The class POSI 2310 is required for all undergraduates at my university in the state of Texas. It could very well be renamed "Early American Political Documents," because that represents the entire body of the course, with no attention paid to figures, maps, statistics, speeches, pictures, stories, or legends. One can actually gain a large degree of familiarity with the American political tradition by following just a half-dozen or so important documents.
A note on American documentary history: Unlike the edicts of French kings or the mandates of Russian tsars or Japanese shoguns, there is not much precedent (or acceptance) in America of laws and constitutions and acts being imposed upon them. When a document is produced officially, it usually represents laborious debate, often overcoming overwhelming opposition at the start. Despite this, the message is usually fairly clear, and (at least for the examples you are about to look at) relatively short and readable.
This post discusses some of the documents we studied. The remainder will come in the follow-up post.
 |
| The Mayflower Compact, a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris |
This document was created by the settlers of the Plymouth colony in present-day Massachusetts upon the second-ever successful colonization effort by the English (Jamestown in 1607 was first). The Mayflower carried 101 settlers, including many women and children. The 41 signers of this document included the majority of the adult males aboard the ship. In the very first line the signers describe themselves as "loyall Subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord King James." This implies that they were eager to assert that they remained loyal to the King, even if they felt persecuted enough for their religious heterodoxy to travel across the Atlantic in the first place.
From my perspective, it seems like the early colonists wanted to take almost everything English with them except for the reasons they had fled. Because everyone fled for different reasons, this created a surprising amount of diversity from the start, even though practically all of them were natives of the British Isles. This document is very short and every sentence is thoughtful, so reading the entire thing is recommended. They directly list their motivations very clearly:
- the glory of God;
- advancement of the Christian faith;
- the glory and honor of their King
They list their goal as the creation of a civil body politic. This is the distant precursor to an American state. It's the original representative government of the people, with much later national and local governments receiving their legitimacy from the state. As an aside, I do not speak for the cause of "state's rights" in particular when I say that the only thing the Constitution cannot be amended to do is deny the existence of the states, because they existed first.
The Plymouth settlers did not expect any kind of assistance or overseeing from the English government. They asserted their loyalty to the English King, and specifically did not mention Parliament. None of the colonists ever expected that the British would take much interest in the colonies, and so they paid lip service to loyalty, but the British government's policy during the 17th and early 18th centuries was always a hands-off approach to its colonies. Some have referred to it as "benign neglect." In the case of the United States, this policy let a spirit of independence grow.
This document is sometimes cited as "the first written constitution" in the modern, Western sense of being a single founding document. The background for this is that Connecticut was part of the territory claimed by Massachusetts, but being settled outside of the authority of the Massachusetts General Court. This could be considered an act of declaring independence from Massachusetts.
The Fundamental Orders formally protected some procedural rights of the people. A procedural right says that "the government can't do this without first doing this", while a substantive right has some quality where "the government cannot do this under any circumstances". Since the Fundamental Orders allowed itself to be modified by the Connecticut government at any time, it had no substantive rights.
This is probably the first attempt at a "bill of rights". It was radical enough that it was declared null and void by King Charles II in 1684, but then was reinstated before finally being replaced with a new provincial royal charter in 1691. The English didn't like the Massachusetts notions of rights and freedoms.
As before in Connecticut, there were some novel guaranteed rights like the right to a trial by jury, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, right to bail, and freedom from having property taken by the government without compensation. But the Massachusetts General Court reserved the right to modify these anytime. It also did not say that procedures could not be enacted to make trampling of any of these rights commonplace. There were not yet substantive rights enshrined into law anywhere in the world.
 |
| George Mason, author of the document |
We have passed a long section of history, and let me fill you in: in 1650 the British make their first effort to regulate colonial commerce with the Navigation Acts, but they are largely unenforced. The American colonial economies flourished throughout 1650-1750 in the absence of strong British regulation, with unfettered economic freedom. Indian wars are of course continuously ongoing. The Seven Years War (1756-1763) was a global military conflict involving the UK, France, Sweden, Russia, various German states, and many Indian tribes. In the US, this is referred to as the French and Indian War, since the French were the enemies, and the Indians were largely allied with the French against the British and Americans. The war was an astonishing British victory, securing control both over North America and the Indian subcontinent. It was the first indication that Britain would become a superpower. However, the cost of the Seven Years' War was enormous (it has been called the "first world war") and the British felt that the American colonies should pay off the British debt (despite their own contribution to the war in the form of militia and support for British troops). Historians do not agree on whether the mere concept of repayment to England was unacceptable to Americans, but the heavy-handed means that Parliament used to tax Americans definitely engendered massive outpourings of grief and hatred. Taxation without American representation in Parliament violated customs of the very convoluted British Constitution. A massacre of civilians in Boston in 1770 was later followed by protest of a tea tax by throwing tea overboard into Boston Harbor in 1773 (the Boston Tea Party). The final straw came in 1775 when the British attempted to take American powder stores and muskets. The Americans were informed of the British raid by riders like Paul Revere, and their quick-response militia (known as "minutemen" for their ability to get ready for combat in one minute) intercepted the British. Shots were fired, although nobody knows who gave the order to fire. The American Revolution was underway.
As you might expect, since the Virginia Bill of Rights comes in 1776, it's representative of what the American Revolution meant in practical political terms. Speaking generally, shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, American citizens sensed that the chance was at hand to secure local self-government and seized it in every single one of the 13 colonies. Most of them revoked their colonial charters and wrote themselves new constitutions or at least laws reflecting the democratic content of the states for the future. The fear was great that the British would win the war and hang the rebels, but despite the danger, all states had a majority or at least plurality of the prominent officials, representatives, and statesmen come out in favor of independence. It was more or less spontaneous after word had spread that hostilities were underway in New England. By 1776 all of the colonies had some self-governing powers and no longer depended on English support for legitimacy.
The Virginia Bill of Rights (also Virginia Declaration of Rights, but I use the former wording because that is how I was taught) is an example of a globally important document. It assures to Virginia citizens (still only white males) many substantive rights that were later enshrined in the US Bill of Rights and exported worldwide. It uses rhetoric like "all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights" and listed among them free practice of religion, speech, property rights, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, and freedom to own and bear weapons.
Much of this language was re-used by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, which is far more widely-known, but was never intended nor used as the basis of government, while Virginia actually used its Bill of Rights as a cornerstone of its constitution.
The military history of the United States during the American Revolution is also important, but I will condense it all into a single-paragraph narrative:
.jpg) |
| Landsowne portrait of Washington, 1796 |
In 1775 the war was started at Lexington and Concord when American militia stopped British Army troops in the action that was already described. They showed their willingness to fight by inflicting heavy losses on the British Army at Bunker Hill. Later that year the inhabitants of Massachusetts spontaneously rose up against the British throughout the state and pushed them into Boston, where they would have starved if not evacuated. Later in the year the British conquered New York and defeated
George Washington's Continental Army in many engagements. The Americans unsuccessfully attacked Quebec in 1775 and lost. American morale was restored by a raid against the British by crossing the Delaware River into New Jersey at the end of the year. Still, no major successes for the Patriots came until a victory at Saratoga by Gen.
Horatio Gates in 1778. After that, the French government fully supported the Americans. With French naval support, the Americans under Washington blockaded English Gen. Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 and forced his surrender. The British might have won the war if they fought with all their might, but it was never something they had the stomach for. The war had a negotiated peace in 1783, after which the 13 states (all of which had fought against the British in some way or another) created the
Articles of Confederation, a weak national government with almost all power held by the individual states.
This is all well-known. But I'd like to point out some lesser-known facts. Over the course of the war, something like four-fifths of all powder and shot used by American forces was bought or donated from France. Without French industry, American industry would have been so outclassed by the British Army that it would have been impossible to win the war. The French King could have found other ways to harrass the British instead of supporting American revolutionaries, so it's a miracle of history that he chose to do so.
The Marquis de Lafayette, a French general, was revered by the American people for his sacrifices for American independence. When Lafayette came to America again in 1824 and visited all of the states, he earned the biggest hero's welcome a foreigner has ever received in this part of the world. Viva la France! We should never forget the earnest support they gave us.
Loyalists (those who opposed revolution and remained loyal to the British crown) amounted to a sizable portion of the US population, perhaps 20%. At least 40% were Patriots (pro-independence), and the remainder were undecided, and mostly concerned about surviving the war. Washington was an extremely determined general but his tactics were not exceptional; he had many embarrassing defeats. But Washington's decision to resign power and disband the Continental Army at the end of 1783 was incredibly good fortune for the American people. It stunned the monarchs of Europe, who had never seen anything like it happen in modern times. King George III of England called Washington "the greatest character of the age" for his humble act of resignation. The reason Washington is so legendary is not because of his military success or his success as first President. It is because he protected the trust of the American people in a way that has never existed before. He was loved as much as Emperor Augustus had been. He could have betrayed the revolution and become a modern dictator, since he had the popularity and possessed the only professional army on the whole continent, but he chose to leave the political scene in order to let the new republic grow in a democratic direction.
Looking ahead: The Constitution and Regional Divide
The next post will be longer and cover the period 1783-1865. It will go through the
Articles of Confederation,
Constitutional Convention, the first presidencies, the
War of 1812, and lead up to the
Civil War. Much of the content of 1820-1860 will be condensed since, speaking from the American political tradition, it's a period of gridlock in which not much happened.
The briefest summary of American political tradition has been a dogged resistance to authority that is perceived as being unfair or un-representative, with conscience and love for neighbors requiring that citizens should fight not just for their own rights and well-being, but for those of others. The desire to fight for freedom was present in all Americans of the Revolution. The major caveat of this was the subjugation of black persons as slaves, which was perceived by large portions of the American people to be the natural and proper order of life, and it had large concentrations in the southern United States.
The earliest Americans were largely a very religious people, as evidenced by prodigious mentions to God-given rights and to the will and justice of God.
The inhabitants of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Rhode Island all had religious motivations in coming to the New World. Since the church was the only way that literacy was spread before public schools, this means that most writing that exists from 17th century Americans comes from New England. The churches did not explicitly condemn slavery at this time, except for the Quakers, but slaveholding was very, very rare in New England at any point, and it was banned there before 1800 in any case.
New England may have been the cultural center of America in the 17th century, but Virginia was by far the most populous state. Without its support, no national union could exist.
Jamestown was originally founded to earn a profit, but after the spectacular failure and over 80% death rate in the original settlement, the motivation shifted from exploitation of the land to permanent settlement. Virginia was also the home of most of the founding fathers and four of the first five presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison (author of the US Constitution), and James Monroe.
The Deep South was very sparsely inhabited; Georgia and the Carolinas did not play a decisive role in the war, nor in the development of unique American political tradition. And the stage was already set for the North to industrialize starting in the early 19th century, while the South (Virginia included) would stagnate because of its attachment to slavery.
Slavery was technically legal in all states before the Revolution. New England states had practically no slaves or willing slaveholders, and it was no great task to ban slavery when those states made new constitutions during the war. However, in the Deep South, like South Carolina, blacks were 2/3 of the population and their labor was crucial to support the white minority. The climate of the South also supported plantation farming on a large scale, which was not possible in the North.
The first blacks arrived in Virginia in 1619. They were indentured workers, but not permanent slaves, and could not be sold as property. Most of them eventually gained their freedom and some became slaveholders later on. By the 1640s, slavery was still uncommon, and usually only as a penalty for disobedient black indentured workers. Slavery became supported by law in some states in the 1650s, and by 1660 Virginia had set the precedent that non-Christian, non-British-subject people of African origin could be kept as slaves forever, with their children also becoming slaves. It was still possible to see blacks being freed by the courts throughout the latter half of the 17th century, usually with good connections and lawyers, but by 1705 Virginia had legally codified slavery as permissible for any non-Christian foreigner. This technically included other European nationals, but in practice it was only legally defended for African slaves and captured Indians. By about 1700, slavery was in wide use throughout the South, and was at least legal in the North, if not common. The great majority of black slaves worked on huge Southern plantations for cash crops like tobacco, rice, and sugar.
Despite this, there are historians who foolishly say that the South would have gradually abandoned slavery starting in the 1790s because it was not possible to grow soil-depleting crops indefinitely, and nothing else would pay to use slaves. At the time the Constitution was written in 1788, they might have been correct in this prediction. Southerners did not even object to a clause that would ban importation of slaves after 1808. Although the British would ban slave trade in 1807, one year earlier, the Americans wrote it into their Constitution in 1788, making them the first modern nation to take measures against African slavery. In the antebellum period between 1807 and 1860, the Royal Navy, with minor support from the US Navy, performed a miracle of humanitarianism in fighting the slave trade on the high seas. They were remarkably effective and intercepted hundreds of slave ships, freeing tens of thousands of soon-to-be slaves.
However, slavery would not make a clean exit in the USA. Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton gin changed the world forever and invigorated slavery beyond its previous financial incentive. Slaves suddenly became enormously profitable because the cotton gin made it possible for unskilled slaves to pick and refine cotton, while cotton could be grown throughout the Deep South and did not deplete the soil as quickly as most of the other cash crops. In the twenty years leading up to the importation ban, over 100,000 more slaves were imported, at a faster rate than ever before. Under managed procreation, by the time of the Civil War in 1860, there were millions of slaves: one in three Southerners was an enslaved black person. Even with vastly increased numbers, by 1860 slaves were more expensive than they had ever been before. To make predictions about the eventual abolition of slavery is somewhat preposterous, since all slaveholding nations had to enact laws to achieve emancipation. The French were able to emancipate during the French Revolution, and the British found little political difficulty in it because the British-owned slaves were in the Carribean. Since there were almost no slaves living in the British Isles, Parliament's decision to manumit slaves starting in 1833 was not fraught by any of the terror and destruction that the Southerners feared would be wrought on their home states by emancipation. Their fears were perhaps heightened by John Brown's raids in the 1850s, leading them to fear the wrath of both armed abolitionists and rebellious ex-slaves. No doubt this fear made the Confederate States armies fight doggedly to preserve their existing system, for fear of devastation at home.
To veer slightly off topic, another obstacle to the progress of the South, and a glaring example of the un-American character of the
antebellum (pre-Civil War) South, was its adherence to a similar aristocratic structure than that which had existed in England. The
FFV (
First Families of Virginia) refers to several dozen families who were the original inhabitants and could trace their lineage to the days of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Their descendants were powerful, and concentrated at the very top. In 1660, the entire Council of Virginia was comprised of descendants of
just five families.
By 1775, all of the members of the Council were descendants of the same members who had been there in 1660.
Why is this population study interesting? It is interesting because it is something that no longer exists in America and has not for 150 years. Here was yet one more casualty of the Civil War: the aristocratic society which held that someone's background or name entitled him to more, and that his standing was the most important thing he had.
Here was espoused the belief that because his father had owned hundreds of slaves, he was entitled to own hundreds of slaves. This system had its adherents even among poor Southern whites, who unrealistically hoped to join in the prosperity but never managed to do so. The optimism of poor whites in the South led to them supporting slavery enthusiastically, even though slaves were too expensive for them to own, since they longed for the day when they could own slaves to become rich, as they saw the plantation owners did. In the expanding South, like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, there was an ample supply of good land to be worked by slaves, with profits concentrated at the very top. This model would continue to grow unchanged until 1860. Profits were better than ever due to soaring demand for cotton. The South was actually responsible for 2/3 of the exports of the United States in 1860, even though the North was significantly more industrialized. The ruin of the Southern economy when the market for cotton was closed by Northern blockade was total.
This aristocracy never developed in New England or in the subsequent Midwest and Far West, which was far more egalitarian. Although this egalitarianism had a religious motivation at first, eventually the Northern culture became synonymous with capitalism and free market economy. Social mobility was critically important; no aristocratic tendencies existed because it was impossible to consolidate power for generations without slave labor. Southern slaveholders were living in a feudalistic world that was already obsolete. For all future territories where slavery was disallowed from the start, even if the majority of the settlers were Southerners, the old Southern plantation culture would not be recreated. Good riddance, too.
.jpg)