Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, Part IX: More British than British, contd.

While Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration did not go so far as to make explicit the evident dedication of the united colonies to preserve the traditions of British constitutionalism, it did ultimately offer a remarkably powerful rebuke against the contemporary British government which could not have but made perfectly clear the nature and depth of the conviction nurtured by the delegates to the Continental Congress and the colonies they represented. Namely, after having described the repeated and respectful petitions for relief that had been submitted by the united colonies to the Crown over the course of the Anglo-American crisis near the end of the fifth paragraph therein, Jefferson and Dickinson asserted that,

We have pursued every temperate, every respectful measure; we have even proceeded to break off our commercial intercourse with our fellow-subjects, as the last peaceable admonition, that our attachment to no Nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.

Consider, for a moment, the implication of that last clause. In spite of pursuing the stated objective of achieving reconciliation between the Thirteen Colonies and the Crown, Parliament, and people of Britain, here a document issued by representatives of these selfsame colonies declared without ambiguity or equivocation that the American people valued their freedom more than they valued their relationship with their nominal motherland. While doubtless offered sincerely, it would seem rather difficult now to imagine the circumstances within which either the membership of the Continental Congress believed this sentiment to be conducive to conciliation or the reigning ministry in London would have received it in the spirit it was given.

Taken at face value, the sentiment at the core of this affirmation would seem to be something on the order of “If forced to choose, it is better to be free than to be British.” From the perspective of a government in the process of confronting an armed insurrection in one of its colonial possessions, whose members had borne witness to over a decade of tumult originating from that same quarter of the empire, and whose duties arguably demanded a degree of suspicion and mistrust whenever that empire was in any way threatened by the prospect of dissolution, it would seem exceedingly unlikely that this kind of declaration would be met as anything other than an expression of extreme ingratitude. Britain had protected the colonies from invasion and conquest by rival European powers, provided a shield for their commerce in the form of the indomitable Royal Navy, and offered a seemingly unquenchable market for the various commodities they had it in their power to extract, produce, or cultivate. And in exchange, it more than likely appeared to Lord North and his ministers, the united colonies had the temerity to assert that liberty was more important than any attachment they might have felt to any nation on Earth.

What was the meaning of “liberty” to these colonists anyway? Were they not some of the freest people in the world? Didn’t the British Constitution guarantee to them a set of rights and freedoms that the greater share of the globe could only envy? And what of the loyalty, fealty, and gratitude they owed to the nation that had nurtured them since their infancy? The men who had died upon the field of battle in defence of the colonies during the Seven Years War – at Fort Oswego, and Fort Carillon, and Quebec City, among others – did their blood, their suffering, and their lives count for so little? These and similar questions doubtless lashed at the minds of the members of Lord North’s government as the Anglo-American crisis shifted from popular protest to armed rebellion over the course of the middle 1770s. As it happened, the answers that the collective leadership of the united colonies were most likely to offer were almost certainly among the least satisfying it was possible to conceive. It wasn’t simply that the colonists would rather be free than British, Jefferson and Dickinson argued in their 1775 Declaration. Rather, it was that they believed that an attachment to freedom which made no allowance for loyalty or sentiment was absolutely fundamental to what it meant to be British.

In deference to this assertion, the history of England to that period had arguably shown as much. In spite of their supposed fealty to the Crown, members of the landed aristocracy had taken up arms against their sovereign during, among many other notable revolts, the First (1215-1217) and Second (1264-1267) Baron’s Wars, the Despenser War (1321-1322), the Rising of the North (1569-1570), and the Monmouth Rebellion (1685). The English Civil War (1642-1651) combined a similar attempt by influential magnates to reign in executive authority with strains of popular discontent over religious and social inequality, while the aforementioned Glorious Revolution (1688) witnessed the overthrow of a reigning monarch, the solidification of Catholic exclusion from public affairs, and the death knell of political absolutism in Britain. Laying aside the various colonial precedents for a similarly vigilant sense of citizenship – Bacon’s Rebellion (1676), the Boston Revolt (1689), the War of the Regulation (1765-1771), etc. – the history of Britain alone would seem to have provided the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies with ample reason to understand their status as British subjects as an identity that actively embraced radical resistance to infringements upon one’s rights and freedoms. Granted, the leaders of the cited aristocratic rebellions were generally fighting to preserve the privileges of their social class or to dispel the power of adversarial royal favorites – hardly the kinds of objectives one identifies with popular sovereignty or constitutionalism. But the principle embodied by their resort to arms – that freedom from an excessive authority was more important than fealty to that authority – nonetheless locates their actions within the same hallowed tradition as the Roundheads of the Civil War or the Williamites during the Glorious Revolution. To be British, these examples affirmed and reiterated, was to be jealous of one’s rights, jealous of authority, and willing to resist the latter in defence of the former.

That the membership of the Continental Congress and their supporters in the various colonies were both aware of and embraced this distinctly British legacy of vigilance over loyalty is borne out by certain references to key moments in British history which they sought to utilize in their ongoing struggle. The use of the term “Whig,” for example, or the invocation of a past “revolution” or of “Revolution Principles” in the discourse of people or organizations that supported the petitions and remonstrances of the united colonies against successive British governments showed a distinct consciousness of and connection to Britain’s rich legacy of radical politics. Whig, as a political designation, originated in the 1640s as a slur against a faction of the Presbyterian Scottish Covenanters whose violent opposition to an Episcopalian religious order – i.e. one that was governed by bishops and organized into dioceses – made them a source of derision and disdain among the Scottish supporters of Charles I. A shortening of the term “whiggamor” – a type of cattle driver native to the West of Scotland – Whig later came to refer in the late 1670s and early 1680s to the members of Parliament who opposed the potential ascension of James II to the throne on the grounds that his Catholic faith, tendency towards absolutism, and French relations threatened the religious freedom and civil liberties of the people of England. While, by the time of the Anglo-American crisis in the late 1760s and early 1770s the Whigs had since become a fairly mutable political faction whose history encompassed numerous periods in and out of government, the notion of being a Whig – as opposed to being a Tory – continued to carry with it connotations of radicalism, opposition to a strong executive, and a belief in the supremacy of Parliament.

It was for this reason that many of the early supporters of colonial resistance to the Stamp Act (1765), the Townshend Duties (1767), and the Tea Act (1773), among other particularly controversial pieces of contemporary British legislation, enthusiastically embraced the name of Whig for themselves and their allies. Not only did adopting such a moniker emphasize a degree of solidarity with the British Whigs – like the aforementioned William Pitt – who had publically and vehemently opposed such policies, but it simultaneously identified the campaign to preserve the rights and liberties of British America with past iterations of Whiggism whose adherents had sought to protect what they believed to be their accustomed and inviolable rights – to their faith, their government, or their property – against a powerful central authority. By way of specific example, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) had earlier referred in his satirical Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One (1773) to, “Zealous Whigs, and Friends of Liberty” as a group to which Britain ought to have shown particular enmity if it wished to divest itself of no small portion of its global dominion. Thomas Paine (1737-1809) similarly prized the title of Whig in his much-heralded pamphlet Common Sense (1776), implicitly identifying it with virtue, integrity, and the cause of American independence. For these men – and for no small number of their compatriots, it seemed – what could have variously been understood as a somewhat opaque artifact of a very specific moment in British history, a political slur, or the default designation for a fairly malleable Parliamentary faction became instead a symbol of resistance, a rallying cry, and a model of principle and ideal.

In spite of the significance that it would later acquire over the course of the struggle for American independence, the use of the word “revolution” within the pamphlets, treatises, remonstrances, and petitions of the American opposition to British authority during the height of the Anglo-American crisis in the 1760s and 1770s possessed a similar provenance to that of “Whig.” Far from intending to refer to any desired severing of ties between British America and Britain proper, “revolution” was almost always meant to evoke the aforementioned events of 1688-1689. Encompassing the overthrow of James II, the ascension of William & Mary, and the passage of the Bill of Rights, the – somewhat bombastically-named – Glorious Revolution remained, as of the late 18^th century, the peak and pinnacle of English/British constitutionalism. To refer, in the 1770s, to “the Revolution,” therefore, was to conjure the moment at which the spectre of arbitrary monarchy – an object that English civilization had grappled with for centuries – was well and truly banished. To support the principles of the same thus represented a particular appeal to or identification with the values and convictions – Parliamentary supremacy, free elections, due process, etc. – for which the memory of 1688 continued to stand.

Consider, to that end, even a modest sampling of the literature produced by the American opposition during the height of the Anglo-American crisis. Franklin, in his aforementioned satire aimed at the seeming determination of the contemporary British government to wholly and irrevocably alienate the American people, made specific reference to, “Revolution Principles,” as being possessed and nurtured by those to whom Britain had a particular interest in viewing as its enemies. John Adams (1735-1826), in the first of his 1775 Novanglus essays – written in response to the treatises of Massachusetts Loyalist Daniel Leonard (1740-1829) – declared that the conviction that,

All men by nature are equal; that kings are but the ministers of the people; that their authority is delegated to them by the people, for their good, and they have a right to resume it, and place it in other hands, or keep it themselves, whenever it is made use of to oppress them [,]

Likewise fell under this same sacred rubric. Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) made use of this same terminology in his A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress (1774) when expressing his understanding of the distance from the essence of decency and propriety the contemporary British government had strayed. Though the unconditional supporters of British authority in America may well have scoffed at colonial protestations, Hamilton wrote, would these same individuals shrug off similar complaints from, “The Mayor and Alderman of the City of London,” who, by their opposition to such measures as Parliament had lately enacted in America, “Signified [their] repugnancy to the principles of the revolution [?]”    

            In the aforementioned A Summary View of the Rights of British North America (1774), Jefferson himself likewise made note of the significance of the Glorious Revolution within the history of British constitutional government. Noting the tendency of English monarchs during the Middle Ages to dissolve a sitting of Parliament at their own discretion, Jefferson declared approvingly that, “Since the establishment, however, of the British constitution, at the glorious revolution, on its free and antient principles, neither his majesty, nor his ancestors, have exercised such a power of dissolution in the island of Great Britain [.]” To the Sage of Monticello, it seemed, the events of the Glorious Revolution represented a sea-change in the history and practice of government in Britain. Whereas before it, the Crown had enjoyed tremendous authority over the institutions of the realm, after it, the power of the monarchy was substantially restrained – to the benefit, it followed, of those whom said institutions were intended to represent. Just so, James Wilson (1742-1798) offered, in his Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (1774) that, contrary to the history of Parliament up to that point, “It was not till some years after the revolution, that the people could rely on the faithfulness of their representatives, or punish their perfidy.” As with Jefferson, Wilson appeared to mark the Glorious Revolution as a turning point in the saga of parliamentary government in Britain. Having thus permitted the people it had long claimed to serve to begin to depend in earnest on the integrity of the institution, “the revolution” thus signified the necessary upending of existing power structures in the name of the liberties and rights to which all British people could lay claim.

            Such a clear and evident regard for the often turbulent relationship described in British history between authority and sovereignty made itself known in certain of the institutions of the American Revolution as well. The notion of alternative governments to those recognized by the Crown – i.e. those which governed the individual colonies or even Congress itself – for example, was well-attested in the saga of British constitutionalism during moments of peak tension between the mechanisms of royal authority and established popular prerogatives. Just as the Anglo-American crisis gave rise in the 1770s to the various provincial congresses once uncooperative colonial legislatures were dissolved by governors loyal to the Crown – and just as the Continental Congress itself effectively stood in for a hostile Parliament as the de-facto legislative body for British America – so too had the conflict between Parliament and Charlies I in the 1630s and 1640s resulted in the existence of two administrations claiming the right to govern the realm.

Granted, the parallels between these two assertions of radical sovereignty are far from exact. On one hand, the provincial congresses bear a close resemblance to the so-called “Long Parliament” that defied the authority of Charles I by attempting to govern without his consent in the 1640s in that both were comprised of members that had been elected via mechanisms established for that purpose – i.e. they had initially been chosen by a means which both sides agreed was legitimate. On the other hand, the congresses were formed specifically because their authority had been vacated by the aforesaid royal governor, whereas Charles was prohibited from dissolving the Long Parliament by the terms of the Dissolution Act (1641) and so sought to split the body by calling them to session at Oxford (resulting, again, in two Parliaments for one kingdom). The relationship between the sitting Parliament in 1774 and the Continental Congress, meanwhile, was dissimilar to that between the Long Parliament and the Oxford Parliament in large part because the two were formed by different means, from different population, and in different parts of the world. No member of Congress had been elected to Parliament, made themselves an object of the king’s displeasure, and witnessed the bisecting of that institution along partisan lines. The Continental Congress was truly an alternative body – it bore no formal relationship to Parliament, save for the fact that it claimed some portion of the authority normally reserved to that institution. In the sense that it did claim certain prerogatives in defiance of royal authority, however, Congress very much operated in the same realm as the Long Parliament had some one hundred and thirty years earlier. Just as the latter had asserted, beginning with the Militia Ordinance (1642), that the laws it ratified were binding whether or not they received the assent of the Crown, the former issued a number of declarations and petitions over the course of 1774-1775, as well as making supply requisitions, levying troops, and issuing military commissions, all without either requiring or requesting the validation of the reigning monarch.

Indeed, it is this lack of expectation or even desire for royal dispensation that fundamentally unites the provincial congresses and the Continental Congress with the example earlier established by the Long Parliament. In the 1640s and the 1770s alike, bodies of men banded together under the banner of a sovereign institution of government and claimed that their right to make law for their constituents outweighed any loyalty or obligation they may have felt towards their nominal ruler. Faced with a king whose actions in the preceding decades had made it abundantly clear that he had little patience for a legislature that did anything more than levy the taxes he desired, the members of the Long Parliament effectively concluded that their collective authority as the elected representatives of England superseded the prerogatives of a monarch who seemed to possess no sense of respect for the rights to which his people were entitled by custom and precedent. Likewise, having received nothing but hostility and antagonism from Parliament and the Crown in response to their earnest petitions for a redress of grievances, a portion of the inhabitants of British America determined that the only way to ensure their rights and liberties received the respect they deserved would be to form governments that truly represented the interests and concerns of the people being governed. Not only was this in keeping with the principles at the heart of the British Constitution – i.e. that people were entitled to be a part of the process when their money, their liberty, or their lives were being apportioned – but it was validated and justified by the history of the British nation.

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, Part VIII: More British than British

            As if the last several entries in this present series weren’t fodder enough for confusion – with their mazy meditations upon national identity, mythmaking, and the nature of the colonial founding – the essay that follows will attempt to argue, in apparent contradiction to what preceded it, that the text of Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration in fact made clear that the crux of local opposition to British tax and trade policy in late 18^th century British America was fundamentally British in character. That is to say, while there is indeed an argument to be made that the document in question represents an early official assertion of a distinctly American political and cultural identity, certain declarations made therein also conversely point to the British origins and British inspirations behind much of the Patriot struggle for what that faction perceived to be justice at the hands of Parliament and the Crown. Granting the possibility that this author may not actually know what it is he’s talking about and has stumbled into a contradiction without knowing how it might be reconciled, let it be offered here that reconciliation is perhaps not entirely necessary.

The American Revolution – as this series has long-since attempted to explain – represents a frightfully complex and tangled topic of study.  In it are bound up strains of law, history, culture, religion, philosophy, and politics. It has no definitive beginning or end, no single cause or origin. Attempting to understand it, therefore, in anything like a comprehensive manner can be both intensely difficult and intensely rewarding. Consider, for example, the nature of the disagreement – rooted in certain specific pieces of contemporary British legislation – which culminated in a state of war between Great Britain and the united colonies. Was it a matter of law or philosophy – i.e. were the actions of Parliament justified by statute or by the dictates or reason – or was the question at hand one of simple morality? The answer, of course, depends on how one intends to understand the Revolution, and what literature a person resorts to, and in what context the inquiry is made. Just so, attempting to determine whether the justifications offered by the Continental Congress in its Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms represented an assertion of a distinct American identity or an adherence to fundamentally British custom and British law may well lead to more than one answer. Having gone to some lengths to assert the viability of the former – that Jefferson and Dickinson seemed particularly concerned with communicating the uniqueness of the American position – and desiring as always to develop a nuanced and well-rounded understanding of the American Founding, it therefore now seems prudent to give some thought to the latter.

As discussed in weeks past, the text of Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration leaves little doubt that some portion of the contemporary population of the united colonies continued to identify with and feel affection for certain personalities within the British socio-political elite. Furthermore, said document also makes clear that the primary institutions of the British state – the House of Common, the House of Lords, the Crown, etc. – continued to enjoy the respect and admiration of the reigning monarch’s American subjects. William Pitt, for example, the Great Commoner himself, was cited by Jefferson and Dickinson as a prominent supporter of America whose praise and commemoration of the inhabitants of that land during the late war with France was warmly and freely returned. Just so, George III, his grandfather and predecessor George II, and Parliament were all referred to with unfailing respect and courtesy, and certain specific British municipalities were made mention of in an attitude of undisguised esteem and appreciation. The Continental Congress, in short, seemed to believe that the people it represented still had quite a number of reasons to feel enthusiastic in June, 1775 about their continued membership in the British Empire, and were accordingly willing to extend a degree of deference and devotion to the institutions and personalities in which they located that passion. Certainly there were factions, interests, or individuals operating within the framework of the British state that had abused their responsibilities and damaged the Anglo-American relationship in the process. But the text of Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration most emphatically did not find cause for a separation between Britain and America in any supposed flaw or shortcoming of British customs or institutions.

What that document does seem to assert, however, is that the devotion nurtured by the people of the united colonies for the rights and liberties they enjoyed as British subjects was so pure, so true, and so wholly unshakable that the continued failure by the government of Lord North – Earl of Guilford and Prime Minister from 1770-1782 – to recognize and respect the same may indeed have been just cause for a breach in relations. What this amounted to, in essence, is that at least one of the arguments presented by the Continental Congress in June of 1775 for taking up arms against Great Britain was an accusation that British authorities had forgotten what it meant to be British. The people of America, it seemed, had not, and were willing to shed blood and die to prove it. This assertion was born out in the text of Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration, and further corroborated by actions being undertaken at that same point in time by certain rebellious citizens of British America. These various elements all serve to attest that, while the inhabitants of the united colonies loved Britain very deeply and located in its history and its culture a source of pride and inspiration, they believed more even more fervently in what they believed Britain was supposed to stand for.

Consider, by way of explanation, the accusation leveled by Jefferson and Dickinson in the first paragraph of their 1775 Declaration. Whereas, it read, “Government was instituted to promote the welfare of all mankind” – a notion that is itself very much in keeping with the philosophy of English political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) –

The legislature of Great Britain […] stimulated by an inordinate passion for power, not only unjustifiable, but which they know to be peculiarly reprobated by the very Constitution of that Kingdom, and desperate of success in any mode of contest where regard should be had to truth, law, or right, have at length, deserting those, attempted to effect their cruel and impolitick purpose of enslaving these Colonies by violence [.]

Accusing the British legislature of having violated the British Constitution – regarded then and since by countless citizens of that nation as the embodiment of “truth, law, and right” – was a bold and damning tactic, particularly when offered so early in the body of a document whose ostensible purpose was to facilitate reconciliation. Worse yet – or quite possibly better, depending on one’s perspective – was the exact manner in which the accusation was offered. It wasn’t that Jefferson and Dickinson believed Parliament had unthinkingly or unknowingly flouted the Constitution in pursuit of some ultimately noble objective. Rather, they avowed, in pursuit of the total subordination of British America, the members of that noble institution allowed themselves to be, “stimulated by an inordinate passion for power […] which they know [emphasis added] to be peculiarly reprobated by the very Constitution of that Kingdom [.]” It was this image of knowing, willful disregard for the foundational principles of British law and citizenship with which the Continental Congress most emphatically pointed the finger of accusation at the contemporary government of Lord North.

            Less explicit, though still quite damning, were certain of the observations later offered by Jefferson and Dickinson in paragraphs three, four, and five of their 1775 Declaration. Of the first of these it will suffice to say that an enumeration was made of the various ways in which the provisions of the Intolerable Acts (1774) violated the rights and privileges customarily possessed by the people of British America. These included, notably, the levying of taxes without the consent of the taxed, the abrogation of the right of trial by jury, and the maintenance of a standing army during a time of peace. The second cited paragraph added to this list a further statute – the earlier Declaratory Act (1766) – by which Parliament claimed the authority to, “Make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America [...] in all cases whatsoever [,]” and offered in turn the response that any reasonable person was bound to arrive at. “What is to defend us,” Jefferson and Dickinson inquired, “against so enormous, so unlimited a power?” The fifth paragraph capped this three-part takedown by echoing the cited accusation leveled at Parliament as to that body’s commission of a crime against the essence of British liberty. “Administration,” it read, referring to the governments responsible for enforcing the various offending legislation, “Sensible that we should regard these oppressive measures as freemen ought to, sent over fleets and armies to enforce them.” Note here both the observation that the relevant ministries were aware that the inhabitants of British America would react in a manner requiring particularly thorough enforcement and the use of the term “freemen” as a kind of ideal to which Jefferson and Dickinson seemed keen their countrymen should aspire.

            The implication of the first element of this passage is plain enough, though far from insubstantial. If, after all, the offending governments – specifically, those of the Marquess of Rockingham, the Earl of Grafton, and Lord North – were indeed “sensible that [the colonists] should regard these oppressive measures” in such a way as to necessitate military assistance in their enforcement, the most likely reason would seem to be that they understood that what they were doing was likely to be interpreted in the colonies as illegal, illegitimate, or morally questionable. While the particular phrasing of this accusation would seem to leave open the possibility that the named ministries were acting in what they believed to be good faith – that they understood their policies would not be well-received in America while at the same time believing sincerely that they were just, legal, and valid – the threat of military force attached to their efforts at implementation begs a question which the delegates to the Continental Congress doubtless believed was crucial to the nature of their protest against Britain’s administration of the Thirteen Colonies. Regardless of the validity of the policy itself or the ultimately honorable intentions of its sponsors, does not the use of military force in seeing it carried out constitute a grave violation in itself? Judging from the tenor, tone, and content of their 1775 Declaration, Jefferson and Dickinson’s answer was very much in the affirmative. The offending ministries had known full well what the response to their actions would be, they asserted – just as they knew that the actions themselves were “reprobated by the very Constitution” of Great Britain – furthermore knew that military force would be necessary to see them carried out, and chose to proceed regardless of the many and various injuries they were preparing to visit upon their American brethren.  

            As to Jefferson and Dickinson’s choice of the word “freemen,” the significance is somewhat more esoteric. Within the dense legal hierarchy of feudal English/British society, freemen was a generic term intended to refer to any male individual who was not bound in servitude to a particular title or holding. While this naturally excluded slaves, peasants, or any type of tenant farmer or liege servant, it necessarily included such diverse social classes as yeomen (independent small-scale farmers), gentlemen (non-aristocratic landlords), knights and baronets (low-level nobility), and peers (possessors of hereditary title). While the resulting socio-legal body is accordingly somewhat vague and mutable, the vital significance of the possession of freeman status – a circumstance which persisted throughout the Medieval and Early Modern periods – was its attachment to a set of specific rights and liberties. Unlike the aforementioned peasant, border, slave, or tenant, a freeman enjoyed legal standing in a court of law. They could own property and pass it on to a designated inheritor, make suit against a person, or persons, or institution by which the felt they had been wronged, and enjoyed the benefit of a handful of basic procedural guarantees.

By the terms of the Magna Carta, for instance – a charter pressed upon John of England (1166-1216) by rebellious barons in 1215, ratified by Parliament in 1297, and consulted for centuries thereafter as an essential cornerstone of English jurisprudence – the monarch made known that it was, “Granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever.” Among these liberties was included the seminal guarantee that,

NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

This promise, rooted in a desire by fitful magnates to erode the authority of the monarch, has since given rise to such essential legal rights as trial by jury and due process. Indeed, the very notion of the freeman – i.e. one whose default position is that of legal un-encumbrance – as a protected class in time became the core object of an entire regime of guarantees and assurances within the British legal tradition intended to limit the exercise of arbitrary executive power at the behest of the commoner and the institutions intended to serve their interests.

            Jefferson and Dickinson’s invocation of the word freemen while decrying the behavior of successive British government thus possessed a quality of cultural potency that would have been difficult to ignore. To behave “as freemen ought to do,” centuries of conflict between the Crown, the peerage, and Parliament had shown, was to maintain both a cognizance of one’s rights under the law and a willingness to defend said rights to whatever ends were necessary to see them respected. A number of monarchs, from the aforementioned John, to the beheaded Charles I (1600-1649), to the dethroned and exiled James II (1633-1701) had ran afoul of this conviction among their subjects, and by 1775 there was surely little doubt among the British people – a great many more of whom were freemen then than had been the case in 1215 – that the freedoms they enjoyed were among the most substantial and the most secure in the world. Having imbibed these same lessons, the contemporary inhabitants of British America most certainly shared this sense of socio-cultural pride. As a free people – discounting, as was so often the case, the slave population – Americans therefore fully expected that the same guarantees which collectively formed the foundation of British society and law – the so-called British Constitution – applied to them in the same manner and to the same degree as to any resident of Surrey, Aberdeen, or Swansea. That the actions of successive governments had called this into question – that the people of British America had been persistently treated as though they were not freemen – was therefore understandably cause for alarm and consternation.

            Eager to address this evident contradiction in the behavior of successive British ministries, Jefferson and Dickinson sought validation by calling attention in their 1775 Declaration to certain of the protections to which the freeman was entitled under the aforementioned Constitution. Recall, to that end, the aforementioned transgressions enumerated in the third paragraph therein. Among other abuses committed against the inhabitants of British America, Jefferson and Dickinson made sure to cite taxation without consent, disregard for the practice of trial by jury, and the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace. Surely it was no coincidence that specific protections against precisely these violations formed a central part of both the aforementioned Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights (1689). The latter document – an act of Parliament ratified upon the ascension of join-monarchs William III (1650-1702) and Mary II (1662-1694) in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of the aforementioned James II – enshrined into law a number of fundamental guarantees of both the liberty of the individual and the sovereignty of the British legislature. While the Magna Carta declared that the reigning monarch would not attempt to condemn any freeman “but by lawful judgment of his Peers [,]” the Bill of Rights asserted that,

Levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal [and that] the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law [.]

By drawing attention to the manner in which successive governments had appeared to violate these fundamental principles of British law, Jefferson and Dickinson doubtless aimed to expose the actions of their opponents as illegitimate, void, and of no effect.

            Granted, the premise embodied by this tactic – the exposure of ministerial hypocrisy – was perhaps not quite so cut and dried as the above citations might indicate. Parliament was not about to be so easily cowed into submission by a pair of farmer-philosophers from the ragged fringe of the British Empire, and with adequate reason enough in the letter of the law if not in its spirit. Consider, once more, the exact phrasing of the relevant passages of the Bill of Rights. “Levying money for or to the use of the Crown,” the first stated, “Without grant of Parliament […] is illegal.” “The raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace,” the second affirmed, “Unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law [.]” The Stamp Act (1765), which levied taxes upon a host of paper goods purchased in British America, and the Quartering Act (1774), which mandated that British troops stationed in America were to be housed, if necessary, in privately-owned buildings and at the expense of the colonial legislatures, had in fact both been ratified via the grant/consent of Parliament. Bearing this fact in mind, the relevant ministries would indeed seem to have possessed a mandate to accomplish precisely that which the Continental Congress labeled as abuses, crimes, or offences against the rights and liberties of British America.

            As Jefferson and Dickinson rather subtly indicated in their 1775 Declaration, however, this type of literal justification flew somewhat wide of the mark. After all, the purpose of the British Constitution – and of the individual statutes and charters of which it was comprised – was not to permit a legislature elected to represent one group of British subjects to enjoy legal sanction while violating the rights of a second group. The Bill of Rights, for instance, did not prohibit the raising taxes without the consent of Parliament so that Parliament could in turn raise taxes upon those who possessed no voice in its proceedings. Laying aside the necessary details upon which all statutes depend for their meaning and effect, the spirit of this specific provision was to ensure that no British subject was made to suffer the burden of taxation without some opportunity to determine the particulars thereof. As a protection against the vast and arbitrary power of the Crown to raise revenues via the customary royal prerogatives – most notoriously employed by Charles I – the Bill of Rights served adequately and well, though it did not constitute a principle in and of itself. Rather, it was represented a given means by which a desired principle could be served. In consequence, while it may indeed have accorded with the specific text of the Bill of Rights for Parliament to have consented to the taxation of British America, it most certainly did not align with the spirit in which that document had originally been conceived.

Jefferson and Dickinson seemed to address this notion in their 1775 Declaration by asking the question cited above in response to the blunt display of arbitrary authority embodied by the Declaratory Act (1766). “What is to defend us against so enormous, so unlimited a power?” they inquired, simply and yet powerfully. The answer, implicit if unspoken, was the British Constitution. Its provisions may not have applied so neatly or explicitly to the inhabitants of British America as they did to those of Britain proper, but the spirit of the thing – the basic principles which the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Statement of Right (1628), and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) were intended to uphold – surely pertained to the Crown’s subjects in America as well as they did to their counterparts in Amersham. Naturally, Parliament could not be expected to adequately represent communities living some three thousand miles distant on the other side of a vast and turbulent ocean, but this surely need not have disqualified Americans from enjoying the same basic constitutional protections as their British cousins. To that end, as the various colonial legislatures stood in for Parliament for the purpose of administrative efficiency, did they not also take up Parliament’s role as the guarantor and repository of the sovereignty of their constituents? In short, did they not serve to ensure that the provisions of the British Constitution were upheld regardless of their distance from the seat of British authority? The answer, as numerous American pamphleteers, the Stamp Act Congress, and the Continental Congress had argued, was a most emphatic yes. 

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, Part VII: American Ego, contd.

Not only does the text of the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms appear to support this somewhat paradoxical interpretation of America’s place within the contemporary British Empire – at once an enthusiastic member of the whole and a fundamentally separate people – but it seems to align rather closely to the position taken by one of the authors of that selfsame document in a treatise published the previous year. Thomas Jefferson’s A Summary View of the Rights of British America – discussed at length many moons ago in this very series – indeed proposed that the manner by which the colonies that comprised British America were founded entitled their later inhabitants to a degree of autonomy somewhat at odds with the plainly observable facts. In attempting to first establish the basis of his claim that the inhabitants of British America were a wholly sovereign and autonomous people, for instance, Jefferson declared that,   

America was conquered, and her settlements made, and firmly established, at the expence of individuals, and not of the British public. Their own blood was spilt in acquiring lands for their settlement, their own fortunes expended in making that settlement effectual; for themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold.

As with his and Dickinson’s later Declaration, the circumstances of the colonial founding were restated in such a way as to valorize individual initiative and omit any explicit mention of private enterprise or official patronage.

While it was most certainly true that the British public did not fund the establishment of any of the colonies for whom Jefferson professed to speak in 1774, nor were the individuals whose “fortunes” were “expended” in the process solely those who participated in the project as migrants. A number of these selfsame colonies were, as aforementioned, the product of joint-stock ventures by which individual shareholders staked their investment upon the possibility that the settlement of North America would generate a significant dividend. The involvement of these financiers was certainly of a different quality than that of the colonists themselves – they did not spill their blood, for instance, nor suffer the countless hardships with which the American wilderness abounded. They were, nevertheless, a vital element of the process as a whole. Their financial contribution, after all, is what made the transportation of peoples from Britain to the New World possible and further provided for the material support of the transplanted settlers during the often strained circumstances of the opening phase of colonization. For Jefferson to have claimed of the founding colonists that, “For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have right to hold [.]” thus represents an oversimplification very much in keeping with those previously cited in his and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration. While the 17^th century architects of the Jamestown or Plymouth settlements may have believed with all sincerity that they were indeed laboring for their own personal or communal benefit, the owners of Virginia Company stock may have understood with equal candor that these same migrants were enduring toil, disease, starvation, and death for the purpose of increasing the average share price. While the former conception is far nobler – and far easier to adopt as the basis of a robust socio-cultural identity – the latter is no less accurate.

A further parallel between the self-perception of American autonomy represented in Jefferson’s 1774 A Summary View and his and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration can be found in their shared – though qualified – admission of the benefits America derived from its association with the British Empire. The latter, in attempting to affirm both the solidity of the Anglo-American relationship and define the manner by which it had become strained, described the,

Harmonious intercourse [that] was established between the Colonies and the Kingdom from which they derived their origin. The mutual benefits of this union became in a short time so extraordinary, as to excite astonishment. It is universally confessed, that the amazing increase of the wealth, strength, and navigation of the Realm, arose from this source [.]

Note the use of the phrases “mutual benefits” and “the Realm.” Rather than explicitly acknowledge the various advantages that the inhabitants of British America derived from their close association with one of the wealthiest empires in human history, Jefferson and Dickinson styled the dividends of the Anglo-American relationship as being either reciprocal or having strengthened Britain itself. The implication of this phrasing would seem to be that Britain derived greater advantage from its continued involvement in North America than the colonists themselves and/or that the only reason Britain continued to offer support to the American colonies was out a desire for mutual gain.

While expressed more overtly and more harshly, A Summary View gives voice to essentially the same perspective on the same topic. In likewise discussing the significance of the aid Britain had recently extended to the American colonies during the course of the Seven Years War (1754-1763), Jefferson made a point of remarking that,             

    

Not a shilling was ever issued from the public treasures of his majesty, or his ancestors, for their assistance, till of very late times, after the colonies had become established on a firm and permanent footing. That then, indeed, having become valuable to Great Britain for her commercial purposes, his parliament was pleased to lend them assistance against an enemy, who would fain have drawn to herself the benefits of their commerce, to the great aggrandizement of herself, and danger of Great Britain. 

As with his and Dickinson’s later Declaration, A Summary View seeks to establish the motivation behind Britain’s continued investment in North America as having been purely economic, strategic, or otherwise self-interested. While not half so kind as describing the benefits of the Anglo-American relationship as being mutual, Jefferson’s assertion that America received active aid as a result of it “having become valuable to Great Britain for her commercial purposes” would seem to amount to essentially the same thing. Britain, both documents affirmed, did not seek to protect or to assist the people of America out of a sense of kindness, charity, or fellow feeling, but because the former believed that there was sufficient advantage to be derived from doing so. Likewise, as Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration ascribes to the Anglo-American relationship an “amazing increase of the wealth, strength, and navigation of the Realm,” so A Summary View assigned British support for the American colonies during the Seven Years War to an essentially defensive measure intended to prevent some rival power from drawing to themselves “the benefits of their commerce [.]” Again, though via markedly different language, both documents characterized British support for the American colonies as being primarily mercenary. It was a desire for gain rather than any sense of justice that brought forth British generosity, it seemed, and Americans would have done well – in 1774 as in 1775 – to recognize the fact of it.

            The significance of these cited parallels to the discussion at hand – having to do with the somewhat contradictory nature of the position put forward by Jefferson and Dickinson in their 1775 Declaration – would seem to pivot upon the notion of mythology as identity. As cited above, the premise that the inhabitants of the united colonies were the beneficiaries of a philosophical and material legacy wrought solely by their virtuous and long-suffering forbears – to the extent that armed resistance became justified when that legacy was actively threatened – represents a gross oversimplification of the forces and mechanisms that gave rise to the English colonization of North America. The 17^th century colonial founders did not live, and toil, and die in a vacuum, they were not constantly under siege by hostile indigenous peoples, and their successes were not wholly the product of their own perseverance. Jefferson’s stated belief to the contrary, therefore, represents faith in a story whose veracity was questionable but whose emotional or psychological appeal would have been difficult to deny.

There would seem to be little glory and less satisfaction to be derived from an acknowledgment that large swathes of British America were settled in consequence of corporate enterprise or royal patronage. A people would thus be better inclined to locate their origins – indeed, the meaning of their existence – in a narrative of repression, exodus, personal sacrifice, and eventual triumph, particularly when it appears to confirm the things they already know about themselves. Americans were an isolated people, and by necessity had developed habits of autonomy and self-reliance. They practised a number of religious faiths among them, many of which were subject to official persecution in Britain proper, and they were often subject to attack by native peoples whose martial traditions could be quite harsh and unforgiving. Jefferson’s theory of the colonial founding – as represented in both A Summary View and his and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration – gave significance to these observations by tying them to a narrative that inspired pride and encouraged fidelity. The people and polities of British America were not merely by-products of the growth and evolution of an increasingly complex global empire, he asserted thereby, but the living manifestation of the dreams and aspirations harbored by a band of tireless seekers after personal, political, and confessional liberty.

Stirring though this conception of what it meant to be American might have been, however, Jefferson’s intention to deploy it in his and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration would seem to present something of a contradiction. As written, the document in question appears to both celebrate the Anglo-American relationship as a way of allaying accusations that the united colonies hoped to break away from the British Empire and affirm the sanctity of American liberties as a way of vindicating a resort to armed resistance. Forgoing the latter – establishing the official justification for war between Britain and the united colonies solely upon the basis of loyalty, affection, and the amelioration of momentary disagreements – would surely have been the simpler course, and more likely to succeed in convincing British authorities that revolt was not the aim of their fellow subjects in America. That Jefferson, Dickinson, and their colleagues in the Continental Congress declined to do so – that they all approved of openly declaring that the people of British America identified the source of their rights as something other than their status as British subjects – accordingly speaks volumes about the strength of the contemporary American national identity and the unwillingness of colonial leadership to sublimate the same while seeking to resolve a particularly volatile political crisis.

As noted previously, the notion that the colonies of British America were founded wholly via the initiative and endurance of the settlers themselves – and absent any aide from official sources in Britain – represents a fairly egotistical understanding of why and how the British colonization of the New World came to pass. Just so, an insistence upon this founding narrative as the source of American liberties and the justification for an armed defence of the same by the delegates to the Continental Congress within a text otherwise assertive of American membership in the contemporary British Empire would seem to present a similar quality of socio-cultural vanity. When pressed, it seemed – when confronted by something on the order of an existential crisis – the representative body of the united colonies could not help but assert that Americans were an essentially sovereign people and that the rights they were willing to die to defend had been sanctified by the suffering of their forefathers. Again, simply acknowledging the pride and affection with which most Americans continued to regard British law, British culture, and British institutions would have seemed a surer method of achieving reconciliation. There were no guarantees, of course – arguing that America opposed certain policies, governments, or officials rather than Britain itself was bound to irk those who failed to see a distinction between the nation proper and its various appendages. That being said, assertions of the exceptional nature of American liberties – i.e. anything that described them as being separate from or differently derived than the rights supposedly possessed by all British subjects – could not have but met with even greater consternation. It was one thing, after all, to argue that the aggrieved colonists were not being granted the respect and consideration due to them as subjects of the Crown, and quite another to declare that contemporary British authorities had failed to recognize the significance of the legacy left to the colonists by their settler ancestors. One was most likely to arouse sympathy, the other to generate suspicion.  

Jefferson, Dickinson, and their fellow delegates, however, appeared unwilling or unable to grant this premise. Forced to explain – to their fellow countrymen as well as to the contemporary British government – why it was they had determined to undertake a campaign of armed resistance against British authority in America, it was evidently beyond their collective ability to forego an expression of national autonomy in favor of a successful reconciliation. They were too proud of themselves, it seemed, or too haughty, or perhaps too sensitive of the dishonor they would visit upon their ancestors by failing to acknowledge the importance of their legacy. Jefferson had done as much in his capacity as a private citizen – Americans derived their autonomy from the circumstances of the colonial founding, he argued in A Summary View, and attributed the value of their rights and liberties to the suffering that the founders themselves had endured. Whether this proved a particularly influential doctrine or the treatise in question had simply given voice to what most Americans already understood to be true, its inclusion within a statement of public policy arguably represented a turning point in the history of American national identity.

Having endured a decade of British government attempts to tax the colonies, to regulate their trade, to alter the nature of their governments, and to affect a permanent military presence therein, the authorities which laid claim to the government of British America seemed no longer able to offer the patient reassurance that the sum total of what they desired was the recognition of their accustomed status as British subjects. By June of 1775, in the midst of open warfare between the Continental Army, the British garrison in North America, and their respective civilian supporters, something about the struggle at the heart of the Anglo-American crisis had changed. Americans remained exceptionally fond of their British cousins, reciprocated the affection they were shown by figures like William Pitt and Edmund Burke, and made known their desire to remain a vital part of Britain’s ever-expanding global empire. But now they joined their praise with a caution and a claim. What was at stake in the present conflict, they appeared keen to assert, was not merely their rights as British subjects, but the sanctity imparted to those rights by the blood and treasure expended by the founders of British America. And while the Continental Congress and the colonial governments it represented were doubtless willing to go to some lengths to see further conflict between Britain and the united colonies averted, they were now making clear – via Jefferson and Dickinson’s Declaration – that there were some things that they collectively valued more than the prospect of reconciliation. In so doing, they effectively made the distinction between being British and being America something more than a set of practical circumstances or the pet theory of a gentleman philosopher. That Americans were a people of distinct derivation from their fellow subjects of the Crown was now a matter of public record. Not only were the inhabitants of British America now prepared to argue this fact in public, but, as the text of the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms made clear, they were willing to die for it.

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms, Part VI: American Ego, contd.

Returning to the cited passage from the second paragraph of their 1775 Declaration, further evidence of Jefferson and Dickinson’s rather mythologized presentation of the colonial founding can be located in their assertion that the “wilds of America” were, “Then filled with numerous and warlike nations of barbarians.” Aside from what would now most often be referred to as a blatant example of cultural insensitivity or political incorrectness, this obvious implication of this statement – i.e. that the settlement of British America succeeded in spite of the presence of exceedingly hostile indigenous peoples – quite simply fails to correspond to the plain facts of early colonial history. Granting that war – or at least some form of armed aggression – between the residents of the colonies and their various indigenous neighbors did ultimately become an endemic condition of existence in British America, native peoples more than once saved the lives of entire communities of English settlers during moments of crisis in the opening phase of the colonial project. The founders of the Plymouth Colony, for instance, were provided with a vital source of valuable animal furs for resale in Europe by the local Wampanoag people during the early years if the coexistence in the 17^th century. Representatives of this same tribe also taught the settlers various agricultural techniques that helped increase their food production and enhanced their ability to survive New England’s harsh winters. This crucial early assistance was subsequently repaid in the 1620s when the Wampanoag requested and received the protection of the Plymouth settlers from their regional rivals the Narragansett.

The early interactions between the Powhatan Confederacy and the inhabitants of the Jamestown colony followed a similar trajectory. The newcomers, acknowledging the importance of cultivating strong local allies, sent an expedition up the James River in 1607 for the express purpose of contacting and establishing relations with the native settlements there. While the subsequent diplomatic contacts were not always entirely harmonious – given as the English settlers were to look upon the Powhatan in a rather patronizing manner – trade and cultural exchange allowed the Jamestown plantation to establish itself upon firmer footing than would otherwise have been possible during its first perilous years. The early inhabitants of Maryland found even more enthusiastic allies in the local Yaocomico people, a branch of the populous and powerful Piscataway. Not only did the Yaocomico first encountered by the Maryland colonists sell them the land upon which they founded their first settlement, St. Mary’s City, in 1634, but they also shared with them various agricultural practices and taught them where they could harvest foods like oysters and clams. As with the inhabitants of Plymouth and Jamestown, it is accordingly debatable whether or not the Maryland settlers would have survived without this assistance, isolated as they were and unfamiliar with local conditions. Indeed, far from being “warlike” or otherwise behaving in a manner that would justify the moniker of “barbarians,” the indigenous nations first encountered by early colonists of what would become British America were often quite welcoming and cooperative.  

All that being said, it bears acknowledging that in none of these instances did early bilateral cooperation lead to sustained and sustaining relationships between indigenous and migrant peoples. Between the 1630s and 1670s, for instance, the inhabitants of the Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony pushed the bounds of their respective settlements deeper into indigenous territory, became increasingly involved in local power struggles between rival tribes, and ultimately found themselves allied to or engaged in hostilities with seemingly every local native polity in southern New England. Former enemies the Narragansett, for example, became their allies against the Pequot in the 1630s, who in turn found common cause with the English against their former patrons the Wampanoag in the 1670s. Over the course of these conflicts whole nations of indigenous peoples were devastated, scattered, or destroyed while the colonies of New England managed to shoulder their own casualties while continuing to expand apace. The early inhabitants of Jamestown proved similarly caustic to their Powhatan hosts. After fumbling through a series of disagreements over territory, control of resources, and strategic intentions over the course of the years 1608 and 1609, the starving colonists closed out 1610 in a state of war with the natives at the behest of the belligerent Lord De La Warr (1577-1618) and his long-overdue relief expedition. While that particular conflict ended in a peace settlement in 1614, subsequent Anglo-Powhatan conflicts in the 1620s, 1640s, and 1670s left the once powerful nation relegated to a series of reservations and bound by treaty to acknowledge the supremacy of the English Crown. The founding settlers of Maryland were only slightly more generous to their Yaocomico allies, managing to maintain peaceful – and mutually beneficial – relations with them through the 1650s. Thereafter, however, conflicts between the Yaocomico and the migrating Susquehannock, the further expansion of the colony’s borders, and deliberate efforts to remove the entire Piscataway nation from their ancestral homeland left them a scattered, weakened, and much reduced people.

Notwithstanding Jefferson and Dickinson’s assertion in their 1775 Declaration that the forebears of the contemporary population of British America, “Effected settlements in the distant and inhospitable wilds of America, then filled with numerous and warlike nations of barbarians [,]” the truth would seem to be far less flattering to the image of redoubtable colonists laboring against seemingly insurmountable odds. The indigenous nations first encountered in the early 17^th century by the founders of such colonies as Plymouth, Jamestown, and Maryland were certainly capable of making war, had been doing so for generations against regional rivals, and were hardly adverse – in the immediate – to the introduction of European weapons. And it also bears acknowledging that their intentions and actions during the early phase of the English colonial project were not infrequently hostile – unannounced incursions into their territory were often met with force and followed by raids that involved hostage taking and executions. Nevertheless, the customary nature of the English response to such behavior was almost always far harsher, more aggressive, and more definitive than any offered by the relevant indigenous peoples. Granting that the Wampanoag, the Powhatan, and the Yaocomico in particular were generally inclined to cooperate with the European newcomers with the intention of leveraging their presence and their technology to their own advantage against their regional rivals, they arguably never went so far as to seek the utter destruction of the settler colonies or the enslavement of their inhabitants. In this sense, recalling the generosity offered by the tribes mentioned here and the fates to which their generosity ultimately led them, it would seem fair to instead characterize Jefferson and Dickinson’s hallowed forefathers as the particularly warlike or barbarous people within the narrative of the colonial founding. Within the context in which this narrative was offered, of course, the truth was of limited worth.

The purpose of Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration was to demonstrate and affirm the legitimacy of the decision rendered by the united colonies to pursue and support a course of armed resistance against the British political and military representatives at that time operating in North America. Key to this objective was the sanctification of the rights and liberties for whose protection the aggrieved colonists claimed to have taken up arms. While acclaimed by the relevant text as being British in origin – as embodied by the British Constitution – to which every British subject could lay a legitimate claim, Jefferson and Dickinson also seemed keen to attribute the appropriate sense of sacredness to these rights by representing them as a form of personal inheritance bequeathed to the contemporary population of British America by the founders of the various colonies therein. It was thus not simply a matter of the colonists seeking to defend something to which all British peoples – be they Scottish, Bermudian, or Quebecois – could lay claim, but rather an attempt on their part to validate the specific hardships suffered by their forefathers in the process of forging the various colonies out of a supposedly primordial wilderness.  For the resulting sense of legacy and duty to have the appropriate effect, of course, the aforementioned hardships would need to be portrayed as having been suitably severe. A narrative of settlement characterized by mild winters, rich land, and ready support from private and public sources, for instance, would hardly have validated – let alone galvanized – the sense of urgency with which the united colonies represented their position as the ongoing Anglo-American crisis entered its most destructive phase yet.

Just so, a nuanced understanding of the relationship between the early colonists and indigenous peoples during the colonial founding would surely have failed to provide any such reassurance as to the sanctity of the Patriot cause or the moral imperative that it claimed to embody. For the evident violations of American liberties committed by British officials to acquire personal significance – indeed, for the burgeoning sense of American exceptionalism to have any value at all – the liberties being threatened required an illustrious legacy of heroic sacrifice that contemporary Americans could feel as though they were being called to validate. Clearly, an accurate retelling of the fates of peoples like the Wampanoag, the Powhatan, or the Yaocomico at the hands of the founders of Plymouth, Jamestown, or Maryland would not have served this purpose. Not only does history record the crucial aide that these nations rendered to the English migrants – effectively giving the lie to any claims of self-sufficiency – but it further attests to their eventual victimization at the hands of aggressive colonial expansion. The collective ego of the contemporary American peoples – centered on a core belief in the providential nature of the colonial project – surely had no use for these unfortunate truths. To Jefferson and Dickinson, their fellow delegates to the Continental Congress, and the millions of people they claimed to represent, America was something special. Its inhabitants were mainly British in origin, of course, and located the genesis of their rights in the history and traditions of those islands. But the experience of colonization had changed them, they often affirmed, made them into something more than another variety of British subject. The hostility of the North American environment – its climate, its wildlife, and indeed its native inhabitants – was central to this narrative, forming the backdrop of antagonism against which the great heroes of the colonial founding labored and fought. And in so laboring and fighting – in blessing the soil with their blood – they accordingly sanctified the rights to which they laid claim as British subjects to a greater degree than any person living in any other region of the British Empire could possibly understand.  

This particular conception of the rights and liberties claimed by the inhabitants of British America in 1775 – in evident defence of which these same inhabitants now found themselves at war – is undeniably an egotistical one. In addition to embracing a rather warped understanding of the mechanisms and means by which the various colonies were founded – individual initiative as opposed to a mix of labor, capital, and patronage, or via struggle against hostile indigenous peoples rather than in cooperation with or through exploitation of the same – it would seem to attribute a degree of moral superiority to the contemporary American people incapable of being claimed by any of their fellow subjects of the British Crown. Certainly, Jefferson and Dickinson asserted in the 1775 Declaration, the inhabitants of the united colonies were proud to be British, and would have loved nothing more than to continue to be so. Unfortunately, as a result of errors and transgression committed by corrupt and ambitious individuals who would claim to act with official sanction, the rights for which the founders of British America had shed blood to see established in the New World had been dangerously threatened. Claims by Parliament, successive governments, and the Crown notwithstanding, Americans understood and valued their rights better than anyone could, and knew that armed resistance to any attempts made to bring them to heel was the only valid course of action.