Seeds of Revolution

The place in the modern world where kings were first turned permanently out of power and a strong alternative formed was in America.
What was it all about?
Democracy can be viewed either as a means to an end and as an end in itself. Today we often tend to think of it as an end in itself. If you have democracy, then you are free, we like to think. But that is not necessarily true. Democracies can easily become as despotic and intolerant as any tyrant. They can pass laws taking away the rights of citizens. We have seen it happen here in some our darker episodes.
The main thing the Founding Fathers were trying to achieve in establishing democracy was to prevent the institution of a tyranny. To them, the threat of tyranny came mostly from kings. Their interest was in setting up a system of government that was not dominated by any one person or group.
This was some of the thinking behind the Constitution. The Constitution came after the Revolution. The same thinking did not necessarily provide the impetus for the Revolution itself.
As for the Revolution, it came out of the broad sweep of Western history, and flowed mainly from the developments of the preceding couple of centuries.

There were conflicting cultural forces at work in the West. Among these was the conflict between the tendency of Western people to splinter into tribes and clans rather than unite, and the tendency of empires and rulers to expand and establish unified rules.
Ancient Germania had been composed of warring tribes and factions since time immemorial, and with brief exceptions it stayed that way till Germany was united under Bismarck and Kaisar Wilhelm in 1870.
Similarly, the Celts’ lack of unity was one of the things that enabled the Romans to defeat and conquer them in Gaul, Britain and the Iberian peninsula.
The Greeks had also demonstrated the splintering factor, being divided into city-states that were often at war. A long and devastating war between Athens and Sparta weakened them sufficiently to allow Phillip of Macedonia (Alexander the Great’s father) to conquer all of Greece and end Greek independence once and for all.
The Medieval world that replaced the Roman Empire in Europe was one that had no central control, but rather an intricate system of loyalties and allegiances. This was known as feudalism.
In the late Middle Ages, Europe seemed to be evolving towards a unified re-creation of the Roman Empire, this time under the spiritual (and incipiently temporal) leadership of the Pope. But growing nationalism, powerful monarchs and other factors destroyed the unity.
As the Middle Ages drew to a close and the Renaissance began to bloom, the fuedal system and the potential political unity under the Pope began to be replaced by the gathering power of central monarchs.
Though the parts into which Europe splintered were much larger than before, the overall splintering pattern can be discerned. The various parts continued their long tradition of warring against each other—a tradition that continued, with devastating effect, well into the twentieth century, and with minor intervals continuing into the present.
In the light of all this, it is not so remarkable that America split off from Britain. It was just part of the splintering tradition. What was remarkable was that the English-speaking world, including England itself, stayed together for so long. There were powerful forces threatening to break it apart, just as there were powerful forces working to keep it together. But England had found a powerful (and deadly) basis for unity: that of nationality.
England had been formed into a unified state earlier than any other European nation, by an act of conquest in the year 1066. When France was still largely feudal and Spain was still ruled by Muslims, William the Conqueror set up a unified state in which he was in control of everything. Not only did he conquer, but he also organized the nation as it had never been organized before. He did a full census and inventory of his realm and set up the system of officials that would govern it in all its parts.
England became the first nation-state in Europe. It underwent a significant adjustment in 1215 with the revolt of the barons, who extracted from King John the Magna Carta. But the unity of the realm remained. The War of the Roses in the fifteenth century also failed to break it up. It underwent a major civil war in the seventeenth century in which the monarchy was abolished and then re-established, but England remained a unit.
As happened eventually all over Europe, the English had become conscious of being a nation. A nation, in the original sense of the word, was a large ethnically similar group, like a super-sized tribe. It was a people who shared common origins, customs, history and language. The word itself is derived from the Latin for ‘race’ or ‘breed.’
Thus in a sense the Western world was still being true to its ancient way of forming itself into tribal units, which would then fight amongst themselves. The units had taken a step above the tribal level, but beyond that nothing much had changed.
The units then formed themselves into fixed states, with defined territories and established governments. Nation then became synonymous with country and state. That changed the game a little, but nationalism was still based very much on an ethnic quality.
England was also united by the monarchy, which was both a symbol and a real institution of power. The allegiance of the English people was not only to their nation and their land, but also to the Crown. This was another powerful rallying point. But it also became a major point to be attacked in the American Revolution.

There was another factor to be considered in America’s developing split with England. That factor was the Atlantic Ocean.
The Atlantic obviously forms a natural boundary of considerable magnitude, and it is one of the things that made it seem natural for the split to come. But oddly enough, oceans have been important unifying factors throughout Western history. With the exception of the Middle Ages, Western Civilization has tended to orient itself around seas and oceans: the Aegean for the Greeks, the Mediterranean for the Roman Empire and the Atlantic in modern times.
Oceans provide a medium of communication and trade. The people on opposite shores of oceans sometimes have more in common with each other than with people in the interiors of their own continents.
Since England was the greatest sea power of the day, the constant coming and going of merchant ships and naval vessels made the Atlantic as much a unifier as a boundary. It certainly gave the English military easy access to all the colonies.
Nevertheless, Americans began to be conscious of the separation between the English and themselves, and many of them began to think of America, or their own particular region, as their country.
The splintering factor discussed above, as it applied to America, did not mean at first that that America would split off as a whole from England. The early agitators for independence, such as Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, envisioned each colony becoming an independent sovereign state. Patrick Henry in particular was appalled when the states eventually joined together into a federal union. To him, independence meant a real splintering—the creation of thirteen new independent countries.

Massachusetts was the troublesome colony that dragged all the rest of the parties—the other colonies and the mother country—into the war. The famous Shot Heard Round the World was fired just outside of Boston. A series of disturbances in the Boston area had led to the town being occupied by British troops, and one thing led to another. When Patrick Henry gave his famous “Give Me Liberty of Give Me Death” speech in Virginia, he remarked that “our brothers to the north are already in the field.” It took the Virginians a little longer to become involved.
Samuel Adams, one of the leaders of the patriots in Boston, had been agitating for independence virtually all his life. When he graduated from Harvard College, his final paper had been a justification of the right of a people to form an independent political unit. For many years after that he published a newspaper that tirelessly advocated independence. He was a leader of the Boston Tea Party. When the citizens of Massachusetts began to come to blows with the British, he wrote an endless stream of letters to leaders and legislative bodies in the other colonies, pleading Massachusetts’ case and begging for assistance. At the Continental Congresses that met to discuss the situation, he was constantly active behind the scenes and on the debating floor. His unswerving message: The colonies must be independent. Drawing on the philosophy of John Locke, he wrote treatises justifying the power of a people to form their own government.
Adams was a product of Massachusetts, which had had a stormy relationship with the British monarchy since its beginning. He did not create the direction Massachusetts traveled, but it is possible that he was instrumental in getting all the rest of the colonies to come along.

And what of Massachusetts? How did it come to be such a troublemaker?
Massachusetts was founded and settled by Puritans. There were Puritans in all the colonies, but they were strongest in Massachusetts. The Puritans were Calvinists who had a religious objection to the authority of the monarchy.
For example, in 1683, King Charles demanded that Massachusetts declare its absolute obedience to the King, or its charter would be revoked. The colonists refused on the grounds that they owed absolute obedience only to God. The charter was revoked. (It was restored later under a different king.)

The Puritans were a complex religious and quasi-political development. We know them now only in caricature. In their day they were probably among the most intelligent and dedicated of European people. There were many varieties of Puritans—some who advocated toleration of all types of religious views, and others who tortured and executed heretics. They loved learning of all kinds—Greek and Latin classics as well as the Bible. Many of them could read the New Testament in the original Greek. Cotton Mather, a famous Puritan of Boston, wrote over 200 books on subjects ranging from science to philosophy to moral essays.
The Puritans were also Congregationalists.
Congregationalism was an offshoot of Calvinism. It held that each congregation was an independent unit. There were no higher religious bodies. There were no bishops. No higher earthly authority could tell any congregation what to do.
Moreover, each congregation was run as a democracy (at least in theory). Leaders were elected. The congregation, not the ministers or any other leaders, was the basic source of all authority. Except…
Except that all law and authority ultimately rested in the bible and in God.

When Jean Morely, founder of Congregationalism, used the word “democracy” in describing his new form of church government, he was using what in the late 16th century was a negative word. Democracy was associated with chaos and discord. No serious person at that time advocated democracy for any kind of government. Morely acknowledged the potential for harm in democracy, but argued that a democracy coupled with the Roman concept of the rule of law would be an excellent form of government. As examples he cited Athens and the Roman Republic. In the church, the law would be provided by the Bible.

Let us pause here to consider what is happening in this development. It contains a number of factors. Let us list them:
1. The splintering factor: all congregations become independent of each other and of any higher earthly authority.
2. Democracy: an ancient Western tradition is picked up and dusted off.
3. The Renaissance : a knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman history is obviously necessary for the citing of them as examples.
4. The Reformation, religious inspiration and the Bible.

That sums up a backwards look. Looking forward from this point we
find what may be the germ of the Revolution.
The Revolution was preached from the pulpits of America like a religious revival. God had a hand in it, said all the great speakers and movers. Tom Paine, in Common Sense, said that God had put the American continent here to allow people to form a country that would correct the errors of the Old World.

The Revolution, then, was a splintering and a rejection of monarchy on grounds heavily mixed with religion. It looked back to ancient Western traditions of autonomy and democracy. It drew heavily on Christianity as interpreted by Protestants. And it was energized by a finely blended mixture of all the above—a mixture known as Puritanism.