On the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Honestly, I love this book. It’s dated, but the logic is tight and easy to follow. I’m sure that it’s been surpassed in the 54 years since its publication.

In the first chapter, Bailyn gives us a broad overview of the flurry of publications that occurred in the years leading up to the American Revolution. In the second chapter, he argues that the debate between countless pamphlets—most of which were explicitly partisan—fused together and made a comprehensive case. To make sense of the debate, it’s necessary to discuss what “power” meant to white, Anglophone settlers in North America.

To them, power meant dominion of some people over others, it meant force, and it meant coercion. Moreover, a crucial adjective that describes power is “trespass.” Ultimately, power always expands outwards, taking more under its grip. Lastly, power’s natural prey is liberty and the law. Power and freedom are inherently at odds. This is something that we 21st century Americans may not necessarily agree with, as we tend to see “power” and “law” as often (although not always) being on the same side. Power is something that can be expanded, or retracted, through the law. At times, they seem to work as companions, but the 18th century English settler would not have seen power in these terms.

The big idea behind the comprehensive worldview articulated by the pamphlet debates was that there were nefarious agents in both Britain and America who sought the wholesale destruction of the freedoms guaranteed within the English (and, now and at the time, British) constitution. British settlers felt that the events in America were only one part of the picture, which mirrored events happening in Britain as well. At the end of the day, Americans believed that they were facing a conspiracy of power (in the 18th century sense), and the fear of conspiracy is what galvanized British settlers to shift from protest to revolution.

To Bailyn, the “revolutionary” aspect of the American Revolution was not the war, the Confederation experiments, or the signing of the constitution. Instead, the real revolution was the way Americans came to invert European values in virtues. They through away institutional sophistication, seeking simplicy. They abandoned “high” manners and social hierarchies, seeking a more egalitarian, individualist direction. They fought for a weakened state and fought against religious homogeneity. YET, although the past sentences are written as absolutes, the reality is those ideas were more ideals. The American Revolution was not wholly successful and, to some extent, we can even talk about a “counter-Revolution” taking place under the Federalists (essentially the signing of the United States Constitution, and its aftermath). Nevertheless, the ideals were there, and they were important.

I’m not going to take the time to critique this work too heavily, but it made an impression on me in a very positive way. I think that most of us see the Revolution as much more conservative than Bailyn suggests—to the point we may not see it as a revolution at all—but these questions are still very much worth thinking about.