dismissed their Utopian ideals, and accepted the invisible hand of self-interest as the basis for social and political no! republicanism but
life.
The radicalism of
abandonment.
its
.
.
Reserving the term "revolutionaries*' for an essary, for a
gap
at
Wood
the Revolution,
makes
elite
possible, even nec-
it
movement. There is he offers more than the
to leave out significant parts of the resistance
the middle, at the heart.
o\'
his dual revolution. If
A
usual college course on Revolutionary America, he also otters less.
"Revolution" occupies twenty out of 369 pages oi
titled
emerges, was
it
.
text.
section en-
Neither there nor
elsewhere do readers learn substantial amounts about these topics and events: the
Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre: the gathering
Sons of Liberty;
o\
women
mobilizing to disuse tea and lake up the spinning wheel: merchants and artisans negotiating over terms of nonimportation: committees of correspondence feverishl) linking inland villages and seaports; committees
o\'
inspection cementing a cross-
class patriot coalition bv enforcing the Continental Association o\ antitorv
mobs and
tion there i
is
1774: wartime
struggles against monopolists and price gOUgers. In this revolu-
no heroism, delinquency, or treason; no one fought
save George Washington,
who
took no salarv tor
it).
this revolution
Although the federal Consti-
comes in lor discussion, the bulk of what counts many courses and monographs is barelv here.
tution
as
(he Revolution"
in
Readers receive no picture of the unfolding of resistance, the moves and coun-
termoves of different actors, the reluctance of merchants and the energv sans; the tears of indebted slaveholders as thev
unrulv African-American workers.
course of events, and tor therein omitted the
thai
Wood
we might
There political
who
is
tOO
tonus.
doesn't
march us through
the familiar
patriot coalition, a coalition across region. .
.
.
example, about popular ideas
o! hbertv and popular does not consider whether the relative!) humble patriots
here, lor
little
Wood
joined the Revolution activelv shaped the coalition And contributed then
understanding
ol events.
there
II
was something
radical about the eia.
could not be the plebeian capacity lor interracial alliance, up. contesting the law, and others ise
public terrain,
it
capacity to
theii
the soeial scale
there all)
So
arti-
well be grateful, save tor this effect: he has
means bv w Inch the was achieved.
rank, interest, and belief,
ol
faced fervent evangelicals and
was something
presuming then ow
n
toi
it
own
seems, n
running away, rising
competence
radical about patriot leaders,
it
to
occup)
a
could not be
themselves and hence negotiate with those beneath them on
the long
sweep
Jacksonian America, lakes place
at
ot
Wood's Revolution, from colonial
society to
the surface, absent a careful account ol revolu-
tionarv events, absent the agenc) ol artisans, sailois. and foot soldiers, absent the lull
daring
resist
ol
clue patriots,
constituted aul hoi
it
v
who
and
to
staked then
.ill
on then inferiors' competent
commit themselves
io hbeitv
6
Major Problems
in the
Era of the American Revolution
... To accept much of Wood's argument, to follow his use of terms, readers must absorb an imperative: although many things have happened in this history, we allow only some of them to count. Indeed, it is noteworthy that what interests Wood most about African-American slavery is whether that institution was conspicuous to eighteenth-century Euro.
.
.
Most slaveholders and others saw no evil, Wood tells us, as if that to know about them or as if theirs were the only subjectivities that mattered. Surely African- American slavery was conspicuous to some Americans: it depends on who was looking. Americans.
were
.
.
.
we need
all
.
.
We might imagine a radical revolution in the eighteenth century, centered in the vision and the acts of those Americans
—
patriot
and
black and white
tory,
—who
extended the imperatives of liberty from the imperial controversy to relationships
at
home. The radical moment in some Americans' revolution came when they looked anew at slavery. Although some Founding Fathers would still figure as revolutionaries in this story and although the narrative would still unfold in the nineteenth century, its center
One
would
substantially shift outside elite hands
with the impression that Wood's purpose
is left
and
elite vision.
less to discover
is
Ameri-
He
can radicalism than to avoid acknowledging radicalisms of the wrong kind.
down
plays
historical reservations about the
market
to suggest an
relationship between ordinary people and consumption.
.
.
.
unproblematic
Yet in one crucial
decade, from 1765 to 1775, colonists high and low sought liberty by rallying
around a critique of consumption and withdrawing from the British market.
Antebellum Americans were strongly evangelical, that
many looked to religion
reform
—precisely
compass. Instead,
—
.
.
and social
consuming society some moral
resolves the Revolution into a comfortable, democractic
nineteenth-century society that was, after the end, does
.
says, but he does not note
as to trade unionism, political participation,
to give their individualistic,
Wood
Wood
Wood means when
all,
good enough
for everyone.
What,
in
he characterizes the American Revolution as radi-
means that it was adequate. Morgan once noted that most Americans seem to think that the American Revolution was "a good thing." Morgan's characteristic understatement
cal?
At
heart,
Edmund
I
think, he
S.
contains a wealth of insight. freshly.
.
.
.
Few
historians or others approach the Revolution
Revolutionary ideas and events lay claim to Americans' loyalty.
Americans do not have feel implicated in the
to
.
.
.
accord sacred status to the intentions of the Founders to
American Revolution or obligated by
its
commitments and
aspirations. ... In this culture, the Revolution has claims. It is
because of that context,
I
think, that
The Radicalism of the American Revowe look to the Founders and for rad-
lution remains insistent that for Revolutionaries
icalism
we
ultimately look to impersonal demographic and commercial forces.
.
.
.
This book invokes the American Revolution as a powerful legitimating narrative and attaches
more
it
to the
socioeconomic changes of the early nineteenth century. There
to this than harnessing
capitalism,
is
our approval of the Revolution to nineteenth-century
making mobile, competitive, and individualistic elements of the JacksonAmerican Revolutionary, hence worthy of celebra-
ian era not just revolutionary but tion
and deference. .
.
.
.
.
Wood commits himself to overstating the
impact of Revolution, constructing
a unidimensional, fully adequate revolutionary legacy. That the relationship
commitment renders
between the Revolution and the freedom of people not
initially
Interpreting the
included
blessing far too transparent, linear, and simple than
in its
remains. Wood's revolution takes too
who
much
credit.
slights the
It
was and
it
agenc> of those
makes it difficult to comprehend or even "American now recognized that slavery in a
did struggle to end slaver) and
who opposed
credit those
abolition.
republic of workers was an aberration,
Americans were have
to retain
it.
explain and justif)
to
Revolution
and
lutionaries
was
slavery
.
Wood
.
new
and anthropological ways.
racial
who
as those
bit as surel)
a
argument
at
that slaver)
two formations
the hip."
.
Wood
.
.
.
.
[MJaking
a
implied and assumed each
that
does not attend
persists in constructing a Revolution
women of an) liberate women
failed to
But the Revolution was not
later.
less coinci-
ways
to the
that the
eighteenth and earl)
in the late
defense of slaver) necessar) was not the same
In his account,
The Revolution do so
.
and freedom were
defense of slaver) impossible.
Wood all.
the
Revo-
.
silently rejects the
nineteenth centuries.
Yet
The
.
compact with
cast the Constitution as a
bonds of slavery loosened and then tightened again
cient to
.
.
doomed
that
defended slaver) too. Those who believed that were drawing on their Revolutionary
their followers
phenomena "joined
making
an>
if
would
did. they
the North and led ine\orabl\ to the Civil War." But
in
dent, contradictor) growths than other,
Americans eventually
the bedrock of the republic
heritage every the devil.
m
it
peculiar institution.' and that
'a
as southern
motion ideological and social forces
in effect set in
of slavery
institution
as
7
Ann-
womankind. Women's
was
inequality
a
Jacksoman
SOCiet) suffi-
period, he notes, although
in this
a transhistorical
economic,
ing through the ages to bestow
and
circumstance figure largel) as an absence.
m
would
on waiting
social, or political rights
presence
a
it
agent that could go march-
the nineteenth century, and
were ideological versions o\ women's nature that have profoundl) affected female Americans tor over a century. Take women's responsibilit) for present with
\
irtue.
it
As Wood himself
notes. ha\
mg
adopted self-interest as the basis
and society, American culture did not dispense with virtue but placed
women. At
custodial care o\ middle-class
what participation it
in
public
life
under the
that self-interest
was about, women were given
became made
the virtue that
crucial that the) not participate.
Thus neither
women
nor enslaved African Vmericans were
can freedom; both were included sar\ roles.
.
.
.
so
much
the public world, set apart
a narrative ot the
rations, experiences,
sell
the labor the) Controlled 01
Wood.
1
possible
latei
that
it
arguahK
n
.
when
movements
in
tact
it
tenants. mk\
tonus of participation, and
Vmerican-ness without then
.
real, in part as
households, the SUppOSedl) independent
of the nineteenth century, in the
1
from the consciousness
Americans, children,
home, to
who m
tor abolition
tact relied
on
the fields, and the mills
be quibbling, stressing the things
accomplished so much
1
and women's rights -\uk\
current egalitarian thinking." he writes. Others
and
banished
that
thmk. such arguments appeal
the Revolution did not
made
out ot Ameri-
left
a\)^\
and agency. Such omission was necessar) and
dependence
and sometimes even
1
within critical, untree.
African
other poor people, remade the
denial ol the
it
dependence
as a reformulation Ol
constructed
in
This Revolution did not bung "a full-scale assault on dependency*
oi
a
same time
the
o\ politics
it
would suggest
he Revolution
m
that those
thinking ha\e also taken place against the weight of the
fact all
our
movements
8
Major Problems
Era of the American Revolution
in the
the Revolution extended
and contained
liberty. It offered a particular heritage
of par-
ticipation, particular possibilities for public life, but not others ....
The Revolution Destroyed Monarchy and Paved the Way for Democracy GORDON
New
Smith, like other neo-Progressive or
means "substantive change
WOOD
S.
Left historians, believes that radicalism
who were most oppressed,
in the lot of those
subjugated,
or marginal in the society." In her opinion, these most oppressed, subjugated, or
marginal were African-American slaves, women, and other "have-nots" on the very
bottom of American
No one were
in
society.
denies that these groups were oppressed in various ways, as most people
premodern times, and
that black slaves especially
rarely duplicated in the history of the world. ...
gender or of ethnicity. ... To be sure,
I
proper context for fully understanding them challenges the Revolution
made
ing explaining the origins of the
No
.
I
.
.
.
believe
I
.
dozens of monographs on
have
set these issues in their
and have correctly
.
to the position of
first
endured a subjugation
do not ignore issues of slavery and
do not repeat
race and gender over the past few decades, but
tial
I
set forth the essen-
women and to
slavery, includ-
emancipation and the abolition movement.
.
.
.
would have liked or expected on the lot of slaves and women in the Revolution. But I never intended merely to synthesize contemporary scholarship. Of course, my book does rely heavily on the writing of many historians. But it tries to be much more than a simple summing up of existing scholarship; it also aims to say something new and original about the Revolution, to see it from an unconventional, if not unfashionable, perspective which is why "the bulk of what counts as 'the Revolution' in many courses and monographs is barely here." What I hoped to do was press beyond the issues of contemporary scholarship, which often deal with past oppressions of women and blacks in a very presentminded manner, to retrieve a kind of oppression that has been lost to us. There existed in the premodern world another, more general sort of oppression that I believe the Revolution eliminated, a comprehensive oppression that subsumed the oppression of both slaves and women and in which all ordinary people had a stake. doubt
spent less time than Smith
I
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
all common women but white males as well.
comparable
.
.
This oppression involved blacks and
.
ordinary Americans, including not only
This oppression was, of course, scarcely
to the particular degradation suffered
nevertheless,
its
by African- American
slaves;
elimination had to precede the elimination of the oppression of
women. The age-old humiliation felt by all commoners in the premodern by no means as well known today as that experienced by black slaves and women, and for that reason I thought it was worth emphasizing. Because this
blacks and
world
is
.
oppression of
all
ordinary people
gender, and ethnicity are,
From Gordon
S.
it
is
Wood, "Equality and
is
not an issue of our
own
.
.
time in the
way
race,
not easy to get present-minded historians ... to
Social Conflict in the
American Revolution" William and Mary-
Quarterly, 3d Series, Vol. 51, 1994, pp. 703-716. Reprinted by permission.
understand
absorbed
In fact, so
it.
9
American
Interpreting the
present cultural wars are they that
in the
inconceivable to them that any white males
is
it
unless they were sailors or
in the past,
homeless or very poor, could ever have been oppressed or have tell oppressed. The) imply that only those who are oppressed or marginalized in our own time were capable of being oppressed two centuries ago.
and fundamentally change the
ish slavery
have been radical.
lot
words, there
In other
women,
far as
we would behave
ing as
as
fundamental
We cannot
we
men were
all
we understand
What was
blacks and
as well as black,
men were teat since
o\'
created equal to white
it
was
It
my book
equal. ... In
Inequality
I
men
and the contempt
We know
it
did not
(although
it
would
1776 because
radical in
wanted
mean
meant
it
in the
our brief American
So when Smith says
eighteenth century (no
Western
story, or
.
.
.
that
that
past, follow rather rapidly.
developments concerning social leveling are not cen-
I
exclude from my account the Ideals and passions
ordinary Americans, they could not be more mistaken. Central to struggle of ordinary people to
emergence ultimately
their
is
emerge
my account
is
not written out
ing the point ot \iew only of the Revolutionary leaders ing that of in
Revolution
ot the
not merely a reflection ot northeastern aristocrats. They
is
food
common
riots or the
my
story
ot
the
is
consciousness and prominence: indeed,
into
what the radicalism
Contrary to what these critics say.
and
that all
took a lew thousand years of Western history to accomplish), then
history, although not to
my
that
once the
the other claims to equality could follow and. relative to the total span of
tral to
in
his-
time be
in
to get that point clear: tor
white males was established
all
Declaration's ring-
o\ the
were held throughout previous
radical about the Declaration in 1776.'
women were
claim of equality by
mean
1776
in
created equal and had certain inalienable rights
used to justify those equalities too).
white
they are unable to understand a docu-
the earlier presumptions
which ordinary people, white tory.
Consequently
in their critiques:
think and tor not behav-
Revolution as the Declaration of Independence.
appreciate the radical significance
ing affirmation that
unless
today.
to the
abol-
1\
eould not possibly
it
expressed
is
it
they indict the Americans of the past tor not thinking as
ment
then
something profoundly anachronistic
is
about their conception of the Revolution, as
the Revolution did not total
It
of
ordinary people because
I
i.U)
about.
is all
assume
and the belter
archives
elite
ot"
that
sort
I
not talk about Jack Tars or
homeless. The only ordinary people they can
really
am
tak-
and ignor-
women
conceive
ot
whom they wrap nostalgic and a ot mantle romantic communalism. Common sentimentalize in artisans, shopkeepers, petty merchants, protobusinessmen those whom farmers,
are those
today
on the \ery bottom
we might
have no
real
label
place
m
ot the society, usually the society's victims,
"lowci-middlc
class'* or
'middle class"
Yet these sorts ot ordinal) people are the majOl actors
actors
the majOl
m m\
talked about are not lor the actions o!
These Jefferson
was
the
StOT)
I
ol
thousands
entities. ot
ot these
I
Ihe\ are merely shorthand terms
among
spokesmen
the Revolutionary
elitt
anyone
else
Hettei than
had. Jefferson articulated out basic
Vmerican ideolog)
equality, oui confidence in education,
and out
people
the Revolution A\\d
these oulinar\ woikada\ people.
people did have spokesmen
most important
m
he demographic and economic forces that
some supeihuman
hundreds
common
these oidinary people
then Consciousness.
faith in the
our belie!
common
Hut Jefferson was not aw ordinary working pcison
in liberty
a\k\
sens
he was
a
slave-owning
Major Problems
1
who
aristocrat
saw
fully
in the
Era of the American Revolution
never really worked a day in his
life
— and consequently he never
what he was saying. His words outran many people became far more money-loving and relig-
the explosive implications of
of his intentions, and his
common
ious than he ever imagined. Certainly, he had
was
nature of the popular forces he
awareness of the commercial
little
leading.
But ordinary people themselves also became spokesmen for their cause, and they spoke with a degree of anger and feeling that the liberal intellectual Jefferson
could never muster.
am
I
thinking of middling
men
Lyon, and William Manning,
to
whom
I
men
William Findley, Matthew
like
my
devote a good deal of attention in
book. These Scots-Irish immigrants, ex-weavers, ex-servants, uneducated farmers,
and
the hundreds of thousands of lowly and middling folk they spoke for
all
these are the real heroes and principal agents of
my
story.
.
.
These men were
.
and tough-minded exponents of the emerging democractic ideology.
telligent
They were
in.
.
.
on the Federalist
the principal actors in Jefferson's democratic assault
establishment and other remnants of an older hierarchical society. These ordinary
people did not need the French Revolution to give their democratic movement
momentum. They had enough indigenous lution without the aid of a foreign model.
rage and resentment to
make
its
their revo-
They were determined to destroy the social Hugh Henry Brackenridge or
pretensions of so-called or would-be aristocrats like
Chipman
Nathaniel
James Bowdoin and
or
their hitherto despised labor. .
.
But Smith
.
.
.
.
.
.
to establish the
moral superiority of
.
can scarcely admit the existence of
and Manning because such white males do not
fit
the
men
modern
like Findley,
definition of oppressed
people. Since the Revolution did not totally abolish black slavery or free
from patriarchal dependency,
it
Lyon,
could not have been radical;
it
women
could only have
been, in Smith's word, "adequate."
How
the Revolution could have
been merely adequate
transformed some-
if it
thing as important as people's sense of equality and self-worth and their conceptions
of property and labor socialist R.
much economic classic
is
not addressed by these
inequality; but
1906 account
Why Is
also
it is
There
There ity
as is
.
The
open and cheerful
marked indeed by
social equality." In his
United States? German econ-
this social equality
by contrasting the American
his
head high, walks with a lissom
stride,
member of the middle class. submissive about him." More important than equal-
in his
nothing oppressed or
British historian and
"is
in the
worker with the European one: "He carries is
.
.
marked by much
No Socialism
omist Werner Sombart illustrated
and
critics.
H. Tawney, for example, realized that America
expression as any
of wealth, says [Mickey] Kaus,
this social equality, this
is
worth and dignity among people, a feeling of equality
equal sense of
self-
that allows people, regardless
of differences of wealth, to look others in the eye and treat them as equals and to expect to be treated as equals in return. Americans generally have had feeling of equality than other peoples, and the Revolution
was
more of
this
crucial in creating
it.
Correspondingly important were changes that the Revolution brought about
in
people's conceptions of property and labor. These changes were linked and were
based on substantial transformations
were eager
to acquire
in the society.
.
.
.
Eighteenth-century gentry
landed property or any other form of property that would
Such wealth was composed of static forms rents from tenof property that generated what we might call "unearned income" sufficient to allow its ants, returns on bonds, interest from money out on loan give
them
the desired independence.
.
.
.
—
—
Interpreting the Ante)
1
1
holders not to have to work for a living so thai they had leisure to assume the burdens
of publie office without expecting high salaries.
.
.
wealth
static proprietary
Their
.
was of eourse very vulnerable to inflation, which is wh> the printing of paper money was so frightening to these gentry: inflation threatened not simply their Livelihood but their very identity and social position.
.
.
.
Not only was this kind oi proprietary wealth very hard to come by in America. where, compared to England, land was so plentiful and rent-paying tenants so rare.
commerce and trade were creating new forms o\ property that gave wealth and to new sorts o( people. The Revolution accelerated the creation of this kind of property. This new property was anything but static: it was risk-taking, entreprewas in fact all the neurial capital not money out on loan, but money borrowed; This was the paper money that enterprising people clamored for m these years. but
power
—
it
.
property of businessmen and protobusinessmen
manufacturers, traders, shopkeepers, and
— of commercial
who
all
labored tor a
Unlike proprietary wealth,
this
new kind of dynamic,
.
produced
Ing and
li\
and exchanged things, no matter how poor or wealthy they might property could not create personal authority or identity;
.
farmers, artisan-
be.
and evanescent
fluid,
was. said Joseph Story,
it
sea.'" Hence it could not be relied on as was understood, then property qualifications
"continually changing like the waves of the
independence. Once
a source of
m
for participation
vance and rapidly
public
tell
life
this
either as voters or as officerholders lost their rele-
away.
This radical change
m
people's idea of property
during the Revolution
linked with similarly radical changes that took place
m
be the wrong kind of radicalism tor
my
But
seems
this
freedom from the need
fined as the
.
.
.
leisure being de-
all
have an occupation
to labor or to
is
conception of labor.
critics.
world where aristocratic leisure was valued above
In a
ol
to
their
the necessit)
earning a livelihood and working directly lor money was traditionally seen as con-
temptible. In fact, this need ol
was what
their hands, history.
lay
common
people
work, particularly
to
to
work with
behind then degraded and oppressed position throughout
Even Native American males had an
contempt for common labor;
aristocratic
the) hunted ami fought and regarded ordinary work as belonging exclusively
women. Before was
culture,
the American Revolution, labor, as
women's experience sure,
associated with
widely
still
ol Childbirth
it
had been
trouble,
toil,
was called labor
in all
lor ages
and pain
m
to their
Western
which
i
European languages
industriousness and the \kx\\ tor a calling were every where extolled
was widely preached
colonies, and the Puritan ethic
why
is
lo be
i.
in
the
but only tor ordinary people.
not for the aristocratic gentry, and only for moral reasons, not foi the sake ol inci ing an individual's prosperity or the society
common trouble.
.
people; .
.
it
lifted
them out
People labored out
in
the
in
air,
Hard work was good
it
was
said,
equality ot
men
much
as thev
condescended
expression
ot tins
tor cent, v
&]
e the
I
Revolution bee.une the occasion tor the w QOlesaU
pression ot the new importance to be granted to equality, so too was lor the lull
foe
them out of
and
and enlightened cighlccnth-ccniui
to exi«>l the value ot labor
Just as the
productivity.
which working people had been held
condescended all
s
idleness and barbarism and kept
ol necessity, out ot poverty,
and poverty bred the contempt Hut changes had long been
Ol
new moral value
Ibis transformation in the
meaning
ol
to
labor
the radicalism ol the Revolution. Suddenly,
all
it
the
be given to laboi is
a
majoi part of what
who worked
foi
.1
li
I
mean
b>
Major Problems
1
in the
Era of the American Revolution
longer willing to put up with their hitherto degraded and oppressed condition. The
Revolution became an important expression of their strenuous and angry struggle to establish their
who
moral superiority over those they labeled leisured aristocrats
work for a living or have occupations, over those whose income came from proprietary wealth, came, in other words, without exertion or manual labor: landed gentry, rentiers, and those we today would call profesover those
Many
sionals.
did not have to
of these leisured aristocrats, having themselves so recently praised
were
the virtues of labor and equality,
in
no position
to resist this assault,
and
in the
North they were overwhelmed. This struggle was what the farmer William Manning and the rich manufacturer Matthew Lyon meant when they said the essential social conflict was between "those that Labour for a Living and those that git a Living without Bodily Labour" or between "the industrious part of the community" and those brought up in "idleness, dissipation, and extravagance." Manning and Lyon are not yet talking about the later nineteenth-century class conflict between a modern proletariat and busi-
nessmen. In the eighteenth century, hard as
men like Lyon with many employees and
may be
it
for us to accept, rich business-
struggling single shoemakers like William
Brewster of Connecticut saw themselves in a similar category as laborers, sharing a
common
resentment of a genteel aristocratic world that had humiliated and dis-
dained them since the beginning of time because of their need to work. Eventually, of course, this
common
category of laborers would break apart into employers and
employees, into manual and nonmanual, and into blue-collar and white-collar workers
—
into, in other
torians like
Smith are more comfortable with.
them from seeing social
that
my book is
and class conflict
They that
words, the modern categories and classes that
all
.
.
have been conditioned
that they
are featured in
ism, and everyone today
my
story
knows
one has
.
.
.
prevent
just not the
to expect.
Mannings and other ordinary white
were not opposed
that
it is
Left his-
and the radicalism of the Revolution
are unable to see the social conflict
who
Presentist prejudices
about social and class conflict;
describe because the Findleys, Lyons, and
I
males
.
New
to
development of
to the
be opposed
capital-
to capitalism in order to
be truly radical. This assumption that the eighteenth-century proponents and practitioners of capitalism could never have
nism.
.
.
.
There was a time, however,
been radical .
.
.
when
is
the
probably the ultimate anachro-
development of capitalism was
regarded as very radical indeed. But to link the Revolution, which, as Smith says,
was "a good far: this
ism"
is
thing," with capitalism,
which
is
"a bad thing"
—
well, that's going too
"harnessing our approval of the Revolution to nineteenth-century capital-
to
make
"mobile, competitive, and individualistic elements of the Jacksonian
American Revolutionary, hence worthy of celebration realize that what Americans thought about politics and the economy in 1800 is no longer much with us in the late twentieth century. It is quite possible for us to recognize that the Revolution and capitalism were linked and that early nineteenth-century contemporaries considered both to be good things, and yet at the same time for us to believe that capitalism today might need controlrecovering different, ling by the government. That is what doing history is all about lost worlds and showing how they developed into our present. The democratic world of the early nineteenth century that I attempted to describe was not a world only of crass material strivings and obsessive consumers. Throughout the book I was concerned with the different ways people related to one era not just revolutionary but
and deference." Smith needs
to
.
.
.
— .
.
Interp reting the
another.
By
the early nineteenth century,
my
is
it
1
opinion
3
with the general de-
that,
nunciation of the monarchial adhesives of blood, family, and patronage and with the
perceived weakness of republican virtue and sociability as a means of trying people together,
many people had come
on
to rel\
source of attachment between people. This
money
cared only about
This
new
or
interest as the principal
not the
is
consumer goods.
.
.
same
.
ma\ have been held
liberal society of the early nineteenth century
mean
together largely by interest, which was no
and strongest
thing as sa\ing that the)
adhesive, but interest was not the
only adhesive. Not only did the older bonds, both monarchical and republican,
and even into our own da\. but the Re\olu-
linger on into the nineteenth century
tionary explosion of evangelical religious passion
new ways and
my book
to
worked
temper and control the scramble
spends some time on, despite Smith's statement
evangelicals were not
unworldK and
people together
to tie
for pri\ ate wealth
to the contrary.
them on with
their
work
as
it
.
is
disciplined their acquisitive urges, and
it
standards of right and wrong and thus could be trusted .
M
restrained their
gave them confidence that even self-interested individuals subscribed contractual relationships.
in
a point
Quite the contrary: there
anticapitalist.
considerable evidence that religion increased people's energ) as liberty, got
—
to absolute
market exchange and
in
.
In the three decades between the 1760s and the 1790s the religious landscape o\ America was transformed. The older state churches that had dominated colonial
society for a century and a half
were surrounded or supplanted nominations and
denomination in
1760, were
in
sects.
— the Anglican. Congregational, and Presbyterian new and
b)
some cases unheard
in
who had no
the country, and the Methodists,
moving up
o\ religious
1790 the Baptists had already become the largest
B\
last,
soon to outstrip ever) group.
These religions changes represented
.
adherents
.
m
America
.
a radical shift in the
American people's
Because religion (and not the ideas issued from the heights o\ Monticello) was still
social relationships and cultural consciousness.
oi Bacon, Locke, and the
Newton
as
major means h\ which most
startling religious
ordinal")
changes are some
and class-ridden character
Ol the
Boycotts
it
have no doubt
And
was.
Made
the eve ot
(a\mg
Independence,
the colonists
at
it
H
BR]
ill
to
be done,
more we explore discover
just
Parliament aggressively asserted
B) reconstructing the mental framework
.
I
permissioi
a
\\ooA ot British manufactl
.
that
in this case,
H Breen No I, Jul) 1993 Copyright 1993 Reprinted by
.
informed one
ot the central
an elaborate ston
ol
the
what
N
l
about the same tune that
of the mid eighteenth centun
more work
that the
not oxer yet
is
items transformed the American marketplace.
lives
is
of the radicall) social
the Revolution Radical I
b)
I
and cultural histor) of the Revolution, the more we w
radicall) transforming event
On
we have
Revolution. But there
particular!) on this matter o\ religion. social
people made sense of the world, these
of (he best signs
misundersi
a
14
in the
American consumers
— we
ine themselves within an political crisis a
Era of the American E
shall better
i
how the colonists came to imaghow at a moment of extreme
understand
expanding empire of
trade,
bundle of popular ideas and assumptions about commerce sug-
gested specific styles of resistance, and finally,
how
movement organized
a boycott
to
counter British policy allowed scattered colonists to reach out
to
reimagine themselves within an independent commercial empire. In 1763.
no one could have foreseen
merce"" into political protest in
America.
was
It
commercial
radical
We
shall
look
initially at the
evolution of a pop-
and then explore the broad expenential and ideolog-
life
context in which this bizarre account briefly but powerfully flourished.
ical
Com-
community that made the
of liberal
consequences of commercial ideas
Revolution genuinely revolutionary. ular narrative of
new forms
each other and
"Genius of
that the translation of a
would produce
the unintended
to
.
.
The first troubled response appeared in Boston. Although the author of an anonymous pamphlet of 1764 entitled Considerations Upon the Act of Parliament did not proclaim a full-blown conspiracy, he suggested that American themselves bore responsibility for deteriorating relations with England. During the Seven Years*
War, the colonists not only have lived too well but had done so too publicly. Their opulent consumption of British manufactures strongly impressed of the army and others
at
outsiders learned that the
present and lately residing in the maritime towns." These
Americans "spend
The next
year, the
ial crisis in
sumer
pan
habits.
much [on] the much more.*"
full as
imports a> prudence will countenance, and often
fuller definition.
gentlemen
"'the
luxurious British
commercial interpretation of parliamentary taxation acquired
John Dickinson, a respected Pennsylvania lawyer, traced the imperto a
"W "e
stunning misinterpretation in Great Britain of American con-
Dickinson noted
are informed."
in
The Late Regulations, "that an
opinion has been industriously propagated in Great-Britain that the colonies are wal-
lowing
in
wealth and luxury." That conclusion, he insisted, represented a pernicious
misreading of colonial culture.
.
.
.
Americans. Dickinson claimed, were ordinarily
and mostly quite poor. British observers had been misled because the colonists, "having a number of strangers
own
among
us."'
were too generous and hospitable for
good. The Americans had "indulged themselves in
many uncommon
their
expenses."*
This "imprudent excess of kindness" was simply an ill-conceived attempt to impress British visitors.
Other writers took up the narrative of commercial
ments of situated
their
Anglo-American consumption within
Like other colonial authors, the crucial
life,
own. In 1768. for example, an anonymous
moment
in the
New Yorker
adding innovative ele-
New
York pamphleteer
a larger historical
framework.
described the Seven Years"
development of an empire of goods. In
its
War
.
.
.
as the
aftermath. Britain
turned the ingenuity of American consumers into a justification for parliamentary taxation, based on the reports of visitors
ing
a great display of luxury, aris-
from the wealth, which many had suddenly acquired during the wars." In 1*768.
this
"who saw
.
.
.
William Hicks of Philadelphia heightened the conspiratorial element
broad folk discourse.
It
was no accident, he announced,
in
that ordinary English
people accepted inflated estimates of colonial prosperity as
truth,
sources had systematically distorted reports of economic conditions
for
unnamed
in
America.
Hicks protested that "the estimates of our wealth which have been received from ignorant or prejudiced persons, are.
in
every calculation, grossly erroneous. These
Interpreting
Ou
1
5
misrepresentations, which have been so industriousl) propagated, are \er> possibl)
form the best apolog)
the offspring of politieal invention, as the)
us burthens to
which we
was becoming
for
commerce—carried
Hicks as conspirac) of
imposing upon
lor
—what
framework
are altogether unequal."" This interpretive
extremel) sinister
implications for the colonists' happiness within a commercial empire. Boldl> linking
remember exact!) how Parliawealth. Had that bod) not immediate!) imposed new taxes.' Were not these revenue acts an ominous hint of future assaults? Without money, what would the colonists be able to afford.' The plot was obvious. The British wanted to keep the Americans poor, marginal consumers just able to pa) consumption and
ment had
first
Hicks asked Americans
politics.
reacted to the false reports
to
()\
the rising taxes but never "suffered to riot in a SUperfluit) o\ wealth.'
Narratives o\ commercial
consumption and
—
assemblage
a fluid
.
.
echoed through the colonial newspapers, indicating that American consumers and bemused British visitors. o\ luxui)
changing economy, had become
in a
.
popular notions about
l
GRJ
\l
BRITAIN
Hi-land tailed to
to play: they
\Kl
l
UD
IN
VMERK
win parliamentary concessions,
could go into manufacturing themselves
broad colonial interest before the passage ot a
\
ol the
Mamp
general commercial conversation, n opened up new
Insistence thai Americans were capable ot satisfying the,;
something
easiei loi people to
that
they
would
nol achieve foi
many decades
imagine genuine economic independence
20
Major Problems
Such
in the
Era of the American Revolution
plausible, though exaggerated,
economic claims fed the boycott move-
ment, continuously strengthening the political resolve of individual consumers.
Local associations organized to promote nonimportation and manufacturing represented
initial,
of
in point
often tentative steps toward a radical reconstitution of civil society. For
fact,
Americans of the time were experimenting with new forms of com-
munity, founded not on traditional religious affiliations but on shared commercial
Only those who
interests.
insist that preindustrial capitalism inevitably
structive individualism will be surprised
by popular attempts
sparked de-
to construct interpretive
communities around a temporary withdrawal from an Atlantic marketplace. The truth of the matter is that a liberal market ideology proved capable of
men and women
mobilizing ordinary the
common
.
.
.
into associations unequivocally dedicated to
good. As a "Tradesman" writing for the Pennsylvania Chronicle in
1770 well understood,
civil society in
He
than republicanism.
America could develop from sources other we form a considerable, independent,
explained that "as
and respectable Body of the People, we certainly have an equal Right
to enter into
Agreements and Resolutions with others for the public Good, in a sober, orderly [L]et us determine, for the Manner, becoming Freemen and loyal Subjects. Good of the Whole, to strengthen the Hands of the Patriotic Majority, by agreeing .
Goods" The nonimportation movement
not to purchase British
—exposed
.
.
.
.
.
—
communal experiment
in effect, a
in applied
To consumer market of the mid-eighteenth century was open to almost any white person able to pay the price. Generous credit, paper currency, and newspaper advertisements encouraged broad participation. Usually, free producers were also consumers. And on the eve of Revolution, the success of the colonial boycotts depended on all these consumers temporarily deciding to become nonconsumers. The argument for the liberating possibilities of agency in the new Anglo-American marketplace is not intended to ideology
a radical egalitarian strand within the commercial discourse.
appreciate this development one must
remember
that the
mitigate the exploitative and oppressive effects of eighteenth-century capitalism.
The development of an indentured servants
Atlantic
economy meant
—indeed, unfree people of
der extremely harsh conditions. fering of laborers in
that
all sorts
African-American slaves and
—worked very
New forms of self- fashioning
were
hard, often un-
built
on the
suf-
England and America who made mass consumption possible.
Since in the politicization of private economic choice every free voice counted, it is
not surprising that the promoters of the boycott
their activities
through appeals to the popular
will.
movement
tried to legitimate
They presumed
to
speak for the
however defined. Exclusiveness ran counter to the spirit of this powerful mobilizing. discourse, and it was a happy moment when a town could report as did Norwich, Connecticut, in September 1770-that "there was as full a Town Meeting as [was] ever known when the Town voted, almost unanimously, to adhere Non-Importation Agreement." to their The so-called subscription lists also testify to the egalitarian thrust of eighteenthcentury commercial thought. These instruments extended the boycott movement to large numbers of people who normally would not have had a voice in public affairs. The lists presented individual consumers with a formal declaration of purpose, followed by an oath or pledge. The goal of subscription was in part indoctrination. The forms reviewed a growing catalogue of grievances and announced that in the majority,
—
.
.
.
Interpreting the
21
American Revolution
More signifiThe ordinary consumer
short term only nonimportation could preserve liberty and property.
new
cant, the ritual of signing gave birth to
who
collectivities.
accepted the logic of the argument and signed the paper thereby volunteered
community
to support a
protest.
Surviving subscriptions resonate with religious as well as contractual lan-
A
guage.
Boston agreement drafted
1767 announced
in
and with each other,
we
that
all
"do
signers:
encourage the Use and Onsumption of all Articles manufactured in any of the British American Colonies. Articles purchase and more especially in this Province: and that we will not from abroad." A 1773 South Carolina subscription sounded remarkably similar to promise and engage,
to
that
will
(
.
that o( Boston.
.
.
index of political success.
in
.
.
.
.
the public interest.
Numbers provide
an
.
person's signature seems to have been as desirable an another's.
Boston town
and
.
.
.
The subscription campaign caught
One
.
urged "Persons
officials specifically
come
Ranks"* to
o\' all
1767,
In
forward.
Annapolis. Maryland, people circulating "our Association-Paper" predicted
that colonists o\
"every Degree" would sign
The South-Carolina Gazette even
it.
re-
New York, "The Sense of the People was taken b\ Subscription, and near 800 Names got. about 300 oi' the People without a single Shilling Property" Even more significant, the subscription movement actively involved women. It ported that
was
as
women
in
consumers participating first
margins
new
in
formal protest, so that they
ol
interpretive
women made women drew
the
most of
"We
the
have and now do appear for the public Interest
m
denying ourselves the drinking
that tends to
example,
this opportunity. In 1770. for
thai
deprive the whole
o\
.
.
.
Community
o\
The
next week.
I
10
n
group
a
their o\
in
all
hopes that
is
to frustrate a
valuable
These innovative
to
efforts
it
to
In
I
774, the
to
Plan
Life."
the
women
to the local
very fast."
bring people into the boycott
COnsumer-based actions were inherently more open than were ones accessible only
in
300 "Mistresses of
more names appeared.
of Charleston, South Carolina, formed an association and. according
newspaper, "are subscribing
Boston
o\
\.""
do with Pleasure engage with
foreign lea.
Another Boston subscription gained the signatures Spective families.*"
ical
American
One hundred Daughters of those Patriots who
up an agreement "against drinking foreign
twenty-six "young Ladies'* announced:
them
communities
men amy have pushed women to the had to organize their own subscriptions,
gained a political voice. Although
white males with property
remind us
that
the traditional polit-
Peter Oliver, the Boston
was highly diverting, to see the names & maiks. to the Subset iption, el Porters & Washing Women." Oliver ridiculed SUCh aeti\ Hies How could persons outside polities evei hope to have then opinions on important issues taken seriously? But the poor laborers o! Boston women as well as men knew what they weie doing. Iheu "names & marks*' testify to their membership in a new loyalist
.
volitional
.
.
claimed
that "it
community
that
people of Oliver's status could nevei comprehend.
Subscription should he seen, therefore, as an instrument through which the colonists explored the limits ol democratic participation
mainstream political discourse, the populai elusi\it\. Did the men and women who signed ol
represent the people
'
ii
they did not, then foi
lists
Vppearing on the mai
raised the issue ol politics
the papers, fol
whom
c\amp
did they speak
'
uil\
22
Major Problems
in the
Era of the American Revolution
During the summer of 1770, the
New York boycott movement hotly
thus dropping
tacts
might give competitors
ever
much
the
New
York merchants wanted
in reestablishing
English con-
Boston a huge advantage. But how-
in Philadelphia or
to turn a profit, they
could not bring
themselves unilaterally to break the local nonimportant agreement.
needed
at this
decisive
moment was
such effort conducted in America.
dence
that the public
safe.
The
wanted
If they
—perhaps
to rescind the boycott, the
merchants knew they would
New York
supported a greatly modified boycott that tea.
New York found themselves confronted with a quandary democratic theorists since ancient Greece. How does a minority
radical leaders of
haunted
respond when
was
the first
could demonstrate with quantitative evi-
allowed the merchants to import virtually everything except British that has
they
worked. Polling papers carried though the city wards revealed
tactic
that a majority of the people of
The
What
authorization from the people, and this they de-
termined to obtain through a public opinion poll of consumers
be
duties,
taxes except that on tea, the major import merchants of the city
all
renew trade as soon as possible. Delays
agitated to
debated the
Townshend
issue of democratic participation. After Parliament repealed the
certain that the majority has
it is
to declare the poll a fraud,
made
a mistake?
The obvious ploy
and over several months the supporters of a contin-
boycott did just that. They happened away at the merchants' sham democThe author of "A Protest" in the New-York Mercury argued that the reported numbers were not credible. "It appears from the Ward-Lists," the writer charged, "that only 794 Persons in this populous City, including all Ranks, and both Sexes;
ued
total
racy.
declared for the Affirmative of the Question."
argument
that this writer
one involving complex
by
women
as well as
assumed
It is
particularly significant for
that a true canvass of colonial
political issues
men, the poor
—required
consumers
my
—even
inclusiveness, full participation
as well as the rich.
.
.
.
"A Citizen" produced a pointed defense of open, egalitarian procedures in a politicized consumer marketplace. To appreciate fully his contribution to the liberal discourse, we must remember that A Citizen was disDuring
this contest,
cussing civic responsibility within a commercial public sphere of quite recent invention
—
in other
ning to express
men and
commerce. "Will it
from
traditional institutions of governance.
New York brought theory women better to appreciate
chant canvass of ordinary
words, within a popular political arena that was just begin-
itself apart
it
excuse
The mer-
into contact with events, helping
the interdependence of liberty and
this City to the rest
of the World,"
A Citizen
asked, "if
should appear that a Majority of the Inhabitants concurred in desiring to break
thro' the [nonimportation]
Agreement?" He argued through interrogation, with
hard questions leading to harder ones until the logic of the performance seemed irrefutable.
"Supposing there
is
a Majority, (which
is
not admitted)," he inquired
of the merchants,
was
it
fairly
and properly obtained? Was
that
Opinion given and subscribed with due
Knowledge and Freedom? Or were not
Deliberation,
a very considerable
Number
of
the Subscribers, influenced and determined, by your Persuasions and Representations,
or by submitting their Opinions to be guided by your Advice and superior
Can opinions
or given a Sanction to the Dissolution of an
Importance?
.
Judgment?
so given and obtained, properly be called the Voice of the People,
.
.
Agreement of such immense Weight and
Interpreting the
Americans of
Ame
23
r
backgrounds and regions regularl) insisted
different
that with-
out "virtue" their cause had no chance whatsoever. Virtue was the social glue that
who
kept the newly formed liberal communities from fragmenting. Colonists
signed the subscriptions, supported the boycotts of British goods, and marched the
banners proclaiming "Liberty and Non-ImpOltation" assumed that
streets carrying
their protests
mobilized virtuous people.
Eighteenth-century virtue claims two distinguished genealogies. traces
back
it
to the Florentine
world
Maehiavelh. arguing
o\ \\^l-o\o
G
J
\'
\
that the
sinu-
man whose landed wealth enabled him to rise above the corn.: influences of commerce and therehv preserve the puritv ol republican government. Such historians as Edmund S. Morgan associate eighteenth-centur) virtue with the
ous citizen was
a
so-called Protestant Ethic. While both positions possess merit
— indeed,
political
discourse on the eve of the Revolution seems to have drawn on both traditions
movement was
virtue that resonated through the entire boycott
Home provocatively labels •"bourgeois virtue.*' When advocates o( nonimportation spoke a
A
personal attribute.
virtuous
man
or
of virtue, the) referred
woman was one who
to
{
consumer marketplace. Such behavior represented a desirability of the new manufactured items. But however
denied the
\
I
pnmanlv
voluntanlv
self-restraint in the
No one
— the
closer to what
-
ap:
ing the British imports were, the virtuous person exercised self-control tor the
common
good.
.
.
.
This rather straightforward sense
o\
market
irtue that
v
developed throughout the
colonies before Independence had important implications tor political mohili/..
Anyone who regularly purchased manufactured goods from Great Britain could become virtuous simply by Controlling consumption. The concept thus linked ever', experience and behav ioi w ith a hroadlv shared sense of the comn did with one's monev mattered VCT) much to the entire community, tor in this highlx charged atmosphere, economic self-indulgence became
pub!
a glaring
CincinnatUS, the bourgeois patriot did not reach immediatelv tor the
examined
the
household budget.
a direct all to action:
for v
eloped
their insistence
all
a potentiallv
The H
who
translated market "
save yoill Countrv
on voluntarism, the proponents
coercive understanding
and ignore
Membership
implied responsibilities
it)
Withm
the
to the largei
framework
subscription drives created
mem
in
the
coming
constructed
a
less virtuous to creating
In
what
the
new
the
political abstraction thai
Ann"
mii imagined goods and thUS earned the
the American colonies
new
this
I
space was an arena ol
ol
Iv
in
which
m
bourgeois virtue, organizer
ol a
collects
"public,"
bv renouncing British
pares
nommpe
supported the boveotts. But one therebv surrender
others for the destruction ol political liberty.
nificance
ol
ol political obligat:
his or her tree will
consumer COUld exercise
individual
those
.
"Save yOUI Monev and you
intellectuals
founded Ult
ma
light
a
t
|
-
comn
.
v
like first
irtue into
24
Major Problems
men and women
to liberal
When
critics
addressed a growing audience of
—
name of the public. The public an abstract body assembled was composed of reasonable persons, individuals
that never actually
open
Era of the American Revolution
These independent
the absolutist state. literate
in the
in the
—
argument and hostile
to the arbitrary exercise of
bourgeois virtue that held them accountable, often demanding restitution.
had
cott,
A New York City
.
.
.
merchant, Alexander Robertson,
tened Robertson stated, "As
from
my
that
I
who
was
violated the boy-
have justly incurred the Resentment of
I
it
confession and
A
my
chas-
Fellow
Behaviour, as set forth in an Advertisement, of great Importance
to the Publick, assuring
and promise
full
broadside addressed specifically "To the publick."
to publish a
Citizens,
power.
vicious consumers were caught with British manufactured goods,
them
that
I
am
truly sorry for the Part
I
have acted; declare
never will again attempt an Act contrary to the true Interest and
Resolutions of the People zealous in the Cause of Virtue and Liberty."
He
closed
with a pathetic appeal to "the Publick in general to believe me."
Such
local conversations
—however
encouraged virtuous consumers
was
to
painful for the likes of Robertson
imagine even larger
The process
collectivities.
by self-doubt and mutual recrimination, but during Independence, Americans living in scattered communities managed to
slow, halting, punctuated
the run-up to
reach out convincingly to distant strangers, to persons not directly
assumed
known
development of a new consumer marketplace. The
to share in the
but
initial
boycott experiments of the 1760s persuaded the colonists of the need for broader,
more
effective alliances.
They learned about each other through
the
weekly news-
papers that were themselves both a product and a voice of expanding commerce.
.
.
The collapse of nonimportation in 1770 left Americans in a sour mood. As they assessed the failure to wean themselves from British goods, they momentarily doubted
their
moral
ability to create a truly virtuous state.
Their self-deprecatory
seem to echo the anticommercial rhetoric of republican discourse, persuading some modern historians, at least, that preindustrial capitalism and the public good were in fact incompatible. What, inquired one newspaper essay, can the colonists learn from recent defection from the boycott? statements during this period
That
self-interest is irresistible.
That
liberty
and public good can stand no change among
men when
self-interest is
its rival.
That self-interest recommends the most underhanded schemes
good conscience.
.
.
to every
man's
.
—
—
Such statements and they were common should not be interpreted as evithat Americans rejected either preindustrial capitalism or the consumer marketplace. The renunciation of excess in the market made sense only in a society that took consumption for granted. The challenge for Revolutionary Americans was to negotiate between extreme self-indulgence and primitive simplicity. It involved dence
mediation, not repudiation.
.
.
.
In any case, the cries of the pessimists
were unfounded. They misread the com-
mercial changes sweeping American society and therefore underestimated the capacity
of
men and women
to translate individual
market behavior into mass
political
protest. The delegates to the First Continental Congress did not make that mistake. They appreciated the centrality of consumption in mobilizing persons of different
Interpreting the
On October
regions and social backgrounds.
Association, a broad network
20.
1774. Congress authorized the
enforcement of nonimportation. These bodies became lic safety."
At the moment of decision about ultimate
friends and neighbors were bus)
bourgeois virtue
name
in the
in effect,
total
"'committees of pub-
political loyalties, the colonists'
monitoring commercial behavior and enforcing
the
o\
;
committees entrusted with the
local elected
o\'
American
common
\io(k\.
"We need
only fight our
Own
selves," announced "A Carolinian"' in 1774, "suppress tor a while our Lu\ur> and Corruption, and wield the Arms of Sell Denial in our own Houses, to obtain the tory.
.
.
And
.
the
Man who would
not refuse himself a fine Coat, to save his Country,
deserves to be hanged."
We
have traced a complex flow
ideas into actions, of shared assumptions
o\
about a commercial empire into forms of political resistance. This was most eertaml) not the only route from experience and ideolog) to revolution. Other,
brated political discourses helped Americans
make sense
social
and economic conditions within the British empire.
ration,
however, we have reconstituted
how
example
the great shaping forces o\ histor)
— impinged on
the lives of ordinary
reimagine themselves within
In this particular
that
defined
itself
a larger polity,
-
-commercial capitalism,
woman
interests.
FURTHER READING Bernard Bailyn, Faces
Independence I
.
1
oj
Revolution: Persona
1990)
he Ideological Origins
th
t
Thomas C. Barrow, "The American Revolution dence" William one Richard Hud Jr., "Democracy and
Edwin G Humous and Michael
the
dward I
c
lountr)
/'
man
liegelman, Prodigah
William
M
Jack P
rreene, ed
(
I
ovi ler,
Ji
.
and Walla
:o
~
who saw Penns pointed out the he:
growth By >
the
million inhabit,; ;
were doubling t ust the empii \me\
___
28
>*\ V
Major Problems
Era of the American Revolution
in the
DOCUMENTS
master was gone to ong Island was then at gunning. At first the quarrel began between m\ wile and her mistress
with a
o\ the
.
me
me. for which he lm\c
ol
m\ master purchased m\ w
a half after that lime.
my mistress
Sec.
K
near twenty-one pounds York currency, m\ mas
to
Robert Stanton, hired
one year and
and b\
spells.
money amounting
All this
ter's brother.
five
got b> cleaning gentlemen's shoes a\k\ drawing
by catching muskrats and minks, raising potatoes and carrots. the night,
two Johannes, pounds of m\
late master's,
two thousand of coppers, besides
three old Spanish dollars, and
1
.
I
work
the barn,
in
and hearing
what had broken passion with thai
m\ w
out.
quested mj w
ife to
m\
a racket I
m
mistress to the
beg pardon
ot
me
the house, induced
entered the house.
what she informed
ife, lor
forbear to put
I
When
me was
shame
her mistress
ot
to run there an,
m
found m\ mistress
I
a
meie
having
it
sake
fo] the
trifle;
such
known
I
a
.
earnestly
5VCn
ol
a violent
small
it
she
was thus saying* m) mistress turned given no jusi occasion foi offence But whilst w to me She took down her horsewhip. ile the blows which she was repeating on m\ I
ami while she was glutting raised
head,
it
I
hen
I
oi the
fur)
with
ot ihe
mastet
piesent he
tome Some days
re turned
seemed
horn the
lo lake ii"
after his return, in the
harm from an) m\ head u nh a club tv. blow ven badl\ wounded in\ head, and
I
reached out m\ great black it
to the
which
> ol
il.
morning
I
him
ol the alia
was
nil
1
1
pi
most violent
n Ol
I
m\
I
and mentis as
I
devout
island, his uile told
noiu
place, not suspecting
eiow
n.
whip on
immediatel) committed the whip
When m\ I
hei
up and received the blows
.'mains to this
n
the
30
Major Problems
my
blow made me have renew it, I snatched
my
He
it
him, but
finally advised
what he treated
for
great violence. laid
I
after this
I
my
master, took
and
master, and live
my
master, he and his brother set out
their respective horses,
became enraged
and unjustly, and told him
he continued the same treatment towards me.
When and
my
they had
fell to
come
beating
me
to a
with
and immediately turned them both under
at this
one of them across the other, and stamped both with
This occasioned
left
my
to return to
home, one before and the other behind me.
bye place, they both dismounted me,
me
his slave thus hastily if
After the Justice had ended his discourse with
me
presently
set out for
I
what would be the consequence with
I
to a neighboring Justice of the Peace,
me again, and then complain. I consented to do my master's, up he come and his brother Robert improved this convenient opportunity to caution my master.
me. The Justice for
assist
he abused
till
accordingly. But before after
come and
with, carried
master.
contented with him
He asked him
suppose, for as soon as he went to and dragged him out of the door. He
the club out of his hands
wounded me
complained of
me you may
wits about
then sent for his brother to the club he
Era of the American Revolution
in the
my
feet
what
I
would.
him to put me off. A short time constable and two men. They carried me to a blacksmith's
master's brother to advise
was taken by a
her waiters, whether Venture was handcuffed.
home my mistress enquired much of When she was informed that I was, she
much
transported with the news. In the midst
shop and had appeared
to
me
When
handcuffed.
I
returned
be very contented and was
my mistress, showed her my handmy master commanded a negro of his to fetch him a large ox chain. This my master locked on my legs with two padlocks. I continued to wear the chain peaceably for two or three days, when my master asked me with contemptuous hard names whether I had not better be freed from my of this content and joy, cuffs,
I
presented myself before
my
and gave her thanks for
gold rings. For this
I answered him, No. Well then, said he, I will send you to West Indies or banish you, for I am resolved not to keep you. I answered him I crossed the waters to come here, and I am willing to cross them to return. For a day or two after this not any one said much to me, until one Hempste d Mi ner, of Stonington, asked me if I would live with h^m I answered him that I would. He then requested me to make myself discontented and to appear as unreconciled to my master as I could before that he bargained with him for me; and that in return he would give me a good chance to gain my freedom when I came to live with him. I did as he requested me. Not long after Hempsted Miner purchased me of my master for fifty six pounds lawful. He took the chain and padlocks from
chains and go to work. the
.
off
me
A me
to
immediately
after.
short time after
my
.
.
.
one William Hooker of
My
master next offered
not purchasing me,
my
me
Stonington. After
some
me. He put
trial
to
at his
house
wine and other
.
.
to Hartford,
and
first
proposed
me
to sell
.
Daniel Edwards. Esq. of Hartford, for
sal e.
But
him for ten pounds, and returned to honesty, Mr. Edwards placed considerable trust
my me to
of
was company to fetch
that place.
master pawned
and confidence
in
me
master carried
to
serve as his cupbearer and waiter.
house, he would send
me
into the cellar
articles occasionally for
them.
When
there
and other parts of
When had I
his
been with
me why my master wished to part with such an honest negro, and why he did not keep me himself. I replied that I could not give him the reason, unless it was to convert me into cash, and speculate with me as with other him some
time, he asked
}
commodities.
hope
I
me
willing to keep
can never justl) sa)
that he
me
duct that he did not keep
was OH account
it
Edwards he would never
himself. Mr.
himself, and that
m\
o\
1
con-
ill
me that he should he very me go from him to live,
told lei
it
it
was not unreasonable and inconvenient tor me to he parted from m> wife and children; therefore he would furnish me with a horse to return to Stonmgton. it had a mind for it. As Miner did not appear to redeem me went, and called at m\ old master Stanton's first to see m\ wife, who was then owned h\ him. As m\ old I
I
I
ter
appeared much ruffled
m\ being
at
considerable time with her. and went
to
for
Col. Smith a
me. These
sale o\
that
should
1
Colonel
(
).
had spent an>
I
Smith's. Miner had not as yel
men once met
should hold me, and upon m\ expressing
was agreed
m\ wife before
lett
I
me. and had before m\ return from Hartford given
wholly settled with Stanton bill o\'
there.
a desire to
determine which of them
to
owned
be
b\ Col. Smith. ...
m>
live with Col. Smith. This was the third time ol
it
fcx
was then thirty-one years old 1760J. As never had an opportunit) ol redeeming myself whilst was owned b\ Miner, though he promised to give me a chance. was then very ambitious of obtaining it. asked m\ master one time if he and
sold,
I
I
1
I
I
I
would consent
to
then very happy,
me
have
knowing
my
purchase that
1
was
freedom. He replied
he would.
that
I
time able to pa) part ol the purchase
at that
money, by means of the money which some time since buried. This took out y^\ and tendered to m\ master, having previousl) engaged a free negro man I
I
the earth
to take his security for
it.
as
I
was
master agreed
work
my
note to
on
to wait
for Col. Smith.
me
^
for. until
1
could procure
There was continually some
friend the free negro
some besides which
m> master, and therefore could What was wanting in redeeming myself, m>
the propert) of
not safely take his obligation myself.
1
got b\
it
for him.
man above named, which
fishing.
I
I
still
interest accruing
laid out in land
I
continue
on
ma-
ins
received, and with
adjoining
m\
old
n.
land with the greatest diligence and econon
By cultivating when m\ master did not require m> labor, in two years laid up ten pounds This m\ friend tendered m\ master lor myself, and received his note foi Stanton's.
this
times
Being encouraged b\_ the success which \
s
olicited
j
m\ master
timber chance
for a
ol
I
had met
in
completing
I
it
redeeming
it
I
mwt »
1
to him was that of going out to work the ensuing w inu condition that would give him one quartet ol m> earnings Hi these terms the follow ing w inter, and earned loin pounds sixteen shillings. one qu went to m\ master for the privilege, and the rest was paid him on ni\
solicited
Ilus
added
payments made up fort) foul pounds, eight own account was then about thut\ h\e years old summei again desired he
tO the other \n\
The next
it
chance
a
the past winter. to
leave
this uh.it ii
i
I
when work hue mysell oul would give him foi
wholl) with his ov
month Well
then, said he.
the least he
would take
I
thai
he must have
replied thai
I
m\
laboi this
considered u as hard
dial
1
i
the season became advant.
out
onl\ be permitted to aftei
shillings, wl
I
!
have
this
I
work Bui he refused and answered did not have
i
I
on
am much more knowing cithei cannot Satisf) m\ sell that Books, or Men. from this Chamber, or the World, than was al least a N Most ot my lime has been spent in Rambling a\)A Dissipatio n Riding, and Smoking Pipes and Spending Evenings, consume a vasl Proportion ot my Vnother Year
is
I
I
Plans of study.
I
I
I
I
I
the
(ares and \n\icticsol Business,
must
more
stay
home
al
Instrument, to h\
leni
beginning
a
new
a
and commit mote
Mans Attention and
literal) Year,
with the 26th
1760 I
l
am
iust
aw, and
entered on the 26th Yeaj l
think
foi I
high
Vnimal
25 Years ol the
and foul Years,
is
il
v 1
1
1
-
aw
I
el
me keep
I
ime
ife
I
Space
no more Knowledge
damp m)
thai
in the
an exa