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Liberty, Enlightenment, and Classical Republican Virtues in The Founding of America
Liberty, Enlightenment, and Classical Republican Virtues in The Founding of America
William R Cox
4075725
Graduate Seminar in American History, HIST 520, C001, Fall 09
Dr. John F. Chappo
2
The United States of America has, arguably, impacted the world more than any
other nation or society in history. America has enjoyed political, cultural, military and
economic dominance since World War II, where, with the help of Britain and the other
allies, America rolled back the reach of tyranny to the benefit of all humanity. America
later engaged and ultimately defeated communism through the Cold War, again lifting
liberty to supremacy over despotic leadership. This brief history of American success
and positive impact throughout world history, invites a litany of questions that historians
must endeavor to answer. Was the founding of America truly a monumental event in the
history of the world? Was something innately special created in 1776 and then confirmed
and codified in 1787? Was American success determined by the fact that the founders
were simply the best political minds the world has ever produced? In short, why was the
Throughout America’s short life, many historians have attempted to answer these
questions. Scholars put forth many different theories over the last 200 years, such as,
George Bancroft who in the nineteenth century offered the divine hand of providence and
the deified traits of the founders as the primary impetus for the founding.1 As America
transformed itself from an agrarian to industrial country, Bancroft’s thesis and the
founders’ motives came under assault from a group of historians who focused on the
economic impact of the American Revolution. Charles Beard offered his ideas through
the lens of an economic interpretation of the founding arguing that economics were the
primary factors leading to the American Revolution and the framing of the United States
Constitution. Beard, in large measure, dismissed Bancroft’s and other early historians
1
Ernst Breisach, Historiography Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, 3rd Edition (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007) 255-261.
3
theories that were based in ideology, because, in his view the proper method for
interpreting history was through the realm of economics.2 Fredrick Jackson Turner, a
contemporary of Beard’s, combined the idealism of individualism and liberty with the
only through the lens of ideology or economics but he attempted to develop a history
through a sort of compilation of the two.3 More recently, Joseph Ellis focused his work
on the founders themselves because “men make history” and the generation responsible
for the founding knew they were making history.4 He further argued that the success of
the founding was based upon the founders’ intellectual, cultural, and social diversity;
arguing that the founding represents what “was, and still is a group portrait.”5
Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood provide the most comprehensive work focused
ideology, which began nearly a century earlier, provided the intellectual transformation,
that resulted in the American Revolution. Wood furthers Bailyn’s work by illustrating
the importance of the Enlightenment and classical republican virtues in the founding of
America.6 This work continues in the vein of Bailyn and Wood, exploring the
ideological history of America’s founding by asking the question, “Why was the
founding of America special?” The answer, to this seemingly complex question, is found
2
Ernst Breisach, Historiography, 334-337.
3
Fredrick Jackson Turner, "AHA Presidential Address: Social Forces in American
History," American Historical Association,
http://www.historians.org/info/aha_history/fjturner.htm (accessed February 7, 2010).
4
Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation (New York, NY:
Vintage Books, 2002) 4.
5
Joseph Ellis, American Creation Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the
Republic (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2007) 16-17.
6
Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 1998) v-xviii.
4
The founding of the United States of America was a synthesis of the evolving
culminated in the political institution known as We The People. The synthesis of these
elements can be best viewed through the lens of the American colonial mindset of the
Revolutionary period. Gaining insight into the revolutionary ideology and mindset will
be accomplished by: first examining the ideology of personal liberty, it’s origins and
to the founders during the Enlightenment; and finally how the founders synthesized these
ideas into a new pragmatic political reality that they codified into the Constitution of The
United States of America. The new political reality that had matured through the years
was so powerful that it would transform thirteen independent states from oppressed
subjects of King George to a united single nation sized republic that would obtain
political and economic hegemony of the North American continent in less than one
liberty as an ideology.
Independence. All men, have “certain inalienable rights,” that governments get “their
powers from the consent of the governed,” and that “whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends” it is the right of the people to “abolish it and institute
a new government.” 7 The Congress further explained that, “the history of the present
king of Great Britain, is a history of repeated injustices and usurpations in direct object
7
Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence" (Philidelphia, PA: Continental
Congress, July 4, 1776).
5
the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.” 8 King George and
Parliament were viewed as tyrannical usurpers of liberty. The Americans perceived only
one choice, in 1776, war. The ideology displayed in the Declaration of Independence
was not simply the result of Thomas Jefferson’s imagination or creativity. The ideology
evolved over many years prior to Jefferson’s penning the famous text. In many ways, the
ideals described in the Declaration by Jefferson and ingrained into the mindset of the
The Age of the Enlightenment began with the Glorious Revolution, of 1688, in
Britain and continued to include the American Revolution and the European revolutions
that would follow. The philosophers of this age included Voltaire, Rousseau, Smith,
Locke and many others. The significance of this age to the ideological mindset of the
Locke and Newton as immense and immortalized the three in 1789 with portraiture for
the library at Monticello.9 Jefferson was not alone in his admiration of the
Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment was the age of reason and progress, where men believed in
themselves and their intellectual abilities rather than superstition and tradition alone. Sir
Francis Bacon set the stage for future philosophers when he argued that man can only
understand that which “he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature:
beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”10 The Enlightenment held
philosophically that everything was subject to the reason and criticism of mans intellect.
8
Ibid.
9
Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New
York: Penguin Books, 1995) ix.
10
Francis Bacon, "Reason and Nature: The New Science," in The Portable
Enlightenment Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin Books, 1995) 39.
6
The dogma of religion and the despotic traditions of statecraft were no longer exempt
individual, in many ways, came to be the ultimate authority, no longer were men’s minds
subjugated to an idle aristocracy, the ritualistic established church nor the despotic
arrangements based on anything other than an individual fulfilling his self interests by his
own means within a level playing field.12 Meanwhile, America’s own Thomas Jefferson
exemplified the growing desire by men of reason to question dogma with his version of
the Holy Bible where he had removed all elements of the Gospels that seemed “un-
reasonable” to the intellect of man.13 John Locke was arguably the first and certainly one
of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment, particularly for the Americans.
By 1776, Americans were very familiar with the political philosophy of Locke,
and others, “in pamphlet after pamphlet the American writers cited Locke on natural
rights and on the social and governmental contract.”14 Locke argued that government
was a contract amongst a citizenry and that the people voluntarily submitted to authority
in order to obtain “public protection of their natural rights.”15 Locke posited that, “to
understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what
state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions
and dispose of their possessions and persons as they see fit . . . without depending upon
11
Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader, xi.
12
Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations," in The Portable Enlightenment Reader, ed.
Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin Books, 1995) 505-513.
13
David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, 2006) 83.
14
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992) 27.
15
Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader. xvi.
7
yet, an elite of society had formed where, daily life closely resembled Adam Smith’s
if you held ambitions of political leadership. The founders, the American Enlightened
elite, grew into the new liberal standards for men of leadership, cultivating politeness,
America.17 These classical republican ideals and virtues were of immense importance to
the founding fathers; because, “republics had to hold themselves together from the
bottom up, ultimately, from their citizens’ willingness to take up arms to defend their
country and to sacrifice their private desires for the sake of the public good—from their
disinterestedness.”18 The philosophers of the day, and the founders of America, reasoned
that no republic could survive were it not for the virtue of its citizenry.
The initial blows of the American Revolution occurred at Lexington; however, the
ideological battle began nearly a century earlier with the Glorious Revolution in Great
Britain. John Locke’s natural rights argument and its emphasis of individual liberty
provided the philosophical justification for the 1688 Glorious Revolution of Britain and,
16
John Locke, "The Second Treatise of Civil Government," in The Portable
Enlightenment Reader, ed. Isaac Kramnick (New York: Penguin, 1995) 395.
17
Gordon Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (East
Rutherford, NJ: Penguin Group, 2006) 23.
18
Gordon S Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009) 7.
8
subsequently, greatly influenced the ideology leading to the American Revolution.19 The
1688 British war resulted in the creation of Great Britain’s parliamentary style
government and the overthrow of King James II of England. In large measure, the
opposition to King James and the work of Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Washington
The Glorious Revolution hoped to restrict the Crowns power by subjugating the
King’s war making and taxing abilities to the advice the British Parliament. Bernard
Bailyn, in his study of colonial literature, observed that, “few of them,” that is the
colonists, “accepted the Glorious Revolution and the lax political pragmatism that had
followed as the final solution to the political problems of the time . . . and they refused to
believe that the transfer of sovereignty from the crown to Parliament provided a perfect
guarantee that the individual would be protected from the power of the state.”21 The
ocean away and nearly a century earlier. After 1688 the sovereignty of Americans, as
well as, that of Englishmen resided in the hands of Parliament and instead of subjection
to one tyrant, the King, British subjects found themselves subjected to many tyrants: the
the British Constitution and afforded the same protections of the Crown as any
Englishman; however, many developed unique political beliefs that were viewed as
19
Isaac Kramnick, ed., The Portable Enlightenment Reader, x-xii.
20
Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, 2nd
Edition, ed. David Kennedy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005) 51.
21
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. 46-47.
9
extremist by the English. According to Robert Middlekauf, scholars labeled these beliefs
radical Whig Ideology and argued that the British political tumult of the seventeenth
century birthed this new, yet soon to be important, political thought.22 These ideas, that a
majority of the colonists identified with, became ingrained in the American mindset and
coalesced around “two sorts of threats to political freedom: a general moral decay of the
people that would invite the intrusion of evil despotic rulers, and the encroachment of the
executive authority upon the legislature, the attempt that power always made to subdue
the liberty protected by mixed government.”23 Parliament asserted its authority through
the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, and the other Intolerable Acts. Parliaments assertion
within the context of this radical Whig Ideology, that had taken root in the political arena
of America, proved out the fear of the “attempt that power always made to subdue the
liberty.”24
embraced the philosophy of Locke, which bound together life, liberty and property as
rights inherent to being free men. The rights of life and liberty depended upon the right
to property; because, economic activity even survival was dependent upon property,
similarly, political participation or suffrage depended upon property; therefore, from the
perspective of the Americans property rights defined life and liberty.25 Americans lived
under the assumption of the same constitutional protections as other British subjects
announced, in a letter that, “if they have the right to take one shilling from us without our
consent, they have a right to all we posses; for it is the birthright of an Englishman, not to
argument, the British Parliament and King considered the American colonists
appropriately represented, “like ‘nine tenths of the people of Britain’ who did not choose
their own representatives were in effect represented.”27 In fact, only one tenth of the
British people were propertied, a requirement of suffrage, therefore, the Americans were
represented as most Englishmen and better than some other subjects of the Crown.
Patrick Henry effectively and accurately expressed the American’s argument and political
ideology with his fifth, and most controversial, resolution offered in the Virginia House
of Burgesses stating, “that the General Assembly of this Colony have the only and sole
exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this
colony;” he argued further that attempts by any other political body, such as the British
Parliament, or any other person, such as King George, “to vest such power . . . has the
The American colonists and the British Empire approached a cross roads of
history that the Comte de Vergennes predicted twelve years earlier while serving as
colonies will no longer need Britain’s protection . . . she will call on them to contribute
toward supporting the burdens . . . and they will answer by striking off their chains.”29
Benjamin Franklin was less sure of a united colonial action and wondered if the thirteen
26
Ibid., 77.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid., 73.
29
Ibid., 29.
11
separate colonies could unite for any reason, “‘if they could not agree to unite against the
French and Indians, can it reasonably be supposed that there is any danger of their uniting
against their own nation;’” he deemed the likelihood as “impossible;” however, he added
the caveat “unless . . . they are made to feel ‘the most grievous tyranny and
oppression.’”30
Franklin’s caveat and the Comte de Vergennes letter proved prophetic as the
America illustrated the belief that the Glorious Revolution did not transfer sovereignty far
enough from the historical center of tyranny. The political circumstances of 1775 as
system where citizens other than Americans, elected the House of Commons, which
exercised rule over America; therefore, the Americans viewed themselves as “subjects of
Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the other Intolerable Acts, and ultimately endured the
dissolution of their elected representative assemblies, until May 10, 1776 when the
Continental Congress counseled that “the respective assemblies and conventions of the
United Colonies . . . that they adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the
representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their
Finally on July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson, and committee, with British war ships
off the coast of New York, New Jersey and South Carolina, agreed and set to paper the
30
Ibid.
31
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New
York: Vintage Books, 1998) 21.
32
Ibid., 37.
12
summary of a political and ideological shift that began with the Glorious Revolution in
1688. The founding fathers moved ideology to action when they put “their lives, their
fortunes and their sacred honor” at risk by declaring that liberty was a natural right.33
Americans declared with blood, that government’s only authority is derived from the
consent of the governed and they exercised their natural rights to throw off the chains of
The founding fathers’ wisdom carried politics in America from the lofty ideals of
committees, documents, and debates, through the trials of war and finally with uncanny
creativity they instilled the ideology into a functioning government based on a type of
ambiguous federalism, whose benefits were illustrated and defended by Publius prior to
founders like George Washington, whose 1783 circular letter to the Governors of the
colonies, stated that for the new country to flourish it needed “an indissoluble union of
the states under one federal head and a friendly disposition among the people . . . to
forget their local prejudices and policies . . . to sacrifice their individual advantages to the
the virtue of the citizenry. Washington himself provided two historic lessons of classical
republican disinterestedness and virtue when he, as the victorious conquering general,
surrendered his commission to the Continental Congress stating that, “having now
33
Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence."
34
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and Madison James, The Federalist Papers, ed. Garry
Wills (New York, NY: Bantam Classics, 2003) xiii.
35
George Washington, "George Washington to John Hancock (Circular) 11 June 1783,"
The Papers of George Washington, University of Virginia,
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/constitution/1784/hancock.html (accessed
February 24, 2010).
13
finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action . . . I here offer my
Commission, and take my leave of all employments of public life” and again, perhaps
however, most importantly the new government corrected the fatal flaw of the Glorious
from the King and placed it with the British Parliament, while the American Revolution
and the Declaration of Independence removed American sovereignty from the British
Parliament. The framers of the Constitution of The United States of America ultimately
People. Sovereignty instilled into this new nationwide concept of We the People offered
an adequate explanation and pragmatic solution to the question: where did the national
personal liberty that began in the Glorious Revolution of Great Britain. The founding
fathers internalized classical republican virtues and used the reason of the Enlightenment
and pragmatism born of the American Revolution to create We the People, a place where
American sovereignty could reside, a political institution far removed from the historical
America’s founding began a new era of political ideology, where the supremacy
36
George Washington, "George Washington's Resignation Address to the Continental
Congress," The Papers of George Washington, Univeristy of Virginia, December 23,
1783, http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/revolution/resignation.html (accessed
February 24, 2010).
37
Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England
and America (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988) 283.
14
of individual liberty would wax and wane in opposition to strong central government, yet
never yield to despotism. This uniquely American political ideology matured to become
the antithesis of tyrannical despots the world over. The colonist waged the Revolutionary
War to remove the tyrannical leadership of King George and Parliament; and, through the
actions of the Revolution, and the wisdom gained from the trials of war, the founders
recognized and created a government with the express purpose of protecting individual
liberty.
Works Cited
Bacon, Francis. "Reason and Nature: The New Science." In The Portable Enlightenment
Reader, edited by Isaac Kramnick. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.
Bobrick, Benson. Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution. New
York: Penguin Group, 1997.
Breisach, Ernst. Historiography Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. 3rd Edition. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Ellis, Joseph. American Creation Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the
Republic. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2007.
—. Founding Brothers The Revolutionary Generation. New York, NY: Vintage Books,
2002.
15
Hamilton, Alexander, John Jay, and Madison James. The Federalist Papers. Edited by
Garry Wills. New York, NY: Bantam Classics, 2003.
Holmes, David L. The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Kramnick, Isaac, ed. The Portable Enlightenment Reader. New York: Penguin Books,
1995.
Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. 2nd
Edition. Edited by David Kennedy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Morgan, Edmund S. Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England
and America. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.
Smith, Adam. "The Wealth of Nations." In The Portable Enlightenment Reader, edited
by Isaac Kramnick. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.
Wood, Gordon. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.
—. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. East Rutherford, NJ:
Penguin Group, 2006.
16
—. The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787. Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1998.