Democratic Contestation and Renovation during the American Revolution

• In Event: Nationalism, Liberation, and Revolution

Abstract

During the Stamp Act Crisis, an author using the pseudonym ‘Britannus Americanus’ wrote to the Printers of the Boston Gazette, critiquing “the flattering, soothing dependents and slaves of corrupt and arbitrary ministers”. Eight years later, in a letter to the Pennsylvania Gazette, ‘AP’ rejected the concept of political slavery to critique the British administration, instead highlighting the hypocrisy of American political discourse, remarking that “it seems almost impossible to claim our own rights, without acknowledging that we have deprived them of theirs…under the most absolute and cruel tyranny”.

This debate over slavery as both political subjection to domination, and an institutionalised system of slavery, is but one example of the contestation over what it meant to form a democratic polity during the American Revolution. Whilst scholarship has exposed the non-democratic elements of the Founding state, many of the concepts discussed in the period leading to the Revolutionary War, such as liberty, popular sovereignty, and constitutional government, are component parts of what theorists would now term a democratic state. I will therefore focus on an America on the cusp of Revolution, during the last ‘critical moment’ as defined by Bernard Bailyn: the crisis of the Coercive Acts, 1773-4. I will examine how continuing examples of democratic retrenchment encouraged the colonists to re-imagine their constitutional system, to “restore [the constitution] to its pristine Perfection” and “settle [their] rights on a firmer foundation than ever”.

Therefore, this paper examines how Revolutionary actors used political concepts to articulate concerns about a perceived decay of their constitutional system, and re-imagine what, to some, could be a more democratic political order. By examining how colonists in different spaces and places used ideas such as liberty, property, slavery, and authority to articulate their grievances towards the imperial system, I contest the idea of a single, comprehensive strand of ideological thought driving them towards independence, and instead reveal the more disjointed and disunited nature of Revolutionary ideas. I compare how three colonies – Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia – used the political concepts available to them, including from British radical thought and classical antiquity, to articulate their responses to the Coercive Acts. I examine how the meaning of such ideas were debated and contested across different colonies and groups, as actors critiqued the actions of the British and attempted to posit an alternative form of political rule. Furthermore, I move beyond traditional reliance on pamphlets to include newspapers, broadsides, and sermons. This expands scholarly understandings of the term ‘political’, to embrace these texts as sites of political engagement, showing that the imperial crisis was not determined by the pamphlets of a few ‘great men’, but was constantly negotiated and renegotiated by ordinary people on the ground.

Consequently, this paper will enhance understandings of the nuances of Revolutionary political thought, revealing the contested nature of democracy and the changing definitions of its component parts. I posit that there was no consistent line of ideological thought that all actors prescribed to, as suggested by previous scholars; instead, ideas developed from traditions such as liberalism and republicanism were heavily debated, and used intermittently with undetermined definitions. At times actors used democratic concepts to critique the imperial political system, without a clear suggestion of an alternative form of government, and in other moments, there was debate over the extent to which American political society should be ‘democratic’ at all. Ultimately, therefore, this suggests a political theory that created the appearance of coherency when, on the ground, it was far more divided and disaggregated.

Finally, I hope that an understanding of the continuous contestation of political concepts, and the ways that elements of democratic theory were renegotiated and reorganised in response to political crises, will have wider relevance. There has been significant debate over whether the Founding era can be termed ‘democratic’, but a focus on how democratic principles were conceptualised before independence, and the extent to which these were democratic at all, is significant in providing a foundation for the broader trajectory of American democratic development. Recognising that the Revolution was not inevitable, with a clear ideology all colonists were motivated by, may also aid scholars in understanding why the American state has struggled to achieve its democratic ideals. If these were not universally accepted even before the nation was created, scholars can view the modern American state not as neglecting its democratic principles, but rather as a polity whose history is defined by continuing debate over whether it should be democratic at all.

Author

• Rebecca Palmer, University College London