Class 2: Revolutionary (and Not So Revolutionary) Beginnings

It is my great pleasure to launch the first of the eight lectures that I'm going to be offering in coming weeks that will get us well into the 19th century. Now, as many of you heard last Thursday, this course as a whole is looking at American history from something of a long view. From the revolution through, I think you said the present day, okay, the present day, that's impressive. That is a challenge, and I've been telling everyone I could talk to this morning that it was a challenge for me to fit the American Revolution into one lecture. Since, as I mentioned last time, it does normally take me an entire semester to teach. We will get an added bonus revolution lecture on the Declaration of Independence on Thursday, but still. We are gallovanting through history to ask and answer big questions. And in fact, as we mentioned last time, our overall goal in each lecture is to address or discuss one big question. Now, in some cases, the title of the lecture gives you a hint about that question. And today's lecture is one of those cases. Revolutionary and not so revolutionary beginnings. I'm going to come back to what that means shortly. But before I plunge in, I feel the need to give you three quick useful tips on studying early America, earned through 20-something years of teaching it here at Yale. I do this in many of my courses, and as I offer the tips, I think you'll understand why. So number one, Freeman Useful Tip Number One, Contingency. This is particularly important to keep in mind when studying early America, the Revolution, the Constitution, and pretty much the founding period overall. Because generally, people see much of early American history as a bunch of courses. Of course, it was a revolution. Of course, we won. Of course, people created the Constitution. Of course, it worked pretty much. But none of these were, of course, is when they happened. Even the simple word "founding" does this. Suggest that something is being founded. It focuses on what comes next, something being founded, and not at the process itself, the unfolding in action. So we look back and hindsight and know what's coming. Obviously, the people we're going to be looking at all semester are looking forward in time, and they don't know what's coming next. And that is vitally important to understanding how and why people in the past did what they did throughout all of history. It just has particular importance in this period, because it's hard to get past all of those courses. And as a matter of fact, as I mentioned last week, one of the things I love about this time period is the opposite of the of courses. I'm fascinated by the improvisation. The fact that people didn't necessarily know what they were doing certainly didn't know if it would work. Okay, handy tip number one. Always remember contingency. And the handy tip number two is that words in this period and often in the past generally often have very different meanings from the same words used today. So words that seem to have an obvious meaning to us sometimes had a really different meaning in 1776 or 1787. For example, consider the word democracy, the core of American government. To some elite members of the founding generation, democracy as they defined it as they understood it was not so good. The word democracy as they understood it meant a form of government in which every single person participates personally, not a government grounded on representation. In the minds of some people in that generation, the very definition of chaos. Just listen to a sentence from one of Alexander Hamilton's last letters in 1804. Actually, he wrote this on the night before his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. So it was a sort of Hamilton signing off comment. He wrote to a colleague and friend. I will hear express, but one sentiment, which is that the dismemberment of our empire will be a clear sacrifice of great positive advantages without any counter balancing good. And administering administering no relief to our real disease, which is democracy. Now admittedly, Hamilton may not be the best example here because he was not exactly Mr democracy despite what happens on Broadway. He's deeply conflicted will come to that in a future lecture. But now listen to Thomas Jefferson, someone who had a lot to say about the power of the American people and the degree to which he had faith in the American people. What did he have to say about democracy? Well, in 1816, Jefferson said that democracy would be impractical in the United States beyond the limits of a town. Now, of course, he quickly added that a democratic, but representative government was a good thing. Right? The United States was trying to figure out how to be a democratic 18th century, democratic. They had to equal to many things in the 18th century, a democratic republic. So a democratic government may be good. A democracy as Jefferson was defining it not necessarily a good thing. So the moral of this story is to not fall into the trap of what I call democracy. So for those taking the class who will be writing papers, do not toss around terms like democracy. Liberty. Without really thinking about what you mean and what the people you're writing about meant when they were using those words. As Americans were used to throwing those words around, but to early Americans of all kinds, including enslaved people and slaveholders, words like liberty and democracy clearly had a far more complicated meaning as they do today. Freedom in tip number two, be sure to think about the meaning of words in their proper historical context. Last but not least, handy tip number three is something that I think it's really easy to forget generally when we're studying history, particularly again, the founding period. And that is it is important to remember that history is a human enterprise. It's about people making choices or people being unable to make choices. Even in this course about big questions and big ideas, never forget the human element, particularly in the founding period. It's the key to understanding everything. As the John Adams quote that I mentioned on Thursday, pretty much says outright, I'm going to do a bad paraphrase. He said, we didn't know what we were doing right in later generations when they said, tell us about the founding. We didn't know we were guessing. We didn't know what we were doing. And I actually am going to pause here for just a second because when I talk about John Adams having a human moment, there is a quote that pops into my head that I must offer you. I'm just happening now and again in my lectures because some of the things that they say are just too good and John Adams was pretty much the only elite founder type who was routinely self deprecating and amazing had a sense of humor. Not a lot of yucking it up going on among the founding generation, but he did. So he writes in 1823, a letter to Thomas Jefferson, the two of them are writing to each other as ex presidents and Adam signs the letter that he just wrote to Jefferson in the 89th year of his age still too fat to last much longer. John Adams, he's just he's too much fun to study because sometimes he just says it like it is. Okay, so it's important to keep in mind that the so called founders were most certainly not demigods. They were regular human beings often well educated, sometimes well meaning sometimes extremely self interested and self serving in any number of ways. Now, of course, we're not just going to be talking about founders today or lectures to come. We're going to be talking about many kinds of Americans as we'll see in the next few lectures and particularly in today's. Okay, so let's plunge into the American revolution. Overall, my lectures are going to be touching on big ideas about power and democracy in each lecture in one way or another will be exploring where was power placed? Who had power? Who didn't have power? And how did that fundamentally shape the US, its government and the American people? Today, as we look at the American revolution, we're going to come across a lot of questions that really. to this theme. Who or what group had power at any given point? Who did people at the time feel should have power? How did ideas about power, the people and government change over the course of the revolution and vary for different kinds of people? And then finally, how did the American people writ large take part in that change? Okay, so let's start with a really basic fact. And that is for a good long time, most of the people, the colonists, who ultimately took part in the revolution, did not see that coming. They were very much British colonists, British subjects, who identified with Britain's long-boasted rights and liberties. I'm going to come back to that idea again and again. They conceived of themselves logically enough as British subjects. And a lot of what we're going to be talking about today is them demanding their due rights as British subjects. Now they didn't necessarily know a lot about their sister colonies in North America. And part of what we're going to be seeing today and on Thursday is colonists, ultimately Americans forming connections with other colonies, creating some kind of a "we" more powerful than what had been there before. Okay, so what started the clash that led to what became the American revolution? In part, it was another war. The French and Indian War, which unfolded between roughly 1754 and 1763, to sum it up in one sentence, which is really rude to the history of that war, but I only have 50 minutes. It was part of a prolonged struggle for imperial mastery between Britain and France. And in North America, it unfolded in a series of frontier battles between the French and British. Now, there were two outcomes of that war, that would particularly affect the colonies. Number one, the British spent vast sums of money in fighting that war. And ultimately, they needed to make that money back. Number two, in watching the war unfold, the British discovered some gaps and creeks in their colonial system in North America, like for example, problems with the colonists smuggling to avoid British trade laws. So Britain responded to that war and their new needs because of the war by doing things like, logically enough, clamping down on smuggling, making it harder to smuggle, and they began to do things like putting higher duties on imported goods, essentially putting tariffs on certain imported goods to raise revenue. Now, think for a moment about how some colonists reacted to these changes. Things have been going along relatively swimmingly, they would have fought. What did these new assertions of authority mean? Slowly, and we're going to see this throughout the lecture, these various acts and their implications began to push colonists towards really reckoning with their place in the British Empire. Now, as I've already mentioned, colonists had a powerful sense of connection with the mother country, the king, and at least for a while with parliament. It feels ridiculous that I feel the need to say this again, but I will regardless. The colonists were British. And an example of the degree to which we forget this is that when I say Paul Revere, I bet a lot of you are thinking in your head, the British are coming, the British are coming, he would not have said that, he was British. He said the regulars are coming, right? The soldiers are coming. That's like so ingrained in our heads and that shows you the degree which we forget at the point that I'm writing about here. We haven't divided into two sides fighting each other. So colonists had a powerful sense of connection with the mother country, and that was even more the case after the French and Indian War because fighting in that war made the colonists feel even more connected with the mother country. They had fought alongside British regulars against England's longtime enemy, the French. So in a way, it had been their war too. And they were defensive about their right to the full spectrum of British rights and liberties that any British subject had. They were particularly defensive about this as British subjects because they were so far removed from the center of everything. They were far, you know, the peripheries of empire, you might call it. And so they were very defensive about protecting their British rights and liberties. An act passed by Parliament in 1765 raised colonial thoughts about their place and the British Empire to a new level. The stamp act. The stamp act stated that stamped paper, so paper basically that had a stamp on it that you had to pay for, now had to be used for all kinds of documents. So you needed to pay more for stamped paper for things like legal documents, college diplomas, land deeds, contracts, bills of sale, liquor licenses, playing cards, newspapers, and more. So basically the stamp act placed a tax on all of these things by making people buy stamped paper for them. And these things that I just named by playing cards, newspapers, this tax was being placed on material goods of everyday life, right? Things that people were dealing with in one way or another all the time. So in this sense, the stamp act was the first direct tax, internal tax, levied by Parliament directly upon the colonists. Not something related to trade, not something related to shipping, not a duty on imported goods, but a direct tax on items in the colonies. So a direct tax levied by Parliament and it's vitally important to note. And again, this is one of those phrases that goes through our heads when we think about the revolution, right? First, the British are coming and second is no taxation without representation. We all get that in our heads from school too. But here's the problem with that. It's that the problem with taxes that we're talking about here, what was upsetting the colonist, was not just a financial issue. When I first first came here and I was taking my American Revolution course, I don't know what I did or didn't say in my lecture, but I gave the midterm exam. And all of these students said that the revolution was because colonists didn't want to pay taxes. And I thought, I have failed, right? That's it's much more than that. It's the meaning of these financial changes that upset the colonists, the ways in which they thought that their rights as British subjects were being violated, as well as their sense that they had no way to voice their grievances. They didn't have direct representation in Parliament. So again, no taxation without representation makes this sound as though it's just an issue of taxes. There was much more at stake here. Again, colonists were reckoning with their place within the British Empire. Now, one particular outcome of their reckoning with their outrage over the Stamp Act is that people in different colonies began to turn to each other in common cause. Now, this wasn't a kind of saying, "Hosanna's, we are joining hands, kind of union," but given that these sister colonies didn't have much of a history of acting together, joining in shared cause was a big deal. To fight the Stamp Act, there began to be networking between the colonies. For example, newspapers publicized protests in one colony, in other colonies helping foster a shared sense of purpose. So we're seeing the inkling of some kind of a "we" among the colonists. Importantly, one product of this new sense of colonial commonalities was the calling of the conveniently named Stamp Act Congress of 1765. In June of 1765, the Massachusetts Assembly sent a circular letter to all of the colonial assemblies, all of the colonial legislatures, inviting them to meet in a Congress at New York in October of 1765, quote, "and this phrase is interesting. To consider of a general and united, beautiful, loyal, and humble representation of their condition to his majesty and the parliament and to implore relief." So they're upset by the Stamp Act. They're calling a Congress to deal with it, and they are saying that they are being loyal and beautiful and humble and they are imploring relief. These are not people who are sort of kicking away at the King Parliament. They're being good, bitter subjects, but also are speaking up about something that feels to them unfair. They were doing what they could as loyal British subjects to solve a problem. Now in the end, nine colonies responded to Massachusetts call for a Congress. So all in all, 27 men took part again in what came to be known as the Stamp Act Congress, which meant for much of October in 1765. Now the Stamp Act Congress was the first of a series of extra legal organizations created outside of the regular colonial political system. So this isn't like, okay, let's have a committee meet in the legislature. This is an extra legal organization that is sort of giving itself the authority to meet. Ultimately, the Stamp Act Congress passed a series of resolutions. I'm just going to mention four of them because again, it's going to tell you a lot about the mindset at the time. So one of the Stamp Act Congress resolutions was that the colonists owed allegiance to the crown like any British subject. We're angry about the Stamp Tax, right? The Stamp Act, we owe allegiance to the crown. Again, think about revolutionary, not so revolutionary going on here. Number two, the Stamp Act Congress declared that they were entitled to the rights and liberties of any English subject. That English number three, that English subjects and the colonies could not be taxed without their consent. And number four, that trial by jury was the right of every British subject in the colonies. So they're showing that they're loyal and beautiful subjects, they're also saying they want their due rights as British subjects. Now, despite such promising assertions in the end, the Stamp Act Congress didn't accomplish much, didn't really get the Stamp Act repealed, which ultimately happened because colonial boycotts of imported goods were hurting, manufacturing in Britain. But the calling of that Congress and colonial protest overall mattered because it was a coming together of the colonies in some kind of shared cause. And that coming together would come to matter because repealing the Stamp Act motivated Parliament to pass another act as an assertion of authority. So essentially, Parliament said, yes, okay. We're gonna take back the Stamp Act, we're repealing the Stamp Act, but we still have the right to impose such legislation, right? They're saying, okay, this one thing we're taking away. However, we still have the power to do that kind of thing. This was the purpose of Parliament's Declaratory Act. Past on the same day that the Stamp Act was repealed, saying that Parliament could make laws binding the colonies quote, in all cases whatsoever. Strong statement. Now, given the limited time I have a here, I'm not gonna rehearse for you, the string of royal acts and colonial responses that went on in coming years. Basically, the years after this saw conflicts between the colonists and Parliament and ultimately the king escalating. So throughout this period, colonists protested aggressively ongoing, using tools of protest within the British system. So they petitioned, they boy-cotted, they had street protests, they passed all kinds of resolutions in their assemblies. And throughout that escalation, colonists began to get more of a sense of themselves as some kind of we, as things continued. The British government, of course, being more and more assertive of its authority. My larger point here is that what we're seeing is colonists really being compelled to wrestle with and define their place within the British Empire. Who were they? How were they connected? What were their rights in a colonial context? The colonies weren't subservient to Britain. They said that again and again. They protested that repeatedly. They were not slaves of Britain to use their word, a metaphor that they used repeatedly and they knew where of they spoke, of course, about the depths of enslavement because many of the people making these statements enslaved people themselves. They also insisted they had their own legislatures. They were modeled on the British example, but they were their own colonial legislatures. So clearly, I'm not talking about a smooth slide into revolution and independence. It was a struggle. People were having their assumptions about their loyalties and their rights torn apart. And there was no single undivided opinion about what was or should be happening. So as I've sort of suggested already, we tend to divide this period into a clash between loyalists and so-called patriots, but it was not that clear. Families were torn apart. People changed their mind over time. There was actually, and I discovered this when I was first teaching this course, there was a battle of New Haven, who knew. And in the battle of New Haven, there was a person who, I think, actually he lived on chapel street. And the British came and were doing what they do, taking belongings, sort of stamping through New Haven. And there was someone who had been on the Patriot side, but his wife was sick, and she couldn't leave their house. So as the British came through New Haven, he declared himself a loyalties to save his wife. So he may have been one thing, but the circumstances demanded that he do something else. And then of course, he never lived that down after the battle had ended. So there were all kinds of reasons why people had to make really hard choices. And of course, there were some colonists who were more radical, and they wanted more change, and they reached for independence earlier than others. And there were colonists who were more resistant, and weren't really excited about that kind of dramatic change, and a lot of people in between. So this is really a struggle on a personal level. And that's important to note, because again, I think we assume on some visceral level that the revolution began and ended as a rush to independence, right? Flags waving the 18th century version of who they, "Hozah!" Now you can cheer in 18th century. But in fact, many colonists were demanding, at least initially, their British rights. They're not saying, "Yay independence, although somewhere," certainly not at first. They were resisting and demanding and interpreting and evaluating big questions about what they were as colonies. The stakes and the pressing questions had enormous implications. What was their place in the British Empire? How could they preserve their rights? Who were they? The spirit of that time, the sense that their fundamental rights as British subjects and as colonists were being violated was a really strong feeling. And it spread widely. And I cannot resist offering you a somewhat up close and personal example of how widely that spirit spread. You can see it in something that took place at Harvard. And trust me, we're gonna make our way back to Yale, I promise. Took place at Harvard. So in 1768, Harvard undergrad's decided that their tutors had, quote, "unconstitutional rules on attendance." Spirit of the time. And in protest, they broke some windows. Their tutors or teachers were tyrannical, they claimed. Now logically enough, the students were rounded up and interrogated and they responded by rioting. Three students were expelled, at which the entire senior class at Harvard, who were about to graduate soon, went to the president's office at Harvard and requested to transfer to Yale. So they could finish their degrees and graduate. In the end, the entire thing was put down, but I kind of loved the fact. I was like, "We all like it here." Yale, it is. So obviously, the Harvard students were turning to ideas about violated British rights for their particular immediate personal reasons, but the struggle and thinking and interpreting that I've been showing today, demonstrate a really important point. They are an example of a basic fact across time, and I mentioned this on Thursday, there are moments in time, in history, that compel people to think about the basics of their form of government. Basics of government that people, subjects, citizens, especially, sometimes take for granted. And in a sense, the ultimate example of that case is the period that we're talking about now, today and in coming lectures. The period when this fundamental question of what the United States would actually be as a nation, constitutionally, politically, and to a certain degree socially, was first being debated. Now, as we're moving towards the close, I want to turn to one more transitional moment and it involves the events of an April morning in 1775. In April of 1775, British regulars were marching towards Concord because they learned that colonists had begun storing powder and arms there. And overall, logically enough, the British assumed, well, a little display of force. British regulars marching through the Massachusetts countryside, colonial resistance will collapse. They'll be intimidated. We'll end this whole thing. So they determined they could seize colonial arms and intimidate the colonists, despite heading to Concord. Again, important to note at this point, no one's assuming a pending war. The colonists are stocking things in case they need to defend themselves. So the British are marching towards Lexington on their way to Concord and they begin to get nervous. Church bells were ringing before they arrived in towns. One soldier later described how a "very gentle man" in a carriage stopped and told them that there were 600 armed men waiting for them on Lexington Commod. And there were about 700 English soldiers marching there. Now in truth, they were probably about 70 colonists on Lexington Commod. They had heard Church bells ringing. They had rolled out of bed and they were assembling on the commons. In the end, in the confusion of the moment, British regulars, British soldiers fired on and killed British subjects. The British army had turned against the British people, its own people. It would be hard to exaggerate the shock that this produced. For the colonists, the events at Lexington and Concord revealed a truly dire threat. As John Adams put it in his diary, he described riding up to Lexington. He wanted to learn about what happened. He says, "Road to Lexington and along the scene of action for many miles and inquired of the inhabitants the circumstances." These were not calculated to diminish my arger in the cause. They, on the contrary, convinced me that the die was cast, the Rubicon passed, and as Lord Mansfield expressed it in Parliament, "If we do not defend ourselves, they will kill us." Now what Lord Mansfield actually said in Parliament was something along the lines of that he supported the use of any means necessary to put down the rebellion. He cited the admonition of a Swedish general to his troops who said, "If you do not kill them, they will kill you." And then continued, "If you do not, my lords, get the better of America. America will get the better of us." So he did not actually say, "If we don't kill the colonists, they will kill us." It's not what Adams is quoting though. Adams is talking about what it felt like. Adams is talking about what that moment felt like to him and that idea, if we don't kill them, they will kill us. That to him represented that moment. Now let me ask, how many of you know about Powder House Day? One. Oh, I am giving you something fine. Two. Powder House Day is usually in May, although Lexington and Concord is in April. And it celebrates when Benedict Arnold, who is a local hero, hears about what happened at Lexington and Concord. And outraged, he goes to Town Hall and demands the keys to the Powder House so he can arm the men he's been practicing with and rush up to Lexington. Now what's wonderful about Powder House Day, I actually learned about it from a taxi driver. So I can't claim any deep knowledge, but it's celebrated every year on the green here in New Haven. I swear. And there's the King's foot guard or whatever, the descendants of them are and they march and they have a church service. And then someone every year plays Benedict Arnold and goes up to the Town Hall and some poor guy in Town Hall has to come out and say, you know, okay, you're the keys. But it represents that moment, right, of shock. Wait, like that just happened at Lexington. We need to go, we need to go there now. Now I will say the day, the time I once brought some of the class, my Revolution class, to see Powder House Day. There was, there's always one person playing Benedict Arnold who is, you know, let's go fight. Unfortunately that particular year, that person went to the person at Town Hall and said, I need the keys so that we can go to the Powder House and ride to fight in and someone behind him said, Lexington, it's Lexington. I highly encourage you to find this. They shot a cannon. I mean, it was quite a thing. I can't believe I lived here all these years and didn't know about it. Okay. So the sense of shock and outrage on talking about here helped lead to the second continental Congress. That we're going to talk about more on Thursday. But what you can really see is how the colonies were set on fire in 1775, how people began to come together to defend themselves because of the actions of the British regulars. Now I've been talking about fighting in 1775. Independence isn't declared until July of 1776. It took more than a year after Lexington and Concert for the colonies to declare themselves independent, which is a great reminder of what I've already said in a variety of ways, that not only wasn't a war inevitable at this point, but colonists were struggling to find ways to avoid it. Even as they were taking action to defend themselves against what now felt like a real threat by the British. Just a few months after Lexington and Concert in July of 1775, the second continental Congress issued the so-called Olive Branch petition, which is just what it sounds like. It was a petition to the king asking him to find a way to resolve the crisis after Lexington and Concert. Now King George apparently refused to read it and declared the colonies in open and avowed rebellion, so that did not help things. But again, even at that late point, the colonies aren't rushing with flags blazing into independence. Now we're going to pick up this trail on Thursday, but before we close two things. First, a big juicy question and then an unexpected answer. I said that we were going to focus each lecture on a big question. Here is one. It's a really, really, really big question. What was the American Revolution really about? You don't want that question on a test, right? Ah, I got the question that will cause you to panic on an exam. You might say, which I've already told you not to say, freedom, breaking away from Britain, no taxation without representation. I've already cautioned you against democracy, claims about vague claims about liberty and freedom. Rather, what I've shown today is one of the things that the revolution was about, was British colonies beginning to determine who they were as a we. I'm going to add one last thing because I actually have a few minutes left. There's a story I cut out that now I get to tell you because I actually have a few minutes. Again, I can't resist. This is obvious. You already know me by now that I can't resist sometimes some of the things percolating in my brain. This is my personal experience of A, stamp tax. I'm someone who has studied Alexander Hamilton for many, many, many decades. I went to the island of Mevis to research him and to get into the courthouse, to get to the papers from the 18th century. I had to sign a register and I had to put a stamp in it. I needed to get a stamp to get in. Now apparently there was one person on that island who could sell those stamps. I couldn't find him. Whenever I went to the post office, he wasn't there. I couldn't get in without the stamp. I was wandering around Mevis saying, "Damn, that stamp, man." It's like my own little personal experience of this. I had my own stamp tax moment. I ultimately did get the stamp, did get in to look at these materials, did find evidence of Hamilton's mother among other things. It's a fine archive story, but stamps, my own personal experience. On Thursday, we're going to pick up with some of the themes that I've been talking about today, creating an American "we," the colonies learning to rely on each other, the colonists and colonies coming to think differently of who they are. We're going to look at that by looking at the Declaration of Independence, but as you'll see, if you look at the syllabus, we're going to look at the Declaration of Independence. I've titled that lecture "Declaring Independence." Because the act of declaring independence, it was a moment, it was an action, it wasn't just a document. And that's how I want to talk about it on Thursday. Declaring independence, declaring independence before the American people, finding ways to define who was it, who were the people declaring independence, defining in some way a "we" in that document. All of that is happening on paper, but in a sense, even more importantly, in reality, as the colonies come to not just be able to talk about independence, but they take the move to act on it. I will stop there.