Colonial America

by Richard Middleton, Anne Lombard

  Any system of government is bound to produce political discord; such conflict is part of the human condition. Perhaps more noteworthy than the occasional lack of harmony was the essential stability of colonial institutions between 1714 and 1760. Compared with the seventeenth century the period after 1715 saw few, if any, serious disturbances. No governors had to flee for their lives, nor were royal troops called upon to put down any insurrection. One reason for this relative calm was the greater stability of Britain itself. Another was the new maturity of the colonies. They were no longer isolated frontier settlements, ready to seize arms at the first alarm, and the change was reflected in their politics, which were now conducted within a clear constitutional framework. It was this very maturity that was to be so important after 1760.

  5 Toward a Republican Ideology

  To what extent did the British North American colonists' political factiousness foreshadow the development of a republican, as opposed to a monarchical, theory of government?

  Many historians have argued that an embryonic republican ideology began to develop after 1689, making possible the rapid appearance of an alternative political creed after 1763 when Britain and the colonies came into open conflict.

  The sources of this ideology have been variously identified. One was the tradition of Protestant dissent. New Englanders in particular held strong critical views of the Anglican Church and, by implication, the English state. Their views were shared by other dissenting groups like the Presbyterians. None was overtly antimonarchical; their quarrel was with the unreformed church. There was much in their theology, however, which was incompatible with the kind of hierarchical authority that kings had sought to claim during the seventeenth century. James I had asserted in 1603 that no bishops would mean no king. Subsequent events proved him right when Charles I was executed and a commonwealth form of government imposed.

  The tradition of religious dissent was subsequently subsumed into the Whig party after the restoration of Charles II. Many Whigs, like the earl of Shaftesbury, Algernon Sydney, and John Locke had served during the Cromwellian era. It was their distrust of monarchical power, allied to a hatred of Catholicism, which led to the Exclusion crisis of 1681 when an attempt was made to deprive James II of his right to the throne. The Whigs also played a key role in 1689 during the Glorious Revolution.

  After 1689 most English Whigs became supporters of the Crown, since the monarchy was now constrained by Parliament, where the Whigs had a majority following the revolutionary settlement. But a small band continued to remember their more radical traditions. Among them were the publicists Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard. After 1714 they and other “real” Whigs became increasingly alarmed at the apparent corruption of successive ministries under Sir Robert Walpole, fearing that his use of patronage to control the House of Commons would lead to the reimposition of tyranny. They expressed their opposition in various English publications, notably the Independent Whig and Cato's Letters. These eighteenth-century “commonwealth”-style papers were sometimes read in British North America, where they reminded their transatlantic readers of the need for vigilance if virtuous government and a free people were to survive. The New York lawyer Andrew Hamilton, exhorting a jury to acquit John Peter Zenger in his 1735 trial for seditious libel, exemplified the “commonwealth” tradition with his argument that citizens had a duty to protect liberty: “like wise men who value freedom [we must] use our utmost care to support liberty, the only bulwark against lawless power, which in all ages has sacrificed to its wild lust and boundless ambition the blood of the best men that ever lived.” The Boston minister, Jonathan Mayhew, explained that the protection of liberty could even justify revolution. In a 1750 sermon entitled Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, he told his congregation on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I: “For a nation thus abused to arise unanimously and to resist their prince even to the dethroning him, is not criminal, but a reasonable way of vindicating their liberties and just rights.” Or as Andrew Eliot wrote more succinctly in 1765, “when tyranny is abroad, submission is a crime.”

  Writings on natural law by Enlightenment philosophers like Pufendorf, Vattel, Grotius, Montesquieu, and Voltaire formed a third strand in the embryonic republican ideology. These philosophers provided a rationale for government based on reason, justice, and the laws of nature. The most influential member of this school was John Locke. Locke's intention on publishing his Two Treatises of Government in 1691 was to justify the Glorious Revolution. In practice, his arguments found little support even among English Whigs, for Locke stated that all authority must emanate from the people, to whom both monarch and Parliament were accountable. Government was a trust, and if rulers abused their authority the people could remove them, since their consent alone could confer legitimacy. This radical view offered a basis for government quite different from the existing European notions of divine right, prescriptive inheritance, or even parliamentary omnipotence. Significantly, it was this rationale which colonial British North Americans adopted when denying British authority in 1776.

  A fourth strand in this incipient republicanism was provided by the classical historians of Greece and Rome, often interpreted and elucidated by Renaissance authors. These demonstrated how a society could conduct itself in an enlightened, constitutional, and virtuous fashion. Classical republicanism appealed to all those looking for a system of government not based on religion in which the good of the commonwealth came before the interests of the individual. But there were dangers too in such precedents, as history showed. The writings of Plutarch, Livy, Cicero, and Tacitus were full of dire warnings about the fate of the Roman republic, where a decline in virtue had allowed vicious tyrants like Nero and Caligula to take control. How happy in contrast were the Germans, Tacitus asserted, because they had retained their simple ways. These perils were seemingly confirmed by the experience of some eighteenth-century colonials. When John Dickinson studied law in London he was appalled at the apparent corruption of British politics. As he told his father, “It is grown a vice here to be virtuous.” He could only reflect that “unbounded licentiousness … is the unfailing cause of the destruction of all empires.” The colonists should take note.

  Lastly, educated British North Americans were familiar with the writings of Aristotle, the great political scientist of the ancient world. His analysis of the three legitimate forms of government – monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy – taught colonials that, theoretically at least, constitutional monarchy was not the only legitimate system.

  Of course such knowledge was limited to the few before 1760. Conventional wisdom suggested that the British constitution was the best, since it uniquely combined all three types of government defined by Aristotle. Natural rights were merely an interesting concept, not something the colonials needed to seek, since they already had their rights as Englishmen. When colonial legislators came into conflict with imperial authority they resorted to English legal precedents like Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, Habeas Corpus, and the Bill of Rights.

  It was true that ordinary colonists often expressed their loyalty towards the king, professing their belief that the British king was the most benevolent monarch in the world and their gratitude that they were the subjects of a Protestant monarch. Still, the strength of that loyalty had not really been tested since the accession of William and Mary. What would happen if Parliament attempted to impose policies on colonial governments that they genuinely opposed, and if the king failed to protect their rights as the colonists expected him to? In the absence of institutional structures to prop up monarchical authority, without an aristocracy, a court, or a single established church, would that affection and reverence for the monarchy survive? Time would tell.15

  1. See Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York, 1970); and Edward M. Cook, Jr., The Fathers of the Towns: Leadership and Community Structure in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore, 1976). For Glou
cester, see Christine Leigh Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690–1750 (New York, 1984). The argument that consensus was breaking down is disputed by Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1970).

  2. For a discussion of the provincial franchise, see Robert J. Dinkin, Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689–1776 (Westport, 1977). The view that land was cheap, wages high, and voting qualifications easily obtainable is argued by Robert E. Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691–1780 (Ithaca, 1955). For a more recent analysis of electoral practices in Virginia, see John Gilman Kolp, Gentlemen and Freeholders: Electoral Politics in Colonial Virginia (Baltimore, 1998). He shows that there were wide variations in voter participation depending on the issues and local circumstances. In some counties only 25 percent of males voted; in others the figure was as high as 75 percent. See also Chapter 11, section 4.

  3. Inevitably there were a few exceptions. In some places in Massachusetts, widows with property were occasionally allowed to vote, as were Indians, in, for example, Stockbridge in western Massachusetts. For more information on the latter, see Brown, Middle-Class Democracy, 40–4, 89. Some free African Americans may also have voted in the South until the second decade of the eighteenth century, when both North and South Carolina passed laws to make the franchise exclusively white, as did Virginia in 1723. For more information, see Dinkin, Voting in Provincial America, 33. Five colonies also specifically excluded Catholics from the franchise: Virginia, New York, Maryland, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. Another four excluded Jews. See Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage: From Property to Democracy, 1760–1860 (Princeton, 1960), 15–16.

  4. The concept of deference in the colonial context has been widely employed by various historians including J. R. Pole, “Historians and the Problem of Early American Democracy,” American Historical Review, 67 (1962), 626–46; Jack P. Greene, “Society, Ideology, and Politics: An Analysis of the Political Culture of Mid-Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” in Richard Jellison, ed., Society, Freedom, and Conscience: The American Revolution in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York (New York, 1976); J. G. A. Pocock, “The Classical Theory of Deference,” American Historical Review, 81 (1976), 516–23; Richard L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, 1985). The concept of deference has been challenged by historians from the Progressive school, who argue that ordinary colonial people acted in ways that promoted their self-interests. For a recent critique, see Michael Zuckerman, “Toqueville, Turner, and Turds: Four Stories of Manners in Early America,” Journal of American History, 85 (1998), 13–42.

  5. See Chapter 10, section 5, for details about the Land Bank.

  6. This aspect of Cornbury's character has been challenged by Patricia U. Bonomi, “Lord Cornbury Redressed: The Governor and Problem Portrait,” William and Mary Quarterly, 51 (1994), 106–18. See also Patricia U. Bonomi, The Lord Cornbury Scandal (Chapel Hill, 1998), in which she argues that the charges against Cornbury were largely inventions by his political opponents.

  7. See especially Leonard W. Labaree, Royal Government in America: A Study of the British Colonial System Before 1783 (New Haven, 1930); and Jack P. Greene, The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill, 1963). The thesis is restated in Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Politics of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1788 (Athens, Ga., 1986).

  8. For a fuller analysis of Shirley, see John A. Shutz, William Shirley: King's Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, 1961). The view that the period was one of drift is argued by James A. Henretta, “Salutary Neglect”: Colonial Administration under the Duke of Newcastle (Princeton, 1972); and Stanley N. Katz, Newcastle's New York: Anglo-American Politics, 1732–1753 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). Both Henretta and Katz were influenced by the British historian Sir Lewis Namier, who argued that patronage was the sole consideration in mid-eighteenth-century British politics. More favorable to Newcastle is Philip S. Haffenden, “Colonial Appointments and Patronage under the Duke of Newcastle, 1724–1739,” English Historical Review, 78 (1963), 417–35; and Richard Middleton, “The Duke of Newcastle and the Conduct of Patronage during the Seven Years' War, 1757–1762,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 12 (1989), 175–86. Behind the distribution of offices Newcastle had a serious political objective: the maintenance of the 1689 Revolution settlement.

  9. For a discussion of Byrd's wounded pride and the alienation of other members of the Virginia gentry, see Kenneth A. Lockridge, “Colonial Self-Fashioning: Paradoxes and Pathologies in the Construction of Genteel Identity in Eighteenth-Century America,” in Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika Teute, eds, Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America (Chapel Hill, 1997), 274–339.

  10. Brendan McConville, The King's Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776 (Chapel Hill, 2006).

  11. See Robert Zemsky, Merchants, Farmers, and River Gods: An Essay on Eighteenth-Century American Politics (Boston, 1971). A similar interpretation is followed by Stephen E. Patterson, Political Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts (Madison, 1973); and Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts.

  12. For a revisionist view, see Thomas Purvis, Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, 1703–1776 (New Brunswick, 1986). See also Benjamin H. Newcomb, Political Partisanship in the American Middle Colonies, 1700–1776 (Baton Rouge, 1995); and Brendan McConville, Those Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Ithaca, 1999). Newcomb plays down the importance of the subsequent land title disputes.

  13. See Chapter 7, section 3 for a discussion of the original grants in New Jersey.

  14. Marc Egnal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca, 1988), suggests that the lines of political action were divided between optimists, who wanted to expand as quickly as possible, and pessimists, who were inclined to conserve what had already been won.

  15. Richard L. Bushman, in King and People in Provincial Massachusetts, argues that despite its monarchical character, colonial society had already begun drifting subconsciously in a republican direction during the eighteenth century. Brendan McConville (The King's Three Faces, ch. 10) argues that a monarchical political culture lasted until the middle of the revolutionary crisis, and that the colonists finally lost their confidence in the monarchy around 1773. Most scholars have argued that the roots of a republican political culture were present before the American Revolution. For other important writings on the topic see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969); Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); and Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, 1988).

  Chapter 19

  Britain, France, and Spain

  The Imperial Contest, 1739–1763

  1713 The Treaty of Utrecht ends the War of the Spanish Succession.

  1720 The French establish a fort at Niagara.

  1727 The British build a fort at Oswego.

  1739 The War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain breaks out.

  1741 The British navy is defeated in the Battle of Cartagena.

  1745 The New Englanders capture Louisburg.

  1747 The Ohio Company is founded.

  1748 The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession. The Treaty of Logstown o
pens the trail to Pickawillany in the West.

  1753 Mohawk leaders declare the Covenant Chain to be broken.

  1754 The French establish Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) at the forks of the Ohio. A plan of union is unveiled at the Albany Congress.

  1755 The French defeat General Braddock with the help of western Indians. The British deport French settlers from Acadia.

  1756 The French take Oswego; western Indians join the French war effort in large numbers.

  1757 The French take Fort William Henry.

  1758 The British take Louisburg, Fort Frontenac, and Fort Duquesne; Delawares agree to peace with British at the Treaty of Easton.

  1759 General Wolfe takes Québec.

  1760 General Amherst takes Montréal and receives the surrender of New France.

  1762 Spain enters the war.

  1763 Pontiac's Rebellion begins in the West. The Peace of Paris ends the French and Indian War. Canada and the Ohio Country are ceded to the British. Louisiana becomes a colony of Spain. Spanish citizens leave Florida. The British issue the Proclamation of 1763 limiting western settlement.