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The American Revolution is all too often confused with the War for Independence. As John Adams noted in a letter of 1815 to Thomas Jefferson, "What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies." This lesson examines the "Revolution in the minds of the people" that Adams described, focusing on Thomas Paine's remarkably influential pamphlet Common Sense, published in January 1776 and reprinted 25 times in the next year, and the Declaration of Independence that it helped to inspire.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) wrote several books and pamphlets that greatly contributed to "delegitimizing" the claims to authority of the British state. Paine asserted that "society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one" and directed the reader to the discussion of the nature of rulers in the Bible (I Samuel 8, included in the readings for this module). As to the particular claims of the British monarchy, Paine noted, "No man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard, landing with an armed banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it."
The material in this module reveals the way in which the American experiment in liberty and limited government arose out of the intersection of libertarian moral and political philosophy and the political conflicts of the day, for example, the intersection of support for freedom of trade and attempts by the British government to impose mercantilist policies on the Americans in the interest of the British East Indies Company. A particularly important topic discussed in this module is the glaring contradiction between the claims to liberty and self-government made by the revolutionaries and the existence of the degrading practice of chattel slavery in many of the states.
The most enduring legacy of the American Revolution is the attempt to establish a system of individual liberty and limited government governed by law—a system consistent with the nature of human beings as moral agents with inalienable rights. That effort has been an inspiration to lovers of liberty all around the globe.
Readings to Accompany The Audio
From The Libertarian Reader: The Bible, I Samuel 8 (pp. 5-6); Thomas Paine, "Of the Origin and Design of Government" (pp. 7-12) and "Of Society and Civilization" (pp. 211-14).
From From Magna Carta to the Constitution: Documents in the Struggle for Liberty: Declarations of the Stamp Act Congress (1765) (pp. 47-50), Declaration of the First Continental Congress (1774) (pp. 51-56), Declaration of Independence (1776) (pp. 51-62).
Some Problems to Ponder & Discuss
• To what extent were the American revolutionaries defending a tradition of liberty and constitutionalism against encroaching absolutism, and to what extent were they introducing and implementing new principles?
• Were the colonists of British America being "ungrateful" for the protection offered them by the British Empire during, for example, the French and Indian Wars? To what extent does the extension of protection of the sort offered by the British armies obligate the protected?
• What is the distinction between resistance to unjust authority and active revolution seeking to overturn unjust authority? What might justify revolution to "alter or abolish" an established authority?
• What is the role of representation in legitimating political authority?
• What is the distinction between an alienable right and an inalienable right?
• In what way(s) might a legitimate government rest upon the "consent of the governed"?
• How has popular political thinking changed since the time of Paine and Jefferson? In what ways has it become more libertarian, and in what ways less?
• What distinctly Lockean elements can be identified in the Declaration of Independence?
