The American Revolution: Revolution in Mind and Body - Essay Example

The American Revolution: Revolution in Mind and Body In the modern literature, we often hear of oppression and taxation as the catalyst for a revolution in the American colonies. We hear of accounts of extraordinary bravery, extraordinary intellectual accomplishments, and we hear of a David over Goliath triumph. The tiny colonies, an inexperienced fighting force of farmers, slaves, and merchants, defeat the most fearsome army the world had to offer. These accounts glorify the Founding Fathers as champions of individual rights, rule of law, and classical liberal values, and fighting despite seemingly definite defeat against tyranny and subjugation to the King. All of these accounts have something in common: they convey the truth. The Patriots were perhaps the bravest and most intellectually advanced revolutionaries in the history of civilization. Nevertheless, where these accounts differ is in their treatment of the nature of the American Revolution. Are we to emphasize the intellectual nature of the revolution (what shall be termed ideological revolution), or accentuate the warring nature of the revolution (what shall be termed political revolution)? There are, after all, two important aspects of the concept of “revolution”, and if we are to adequately address what can properly be called the “American Revolution”, then we must engage in the proper conceptual analysis of that that term refers to in reality. After engaging in such a conceptual analysis, this paper will try to apply it to three periods: the pre-war, the war, and the aftermath; in doing so, one can only conclude that the “American Revolution” was not simply a war, not simply an ideological shift, but an amorphous progression of events which began with drastic changes in thought, and ended with the creation of the radical Constitution. What is “revolution”? In its etymology, a “revolution” is a revolutio—a term in the Latin meaning “turnaround”. Aristotle, in his Politics, defines two types of revolution, one being a complete change and the other being simply a modification. The occurrence of revolution throughout human history is surprisingly common when considered in the context of how much time is required for the development of sophisticated human cultures and civilizations. Revolution, in its common usage, can denote two quite different things: either (1), a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking, or (2), the achievement of fundamental change in some institution by force or action. In (1), we have an example of something pertaining to the mind—to thinking—and not to action in the physical world. In (2), we have an example of something pertaining to human actions, and not the intellectual context of those actions. In many ways, (2) is subsumed by (1) insofar as it is almost always the case that an overthrow of a government necessitates some kind of “change” in the ways of thinking. Historians, for thousands of years, have debated the true nature of revolutions. Are revolutions defined most properly by definition (1) or by definition (2)? Certainly, the argument for the former view is compelling: the aforementioned nearly necessary entailment of (2) by (1) makes it quite possible that (2) cannot exist prior to (1). But why can it not be (1) alone? Because changes in thought are meaningless in themselves. Thought, once it has changed, will inevitably change again. Only when men can concretize these thoughts in the form of objective institutions like governments can thought persevere through the changes which inevitably happen more frequently than “fundamental changes in institution”. Thus, “revolution” must be a mixture of both definitions (1) and (2), with both definitions being mutually dependent upon one another. It is proper to say that the “American Revolution”, in its historical context, was both (1) and (2). However, to consider it a revolution in the proper usage of the word, one cannot differentiate between the intellectual—“ideological”—nature of this revolution and its “political” nature. We cannot differentiate between an “American Revolution” and an “American War of Independence”. The two must be treated as inseparable and as mutually dependent upon one another. First, however, it may be useful to analyze the ideological roots of the American Revolution to gain a sense of what was so ideologically revolutionary which drove it to fruition. Although this is subject to some debate, the intellectual source of the American Revolution can be traced back to classical liberalism in the tradition of John Locke. Although by no means revolutionary today, John Locke’s political philosophy could be viewed as nothing but radical at the time he wrote his Second Treatise of Civil Government, a work which treats monarchy as potentially a form of slavery, denies the Divine Right of Kings, and says that at any time which men are no longer represented by their government, they possess the natural right to start anew. Conservatives during the 17th century would no doubt regard Lockean theory as nothing but metaphysical abstraction—futile, naïve, and impractical. But it was with Lockean ideals that Thomas Jefferson, who formulated the final decree of the American colonies in their revulsion for the King and his policies, wrote the Declaration of Independence and commenced the Revolutionary War. Before the actual war itself, however, one has to focus on the ideological revolution, the seeds of political revolution, to gain the necessary context for discussion. An account of the American Revolution must consider any of the first occurrences of notions of individual rights, taxation without representation, and oppression on the part of the English King. Although the process of the American Revolution is, as previously described, “an amorphous progression of events”, one can trace the beginnings of “drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking” to 1764. In the start of the ideological revolution, we find a man named James Otis, a lawyer and politician in colonial Massachusetts. To him, American historians frequently accredit the now famous phrase “Taxation without Representation is Tyranny”—an adage that became part of the justification for independence. Otis spoke thus in the context of a series of acts by the British Crown in 1764, including the Sugar Act and Currency Act, which imposed sanctions and taxes upon the colonists. In our timeline, the Revolution begins there, thirteen years before the shot heard round the world. What was the ultimate effect of these attitudes? Feelings of independence were increasingly common throughout the colonies during this period. Consequently, a departure from the typical perception of a colony during this age of mercantile capitalism resulted. American colonists no longer saw themselves as individuals—as Britons—serving the King by producing and trading with goods produced a world away. Rather, they saw themselves as individuals in a self-sufficient community of settlers: trading, producing, and working for their own good, not for the good of Britain, and certainly not for the good of the King. However, the taxes levied upon them by the Crown ran contrary to this revolution self-perception; “how could it be”, they asked, “that a government a world away can take from us what is rightly ours, and to do so without any substantive representation in that government?” The logic of the pre-war ideological revolution was sound and their thought justified: the colonies belonged to the colonists, not to the King. Nevertheless, to think this way is revolution in itself. This logic and this thought was concretized in the words of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, which officially initiated the gears of war. Once again, one cannot overstate the emphasis which that document places on classical liberalist ideals laid down originally in John Locke’s Second Treatise, especially where Jefferson says: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” Here, Jefferson says essentially that because government is the result of a social contract between individuals, who are seeking a commonwealth that can secure the natural rights (another revolutionary concept) to life, liberty, and property, people retain the right to dissolve that power and can use it when that government no longer serves those ends. Jefferson’s justification for rebellion—modeled after Locke’s—although today widely accepted, in the 18th century would be regarded as nonsense—naïve and radical. The Declaration of Independence bears striking resemblance to the Dutch Act of Abjuration, which states: “As it is apparent to all that a prince is constituted by God to be ruler of a people, to defend them from oppression and violence as the shepherd his sheep… when he does not behave thus, but, on the contrary, oppresses them… [The subjects] may not only disallow his authority, but legally proceed to the choice of another prince for their defense.” The Act, like the Declaration, achieved wide-ranging, revolutionary change in the political constitutions of many cities in the Netherlands (Wolff). With the Declaration penned and signed, and the British Crown unwilling to accept this liberalist justification for secession, the Revolutionary War formally commenced. Hostilities began, of course, nearly two years before, with the Battle of Lexington and Concord; however, the War itself cannot be said to have begun until Britain’s waging of it in August 1776, at the Battle of Brooklyn. The British proceeded to take New York and New Jersey, until George Washington’s famous crossing of the Delaware River to retake the latter. The British seized Philadelphia and parts of Canada, only to be stopped and trapped at Saratoga in late 1777. After aligning with the Dutch, Spanish, and French, the Americans now found themselves fighting in the Southern theater. In late 1778, the British took Savannah and soon after controlled much of the Southern colonies. However, the British’s “Southern strategy” failed as they slowly moved north. Moving into Yorktown, and trapped by the Continental armies and the French naval fleet, the Southern British army surrendered under the command of General Cornwallis. Despite King George III’s desire to continue the campaign, it had lost support in Parliament and he was forced to abandon it. So, the question becomes: what this conflict of guns and swords simply a war, or was it one step in a long process of revolution? Was it an “American War of Independence”, or was it an inseparable aspect of a long process which can be called the “American Revolution”? As our conceptual analysis revealed previously, “revolution” is neither a simple process of thorough ideological change nor merely the achievement of fundamental institutional change. “Revolution” must consist of both, as mutually dependent events, for it to exist in reality. To call the war simply the “American War of Independence”, as John Adams—and contemporary Britons might do in an attempt to stay neutral—ignores the revolutionary context of the political hostilities and the rebellion itself. Indeed, the term is useful when separating the war from that context for specific investigations—when, as we have done, one wishes to detail a timeline of discrete events that led to the ultimate surrender of the British army. It is, in fact, a matter of convenience to do so in this fashion. Nevertheless, acting for the sake of convenience often leads to the sacrifice of truth in the process. Completely and purposefully ignoring the ideological context of human actions can only lead to ignorance, a word which comes from the Latin ig-gnarus or “not-aware”. So, although one can separate out the War from its ideological context to focus precisely on the physical, historical events which took place, calling it the “American War of Independence”, and consequently refusing to think of it as either a part of the “American Revolution” or as termed the “Revolutionary War”, is a grievous error. The War was simply a single step in a long, amorphous process of mental and physical action that is best described, in its totality, as a “revolution”. Such a revolution is, according to the definition of that concept, both a process of ideological and political change, both of which were achieved by its end. But what was the end of the American Revolution? The American Revolution’s intent, as concretized in Jefferson’s Declaration, was two-fold: (1) to establish “a more perfect union” (phraseology used in the American Constitution), and (2) to create freedom from the despotic rule of the King. We may rightly say that (2) was the result of the “American War of Independence”, which separated the American colonies from British rule. However, (1) remains unsatisfied; there was no perfect union either between men or between the states in the new nation. Such would have to wait for the Continental Congress, where the American Revolution ended in our account. If we are to extend the period known as the “American Revolution” so far forward in history as to include the creation of the Constitution, we must justify the claim that this post-war period too was “revolutionary”. Immediately after the war, the victors concluded that it was necessary to create a unifying law between the states, which led to the creation of the Articles of Confederation. The weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation were obvious from the outset; most glaringly, the Articles gave the central government almost no authority in uniting the various states. However, despite the very non-centrist nature of the Articles, which stood contrary to the political systems in wide use at the time, we cannot rightly say that the Articles were in fact “revolutionary”. All they accomplished was the persisting condition of colonies, separated by various commercial and governmental practices. Thus, the new nation looked no different from the period before achieving its freedom, except with respect to its crushing debt and damaged infrastructure. Recognizing the weaknesses in the Articles, the Constitutional Congress met and drafted a new document: a Constitution of the United States, which created a stronger central government and “a more perfect union”. Thus, they established the unification of the states in a new nation—one based on the rights of the individual and classical liberalist freedoms. In contrast to the Articles of Confederation, how was the Constitution any more “revolutionary” than its predecessor? The Constitution specifies the structure of the American government, one that consists of three branches which are constructed in such a way that guarantees that one cannot manipulate the others and achieve superiority (Kurland and Lerner). This construction comes from the political philosophy of the French thinker Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu. Although not as radical as the minds behind the French Revolution, Montesquieu was a radical in his time and even in the time of the American Revolution. His revolutionary thought is ingrained into the very structure of the Constitution, and consequently, into the very structure of the American government—making both institutions a continuation of the American Revolution. Of course, Lockean ideals are present in the Constitution—namely that the three branches of government address the three Inconveniences of no government: (1) an executive branch to support punishments and execute laws; (2) a legislative branch to establish a settled and known law; and (3) a judicial branch to create a known and indifferent judge (Locke 66). The Constitution, by its very nature, also appeals to the ideals of the Magna Carta, a document regarded as liberalist or even radical so much as in the 18th century as during the 12th, when it established the rule of law in monarchy. The Magna Carta is most clearly seen in the Bill of Rights, a concession made on the behalf of individual rights. Thus, what we have seen is that the “American Revolution” is not simply a war and not simply a change in perspective of the colonists both before and after that war. It is rather the complete set of events from 1764 to 1788—from the first introduction of dissatisfaction with the British monarchial rule from across the sea to the ratification of the United States Constitution. To attempt to dissociate the War from its proper ideological context is at times practical and useful for historical discussions, but to do so in the grounds that the War has nothing to do with that context is a serious mistake. Our concept of “revolution” denotes neither ideological change nor political change, but necessarily a conjunction of both radicalisms. It is often said that “ideas have consequences”, and during the American Revolution, ideas led to war, and the war led to a new nation, founded upon the revolutionary ideals of classical liberalisms and republican values. With the establishment of the Constitution, the revolutionary ideas of Jefferson, Locke, and Montesquieu lose, in a sense, their revolutionary nature, and become the world standard. Works Cited Aristotle. Politics. New York: Penguin Classics, 1981. Jefferson, Thomas. "Declaration of Independence of the United States of America." Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 1776. Kurland, Philip B. and Ralph Lerner. The Founders Constitution. 1987. 11 October 2008 . Locke, John. Second Treatise of Civil Government. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980. Wolff, Barbara. Was Declaration of Independence inspired by Dutch. 29 June 1998. 12 October 2008 . Read More