Yesterday, I was chatting with a friend of mine about the Founding principles of the United States of America.
He wanted to know whether he should refer to thes principles as "The Principles of the Founding" or "The Principles of the American Revolution."
I said "Principlesof the Founding", because that speaks to not just the initiation of a great project, but a project which has continued to the present day. I objected to the phrase "Principles of the American Revolution" because those statements speak of a war.
John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers, the Second President of the United States, and an under-rated American icon, differed.
He wrote extensively about the American Revolution as far more than a military conflict. It was not a "common event", as war is a common event, even though some people want to sensationalize armed military conflict.
The American Revolution was not a common event. Its effects and
consequences have already been awful over a great part of the globe. And when
and where are they to cease?
But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American
war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was
in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments
of their duties and obligations. While the king, and all in authority under
him, were believed to govern in justice and mercy, according to the laws and
constitution derived to them from the God of nature and transmitted to them by
their ancestors, they thought themselves bound to pray for the king and queen
and all the royal family, and all in authority under them, as ministers
ordained of God for their good; but when they saw those powers renouncing all
the principles of authority, and bent upon the destruction of all the
securities of their lives, liberties, and properties, they thought it their
duty to pray for the continental congress and all the thirteen State
congresses, &c.
There might be, and there were others who thought less about religion
and conscience, but had certain habitual sentiments of allegiance and loyalty
derived from their education; but believing allegiance and protection to be
reciprocal, when protection was withdrawn, they thought allegiance was
dissolved.
Another alteration was common to all. The people of America had been
educated in an habitual affection for England, as their mother country; and
while they thought her a kind and tender parent, (erroneously enough, however,
for she never was such a mother,) no affection could be more sincere. But when
they found her a cruel beldam, willing like Lady Macbeth, to “dash their brains
out,” it is no wonder if their filial affections ceased, and were changed into
indignation and horror.
This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and
affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.
By what means this great and important alteration in the religious,
moral, political, and social character of the people of thirteen colonies, all
distinct, unconnected, and independent of each other, was begun, pursued, and
accomplished, it is surely interesting to humanity to investigate, and
perpetuate to posterity.
To this end, it is greatly to be desired, that young men of letters in
all the States, especially in the thirteen original States, would undertake the
laborious, but certainly interesting and amusing task, of searching and
collecting all the records, pamphlets, newspapers, and even handbills, which in
any way contributed to change the temper and views of the people, and compose
them into an independent nation.
The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so
different, there was so great a variety of religions, they were composed of so
many different nations, their customs, manners, and habits had so little
resemblance, and their intercourse had been so rare, and their knowledge of
each other so imperfect, that to unite them in the same principles in theory
and the same system of action, was certainly a very difficult enterprise. The
complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was
perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made
to strike together — a perfection of mechanism, which no artist had ever before
effected.
In this research, the gloriole of individual gentlemen, and of separate
States, is of little consequence. The means and the measures are the proper
objects of investigation. These may be of use to posterity, not only in this
nation, but in South America and all other countries. They may teach mankind
that revolutions are no trifles; that they ought never to be undertaken rashly;
nor without deliberate consideration and sober reflection; nor without a solid,
immutable, eternal foundation of justice and humanity; nor without a people
possessed of intelligence, fortitude, and integrity sufficient to carry them
with steadiness, patience, and perseverance, through all the vicissitudes of
fortune, the fiery trials and melancholy disasters they may have to encounter.
The town of Boston early instituted an annual oration on the 4th of
July, in commemoration of the principles and feelings which contributed to
produce the revolution. Many of those orations I have heard, and all that I
could obtain, I have read. Much ingenuity and eloquence appears upon every
subject, except those principles and feelings. That of my honest and amiable
neighbor, Josiah Quincy, appeared to me the most directly to the purpose of the
institution. Those principles and feelings ought to be traced back for two
hundred years, and sought in the history of the country from the first
plantations in America. Nor should the principles and feelings of the English
and Scotch towards the colonies, through that whole period, ever be forgotten.
The perpetual discordance between British principles and feelings and of those
of America, the next year after the suppression of the French power in America,
came to a crisis, and produced an explosion.
It was not until after the annihilation of the French dominion in
America that any British ministry had dared to gratify their own wishes, and
the desire of the nation, by projecting a formal plan for raising a national
revenue from America, by parliamentary taxation. The first great manifestation
of this design was by the order to carry into strict executions those acts of
parliament, which were well known by the appellation of the acts of trade,
which had lain a dead letter, unexecuted for half a century, and some of them,
I believe, for nearly a whole one.
This produced, in 1760 and 1761, an awakening and a revival of American
principles and feelings, with an enthusiasm which went on increasing till, in
1775, it burst out in open violence, hostility, and fury.
The characters the most conspicuous, the most ardent and influential in
this revival, from 1760 to 1766, were, first and foremost, before all and above
all, James Otis; next to him was Oxenbridge Thacher; next to him, Samuel Adams;
next to him, John Hancock; then Dr. Mayhew; then Dr. Cooper and his brother. Of
Mr. Hancock’s life, character, generous nature, great and disinterested
sacrifices, and important services, if I had forces, I should be glad to write
a volume. But this, I hope, will be done by some younger and abler hand. Mr. Thacher,
because his name and merits are less known, must not be wholly omitted. This
gentleman was an eminent barrister at law, in as large practice as any one in
Boston. There was not a citizen of that town more universally beloved for his
learning, ingenuity, every domestic and social virtue, and conscientious
conduct in every relation of life. His patriotism was as ardent as his
progenitors had been ancient and illustrious in this country. Hutchinson often
said, “Thacher was not born a plebeian, but he was determined to die one.” In
May, 1763, I believe, he was chosen by the town of Boston one of their
representatives in the legislature , a colleague with Mr. Otis, who had been a
member from May, 1761, and he continued to be reflectcd annually till his death
in 1765, when Mr. Samuel Adams was elected to fill his place, in the absence of
Mr. Otis, then attending the Congress at New York. Thacher had long been
jealous of the unbounded ambition of Mr. Hutchinson, but when he found him not
content with the office of Lieutenant-Governor, the command of the castle and
its emoluments, of Judge of Probate for the county of Suffolk, a seat in his
Majesty’s Council in the Legislature, his brother-in-law Secretary of State by
the king’s commission, a brother of that Secretary of State, a Judge of the
Supreme Court and a member of Council, now in 1760 and 1761, soliciting and
accepting the office of Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, he
concluded, as Mr. Otis did, and as every other enlightened friend of his
country did, that he sought that office with the determined purpose of
determining all causes in favor of the ministry at St. James’s, and their
servile parliament.
His indignation against him hence forward, to 1765, when he died, knew
no bounds but truth. I speak from personal knowledge. For, from 1758 to 1765, I
attended every superior and inferior court in Boston, and recollect not one, in
which he did not invite me home to spend evenings with him, when he made me
converse with him as well as I could, on all subjects of religion, morals, law,
politics, history, philosophy, belles lettres, theology, mythology, cosmogony,
metaphysics, — Locke, Clark, Leibnitz, Bolingbroke, Berkeley, — the
pre-established harmony of the universe, the nature of matter and of spirit,
and the eternal establishment of coincidences between their operations; fate,
foreknowledge absolute; and we reasoned on such unfathomable subjects as high
as Milton’s gentry in pandemonium; and we understood them as well as they did,
and no better. To such mighty mysteries he added the news of the day, and the
tittle-tattle of the town. But his favorite subject was politics, and the
impending, threatening system of parliamentary taxation and universal
government over the colonies. On this subject he was so anxious and agitated
that I have no doubt it occasioned his premature death. From the time when he
argued the question of writs of assistance to his death, he considered the
king, ministry, parliament, and nation of Great Britain as determined to
new-model the colonies from the foundation, to annul all their charters, to
constitute them all royal governments, to raise a revenue in America by
parliamentary taxation, to apply that revenue to pay the salaries of governors,
judges, and all other crown officers; and, after all this, to raise as large a
revenue as they pleased, to be applied to national purposes at the exchequer in
England; and further, to establish bishops and the whole system of the Church
of England, tithes and all, throughout all British America. This system, he
said, if it was suffered to prevail, would extinguish the flame of liberty all
over the world; that America would be employed as an engine to batter down all
the miserable remains of liberty in Great Britain and Ireland, where only any
semblance of it was left in the world. To this system he considered Hutchinson,
the Olivers, and all their connections, dependents, adherents, shoelickers,
&c., entirely devoted. He asserted that they were all engaged with all the
crown officers in America and the understrappers of the ministry in England, in
a deep and treasonable conspiracy to betray the liberties of their country, for
their own private, personal and family aggrandizement. His philippics against
the unprincipled ambition and avarice of all of them, but especially of
Hutchinson, were unbridled; not only in private, confidential conversations,
but in all companies and on all occasions. He gave Hutchinson the sobriquet of
“Summa Potestatis,” and rarely mentioned him but by the name of “Summa.” His
liberties of speech were no secrets to his enemies. I have sometimes wondered
that they did not throw him over the bar, as they did soon afterwards Major
Hawley. For they hated him worse than they did James Otis or Samuel Adams, and
they feared him more, because they had no revenge for a father’s disappointment
of a seat on the superior bench to impute to him, as they did to Otis; and
Thacher’s character through life had been so modest, decent, unassuming; his
morals so pure, and his religion so venerated, that they dared not attack him.
In his office were educated to the bar two eminent characters, the late Judge
Lowell and Josiah Quincy, aptly called the Boston Cicero. Mr. Thacher’s frame
was slender, his constitution delicate; whether his physicians overstrained his
vessels with mercury, when he had the smallpox by inoculation at the castle, or
whether he was overplied by public anxieties and exertions, the smallpox left
him in a decline from which he never recovered. Not long before his death he
sent for me to commit to my care some of his business at the bar. I asked him
whether he had seen the Virginia resolves: “Oh yes–they are men! they are noble
spirits! It kills me to think of the lethargy and stupidity that prevails here.
I long to be out. I will go out. I will go out. I will go into court, and make
a speech, which shall be read after my death, as my dying testimony against
this infernal tyranny which they are bringing upon us.” Seeing the violent
agitation into which it threw him, I changed the subject as soon as possible,
and retired. He had been confined for some time. Had he been abroad among the
people, he would not have complained so pathetically of the “lethargy and
stupidity that prevailed;” for town and country were all alive, and in August
became active enough; and some of the people proceeded to unwarrantable
excesses, which were more lamented by the patriots than by their enemies. Mr.
Thacher soon died, deeply lamented by all the friends of their country.
Another gentleman, who had great influence in the commencement of the
Revolution, was Doctor Jonathan Mayhew, a descendant of the ancient governor of
Martha’s Vineyard. This divine had raised a great reputation both in Europe and
America, by the publication of a volume of seven sermons in the reign of King
George the Second, 1749, and by many other writings, particularly a sermon in
1750, on the 30th of January, on the subject of passive obedience and
non-resistance, in which the saintship and martyrdom of King Charles the First
are considered, seasoned with wit and satire superior to any in Swift or
Franklin. It was read by everybody; celebrated by friends, and abused by
enemies. During the reigns of King George the First and King George the Second,
the reigns of the Stuarts, the two Jameses and the two Charleses were in
general disgrace in England. In America they had always been held in
abhorrence. The persecutions and cruelties suffered by their ancestors under
those reigns, had been transmitted by history and tradition, and Mayhew seemed
to be raised up to revive all their animosities against tyranny, in church and
state, and at the same time to destroy their bigotry, fanaticism, and
inconsistency. David Hume’s plausible, elegant, fascinating, and fallacious
apology, in which he varnished over the crimes of the Stuarts, had not then
appeared. To draw the character of Mayhew, would be to transcribe a dozen
volumes. This transcendent genius threw all the weight of his great fame into
the scale of his country in 1761, and maintained it there with zeal and ardor
till his death, in 1766. In 1763 appeared the controversy between him and Mr.
Apthorp, Mr. Caner, Dr. Johnson, and Archbishop Secker, on the charter and
conduct of the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts. To form a
judgment of this debate, I beg leave to refer to a review of the whole, printed
at the time and written by Samuel Adams, though by some, very absurdly and
erroneously ascribed to Mr. Apthorp. If I am not mistaken, it will be found a
model of candor, sagacity, impartiality, and close, correct reasoning.
If any gentleman supposes this controversy to be nothing to the present
purpose, he is grossly mistaken. It spread an universal alarm against the
authority of Parliament. It excited a general and just apprehension, that
bishops, and dioceses, and churches, and priests, and tithes, were to be
imposed on us by Parliament. It was known that neither king, nor ministry, nor
archbishops, could appoint bishops in America, without an act of Parliament;
and if Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England,
with all its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and tithes, and prohibit all
other churches, as conventicles and schism shops.
Nor must Mr. Cushing be forgotten. His good sense and sound judgment,
the urbanity of his manners, his universal good character, his numerous friends
and connections, and his continual intercourse with all sorts of people, added
to his constant attachment to the liberties of his country, gave him a great
and salutary influence from the beginning in 1760.
Let me recommend these hints to the consideration of Mr. Wirt, whose
Life of Mr. Henry I have read with great delight. I think that, after mature
investigation, he will be convinced that Mr. Henry did not “give the first
impulse to the ball of independence,” and that Otis, Thacher, Samuel Adams,
Mayhew, Hancock, Cushing, and thousands of others, were laboring for several
years at the wheel before the name of Henry was heard beyond the limits of
Virginia.
If you print this, I will endeavour to send you something concerning
Samuel Adams, who was destined to a longer career, and to act a more
conspicuous, and, perhaps, a more important part, than any other man. But his
life would require a volume. If you decline printing this letter, I pray you to
return it as soon as possible.
