PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
by Dr. Charles Greenawalt, II,
Senior Fellow, Susquehanna Valley Center for Public Policy
Today we celebrate the birthday of America-July 4th, a truly All-American holiday. It is America's 232nd birthday. On July 4, 1776, a courageous group of 54 men banded together to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in order win American independence from the British Crown. The declaration that they signed and issued to the world declared that the 13 British colonies were now free and independent states.
The goal of the American Revolution was liberty. It would not be the first revolution with that goal, and it may not be the last. The esteemed political scientist, James Q. Wilson, believes that it may be the clearest case in recorded history of a people violently altering their political order in order to protect their liberties. Subsequent revolutions have had more complicated, or much different, objectives. The French Revolution in 1789 sought not only liberty, but also "equality and fraternity." The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Chinese Revolution of 1948 chiefly sought equality.
The American Revolution was truly a conservative moment. It was a conservative movement since the restive colonists sought to preserve and protect the traditional liberties and freedoms enjoyed by all British subjects. These liberties included the right to bring their legal cases before truly independent judges rather than ones subordinate to the King; to be free of the burden of having British soldiers quartered in their houses; to engage in trade without burdensome restrictions; and to pay no taxes voted for by a British Parliament in which they had no direct representation. During the decade leading up to the Revolutionary War (or as the British coin it, the War of American Independence), the majority of colonists believed that their liberties could be protected most effectively by remaining part of the British Empire.
As the famous British historian, Paul Johnson, tells us, about one-third of the colonists would eventually favor revolution, while one-third remained loyal to the Crown, and one-third had no opinion. (That percentage mix cannot help but strike one in a fundamental way for that is still the approximate break-down of partisan opinion in America. One-third of the public declaring themselves as Independents while one-third declares themselves to be Republicans and one-third declares themselves to be Democrats.)
Notably, there was one reason above all others that many colonists believed that revolution and independence was the only solution to maintain their liberties-they no longer had faith in the British Constitution. The British Constitution is an unwritten one, not a single written document. It consists of laws, charters, and traditional understandings that all proclaim the liberties of British subjects. Yet these liberties, in the eyes of many of the colonists, were regularly violated despite their Constitutional protection. Clearly, the British Constitution was an inadequate check on the abuses of political power. When the colonial leaders sought an explanation for the insufficiency of the constitution, they ultimately found it in human nature.
The colonists fought to protect liberties that they believed were widely understood. These liberties were based not on the generosity of a king or on the language contained in various statutes, but on a "higher law" embodying "natural rights" that were conferred upon mankind by God. The colonists believed that these natural rights were discoverable in history and nature and were essential to human progress. John Dickinson wrote that these rights, "are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken away from us by any human power." There was general agreement that these rights consisted of life, liberty, and property long before Thomas Jefferson's pen changed property to the "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence. Despite the emphasis on the importance of underlining property rights, Americans clearly saw this conflict in terms of political, not economic issues. The Revolutionary War was a war of ideology.
After Jefferson sets out the case for independence in the second paragraph of the Declaration, he spends the next 27 paragraphs detailing on an item-by-item basis America's complaints with King George III and his ministers. In essence, the Declaration is a lawyer's brief prefaced with a stirring philosophical claim that the rights being violated were "unalienable"-based on nature and on Providence, not on the whims and preferences of men.
John Adams believed that the real Revolution was not conducted on the battlefield, but in the minds of men. So he stressed the importance of the "radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people." There was now a new vision of what could make political authority legitimate and personal liberties secure. Government by Royal prerogative was rejected; instead, legitimate government now required consent of the governed. Political power could not be exercised on the basis of tradition but only as a result of a direct grant of power contained in a written constitution.
Written constitutions, elected representatives, and bills of rights were an unprecedented combination of elements upon which to base a government. No government had ever been organized on the basis of these principles. But in 1776, eight states adopted written constitutions. Within a few years, every former colony except Connecticut and Rhode Island had adopted one. Most of the states had detailed bills of rights defining personal liberties and most placed the most power in the hands of elected representatives.
While I will not enumerate the names of all the men who signed the Declaration in this essay, it is worthwhile to remember the nine Pennsylvania men who pledged their future on this document. These men included the following: George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, John Morton, George Ross, Benjamin Rush, James Smith, George Taylor, and James Wilson.
In Lincoln's words, this was a document that created a new nation that was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Indeed, the Declaration and the Constitution are really one inseparable document and always appeared to be treated as such until the 1930s by the Supreme Court. When our liberties are again threatened by those who would impose upon us an authoritarian, quasi-Marxist, Godless regime as our courts usurp our rights and ignore majority sentiment, it is useful to re-read the Declaration and rededicate ourselves to regaining and retaining what the Founding Fathers gave us 232 years ago.
