The insistence, the violence of language, increased in the heightening crisis. “Rebellion,” Daniel Leonard wrote flatly in 1775, “is the most atrocious offense that can be perpetrated by man,” except those committed directly against God. “It dissolves the social band, annihilates the security resulting from law and government; introduces fraud, violence, rapine, murder, sacrilege, and the long train of evils that riot uncontrolled in a state of nature.” But the end was near. By the spring of 1775 such sentiments, fulminous and despairing, were being driven underground.
Jonathan Boucher’s sermon “On Civil Liberty, Passive Obedience, and Nonresistance” had been written in 1775 “with a view to publication,” and though it had been delivered publicly enough in Queen Anne’s Parish, Maryland, it was promptly thereafter suppressed; “the press,” Boucher later wrote, “was shut to every publication of the kind.” Its publication twenty-two years afterward in a volume of Boucher’s sermons entitled A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution was the result of the French Revolution’s reawakening in the author, long since safely established in England, the fears of incipient anarchy and social incoherence that had agitated him two decades before. It was a fortunate result, for the sermon is a classic of its kind. It sums up, as no other essay of the period, the threat to the traditional ordering of human relations implicit in Revolutionary thought.
Boucher sought, first and foremost, to establish the divine origins of the doctrine of obedience to constituted authority — a necessity, he felt, not merely in view of the arguments of the Reverend Jacob Duché whom he was ostensibly refuting, but, more important, in view of the gross misinterpretation rebellious Americans had for years been making of that suggestive verse of Galatians v,1: “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” What had been meant by “liberty” in that passage, he said, was simply and unambiguously freedom from sin, for “every sinner is, literally, a slave … the only true liberty is the liberty of being the servants of God.” Yet the Gospel does speak to the question of public obligations, and its command could hardly be more unmistakable: it orders, always, “obedience to the laws of every country, in every kind or form of government.” The rumor promoted in the infancy of Christianity “that the Gospel was designed to undermine kingdoms and commonwealths” had probably been the work of Judas, and patently mixed up the purpose of the First Coming with that of the Second. Submission to the higher powers is what the Gospel intends for man: “obedience to government is every man’s duty because it is every man’s interest; but it is particularly incumbent on Christians, because … it is enjoined by the positive commands of God.”
So much was scriptural, and could be buttressed by such authorities as Edmund Burke, Bishop Butler, “the learned Mr. Selden,” and Lancelot Andrewes, whose Biblical exegesis of 1650 was quoted to the effect that “princes receive their power only from God, and are by him constituted and entrusted with government of others chiefly for his own glory and honor, as his deputies and vicegerents upon earth.” More complicated was the application of this central thesis to the associated questions of the origins and aims of government and of the equality of men. As for the former, the idea that the aim of government is “the common good of mankind” is in itself questionable; but even if it were correct, it would not follow that government should rest on consent, for common consent can only mean common feeling, and this a “vague and loose” thing not susceptible to proof. Mankind has never yet agreed on what the common good is, and so, there being no “common feeling” that can clearly designate the “common good,” one can scarcely argue that government is, or should be, instituted by “common consent.”
Similarly popular, dangerous, and fallacious to Boucher was the notion “that the whole human race is born equal; and that no man is naturally inferior, or in any respect subjected to another, and that he can be made subject to another only by his own consent.” This argument, he wrote, is “ill-founded and false both in its premises and conclusions.” It is hard to see how it could conceivably be true in any sense. “Man differs from man in everything that can be supposed to lead to supremacy and subjection, as one star differs from another star in glory.” God intended man to be a social animal; but society requires government, and “without some relative inferiority and superiority” there can be no government.
A musical instrument composed of chords, keys, or pipes all perfectly equal in size and power might as well be expected to produce harmony as a society composed of members all perfectly equal to be productive of order and peace … On the principle of equality, neither his parents nor even the vote of a majority of the society … can have … authority over any man … Even an implicit consent can bind a man no longer than he chooses to be bound. The same principle of equality … clearly entitles him to recall and resume that consent whenever he sees fit, and he alone has a right to judge when and for what reasons it may be resumed.
A social and political system based on the principles of consent and equality would be “fantastic”; it would result in “the whole business of social life” being reduced to confusion and futility. People would first express and then withdraw their consent to an endless succession of schemes of government. “Governments, though always forming, would never be completely formed, for the majority today might be the minority tomorrow, and, of course, that which is now fixed might and would be soon unfixed.”
Consent, equality — these were “particularly loose and dangerous” ideas, Boucher wrote; illogical, unrealistic, and lacking in scriptural sanction. There need be no mystery about the origins of government. Government was created by God. “As soon as there were some to be governed, there were also some to govern; and the first man, by virtue of that paternal claim on which all subsequent governments have been founded, was first invested with the power of government … The first father was the first king: and … it was thus that all government originated; and monarchy is its most ancient form.” From this origin it follows directly that resistance to constituted authority is a sin, and that mankind is “commanded to be subject to the higher powers.” True, “kings and princes … were doubtless created and appointed not so much for their own sakes as for the sake of the people committed to their charge: yet they are not, therefore, the creatures of the people. So far from deriving their authority from any supposed consent or suffrage of men, they receive their commission from Heaven; they receive it from God, the source and original of all power.” The judgment of Jesus Christ is evident: the most essential duty of subjects with respect to government is simply “(in the phraseology of a prophet) to be quiet, and to sit still.”
How simple but yet how demanding an injunction, for men are ever “prone to be presumptuous and self-willed, always disposed and ready to despise dominion, and to speak evil of dignities.” And how necessary to be obeyed in the present circumstance. Sedition has already penetrated deeply; it tears at the vitals of social order. It threatens far more than “the persons invested with the supreme power either legislative or executive”; “the resistance which your political counselors urge you to practice [is exerted] clearly and literally against authority … you are encouraged to resist not only all authority over us as it now exists, but any and all that it is possible to constitute.”81
This was the ultimate concern. What Boucher, Leonard, Chandler, and other articulate defenders of the status quo saw as the final threat was not so much the replacement of one set of rulers by another as the triumph of ideas and attitudes incompatible with the stability of any standing order, any establishment — incompatible with society itself, as it had been traditionally known. Their fears were in a sense justified, for in the context of eighteenth-century social thought it was difficult to see how any harmonious, stable social order could be constructed from such materials. To argue that all men were equal would not make them so; it would only help justify and perpetuate that spirit of defiance, that refusal to concede to authority whose ultimate resolution c
ould only be anarchy, demagoguery, and tyranny. If such ideas prevailed year after year, generation after generation, the “latent spark” in the breasts of even the most humble of men would be kindled again and again by entrepreneurs of discontent who would remind the people “of the elevated rank they hold in the universe, as men; that all men by nature are equal; that kings are but the ministers of the people; that their authority is delegated to them by the people for their good, and they have a right to resume it, and place it in other hands, or keep it themselves, whenever it is made use of to oppress them.”82 Seeds of sedition would thus constantly be sown, and harvests of licentiousness reaped.
How else could it end? What reasonable social and political order could conceivably be built and maintained where authority was questioned before it was obeyed, where social differences were considered to be incidental rather than essential to community order, and where superiority, suspect in principle, was not allowed to concentrate in the hands of a few but was scattered broadly through the populace? No one could clearly say. But some, caught up in a vision of the future in which the peculiarities of American life became the marks of a chosen people, found in the defiance of traditional order the firmest of all grounds for their hope for a freer life. The details of this new world were not as yet clearly depicted; but faith ran high that a better world than any that had ever been known could be built where authority was distrusted and held in constant scrutiny; where the status of men flowed from their achievements and from their personal qualities, not from distinctions ascribed to them at birth; and where the use of power over the lives of men was jealously guarded and severely restricted. It was only where there was this defiance, this refusal to truckle, this distrust of all authority, political or social, that institutions would express human aspirations, not crush them.
1. The Eclipse ([Boston], 1754), p. 7; Joseph Warren, An Oration … (Boston, 1772: JHL Pamphlet 35), p. 6; [John Allen], The American Alarm … for the Rights, and Liberties, of the People … (Boston, 1773: JHL Pamphlet 39), 1st sec., p. 9; A Serious Address to … New-York … (New York, 1774: JHL Pamphlet 42), p. 5; [John Dickinson], Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania … (Philadelphia, 1768: JHL Pamphlet 23), p. 38; Josiah Quincy, Jr., Observations on the … Boston Port-Bill; with Thoughts on … Standing Armies … (Boston, 1774), in Josiah Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy Jun.… (Boston, 1825), p. 451; John Adams (“Novanglus”), in Works, IV, 28. Curiously, Dickinson’s phrase in the original, newspaper version of the Farmer’s Letters was almost identical with Quincy’s: “We are therefore — I speak it with grief — I speak it with indignation — we are SLAVES.”
2. New York Evening Post, November 16, 1747; [Moses Mather], America’s Appeal to the Impartial World … (Hartford, 1775: JHL Pamphlet 59), p. 48.
3. New York Evening Post, November 16, 1747 (cf. Boston Gazette, May 10, 1756); [Richard Wells], A Few Political Reflections … (Philadelphia, 1774), p. 82; Mather, America’s Appeal (JHL 59), p. 48; [Stephen Hopkins], The Rights of Colonies Examined (Providence, 1765: JHL Pamphlet 9), p. 16.
4. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, iv, 23.
5. [John Camm], Critical Remarks on a Letter Ascribed to Common Sense … (Williamsburg, 1765), p. 19.
6. Some Fugitive Thoughts on a Letter Signed Freeman … ([Charleston], 1774), p. 25; [Thomas Jefferson], A Summary View of the Rights of British America … (Williamsburg, [1774]: JHL Pamphlet 43), pp. 16–17; J. Franklin Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (Princeton, 1926), pp. 32–33. On the successful opposition to the clause condemning the slave trade in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, see Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (New York, 1922), pp. 212–213; and Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1961), pp. 42–43.
7. Considerations upon the Act of Parliament (Boston, 1764: JHL Pamphlet 5), pp. 15–16; James Otis, Rights of the British Colonies (Boston, 1764: JHL Pamphlet 7), p. 29.
8. [Stephen Johnson], Some Important Observations … (Newport, 1766: JHL Pamphlet 19), pp. 5, 7, 8, 9, 52; Dickinson, Farmer’s Letters (JHL 23), p. 48; Lee’s “Monitor” letters, nos. II, IV, VI, Virginia Gazette (R), March 3, 17, 31, 1768. See also [Silas Downer], A Discourse Delivered in Providence … (Providence, 1768: JHL Pamphlet 25), pp. 10, 12; and the citation of Dr. Johnson’s definition of slavery in the Boston Evening Post, 1767, quoted in Gipson, British Empire, XI, 144.
9. Samuel Cooke, A Sermon Preached at Cambridge … (Boston, 1770), pp. 42, 41; Dagobert D. Runes, ed., The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush (New York, 1947), p. 17.
10. Wells, A Few Political Reflections, pp. 79–80, 81, 82, 83: [John Allen], The Watchman’s Alarm to Lord N---h … (Salem. 1774), pp. 25, 27, 28; Granville Sharp, A Declaration of the People’s Natural Right to Share in the Legislature … (New York, 1774), p. 14n; [John Mein], Sagittarius’s Letters and Political Speculations … (Boston, 1775), pp. 38–39; Jefferson, Summary View (JHL 43), pp. 16–17. Sharp’s pamphlet, originally published in London in 1774, was reprinted four times in the colonies before the year was out (Thomas R. Adams, American Independence … A Bibliographical Study …, Providence, 1965, entries 139e-h). On the original, English context of Sharp’s pamphlet, see Frank J. Klingberg, The Anti-Slavery Movement in England (New Haven, 1926), chap. ii.
11. Levi Hart, Liberty Described and Recommended … (Hartford, 1775), pp. v, 9 ff., 15, 16, 20, 22, 23.
12. Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, pp. 33–35; [Samuel Hopkins], A Dialogue … (Norwich, 1776), pp. 12, 15, 23, 24, 50, 30, 52, 54.
13. Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, pp. 40–41; Thomas E. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (New Haven, 1950), pp. 85–90; W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade … (New York, 1896), pp. 42–47.
14. [Thomas Hutchinson], Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia … (London, 1776), as reprinted in Old South Leaflets, no. 227 (Malcolm Freiberg, ed., Boston, 1958), p. 11; Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, p. 43. On the carry-over of the antislavery arguments of the Revolutionary period to the debates of the ante-bellum era, see Philip F. Detweiler, “Congressional Debate on Slavery and the Declaration of Independence, 1819–1821,” American Historical Review, 63 (1957–58), 598–616.
15. Jonathan Parsons’ Massacre Day sermon, 1774 (Newburyport, [1774]).
16. Diary and Autobiography, III, 312. That the Congregational establishments in New England were severe was a commonplace, however, especially among the Anglican opponents of the Revolutionary movement. See, e.g., [James Chalmers], Plain Truth … (Philadelphia, 1776: JHL Pamphlet 64), p. 64: “… it were folly supreme, madness, to expect angelic toleration from New England, where she has constantly been detested, persecuted, and execrated”; in matters of toleration the people of New England were “not yet arrived in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.”
17. Wesley M. Gewehr, The Great Awakening in Virginia, 1740–1790 (Durham, N.C., 1930), pp. 49 ff.; George M. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church … (Richmond and Philadelphia, 1947–1952), II, 159 ff.; Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (Durham, N.C., 1928), pp. 65, 76, 77, 79. For a descriptive account of the Separates, see C. C. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740–1800 (New Haven, 1962).
18. William Livingston, et al., The Independent Reflector … (Milton M. Klein, ed., Cambridge, 1963), papers 17–22.
19. They were ultimately convinced by “an old Scot” who offered them hospitality one night that they were really Presbyterians. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II, 157.
20. William S. Perry, ed., Historical Collections of the American Colonial Church: Volume I, Virginia ([Hartford], 1870), p. 461; Richard Bland, A Letter to the Clergy of Virginia … (Williamsburg, 1760), pp. 4, 19, 18; John Camm, A Single and Distinct View … (Annapolis, 1763), p. 24; Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, 1960), II, 811; William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry (New York, 1891), I, 41.
21. On the Mayhew-Apthorp controversy, see above, pp. 96–97, and Bailyn, Pamphlets, I, Introduction to Pamphlet 3; and on Mayhew’s earlier career, see Introduction to Pamphlet 1.
22. Wendell D. Garrett, Apthorp House, 1760–1960 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 12, 13; [East Apthorp], Considerations on the Institution and Conduct of the Society … (Boston, 1763), pp. 7, 10–11, 17, 14, 23.
23. Significantly, “the etymology of the word orthodox” played an important role in the arguments of the Baptists ten years later, disputing not a threatened Anglican establishment but the actual Congregational establishment in Massachusetts of which Mayhew, formally at least, had been a member. Allen, American Alarm (JHL 39), 4th sec., p. 11.
24. Mayhew, Observations … (Boston, 1763), pp. 20–21, 26, 155–156; Richard J. Hooker, “The Mayhew Controversy,” Church History, 5 (1936), 254; Adams, Works, X, 288.
25. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II, 249 ff., 367 ff.; Gewehr, Great Awakening, chap. v, pp. 146–147; Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 6 (1898–1899), 132, 131.
26. Brydon, Virginia’s Mother Church, II, 378–380, 381, 555, 556, 557.
27. Thus, for example, the militia and freeholders of Augusta County instructed their representatives not to forget, in their efforts to establish American rights and privileges, “the illiberal treatment which a difference in religious sentiments … has produced,” and ordered them to work for a declaration “that no religious sect whatever be established in this commonwealth.” In a reply to this, published in Purdy’s Gazette, a writer who proposed to speak for the established church had to admit that “it seems somewhat hard and repugnant to liberty to oblige men to pay towards the support of a church to which they do not belong”; his support for the establishment was defensive, based only on the ground that if such an institution was for the general good those who opposed it must concede to it “in consideration of the many advantages they may be supposed to derive from the state.” “The Sentiments of the Several Companies of Militia and Freeholders of Augusta, in Virginia…,” Peter Force, ed., American Archives … (Washington, D.C., 1837–1853), 5th ser., II, cols. 815, 816.
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Page 38
