Friday, February 26, 2016

Draft Constitution for Virginia, Part I: Context

            I’d like to make something clear before I begin this next series of posts.

            In spite of how often his work has appeared here, and thus how frequently he has been a topic of discussion, I do not think of myself as a particular admirer of Thomas Jefferson. He was undeniably an intelligent man, as well as eloquent and exceedingly knowledgeable about a great swath of topics, but there are absolutely certain elements of his personal and political philosophy that I disagree with in no uncertain terms. I am not, if I may use the term, a Jefferson apologist, nor do I think that if we all just paid a little more attention to what he said and what he did the world would be in better shape. That being said, the man unquestionably makes for a fascinating object of study. For all his brilliance, his wide-ranging interests, and his dominant influence in American history, politics, and culture, he was a deeply flawed individual. He could be mercurial, cunning, reserved, and self-effacing. He decried, for the better part of his political career, the evils of centralized government, and yet when handed the reigns of federal power did more to expand its influence in America than all of his predecessors combined. It would be hard, I think, not to find such a man intriguing, particularly when he wrote so often and so well about such a great variety of subjects.

            This brings us to the present case. As I hope I've made clear by now, one of the reasons America, On Paper exists is because I wanted to share my appreciation for the primary source texts of the American founding with whoever would take the time. It is my firm belief that the best way to get to know the men (and women) who gave birth to the United States, and whose thoughts and opinions continue to be haphazardly thrown about in the media and in politics, is to read the words that they wrote. This is a harder task than might appear – hence why I've attempted to do some of the legwork of establishing context, sources, and comparisons – but ultimately very rewarding. Unfortunately, not every Founder was terribly prolific, and so the picture we are left with, here at the dawn of the 21st century, is somewhat skewed towards those who were. George Washington, for instance, is an incredibly important figure to understand the principles and motivations of if one hopes to gain a deeper appreciation for how and why the United States turned out the way it did. As it happens, however, Washington was not much of a philosopher or an essayist. He wasn't the sort of person to pen lengthy treatises on the nature of American liberty, or the practical limitations of representative government, and so we are left with a rather limited canon of documents through which to attempt to gain insight into who the man was, what moved him, and why (or if) he is worthy of continued commemoration. His Farewell Address is mercifully rich in its philosophical and ideological content, but it nonetheless remains one a very small number of documents through which a modern inquirer could hope to known George Washington in any real sense.

            Thomas Jefferson, love him or hate him, was somewhat more generous with his pen. By somewhat, of course, I mean that the man practically filled libraries with his personal correspondence, dashed off dissertations like it was going out of style, and compiled enough travelogues, agricultural and geological surveys, and philosophical meditations so that a person could build a small dwelling out of the compiled volumes and still have something left over to read on a rainy day. He was, in short, a prolific writer, and so their remains very little about which Jefferson’s opinion cannot be solicited. This is, through one lens, a good thing. It allows us to construct an exceedingly complete picture of one of the single most important people in the history of the Western world. Through another lens, however, it can be said that relying too much on the works of Jefferson as a means of understanding the American founding possibly twists our perception so as to portray the Sage of Monticello as the one and only prime mover in early American history. This is obviously an undesirable outcome, and one which I have attempted to push against by turning my frequent attention to a number of Jefferson’s contemporaries, be they Federalist or Anti-Federalist, Northerners, Southerners, immigrants or native sons (or daughters).

            In spite of the effort on my part, however, I find myself wanting to shine a light on Jefferson once more. I had not necessarily planed to return to him. But, as these things so often happen, a point of discussion in the most recent series of posts led me down a particular path of enquiry, and then to a handful of documents, and then to that smug, chameleonic Virginian once more. And so, as I again embark on an examination of some of the work left to us by Albemarle County’s favorite son, I ask of my readers their indulgence, their patience, and if need be, their forgiveness.

            Though I can’t promise it won’t happen again.

            Lengthy and almost certainly unnecessary pseudo-apology aside, the document in question that will hereafter be discussed is most definitely an intriguing one. Written in the spring and early summer of 1776 while Jefferson was serving in the Second Continental Congress, it is a draft of a constitution for his home state of Virginia. This, on the surface, probably doesn't sound so remarkable. Jefferson was a Virginian, through and through, and though he served over the course of his life in a number of high federal offices, his home state remained always very close to his heart, and greatly informed his vision of what kind of country the United States ought to be. So of course he had a hand in writing Virginia’s first constitution.

            But the thing is, he didn't; or at least not substantially

            By the time Jefferson settled on a plan for the government of independent Virginia that he was satisfied with and sent the draft from Philadelphia to Williamsburg, his colleague George Mason (1725-1792) had already submitted his own version to the appropriate committee. Jefferson’s constitution was thereafter considered as an alternative, received support from a handful of those present, and had certain of its elements incorporated into the final document. Consequently, though there was some small sliver of Jefferson present in the 1776 Constitution of Virginia, the finished product was then understood, and should still be, as Mason’s brainchild. For this reason Jefferson’s original draft, written in Philadelphia during those same months when he lent his pen to the crafting of a declaration of American independence, represents a vision of what could have been; a version of Virginia that only ever existed on paper, and in the mind of one of America’s most celebrated revolutionaries. As a consequence, because the draft that survives did not suffer being “mangled” by a committee of those who would no doubt have sought to moderate Jefferson’s more radical proclivities, it is a more revolutionary document than the one ultimately adopted. In this sense the document provides a rare opportunity.

There is a veritable mountain of missives that Jefferson dashed off over the course of his life which represent at least a sampling of his honest and unadulterated perspective. And he was the author of numerous essays, pieces of legislation, declarations, and public addresses across the length of his public career, many of which addressed areas of philosophy or administration that were near and dear to his heart. But hardly any of these written works are as broad in scope or fundamental in approach as a codified constitution. Rather than detail his opinion on freedom of religion, say, or provide insight into his thoughts on international trade, the framework he penned in mid-1776 for a new government for Virginia encompassed nothing more or less than 33-year-old Jefferson’s vision of the ideal republic. However he was forced to compromise his vision when working alongside collaborators, or when confronted by practical limitations, the draft constitution represents Jefferson at his most raw and idealistic, and accordingly perhaps his most honest. Studying said constitution thus makes understanding the Jeffersonian ideal – so influential in subsequent decades – much easier. Rather than having to intimate what kind of society the Sage of Monticello would have preferred exist in America from fragments or suggestions contained in various other documents, one need only examine the plan he very clearly laid out for his home state’s government. As well, a comparison of Jefferson’s constitution with Mason’s, and also with the colonial charters that preceded them both, aids in understanding how the Founding Generation set about transforming the societies in which they lived and what their approximate threshold for change was.

But of course, before we dig into any of this, a little background. Because, as aforementioned, Jefferson has been a frequent topic of discussion in these pages, there is very little more that needs to be said about who he was in 1776 and what sort of life he had led up to that point. It will therefore hopefully suffice to simply reiterate that he was the son of a surveyor and prominent Virginia landowner, that he was born near that colony’s western frontier, and that he was a lawyer by trade. It may also be worth noting, as a nod to his contemporary public profile, that he had already written a well-regarded pamphlet in 1774 refuting the claimed British right to tax the American colonies (A Summary View of the Rights of British America) and then co-wrote a declaration by the Second Continental Congress explaining the logic behind their decision to take up arms against the British government (Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms). It would perhaps also be prudent to examine, in light of the subject of the coming discussion, what sort of government Virginia existed under prior to 1776.

Virginia, as mentioned in a previous post detailing the origins of each of the original Thirteen Colonies, was the oldest of its brethren, and its history was somewhat troubled in the early years. After the first efforts at colonizing the western seaboard of North America in 1606 by the competing London and Plymouth Companies (both divisions of the joint-stock Virginia Company) failed, the former was able to successfully petition the Crown in 1609 for a revision of its original charter. Thereafter its territory encompassed the entire modern coastlines of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina (extending, theoretically, to the Pacific Ocean). Subsequent settlements in this expanded territory struggled to prosper, however, due to poor access to resources, disease, and frequent contact with hostile Natives. Government during this formative era, between 1609 and 1619, was exercised by a Company-appointed Governing Council, headed by a President. Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (from whose title is derived the name “Delaware”) attained the latter position in 1609 (as “Governor”), and because of his frequent absences power was most often exercised by a series of deputies. The third of these deputy governors, Sir Thomas Dale, enacted a legal code in 1612 known as the “Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martial” which effectively conferred on him a kind of dictatorial authority, and erected a series of exceedingly strict punishments (up to and including execution) for a host of outwardly trivial offences. Though it has been argued that Dale’s harsh administration in Virginia was what ultimately allowed the colony to overcome its earlier difficulties, particularly in terms of economic self-sufficiency, it was his uncompromisingly authoritarian leadership that perhaps led to the most significant transformation of colonial Virginian society.

Or, more specifically, it was the reaction to his leadership that set Virginia on such an important path. Though Dale had overseen a period of increased economic stability in the young colony, his style of leadership was not viewed by the Governing Council as necessarily conducive to the enlarged immigration Virginia sorely required if its population was to recover from years of poor harvests and frequent epidemics. Accordingly, the colony was granted a new charter by the Virginia Company in 1618 that established an elected assembly, mandated civilian control of the military, and granted fifty acres of land to all those who paid their passage from England in full. The assembly, known subsequently as the House of Burgesses, was not independent of either the appointed governor (who possessed a veto on their legislation) or the Company (who could revoke the charter at will), but did for the first time permit colonial residents some say in how they were governed and taxed. When the newly-elected Burgesses met for the first time alongside the Governing Council (together comprising the Virginia General Assembly) in July, 1619, it represented the effective beginning of European-style representative government in the Americas.

The House of Burgesses was initially composed of 22 members representing an equal number of constituencies, and all free men were permitted to vote in their election. After the massacre of several hundred colonists by Natives in 1622, preceded and followed by a pair of destructive epidemics, Virginia again passed into brief era of particularly firm governance by the Company and its appointed Governor and Council. In 1624, responding to the frequent crises that seemed always to be besetting the long-standing venture and the evident inability of the Virginia Company to arrive at a permanent solution, James I had its charter summarily revoked. Virginia was consequently reorganized as a Crown colony, though the government established under the 1618 charter remained largely intact. In the one hundred and fifty years that followed between the re-charter of Virginia as a Crown Colony and the events of the American Revolution, the colonial government underwent only minor changes. Beginning in 1634, Virginia was divided into 8 counties whose significance was mainly administrative and judicial. This number was expanded to 15 in 1643. County-level offices were appointed, including clerks, sheriffs, constables, and judges, and after 1670 the franchise was narrowed so as to permit only property owing males the right to vote in elections.

 Slavery, one of the most important and most divisive issues in Jefferson’s era, no doubt also bears some degree of explanation, in terms of its origins in Virginia. In spite of how important the institution would become to the colonial, and later state, economy, it was introduced gradually; the first Africans appear in the historical record 1619 as indentured servants. By 1650 there were some 300 Black Africans living in Virginia under terms of indenture, along with 4000 White Europeans in a similar state of servitude. While certain among these African servants succeeded in paying off their contracts and becoming property owners in their own right, between the 1640s and 1660s the colonial government began to alter the manner in which Black indentured servants were legally perceived. As punishment for escape attempts, constituting essentially a violation of their contracts, Black servants began increasingly to be sentenced to life service to their aggrieved master. In fairly short order life servitude became the norm for imported Africans in Virginia, partly in response to increased demand for labor stemming from the growth of plantation agriculture and the viability of cash crops like tobacco. When, in 1660, a mixed-race indentured servant named Elizabeth Key successfully sued the colonial government for her freedom on the grounds that she was both a baptized Christian and the acknowledged daughter of a free Englishmen, the House of Burgesses responded in 1662 by adopting the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem. This legal concept, meaning literally “that which is brought forth follows the womb,” decreed that all children born in the colony thereafter were to inherit the legal status of their mother. Though it represented a violation of English Common Law tradition (whereby children took the status of their father), it was likely deemed necessary by the colonial government as a means of ensuring the continued existence of a stable labor pool in light of chronic population instability, the general unwillingness of Whites to take on menial vocations, and the needs of the burgeoning export economy.

By the dawn of the 18th century, both the political and economic status quo in colonial Virginia had more or less solidified to the point where they would have been recognizable to men like Thomas Jefferson and George Mason seventy years later. This was in spite of an attempted rebellion against the authority of Governor William Berkeley (1605-1677) that was led by English settler and colonial statesman Nathaniel Bacon (1647-1676) in 1676. The revolt was supported by a wide swath of discontented Virginians from across the social orders, including planters who desired to expand westward into Native-held territory and landless laborers who desired the right to vote. Bacon also found the bulk of his armed following among the Black enslaved and White indentured servants who constituted the bulk of the colony’s labor force. The insurrection was ultimately crushed thanks to armed support from the British government. Thereafter, property qualifications on the franchise were reinforced, and a slave code was drawn up in 1705 that more clearly established and defined the practice of chattel slavery in the colony and helped establish a degree of social segregation so as to discourage any future alliance between discontented Blacks and Whites.       

There are several things which ought to be drawn from this brief chronicle which bear directly on an examination of Jefferson’s draft constitution of 1776. One is that, again, the system of government in Virginia that was replaced in the 1770s had been in operation, with minor changes, for something on the order of a century. It had managed to weather a great deal of economic uncertainty, attacks by Native Americans, enduring problems stemming from an unstable population, devastating epidemics, and at least one major armed rebellion. Yet, from 1619 until 1776 the House of Burgesses continued to operate, elections continued to be held, and Governors continued to be appointed (first by the Virginia Company and then by the Crown). This perhaps speaks to the flexibility and durability of Virginia’s charter government, as well as to the relative conservatism of the resulting society. After all, the culture that developed in Jefferson’s home colony was doubtless greatly affected by the manner in which it was administered; by the 1770s elections were no doubt considered “normal,” as were slavery, property qualifications, and some degree of deference to royal authority. To what degree Jefferson’s proposed state constitution deviated from or conformed to these established norms is potentially illustrative of what elements of his own culture the Sage of Monticello felt were in need of reform, as well as to what extent he felt his fellow Virginians were willing to accept change.      

            Also worth noting, in light of the history of government in Virginia, are the priorities that continually seemed to sustain the colonial population amidst decades of well-documented hardship. In addition to being molded by their government, settlers, landowners, and laborers also shaped it in turn by what they were willing to accept, what they actively resisted, and indeed what drove them to choose Virginia in the first place. As mentioned above, the elected House of Burgesses was created in 1619 with the aim of encouraging settlement. This would seem to suggest that representative government was felt to be an enticing proposition by the directors of the Virginia Company. The fact that the colony thereafter survived and expanded potentially speaks to the clarity of their wisdom. While it would be impossible to say for certain why every person who settled in Virginia after 1620 did so, it is perhaps a fair guess that at least a portion were attracted by the promise of having some input into how they were governed. In the same sense, some of the declared objectives of those involved in Bacon’s Rebellion, namely the demand for an un-landed franchise, indicates both the probable size of the landless population in the late 17th century as well as the importance that continued to be attached to the vote over fifty years after it was first introduced. Though the 1676 revolt was ultimately defeated, it nonetheless represents an instance wherein the political status quo in Virginia was actively challenged by a broad-based alliance of landed and landless citizens. In light of Jefferson’s attempt in 1776 to far more drastically alter how Virginia was governed,  and in turn affect how its culture and society functioned, it was perhaps worth keeping in mind what kind of people Virginians had thus far proven themselves to be.

Friday, February 19, 2016

Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions, Part X: Theories and Conclusions

Another example of Warren’s republican bona fides, though slightly more oblique than those discussed already, can be found in section eighteen of her Observations. In spite of various elements of the proposed constitution that she considered to be blatantly monarchical (more on that later), and in spite of the fact that as she wrote Observations the document in question was on its way to being ratified, Warren contended that her fellow countrymen were not prepared to erect a monarchy of their own in place of the federal government that then existed. Her fellow Americans, she wrote, “Are not yet generally prepared with the ungrateful Israelites to ask a King, nor are their spirits sufficiently broken to yield the best of their olive grounds to his servants, and to see their sons appointed to run before his chariots.” This reference to the Israelites, olive grounds, and chariots is worth taking note of, both because it presents a rare occasion of Warren making use of an explicitly Biblical example, and because it connects her to the writings of another advocate for republicanism who worked from within the American context.

In the first case, it bears explaining that the story she attempted to relate is a much-abridged fragment of the Old Testament Books of Samuel. Therein the Israelites, seeking security in response to being surrounded by strong and aggressive neighbors (like the Philistines and the Amalekites), requested that the Prophet Samuel anoint a king so that they might gain strength through the centralization of political authority, and be “like other nations.” Samuel initially viewed this as a rejection of his abilities as a leader, and attempted to dissuade the Israelites in no uncertain terms from seeking to interpose a monarch between themselves and their God. Though Samuel eventually bowed to the desires of his people, and via divine revelation chose Saul, of the Tribe of Benjamin, to reign over the Israelites, it was from among the prophet’s arguments against monarchy that Warren drew her example in Observations.

Considering her upbringing in Puritan-inflected Massachusetts, and the fact that her childhood tutor was a Congregationalist minister, it is perhaps not so surprising that Mercy Otis Warren was familiar with the Bible and could draw from it when the occasion called. Still, understanding the Bible as a moral exemplar and reading it as a political treatise would seem to require two different frames of mind. The story of Samuel as king-maker is most obviously interpreted as reinforcing the obedience the Israelites owed to God. Samuel did not agree to anoint a king until God revealed that he had chosen Saul, and Saul’s downfall came as a result of first slighting the role of Samuel as a priest and then refusing to obey God’s wishes in dealing with the defeated Amalekites. Taking Samuel’s initial rejection of monarchy as a tacit, Biblical endorsement for republicanism would have required a somewhat unconventional understanding of the significance of the Old Testament. That Warren felt this was an apt interpretation, and that putting it to use amidst an argument against what she viewed as a monarchical level of political centralization in America would help convince her audience, says something about her sensibilities as well as those she perceived in her fellow Americans. Perhaps she, like certain other essayists in the American tradition, believed that widespread, class-spanning knowledge of the Bible made it an ideal vehicle through which to impart a political or philosophical statement. Or perhaps she assumed that making reference to such a hallowed text, even in passing, added a moral weight to the case she was trying to make which discussions of Don Quixote, Spanish history, and French philosophy couldn’t manage. The fact that Warren made no other Biblical references in the entirety of Observations makes the thing rather difficult to account for. Yet, for it being an exception, it would surely be a mistake to dismiss it out of hand.     
            
While it perhaps cannot definitively account for the presence of a brief paraphrase from the Old Testament in Warren’s Observations, it is at the very least something of a curiosity that the same retelling of the Israelites’ first foray into kingship also appeared in Thomas Paine’s ardently republican Common Sense. In light of the fact that numerous detailed and thoroughly readable discussions of Paine’s seminal text do exist and are readily available (*loud throat-clearing noise*), it will suffice here to simply say that Common Sense argued in favor of the independence of the American colonies, specifically in accordance with the principles of 18th century republicanism. Among the assertions that Paine brought to bear on that count, which in their multitude included references to warlords, prostitution, and the untrustworthiness of heredity, quotations and/or paraphrases of the Old Testament were very much in evidence. Of the latter, the story of Samuel and the Israelites’ plea for monarchy was the most thoroughly fleshed-out. Paine, as it happened, seized upon Samuel’s rejection of kingship, with perhaps more glee than was really healthy, and described at length the ills that the prophet believed his people were preparing to call upon themselves. These included, in the ninth paragraph of the second section of Common Sense, the assertion on Samuel’s part that a king, “Will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots [,]” and that, “He will take your fields and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants [.]” Though greater in length and more elaborately phrased, Paine’s invocation of the story of Samuel contains two very specific elements in common with Warren’s (the aforementioned olive grounds and running before chariots). In addition, both Warren and Paine echoed Samuel’s denunciation of kingship from within the same fundamental philosophical context; that is, the rejection of a voluntary submission to arbitrary authority.

Though the immediate and obvious conclusion to these similarities would likely be that Warren had read Common Sense and endorsed Paine’s characterization of Samuel’s story, it is entirely possible that their shared invocation of a specific incident from the Old Testament was purely coincidental. In fairness, Mercy Otis Warren and Thomas Paine did not reference the Prophet Samuel’s disdain for monarchy in quite the same way. Paine, writing in late 1775, seemed intent on demonstrating to his audience that God had always scorned monarchy by drawing attention to the dialogue between the Israelites, Samuel, and God himself. His hope, no doubt, was to leverage the moral weight of the Bible in favor of republicanism by showing his American audience how innately hostile to monarchy their own religion truly was. Warren, writing at some point early in 1788, deployed her reference to Samuel and the Israelites’ request for a king with far less emphasis. Her fellow Americans, she wrote, were not like the ancient Israelites because they had chosen to reject the prospect of monarchy, in spite of the, “Discord and civil convulsions” they may have suffered as a result. Paine had also referenced the Israelites’ acceptance of the costs of monarchy in a negative sense, thereby exhorting his fellow Americans not to repeat the same error, but his attention was mainly focused on the passion with which Samuel had attacked the idea of kingship. Warren did not even mention Samuel’s name, though she was clearly referencing the same Old Testament source material. It therefore may have been the case that Warren came to the story of Samuel entirely independent of Paine, though her own reading of the Biblical text, and sought to incorporate a reference to the Israelites as a form of shorthand, owing to how widely the Bible was read in 18th century America.
Then again, considering how well-read Warren is known to have been, it would seem rather odd for her not to have read Paine’s Common Sense. It was, and remains, one of the most popular documents ever printed in the United States, certain estimates placing its first year publication numbers as high as 500,000 copies. In light of how involved Warren was with revolutionary politics in her native Massachusetts, as well as her correspondence with numerous other members of the Founding Generation (man of whom, it is known for a fact, did read Common Sense), for her to have missed perhaps the most seminal piece of pro-independence literature would constitute an almost entirely inexplicable hole in her otherwise thorough and wide-ranging personal knowledge. It thus seems perhaps a little more than likely that Warren did read Common Sense, and as a consequence her invocation of Samuel’s ancient critique of monarchy takes on an added significance. Specifically, it implies some kind of affinity on Warren’s part for Paine’s writing, or perhaps represents a gesture of ideological sympathy. Because, again, Common Sense and Observations do not regard the story of Samuel as kingmaker with same emphasis, it is doubtful that Warren was attempting simply to repeat something she had read and agreed with. It rather seems more likely that, by choosing to repeat certain specific phrases that figured into Paine’s retelling of Samuel’s rebuke, she was attempting to nod in the direction of Common Sense, thereby alerting her audience to her familiarity with the document and her sympathy with its aims. As with the possibility of a coincidence, this hypothesis is essentially impossible to prove or disprove. That being said, it at least accounts for Warren’s far-ranging knowledge and her active participation in the events of the Revolution, and it certainly aligns with her demonstrated affinity for republican philosophy.
Taking this affinity into account, along with the clear examples that can be found in Observations of her regard for transparency in government and freedom of the press, and her dislike for monarchy and the principle of standing armies, a reasonably clear political portrait of Mercy Otis Warren fairly emerges. She was certainly not a Federalist, as her critique of the proposed constitution makes rather plain. Her demonstrated suspicion of centralized authority, with a keen understanding of history at its core, doubtless precluded her from regarding the new federal charter and the government it proposed as anything more than a resurgence of the tried and tested methods of tyranny that man had suffered under for centuries, and which her countrymen had lately defeated in a long and bloody struggle. At the same time, her regard for public service, belief in self-sacrifice, and desire to promote accountability in government seemed to incline her toward supporting the existing federal arrangement under the Articles of Confederation.
She demonstrated, for instance, a preference for imposing measures like term limits on elected offices. This doubtless disposed her toward strengthening the existing state governments, many of which enshrined the rotation of offices in their constitutions, and the Confederation Congress, which likewise recognized the importance of disallowing extended mandates. Because the proposed constitution placed no term limits on the offices it outlined, would have scrapped the Articles of Confederation entirely, and appeared (to some people) as though it was designed with the intention of weakening the states, it is not difficult to understand why someone of Warren’s political character would have rejected its ratification as strongly as she did. Describing her as an Anti-Federalist, however, would do her a disservice; the term is rather nebulous, and was initially intended as a pejorative. It would rather seem more accurate to identify her, loosely, as a Whig. This was the label applied to critics of absolute monarchy in 17th century England, adopted by early American supporters of resistance to British parliamentary overreach, and cherished by those who subsequently participated in the Revolution and came to regard with passion and reverence the various republican principles for which they believed it had been waged. Warren was certainly passionate about, and reverent of, the Revolution, its significance, and legacy, as Observations makes quite plain, Thinking of her in 1788 as a Whig on the old model, therefore, seems a reasonably fair assessment.
No doubt it seems needlessly pedantic to attempt to determine where on the political spectrum of Revolutionary America Mercy Otis Warren might have sat – and pointless too, given the vagueness of the label finally arrived upon. Maybe it is, in and of itself. Then again, because of the comparison it invites between her words and expressions and those of her more publicised male counterparts, perhaps it isn't such a futile exercise. Warren’s words should be compared to theirs, to Jefferson’s, Washington’s, Hamilton’s, and Madison’s. She was one of them; their equal in intellect, capacity for expression, and personal knowledge. As a woman she was exiled from the halls of political power, but Warren was no less a political being and no less capable of contributing her time, energy, and talents to the growth and development of the American experiment. Judging from the manner in which she referred to her male contemporaries in Observations, this was an opinion she shared. In same way that other members of the Founding Generation cited in their own works the efforts of their compatriots and opponents, in tones honeyed or barbed but always with a sense of familiarity, Warren praised and castigated some of the men we've come to think of as the prime movers of the Revolutionary Era in the text of her constitutional critique. Her husband, James Warren, she characterized as, “An elegant writer,” while James Wilson was sardonically praised for, “The fertility of his genius [.]” In section fourteen she quoted James Bowdoin (1726-1790), 2nd Governor of Massachusetts, with the preface that he was, “A gentleman of too much virtue and real probity to suspect he has a design to deceive [,]” and in section eighteen she cited the words of Luther Martin (1740-1826) in support of her argument against the secrecy of the Philadelphia Convention. Her tone while invoking the names and words of these men was not one of supplication or deference, but rather conveyed a sense of rough camaraderie; she praised or pilloried them as they did each other. This, among other things, seems a fair indication that she regarded herself as belonging among the group – that she was engaged in the same political and philosophical exercise as her male counterparts.           
That being said, the fact of Warren’s sex remains a central part of her historical identity. It is arguably the reason she went largely ignored for most of the last 200 years, and also why she has received so much attention in the last 40 or 50. She was a politically active woman in an era that pre-dates feminism as we understand it by five decades or more, and among the male-dominated pantheon of the American founding she cannot help but stand out. Yet Warren was far from the only woman who contributed to the creation of the United States of America. Many, as wives and mothers, cooked for soldiers during the Revolution, served as nurses, looked after their family’s property during their husband’s absence, and raised the next generation of American soldiers, merchants, statesmen, and farmers. Others – Abigail Adams most famously – provided invaluable counsel and advice to their spouses, thereby guiding innumerable outcomes and shaping the history of the United States in ways likely impossible to calculate. Though, as discussed at the beginning of this series, Mrs. Adams was able to exert her influence on public affairs only through the medium of her husband, exert it she nevertheless did.  
Other notable women, like Deborah Sampson and Molly Corbin, even fought in the Revolutionary War, though they were forced to hide their gender, or were allowed to serve only in times of desperation. Mercy Otis Warren was a wife and mother, and no doubt contributed to the course of the Revolution in both of these capacities in her fair share. But she was also a very intelligent, knowledgeable, and politically savvy individual, and it is through her pen that she sought to most effectively mark her place in the world. In this she was undeniably unusual. Women in the 18th century did not customarily engage in feats of literature or politics. But it is very important not to simply regard Warren as being noteworthy solely because she was an exception to the rule. The fact should be marked and acknowledged as such, but she should otherwise be understood as a member of the Founding Generation in full and equal standing. Her writing was eloquent and incisive, her perception keen, and her knowledge vast; fixating on the petticoat obscures the mind at work beneath it. No doubt this was, again, one of the reasons she so often wrote under a pseudonym. As a woman in the realm of politics she would have been a curiosity, however well-respected by a small group of friends and correspondents. Though we live – or perhaps only like to think so – in a far more egalitarian era in the history of gender relations, it still so very easy to commit this same act of well-meaning dismissal precisely because we still persist in viewing her through the prism of the 18th century.
Mercy Otis Warren was a political essayist.
Mercy Otis Warren was a playwright.
Mercy Otis Warren was a historian.
Mercy Otis Warren was a woman.
No one of these things should outweigh or obscure the others; all of them should be acknowledged and celebrated. Reading the words she wrote in that fateful winter of 1788 is a good place to start. 
Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions: http://www.samizdat.com/warren/observations.html  

Friday, February 12, 2016

Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions, Part IX: Character, contd.

Perhaps the most obvious political characteristic that Mercy Otis Warren displayed within the text of Observations was a strong affinity for the ideals of 18th-century republicanism. For those who are unfamiliar with the phrase, and who have perhaps not taken the opportunity to peruse the discussion of George Washington’s Farewell Address that was featured in this series so very many moons ago, a brief explanation is doubtless in order. Republicanism in the 18th century was most often an outgrowth of elite scholarly reverence for the literature, philosophy, and history of antiquity. The Greek city-states of the ancient world, along with the Roman Republic, were viewed by many social and political reformers as models fit for emulation because the values these societies seemed to embrace appeared to represent a virtuous, stable, and pragmatic alternative to the corruption and sectarian strife often attributed to contemporary European governments. Generally speaking these ancient states were organized along republican lines, whereby responsibility for governing was distributed among a variety of different offices, most of which were subject to regular election. These states accordingly promoted certain social values in an effort to encourage transparent and stable governance. These included, but were not limited to, reverence for public service, personal and collective virtue, and decentralised administration. Self-sacrifice was also characterised as a republican value, whereby members of the most privileged social orders within a state were under the strongest obligation to place their wealth and education at the service of the public good. Classical Republicanism, as it is often now described, was at the core of many 17th and 18th century European reform ideologies, including those embraced by English social and political dissenters and commentators like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, members of the Whig Country Party like Lord Bolingbroke, and playwright Joseph Addison. 
           
As referenced above (and more extensively in weeks past *hint hint*), George Washington was a noted devotee and promoter of classical republican principles. His Farewell Address groans under the weight of the man’s forbearance, selfless devotion to public service, and dedication to virtue in civic life. Clearly the republican values embraced by certain English thinkers found an audience among the educated elite of the American colonies as well – Addison’s Cato, a Tragedy, as I’m so fond of repeating, was Washington’s favorite play. Observations, written by Mercy Otis Warren and published in the early spring of 1788, provides further evidence of the enthusiasm with which certain members of the Founding Generation embraced republican values as a standard by which to shape and to measure the public affairs of their own emerging nation. Warren’s particular republican affinity manifested itself in Observations by the expression of a variety of different positions on the nature of political power, the proper arrangement of a republican government, and the values she believed a republican society ought to embrace and promote. Also informative was her use of a specific allusion to a section of the Old Testament. This same passage had been referenced by radical English polemicist Thomas Paine in his 1776 pro-independence pamphlet Common Sense. Whether this was purposeful or coincidental, it seems likely that Warren’s perception of the political pitfalls her countrymen faced was not so far removed from the ideological plateau occupied by one of the 18th century’s most ardent, and radical, republicans.

As aforementioned, one of the values commonly embraced by classical republican ideology was a reverence for public service and self-sacrifice. In a republic, it was held, the interests of the individual must be understood to coincide with the interests of the general population, thereby ensuring that citizens would feel compelled to engage in acts of public service up to and including taking on the responsibilities of public office. Rather than represent an opportunity for personal enrichment, then, legislative, executive, judicial, or even military positions would be seen as opportunities for the individual to contribute to the greater good in which they share, even if it required them to sacrifice a portion of their comfort, wealth, or energy. Warren spoke to this ideal in section one of Observations. “Every uncorrupted American yet hopes,” she wrote,

To see [their nation’s freedom] supported by the vigour, the justice, the wisdom and unanimity of the people, in spite of the deep-laid plots, the secret intrigues, or the bold effrontery of those interested and avaricious adventurers for place, who intoxicated with the ideas of distinction and preferment have prostrated every worthy principle beneath the shrine of ambition.”

Warren’s disdain for the “avaricious” office-seeker, who feigns concern for the public good while seeking only to improve their situation, is clear enough. The 18th-century association of “interest” with corruption and greed has been discussed in weeks past, and here it is deployed once more in its negative sense alongside “preferment” and “distinction.” Whereas a monarchical society, like 18th century Britain, might have embraced the existence of titles and honors (knighthoods, peerages, or post-nominals like QC or OBE) as a means of encouraging service to the realm, Warren hoped that republican America would instead endorse service in pursuit of higher goals like the preservation and promotion of liberty and justice. Yet she also perceived in the United States of the 1780s the existence of men who evidently had little use for such abstract rewards. It was they who most ardently supported the adoption of a more centralised system of government, she asserted, who claimed that, “Republicanism is dwindled into theory,” and who needed to be opposed by an even stronger dedication to republican principles.      

            Indeed, it was the actions and sentiments of these men, real or perceived, which seemed principally to raise Warren’s ire. Though she failed to provide any specific examples of the insincere and vainglorious persons she was actively denouncing – an admission, perhaps, to 18th century pretensions of gentility and discretion – she questioned where the supporters of the proposed constitution had been during the years of the Revolutionary War. In light of the deep significance Warren attached to that conflict, and the desire she displayed to honor the sacrifices of its American participants, it is perhaps not surprising that she perceived the war as a kind of yardstick by which to measure the virtue of her countrymen and the nation they shared. “Were not some of them hidden in the corners of obscurity,” she accordingly wrote of the proposed constitution’s most ardent supporters, “And others speculating for fortune, by sporting with public money [.]” Through these criticisms it is fairly easy to infer Warren’s decidedly republican temperament. By accusing certain among the supporters of the new federal charter of hiding during the Revolutionary War “in the corners of obscurity” she rather clearly demonstrated her own belief in the primacy of public service. When these men took refuge from the conflict between Britain and its rebellious colonies, out of cowardice or whatever motive, they abandoned any regard for the public good. While this may seem a rather harsh response on Warren’s part – berating men for attempting to avoid a bloody war – the fact that she felt the need to call attention to it would seem a fairly clear indication of her strong feelings on the matter.

            Similarly definitive was her criticism of those who, while others were risking their lives from one day to the next, were “speculating for fortune, by sporting with public money [.]” This was almost certainly intended to reference some of the financiers of the Revolution, the bankers, investors, and merchants who enriched themselves by exploiting the needs of the war effort to turn a profit on bonds, supplies, and various other commodities. No doubt Alexander Hamilton, 1st Secretary of the Treasury, or Robert Morris, Superintendent of Finance during the Revolutionary War, would have argued that such men were necessary to the ultimate victory of the United States because of the way they facilitated the movement of currency, and made it possible for the Continental Congress to raise the sums it needed to fund the war. Warren would surely have disagreed, however valid a point this might have been; speculation, as the context of Observations makes clear, was in her mind a disreputable pursuit. She was certainly not alone in this; Thomas Jefferson frequently evinced a categorical disdain for those who “played the market,” and public disagreements in the 1790s between those who supported the creation of a national bank and those who rejected the very idea often pivoted on the relative evil or utility of facilitating financial speculation. Of particular significance, however, is Warren’s inclusion of the phrase “sporting with public money.” Here her dislike for reckless commodity trading took on a distinctly republican aspect. Most likely the root of her objection lay in the fact that, beyond attempting to profit by exploiting the work of actual producers and manipulating prices to meet their own ends, those who speculated with public money were guilty of appropriating funds that belonged to the community at large. If a transaction thus funded were to have failed, therefore, the facilitator would have lost a sum of money that was not theirs to risk, harming the economic prospects of the general public and lessening the ability of government to accomplish the ends for which it was created. By calling attention in Observations to the presence of such speculators among the supporters of the proposed constitution, Warren therefore also made clear the contempt she felt for those who would dare risk the public good in attempting to enrich themselves.     
                
            Mercy Otis Warren’s manifest concern for the public good was further elaborated upon in section nine of Observations, joined this time by an exhortation for supporters of the proposed federal charter to embrace a measure of self-sacrifice in their formulation of a new government for the United States. What specifically raised her bile and elicited commentary was the lack she perceived in the Constitution for the rotation of federal offices. There was not, she argued, “Anything to prevent the perpetuity of office in the same hands for life; which by a little well timed bribery, will probably be done [.]” Such an eventuality was bad enough, essentially placing power in the hands of a self-selecting pseudo-aristocracy. Worse yet, Warren contended, was the manner in which allowing men to run for and be elected to the same office without limit would cause the American people to, “Lose the advantage of that check to the overbearing insolence of office, which by rendering him ineligible at certain periods, keeps the mind of man in quilibrio, and teaches him the feelings of the governed, and better qualifies him to govern in his turn.” Within these statements Warren once again revealed a philosophical outlook that was strongly republican, and drew upon precedents native to America and distant antiquity.

            As aforementioned, at the core of 18th century republican ideology was a reverence for the politics and philosophy of the Roman Republic and the democracies of Ancient Greece. The former in particular, with its Cato the Younger and Marcus Tullius Cicero, was a source of inspiration for those seeking exemplars of public virtue and resistance to corruption, and it was in the unwritten constitution of the Roman Republic that the need for a rotation of offices was most strongly expressed in the ancient world. While to the uninitiated the government of republican Rome can seem like a chaotic tangle of executive, military and legislative posts and jurisdictions, it was considered by the Romans themselves, and by later commentators, to be a model of balance and an efficient facilitator of individual public service. Though appointment to the Roman Senate was for life, the many magistrates that made up the executive branch of government were term limited and subject to election. Among these were the Military Tribunes, Quaestors, and Aediles (elected by the Tribal Assembly), and the Praetors, Consuls, and Censors (elected by the Century Assembly). Each of these offices enjoyed a one year term, fulfilled a specific role within the government of the republic, possessed minimum age requirements (i.e. one had to be at least 42 to be elected Consul), and could veto the edicts of the officials below them in precedence. After having served in any of these offices, a person could not by law be eligible for re-election to the same office until fully 10 years had elapsed. The purpose of such a measure was, in theory, to circulate authority amongst as large a group as possible (within the established social orders) so as to prevent endemic corruption.

In spite of its apparent reliance on frequent elections, however, Roman republicanism was not particularly democratic. The franchise was generally restricted to the various legislative councils, and citizens within those councils restricted in who they could vote for based on their social status (be it Plebian or Patrician). It also bears mentioning that the imposition of term limits on elective offices was ultimately incapable of staving off the rise of venality in Rome that arguably led to the downfall of the republic. That being said, and as the reverence of figures like Cato and Cicero indicates, there did seem to be a redemptive quality to 18th century republican thought. Though Rome did eventually succumb to corruption, civil war, and tyranny, followed by a centuries-long period of authoritarian rule punctuated by occasional bursts of administrative chaos, Enlightenment reformers and supporters of classical republicanism seemed to hold that the principles embodied in the ancient Roman constitution were worth attempting to rejuvenate. Idealistic though this effort no doubt was, the fact of it does explain how a concept like term limits became a key characteristic of the reforms and new models of government proposed and promoted by devotees of republicanism in the 17th and 18th centuries.

This is about where America re-enters the conversation. As previously discussed, a sizable proportion of the 18th century American colonial elite were the beneficiaries of a classical education. Among the subjects in which they received instruction, including logic and rhetoric, was the study of the literature, politics, and history of the ancient world. Republican Rome loomed large in this curriculum, and so many members of the Founding Generation were quite familiar with the works of that civilization’s great statesmen and philosophers, and through them imbibed an appreciation for the particular virtues and principles that the ancient Romans ascribed to their political culture. When it came time, in the late 1770s following the declaration of American independence, for the various states to draft constitutions to replace their colonial charters, the opportunity to express and embody this appreciation was accordingly, and quite widely, seized upon. The imposition of term limits on elected offices was one of the most obvious signifiers of American elite’s abiding classicism, and they appeared quite frequently in the resulting documents.

The Constitution of Pennsylvania, for instance, decreed that a person could serve in the unicameral General Assembly for only four out of seven years. In addition, the Supreme Executive Council, from which the President and Vice President of the state were drawn, was composed of twelve men who were to be elected to three year terms followed by a mandatory four year interval before re-election. The Constitution of Virginia similarly mandated that a person elected to the office of Governor was required to vacate the post after a period of no more than three years, and could not be re-elected until another four had passed. In rather unique innovation, the document also stated that two members of the eight-man Council of State were to be removed by ballot every three years, and that these two would be ineligible to rejoin the Council for a further three years. The Constitution of Maryland echoed Virginia’s limit on the office of Governor, while the Constitution of North Carolina instructed that the same post could not be held by anyone for more than three in six successive years. The Constitution of South Carolina meanwhile limited service as Governor to two consecutive years with an interval of four, and the Constitution of Delaware to three years with an interval of three more. The Articles of Confederation, which the United States Constitution ultimately replaced, were similarly concerned with limiting the ability of any officeholder from becoming too entrenched. Article 5 of the selfsame document consequently limited service as a delegate in the Continental Congress to no more than three years in “any term of six [.]”

If these examples are any indication – and they certainly seem to be – Americans were already abundantly familiar with the principle of terms limits by the time the proposed constitution was being debated in the late 1780s. And this familiarity extended beyond the realm of theory, beyond scholarly discussion and hypothetical models. By 1788, when Warren’s Observations was published, citizens of a number of states had been living and working under the authority of governments that practiced the rotation of offices for a decade or more. Admittedly, she did not live in such a state herself – the Constitution of Massachusetts placed no term limits on the offices of Governor, Senator, or Representative. Yet she clearly understood, based on the above-quoted passage of Observations, why a republican government might require such limits to be placed upon its officers. Without some provision for the rotation of offices, Warren argued in Observations, Americans under the proposed constitution might lose a valuable check on the “overbearing insolence of office,” that, “keeps the mind of man in quilibrio, and teaches him the feelings of the governed, and better qualifies him to govern in his turn.” The way this statement is phrased speaks to Warren’s prioritization of public service over personal ambition. What mattered to her, and what she perceived the proposed constitution as being incapable of doing, was ensuring that the interests of the community were being served. Men might well aspire to national office under the new federal charter for less than selfless reasons. Though it may have been unavoidable to keep such persons from being elected, Warren evidently believed it was possible, if not imperative, to ensure that federal officeholders were forced to sacrifice their ambitions in service of the general public. Accordingly, if a man were not fitted to govern by his own principles, or lack thereof, measures could be taken to, “better [qualify] him to govern in his turn.” This was a very republican sentiment, and far from the only one Warren expressed in Observations.

Friday, February 5, 2016

Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions, Part VIII: Character

            Accepting that Mercy Otis Warren was in every measurable way the equal of her male counterparts, in terms of the quality and substance of her written commentary, it remains to determine where on the spectrum of American Revolutionary politics she might best be located. The works of Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson, among others, have provided generations of scholars with insight into the philosophical and partisan leanings of these giants of the Founding Generation. Warren having possessed, if Observations is any indication, as keen a mind and as sharp a pen as any of them, it stands to reason that a thorough reading of that same work ought to yield a reasonable approximation of what sort of political being she was; a measure of her character, as it were. Aside from all of the specific concerns she expressed in Observations about the nature and origins of the proposed constitution, which have already been discussed at length, there remains a great deal to be gleaned from that document about how Warren identified herself, her sympathies, and her personal philosophy.

            Indeed, a search of Observations for certain key words, phrases, and ideas provides a fairly clear indication of what faction among the Revolutionary Generation, if any, Mercy Otis Warren belonged to. Accordingly, several characteristics embodied within the selfsame text suggest themselves as evidence of Warren falling within what might best be referred to as the classical Whig tradition. These include her evident regard for transparency in government, her revulsion of standing armies, her distaste for monarchy, and her reverence for republican ideals like self-sacrifice, the rotation of offices, and the primacy of public service. Bearing in mind her already-established affinity for Anti-Federalism, Warren might therefore best be described as more a Jeffersonian than a Hamiltonian; a person for whom centralised power was almost always corrosive to the best intentions of those in authority. The text of Observations would seem to amply bear this out, in the general sense – being an essay intended to defeat the adoption of a centralised federal government – as well as the specific.

            Warren’s ardent belief in the need for transparency in government – referring to a high degree of openness, ease of communication, or accountability – is made clear by arguments she deployed in sections one, two, twelve, and eighteen of Observations. Evidently she viewed both the proposed constitution itself, as well as the manner in which it was created, as being purposefully obscure in a way that would otherwise deny the American people the fullest expression of their natural rights. Of the former she stated, in section one, that the new federal charter represented, “A most complicated system of government; marked on the one side with the dark, secret and profound intrigues, of the statesman, long practised in the purlieus of despotism [.]” To her mind, rather than benefit the average American citizen who was suffering in the 1780s under the burden of crushing debt or a lack of viable markets for their produce or manufactures, the proposed constitution had been designed to aid the security and enrichment of only those most skilled in the arts of intrigue and subterfuge.

There would appear, in this expression of distaste for politically-motivated subterfuge, a note of similarity with the English Country Party distaste for the bowing, scraping, and scheming of the opposing Court Party. Country Party Whigs like Lord Bolingbroke had decried the shift of power away from the House of Commons and into the hands of the Prime Minister that occurred in the late 17th and early 18th centuries at the hands of men like Robert Walpole. This occurrence was not dissimilar to the shift of authority that Warren, and indeed many of the Anti-Federalists, claimed to perceive in the proposed constitution, in that it threatened to weaken the states and empower the federal government. If the financiers and government ministers of early 18th century Britain had constituted a Court Party, mutually reinforcing each other’s ambitions while monopolizing power for themselves, it might have accordingly seemed to critics of the new federal charter like Warren that the Framers and their merchant allies hoped to constitute an American counterpart upon the adoption of a more centralized, and therefore more amendable, form of government.

Warren likewise appeared to detect a degree of intrigue, and an accordant lack of transparency, in the manner by which the proposed constitution was submitted to the states for ratification. As aforementioned, the document in question, once a final draft was agreed upon by the Framers, was submitted to the thirteen states for ratification by specifically-called conventions. By the time Warren sat to pen Observations, the convention called by the government of her home state, Massachusetts, had already met and voted to approve the proposed constitution (187-168). This represented the closest result then witnessed (Rhode Island would later vote to ratify, 34-32), and in such a narrow margin of victory Warren evidently perceived a degree of manipulation and corruption unbecoming of a supposedly free people. “By the chicanery, intrigue, and false colouring,” she wrote in section eighteen,

Of those who plume themselves, more on their education than their political, patriotic, or private virtues -- the imbecility of some, and the duplicity of others, a majority of the Convention of Massachusetts have been flattered with the ideas of amendments, when it will be too late to complain [.]

Doubtless Warren hoped that whatever flaws the proposed constitution possessed, and whatever criticisms people like her brought forth, would be openly and exhaustively discussed during the ratifications debates with the understanding that the process would not move forward until all major concerns were reasonably satisfied. Surely this would have constituted an open and accessible process, whereby men of good conscience could air their grievances and expect to be given a fair hearing. What Warren perceived in the actual proceedings, however, was evidently quite the opposite. “Political, patriotic, or private virtues” did not rule the day, but were rather defeated by “chicanery, intrigue, and false colouring.” Rather than hold fast to the need for amendments before ratification, opponents of the Constitution were somehow charmed into agreeing to pursue them after ratification. What other explanation could there be for this abrupt about face than a resort to trickery?

            There is no evidence presently accessible to suggest that corruption was behind the ratification of the Constitution by the Massachusetts convention. Nor, it should be added, is it completely beyond imagining that money, favors, or threats were exchanged during the proceedings. Ultimately, the validity of Warren’s suspicion is immaterial. What matters in the present context is that her expression of concern and disdain indicated a desire on her part for the public affairs of her country to be carried out in an honest, open, and transparent manner. Perhaps her mistrust of the Massachusetts result was due mainly to it running contrary to her own desire; perhaps if the convention had voted to reject the proposed constitution by a similarly close margin she would not have perceived the presence of a conspiracy. There can, in truth, be no way of knowing. That being the case, it is necessary to take the author of Observations at her word. Opposed to the proposed constitution itself though she undeniably was, the nature of certain of Warren’s written criticisms indicate that she was eager to promote, beyond what she felt about the document under consideration, transparency in the manner by which it was being publicly evaluated.

            That being said, Warren also levelled more specific criticisms at the Constitution and the system of government it outlined. These too provide insight into her political and philosophical sensibilities. Section two of Observations contains such a complaint, which, because of its brevity, will be excerpted here in full. “There is no security in the proffered system,” Warren wrote, speaking of the proposed federal government,

Either for the rights of conscience or the liberty of the Press: Despotism usually while it is gaining ground, will suffer men to think, say, or write what they please; but when it is established, if it is thought necessary to subserve the purposes of arbitrary power, the most unjust restrictions may take place in the first instance, and an imprimator on the Press in the next, may silence the complaints, and forbid the most decent remonstrances of an injured and oppressed people.

Two fairly reasonable conclusions may be gleaned from this passage. The first is quite general; because she expressed alarm that the rights of conscience and free expression were not expressly protected by the proposed constitution, it’s exceedingly likely that Warren supported the inclusion of a bill of rights. The absence of such a fundamental protection of individual rights was a common complaint among the Anti-Federalists, and many of the amendments that were proposed during the ratification process sought to remedy the apparent defect. Freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press were no doubt high on the list of rights to be protected, and accordingly are all guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution that was adopted, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, in December, 1791.

            The second conclusion to be drawn from the above-quoted extract is more specific than the first, and has to do with the 18th-century American conception of press freedom, as distinct from an orthodox British conception of the same. Public discontent aimed at the enforcement of censorship was admittedly widespread in contemporary Britain, particularly in the 17th century, but government responses tended to be slow in coming. Accordingly, many liberal reformers took up the cause of press freedom, most notably poet John Milton (1608-1674) and philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). Milton’s Areopagitica (1644) was a particularly eloquent and impassioned defence of freedom of expression that was published during the tumult of the English Civil War. It has since proven highly influential, though it fell on deaf ears at the time of its publication. Locke made greater headway in the 1690s when he successfully swayed a parliamentary committee to abandon the renewal of the Licensing Act of 1662, though he seemed at the time more concerned with the effect it would have on the regulation of copyright than the promotion of widespread press freedom. The resulting conclusion of government-regulated newspaper licensing in 1695 (before which all publications required government approval) did allow for a much greater degree of press freedom, even into the 1770s the Crown continued to bring libel suits against publishers or authors whose work was considered to be seditious. This institutional rigidity doubtless contributed to the general lack of formal legal protections within the English (and later British) common law for freedom of expression in its various forms. The Bill of Rights of 1689, an extremely important influence on the Declaration of Independence and the American Bill of Rights, provides an interesting example of the same. Though said charter guarantees an individual right to bear arms and a right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, it contains no protections for a broad freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Speech within parliamentary debate was declared free from impeachment or questioning, but the general population received no such security.

In light of the many ways that English history, politics, philosophy, and law are known to have influenced the opinions and actions of the American Founders, it would seem, on the surface, far from improbable that they would have experienced similar conditions in the colonies, and in turn would have developed similar opinions about the place of free speech and a free press in their public discourse. Warren, however, was clearly in favor of a free press, holding it as the proper forum for, “The most decent remonstrances of an injured and oppressed people,” and therefore a likely target for aspiring despots. How this came to be concerns both the particular kinds of English philosophy that the colonial American elites were drawn to, as well as the influence of certain specifically American paradigms. Areopagitica and the political discourse of John Locke, along with a great swath of English radical literature like Cato’s Letters, found a receptive audience among the educated classes in colonial America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The sense of protest inherent in the work of these great liberal advocates no doubt helped condition the way many literate Americans regarded the role of public discourse, government, and the press. The result was a somewhat more tenuous and combative relationship between the colonial governments who attempted to enforce censorship and the publishers and editors who attempted to defy it. The libel trial of John Peter Zenger (1697-1746) provides a particularly illustrative example of this often confrontational dynamic.

            German by birth, Zenger migrated to New York with his family in 1710 and found work as an apprentice to printer William Bradford (1663-1752). In 1725 he became a commercial printer in his own right, and in the 1730s began publishing The New-York Weekly Journal. In 1733, Zenger became embroiled in a highly public confrontation with William Cosby (1690-1736), newly-appointed governor of the Province of New York. After publishing a series of articles highly critical of some of Cosby’s actions (wrangling with the Executive Council over his salary, replacing the head of the New York Supreme Court with someone more favorable, etc.), Zenger was charged with libel by the colonial government and subsequently brought to trial in 1735. Amidst widespread pubic fervor over the case, Zenger’s lawyers defended his decision to publish the offending material on the grounds that nothing that was proven to be truthful could be considered defamation. The jury ultimately found in Zenger’s favor, and though subsequent governors attempted to reassert press censorship up through the 1770s, the connection between literary truth and liberty of the press became firmly lodged in the American public consciousness.

            A further expression of this concept can be found in yet another printed affirmation of individual rights, in this case the Virginia Declaration of Rights that accompanied that state’s first constitution in 1776. Drafted by Virginia lawyer and legislator George Mason (1725-1792), the document affirmed a great many prerogatives, both as they pertained to the community at large as well as to individual citizens. These included, among others, a proscription against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment (a direct lift from the Bill of Rights of 1689), a guarantee of the right of trial by jury, and a prohibition against the hereditary possession of public offices. Of particular interest is section twelve, which declared, “That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” Within the colonial American context, and certainly within the British, this clear affirmation of press freedom represented a major break with precedent. In spite of public agitation to the contrary, no government in the Anglo-American world to that point had ever endorsed such an open-ended assurance of free expression. Admittedly, the Virginia Declaration of Rights likely represented the high tide of American revolutionary liberalism. Subsequent events, including the successful ratification of the Constitution, would prove that a sufficient portion of the American population was amenable to some restrictions on the exercise of their rights in the name of security and stability. That being said, the convictions that motivated the Declaration’s drafting and approval were in part sustained in subsequent years by a vocal subset of Americans who continued to be highly suspicious of centralized authority, at times to the point of paranoia, and highly active in the protection and promotion of the rights and privileges won during the recent conflict with Britain. Mercy Otis Warren was undoubtedly a member of this political and philosophical community, and argued accordingly in her 1788 Observations.

            Besides making explicit calls for administrative and political transparency, and arguing strongly in favor of freedom of the press, Warren also made clear her personal ideology by stating in Observations her unequivocal disdain for the idea of a standing army. As opposed to a militia, which is theoretically composed of ordinary citizens called to serve during times of crisis, a standing army is a professional military force that serves during peace as well as war. While this may sound, in an era when few countries do not possess some kind of permanent military establishment, like a rather innocuous proposition, Warren found the implications of an army always at the beck and call of a central government extremely distressing. “Freedom revolts at the idea,” she wrote in section six,

When the Divan, or the Despot, may draw out his dragoons to suppress the murmurs of a few, who may yet cherish those sublime principles which call forth the exertions, and lead to the best improvements of the human mind. It is hoped that this country may yet be governed by milder methods than are usually displayed beneath the bannerets of military law.

What seemed to concern Warren, if this passage is any indication, was the power that placing a permanent military at the command of a relatively small group of people (like a government) represented, and in turn the temptation to abuse that power for personal or political gain. A militia was not nearly so threatening because, customarily, its existence as a military force was dependent on the will of the political community it served. If not called to arms by the appropriate legislative authority, Parliament or the various colonial legislatures in the Anglo-American tradition, such a militia represented a minimal threat to said community. Accordingly, the manner in which it might be put to use, say, influencing the outcome of an election or silencing public dissent, was limited by its very nature.

A standing army was an altogether different, and far more threatening, beast in the eyes of many Americans who had become accustomed to the exclusive use of militias because it essentially possessed a life of its own. Once called into existence, it persisted, constantly trained and constantly armed, and yet always at the command of a body (like a government) whose everyday concerns were mainly political. And to what end? What could possibly be the purpose of keeping a force of men in arms when they have no enemy to fight? What mischief might they resort to, to occupy their time and justify their existence? Worse yet, what mischief might they be put to, by those who commanded their allegiance? Suppressing “the murmurs of a few” was a likely start, and the end of it might only be guessed at. Warren attempted as much, further on in section six of Observations. “At the rescript of the Monarch,” she wrote, a standing army,

May either be employed to extort the enormous sums that will be necessary to support the civil list – to maintain the regalia of power – and the splendour of the most useless part of the community, or they may be sent into foreign countries for the fulfilment of treaties, stipulated by the President and two-thirds of the Senate.

This additional passage further indicates the ends to which Warren feared a standing military, in a specifically American context, might be deployed. Particularly telling is her association of military power, taxation, and the pomp and circumstance that often accompanies expressions of arbitrary authority. By tying the existence of a standing army to the maintenance of the “regalia of power” and the “splendour of the most useless part of the community,” Warren emphasized the capriciousness a military establishment might be forced to serve, and the resulting danger such an entity posed to the community at large.

            This was a mentality very common within the political culture of Revolutionary America. The late war with Britain had frequently been characterized as a crusade against arbitrary power, unrepresentative taxation, and European-style militarism. The United States was, by comparison with its enemy, a very humble nation (materially and economically), highly concerned with the rights of its citizens, and highly disdainful of traditional hierarchies. It stands to reason, therefore, that upon the achievement of victory in 1783 there were those in America who sought to turn their newly-empowered sense of righteousness inward in an effort to purge the nation of any lingering monarchical aspects and thereafter prevent backsliding. Standing armies were a perennial bogeyman put to use in these efforts. Critics of Britain had summoned the spectre of military oppression during the colonial period, particularly after incidents like the 1770 Boston Massacre, and American Whigs (or Anti-Federalists, as the case may be) carried on the rhetorical and philosophical tradition through the 1780s between the end of the Revolutionary War and the adoption of the United States Constitution. Doubtless they felt able to hold forth on the dangers of unchecked militarism because, though the United States had itself just emerged from a costly war in which it had made use of a traditionally-trained and organized fighting force, the Continental Army was unlike its European counterparts, and certainly differed from what Americans had experienced of the British Army.

            Whereas sizeable numbers of British soldiers had been stationed in the American colonies during the 1760s and 1770s in spite of the fact that the last declared war had ended in 1763, the life of the Continental Army was essentially coterminous with the length of the Revolutionary War. Born in 1775 out of a desire to defend the rights and liberties which Congress believed the British government was actively encroaching upon, the force was funded and supplied by the various states – accompanied, as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton attested, by much wrangling and hand-wringing – for the duration of the war, and in 1783 was demobilized and reduced to little more than a token garrison force. In this sense, the Continental Army behaved much more like a militia than a permanent military establishment. That Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief in December, 1783 was no doubt symbolic of this fact for many of his contemporaries; America’s great general, a man who in Europe would jealously guard his rank and the status attached to it, relinquished his position on his own initiative. Given the significance of this gesture alone, and what it said about the nation that the United States hoped to become, it is thus not hard to understand why people like Mercy Otis Warren balked at even the slightest nod in the direction of approval for a permanent military establishment in the text of the proposed constitution. The United States was not a nation that sought martial glory, or attempted to enforce a preferred outcome on other nations by its overwhelming military might. No doubt it seemed to Warren and her contemporaries that it fell to them to prevent it from becoming such.

            Of course, American antipathy for the concept of a permanent military during times of peace had deeper roots than the history of the Continental Army and the selflessness of George Washington might suggest. In addition to the suspicion with which Enlightenment thought regarded unchecked militarism, drawing upon the history of Ancient Rome and the role that the Roman Legion played in the transition from republic to empire, there were also specifically British precedents for disdaining or fearing standing armies that no doubt influenced American philosophy and political thought. The 17th century, perhaps the most turbulent and most influential period in British history, witnessed the attempts of two monarchs to consolidate their power in the form of military establishments, either by circumventing the authority of Parliament to call men to military service (Charles I), or by creating standing armies during times of peace as a guard against domestic instability (James II). Charles attempted the former during the opening phase of English Civil War (1642-1651) when he set about using the antiquated Commissions of Array in an attempt to expand his military following. Without going into too much detail, the Commissions were a means by which a monarch could raise an armed force on his own authority without the approval of Parliament. Charles resorted to issuing Commissions of Array in 1642, centuries after they had ceased to be commonplace, in response to the efforts of Parliament to cut off his ability to control the county militias by taking away his customary appointment of the Lord Lieutenants (who raised and commended the individual militias). Though the Commissions failed to greatly affect the military disposition of Charles’ forces, they did represent something of a propaganda victory for the Parliamentarians. By attempting to unilaterally and arbitrarily assert his authority to call to arms a large military force in order to do battle with the elected representatives of the realm, Charles ostensibly confirmed the veracity of the Parliament’s accusations that he was little better than a tyrant.

Charles’ son, James II, became similarly associated with the threat of military tyranny when he attempted to create and enlarge a standing army over the course of his brief reign (1685-1689). In fairness to James, his time on the throne was particularly contentious, and his reaction to instability was largely a matter of self-preservation. The converted Catholic ruler of a kingdom dominated by a firmly entrenched Anglican hierarchy, he faced rebellions in England (led by nephew James Scott, Duke of Monmouth) and Scotland (led by Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll) soon after attaining the throne, and was ultimately deposed by a third rebellion (led by Dutch Prince William of Orange) in 1688. His desire to seek the protection of a standing army that answered to his command alone is therefore understandable. That being said, the antipathy that James’ efforts generated doubtless contributed to his ouster during the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and proved strong enough to guarantee the inclusion of an appropriate clause in the aforementioned Bill of Rights of 1689. Said document specifically mandated, in defiance to the efforts of King James, that no standing army would be permitted to exist in England during a time of peace without the express consent of Parliament. By the dawn of the 18th century it had thus been effectively and unequivocally determined that peacetime armies were not justified by the traditions, laws, or history of England, and that the creation of military forces was the exclusive responsibility of the elected legislature.   

            It would be a gross generalization to conclude that because most of the members of the Founding Generation were of British descent that they were all therefore heavily influenced by British history, philosophy, literature, or law. Several among their number where of Dutch or French extraction, and a great many more expressed a strong affinity for the work of French philosophers like Gabriel Bonnot de Mably or Charles-Louis de Secondat, better known as the Baron de Montesquieu. That being said, it is an observable, demonstrable fact that many of the Founders did draw inspiration and example from the history of Britain, and in particular from the work of some of the country’s more radical social and philosophical reformers. It’s entirely possible that Mercy Otis Warren possessed no personal knowledge of the attempts of Charles I and James II to increase the power and autonomy of the monarchy by skirting Parliamentary authority. It seems, however, far less likely given the content of Observations that she was unfamiliar with the work of authors and essayists like Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and John Locke who had championed the rights of the people, and Parliament, over the prerogatives of the Crown during Britain’s chaotic 17th century. In spite of their at-times limited popularity at home, these men, and other like them, went on to wield an outsized influence with the 18th-century Anglo-American colonial elite. Combined with the post-Glorious Revolution reverence for “the rights of Englishmen” that seems to have permeated British culture by the era of the American Revolution, the ideas that these reformers put forward helped to produce an American political culture that was inordinately suspicious of centralized authority and the many mechanism by which it exerted itself. Standing armies were chief among these mechanisms to be feared; British history and radical philosophy attested to the fact, and the experience of the Revolutionary War doubtless sharpened many Americans’ sense of mistrust towards any who supported the creation of a military establishment in the United States.