139. Ira Allen, Natural and Political History of the State of Vermont (London: J.W. Myers, 1798), 60.
140. Gage to Dartmouth, May 25, 1775, Correspondence of General Gage, vol. 1, at 401.
141. Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), August 5, 1775, at 2, col. 1.
142. Pennsylvania Reporter, May 8, 1775, at 4, col. 1.
143. Virginia Gazette, April 22, 1775, at 2, col. 3, and at 3, col. 1. Also in Pennsylvania Reporter, May 8, 1775, at 4, col. 1.
144. R. D. Meade, Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1969), 50–51.
145. Ibid., 53.
146. John Carter Matthews, Richard Henry Lee (Williamsburg: Virginia Independence Bicentennial Commission, 1978), 30.
147. Virginia Gazette, May 6, 1775, at 3, col. 1.
148. R. D. W. Conner, History of North Carolina: The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods, 1584–1783 (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1919), vol. 1, at 360.
149. Ibid., vol. 1, at 362.
150. North Carolina Gazette (Newbern), July 7, 1775, at 2, col. 3.
151. Ibid., at 3, col. 1.
152. Colonial Records of North Carolina, William L. Saunders ed. (Raleigh: Josephus Daniels, 1890), vol. 10, at 144–45.
153. Ibid., vol. 10, at 150.
154. Ibid., vol. 10, at 162.
155. Ibid., vol. 10, at 314.
156. Ibid., vol. 10, at 446.
157. Ibid., vol. 10, at 447.
158. North Carolina Gazette, July 14, 1775, at 1, col. 1.
159. Force ed., American Archives, 4th series, vol. 3, at 621.
160. Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride, 284.
161. New York Journal, November 2, 1775, at 3, col. 3.
162. To Esek Hopkins, Cambridge (no signature), October 21, 1775, in “Revolutionary Correspondence from 1775 to 1782,” Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence: Hammond, Angell, 1867), vol. 6, at 132.
CHAPTER 5
1. See generally Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997); Morton White, The Philosophy of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); John Phillip Reid, Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The Authority of Rights (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986).
2. “The Declaration of Independence was emphatically not a bill of rights in the American sense, that is, a statement of fundamental rights that government must honor and protect . . . .” Maier, American Scripture, 164. This was in contrast to the Bill of Rights to the Constitution introduced by James Madison in 1789, “protecting several basic civil rights—including freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, the rights of assembly and of petition, and the right to bear arms . . . .” Ibid., 195.
3. Thomas Jefferson, The Living Thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey ed. (New York: Longmans, 1963), 42. For a detailed analysis of these and similar sources, see Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984; reprinted, Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute, 1994, 2000), ch. 1. See also Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1967).
4. Aristotle, The Politics, T. A. Sinclair trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1962), 79.
5. Cicero, Selected Political Speeches, Michael Granttrans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), 222.
6. John Locke, Of Civil Government: Second Treatise (Chicago: Henry Regnery/Gateway, 1955), 114–15.
7. Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (printed by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1698), 157.
8. Maier, American Scripture, 157–58.
9. Henry Onderdonk, Jr., Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties; With an Account of the Battle of Long Island, and the British Prisons and Prison-ships at New York (New York: Leavitt & Co., 1849), 59.
10. The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, Philip S. Foner ed. (New York: Citadel Press, 1969), vol. 1, at 49.
11. Ibid., 50.
12. Ibid., 54.
13. Ibid., 55–56.
14. Ibid., 56.
15. The American Crisis II, January 13, 1777, in Foner ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 1, 65.
16. Foner ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 1, 69.
17. The American Crisis III, April 19, 1777, in Foner ed., The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 1, 85.
18. Journals of the Provincial Congress, Provincial Convention, Committee of Safity and Council of Safety of the State of New-York: 1775–1776–1777 (Albany: Thurlow Weed, 1842), vol. 1, at 149–50.
19. E.g., New York Journal, September 7, 1775, at 3, col. 4; ibid., September 14, 1775, at 4, col. 2; and every issue thereafter.
20. New York Journal, October 26, 1775, at 2, col. 4.
21. Journals of the Provincial Congress, vol. 1, at 156.
22. Journals of the Provincial Congress, vol. 2, at 85.
23. Agnes Hunt, The Provincial Committees of Safety of the American Revolution (Cleveland: Western Reserve University, 1904; reprinted, New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968), 65–66.
24. Journals of the Provincial Congress, vol. 1, at 184.
25. Calendar of Historical Manuscripts, Relating to the War of the Revolution, in the Office of the Secretary of State, Albany, N.Y. (Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, Primers, 1868), vol. 1, at 201.
26. New York Journal, December 28, 1775, at 3, cols. 3–4.
27. The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick ed. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Priming Office, 1932–1940), vol. 9, at 274–75.
28. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1779, Worthington C. Ford ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Priming Office, 1906), vol. 4, at 25 (January 3, 1776).
29. Ibid., 1631.
30. Calendar of Historical Manuscripts, vol. 1, at 218.
31. Ibid., vol. 1, at 259–60.
32. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Worthington C. Ford ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906), vol. 4, at 204.
33. Ibid., vol. 4, at 205.
34. Hunt, The Provincial Committees of Safety of the American Revolution, 65–66.
35. Calendar of Historical Manuscripts, vol. 1, at 281–82.
36. Laws of the Legislature of the State of New York, in Force Against the Loyalists, and Affecting the Trade of Great Britain, and British Merchants, and Others Having Property in That State (London: H. Reynell, 1786), 110–11.
37. For summaries of test laws, laws against free speech, and other anti-loyalist enactments by the state legislatures, see appendices B and C of Claude Halstead van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: Bert Franklin, 1970), 318–41. See also James W. Thompson, AntiLoyalist Legislation During the American Revolution, 3 Ill. L. Rev. 81 (1908); James Truslow Adams, New England in the Republic 1776–1850 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1926), 63.
38. E.g., see Lester J. Cappon and Stella F. Duff, Virginia Gazette Index, 1736–1780 (Williamsburg: The Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1950), vol. 2, which contains scores of references to such items as: “Arms, export from Great Britain prohibited . . . seized by Americans . . . seized by British . . . seizure ordered in American colonies. . . .” Ibid., vol. 2, at 30–31. “Pistols, captured by Americans . . . export . . . to British colonies, N.Am., forbidden . . . for sale. . . .” “Pistols, pocket, for sale. . . .” Ibid., vol. 2, at 884.
39. Gage to Dartmouth, September 20, 1775, in The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, and with the War Office and the Treasury, 1763–1775, Clarence E. Carter ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1931–33), vol. 1, at 415.
40. Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), September 14, 1776, at 1, cols. 1–2.
41. Ibid., October 23, 1778, at 2, col. 1.
42. E.g., ibid., May 1, 1778, at 3, col. 1 (“a genteel pair of pocket pistols”); July 10, 1778, at 3, col. 3 (“three pair of four
pound guns and carriages, and every other implement complete, 150 pair of pistols” for sale); February 12, 1780, at 3, col. 2 (“Blunderbusses, pistols with swivels, muskets, cutlasses”).
43. Sources of American Independence, Howard H. Peckman ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), vol. 1, at 176.
44. John W. Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1976); William F. Marina, “Revolution and Social Change: The American Revolution as a People’s War,” Literature of Liberty (April–June 1978), vol. 1, at 5, 21–27.
45. Don Higginbotham, “The American Militia: A Traditional Institution with Revolutionary Responsibilities,” in Don Higginbotham ed., Reconsiderations on the Revolutionary War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), 103.
46. See Lawrence Delbert Cress, Citizens in Arms: The Army and Militia in American Society to the War of 1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Don Higginbotham, “The Federalized Militia Debate: A Neglected Aspect of Second Amendment Scholarship,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 55, no. 1. (Jan. 1998), 39.
47. Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States (New York: University Publishing Co., 1869), 90.
48. Ibid., 110. Cf. 167.
49. Ibid., 187.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., 260.
52. Ibid., 85.
53. Jefferson to Giovanni Fabbroni, June 8, 1778, Thomas Jefferson, Writings (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1984), 760.
54. Articles of Confederation, Art. II.
55. Ibid., Art. IV.
56. Ibid., Art. V.
57. Ibid., Art. VI.
58. Ibid., Art. VII.
59. Ibid., Art. IX.
60. Ibid.
61. Journals of the Continental Congress (October 23, 1783), 741–42.
62. Ibid.
CHAPTER 6
1. See Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 271–73.
2. Extracts from the Journals of the Provincial Congress (Charles-Town: Peter Timothy, 1776), 26–27. The committee included Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, Henry Laurens, Christopher Gadsden, Rawlins Lowndes, Arthur Middleton, Henry Middleton, Thomas Bee, Thomas Lynch, Jr., and Thomas Heyward, Jr.
3. Ibid., 82.
4. Ibid., 137–38.
5. Jonathan Elliot ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1836), vol. 4, at 316.
6. John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution . . . As Relating to South Carolina (Charleston: A. E. Miller, 1821), vol. 1, at 378.
7. Ibid., vol. 2, at 255.
8. Ibid., vol. 2, at 266.
9. Ibid., vol. 2, at 267.
10. The Public Laws of the State of South Carolina, from Its First Establishment as a British Province to the Year 1790, Inclusive (Philadelphia: R. Aitken & Son, 1790), App. 13.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. Russell F. Weigley, The Partisan War: The South Carolina Campaign of 1780–1782 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970).
13. Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution, vol. 1, at 12.
14. Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), December 1, 1774, at 2, col. 3.
15. North Carolina Gazette (New Bern), July 14, 1775, at 1, col. 1.
16. Extracts from the Journals of the Provincial Congress, 121.
17. Ibid., 54.
18. The Public Laws of the State of South Carolina, 174.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 168. Similarly, “their using and carrying wooden swords and other mischievous and dangerous weapons” out of the plantation was prohibited, and “if he or they be armed with such offensive weapons aforesaid, him or them [white persons] to disarm, rake up and whip.” Ibid., 172.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 205.
23. Ibid., 207.
24. George Mason, The Papers of George Mason, Robert A. Rutland ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970), vol. 1, at 210–11. On Virginia’s independent voluntary companies, see E. M. Sanchez-Saavedra, A Guide to Virginia Military Organizations in the American Revolution (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1978), 7 ff.
25. Ibid., 215–16.
26. Ibid., 229–30.
27. Ibid., 229–30.
28. Proceedings of the Convention of Delegates (Williamsburg, Va.: Alexander Purdue, 1776), 100–2.
29. Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), October 18, November 1, and November 8, 1776, at 1.
30. Ibid., February 16, 1776, Supp. at 2.
31. Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Julian P. Boyd ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), vol. 1, at 344–45.
32. Ibid., vol. 1, at 353.
33. Ibid., vol. 1, at 347.
34. Ibid., vol. 2, at 443–44.
35. Ibid., vol. 1, at 362–63.
36. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, vol. 1 of Jefferson and His Time {Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1948), 46–47.
37. Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1865), vol. 1, at 14–15.
38. Jefferson’s Memorandum Books, James A. Bear, Jr., & Lucia C. Stanton eds. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 81.
39. See “Firearms” in Index and referenced text in Jefferson’s Memorandum Books, 1550. See also Ashley Halsey, Jr., “Jefferson’s Beloved Guns,” American Rifleman (November 1969), 17.
40. Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, at 377.
41. The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson: A Repertory of His Ideas on Government, Gilbert Chinard ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1926), vol. 4. This is a condensed version.
42. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Thomas Nugent, trans. (New York: Colonial Press, 1899), vol. 1, at 36; ibid., vol. 2, at 64. In No. 797 of The Commonplace Book (Jefferson Papers), Jefferson copied portions of a page where Montesquieu opposed “severe punishments” for “trifling” matters. Jefferson read, but did not copy, the following: “Hence it follows, that the laws of an Italian republic [Venice], where bearing fire-arms is punished as a capital crime and where it is nor more fatal to make an ill use of them than to carry them, is not agreeable to the nature of things.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, vol. 2, at 79–80.
43. Compare translation from Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, vol. 1, at 57–58, with The Commonplace Book, Chinard ed., 261. Chinard compares this quotation with the anti-standing army provisions in Jefferson’s proposed Virginia Constitution, in ibid., and with the militia clause of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, in Thomas Jefferson, Pensées Choisies de Montesquieu tirees du Commonplace Book de Thomas Jefferson, Gilbert Chinard ed. (Paris: Societe de Edition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1925), 34.
44. Commonplace Book, Chinard ed., 314; Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, Henry Paolucci trans. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1963), 87–88.
45. William Eden, Principles of Penal Law (Dublin: John Milliken, 1772), 301.
46. Ibid., 210–11.
47. Ibid., 213–14.
48. Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 2, at 350.
49. Ibid., 251. See William W. Hening, Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (Philadelphia: Thomas Desilver, 1823), vol. 9, at 267–69.
50. Act of 1757, Hening, Statutes at Large, vol. 7, at 95.
51. New Jersey Constitution, Art. XVIII (1776).
52. Ibid., Art. XXII.
53. Charles R. Erdman, Jr., The New Jersey Constitution of 1776 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1929), 32.
54. Ibid., 33.
55. Ibid., 36.
56. Ibid., 37.
57. William Blackstone, Commentaries, St.
George Tucker ed. (Philadelphia: William Young Birch and Abraham Small, 1803), vol. 1, at 140–44.
58. Ibid.
59. William Griffith, Eumenes: Being a Collection of Papers Written for the Purpose of Exhibiting Some of the More Prominent Errors and Omissions of the Constitution of New Jersey (Trenton: G. Craft, 1799), vol. 9.
60. Journal of the Votes and Proceedings of the Convention of New Jersey, June 10–August 21, 1776 passim (Burlington: Isaac Collins, 1776). On the Constitution, see ibid., 49–51.
61. New-York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury (Newark, N.J.), October 5, 1776, at 2, col. 2.
62. Ibid., October 26, 1776, at 1, col. 2.
63. Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Merrill Jensen ed. (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1978), vol. 3, at 120.
64. Peter Force ed., American Archives (Washington D.C.: M. Sr. Clair Clark, 1837–1853), 5th series, vol. 1, at 1211–1212; vol. 2, at 505.
65. New-York Gazette, November 2, 1776, at 3, cols. 1–2.
66. Writings of George Washington, vol. 10, at 90.
67. Acts of the Council and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey (Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1784), 235.
68. Ibid., 168.
69. Ibid., 169.
70. Ibid., 180.
71. Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights, Art. XIII (1776).
72. J. Paul Selsam, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776: A Study in Revolutionary Democracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936), 175–76. See generally Steven Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and “Lower Sort” During the American Revolution, 1775–1783 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 94–105.
73. Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), June 12, 1776, at 2.
74. Selsam, Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, 148.
75. The Proceedings Relative to Calling the Conventions of 1776 and 1790 (Harrisburg, Pa.: John S. Wiesding, 1825), 48 [hereafter cited Proceedings].
76. Ibid., 49.
77. Richard Alan Ryerson, The Revolution Is Now Begun: The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765–1776 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 117–18, 240.
78. Ibid., 113–15, 167, 241.
79. Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of His Own Time: With Reminiscences of the Men and Events of the Revolution, John Stockton Littell ed. (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1846), 286–87.
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