The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash

Author:Gary B. Nash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

6

WRITING ON THE CLEAN SLATE 1776-1780

BY 1776, COLONISTS WERE PRACTICED AT OVERTHROWING GOVERNMENT, but not at constructing it. In one colony after another they had closed courts, driven royal agents to cover, evicted king-appointed governors from their residences, and, at the urging of the Continental Congress, elected new men to sit in extralegal provincial legislatures and conventions. But creating new constitutionally sanctioned governments was infinitely more difficult, akin to instantly growing a new, fully formed tree after chopping down a venerable old oak. And the work of constitution making was all the more tricky because it had to be accomplished, state by state, in the vortex of a war for national liberation that was going badly.

Composing his autobiography two years after yielding the presidency to Thomas Jefferson in 1801, John Adams remembered how he urged the Second Continental Congress on October 18, 1775, “to resolve on a general recommendation to all the states to call conventions and institute regular governments.” This was the beginning of “our desire of revolutionizing all the governments”—governments that had already formed outside England’s authority, but only as conventions or temporary bodies, after royal governors had disbanded their legislatures.1

Adams was pleased in 1775 that most members of Congress agreed with him about constructing new state governments (at a time when Congress was still deeply divided on declaring independence), but he was mortified at the kind of government most of his friends desired. Pressed to come up with a model plan of government that might serve the states, he began penning “Thoughts on Government.” But Adams chose not to suggest the form of government he had in mind on the congressional floor. In fact, he was chary of having Congress take a stand on any kind of government. “I dared not make such a motion,” he recalled, “because I knew that if such a plan was adopted, it would be if not permanent yet of long duration, and it would be extremely difficult to get rid of it.”

Adams would have been thrilled to see state constitutions constructed that conformed to his idea of a wisely structured government. The raw country lawyer of a decade before had now emerged as a diamond-edged intellectual deeply immersed in the science of politics. He had gained great respect in Massachusetts and in the Continental Congress for poring over the works of political theorists all the way back to classical authors, but especially those of the main English political thinkers of the last century: Hobbes, Harrington, Sydney, and Locke. “I had in my head and at my tongue’s end as many projects of government as Mr. [Edmund] Burke says the Abbe Sieyes [noted French political philosopher] had in his pigeon holes.” However, Adams knew that many others had been reading the same political theorists but had reached different conclusions about what constituted balanced government.

In fact, Adams had to remain mute because, for all the respect he had garnered, he was out of step with most members of Congress. Later he wrote, “I

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.