The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
—Thomas Paine, 1776
The young soldier huddled with his fellow soldiers on the late Decembernight. It was December 23, 1776. They were freezing, huddled togetheras the snow fell on their shoulders. They had no tents, or even enoughwinter clothing to keep them warm as they camped on the banks ofthe Delaware River. The soldier, named Thomas Paine, was servingwith George Washington’s troops. He knew that with their inadequatesupplies and recent losses in battle, morale was down. Paine also knewhe was a better writer than he was a soldier, and that his best contribution
to the army and the cause of independence might well be with his pen,not his musket. He had no paper, so he put his quill to the back of a
drumhead and began, “These are the times that try men’s souls. . . .” Thesewords became the introduction to a series of sixteen essays that would
indeed inspire the troops and the entire nation to victory in their revolution.
BackgroundThomas Paine was born January 29, 1737, in Thetford, England. His father was a Quaker,his mother a member of the Church of England. Paine had little formal education when,as a boy, he went to work for his father, a corset maker. Paine then worked as a tax collector.In 1774 he met Benjamin Franklin, who convinced him to come to America.
Paine arrived in Philadelphia at the end of November 1774. He began work on ananti-slavery essay, African Slavery in America. Paine condemned slavery as a “savagepractice” and pointed out the irony that Americans held Africans as slaves and at thesame time complained of the British government “enslaving” the colonies. Paine was amember of the first American anti-slavery society, formed in 1775.
Common SenseThe next year Paine wrote an essay condemning Britain’s rule of the American colonies.Common Sense was the best-selling pamphlet of the Revolutionary era, read by as greata proportion of the population as watches the Superbowl today. “I offer nothing morethan simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense,” Paine asserted. He rejected theidea that Britain was America’s mother country. British policies violated Americanliberty and limited the country’s economic prospects. Paine called for independence,and saw the American cause as a part of a worldwide uprising against tyranny.
Some of the political opinions expressed in Common Sense were truly radical. Painecondemned monarchy. He also argued “government even in its best state is but anecessary evil.” He also denounced custom as no more than “a long habit of not thinkinga thing wrong.” Paine did not keep the money raised by the sale of his pamphlet. Instead,the money went to the revolutionary cause.
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
The American CrisisCommon Sense helped to persuade many Americans to support independence. During theAmerican Revolution, Paine served in the Continental Army as a soldier. He also composeda series of sixteen essays called The American Crisis. They first appeared at a dark time forthe American cause. Paine reminded his countrymen that “the harder the conflict, themore glorious the triumph.”
Paine’s Crisis essays were read around the campfires of the Continental Army. Theydid much to keep up the morale of the troops. During the war, Paine also served as asecretary for the Continental Congress and as a clerk for the Pennsylvania Assembly.
The Rights of ManPaine returned to England in 1787, where he pursued business interests. Angered byEnglish criticism of the American Revolution, Paine responded in 1791–1792 with TheRights of Man. This work revealed Paine’s devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment.The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century European intellectual movement. Ittaught that through scientific and philosophic progress, reason could lead mankind to astate of earthly perfection.
The Rights of Man was the best-selling political essay in eighteenth-century England.Paine dedicated the book to George Washington and scheduled it for publication onWashington’s birthday. In it, Paine argued that all men had an equal claim to politicalrights and that government depends on the rule of the people. He suggested democraticrepublics were the remedy for the weaknesses of monarchy. Even more radically, hecalled for social programs to help the poor.
The Rights of Man’s critique of monarchy was so strong that the British governmenttried to arrest Paine for the capital crime of “seditious libel” (inciting resistance to thegovernment). But the pamphleteer left for France, as he had taken an interest in theevents of the French Revolution.
The Age of ReasonPaine supported the ousting of the French monarchy and the attempt to establish arepublic. Paine accepted honorary citizenship in France, and was elected to the FrenchRevolutionary National Assembly. In 1793, he voted against the execution of the Frenchking. Paine spoke out against the act of violent revenge, and pointed out that suchpunishments were the tactics of cruel monarchs. He urged the king’s exile instead. Afterthe king’s execution, anyone who had voted against the execution was deemed an enemyof the Revolution. Paine was arrested and sentenced to death.
During his imprisonment, Paine completed The Age of Reason. In this controversialwork, Paine strongly condemned all organized religion, and in particular Christianity, asa series of “fabulous inventions.” Though he acknowledged all are free to believe as theywish, he declared, “The only true religion is Deism, by which I mean, the belief of oneGod, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moralvirtues.” The Age of Reason was read widely throughout Europe and America.
Paine escaped execution when prison guards did not notice the chalk mark on hisdoor that indicated he was to be sent to the guillotine. His was freed in 1794 through theefforts of the new American minister to the French government. Paine was angry thatthe American government had not taken action to secure his release sooner. Upon hisrelease, Paine wrote an open letter insulting President George Washington.
Final YearsPaine remained in France until 1802. He then returned to the United States upon theinvitation of President Thomas Jefferson. But Paine soon found that he was unwelcome.His criticism of Christianity and organized religion had led many to wrongly believe hewas an atheist, and he faced discrimination because of this misconception. His insultingletter to Washington also created enemies.
Paine died in his sleep in New York City on July 8, 1809 and was buried on his farmin New Rochelle. His funeral was attended by only a few. Ten years later, his remains weremoved to England, and later lost.
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriotwill, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now,deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered;yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious thetriumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that givesevery thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and itwould be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highlyrated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (notonly to TAX) but “to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER,” and if being bound inthat manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even theexpression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God. . . .
I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: upand help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little,when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth ofwinter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country,alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not thatthousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the dayupon Providence, but “show your faith by your works,” that God may bless you.It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. . . .
Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to onewhose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. . . .[King George III]
There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons,too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselveswith hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, toexpect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquestis the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violenceof the wolf, and we ought to guard equally against both.
Source: “The American Crisis.” The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.<http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/paine/pframe.htm>.
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
Directions: For each sentence on the left side of the chart, fill in the next column with a paraphrase ofPaine’s statement. Next, identify the civic values or character traits associated with his statement. Finally,explain a way you can act on that civic value in your own life. The first row is begun for you as a model.
Perhaps no single phrase of the Founders is morecommonly misinterpreted than the claim, made by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration ofIndependence, “that all men are created equal.”Jefferson did not mean that all people are, in fact,in every way equal. Nor did he mean that all peopleshould be equal in every way. He did, however,mean that all individuals possessidentical natural rights. Theserights, he wrote, include “life,liberty,” and the ability ofindividuals to engage withoutinjuring one another in “thepursuit of happiness.” Jefferson’sbelief in the equality of naturalrights reflected deeply-rootedAnglo-American tradition. Hiswords, after all, echoed thereasoning of John Locke, theEnglish political philosopherwho, in 1689, maintained that noone—no matter how powerful—possesses the right to “take away”without just cause “the Life,Liberty, Health, Limb or Goods of another.”
Yet Jefferson’s assertion regarding naturalrights also sanctioned a radical departure from thepast. The Declaration of Independence, whichJefferson penned in behalf of the other privilegeddelegates to the Continental Congress, helped toinspire ordinary Americans to overturn timewornsocial and political barriers separating aristocratsfrom common people and the powerful from thepowerless.
In 1776, these distinctions were stark. Maybethe 3.5 million people who lived in America hadbeen created equal, but more than 600,000 hadsubsequently been enslaved. When womenmarried, a legal doctrine known as “coverture”held that they lost their legal identity and forfeitedto their husbands their property. They could notvote, and since nearly everywhere laws madeenfranchisement conditional on the ownership ofa sizeable portion of land, neither could many men.Laws establishing primogeniture, which passed tothe eldest son all of a father’s land if he diedwithout leaving a will, slowed a fairly consistenttrend during the colonial era toward the gradualexpansion of land ownership among the population,
as well as the gradual expansion of common people’spolitical power, which land ownership madepossible. In addition, individuals who subscribedto minority religious faiths also suffered from legalinequality. Despite the relative rarity of instancesof state-sanctioned intolerance toward members ofmost minority religions, nine of the original thirteen
states designated an official faiththat enjoyed taxpayer-financedsubsidies as well as other benefitsand privileges.
A general acceptance ofsocial hierarchy reflected andreinforced these instances oflegal inequality. In many waysAmerican society continued tofit the description of JonathanEdwards, the eighteenth-centurytheologian, who observed thatall individuals possessed “theirappointed office, place andstation, according to theirseveral capacities and talents,and everyone keeps his place,
and continues in his proper business.” Theseassumptions, according to historian GordonWood, coalesced naturally with “the hierarchy of amonarchical society” and were feudal in theirorigins. “In such a society it was inconceivable,”Wood maintains, “for inequality not to exist.”
While an acceptance of monarchical governmenthelped to foster legal inequality and social hierarchy,the republican alternative to absolutism—whichgained ground in America especially after theGlorious Revolution of 1688—did not immediatelyspark a move toward egalitarianism. In many ways,in fact, republicanism bolstered the notion thatlimits should be placed on who could be entrustedwith the reins of government. While republicanthinkers believed that the distribution of politicalpower should be expanded to varying degrees, theempowerment of an increasing number ofindividuals constituted merely a means to a greaterend, which was the restraint of government poweritself.
Republicans insisted, for example, that politicalparticipants be virtuous and that their decisions bemotivated by a concern for the good of the entiresociety. In other words, republicans maintained that
voters and officeholders alike should be selfless (or“disinterested”) in their decision-making—that theyshould not aim to use the power of government toserve the interests of themselves or any particularconstituency. Such disinterestedness, republicansbelieved, could only be expected of individualswho possessed a sufficient degree of economicindependence. Certainly the enslaved lackedindependence, and women were presumed to bedependent on their husbands and fathers. Were thepoor empowered with the franchise, theirdesperation could mean that their votes could becheaply purchased. It mightalso lead them to use theirpower to seize the wealth ofothers. Republican theoristspresumed that the rich andthe middling, meanwhile,would less easily fall underthe influence of others andwould be less likely give in toselfish motives. Republicans, who maintained thatthe only people who should be entrusted with thegovernment of others were people capable ofgoverning themselves, focused their energies onrestraining the predatory nature of political power.
One of the most effective weapons in thiscrusade, however, was the principle that all menhad a right to equal protection under the law.Republicans in Britain and America maintained,for example, that all men accused of serious crimeswere entitled to be tried in front of juries of theirpeers. In addition, republicans believed that allmen deserved protection against the imposition ofexcessive bails and excessive fines, and against theinfliction of punishments disproportionate withthose accorded to others found to have committedsimilar offenses against the law. A general acceptanceof this sort of procedural equality, which aimed toprevent government officials from singling outindividuals or groups for persecution, created aclimate within which other forms of equality couldtake root.
So did the belief that all Britons—whetherthey resided in England or America—shared anequal right to the protection of a representativeassembly. The English Bill of Rights (1689) notonly guaranteed to all men the benefit ofconsistent legal practices, but also restrictedgovernment from acting in certain circumstanceswithout the consent of Parliament. The monarchpossessed no unilateral power to suspend laws, levytaxes, station an army among the civilianpopulation, or interfere with elections or the
legislative process. While members of the House ofCommons generally favored a narrow interpretationof the Bill of Rights and believed themselves to bethe ultimate authority on these mattersthroughout the British empire, Americans tendedto disagree. Since they had no direct representationin Parliament, Americans believed that their ownelected colonial assemblies possessed Parliament’sprerogatives.
The 1763–1776 imperial crisis brought this issueto the fore and cemented in the minds of manyAmericans a belief in their own collective equality
with the people of Britain.First, Parliament drew itsunpopular ProclamationLine, which prohibitedAmerican settlement beyondthe crest of the AppalachianMountains. Then Parliamentpassed the hated 1765 StampAct, through which it acted
without the consent of colonial legislatures toimpose a tax on legal documents, newspapers,broadsides, and other paper goods. These andother British measures spurred a spirited resistancemovement, helped to provoke the spilling of bloodat Lexington and Concord, and led to theDeclaration of Independence. Many Americanscame to agree with Thomas Paine, who wrote in his1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, that “there issomething very absurd, in supposing a continentto be perpetually governed by an island.”Parliament’s recalcitrant insistence on its authorityto govern a distant people portended continuedabuses of power and unacceptable usurpations ofrights. Since in Parliament there existed noequality between the people of Great Britain andthe people of America, there was no accountabilityon the part of Great Britain compelling it toconsider what was good for America.
This unbalanced relationship unleashed theavarice of Britons, whom some colonists comparedto wolves salivating over vulnerable Americansheep. As Paine observed, “the property of no manis secure in the present unbraced system of things.”Within this context, Jefferson, in the Declaration ofIndependence, not only claimed the equal rights ofAmerican people but also the equality of theAmerican people relative to the people of all othernations when he asserted that Americans had aright to enjoy “the separate and equal station towhich the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitlethem.” Americans, in other words, counted for justas much as people anywhere else.
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
One of the most effective weapons inthis crusade, however, was the principle
that all men had a right to equalprotection under the law.
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This was a powerful sentiment. First, itexpressed the collective will of the people whocomprised the various colonies that now—like theindependent nations of Europe—called themselves“states.” The value placed on collective equality bythese new states manifested itself through the factthat, according to the rules that governed theContinental Congress as well as those of theArticles of Confederation, a tiny state such asDelaware had a voice as loud as a much morepopulous state, such as Pennsylvania. Even underthe 1787 Constitution, which provided for a lowerchamber with proportionalrepresentation, within theSenate the states had equalpower. Second, the statementdrafted by Jefferson helpedto inspire the hopes ofvarious groups—such ascommon people, religiousminorities, women, andAfrican-Americans—that would now begin toquestion their own unequal stations. If earlier,Americans had based their claims of equality upontheir inclusion within a system of English rights andprivileges, American revolutionaries now madetheir appeals on the basis of self-evident truths anduniversal rights granted by God or nature. As Painewrote, “a new method of thinking hath arisen.”
It took no great leap of logic to apply theuniversal claims of the Declaration to variousdeprived groups. Abigail Adams did this when in1776 she wrote to her husband, John, a member ofthe Continental Congress. “I long to hear that youhave declared an independency,” she said, for itwould provide him and his colleagues with anopportunity to make a new code of law. In this, shemaintained, “I desire you would remember theladies and be more generous and favorable to themthan your ancestors.” Appropriating some of thesame principles that had been used to justifyAmerican opposition to Britain, she reminded herhusband that “all men would be tyrants if theycould. If particular care and attention is not paid tothe ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion,and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws inwhich we have no voice or representation.”
A group of slaves from the towns of Stratfordand Fairfield in 1779 used similar arguments whenthey petitioned the Connecticut General Assemblyfor freedom. “We are endowed with the sameFaculties as our masters,” they wrote, “and there isnothing that leads us to a Belief, or Suspicion, thatwe are any more obliged to serve them, than they
us.” Not unlike white Americans, they maintained,“we are Convinced of our Right (by the Laws ofNature and by the whole Tenor of the ChristianReligion. . . .) to be free.” It was simply not “consistentwith the present Claims, of the united States, tohold so many Thousands, of the Race of Adam, ourCommon Father, in perpetual Slavery.”
Although women and African-Americanswould continue to suffer under unequal laws formany decades, for white Americans the idea ofequality yielded much more immediate benefits.To a certain degree, American social hierarchy had
never been as fully articulatedas in Europe. John Adamsobserved in 1761 that “allPersons under the Degree ofGentlemen are styledYeoman.” Yet, within thelifetime of the revolutionarygeneration, the veryexistence of a special class of
“gentlemen” and “ladies” had been called intoquestion. Old distinctions melted away as theprinciples of the Revolution combined with thedramatic new economic opportunities of the MarketRevolution and the leveling spirit of early nineteenth-century religious revivalism to foster in the mindsof Americans the notion that no man or woman wasin any fundamental sense better than any other.
This spirit manifested itself through thegradual elimination of laws that favored certainreligious groups over others. Paine helped to setthe stage for this development, for in 1776 he wrotethat “there should be diversity of religiousopinions among us: It affords a larger field for ourChristian kindness.” Then the efforts of Jeffersonand James Madison resulted in the 1786 passage ofthe Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, startinga trend that would continue until 1833, whenMassachusetts became the last state to cut ties witha specific church. Similarly, laws limiting thefranchise also eroded. Thanks to egalitarianprinciples and the recognition that, in thediversified market economy, land no longer servedas a meaningful measure of independence, by the1840s all white men could vote.
The flowering of equality in America manifesteditself not only through the new republic’s laws butalso through its people’s spirit. This is what struckEnglishman Charles Janson, who traveled in theUnited States in the first decade of the nineteenthcentury. Upon his arrival at the house of anacquaintance, he was greeted by a servant. “Is yourmaster at home?” he asked. The servant’s response
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
was simple: “I have no master.” The point was thatAmericans were their own masters and that statushad more to do with effort, behavior, and characterthan inheritance. Americans never called forequality of condition, but they did seek equalopportunities to engage in individual pursuits ofhappiness. Americans, who had abandoned old
notions that paid deference to the inheritedaristocracy of wealth and privilege, now embracedwhat Jefferson described as a “natural aristocracyof talents & virtue.”
Robert S. McDonald, Ph.D.United States Military Academy
Suggestions for Further ReadingAppleby, Joyce. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2000.Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.Bushman, Richard. The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.Pole, J. R. The Pursuit of Equality in American History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969.Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.Zagarri, Rosemarie. “The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America.” William and Mary
Quarterly. 55 (1998): 203–230.
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Liberty was the central political principle of theAmerican Revolution. As Patrick Henry, one of itsstaunchest supporters, famously intoned, “Give meliberty or give me death.” Henry was not alone in his rhetorical fervor. Indeed, no ideal wasproclaimed more often in the eighteenth-centuryAnglo-American world than liberty.
The idea of liberty defendedby the American Founders camefrom several sources. The mostvenerable was English commonlaw. Beginning in the latemedieval period, writers in thecommon law tradition developedan understanding of libertywhich held that English subjectswere free because they livedunder a system of laws whicheven the Crown was bound torespect. Leading English juristsargued that these legal limits onroyal power protected thesubject’s liberty by limiting the arbitrary use ofpolitical power.
Under English common law, liberty alsoconsisted in the subject enjoying certain fundamentalrights to life, liberty and property. William Blackstone(1723–1780), the leading common lawyer of theeighteenth century, argued that these rights allowedan English subject to be the “entire master of hisown conduct, except in those points wherein thepublic good requires some direction or restraint . . .”For Blackstone, these English rights further protectedthe subjects’ liberty by making them secure in theirpersons from arbitrary search and seizure, and byensuring that their property could not be takenfrom them without due process of law.
In order to preserve these fundamental rights,the English common law allowed the subject theright to consent to the laws that bound him byelecting representatives to Parliament whose consentthe monarch had to obtain before acting.
Common lawyers in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries did not view these rights andthe liberty they protected as the gift or grant of themonarch; rather, they believed that they were anEnglishmen’s “birthright,” something that inheredin each subject and that therefore could not betaken away by royal prerogative.
This common law understanding of libertywas central to the seventeenth-century strugglesagainst the Stuart monarchy. Prominent jurists andParliamentarians such as Edward Coke (1552–1634)took the lead in the attempt to limit what they sawas the illegal and arbitrary nature of the Stuarts’ rule.This struggle culminated in the Glorious Revolution
of 1689 and the triumph ofParliamentary authority over theCrown. For champions of Englishliberty, the result of this century-long struggle was the achievementof political liberty. They furtherargued that, as a result of thisstruggle, Britain in the eighteenthcentury had the freest constitutionin the world. According to theFrench writer Montesquieu(1689–1755), Britain was “theonly nation in the world, wherepolitical and civil liberty” was “thedirect end of the constitution.”
This seventeenth century struggle betweenroyal power and the subject’s liberties made a greatimpression on the American Founders. Theyabsorbed its lessons about the nature and importanceof liberty through their reading of English historyas well as through their instruction in English law.
A second and equally influential understandingof liberty was also forged in the constitutionalbattles of the seventeenth century: the idea thatliberty was a natural right pertaining to all. Theforemost exponent of this understanding of libertyin the English-speaking world was John Locke(1632–1704). Locke’s political ideas were part of awider European political and legal movement whichargued that there were certain rights that all menwere entitled to irrespective of social class or creed.
Like the common lawyers, Locke saw liberty ascentrally about the enjoyment of certain rights.However, he universalized the older Englishunderstanding of liberty, arguing that it applied toall persons, and not just to English subjects. Lockealso expanded the contemporary understanding ofliberty by arguing that it included other rights—in particular a right to religious toleration (orliberty of conscience), as well as a right to resistgovernments that violated liberty. In addition,Locke argued that the traditional English common
law right to property was also a natural right, andwas an important part of the subject’s liberty.
Locke began his political theory by arguing thatliberty was the natural state of mankind. Accordingto Locke, all men are “naturally” in a “State ofperfect Freedom to order” their “Actions, anddispose of their Possessions, and Persons as theythink fit, within the bounds of the Law of Nature,without asking leave, or depending upon the Willof any other Man.”
However, Locke did not argue that this naturalliberty was a license to do whatever we want.“Freedom is not,” he argued,“A Liberty for every Man todo what he lists (For whocould be free, when everyother Man’s humour mightdomineer over him?).”Rather, Locke held that sinceall men are “equal andindependent, no one oughtto harm another in his Life, health, Liberty, orPossessions.” According to Locke, each of us has“an uncontroulable Liberty to dispose of ourpersons and possession,” but we do not have theright to interfere with the equal liberty of others todo the same.
In Locke’s political theory, men enter intosociety and form governments to better preservethis natural liberty. When they do so, they create apolitical system where the natural law limits onliberty in the state of nature are translated into alegal regime of rights. In such a system, Lockeargued, each person retains his “Liberty to dispose,and order, as he lists, his Person, Actions,Possession, and his whole Property, within theAllowance of those Laws under which he is; andtherein not to be subject to the arbitrary Will ofanother, but freely follow his own.”
For Locke, as for the common lawyers, the ruleof law was necessary for liberty. In Locke’s view,“the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but topreserve and enlarge Freedom.” According to Locke,“Where there is no Law, there is no Freedom. ForLiberty is to be free from restraint and violence fromothers which cannot be, where there is no law.”
Building on both the English common law andon Locke’s ideas, the eighteenth-century Englishwriter Cato argued “that liberty is the unalienableright of mankind.” It is “the power which everyMan has over his own Actions, and his Right toenjoy the Fruit of his Labour, Art, and Industry, asfar as by it he hurts not the Society, or anymembers of it, by taking from any Member or by
hindering him from enjoying what he himselfenjoys.” Cato was the pseudonym for two Britishwriters, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.Their co-authored Cato’s Letters (1720–1723) werewidely read in the American colonies.
On the eve of the American Revolution, then,the received understanding of liberty in the Anglo-American world was a powerful amalgam of boththe English common law and the liberal ideas ofwriters like Locke and Cato. On this view, libertymeant being able to act freely, secure in your basicrights, unhindered by the coercive actions of others,
and subject only to thelimitation of such laws as youhave consented to. Central tothis idea of liberty was theright to hold property and tohave it secure from arbitraryseizure. In addition, under theinfluence of Locke, liberty wasincreasingly being seen on
both sides of the Atlantic as a universal right, onenot limited to English subjects. Equally influentialwas Locke’s argument that if a government violatedits citizens’ liberty the people could resist thegovernment’s edicts and create a new politicalauthority. However, despite the gains that had beenmade since the seventeenth century, manyEnglishmen in the eighteenth century still worriedthat liberty was fragile and would always beendangered by the ambitions of powerful men.
Since the first settlements were established in the early seventeenth century, the Americancolonists shared in this English understanding ofliberty. In particular, they believed that they hadtaken their English rights with them when theycrossed the Atlantic. It was on the basis of theserights that they made a case for their freedom ascolonists under the Crown. In addition, in theeighteenth century, the colonists were increasinglyinfluenced by the Lockean idea that liberty was anatural right. As a result, when they were confrontedwith the policies of the British Crown and Parliamentin the 1760s and 1770s to tax and legislate for themwithout their consent, the colonists viewed them asan attack on their liberty.
In response, the colonists argued that theseBritish taxes and regulations were illegal because theyviolated fundamental rights. They were particularlyresistant to the claims of the British Parliament, asexpressed in the Declaratory Act of 1766, to legislatefor the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” By 1774,following the Boston Tea Party organized by SamuelAdams and John Hancock, and the subsequent
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
No ideal was proclaimed more often in the eighteenth-century
Anglo-American world than liberty.
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Coercive Acts, many leading colonists such asThomas Paine and James Otis argued that they hada natural right to govern themselves, and that sucha right was the only protection for their liberty. Inaddition to several essays in defense of rights,including Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,John Dickinson wrote the first patriotic song, “TheLiberty Song.”
This colonial thinking about liberty and rightsculminated in the Declaration of Independenceissued by the Continental Congress in 1776, whichproclaimed that, because their liberty wasendangered, the colonists had a natural right toresist the English King and Parliament.
Having made a revolution in the name of liberty,the American challenge was to create a form ofgovernment that preserved liberty better than thevaunted British constitution had done. In doing so,the founders turned to the ancient ideal of republicanself-government, arguing that it alone could preservethe people’s liberty. They further argued that themodern understanding of liberty as the possession ofrights needed to be a central part of any properrepublican government. Beginning in 1776, in themidst of the Revolutionary War, all of the formercolonies began to construct republican governmentswhich rested on the people’s consent and whichincluded bills of rights to protect the people’s liberty.
Since there was widespread consensus amongthe Founders that liberty required the protection ofrights and the rule of law, much of the politicaldebate in the crucial decades following the AmericanRevolution revolved around the question of whichinstitutional arrangements best supported liberty.Was liberty best protected by strong stategovernments jealously guarding the people’s libertiesfrom excessive federal authority, as leading Anti-Federalists like George Mason contended; or, wasan extended federal republic best able to preservethe freedom of all, as leading Federalists like JamesMadison and Alexander Hamilton argued?
The era of the American Revolution also gavebirth to a further series of important debates aboutliberty. Was slavery, as some Americans in theeighteenth century were beginning to recognize, anunjust infringement upon the liberty of AfricanAmericans? Were women, long deprived of basiclegal rights, also entitled to have equal liberty withtheir male fellow citizens? By making a Revolutionin its name, the Founders ensured that debatesabout the nature and extent of liberty wouldremain at the center of the American experimentin self-government.
Craig Yirush, Ph.D.University of California, Los Angeles
Suggestions for Further ReadingBailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.Kammen, Michael. Spheres of Liberty: Changing Perceptions of Liberty in American Culture. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.Reid, John Phillip. The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1988.Skinner, Quentin. Liberty Before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1969.
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As Benjamin Franklin left Philadelphia’s ConventionHall in September 1787, upon the completion of thework of the Framers of the Constitution, a womanapproached him and asked the old sage of theRevolution what the delegates had created. Franklinresponded, “A republic, Madame, if you can keepit.” The woman’s reaction to Franklin’s reply is left unrecorded by history,but she might well haveasked Franklin for a moredetailed answer. Thoughthe word “republic” wascommon currency inAmerica at the time, themeaning of the term wasimprecise, encompassingvarious and diverse formsof government.
Broadly, a republicmeant a country not governed by a king. The rootof the word is the Latin, res publica, meaning “thepublic things.” “The word republic,” Thomas Painewrote, “means the public good, or the good of thewhole, in contradistinction to the despotic form,which makes the good of the sovereign, or of oneman, the only object of the government.” In arepublic, the people are sovereign, delegatingcertain powers to the government whose duty is tolook to the general welfare of society. That citizensof a republic ought to place the common goodbefore individual self-interest was a key assumptionamong Americans of the eighteenth century.“Every man in a republic,” proclaimed BenjaminRush, “is public property. His time and talents—his youth—his manhood—his old age, nay more,life, all belong to his country.”
Republicanism was not an American invention.In shaping their governments, Americans looked tohistory, first to the ancient world, and specifically tothe Israel of the Old Testament, the Roman republic,and the Greek city-states. New Englanders inparticular often cited the ancient state of Israel as theworld’s first experiment in republican governmentand sometimes drew a parallel between the TwelveTribes of Israel and the thirteen American states. In1788, while ratification of the Constitution wasbeing debated, one Yankee preacher gave a sermonentitled,“The Republic of the Israelites an Example
to the American States.” Indeed, the Bible was citedby American authors in the eighteenth centurymore often than any other single source.
Americans not only knew their Bible, but alsothe history of the Greeks and Romans. The eliteclass mastered ancient languages and literature, arequirement of colleges at the time. To these men
of the eighteenth century,ancient languages were notdead, nor were ancientevents distant; rather,the worlds of Pericles and Polybius, Sallust andCicero were vibrant and near. The relativelyminor advancements intechnology across 2,000years—people still traveledby horse and sailing ship—
served to reinforce the bond eighteenth-centuryAmericans felt with the ancients.
Like the Greeks and Romans of antiquity,Americans believed that government must concernitself with the character of its citizenry. Indeed,virtue was “the Soul of a republican Government,”as Samuel Adams put it. Virtue had twoconnotations, one secular and the other sacred.The root of the word was the Latin, vir, meaning“man,” and indeed republican virtue often referredto the display of such “manly” traits as courage andself-sacrifice for the common good. These qualitieswere deemed essential for a republic’s survival. “Apopular government,” Patrick Henry proclaimed,“cannot flourish without virtue in the people.” Butvirtue could also mean the traditional Judeo-Christian virtues, and many Americans feared thatGod would punish the entire nation for the sins ofits people. “Without morals,” Charles Carrollproclaimed, “a republic cannot subsist any lengthof time.” New Englanders in particular sought tohave society’s institutions—government andschools as well as churches—inculcate such qualitiesas industry, frugality, temperance, and chastity inthe citizenry. The Massachusetts Constitution of1780, for example, provided for “public instructionsin piety, religion, and morality.”
The second ingredient of a good republic was awell-constructed government with good institutions.
“If the foundation is badly laid,” George Washingtonsaid of the American government,“the superstructuremust be bad.” Americans adhered to a modifiedversion of the idea of “mixed”government, advocatedby the Greek thinker Polybius and later republicantheorists. A mixed republic combined the threebasic parts of society—monarchy (the one ruler),aristocracy (the rich few), and democracy (thepeople)—in a proper formula so that no one partcould tyrannize the others. But Americans believedthat the people of a republic were sovereign, so theysought to create institutions that approximated themonarchical and aristocraticelements of society. TheFramers of the Constitutiondid just this by fashioning asingle executive and a Senateonce removed from thepeople. The problem, as JohnAdams pointed out in hisThoughts on Government, wasthat “the possible combinations of the powers ofsociety are capable of innumerable variations.”
Americans had every reason to be pessimisticabout their experiment in republicanism. Historytaught that republics were inherently unstable andvulnerable to decay. The Roman republic and thecity-state of Athens, for instance, had succumbed tothe temptations of empire and lost their liberty. Thehistories of the Florentine and Venetian republicsof Renaissance Italy too had been glorious but short-lived. Theorists from the ancient Greek thinkerPolybius to the seventeenth-century English radicalAlgernon Sidney warned that republics suffer fromparticular dangers that monarchies and despotismsdo not. Republics were assumed to burn brightlybut briefly because of their inherent instability.One element of society always usurped power andestablished a tyranny.
The great danger to republics, it was generallybelieved, stemmed from corruption, which, likevirtue, had both a religious and a worldly meaning.Corruption referred, first, to the prevalence ofimmorality among the people. “Liberty,” SamuelAdams asserted, “will not long survive the totalExtinction of Morals.”
“If the Morals of the people” were neglected,Elbridge Gerry cautioned during the crisis withEngland, American independence would notproduce liberty but “a Slavery, far exceeding that ofevery other Nation.”
This kind of corruption most often resultedfrom avarice, the greed for material wealth. SeveralAmerican colonial legislatures therefore passed
sumptuary laws, which prohibited ostentatiousdisplays of wealth. “Luxury . . . leads tocorruption,” a South Carolinian declared duringthe Revolutionary era, “and whoever encouragesgreat luxury in a free state must be a bad citizen.”Another writer warned of the “ill effect ofsuperfluous riches” on republican society. Avaricewas seen as a “feminine” weakness; the lust forwealth rotted away “masculine” virtues. JohnAdams bemoaned “vanities, levities, and fopperies,which are real antidotes to all great, manly, andwarlike virtues.”
The second meaning ofcorruption referred toplacing private interest abovethe common good. Thistemptation plagued publicofficials most of all, who hadample opportunity tomisappropriate public fundsand to expand their power.
“Government was instituted for the general good,”Charles Carroll wrote,“but officers instrusted with itspowers have most commonly perverted them to theselfish views of avarice and ambition.” Increasinglyin the eighteenth century, Americans came to seegovernment itself as the primary source of corruption.
Fear of government’s tendency to expand itspower at the expense of the people’s liberty waspart of Americans’ English political heritage. Theyimbibed the writings of late-seventeenth-centuryEnglish radicals and eighteenth-century “country”politicians who were suspicious of the power of British officials (the “court”). Governmentcorruption was manifested in patronage (theawarding of political office to friends), faction (theformation of parties whose interests were opposed tothe common good), standing (permanent) armies,established churches, and the promotion of an eliteclass. Power, these country writers argued, waspossessed by the government; it was aggressive andexpansionist. Liberty was the property of thegoverned; it was sacred and delicate. The history ofliberty in the world was a history of defeat by theforces of tyranny.
Though the history of republicanism was adismal one, the lessons of history as well as theirown colonial experience convinced the AmericanFounders that they possessed sufficient informationon which to base a new science of politics.“Experience must be our only guide,”John Dickinsonproclaimed at the Philadelphia Convention; “reasonmay mislead us.” The Framers of the United StatesConstitution all had experience as public servants,
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
Fear of government’s tendency to expand its power at the expense of thepeople’s liberty was part of Americans’
English political heritage.
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and it must be remembered that the documentthey produced did not spring forth as somethingentirely new in the American experience. Rather,the Founders had learned much from the operationof their colonial charters, state constitutions, andthe Articles of Confederation.
At Philadelphia, the Founders focused on theproper construction of the machinery of governmentas the key to the building of a stable republic. TheConstitution makes no mention of the need for virtueamong the people, nor does it make broad appealsfor self-sacrifice on behalf of the common good. It isa hard-headed documentforged by practical men whohad too often witnessedavarice and ambition amongtheir peers in the statehouse, the courtroom, andthe counting house. A goodconstitution, the Foundersheld, was the key to goodgovernment. Corruption and decay could beovercome primarily through the creation of a writtenconstitution—something England lacked—thatcarefully detailed a system in which powers wereseparated and set in opposition to each other sothat none could dominate the others.
James Madison, often called “The Father of theConstitution” because of the great influence of hisideas at Philadelphia, proposed to arrange themachinery of government in such a fashion as notto make virtue or “better motives” critical to theadvancement of the common good. Acknowledgingin The Federalist Papers that “enlightened statesmenwill not always be at the helm,” Madison believedthat the separate powers of government—legislative,executive, and judicial—must be set in oppositionto one another, so that “ambition must be made tocounteract ambition.”
“In framing a government which is to beadministered by men over men,” Madison asserted,“the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enablethe government to control the governed; and in thenext place oblige it to control itself.”
James Wilson, representing Pennsylvania atthe Philadelphia Convention, declared that theConstitution’s separation of powers and checksand balances made “it advantageous even for badmen to act for the public good.” This is not to saythat the delegates believed that the republic couldsurvive if corruption vanquished virtue in society.Madison himself emphasized the importance ofrepublican virtue when defending the newgovernment in The Federalist Papers. But the Framers
agreed with Madison that men were not angels, andmost were satisfied that the Constitution, as GeorgeWashington put it,“is provided with more checks andbarriers against the introduction of Tyranny . . . thanany Government hitherto instituted among mortals.”
The question remained, however, whether onepart of society would come to dominate. No matterhow perfect the design, the danger remained that afaction would amass enough political power to takeaway the liberty of others. To combat this problem,classical republican theory called for creating auniformity of opinion among the republican
citizenry so that factionscould not develop. Theancient Greek city-states, forexample, feared anythingthat caused differentiationamong citizens, includingcommerce, which tended tocreate inequalities of wealthand opposing interests. In
contrast, Madison and the Founders recognizedthat factionalism would be inherent in a commercialrepublic that protected freedom of religion, speech,press, and assembly. They sought only to mediatethe deleterious effects of faction.
Republics also were traditionally thought to bedurable only when a small amount of territory wasinvolved. The Greek city-states, the Roman republic,the Italian republics, and the American states allencompassed relatively small areas. When the Romanrepublic expanded in its quest for empire, tyrannywas the result. Madison turned this traditionalthinking on its head in The Federalist Papers, arguingthat a large republic was more conducive to libertybecause it encompassed so many interests that nosingle one, or combination of several, could gaincontrol of the government.
Not all Americans accepted the Madisoniansolution. Agrarians, such as Thomas Jefferson, wereuncomfortable with the idea of a commercial republiccentered on industry and sought to perpetuate anation of independent farmers through the expansionof the frontier. Though uneasy about the “energeticgovernment” created by the Constitution, Jeffersonendorsed the Framers’ work after a bill of rightswas added to the document. “Old republicans” likeSamuel Adams and George Mason opposed theConstitution, even after the addition of a bill ofrights, fearing that the power granted to the centralgovernment was too great and wistfully looking backto the Revolutionary era when virtue, not ambition,was the animating principle of government. But in1789, as the new government went into operation,
[The Constitution] is a hard-headeddocument forged by practical men whohad too often witnessed avarice and
ambition among their peers.
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most Americans shared the optimism of BenjaminFranklin, who had decided at the conclusion of thePhiladelphia Convention that the sun carved intothe back of the chair used by George Washingtonwas a rising—not a setting—sun, and therebyindicative of the bright prospects of the nation.
“We have it in our power to begin the worldover again,” Thomas Paine had written in 1776,during the heady days of American independence.And indeed the American Founders in 1787 werekeenly aware that they possessed a rare opportunity.
Like the legendary Lycurgus of Ancient Greece,they were to be the supreme lawgivers of a newrepublic, a novus ordo seclorum or new order of theages. The American Founders were aware that theeyes of the world and future generations were uponthem, and they were determined to build an eternalrepublic founded in liberty, a shining city upon ahill, as an example to all nations for all time.
Stephen M. Klugewicz, Ph.D.Consulting Scholar, Bill of Rights Institute
Founders and the Constitution: In Their Own Words—Volume 2
Suggestions for Further ReadingAdair, Douglass. Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998.Bailyn, Bernard. The Origins of American Politics. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.McDonald, Forrest. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution. Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 1985.Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.Rahe, Paul A. Republics Ancient and Modern, 3 vols. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994.Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1969.
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