The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

by Bernard Bailyn

  It is not simply a question of the presence or absence of literary imagination or technical skill but of their employment. The more deliberately artful writings were in a significant way — for reasons that reach into the heart of the Revolutionary movement — peripheral to the main lines of intellectual force developing through the period. They were peculiarly incongruous to the deeper impulses of the time, and they never attracted the major talents nor fully excited those that were drawn to them. Beneath the technical deficiencies of the belletristic pieces lies an absence of motivating power, of that “peculiar emotional intensity” that so distinguishes the political writing of Jonathan Swift.21 The American pamphlets are essentially decorous and reasonable. Not that they are all mild in tone, prissy, anemic, or lacking in emphasis. Vigor of one sort or another was common enough; at times, as in the frantic Tory outpouring of 1774–1775, there was something akin to verbal violence. And mud-slinging invective was everywhere; for in an age when gross public accusations were commonplace, it took a degree of restraint no one sought to employ to keep from depicting George Washington as the corrupter of a washerwoman’s daughter, John Hancock as both impotent and the stud of an illegitimate brood, William Drayton as a disappointed office seeker whose fortune had been ruined by “the nicks of seven and eleven,” and Judge Martin Howard, Jr., as a well-known cardsharper.22

  But mere vigor and lurid splash are not in themselves expressions of imaginative intensity. Among all those who wrote pamphlets, in fact, there appear to have been only three — James Otis, Thomas Paine, and that strange itinerant Baptist John Allen — who had anything like the concentrated fury that propelled Swift’s thought and imagination through the intensifying indirections of literary forms. And in all three cases there were singular circumstances. Otis’ passion, the wildness that so astonished his contemporaries, already by 1765 was beginning to lack control: it would soon slip into incoherence. The “daring impudence,” the “uncommon frenzy” which gave Common Sense its unique power, Paine brought with him from England in 1774; it had been nourished in another culture, and was recognized at the time to be an alien quality in American writing. And Allen too — in any case no equal, as a pamphleteer, of Paine — had acquired his habits of literary expression abroad.23

  The American writers were profoundly reasonable people. Their pamphlets convey scorn, anger, and indignation; but rarely blind hate, rarely panic fear. They sought to convince their opponents, not, like the English pamphleteers of the eighteenth century, to annihilate them. In this rationality, this everyday, businesslike sanity so distant from the imaginative mists where artistic creations struggle into birth, they were products of their situation and of the demands it made in politics. For the primary goal of the American Revolution, which transformed American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty. The communication of understanding, therefore, lay at the heart of the Revolutionary movement, and its great expressions, embodied in the best of the pamphlets, are consequently expository and explanatory: didactic, systematic, and direct, rather than imaginative and metaphoric. They take the form most naturally of treatises and sermons, not poems; of descriptions, not allegories; of explanations, not burlesques. The reader is led through arguments, not images. The pamphlets aim to persuade.

  What was essentially involved in the American Revolution was not the disruption of society, with all the fear, despair, and hatred that that entails, but the realization, the comprehension and fulfillment, of the inheritance of liberty and of what was taken to be America’s destiny in the context of world history. The great social shocks that in the French and Russian Revolutions sent the foundations of thousands of individual lives crashing into ruins had taken place in America in the course of the previous century, slowly, silently, almost imperceptibly, not as a sudden avalanche but as myriads of individual changes and adjustments which had gradually transformed the order of society. By 1763 the great landmarks of European life — the church and the idea of orthodoxy, the state and the idea of authority: much of the array of institutions and ideas that buttressed the society of the ancien régime — had faded in their exposure to the open, wilderness environment of America. But until the disturbances of the 1760’s these changes had not been seized upon as grounds for a reconsideration of society and politics. Often they had been condemned as deviations, as retrogressions back toward a more primitive condition of life. Then, after 1760 — and especially in the decade after 1765 — they were brought into open discussion as the colonists sought to apply advanced principles of society and politics to their own immediate problems.24

  The original issue of the Anglo-American conflict was, of course, the question of the extent of Parliament’s jurisdiction in the colonies. But that could not be discussed in isolation. The debate involved eventually a wide range of social and political problems, and it ended by 1776 in what may be called the conceptualization of American life. By then Americans had come to think of themselves as in a special category, uniquely placed by history to capitalize on, to complete and fulfill, the promise of man’s existence. The changes that had overtaken their provincial societies, they saw, had been good: elements not of deviance and retrogression but of betterment and progress; not a lapse into primitivism, but an elevation to a higher plane of political and social life than had ever been reached before. Their rustic blemishes had become the marks of a chosen people. “The liberties of mankind and the glory of human nature is in their keeping,” John Adams wrote in the year of the Stamp Act. “America was designed by Providence for the theatre on which man was to make his true figure, on which science, virtue, liberty, happiness, and glory were to exist in peace.”25

  The effort to comprehend, to communicate, and to fulfill this destiny was continuous through the entire Revolutionary generation — it did not cease, in fact, until in the nineteenth century its creative achievements became dogma. But there were three phases of particular concentration: the period up to and including 1776, centering on the discussion of Anglo-American differences; the devising of the first state governments, mainly in the years from 1776 to 1780; and the reconsideration of the state constitutions and the reconstruction of the national government in the last half of the eighties and in the early nineties. In each of these phases important contributions were made not only to the skeletal structure of constitutional theory but to the surrounding areas of social thought as well. But in none was the creativity as great, the results as radical and as fundamental, as in the period before Independence. It was then that the premises were defined and the assumptions set. It was then that explorations were made in new territories of thought, the first comprehensive maps sketched, and routes marked out. Thereafter the psychological as well as intellectual barriers were down. It was the most creative period in the history of American political thought. Everything that followed assumed and built upon its results.

  In the pamphlets published before Independence may be found the fullest expressions of this creative effort. There were other media of communication; but everything essential to the discussion of those years appeared, if not originally then as reprints, in pamphlet form. The treatises, the sermons, the speeches, the exchanges of letters published as pamphlets — even some of the most personal polemics — all contain elements of this great, transforming debate.

  1. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence (New York, 1958), pp. 215–216, part ii; Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1941), pp. 216–224.

  2. The precise bibliographical definition of a pamphlet is the following: a booklet formed by the folding and stitching loosely together of between two and five printer’s sheets, which “gives to a pamphlet, in extreme, twenty pages when printed in folio; forty pages when printed in quarto; and eighty pages when pr
inted in octavo.” Charles Evans and Clifford K. Shipton, comps., American Bibliography … (Chicago and Worcester, Mass., 1903–1959), V, xv. Cf. Lester Condit, A Pamphlet about Pamphlets (Chicago, 1939), chap. i.

  3. George Orwell, “Introduction,” in George Orwell and Reginald Reynolds, eds., British Pamphleteers (London, 1948–1951), I, 15. Orwell’s spirited introductory essay was sparked by his belief that in twentieth-century society the press does not adequately represent all shades of opinion. “At any given moment there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact.” He looked back to the days of vigorous, highly individualistic pamphleteering with nostalgia, and hoped that people “would once again become aware of the possibilities of the pamphlet as a method of influencing opinion, and as a literary form.” A. J. P. Taylor’s introduction to volume II of the same collection is an acerb comment on Orwell’s nostalgia.

  4. Davidson, Propaganda, pp. 209–210; Moses C. Tyler, The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763–1783 (New York, 1897), I, 17 ff.; Homer L. Calkin, “Pamphlets and Public Opinion during the American Revolution,” Pa. Mag., 64 (1940), 22–42.

  5. See, in general, Evans, American Bibliography, vols. III–V; and Thomas R. Adams, American Independence, the Growth of an Idea: A Bibliographical Study of the American Political Pamphlets Published between 1764 and 1776 … (Providence, 1965). The published sermons delivered at the repeal of the Stamp Act are listed in William D. Love, Jr., The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston and New York, 1895), pp. 541–542.

  6. Adams, Bibliographical Study, contains a separate listing of “Pamphlet Exchanges.” On the Apthorp-Mayhew and Bland-Camm controversies, see Bailyn, Pamphlets, I, Introductions to Pamphlets 3, 4, 10, 11, and 13. See also below, pp. 96–97, 251–257.

  7. Love, Fast and Thanksgiving Days, passim; Robert W. G. Vail, “A Check List of New England Election Sermons,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, new ser., 45 (1935), 233–266. A Letter to the Freeholders, and Qualified Voters, Relating to the Ensuing Election (Boston, 1749) is typical of its genre. The Massacre Orations were delivered annually from 1771 to 1784, when they were superseded by Fourth of July Orations. In 1785 Peter Edes published a collection of Massacre Orations under the title Orations Delivered at the Request of Inhabitants … (Boston, [1785]). Accounts of the orators and of the circumstances of their speaking appear in James S. Loring, The Hundred Boston Orations Appointed by the Municipal Authorities … (Boston, 1852). On the Pilgrim celebrations and the general significance of the pre-Revolutionary commemorations, see Wesley Frank Craven, The Legend of the Founding Fathers (New York, 1956), chap. ii.

  8. Andrew Eliot, A Sermon Preached before His Excellency Francis Bernard … (Boston, 1765: JHL Pamphlet 15), pp. 47–48; John Carmichael, A Self-Defensive War Lawful … (Lancaster, Mass., [1775]), esp. p. 25; Samuel Williams, A Discourse on the Love of Our Country … (Salem, 1775: JHL Pamphlet 55); Perry Miller, “From the Covenant to the Revival,” in The Shaping of American Religion (James W. Smith and A. Leland Jamison, eds., Religion in American Life, I, Princeton, 1961), p. 327. (Miller’s important essay is being reprinted in the forthcoming collection of his writings, Nature’s Nation.)

  9. On the figures for the later years, see Calkin, “Pamphlets and Public Opinion,” p. 23.

  10. Bruce I. Granger, Political Satire in the American Revolution, 1763–1783 (Ithaca, 1960), p. viii.

  11. Ebenezer Chaplin, The Civil State Compared to Rivers, All under God’s Control and What People Have To Do When Administration Is Grievous … (Boston, 1773).

  12. [Philip Livingston], The Other Side of the Question … (New York, 1774: JHL Pamphlet 51), p. 11: “Pray read the eighth and ninth pages _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ Have you read them? _____ Why now, your honor, I will undertake to confute everything contained there.” See also pp. 20, 25.

  13. A Ministerial Catechise, Suitable To Be Learned by All Modern Provincial Governors, Pensioners, Placemen, &c. Dedicated to T[homas] H[utchinson], Esq. (Boston, 1771: JHL Pamphlet 34); The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times (1774–1775: JHL Pamphlet 57); Granger, Political Satire, p. 70. The First Book, which was enormously popular, was published in six chapter segments in Philadelphia, Boston, New Bern, N.C., and Norwich, Connecticut. On the complicated printing history of this pamphlet, or series of pamphlets, see J. R. Bowman, “A Bibliography of The First Book…,” American Literature, 1 (1929–30), 69–74. Political satire in the form of Biblical parodies was popular throughout the Revolutionary period, as it had been in earlier years. Cf. Davidson, Propaganda, p. 212; Granger, Political Satire, pp. 34–35, 68–70, 236–237. For an example characteristic of the earlier years, see Stephen Hopkins’, or his party’s, The Fall of Samuel the Squomicutite, and the Overthrow of the Sons of Gideon, referring to Samuel Ward and Gideon Wanton, described in Edward Field, ed., State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations … (Boston, 1902), I, 209–210.

  14. [Stephen Hopkins], A Letter to the Author of the Halifax Letter … ([Newport], 1765); [Richard Bland], The Colonel Dismounted: Or the Rector Vindicated … (Williamsburg, 1764: JHL Pamphlet 4); [John Camm], Critical Remarks on a Letter Ascribed to Common Sense … with a Dissertation on Drowsiness … (Williamsburg, 1765), pp. vi–ix; [Samuel Seabury], Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress Held at Philadelphia September 5, 1774 … ([New York], 1774), reprinted in Clarence H. Vance, ed., Letters of a Westchester Farmer (1774–1775) (Publications of the Westchester County Historical Society, VIII, White Plains, 1930), pp. 43–68.

  15. [Thomas Bradbury Chandler], The American Querist: or, Some Questions Proposed … ([New York], 1774: JHL Pamphlet 47); [John Aplin], Verses on Doctor Mayhew’s Book of Observations (Providence, 1763: JHL Pamphlet 3). The dialogues, in the order cited, were published in Philadelphia, 1776 (cf. Richard Gimbel, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense …, New Haven, 1956, CS 9, p. 74) and [New York], 1774. They are reprinted in Magazine of History, 13 [Extra Number 51] (1916); and 18 [Extra Number 72] (1920–21).

  16. Samuel Cooke, A Sermon Preached at Cambridge, in the Audience of His Honor Thomas Hutchinson Esq.… (Boston, 1770), pp. 11 ff.

  17. William Livingston, et al., The Independent Reflector … (Milton M. Klein, ed., Cambridge, 1963).

  18. On the professionalism of the English political writers in general, see Laurence Hanson, Government and the Press, 1695–1763 (Oxford, 1936) (on Defoe’s productivity, p. 94); William T. Laprade, Public Opinion and Politics in Eighteenth Century England (New York, 1936); Robert R. Rea, The English Press in Politics. 1760–1774 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1963). On Ralph, whose History was used by the colonists (see Letter to the People of Pennsylvania, JHL Pamphlet 2, text note 1) and whose career stands in such striking contrast to those of the American pamphleteers, see Robert W. Kenny, “James Ralph…,” Pa. Mag., 64 (1940), 218–242.

  19. Granger, Political Satire, p. 70.

  20. Jefferson’s style has been frequently discussed, most fully by Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (New York, 1922), chap. v. Cf. Bernard Bailyn, “Boyd’s Jefferson: Notes for a Sketch,” New England Quarterly, 33 (1960), 392–393. On Adams’ prose, see Bernard Bailyn, “Butterfield’s Adams: Notes for a Sketch,” W.M.Q., 3d ser., 19 (1962), 246–247. The writings referred to are Jefferson’s A Summary View of the Rights of British America … (Williamsburg, [1774]: JHL Pamphlet 43) and Adams’ Thoughts on Government … (Philadelphia, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 65).

  21. F. R. Leavis, “The Irony of Swift,” Determinations: Critical Essays (London, 1934), p. 81.

  22. The Battle of Brooklyn, A Farce in Two Acts … (New York, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 72), p. 11 (cf. Allen French, “The First George Washington Scandal,” MHS Procs., 65 [1932–1936], 469 ff.); [John Mein], Sagittarius’s Letters and Political Speculations … (Boston, 1775), pp. 103–104; Thomas Bolton, An Oration Delivered March Fifteenth, 1775 … ([Boston], 1775),
p. 5; Some Fugitive Thoughts on a Letter Signed Freeman … ([Charleston], 1774), p. 10; Hopkins, Letter to the Author of the Halifax Letter, p. 7.

  23. On Otis, see Bailyn, Pamphlets, I, Introductions to Pamphlets 7 and 11. The quoted phrases on Paine are from John Adams, Diary and Autobiography, III, 330–335, and Charles Inglis, The True Interest of America … Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense … (Philadelphia, 1776), p. vi. Inglis notes later in the pamphlet that Paine’s “main attack is upon the passions of his readers, especially their pity and resentment … he seems to be everywhere transported with rage — a rage that knows no limits, and hurries him along like an impetuous torrent … such fire and fury … indicate that some mortifying disappointment is rankling at heart, or that some tempting object of ambition is in view, or probably both” (p. 34). Allen, author of The American Alarm … for the Rights, and Liberties, of the People and the immensely popular Oration upon the Beauties of Liberty, both published in 1773 (JHL Pamphlets 39 and 38), left London in 1769, where he had been a Baptist preacher, after various vicissitudes, including a trial for forgery and some time in debtor’s prison. Before arriving in the colonies he had published The Spiritual Magazine … (3 vols.) and a half-dozen pamphlets, and during his tumultuous stay in New York, 1770–1772, added The Spirit of Liberty, or Junius’s Loyal Address (1770). His wanderings after he left Boston in 1773 are obscure, but apparently he continued to publish religious tracts; a poem, Christ the Christian’s Hope … (Exeter, N. H., 1789), may also be his. See references cited in Bailyn, Pamphlets, I, 17n, and, generally, John M. Bumsted and Charles E. Clark, “New England’s Tom Paine: John Allen and the Spirit of Liberty,” W.M.Q., 3d ser., 21 (1964), 561–570.