Though
it may appear something of a contradiction to repeatedly affirm the essential
Britishness of some of the arguments offered in given document after having
asserted at length the essential Americanness of certain other arguments in
that same text, Jefferson and Dickinson’s Declaration of the Causes and
Necessity of Taking up Arms most certainly supports both readings of its
author’s intentions. By July of 1775, Great Britain and the united colonies
were essentially in a state of war, with casualties having been suffered on
both sides as the Siege of Boston dragged on and the Invasion of Quebec neared
the end of its planning stage. Having expressed and debated their own sense of
identity, the legacy of their forebears, and their place in the British Empire
at length in private and public discourse – in treatises and pamphlets and
satires offered by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and
Benjamin Franklin, among others – Americans were now being forced to weigh the
depth of their loyalty to a distant monarch against the significance and
implications of their personal and collective history. If the very fact of
having taken up arms against British authority is any indication, the latter
seemed to have prevailed over the former. The liberties that the people of
British America enjoyed had been secured and sanctified by the blood and toil
of their ancestors, Jefferson and Dickinson asserted accordingly, creating an
obligation that cut deeper than obedience to governments or kings.
At
the same time, the means by which this conviction was expressed borrowed
heavily and consciously from the history and traditions of Britain itself.
Notwithstanding the assertions of people like Thomas Jefferson that the
inhabitants of British America formed a distinct community from that which
their forebears had left behind, Britain remained absolutely essential to the
American cultural, political, and social vocabulary. The rights they believed
their hallowed ancestors had sanctified – which they in turn felt it their duty
to preserve – were explicitly British in origin. Accordingly, their points of
reference in the context of a struggle against authority and for liberty were
in large part British in character – from referring to themselves as Whigs to
lamenting the violations being committed in Parliament against the principles
of the Glorious Revolution. It was therefore entirely consistent that the
mechanisms by which they asserted their sovereignty – i.e. establishing
alternative governments to those they deemed no longer legitimate – should have
likewise replicated the basic circumstances of key moments in British history.
In asserting the primacy of their rights, therefore, and celebrating their
status as political outsiders, and privileging principles like legislative
supremacy and the rule of law, the united colonies were effectively attempting
to carve out a space for a distinctly American identity within and according to
the logic of the existing British socio-cultural sphere.
Certain
elements of the text of Jefferson and Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration would seem
to affirm this contention. When given to
reflect upon the nature of their dispute with successive British governments,
for example, the scribes chosen by the united colonies to supply a written justification
for their having taken up arms against the British administration of America appeared
entirely comfortable with expressing respect for the institutions of the
Empire, affection for many of the personalities that governed it, and even a
sense of contentment with their homelands’ accustomed place as its far flung
western province. Certainly they bore malice towards the ministers and military
authorities whose greed, ambition, and corruption had done injury to the rights
and liberties of the people of America. But this antipathy did not translate
into any desire on the part of the latter to destroy the existing
Anglo-American relationship. As the aforementioned document made quite clear,
the united colonies were displeased with the governments of men like Lord Bute
and Lord North, distrusted the actions of magistrates like Guy Carleton, and
rejected the directives of officers like Thomas Gage precisely because they
wished to preserve the relationship between themselves and Great Britain that
had theretofore permitted both parties to flourish. Doubtless this appeared to
the accused ministers and magistrates to be a contradictory and self-defeating
motivation – how could one attempt to preserve the British Empire by
threatening to destroy it? To the membership of the Continental Congress and
their supporters in the various colonial governments, however, there was
nothing self-defeating about it. In July of 1775 – in spite of the battles that
had been fought in Massachusetts and New York, and the pending invasion of
British Quebec – it was the sincere conviction of the leadership of the united
colonies that they and their countrymen were proud to be British and would have
preferred continuing to be so. For such an outcome to be acceptable, however,
it would have to be on terms amenable to their particular American
sensibilities.
The
manner by which it attempts to reconcile these impulses – the desire to be
British and the desire to be American – is precisely what makes Jefferson and
Dickinson’s 1775 Declaration so compelling. Whereas the current popular
conception of the American Revolution – built upon over two centuries of
memorialization and media depictions – tends to characterize the colonial
population of late 18th century as having developed a uniform
distaste for all things British by the time hostilities commenced in April,
1775, and furthermore inclines towards an understanding of the Battles of
Lexington and Concord as a point-of-no-return for Congress and the British
alike, said document gives evidence of a far less definite and far more
complicated state of affairs. American affection for Britain remained high, it
reveals, even after conflict had well and truly commenced. To that end, the
object of armed resistance was not, as yet, to secure the independence of
British America, but rather to accomplish the removal of those elements which
had threatened the rights and liberties of the American people and further
secure their place as willing and eager members of the British imperial family.
That their declaration to that end approached the relevant issues of
sovereignty and liberty in a manner entirely consistent with British history
and tradition further attests to this conviction, naïve though it may have
been.
Indeed,
it would be difficult to imagine any plausible scenario in which the Thirteen
Colonies remained a part of the British Empire without any government thereof
at some point threatening the rights and liberties of the American people in
pursuit of political or economic centralization. What the united colonies
seemed eager to preserve – and what certain supporters of America in British
elite circles seemed to think it was possible to achieve – was a status quo
whereby Parliament simply agreed by custom never to violate the sovereignty of
the Crown’s subjects in America. Absent any laws or constitutional strictures
to that effect, however – neither the Magna Carta nor the Bill of Rights had
anything to say about the rights of British subjects not represented in
Parliament – and in view of the pressures exerted upon the British Empire by
its European rivals to secure its overseas possessions and their resources
against foreign encroachment, this would seem a somewhat fantastical
proposition. Whatever the means by which the various colonies were founded –
via individual initiative, private capital, official patronage, or some mixture
thereof – successive British governments had devoted money, men, and resources
into seeing that they remained subjects of the Crown. Thus reinforced in the
idea that British America represented a form of investment, a source of
commodities, or a symbol of prestige, it would doubtless have taken a
significant effort of will for the contemporary British elite – political,
economic, or military – to commit to respecting the rights and liberties of
fellow subjects in America. The terms of British Constitution placed them under
no formal obligation to do so, and the practical needs of their ever-expanding
empire effectively demanded they do otherwise.
All
that being said, the cited assertions put forward in Jefferson and Dickinson’s
1775 Declaration attest to the fact that the membership of the Continental
Congress believed that a lasting reconciliation was possible. In spite of the
actions of military officers and colonial administrators to more firmly secure
British rule in North America – pursued, by all accounts, in good faith – the
efforts of successive governments to lay taxes upon the colonies, regulate
their trade, or influence their governments – carried out, to be sure, with the
best interests of the Empire in mind – and vibrant examples of human weakness,
cruelty, and ambition having played out in the process, they remained somehow
convinced that it was possible to be British and American, that both of these
identities were founded upon a fundamental respect for certain rights and
liberties, and that a prosperous, powerful empire could exist that embraced
this principle as its guiding light. Naïve, they may have been, or foolish, or
short-sighted. But if they were those things, they were also optimistic,
principled, and hopeful.
And
so, let that be what the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up
Arms represents – that in spite of the popular conception of the Revolution as
being a vehicle for American anger or resentment at British rule, the Founders
themselves have given us every reason to believe that theirs was a struggle
based on hope.
Anyway,
that’s just my slightly sappy take on it. Take a look for yourself.
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