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Episode 30: The American Cause · Missing Pages

0:07
SPEAKER_00: Where are these Missing Pages, this map?
0:08
SPEAKER_00: We must have these pages back.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: This one's got pages missing.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Why are the pages missing?
0:21
SPEAKER_01: Like a book with Missing Pages.
0:22
[music]
0:30
SPEAKER_03: While the assault of Canada during the French and Indian War was obviously pivotal
0:35
SPEAKER_03: to the English imperial expansion,
0:38
SPEAKER_03: it would also have unexpected benefits nearly two decades later.
0:43
SPEAKER_03: During the previous war,
0:44
SPEAKER_03: William Johnson had made strong connections with the Mohawks
0:48
SPEAKER_03: during his diplomatic missions on behalf of Britain.
0:52
SPEAKER_03: Most importantly was his marrying the daughter of the Mohawk chief,
0:55
SPEAKER_03: Kanwatsi Tsiani, Also known as Molly Brandt.
1:00
SPEAKER_03: Crucial to that war,
1:01
SPEAKER_03: Johnson was able to convince over a thousand Mohawk soldiers to fight for
1:05
SPEAKER_03: the British in the assault on Fort Niagara.
1:08
SPEAKER_03: One of those soldiers was Molly's brother, Zion Danagea, also known as Joseph.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: Eighteen years later,
1:15
SPEAKER_03: in the midst of John Burgoyne's Canadian expedition in the summer of 1777,
1:19
SPEAKER_03: Joseph Brandt was now the leader
1:23
SPEAKER_03: H.W.
1:23
SPEAKER_03: Brands, in his book Our First Civil War, states that, quote,
1:40
SPEAKER_03: The Indians allied to the British,
1:42
SPEAKER_03: like those allied to the Americans,
1:43
SPEAKER_03: were both a battlefield asset and a psychological weapon.
1:47
SPEAKER_03: They fought bravely,
1:48
SPEAKER_03: though as a rule they had less tolerance for casualties than the whites did.
1:53
SPEAKER_03: They were fewer in number and could spare fewer lost.
1:56
SPEAKER_03: Further, they were motivated not by ideology or emotion, but by a cool calculation of interest.
2:02
SPEAKER_03: Yet their demonstrated willingness to torture prisoners and mutilate bodies sent
2:06
SPEAKER_03: a shiver through nearly all the whites who found themselves arrayed against
2:10
SPEAKER_03: the Indians.
2:11
SPEAKER_03: Some of the whites knew exactly what to expect if they fell into Indian hands.
2:15
SPEAKER_03: Two junior officers of a Patriot militia attached to Fort Stanwix went on
2:19
SPEAKER_03: a scouting mission and were ambushed by Iroquois.
2:22
SPEAKER_03: One was killed by rifle fire and scalped.
2:25
SPEAKER_03: The other was shot by The Indians approached and pulled out their scalping knives.
2:29
SPEAKER_03: One grabbed the militiamen's hair and began cutting the scalping.
2:41
SPEAKER_03: The victim,
2:42
SPEAKER_03: with almost unbelievable willpower,
2:44
SPEAKER_03: did not make a sound or move a muscle as the rough surgery proceeded.
2:48
SPEAKER_03: The Indians took their bloody prizes and left.
2:51
SPEAKER_03: The militiaman was saved when his dog, appreciating its master's plight, ran and summoned help.
2:56
SPEAKER_03: The dog became a hero,
2:58
SPEAKER_03: the man a walking reminder of the consequences of being caught out
3:01
SPEAKER_03: by unfriendly Indians.
3:04
SPEAKER_03: Now to aid the British further in the spring of 1778,
3:08
SPEAKER_03: Brandt would live up to the Indian reputation and and unleash
3:12
SPEAKER_03: a terror campaign throughout north-central New York.
3:16
SPEAKER_03: Starting with the small village of Cobleskill,
3:18
SPEAKER_03: Brant's raid parties would lure defenders out of their houses,
3:22
SPEAKER_03: kill them or capture them,
3:23
SPEAKER_03: then burn the villages,
3:24
SPEAKER_03: destroy the stores,
3:27
SPEAKER_03: As violence spread,
3:28
SPEAKER_03: either coordinated by Brandt or not,
3:31
SPEAKER_03: there was also an attack on a Patriot settlement in Pennsylvania
3:33
SPEAKER_03: which killed some 300.
3:35
SPEAKER_03: Fear spread alongside.
3:37
SPEAKER_03: The frontier was abandoned as settlers moved towards safer regions.
3:41
SPEAKER_03: Brant would continue attacking settlements and even took several Patriot forts into
3:46
SPEAKER_03: the fall of 1778, earning him the nickname of Butcher.
3:51
SPEAKER_03: To put an end to the terror,
3:53
SPEAKER_03: Washington sent General John Sullivan to chase down and destroy this army.
3:57
SPEAKER_03: He wanted total victory.
4:00
SPEAKER_03: Sullivan used all of the information he could gather to track down Brandt
4:03
SPEAKER_03: and destroy any Indian villages along the way.
4:07
SPEAKER_03: After nearly a year, the two armies finally came to blows in August 1779 at Newtown, New York.
4:15
SPEAKER_03: Brant was not captured,
4:15
SPEAKER_03: the damage inflicted by the American army on the Loyalist Mohawks put an end
4:18
SPEAKER_03: the violence in the northern frontier.
4:48
SPEAKER_03: We are now halfway through this season on the American Revolution,
4:54
SPEAKER_03: and I have discussed many of the various aspects of American society at this point,
5:00
SPEAKER_03: the women,
5:01
SPEAKER_03: slavery,
5:02
SPEAKER_03: as well as many of the And I've also discussed through many episodes up
5:09
SPEAKER_03: to this point what colonial society looked like generally.
5:13
SPEAKER_03: But this season,
5:14
SPEAKER_03: I haven't really truly laid out the case for revolution that was being made at
5:21
SPEAKER_03: the time.
5:22
SPEAKER_03: This period of time in history,
5:24
SPEAKER_03: the 1770s through the 1780s,
5:28
SPEAKER_03: is a massive time in not just American history,
5:31
SPEAKER_03: obviously, but also in world history.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: The American Revolution followed by
5:35
SPEAKER_03: the French Revolution completely changed how politics is looked at.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: Changed how monarchies are looked at.
5:44
SPEAKER_03: And they were the first dominoes to fall in the new liberal framework and
5:48
SPEAKER_03: the republican framework that broke out during this time and continued through
5:53
SPEAKER_03: the 19th century.
5:55
SPEAKER_03: So it would be a massive mistake for me to completely ignore
6:00
SPEAKER_03: the political philosophy that was going on during this period.
6:05
SPEAKER_03: But I've also been worried about diving too deeply into this and kind
6:09
SPEAKER_03: of boring everybody here to tears.
6:11
SPEAKER_03: But I realized that I do need to do it.
6:14
SPEAKER_03: So fair warning, as this is going to be a very theory-heavy episode.
6:20
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of moving pieces going on throughout this episode,
6:25
SPEAKER_03: but I'm hoping to build a more holistic picture of what colonial life looked like,
6:30
SPEAKER_03: what the English society generally looked like in both England and in the colonies,
6:36
SPEAKER_03: as well as the transition that happened and what caused it and what came out of it.
6:42
SPEAKER_03: Because this is so much theory and there's so much going on,
6:44
SPEAKER_03: I will also be quoting my sources quite a bit.
6:47
SPEAKER_03: The two major sources are classics in this study.
6:52
SPEAKER_03: They are The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S.
6:55
SPEAKER_03: Wood and The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn.
7:00
SPEAKER_03: And they both are able to build a picture of what society looked like
7:05
SPEAKER_03: and what changes caused the revolution to break out.
7:09
SPEAKER_03: So this might be the most important episode I put out,
7:13
SPEAKER_03: at least up until this point, to help us understand why the revolution broke out.
7:19
SPEAKER_03: Why the founders believed what they did,
7:21
SPEAKER_03: good or bad, and even why America is the way that it is even today.
7:28
SPEAKER_03: But before we get into it, we need a look at how the AP Notes covered this same subject.
7:34
SPEAKER_03: And we'll start with this, which is titled Thought-Provoking Discussion Starter.
7:39
SPEAKER_03: The defeat of the French in the French and Indian War made colonists proud
7:42
SPEAKER_03: to be part of the British Empire.
7:44
SPEAKER_03: As an editor of a New Hampshire newspaper stated, quote,
7:49
SPEAKER_03: However,
7:50
SPEAKER_03: in the years after the French and Indian War,
7:53
SPEAKER_03: the colonists became alienated and eventually separated from the British Empire
7:57
SPEAKER_03: in 1776.
7:57
SPEAKER_03: Why did this transformation from loyal subjects to rebels occur between 1763 and 1776?
8:19
SPEAKER_03: I said Parliament taxes, the intolerable acts, the presence of British troops.
8:24
SPEAKER_03: They were used to salutary neglect,
8:26
SPEAKER_03: and now England had control, a sense of unity, and a growing American identity.
8:33
SPEAKER_03: Moving well beyond that, we get
8:37
SPEAKER_03: When the Revolutionary War began,
8:39
SPEAKER_03: Americans split into two groups,
8:40
SPEAKER_03: Patriots, also known as Whigs, and Loyalists, also known as Tories.
8:45
SPEAKER_03: Loyalists were against the Revolution,
8:47
SPEAKER_03: and some 21,000 Americans fought in Loyalist military units.
8:51
SPEAKER_03: What percentage of white Americans were Loyalists,
8:53
SPEAKER_03: and what were three major characteristics that Loyalists shared?
8:57
SPEAKER_03: About 20% were loyalists,
8:59
SPEAKER_03: they were wealthier,
9:00
SPEAKER_03: British officials working in the colonies,
9:02
SPEAKER_03: they were more educated and older,
9:04
SPEAKER_03: and the largest amount were in the middle colonies.
9:07
SPEAKER_03: What are some reasons why many colonists chose to remain loyal to Great Britain even
9:11
SPEAKER_03: after independence was declared in 1776?
9:14
SPEAKER_03: I said, it would be a civil war that would be fought among their homes.
9:18
SPEAKER_03: A new government might be just as tyrannical as the old one.
9:21
SPEAKER_03: There wasn't a sense of unity in America.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: And finally, what was the fate of the Loyalists?
9:30
SPEAKER_03: 100,000 Loyalists would flee the country,
9:32
SPEAKER_03: property was confiscated,
9:34
SPEAKER_03: and many were harassed, hung, tarred and feathered, and sent to prison.
9:38
SPEAKER_03: Moving on, this is now the ideals of the Revolution.
9:42
SPEAKER_03: The United States was originally set up as a republic,
9:45
SPEAKER_03: a government in which the people choose leaders to rule on their behalf.
9:48
SPEAKER_03: Under the ideals of republicanism, what is the source of power in the government?
9:52
SPEAKER_03: I said, the people and the consent of the governed.
9:56
SPEAKER_03: However,
9:57
SPEAKER_03: most American leaders believe that in order for a Republican government
10:00
SPEAKER_03: to be successful, the people needed to practice virtue, what is meant by virtue.
10:05
SPEAKER_03: I said, putting the good of the country above your own personal self-interest, selflessness.
10:10
SPEAKER_03: And finally, there's a list of these ideals.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: I'm not going to give the definition next to them, but I'm going to list them out.
10:16
SPEAKER_03: Equality,
10:16
SPEAKER_03: natural rights,
10:17
SPEAKER_03: they're against monarchy,
10:19
SPEAKER_03: against a hereditary aristocracy,
10:21
SPEAKER_03: the people are sovereign, limited governmental power, and virtue.
10:26
SPEAKER_03: And finally, the American Revolution also produced a social revolution.
10:30
SPEAKER_03: The people strove to make the ideal of all manner created equal more of a reality.
10:35
SPEAKER_03: There was a movement towards egalitarianism between the gentry and those
10:39
SPEAKER_03: in social classes below them.
10:41
SPEAKER_03: What was egalitarianism?
10:43
SPEAKER_03: I said, a movement towards equality and away from aristocracy.
10:47
SPEAKER_03: But of three major ways the gentry demonstrated this trend towards egalitarianism.
10:52
SPEAKER_03: I said ordinary men and women demanded being called Mr.
10:55
SPEAKER_03: and Mrs.,
10:56
SPEAKER_03: the rich dressed in homespun clothes, and the word boss took over the word master.
11:02
SPEAKER_03: That's a little tricky to see how well this fits in with my understanding
11:06
SPEAKER_03: after reading about it,
11:07
SPEAKER_03: but there is a lot of background and a lot of deeper understanding that is missing
11:14
SPEAKER_03: in these notes.
11:15
SPEAKER_03: So grab your book, your inkwell, and your quill, and let's fill in those Missing Pages.
11:22
[music]
11:33
SPEAKER_03: The revolutionary period in America is one of ideological consolidation.
11:38
SPEAKER_03: Starting around 1763,
11:41
SPEAKER_03: as the political battle between Britain and her colonies began to heat up,
11:45
SPEAKER_03: colonial leaders began using arguments known to them from history.
11:49
SPEAKER_03: But in the beginning, these were diffuse.
11:52
SPEAKER_03: There were many different arguments from many different sources,
11:56
SPEAKER_03: with writers often just pulling from the ancients to display their legitimacy
12:00
SPEAKER_03: while belying their ignorance of the actual reality of that philosophy.
12:05
SPEAKER_03: However,
12:06
SPEAKER_03: there were also many who read ancient and contemporary,
12:09
SPEAKER_03: that is, 17th and 18th century philosophy, carefully and deeply.
12:14
SPEAKER_03: The works of Plutarch, Livy,
12:16
SPEAKER_03: and Cicero were studied to understand the state of decay they saw
12:21
SPEAKER_03: in their own imperial head in Rome The colonies saw their own government,
12:27
SPEAKER_03: the British government, as corrupt and gluttonous.
12:30
SPEAKER_03: It was along this path that the colonies determined that ruin awaited.
12:35
SPEAKER_03: They were also deeply invested in the political philosophy of Voltaire,
12:40
SPEAKER_03: Rousseau,
12:40
SPEAKER_03: Montesquieu,
12:41
SPEAKER_03: and Locke were quoted endlessly with regard to legal and natural rights.
12:46
SPEAKER_03: These were so pervasive that loyalists and patriots alike used them
12:51
SPEAKER_03: to justify their perspective of the revolution,
12:53
SPEAKER_03: and in previous episodes we saw that they were also used to justify abolition
12:58
SPEAKER_03: and slavery as well as patriarchal systems and also women's rights.
13:03
SPEAKER_03: But beyond the largest names,
13:05
SPEAKER_03: the colonists were very heavily read in common law,
13:09
SPEAKER_03: English common law scholars,
13:11
SPEAKER_03: like Edward Coke, who we discussed in season one of this podcast.
13:16
SPEAKER_03: They were also interested in the radicals born from the English Civil War in
13:20
SPEAKER_03: the 1640s, like John Milton and Algernon Sidney.
13:25
SPEAKER_03: These were all then merged with the tradition of Puritanism in New England.
13:30
SPEAKER_03: All of this was a melting pot of ideas, if you will, Merged into a single stew.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: And though the consolidation was relatively new,
13:39
SPEAKER_03: none of these ideas generally were new to the American colonists.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: In his classic book,
13:45
SPEAKER_03: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,
13:49
SPEAKER_03: Bernard Balin states that, quote,
13:52
SPEAKER_03: To say simply that this tradition of opposition thought was quickly transmitted
13:56
SPEAKER_03: to America and widely appreciated there is to understate the fact.
14:00
SPEAKER_03: Opposition thought,
14:01
SPEAKER_03: in the form it acquired at the turn of the 17th century and in
14:04
SPEAKER_03: the early 18th century, was devoured by the colonists.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: From the earliest years of the century, it nourished their political thought and sensibilities.
14:13
SPEAKER_03: There seems never to have been a time after the Hanoverian succession,
14:16
SPEAKER_03: remember that is in 1688,
14:19
SPEAKER_03: when these writings were not central to American political expression or absent
14:23
SPEAKER_03: from polemical politics.
14:25
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: What was new then was the convergence into a singular coherent ideology, a single argument.
14:33
SPEAKER_03: These various sources were pulled from,
14:35
SPEAKER_03: challenged,
14:35
SPEAKER_03: and merged with contemporary politics until slowly a consolidated threat emerged
14:40
SPEAKER_03: from the American colonies.
14:42
SPEAKER_03: There was disagreement around the edges and often contradictory readings of
14:46
SPEAKER_03: the same text,
14:47
SPEAKER_03: which muddied this message some,
14:49
SPEAKER_03: but by 1776, there was a single argument that the colonies would use.
14:56
SPEAKER_03: The oppression of the British regime is due to the collapse of the moral core in
15:00
SPEAKER_03: the empire and This
15:05
SPEAKER_03: oppression infringes on the natural rights of the colonists
15:09
SPEAKER_03: and fundamentally strays from the framework of common law.
15:12
SPEAKER_03: It is vital, then,
15:14
SPEAKER_03: that the colonies regain these rights and satisfy the aim of God to create
15:18
SPEAKER_03: a mightier empire in America.
15:21
SPEAKER_03: That's the argument.
15:23
SPEAKER_03: Now what I want to do is to break some of this down quite a bit.
15:28
SPEAKER_03: I'm not going to just lay that out and that's it.
15:31
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of underlying history that gave rise to this movement in general
15:35
SPEAKER_03: that we've talked about in the But there was a big movement in Europe
15:40
SPEAKER_03: that helps solidify some of this.
15:43
SPEAKER_03: It's also important to bring up the traditions that were being broken,
15:46
SPEAKER_03: the traditions that were being reformed,
15:49
SPEAKER_03: and just the general understanding that the American colonies had of the world
15:55
SPEAKER_03: as they were making these arguments against their imperial seat.
16:00
SPEAKER_03: So I'm going to go through some of the political philosophy fundamentals here
16:04
SPEAKER_03: before coming back and bringing back that argument and understanding what emerged
16:10
SPEAKER_03: as America,
16:11
SPEAKER_03: quote unquote America,
16:13
SPEAKER_03: at the time and where it would go from there and what the founders,
16:18
SPEAKER_03: as generally as you want to use that term,
16:22
SPEAKER_03: meant when they were talking about becoming slaves or liberty or rights in general.
16:28
SPEAKER_03: In order to understand the revolution, We must understand this philosophy.
16:33
SPEAKER_03: Now to the colonists in general,
16:35
SPEAKER_03: they were resisting the power of the British government to compel them to act
16:41
SPEAKER_03: towards the government's will rather than their own will.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: Balin states that, quote,
16:48
SPEAKER_03: most commonly the discussion of power centered on its essential characteristic
16:52
SPEAKER_03: of aggressiveness,
16:53
SPEAKER_03: its endlessly propulsive tendency to expel itself beyond legitimate boundaries.
16:58
SPEAKER_03: What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact
17:02
SPEAKER_03: that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty or law or right.
17:09
SPEAKER_03: So it became this battle between power and liberty,
17:13
SPEAKER_03: the wolf and the lamb, that drove the colonists to resist their government.
17:17
SPEAKER_03: To them, the leaders in society only seek power.
17:21
SPEAKER_03: It is up to the governed to extract natural liberty for the individual and protect it.
17:26
SPEAKER_03: Power, as we still understand it, is intoxicating and corrupting with no antidote to its poison.
17:33
SPEAKER_03: Thus,
17:33
SPEAKER_03: any act that displays this power such as raising a standing army is seen as a means
17:39
SPEAKER_03: to destroy the liberty of the populace.
17:42
SPEAKER_03: This specific fear also had historical precedent,
17:45
SPEAKER_03: especially recently in places like France and Russia in the 18th century.
17:51
SPEAKER_03: Now more importantly,
17:52
SPEAKER_03: the colonists still did understand themselves to be English,
17:55
SPEAKER_03: and they ought to be granted the rights of Englishmen despite the distance,
17:59
SPEAKER_03: despite the ocean.
18:01
SPEAKER_03: And even with the annoyances that came from trade regulations that they felt,
18:05
SPEAKER_03: there was no thought,
18:06
SPEAKER_03: even in 1763,
18:09
SPEAKER_03: to separate themselves from the Anglican tradition,
18:12
SPEAKER_03: and their protestation was merely achieving their birthright.
18:16
SPEAKER_03: Now these rights as Englishmen were not justified through a written constitution
18:21
SPEAKER_03: as we understand them now as Americans,
18:24
SPEAKER_03: but rather through the long list of institutions,
18:28
SPEAKER_03: customs,
18:29
SPEAKER_03: and laws that made up Englishmen And because the rights
18:33
SPEAKER_03: of Englishmen were naturally inherited,
18:53
SPEAKER_03: They cannot be granted, only protected.
18:56
SPEAKER_03: So this balance is what protects these rights, and if the balance is lost, so are the rights.
19:01
SPEAKER_03: Now the problem was that these rights were not strictly enumerated like they are
19:06
SPEAKER_03: in our Constitution, say, the right to free speech.
19:09
SPEAKER_03: Because the rights were unwritten,
19:11
SPEAKER_03: they're often difficult to specifically defend,
19:14
SPEAKER_03: so any display of power brought an anxiety with it.
19:18
SPEAKER_03: On top of that,
19:19
SPEAKER_03: the American colonies were seen as a more pure version of the mother country
19:24
SPEAKER_03: with greater natural liberty than the corrupted old world of Europe.
19:29
SPEAKER_03: For many in Europe, America was a barbarous place that was fatalized.
19:33
SPEAKER_03: Thus, the endless examples of corruption among the English elites only increased
19:36
SPEAKER_03: the protests against the acts of the king and parliament,
19:39
SPEAKER_03: and the colonies pushed against what they saw as tyranny.
19:56
SPEAKER_03: To let this government broaden their power was an affront not only to the colonists,
20:02
SPEAKER_03: but to mankind itself.
20:04
SPEAKER_03: And the colonists viewed the policies from 1763 onward as an assault not just
20:10
SPEAKER_03: on colonial liberty, but as an attack on the English constitution as a whole.
20:15
SPEAKER_03: However,
20:16
SPEAKER_03: this suspicion,
20:17
SPEAKER_03: though it was much more pointed in the 1760s and 70s,
20:21
SPEAKER_03: had been latent throughout much of the century.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: Most often though,
20:24
SPEAKER_03: this presented itself in the realm And I would be remiss
20:27
SPEAKER_03: if I did not cover religion entirely.
20:47
SPEAKER_03: Now, it was here in the realm of religion that colonists cared just as much
20:53
SPEAKER_03: about ensuring the English yoke was not around their neck.
20:56
SPEAKER_03: From the beginning,
20:57
SPEAKER_03: while the colonists understood the importance of moral teaching,
21:01
SPEAKER_03: So the introduction of new taxes and rules that came before any of the stamp tax
21:05
SPEAKER_03: or anything like that brought with it a concern that
21:07
SPEAKER_03: the once independent churches would fall under the weight of the English government.
21:28
SPEAKER_03: Beyond that,
21:28
SPEAKER_03: the protection from overbearing governments extended beyond just the church,
21:33
SPEAKER_03: but also to the individual.
21:35
SPEAKER_03: And freedom of conscience was baked into several state constitutions like
21:39
SPEAKER_03: the Virginia Declaration of Rights,
21:41
SPEAKER_03: which was passed before the revolution,
21:43
SPEAKER_03: but with others which passed throughout the revolution.
21:47
SPEAKER_03: From the North to the South,
21:48
SPEAKER_03: there were calls for religious freedom,
21:50
SPEAKER_03: often from the minority religion to protect themselves from the majority,
21:54
SPEAKER_03: something that was well understood to cause chaos to any well-read American,
22:00
SPEAKER_03: and which we have discussed in this podcast.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: So when the Sugar Act and Stamp Act,
22:05
SPEAKER_03: especially the Stamp Act,
22:06
SPEAKER_03: were introduced,
22:07
SPEAKER_03: it became obvious that the British Parliament was beginning to go down this long,
22:13
SPEAKER_03: plodding road towards tyranny.
22:16
SPEAKER_03: Any inch given here would be impossible to retake.
22:20
SPEAKER_03: The Townsend duties only further proved that the power granted
22:23
SPEAKER_03: to customs officials threatened colonial property and liberty,
22:27
SPEAKER_03: and anyone who worked on behalf of the British government was thus seen as
22:31
SPEAKER_03: a parasite sucking the life out of the colonial world.
22:35
SPEAKER_03: Adding on,
22:35
SPEAKER_03: the news of the denial of John Wilkes' election proved that now there was
22:41
SPEAKER_03: a conspiracy throughout the British government to undermine American interests.
22:46
SPEAKER_03: So with the arrival of troops at the end of 1768,
22:50
SPEAKER_03: There was finally proof that this tyranny that
22:53
SPEAKER_03: the American colonies were facing knew no bounds.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: A standing army was not the norm in the 18th century, as it is in so many places here.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: So the motive seemed apparent to all with eyes.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: To hell with the Constitution, America would comply.
23:12
SPEAKER_03: By 1770, the list of evidence in favor of this conclusion was overwhelming.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: With each new piece of evidence,
23:19
SPEAKER_03: large or small,
23:20
SPEAKER_03: the general fear within the colonies was being proven and reinforced.
23:25
SPEAKER_03: So the passing of the T-Act and subsequent Intolerable Acts merely proved to
23:29
SPEAKER_03: the colonists that the destruction of liberty and the tearing of the Constitution
23:34
SPEAKER_03: that so many had warned about were true.
23:38
SPEAKER_03: To many,
23:38
SPEAKER_03: even those who saw the reality of the real institution,
23:43
SPEAKER_03: what was occurring was enslavement of the people.
23:47
SPEAKER_03: It was clear that there was a concerted effort to remove freedom and extract wealth
23:53
SPEAKER_03: from the colonies.
23:54
SPEAKER_03: So in total,
23:55
SPEAKER_03: England was degenerating morally,
23:57
SPEAKER_03: through gluttony and greed, and facing downright collapse as an empire.
24:03
SPEAKER_03: And Liberty was being destroyed in the process as happened in Rome before it.
24:09
SPEAKER_03: Now, ironically,
24:10
SPEAKER_03: it is at the same time in the early 1770s
24:13
SPEAKER_03: that Edward Gibbon is completing his magnum opus, The History of the Depression.
24:19
SPEAKER_03: To many in England the concerns of
24:23
SPEAKER_03: the British colonies were not considered highly enough to actually rise to a level
24:29
SPEAKER_03: of a revolution and then actually losing these colonies.
24:33
SPEAKER_03: This irony was lost on them.
24:34
SPEAKER_03: This is just something that we can look at in hindsight.
24:38
SPEAKER_03: But this narrative about Rome falling and England falling was a common one,
24:43
SPEAKER_03: even among the most well-read and respected leaders.
24:46
SPEAKER_03: It was made all the worse Because England,
24:49
SPEAKER_03: at this time, was seen as a last bastion for liberty-seeking people in the world.
24:55
SPEAKER_03: Bernard Bailyn states that, quote,
25:03
SPEAKER_03: For they had long known, it had been known everywhere in the English-speaking
25:18
SPEAKER_03: And if now, in this deepening gloom, the light of liberty went out in Britain too,
25:33
SPEAKER_03: In Britain,
25:34
SPEAKER_03: we're next to, quote,
25:35
SPEAKER_03: self-preservation,
25:36
SPEAKER_03: political liberty is the main aim and end of their constitution,
25:40
SPEAKER_03: end quote, if,
25:42
SPEAKER_03: as events clearly portended and as, quote,
25:44
SPEAKER_03: senators and historians are repeatedly predicting,
25:46
SPEAKER_03: continued corruption and standing armies will prove mortal distempers
25:50
SPEAKER_03: in her constitution, end quote, what then?
25:53
SPEAKER_03: What refuge will liberty find?
25:55
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
25:56
SPEAKER_03: It is this connection to the English tradition of liberty that instilled a sense
26:01
SPEAKER_03: of fate, that America would be the new place to continue that tradition.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: However,
26:07
SPEAKER_03: belief in such destiny proved weak,
26:10
SPEAKER_03: as separation remained difficult even after the first shots were fired.
26:14
SPEAKER_03: The tradition was vital to the colonists, and what if they failed to protect them?
26:26
SPEAKER_03: Now, before we get into the American culture that emerges here,
26:29
SPEAKER_03: let's get into some of those traditions.
26:32
SPEAKER_03: The most crucial one that was the longest lasting is that of hierarchy,
26:37
SPEAKER_03: the idea of hierarchy in society,
26:40
SPEAKER_03: the world the founders were born into,
26:43
SPEAKER_03: To steal the adage from John Adams and then reverse it,
26:48
SPEAKER_03: society was made of men, not laws.
26:51
SPEAKER_03: The structure of society was based on personal relationships,
26:56
SPEAKER_03: not institutions or Through these relationships,
26:59
SPEAKER_03: there was a chain connecting the king down to the lowest slave.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: And everyone knew their place in this chain, in this hierarchy.
27:09
SPEAKER_03: Because of this,
27:10
SPEAKER_03: there was far more concern among the populace about those directly above and
27:14
SPEAKER_03: below them on the chain rather than those at the same level.
27:19
SPEAKER_03: This helped lead to the understanding that there were few among the exalted and many
27:24
SPEAKER_03: among the mob.
27:26
SPEAKER_03: And many even thought that there were physical differences between these two groups
27:30
SPEAKER_03: that ensured that this hierarchy remained intact.
27:33
SPEAKER_03: The most major difference between these two classes was regarding work.
27:38
SPEAKER_03: It was understood that the commons, this mob, worked to keep them away from barbarism.
27:44
SPEAKER_03: Meanwhile,
27:45
SPEAKER_03: the elites,
27:46
SPEAKER_03: the exalted, consumed and leisured to ensure that those below them stayed employed.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: This privilege and plight were doled out at birth, and little was done to change this.
27:58
SPEAKER_03: There were some,
27:59
SPEAKER_03: like traders and merchants,
28:00
SPEAKER_03: who were able to skirt between these two classes a little bit
28:04
SPEAKER_03: because they were not really laboring,
28:05
SPEAKER_03: but they were also not accepted among the leisure class.
28:08
SPEAKER_03: What's interesting about this, though,
28:10
SPEAKER_03: is that these strict hierarchical lines provided more opportunity
28:14
SPEAKER_03: for different social ranks to mingle since they did not risk losing any sort
28:19
SPEAKER_03: of distinction were they to do so.
28:22
SPEAKER_03: It was seen as a parent-child relationship, which is very different today.
28:27
SPEAKER_03: Oftentimes classes don't mix as much because of the connotation of what that means
28:32
SPEAKER_03: to them socially.
28:33
SPEAKER_03: That wasn't the case back then.
28:36
SPEAKER_03: Not to say that this is a worthy trade-off.
28:39
SPEAKER_03: Now at the bottom,
28:40
SPEAKER_03: which was even further below the free laborers,
28:44
SPEAKER_03: were slaves and indentured servants,
28:46
SPEAKER_03: which still existed in very large numbers, servants did, in England.
28:51
SPEAKER_03: The hierarchical relationships and distinctions remain the same here as above,
28:56
SPEAKER_03: thus to many in England and in the colonies,
29:00
SPEAKER_03: slavery was just an extension of an existing institution.
29:04
SPEAKER_03: Now this is a good time to talk about slavery in general here.
29:07
SPEAKER_03: I did a whole episode on this, but it's important to, you know, reinforce some of these things.
29:12
SPEAKER_03: And this is something that is relevant here.
29:15
SPEAKER_03: Now slavery today has a very heavy connotation brought to us through
29:20
SPEAKER_03: the historical practices that we saw in America especially.
29:24
SPEAKER_03: But in the 18th century, the word had a slightly different meaning.
29:28
SPEAKER_03: Balin states that, quote,
29:30
SPEAKER_03: slavery as a political concept had a specific meaning which
29:34
SPEAKER_03: a later generation would lose.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: To 18th century Americans,
29:38
SPEAKER_03: it meant,
29:38
SPEAKER_03: as a newspaper writer put it in 1747, quote,
29:42
SPEAKER_03: a force put upon humane nature by which a man is obliged to act or not
29:47
SPEAKER_03: to act according to the arbitrary will and pleasure of another, end quote.
29:52
SPEAKER_03: It meant,
29:53
SPEAKER_03: a later pamphleteer wrote, quote,
29:55
SPEAKER_03: being wholly under the power and control of another to our actions and properties,
30:01
SPEAKER_03: end quote.
30:02
SPEAKER_03: Balin continues,
30:03
SPEAKER_03: it meant the inability to maintain one's just property in material things
30:08
SPEAKER_03: and abstract rights,
30:09
SPEAKER_03: rights and things which a proper constitution guaranteed a free people, end quote.
30:15
SPEAKER_03: So basically slaves were those who did not have the ability to have property or rights.
30:21
SPEAKER_03: Now in America over the time this started to fall down the fault line of race and
30:27
SPEAKER_03: the talk of inferior races and those who were destined for slavery did take
30:31
SPEAKER_03: over much more than in England.
30:34
SPEAKER_03: The distinction between servants and slaves Slaves was still pretty muddy
30:39
SPEAKER_03: and not super defined.
30:41
SPEAKER_03: Slavery was also seen as on a spectrum,
30:44
SPEAKER_03: such that many Russians were living a life of slavery similar to,
30:48
SPEAKER_03: though not as harshly, the blacks in America.
30:51
SPEAKER_03: And chattel slavery, as was common in America, was just the most extreme version of this state.
30:59
SPEAKER_03: Now even with this distinction and spectrum of slavery,
31:03
SPEAKER_03: the contradiction was not lost on many colonists.
31:07
SPEAKER_03: Now as the crisis deepened and these ideas began to spread,
31:11
SPEAKER_03: more and more people decried the contradiction between supporters.
31:19
SPEAKER_03: There are many attempts to evade this contradiction by claiming that
31:23
SPEAKER_03: the English were just as much at fault for reinforcing the practice,
31:28
SPEAKER_03: which was partially legitimate.
31:29
SPEAKER_03: But none of this was enough to make the institution just disappear.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: And many,
31:32
SPEAKER_03: like Samuel Hopkins,
31:33
SPEAKER_03: even called out those writers who compared themselves to slaves,
31:35
SPEAKER_03: despite the horror inflicted on the true slaves in America.
31:53
SPEAKER_03: And in 1776 in Pennsylvania,
31:56
SPEAKER_03: the Quakers created the first anti-slavery society in the Western world.
32:02
SPEAKER_03: But even though there was much debate and some action,
32:05
SPEAKER_03: this contradiction was a stain on the American founding and would remain so
32:10
SPEAKER_03: until all men really meant all.
32:14
SPEAKER_03: But the argument about the entirety of the colonial world becoming enslaved
32:19
SPEAKER_03: while it did build upon the understanding of what slaves meant within
32:24
SPEAKER_03: a hierarchy was also bound in conspiracy.
32:28
SPEAKER_03: And conspiracy was everywhere prior to the revolution.
32:32
SPEAKER_03: Not only did the radical colonists worry of a grand campaign by the British ministry
32:36
SPEAKER_03: to enslave them,
32:38
SPEAKER_03: those loyal to the crown worried that a small cabal of radicals was deriving dissent
32:44
SPEAKER_03: for their own, often material, gain.
32:47
SPEAKER_03: As the crisis deepened, both sides were seeing proof of these conspiracy theories.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: From the various acts of Congress to the coordinated destruction of tea,
32:57
SPEAKER_03: evidence was everywhere.
32:59
SPEAKER_03: And this large list of evidence for the Patriots is clearly Every single line
33:05
SPEAKER_03: in there is a mark against the government of England.
33:10
SPEAKER_03: As for the loyalists,
33:11
SPEAKER_03: Thomas Hutchinson,
33:12
SPEAKER_03: the governor of Massachusetts,
33:14
SPEAKER_03: summed up the loyalist position in his strictures upon the declaration of
33:18
SPEAKER_03: the Congress at Philadelphia.
33:20
SPEAKER_03: Balin lays out Hutchinson's arguments, quote,
33:23
SPEAKER_03: No indulgence short of independence could ever satisfy them,
33:26
SPEAKER_03: that is, the patriots, quote, For this was the object from the beginning, end quote.
33:32
SPEAKER_03: The chiefs of the revolution in each colony found grounds to, quote, And so it was that, quote,
33:49
SPEAKER_03: The design,
33:50
SPEAKER_03: Hutchinson concluded,
33:51
SPEAKER_03: after answering one by one every charge in the declaration,
33:55
SPEAKER_03: quote, has too well succeeded, end quote.
33:58
SPEAKER_03: There would be continued efforts after this by loyalists like Joseph Galloway
34:02
SPEAKER_03: to defend the actions of the British government.
34:05
SPEAKER_03: The conspiracy they alleged even branched outside of the colonies
34:08
SPEAKER_03: to implicate British officials,
34:10
SPEAKER_03: In total, this whole revolution proved to be a test of wills.
34:17
SPEAKER_03: And Edmund Burke pointed out that, quote, End quote.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: And while it was true that neither side was really willing to give way,
34:43
SPEAKER_03: it's also important to understand that despite the many changes that came from
34:47
SPEAKER_03: the revolution, there was no call for an upending of the existing social order.
34:53
SPEAKER_03: There was still an assumption that hierarchy was good and naturally brought the best
34:58
SPEAKER_03: of society to the top.
35:00
SPEAKER_03: Even if it was not as strictly constructed as in Britain.
35:04
SPEAKER_03: Now this was challenged partly in the colonies by the Puritan understanding
35:08
SPEAKER_03: that one's material condition had little to do with the goodness of her soul.
35:14
SPEAKER_03: And there was more willingness to challenge authority in America than in Britain.
35:18
SPEAKER_03: But it was never adopted as a full principle in the colonies until the protests in 1763.
35:26
SPEAKER_03: Now the reason that there was not a full-blown attempt to upend
35:30
SPEAKER_03: the social hierarchies was because while Americans were not happy with the actions
35:37
SPEAKER_03: of Parliament or the King,
35:39
SPEAKER_03: they still understood that the mixed government of Britain was the most ideal form
35:45
SPEAKER_03: of government.
35:46
SPEAKER_03: Most of those in British society,
35:47
SPEAKER_03: including in the colonists who protested the actions of government prior to
35:51
SPEAKER_03: the revolution, did not want to destroy the monarchy.
35:55
SPEAKER_03: They merely wanted to reform it using Enlightenment principles to restore a balance
36:00
SPEAKER_03: by incorporating Republican principles as laid out by Montesquieu.
36:04
SPEAKER_03: Now this ideal form came from the balance,
36:07
SPEAKER_03: as we spoke about earlier, of the royalty, nobility, and the commons.
36:12
SPEAKER_03: The royalty instilled order,
36:15
SPEAKER_03: the commons provided productive output,
36:19
SPEAKER_03: and the nobility mediated between the royalty and the commons to ensure
36:24
SPEAKER_03: that there was not a tyrannical leader at the top or a tyrannical mob at the bottom.
36:29
SPEAKER_03: But even with these interactions,
36:31
SPEAKER_03: each was to be independent of the other,
36:34
SPEAKER_03: and any imbalance could be attributed to corruption.
36:37
SPEAKER_03: The only problem was this.
36:39
SPEAKER_03: The colonies did not have a nobility class.
36:42
SPEAKER_03: They had a commons, and the governors did stand in for the king.
36:46
SPEAKER_03: But that middle was missing.
36:47
SPEAKER_03: There were no hereditary offices.
36:50
SPEAKER_03: So there was a major concern about what would be able
36:52
SPEAKER_03: to substitute this missing link and what would happen should they fail to find it.
36:58
SPEAKER_03: But even with these concerns,
37:00
SPEAKER_03: the choice of leaning into republicanism was obvious to the colonists.
37:05
SPEAKER_03: But they also knew that republics were fragile, especially when stretched too thin.
37:11
SPEAKER_03: As I said,
37:12
SPEAKER_03: colonial intellectuals read the Roman classics, Cicero,
37:15
SPEAKER_03: Virgil, Tacitus, and followed the tradition through the 18th century thinkers.
37:21
SPEAKER_03: It was in reading these writers that republicanism became synonymous with Now
37:25
SPEAKER_03: in case you were thinking that I only had one book to quote,
37:50
SPEAKER_03: Pulling from the other classic in this realm,
37:54
SPEAKER_03: The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood, Wood states, quote,
38:05
SPEAKER_03: And therefore, to the degree that the rulers...
38:20
SPEAKER_03: But ultimately,
38:21
SPEAKER_03: the most enlightened of that enlightened age believed that the secret
38:24
SPEAKER_03: of good government and the protection of popular liberty lay in ensuring
38:50
SPEAKER_03: That good men, men of character and disinterestedness, wielded power.
38:55
SPEAKER_03: In the end, there was no substitute for classical republican virtue in the society's rulers.
39:02
SPEAKER_03: And everyone on the political spectrum paid at least lip service to it.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: But no one paid more attention to this need for virtue This high demand required
39:10
SPEAKER_03: by republics did make them fragile.
39:11
SPEAKER_03: So the risk of dissolution was far higher.
39:40
SPEAKER_03: Furthermore,
39:40
SPEAKER_03: democracy,
39:41
SPEAKER_03: though a major piece of the republican puzzle,
39:45
SPEAKER_03: risked a tyranny of the commons forming if a balance was not struck.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: So leaders with high moral character were required to ensure power remained checked.
39:55
SPEAKER_03: And this threat of unchecked power was the most major driver in the minds of
40:00
SPEAKER_03: the founders than even the colonial world of 1776.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: Now, putting all of this together, in the end this was a transition period.
40:09
SPEAKER_03: In political theory,
40:10
SPEAKER_03: Bernard Balin states that, quote,
40:13
SPEAKER_03: The discussion of these crucial questions,
40:15
SPEAKER_03: questions upon which the future character of public life in America would depend,
40:19
SPEAKER_03: began when the burning public issue was still the colony's relation to England,
40:24
SPEAKER_03: and ended a decade or more later in the revisions of the first state constitutions.
40:29
SPEAKER_03: And the quite different world of Madison and Tocqueville."
40:53
SPEAKER_03: And the debate expanded as well beyond just the triad of the monarchy, nobility, and commons.
41:00
SPEAKER_03: There was a general debate about the proper scope and form even of
41:04
SPEAKER_03: a republican-style government and which part of that triad,
41:08
SPEAKER_03: however we want to shape it, would actually win out.
41:12
SPEAKER_03: For instance,
41:13
SPEAKER_03: Thomas Paine argued for a direct democracy with a single president,
41:17
SPEAKER_03: while John Adams argued for separate representative assemblies and
41:20
SPEAKER_03: an executive office.
41:22
SPEAKER_03: As we'll see and as we know through American history, Adams agreed.
41:27
SPEAKER_03: Argument for balance eventually won out.
41:30
SPEAKER_03: These will also be covered in far more detail next season.
41:34
SPEAKER_03: The main point here is to say there was often more disagreement among the Patriots
41:40
SPEAKER_03: than even with the Loyalists.
41:42
SPEAKER_03: But underlying all of these models was the idea that the people above all else are
41:48
SPEAKER_03: the basis for government.
41:49
SPEAKER_03: Even if they are represented by another person,
41:52
SPEAKER_03: the representative ought to hold himself to the will of the people and nothing else.
41:57
SPEAKER_03: To help ensure this,
41:58
SPEAKER_03: especially with such an expansive country,
42:01
SPEAKER_03: it was assumed that each state would follow a similar method
42:04
SPEAKER_03: and power would be decentralized.
42:06
SPEAKER_03: This was especially important not just with the size of the government,
42:09
SPEAKER_03: but with a population that had been doubling every 20 years,
42:12
SPEAKER_03: both naturally and through immigration for the past half a century.
42:17
SPEAKER_03: And because of this population boom, there was also rapid settlement and resettlement.
42:21
SPEAKER_03: The population was ever-changing.
42:22
SPEAKER_03: Communities were in flux,
42:23
SPEAKER_03: hierarchies were shifting or fragile, and the institutions lagged behind.
42:28
SPEAKER_03: It would be hard enough for a central government to cope with such
42:31
SPEAKER_03: a rapidly expanding population,
42:34
SPEAKER_03: but the relative isolation among the people made it all that much more difficult
42:39
SPEAKER_03: for such a society to flourish.
42:42
SPEAKER_03: As Gordon Wood puts it,
42:56
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
42:57
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
43:13
SPEAKER_03: Similarly,
43:14
SPEAKER_03: as the people are the basis for government,
43:17
SPEAKER_03: the risk of competing interests and especially factionalism was of great concern.
43:22
SPEAKER_03: This was especially concerning as the people's understanding of
43:25
SPEAKER_03: the social world was changing,
43:26
SPEAKER_03: as we saw,
43:27
SPEAKER_03: from the well-trodden ground of monarchy,
43:30
SPEAKER_03: aristocracy, and democracy to a new form of government entirely.
43:35
SPEAKER_03: And it was not known what new form these factions would take or
43:39
SPEAKER_03: whether this new government could cope with the chaos.
43:42
[music]
43:47
SPEAKER_03: But there did seem to be a way out of this concern for chaos,
43:52
SPEAKER_03: which was born out of the way that the colonies existed in the empire to begin with.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: While the colonists,
44:01
SPEAKER_03: as I've said,
44:02
SPEAKER_03: throughout this podcast,
44:04
SPEAKER_03: considered themselves English and They were far more affected by local authority
44:09
SPEAKER_03: as much, if not more, than royal authority.
44:13
SPEAKER_03: The missing nobility that I spoke about also flattened American society such that
44:18
SPEAKER_03: the small genteel class,
44:19
SPEAKER_03: the rich class,
44:21
SPEAKER_03: did not maintain The gentile class in America was not able to use their estate
44:24
SPEAKER_03: to generate passive income,
44:25
SPEAKER_03: so they were forced to enter the fray and earn it in the business of everybody else.
44:50
SPEAKER_03: Now, this lack of a actual nobility,
44:52
SPEAKER_03: a hereditary nobility class, allowed for upward mobility to be much more prevalent.
44:59
SPEAKER_03: It was also much more sought after by the colonists across the wealth spectrum.
45:04
SPEAKER_03: The servant wanted to start his own shop.
45:05
SPEAKER_03: The shop owner wanted to join the gentry.
45:08
SPEAKER_03: The gentry wanted to join the British aristocracy.
45:11
SPEAKER_03: And there was some ability to reach the higher level of wealth
45:13
SPEAKER_03: through these various avenues, even among those at the bottom.
45:18
SPEAKER_03: There were also barriers to entry along the way.
45:21
SPEAKER_03: And those at the very top,
45:22
SPEAKER_03: even with the vast estates that they had,
45:26
SPEAKER_03: They paled in comparison to the British aristocracy.
45:29
SPEAKER_03: On the flip side,
45:30
SPEAKER_03: however,
45:30
SPEAKER_03: the poor in America,
45:31
SPEAKER_03: those that were not enslaved, often fared far better than the poor in, say, London.
45:37
SPEAKER_03: But the greatest equalizer was that of the ownership of property.
45:41
SPEAKER_03: Two-thirds of farmers in America owned their land, and farmers made up 95% of the population.
45:48
SPEAKER_03: In England, that was less than 40% of the population.
45:52
SPEAKER_03: Even though property ownership was important for these farmers,
45:55
SPEAKER_03: there was a secondary and perhaps even primary larger goal that they were trying
46:00
SPEAKER_03: to reach.
46:01
SPEAKER_03: They wanted to join the English elite.
46:04
SPEAKER_03: Many of the founding fathers, especially in the more But however wealthy they were,
46:22
SPEAKER_03: For many rich families,
46:23
SPEAKER_03: their estates were meant to house many generations and was a way to pass wealth
46:29
SPEAKER_03: through sons and also merge together families and build up their expansion
46:32
SPEAKER_03: of their property.
46:45
SPEAKER_03: Beyond that,
46:45
SPEAKER_03: their family was,
46:46
SPEAKER_03: much more so than today,
46:48
SPEAKER_03: an institution in and of itself,
46:51
SPEAKER_03: and the mixing of families was a way to create larger communities in the colonies.
46:56
SPEAKER_03: Relatives were more often than not business partners or apprentices,
47:01
SPEAKER_03: But
47:05
SPEAKER_03: it's important to note that this elite class in America was not just a hoarder
47:09
SPEAKER_03: of wealth or just drivers of slaves.
47:12
SPEAKER_03: Many were these things, but many more fully embraced the milieu of the Enlightenment.
47:18
SPEAKER_03: They read widely, debated in coffeehouses, wrote political treatises and pamphlets.
47:24
SPEAKER_03: It was among these elites like Washington and Jefferson that the calls for prudence
47:29
SPEAKER_03: and loyalty came when it was assumed that their rights as Englishmen were protected
47:34
SPEAKER_03: by the king and parliament.
47:36
SPEAKER_03: It was also from them that the arguments for separation from English power
47:39
SPEAKER_03: through non-importation and non-consumption and eventually even full rebellion came
47:44
SPEAKER_03: when it became obvious those rights were no longer protected.
47:48
SPEAKER_03: But it wasn't just the elites that were actually making these arguments.
47:51
SPEAKER_03: The publishing of Common Sense by Thomas Paine in January of 1776 moved this debate
47:57
SPEAKER_03: about American sovereignty from the stuffy rooms of the Pennsylvania State House
48:02
SPEAKER_03: or those coffee houses throughout the colonies to the tavern on the street corner.
48:07
SPEAKER_03: Now, by the time of the American Revolution,
48:09
SPEAKER_03: pamphlets were basically ubiquitous and one of the primary ways in
48:14
SPEAKER_03: which colonists spread their ideas to each other.
48:18
SPEAKER_03: The colonists were also highly literate and very expressive.
48:22
SPEAKER_03: Throughout the crisis period,
48:23
SPEAKER_03: before the first shots were fired,
48:25
SPEAKER_03: some 400 pamphlets were published in the colonies.
48:29
SPEAKER_03: Over a thousand more were published by the time the war ended.
48:32
SPEAKER_03: These were often written by amateurs, not highly trained writers.
48:36
SPEAKER_03: And that gave a sort of authenticity to their writing.
48:40
SPEAKER_03: There was not really the market for a writer like Jonathan Swift
48:43
SPEAKER_03: or Daniel Defoe like there was in England.
48:46
SPEAKER_03: Writing was rather a side pursuit rather than a profession in itself.
48:51
SPEAKER_03: There were also greater concerns than artfulness.
48:54
SPEAKER_03: It was the argument itself that was honed, not the technique.
48:59
SPEAKER_03: Their aim was to persuade the reader, not make them swoon.
49:03
SPEAKER_03: Now, it was one of these writers,
49:04
SPEAKER_03: Thomas Jefferson,
49:05
SPEAKER_03: who had written many pamphlets,
49:07
SPEAKER_03: many treatises,
49:08
SPEAKER_03: such as the Summer Review of the Rights of British America,
49:11
SPEAKER_03: before he sat down and wrote the Declaration of Independence.
49:16
SPEAKER_03: And all of these ideas that I've been talking about
49:18
SPEAKER_03: in this episode were finally put together,
49:21
SPEAKER_03: the conspiracism,
49:23
SPEAKER_03: The attacks against the monarchy,
49:26
SPEAKER_03: natural rights as Englishmen,
49:28
SPEAKER_03: loyalty and virtue,
49:30
SPEAKER_03: all of these different facets were put together into the Declaration
49:35
SPEAKER_03: of Independence.
49:36
SPEAKER_03: And as soon as the ink was dry on that document,
49:40
SPEAKER_03: American culture itself,
49:41
SPEAKER_03: the ideas, habits,
49:42
SPEAKER_03: customs and laws,
49:44
SPEAKER_03: transformed from a bastardized,
49:46
SPEAKER_03: unrefined version of Englishness into an emerging independent set
49:50
SPEAKER_03: of virtues worth defending.
49:53
SPEAKER_03: What began as a seemingly random assortment
49:57
SPEAKER_03: of flimsy beliefs quickly became something far more rigid and far more defensible
50:02
SPEAKER_03: through endless curation and molding by men like John Adams,
50:07
SPEAKER_03: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and countless others.
50:11
SPEAKER_03: A central pillar of these ideals that the Patriots took up was that of representation.
50:17
SPEAKER_03: More importantly,
50:18
SPEAKER_03: representation at the local level to ensure the voice of
50:21
SPEAKER_03: the state does not overwhelm the people.
50:24
SPEAKER_03: This was the key to the fight with Parliament throughout the revolution.
50:27
SPEAKER_03: It was understood by scholars at the time that Parliament represented all of Britain,
50:35
SPEAKER_03: However,
50:39
SPEAKER_03: this idea was unconscionable to the colonists who understood power to be derived
50:44
SPEAKER_03: from the people.
50:45
SPEAKER_03: And if they were not directly represented,
50:47
SPEAKER_03: that is, voting for someone, then where did the power come from?
50:51
SPEAKER_03: It was under the consent of the governed,
50:53
SPEAKER_03: as John Locke described it,
50:55
SPEAKER_03: That governments were allowed to exist,
50:57
SPEAKER_03: and it required continuous consent to retain any authority or legitimacy.
51:03
SPEAKER_03: This was constantly at risk of being undermined by Parliament,
51:06
SPEAKER_03: and if they were to succeed,
51:08
SPEAKER_03: the colonists, as they believed, would be turned into mere slaves.
51:12
SPEAKER_03: The next pillar was that of rights and a constitution describing them.
51:16
SPEAKER_03: Now, the colonists fully understood that a constitution didn't need to be written down.
51:20
SPEAKER_03: That was a concept that they understood more than we do.
51:24
SPEAKER_03: We like it in words.
51:25
SPEAKER_03: But it was understood.
51:27
SPEAKER_03: And as it
51:37
SPEAKER_03: was the ultimate authority,
51:39
SPEAKER_03: constitutions ought not to be easily changeable,
51:42
SPEAKER_03: if at all, except through a rigorous process involving the people themselves.
51:47
SPEAKER_03: This was not true of the English constitution.
51:50
SPEAKER_03: And the underlying purpose of any constitution,
51:52
SPEAKER_03: whether it was written or not, was to protect the natural rights of man.
51:56
SPEAKER_03: And it's important to note here that this piece of this,
51:59
SPEAKER_03: this constitution piece,
52:01
SPEAKER_03: was so well understood by the colonists well before even the revolution
52:06
SPEAKER_03: that there were many attempts to write out and enumerate the rights of Englishmen
52:11
SPEAKER_03: to ensure that they were protected in this alien land.
52:14
SPEAKER_03: For instance,
52:15
SPEAKER_03: as Balin points out, quote,
52:17
SPEAKER_03: the ill-fated Charter of Liberties and Privileges passed by
52:19
SPEAKER_03: the First General Assembly of New York in 1683 contained not only, quote,
52:24
SPEAKER_03: the outlines of a constitution for the province,
52:27
SPEAKER_03: end quote, but a quote-unquote Bill of Rights as well.
52:30
SPEAKER_03: Even more elaborate and explicit were the provisions of the rights and privileges of
52:34
SPEAKER_03: the majesty's subjects enacted eight years later in 1691 by the same body.
52:39
SPEAKER_03: This remarkable statute objected to in England because of its quote-unquote large
52:43
SPEAKER_03: and doubtful expressions and disallowed there Listed the rights of the individuals
52:49
SPEAKER_03: in the form of a series of categorical prohibitions on government.
52:53
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
52:54
SPEAKER_03: So it was through representation and a constitution that the highest ideal of all,
52:59
SPEAKER_03: liberty, was preserved.
53:01
SPEAKER_03: The colonists felt that it was through the traditions that began more than a century
53:05
SPEAKER_03: before in America...
53:09
SPEAKER_03: Furthermore, the actions of Parliament were actively infringing on these principal virtues.
53:14
SPEAKER_03: From the British perspective,
53:16
SPEAKER_03: Parliament was merely carrying out its duty as described after
53:19
SPEAKER_03: the Glorious Revolution, in which it was the sovereign power of the British people.
53:25
SPEAKER_03: But the colonists had grown so used to maneuvering through the local assemblies
53:28
SPEAKER_03: and courts that had grown prominently in that period,
53:33
SPEAKER_03: so this reinforcement of authority by parliament was a shock to the colonial world.
53:38
SPEAKER_03: It is in the argument surrounding sovereignty that the conflict emerged.
53:43
SPEAKER_03: The colonists started with more pragmatic delineations of parliamentary authority,
53:48
SPEAKER_03: though to the British, this was a challenge to sovereignty itself.
53:52
SPEAKER_03: So all the arguments about the definitions of duties and taxes during
53:56
SPEAKER_03: the Stamp Act crisis were not seen as debates about limits,
53:59
SPEAKER_03: but rather the colonies directly undermining parliamentary authority.
54:03
SPEAKER_03: But it is also in these arguments,
54:05
SPEAKER_03: merged with the ideals regarding representation,
54:08
SPEAKER_03: from which the statement no taxation without representation emerges.
54:12
SPEAKER_03: This was a constitutional argument that Parliament saw as a threat.
54:16
SPEAKER_03: No matter what line was offered by the colonists, Parliament was not swayed.
54:21
SPEAKER_03: It was this impasse that drove that wedge deeper until separation became the only outcome.
54:28
SPEAKER_03: And it was this argument about parliamentary authority that drove the wedge between
54:34
SPEAKER_03: the Patriots and the Loyalists and created this debate in America.
54:41
SPEAKER_03: While the loyalists were not a large proportion of the population of the colonies,
54:45
SPEAKER_03: they were about 20% or about a million people,
54:48
SPEAKER_03: they did represent a large portion of the rich gentry.
54:51
SPEAKER_03: They were highly connected and influential in politics and trade,
54:55
SPEAKER_03: and their exile caused major disruptions during the revolution.
55:00
SPEAKER_03: Now even though they were loyal to the British government,
55:02
SPEAKER_03: this wasn't really born out of a deep devotion to the king.
55:06
SPEAKER_03: Rather,
55:07
SPEAKER_03: they were merely concerned that severing ties with Britain would destroy any ability
55:12
SPEAKER_03: for America to thrive.
55:15
SPEAKER_03: Franklin started out as a believer in a stronger transatlantic union
55:19
SPEAKER_03: before he joined the Patriot Cause in the 1770s.
55:23
SPEAKER_03: There was a feeling,
55:24
SPEAKER_03: especially after the French and Indian War,
55:27
SPEAKER_03: that they were on the cusp of a total British tribulation.
55:30
SPEAKER_03: The crises that sprang up during this point created a rift between those who wanted
55:34
SPEAKER_03: to remain with Britain and those who did not.
55:51
SPEAKER_03: There are those who saw the government overstepping and trying to wrangle
55:55
SPEAKER_03: the colonies,
55:56
SPEAKER_03: and those who were bound to loyalty,
55:58
SPEAKER_03: like Thomas Hutchinson, or hoping to reconcile differences, like Joseph Galloway.
56:06
SPEAKER_03: To many of them,
56:06
SPEAKER_03: this was just seen as a concocted disruption created by a few anarchists,
56:10
SPEAKER_03: or rebels, like Samuel Adams and John Hancock.
56:27
SPEAKER_03: Many loyalists felt that the colonies were and should remain dependent on
56:32
SPEAKER_03: the mother country, even if that meant curtailing some liberty.
56:37
SPEAKER_03: However, slowly,
56:38
SPEAKER_03: as the loyalists began to lose the ideological war,
56:42
SPEAKER_03: they were driven to silence and isolation over time.
56:46
SPEAKER_03: As independence became more commonly spoken and written about,
56:50
SPEAKER_03: even those once sympathetic to the original cause,
56:53
SPEAKER_03: that is,
56:53
SPEAKER_03: restoring the rights being infringed upon,
56:55
SPEAKER_03: were alienated by the increasing rebelliousness.
56:59
SPEAKER_03: Now in the end,
57:00
SPEAKER_03: while there was constant pressure to conform to the rebel wants and needs,
57:05
SPEAKER_03: often through coercion and violence,
57:07
SPEAKER_03: there was rarely much killing of loyalists, as is often the case in revolution.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: Most of the violence was not kind.
57:16
SPEAKER_03: There was tarring and feathering and ransacking of houses, but there was very little killing.
57:22
SPEAKER_03: But rather than focusing on the loyalists as a whole for all of this,
57:26
SPEAKER_03: I think it's important to focus on just a few who were directly impacted just to get
57:30
SPEAKER_03: a sense of Now,
57:31
SPEAKER_03: while the Patriots drove the Loyalists underground,
57:33
SPEAKER_03: William was one of the most outspoken opponents of the Revolution.
57:48
SPEAKER_03: For this willingness to stand his ground,
57:51
SPEAKER_03: he was placed under house arrest in New Jersey,
57:54
SPEAKER_03: and his salary from his royal governorship was halted.
57:58
SPEAKER_03: He remained outspoken even during this time about what he saw as a conspiracy
58:02
SPEAKER_03: to force independence on the colonies.
58:05
SPEAKER_03: In his book Our First Civil War, H.W.
58:08
SPEAKER_03: Brands quotes William Franklin directly, quote,
58:12
SPEAKER_03: "...I have early and often warned you of the pernicious designs
58:15
SPEAKER_03: of many pretended patriots who,
58:18
SPEAKER_03: under the mask of zeal for reconciliation,
58:21
SPEAKER_03: have been from the first insidiously promoting a system
58:23
SPEAKER_03: of measures purposely calculated for widening the breach between the two countries."
58:28
SPEAKER_03: So far as to let in an independent Republican tyranny,
58:31
SPEAKER_03: the worst and most debasing of all possible tyrannies.
58:34
SPEAKER_03: They well know that this is not even a chance of being accomplished but at
58:38
SPEAKER_03: the expense of the lives and property of many thousands of the honest people
58:42
SPEAKER_03: of this country.
58:44
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
58:45
SPEAKER_03: Now, eventually Franklin was forced to move from New Jersey to Connecticut,
58:49
SPEAKER_03: where he was offered refuge by the governor in exchange for his capitulation.
58:54
SPEAKER_03: He reluctantly accepted,
58:55
SPEAKER_03: though he was eventually caught corresponding with other loyalists and confined to
59:00
SPEAKER_03: a cell in a small Connecticut village.
59:03
SPEAKER_03: After the war, he would leave for England.
59:06
SPEAKER_03: Others were far more involved with the British side of the war effort, like Joseph Galloway.
59:11
SPEAKER_03: Early in the war,
59:12
SPEAKER_03: Galloway was in constant communication with General William Howe to provide insight
59:17
SPEAKER_03: into the number of loyalists throughout the British colonies.
59:20
SPEAKER_03: He proved pivotal in convincing Howe to actually march on Philadelphia itself,
59:25
SPEAKER_03: because there were so many loyalists there.
59:27
SPEAKER_03: However,
59:28
SPEAKER_03: when Howe arrived,
59:29
SPEAKER_03: there were far fewer loyalists willing to fight than Galloway had assumed.
59:34
SPEAKER_03: Now, the reason for this was because the Patriots were aware of this trend
59:39
SPEAKER_03: in Philadelphia as well.
59:41
SPEAKER_03: So many of the loyalists there
59:51
SPEAKER_03: One of these women was Sarah Logan Fisher.
59:54
SPEAKER_03: She was forced to remain in Philadelphia as the British approach drove the city into chaos.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_03: Houses and stores were ransacked as patriot families fled.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_03: As supply shortages took hold after the British arrived,
1:00:07
SPEAKER_03: she could only just stand there and watch as goods were stolen and Now,
1:00:11
SPEAKER_03: beyond just those who already had connections driving them to be loyal to Britain,
1:00:31
SPEAKER_03: The most visible and most well-known of these converts was Benedict Arnold,
1:00:35
SPEAKER_03: a once loyal officer in the American army who was pivotal in the victory at Saratoga
1:00:40
SPEAKER_03: and recapture of Philadelphia.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_03: After sustaining injuries at Saratoga,
1:00:45
SPEAKER_03: Arnold was pushed away from the battlefield and ultimately passed over for
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: a promotion.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_03: With his pride damaged and growing debts that needed to be paid,
1:00:56
SPEAKER_03: Arnold flipped on his general and began working as a spy for the British.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_03: He would remain in British service throughout the war,
1:01:04
SPEAKER_03: And that last piece was the fate of many Loyalists who fled from America during
1:01:12
SPEAKER_03: and immediately after the war.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_03: But it wasn't that easy.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_03: While the British soldiers were treated with military and thus allowed
1:01:19
SPEAKER_03: to leave freely civilian loyalists were still traitors in the eyes of
1:01:24
SPEAKER_03: the new American government.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_03: Furthermore with the war proving to be a lost cause
1:01:29
SPEAKER_03: the British government did little to protect the loyalists attempting to flee.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_03: In the interim between the Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris,
1:01:37
SPEAKER_03: patriots and loyalists alike,
1:01:38
SPEAKER_03: including William Franklin, engaged in a terroristic cycle of violence.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: But in the end,
1:01:44
SPEAKER_03: there was no return to the old status quo, so the loyalists left their home behind.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_03: H.W.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_03: Brands details this exodus, quote, The outcome of the war made heroes of the Patriots.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_03: George Washington was applauded all the way home to Mount Vernon,
1:02:00
SPEAKER_03: where he was permitted to resume his life as a farmer,
1:02:03
SPEAKER_03: but only until post-war troubles prompted his countrymen to summon him back
1:02:06
SPEAKER_03: into service.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_03: The outcome of the war produced a strikingly different result for the Loyalists.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_03: But even had their side prevailed,
1:02:14
SPEAKER_03: they would have achieved no such honor as the Patriots did in their victory.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_03: The Loyalists would have created no new country.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_03: They would have remained servants and subjects of the British crown.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_03: Doubtless King George would have rewarded them,
1:02:27
SPEAKER_03: but whether salaries, posts,
1:02:29
SPEAKER_03: or even peerages would have compensated for the animus many
1:02:32
SPEAKER_03: of their fellow Americans felt for them was impossible to know.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_03: But before we could even get to that point,
1:03:03
SPEAKER_03: There was a war to fight.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_03: And as the war raged,
1:03:06
SPEAKER_03: it was understood that if this nation,
1:03:08
SPEAKER_03: should they outlast the British,
1:03:10
SPEAKER_03: were to succeed,
1:03:12
SPEAKER_03: future generations would need to be taught the republican ideals
1:03:16
SPEAKER_03: to break down any monarchical dependencies that remained.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_03: As we saw in previous episodes,
1:03:21
SPEAKER_03: this includes the role of women in society,
1:03:24
SPEAKER_03: as subordinate to their husbands and in the north of slaves to their owners.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_03: These changes were not universal nor quick,
1:03:31
SPEAKER_03: but they did represent a distinct break from the old understanding of society.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_03: As Gordon Woods says it, quote, Almost at a stroke,
1:03:47
SPEAKER_03: Overnight,
1:03:47
SPEAKER_03: modern conceptions of public power replaced older,
1:03:48
SPEAKER_03: archaic ideas of personal monarchical government.
1:04:11
SPEAKER_03: No longer could government be seen as the king's private authority or as a bundle
1:04:15
SPEAKER_03: of prerogative rights.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_03: Rulers suddenly lost their traditional personal rights to rule
1:04:20
SPEAKER_03: and personal allegiance as a civic bond became meaningless." And even
1:04:25
SPEAKER_03: if there were no major changes suddenly in direct policy like with slavery,
1:04:30
SPEAKER_03: the inconsistency became impossible to ignore.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_03: But there was another level to this.
1:04:36
SPEAKER_03: In order to ensure the republican spirit lived on, Education became vital.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_03: The American Revolution was seen as the fulfillment of the Enlightenment,
1:04:45
SPEAKER_03: and it was up to the future generations to ensure that this light did not dim.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_03: Thus, it was vital to maintain a common moral center and establish connections
1:04:55
SPEAKER_03: between peoples to propagate Republican thought.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_03: They were forced to build the institutions from the ground up without relying
1:05:02
SPEAKER_03: on any existing structures of authority.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_03: So it became imperative that everybody came in with the same understanding of society.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_03: Above all, there was a call for building Wood states that, quote,
1:05:28
SPEAKER_03: End quote.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_01: Now, despite the many changes that
1:05:48
SPEAKER_03: we have faced throughout our history as a country
1:05:50
SPEAKER_03: in America, I do still believe that this virtue remains.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_03: Often it can be perverted or used against us by bad actors,
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: but I do believe that Americans are unique and that our unwavering optimism
1:06:06
SPEAKER_03: and community spirit is what will keep us afloat for another 250 years.
1:06:13
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be alright.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_02: How can you tell?
1:06:22
SPEAKER_02: I feel it in my heart.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be okay.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_02: The sun is shining bright.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_02: To another day.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be alright.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be okay.
1:06:48
SPEAKER_02: Well if at first you don't succeed, you better try, try again.
1:06:55
[music]
1:07:01
SPEAKER_02: Clenched fist can't plant a seed.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_02: Your hands gonna be
1:07:09
[music]
1:07:30
SPEAKER_02: alright.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be okay.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna be alright.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_02: I feel it in my heart.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna, yeah, yeah.
1:07:39
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna find your way.
1:07:42
SPEAKER_02: It's gonna, yeah, yeah.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_02: It's very hard to let things go.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_02: It's hard to carry on.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_02: You won't try, you won't know when next is gonna come.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_02: You've got just
1:08:03
[music]