How the American Revolution Wasn't a Revolution
How the American Revolution Wasn't a Revolution
The Patriots weren't trying to overthrow their traditional form of government; they were trying to respect it.
One thing that's struck me as I've been reading about the leadup to the American Revolution is how orderly it was, and how little it actually broke from tradition.
In many ways, the American Revolution wasn't a revolution at all. At least, it doesn't fit very well in a category with many other modern revolutions. At the time, the word was more understood in its broader sense of "significant change" - which it definitely was.
The other name for the Revolution - the War of Independence - is better. But even then, it didn't start out as a war for independence. The Patriots weren't trying to overthrow their traditional form of government; they were trying to respect it.
From a modern view, the American Revolution was closer to a secession. The legitimate governments of the thirteen American colonies declared independence, and they kept the loyalty of most of their people. Almost as soon as the revolutionary Massachusetts Provincial Congress had assembled, it had the loyalty of the whole state outside Boston (which was garrisoned by British troops). These secessionist governments then resisted efforts of the London government to reinstate its control. You could almost1 say the Patriots weren't trying to change any government.
Some modern historians dispute this point, saying the Patriot governments didn't have public loyalty. These historians view the Revolution as a civil war, emphasizing the large number of Tories (British loyalists) in the colonies and their persecution by the Patriot governments. I think this's been overemphasized - though the overemphasis goes back at least to 1908, when historian Sidney Fisher misquoted John Adams and made him wrongly claim a third of Americans were Tories. Tories were never more than a minor visible force. When the British General Howe sailed to America hoping to find substantial Tory support, he was quickly disillusioned.
But regardless, before the Declaration of Independence, the Patriots were already in control of essentially all the Colonies where British soldiers weren't currently standing. They'd fought a few small battles to get there, but mostly it was because the people followed them. If there was a real "revolution" in the war, the "revolution" was on the side of the British who were attempting to overthrow the Patriot governments. As John Adams said afterwards, the real revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people before the first shot was fired.
Ideologically, the Revolution didn't start out as a call for independence. It started out as a constitutional dispute about the British Constitution.
Britain doesn't, and didn't2, have a written constitution. The British Constitution is an unwritten constitution, a set of longstanding traditions, some of which are written in Acts of Parliament like the Bill of Rights. The first traditions to be recognized as fundamental principles like this were things like "Parliaments are called by the King, and the King can't impose new taxes without consent of Parliament." Later, more details were added - and older details were overturned, such as how nobles can't inherit seats in the House of Lords anymore.
This unwritten constitution is much more flexible than a written constitution. Sometimes that's a good thing... but it can also (much more often, I think) be a bad thing. One big problem with it is that it leaves many points unclear and up to argument.
One of the things up to argument in the 1700's was the status of the American colonies.
In practice, since the Glorious Revolution, the American colonies had legislatures elected locally and governors appointed by the British Crown. Parliament in London regularly declared war on their behalf and legislated about their foreign trade, but - until the 1760's - it didn't do anything else. Even the royal governors generally didn't interfere with local affairs, or could be outmaneuvered by the legislatures. Edmund Burke, a pro-American Member of Parliament, would later call this "Salutary Neglect."
But when Parliament tried to legislate for, and tax, the colonies - the colonists objected. In Britain, it was clear that taxation needed the consent of Parliament. After the Glorious Revolution, it was clear that Parliament - not the King - was the one really governing Britain. But how did all this apply to the colonies? Did the Parliament in London have these powers over them too? Or were their own colonial legislatures properly analogous to Parliament?3
This was the cause the Patriots rallied behind. This was their slogan - "Taxation Without Representation Is Tyranny". Contrary to popular belief, on his famous midnight ride, Paul Revere did not shout that "The British are coming" - nor would he have, because even then, most Patriots saw themselves as British subjects fighting for their rights as British subjects.
Some Patriots, such as Joseph Warren of Massachusetts, saw that Parliament would probably not listen and America would eventually need independence; some others, like Patrick Henry of Virginia, were ready to resort to independence if Parliament didn't listen. But Henry was roundly castigated when he mentioned this, and Warren kept his opinion on this silent at the time to avoid casting the Patriot cause into disrepute.
For over a year after the first "Shot Heard Around the World" at Concord on 19 April 1775, the Patriots fought as Englishmen, loyal subjects of the king, fighting what they called "the Ministerial army". In July 1775, the Continental Congress addressed a petition to their "most gracious Sovereign" against the "new system of statutes" of "that august Legislature, the Parliament". Notice they did not say "their Parliament"; they didn't consider it theirs.
A few, like John Adams (Joseph Warren having by now died at Bunker Hill), considered this petition futile.
The petition did, in fact, prove futile. A year later, on the Fourth of July 1776, the Continental Congress declared independence to the cheers of the American people.
We don't know exactly what changed the people's minds; there weren't any opinion surveys or focus groups during the Revolution. I'm sure the King's roundly rejecting their petition played a big part, and another big part was fighting the "ministerial army". Another part was Thomas Paine's radically populist anti-monarchical book Common Sense, with a larger circulation than any other title published in the colonies.
But declaring independence didn't overthrow the established order. The Declaration of Independence took the already-existing colonies, governed by their already-existing governments, and declared them independent states. For years, some of the states continued to even govern themselves under their same colonial charters with brief amendments to delete references to the king.4 Thomas Paine, who wanted radical change, might have been unhappy with that. But, most of America was happy to wait and change things point by point over time as they were found wanting.
One could almost say this followed English tradition. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Parliament had declared King James overthrown for violating their rights and (in violation of primogeniture) chose a new monarch to rule over them. Now, the elected representatives of America were overthrowing King George for violating their rights. They declined to choose any new monarch to rule over them, but everything else about it was in the same tradition.
What's more, they were doing this with wording from that same era. During the Exclusion Crisis before King James had taken the throne, John Locke had written his Two Treatises of Government to propound the idea of government as a social contract, where the king was a mere servant of the people. His book proved extremely influential, over the next century and since. When the Declaration of Independence speaks of natural rights and the right to alter or abolish governments that infringe them, it's almost quoting from Locke's Second Treatise.
America was declaring independence from Britain, but it wasn't independent at all from British tradition or thought.
This's why the American Revolution was so successful.
The people of America were already electing their colonial governments; they knew how those ran. After independence, little had changed there - soon, new constitutions in some states usually left the broad outlines the same; later, a new federal government was added on top. Americans already knew how to keep their governments functioning.
Just as significantly, Americans saw their government as legitimate. There would be no military coups in America, nor a civil war over how to structure the new government, because it wasn't a new imposition on the people. It was, mostly, the same government they'd had all along. There were barbeques, not coups.
The real revolution, as John Adams said, wasn't declaring independence or forming a new government. It was the change in Americans' hearts to want to fight against distant Britain in a War of Independence.
Yes, the revolutionary legislatures of many colonies were technically "Provincial Congresses" as they'd convened without being summoned by the royal governor. Still, they were elected and governed under the preexisting laws. I don't think that's an important distinction, just like I view the Convention Parliament of 1688 as a full Parliament notwithstanding its lack of a royal summons.
Technically, Britain briefly had a written constitution given by Cromwell for his military dictatorship - but Cromwell broadly ignored it, and it was nullified after his death together with everything else he did.
Nowadays, the colonies might be compared to the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland - but none of those existed in the 1700's. Essentially no local or regional government existed in Britain, aside from sheriffs and coroners for each shire.
Rhode Island was the last state to supersede its colonial charter, in 1843, after the Dorr Rebellion - which is a fascinating story in itself: a revolution raised against a state government without any thought of rebelling against the United States.
I read somewhere, many years ago, that it was considered revolution because each colony had independently rebelled against their royal governors, and then united to fight the war of secession. It sounded more like a lawyerly quibble than any real reason, but at least plausible.
The decision NOT to put a new king in the place of George III was an unusual, perhaps even extraordinary one, at least by the standards of modern history up till then, though I expect the Founders saw the establishment of the Roman republic as a precedent.