A 4th of July story: John Dickinson's conservative dissent bought us time for success

Happy 4th of July! Today is the day Americans commemorate the independence our nation, declared by that courageous band of Founding Fathers who met in Philadelphia and signed the document that declared our nation to be free and independent from the United Kingdom. One of the great Founders that summer in Philadelphia was John Dickinson, a statesman admired second only to Washington by the other delegates.

A Pennsylvania man, Dickinson had long written in defense of the American cause against parliamentary encroachments on the traditional rights of Englishmen that the American colonists had long enjoyed. Yet, as Wilfred M. McClay writes in this fascinating review of a recent biography of Dickinson posted  over at The American Conservative notes, Dickinson opposed the push for American independence for most of that summer and refused to sign the Declaration of Independence. Despite this opposition, when the Crown in Parliament pressed war upon the American nation, Dickinson took to the field and fought fiercely for American liberty, honor and life. 

And in the course of Providence, Dickinson's refusal to go quickly along with the rush towards independence proved essential to the success of the American cause. As Daniel Foster explains in this post over at National Review Online, Dickinson's caution provided the time necessary for the Americans to adequately prepare for war with the greatest superpower the world had yet known at that time. 

So, on this 4th of July, spare a moment or two to think about John Dickinson, probably the greatest Founding Father that almost nobody has heard of. A defender of American rights, then attacked as a Loyalist, then a solider in the cause of the Revolution, always a statesman who put love of country and need for order ahead of grant schemes and personal aggrandizement. A worthy model for Americans of any stripe, but especially for conservatives.  Here is a Founder who preferred the tried and the true to the novel and innovative, but who also understood that sometime reform, even radical reform, is necessary to preserve the established institutions and customs of a society based on law and traditional rights. And he was a proud patriot who shows that dissent, far from being a source of weakness to be extirpated, can give a nation an opportunity to become stronger and more able. 

Rights, government and a punctuation ambiguity in the Declaration of Independence

For rather obvious reasons, here at American Creation we take the 4th of July seriously. As we ramp up for the official Independence Day holiday here in the United States, the New York Time is running a story on what appears to be a newly discovered drafting ambiguity in the formal statement by the Continental Congress that got this whole America things rolling:  A Period is Questioned in the Declaration of Independence.

As the article details, the ambiguity isn't in a minor part of the Declaration, either, or in a one of the parts that hardly anybody reads anymore.  It is dead-center in the heart of the part of the Declaration that has been most interesting to Americans since the 1850s: the statement about inalienable rights and the basis of human government.  The way the text has traditionally been thought to read is as follows, with the newly-called into question punctuation in bold brackets:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness [.] — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Why does this matter?  As the article explains:

The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., concerns a period that appears right after the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the transcript, but almost certainly not, she maintains, on the badly faded parchment original.  

That errant spot of ink, she believes, makes a difference, contributing to what she calls a “routine but serious misunderstanding” of the document.

The period creates the impression that the list of self-evident truths ends with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she says. But as intended by Thomas Jefferson, she argues, what comes next is just as important: the essential role of governments — “instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” — in securing those rights.  

"The logic of the sentence moves from the value of individual rights to the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights,” Ms. Allen said. “You lose that connection when the period gets added.”

An interesting issue.  Fortunately, since the Declaration of Independence has no binding authority as a constitutional document, it is the kind of issue that likely won't have any major practical effect on how our rights and duties are understood legally.  But from the perspective of political philosophy, as well as basic drafting principles, the difference between a comma and a period in the text could be significant in understanding how the two parts of that section of the Declaration were meant to be read.

In any event, this story is a great reminder that there is always stuff waiting to be discovered in the historical record, and technology is only going to make that more true as time goes on.  Even a document as massively studied as the Declaration of Independence can offer up new insights over time.

Update:  in the comments fellow American Creation blogger Tom Van Dyke points out the counter-argument that the punctuation used in the document doesn't make all that much difference.  Clink on the comments and give his contribution a serious read.

Thomas Jefferson was no secularist

Regardless of how high one thinks Jefferson's wall of separation of church and state should be construed, one point that many modern commentators of a secular bent overlook is that Jefferson was consistent to emphasize not just limits on religion's power to use state power but also on limits of the state's power to force people to violate their sincerely formed religious consciences. As he wrote in the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom:

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone[.]

Note here that the justification for this approach to limiting state power over religion and religious controversies is in God's own act of creation of the human mind, and God's will for human beings to be free in matters of religion. In other words, Jefferson's commitment to religious liberty sprang from his own theological beliefs about God's will and how God seeks to execute his purposes in human life. His contention is not secular at all, it is profoundly religious and profoundly theological.  And it parallels his long-standing views on the matters of religious liberty that he set out in his Notes on Virginia, where he writes the famous statement:

The rights of conscience were never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Note again the root justification for Jefferson's views here.  Human beings cannot rightly submit their conscience to the state because our consciences do not come from the state nor can the state properly judge out consciences. The judgment of our consciences is left to God, a God that Jefferson claims as his own.

Thomas Jefferson's views on the limits of state power in religion themselves reflect an attempt to use the agencies of the state to promulgate a theological view of the human person and God's purpose in creating that person. His approach is not secular. It is sacred.

Washington's step-granddaughter writes of his religious practice

Following up on my recent post on Washington's religious library, here's a link to a letter written by Nelly Parke Custis-Lewis, Washington's step-grandaughter, in 1833. The letter is notable because it contains several bits of information about Washington's public support for the Anglican church, as well as his own practices in regard to church attendance and sacrament reception. The letter is based in part on Custis-Lewis' own personal observations of Washington's religious habits.   

Here's the text of the letter:

Sir, 

I received your favor of the 20th instant last evening, and hasten to give you the information, which you desire. 

Truro Parish is the one in which Mount Vernon, Pohick Church, and Woodlawn are situated. Fairfax Parish is now Alexandria. Before the Federal District was ceded to Congress, Alexandria was in Fairfax County. General Washington had a pew in Pohick Church, and one in Christ Church at Alexandria. He was very instrumental in establishing Pohick Church, and I believe subscribed largely. His pew was near the pulpit. I have a perfect recollection of being there, before his election to the presidency, with him and my grandmother. It was a beautiful church, and had a large, respectable, and wealthy congregation, who were regular attendants. 

He attended the church at Alexandria when the weather and roads permitted a ride of ten miles. In New York and Philadelphia he never omitted attendance at church in the morning, unless detained by indisposition. The afternoon was spent in his own room at home; the evening with his family, and without company. Sometimes an old and intimate friend called to see us for an hour or two; but visiting and visitors were prohibited for that day. No one in church attended to the services with more reverential respect. My grandmother, who was eminently pious, never deviated from her early habits. She always knelt. The General, as was then the custom, stood during the devotional parts of the service. On communion Sundays, he left the church with me, after the blessing, and returned home, and we sent the carriage back for my grandmother. 

It was his custom to retire to his library at nine or ten o'clock where he remained an hour before he went to his chamber. He always rose before the sun and remained in his library until called to breakfast. I never witnessed his private devotions. I never inquired about them. I should have thought it the greatest heresy to doubt his firm belief in Christianity. His life, his writings, prove that he was a Christian. He was not one of those who act or pray, "that they may be seen of men." He communed with his God in secret. 

My mother resided two years at Mount Vernon after her marriage with John Parke Custis, the only son of Mrs. Washington. I have heard her say that General Washington always received the sacrament with my grandmother before the revolution. When my aunt, Miss Custis [Martha "Patsy"] died suddenly at Mount Vernon, before they could realize the event, he knelt by her and prayed most fervently, most affectingly, for her recovery. Of this I was assured by Judge Washington's mother and other witnesses. 

He was a silent, thoughtful man. He spoke little generally; never of himself. I never heard him relate a single act of his life during the war. I have often seen him perfectly abstracted, his lips moving, but no sound was perceptible. I have sometimes made him laugh most heartily from sympathy with my joyous and extravagant spirits. I was, probably, one of the last persons on earth to whom he would have addressed serious conversation, particularly when he knew that I had the most perfect model of female excellence ever with me as my monitress, who acted the part of a tender and devoted parent, loving me as only a mother can love, and never extenuating or approving in me what she disapproved of others. She never omitted her private devotions, or her public duties; and she and her husband were so perfectly united and happy that he must have been a Christian. She had no doubts, no fears for him. After forty years of devoted affection and uninterrupted happiness, she resigned him without a murmur into the arms of his Savior and his God, with the assured hope of his eternal felicity. Is it necessary that any one should certify, "General Washington avowed himself to me a believer in Christianity?" As well may we question his patriotism, his heroic, disinterested devotion to his country. His mottos were, "Deeds, not Words"; and, "For God and my Country." 

With sentiments of esteem, 

I am, Nelly Custis-Lewis

Quote of the day: Thomas Jefferson on federalism and the free exercise of religion

In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies.

-- Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1805.

The religious library of George Washington and what it can tell us about Washington's faith

That's the topic of this post by Mark Tooley over at Juicy Ecumenism: George Washington's Birthday & Religious Library. Washington's religious views are subject to almost endless speculation, but the contents of his library and the outlines of at least part of his regular religious practice are fairly clear.

A lifelong Anglican (although in accounts of his later life it appears he refrained from communion), Washington's religious library was diverse but chronologically narrow. Aside from two copies of the Bible (one with the Apocrypha), he had no books, sermons or pamphlets dealing with early Christianity. Of the classical Protestant reformers, only Theodore Beza is represented.

What Washington's religious library did contain, as Tooley describes, is a broad selection of theological works from the 1700's, including sermons and pamphlets representing unitarianism, Methodism, Catholicism, as well as polemical works dealing with various topics. Books attacking deism and atheism are part of Washington's library, as are works on Christian apologetics and the Book of Revelation. Masonic sermons, explanations of the 39 Articles and the Athanasian Creed, and a defense of Quaker pacifism are present in the library as well. Most of the books, unsurprisingly, deal with Anglican or Presbyterian thought.

Interesting from a modern perspective is the large number of sermons contained in Washington's library, particularly in light of a religious practice of Washington's of which I was completely unaware:  he regularly read sermons to his household on Sundays.

As Tooley puts it, "[t]he Washington religious library is eclectic." Given the broad reading and ambiguous sectarian views of the Father of Our Country, this should be no shock.  Washington had friends from a variety of religious traditions, and it makes sense that books from a variety of religious traditions would find their way into his library. And while the contents of Washington's religious library may not shed direct light on Washington's private religious views, they do show some of his influences -- and provide a window into one aspect of his regular religious practice.

Related item:  The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, the charitable organization that owns and maintains Washington's historic home, has a page on its website exploring Washington's religious views.  Well worth a read.

The faith of Washington and Lincoln

President's Day traditionally commemorates the two greatest presidents of our nation, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  The religious beliefs of both men have been the subject of a great deal of commentary and speculation. Thomas Kidd, one of the best evangelical scholars when it comes to the religious history of early America, provides a solid overview of the religious views of both of those presidents, noting the controversy around both Washington's religious practice and Lincoln's early religious beliefs: The Enigmatic Faith of Washington and Lincoln. Well worth a read this holiday.

John Dickinson as fusionist thinker

Over at The Imaginative Conservative Wilfred McClay posts this review of William Murchison's book The Cost of Liberty: the Life of John Dickinson:  The Anti-Jefferson.  In his review, McClay notes that Dickinson often incorporated and fused differing strands of thought into his approach to practical politics. Of particularly interest to those interested in constitutional theory is McClay's observation that Dickinson incorporated critical aspects of anti-federalist theory into his defense of the Constitution, notably the need for a virtuous citizenry in order for the American republic to survive and thrive:

Dickinson carried forward into the constitutional era a great deal of the moral concern expressed by many of the anti-Federalists, a concern grounded in classical republicanism, and he thereby provides a good example of a major debate that remained—and, one hopes, remains—contested. He did not celebrate the Constitution as a well-oiled Rube Goldberg mechanism, cleverly designed to make ambition counteract ambition and render virtue optional, but as a “plain-dealing work,” designed to give “the will of the people a decisive influence over the whole, and over all the parts.” He clearly linked the flourishing of political liberty with a high regard for “that perfect liberty better described in the Holy Scriptures.” His sense of history, prudence, and religion all came together in these words, placed in the mouth of Fabius: “History sacred and profane tells us, that, corruption of manners sinks nations into slavery.” The sole antidote to such corruption was “soundness of sense and honesty of heart.”

Read it all, and get a glimpse at the work of one of the most overlooked of the American Founding Fathers, and one of the great conservative minds of the late colonial and early republican periods. It may be too much to hope for, but perhaps some enterprising young historian might be interested in resurrecting John Dickinson from obscurity to the rightful place of prominence he deserves among the Founding Generation?

Our America: the diversity of the American founding

Commenting on the work of historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Agnes Howard over at The Anxious Bench provides a great reminder that the founding and settlement of what is now the United States was the work of a lot more folks than refugee Puritans and Southern aristocratic hopefuls: Hispanic America is Our America. As Howard explains, to know American history requires a knowledge of Spanish settlement and exploration:

Present-minded reasons might press us to learn more about Hispanic America. Even without them, Spanish colonization should be more familiar simply because a large swath of what is now the United States was first part of Spanish settlement. Learning about the history of our country requires learning about Spanish settlement. We overlook this even as the most obvious features of these states, names of their rivers, towns, mountains, monuments, make it plain: Los Angelos, San Antonio, Santa Fe, Brazos, San Augustin, and so on.

As a personal aside, when I was a teenager and began looking beyond the standard story about the settlement of the United States, I was delighted to find that the Spanish -- and hence Catholic -- settlement in St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest European settlement in the United States. Howard notes that looking more broadly at the American founding puts the focus not only on Protestant settlers but on Catholic ones as well:

Yes, Protestants and their institutions figure in Our America. But Roman Catholicism is much more prominent when the American southwest or Gulf coast is [a] focus of attention. Missions dotted the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of Florida, as well as in more familiar locations in Texas, California, and New Mexico, before and after English settlers made first efforts to introduce the Gospel.

Howard also points out the pivotal role played by Mormon settlers in the colonization of the American West. One weakness of Howard's post is that she omits one other settlement group, critical to history of the far northwest of the American continent: Russian Orthodox monks who brought their distinctive form of Christianity to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. While the story of Alaska isn't central to the story of the American founding, the Russian Orthodox efforts there are an interesting and vital part of the larger story of European contact, for good and ill, with the native peoples already here.

Thanks to Howard's review, I now have another history book to add to the pile by my reading chair!

Christmas as a party in revolutionary America

Thomas Kidd gives some of the background on the festive nature of the Christmas holiday in colonial and revolutionary America here: Was Christmas in Revolutionary America a Drunken Bash? As Kidd writes:

In the 1700s, Christmas was notorious for drunken bashes more reminiscent of Mardi Gras than our family-friendly holiday. An account from New York published during the "twelve days" of Christmas in early 1787 (the same year Americans would frame the new Constitution) paints a picture of a deeply conflicted holiday. As one might expect, some people focused on the religious meaning of the season, setting aside the time "for a most sacred purpose." Others, however, spent the twelve days "reveling in profusion, and paying their sincere devotions to merry Bacchus," the Greek god of wine and festivity.

The overt partying that was part of Christmas celebration back in the day certainly adds context to George Washington's eggnog recipe!

On another note, since Jon has wished everyone a merry Unitarian Christmas, I would like to extend best Christmas holiday wishes from a papist perspective.  If you think it is important to keep Christ in Christmas (and I do), consider how important it is to keep all of Christmas -- Christ + Mass!  A merry Christmas to all -- Christus natus est!

The Christian faith and the American founding: the evangelical-deist alliance

Historian Thomas Kidd, one of the sharpest evangelicals working as a professional historian today, has a well-worth reading post over at the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission website asking the question: Founding faiths: Was America founded as a Christian nation? This nuanced and deeply thought out post examines the alliance of devout evangelicals and more skeptical deists that brought about the unique American experiment in ordered liberty, especially religious liberty. As Kidd writes:

Even Thomas Jefferson, a deist hailed as a hero of today’s secularists, took a generous approach toward the public role of religion after disestablishment. For example, Jefferson routinely attended religious services in government buildings as president. Jefferson was the author, of course, of the 1802 letter in which he argued that the First Amendment had erected a “wall of separation” between church and state. But the same weekend he sent this letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut, a Baptist minister named John Leland preached before a joint session of Congress, with the president in attendance.

The actual history of faith and the Founding, then, confounds our expectations. Evangelical Baptists were the staunchest advocates of church-state separation, and their union with deists like Jefferson made the Baptists’ vision of religious liberty a reality. You could hardly imagine this collaboration of skeptical politicians and traditional believers today. Their partnership worked, however, because deists such as Jefferson realized that religious liberty did not require rigid secularism. The Baptists, for their part, knew about Jefferson’s personal skepticism, but they supported him because he was the champion of real religious freedom.

Not all America’s Founders were devout Christians, but America was founded with Christian principles in mind. Among the most vital of those ideals – one that could bridge the gap between evangelicals and deists – was an expansive concept of religious liberty.

Read it all.

Religion and the Contrast Between the French and American Revolutions

Over at Patheos.com Thomas Albert Howard takes a look at the French and American Revolutions' differing approach to religion: July 4, July 14, and the Religious Questions. America's relative religious pluralism and diversity served to prevent a radically secular regime from arising from our revolution, while the situation in France with a religious tradition overwhelmingly allied with the ancien regime helped to foster a powerful anti-religious prejudice in that country's revolution. 

Another example of the truth that America's Revolution built on customary principles of order, traditional rights and freedom of conscience, while the French Revolution began in abstraction and quickly degenerated into tyranny and and terror.

Was Thomas Jefferson a Conservative?

One of the leading paleo-conservative websites has three posts detailing the place of Thomas Jefferson in the conservative pantheon. While not much of a fan of Jefferson myself, these reflections are passed along to stimulate thought on the role of the Jeffersonian tradition in American conservatism:

Post #1: historian and defender of the Old South Clyde Wilson writes this staunch and stalwart defense of Jefferson as a conservative: Thomas Jefferson, Conservative. Wilson views Jefferson as a conservative reformer, dedicated to the principles of life as he found them in his Virginia planter-society, but also committed to broadening the base of that society in an effort to improve its stability. As Wilson observes:

Who, then, was the real Jefferson? What were these constant themes? They are clear. None offer comfort to the contemporary left. First of all, Jefferson stood for freedom and enlightenment. That he is our best symbol for these virtuous goals is Malone’s central theme. That does not mean, however, that his thought can be twisted to support something that very different men with very different goals postulate to be freedom and enlightenment. His concepts of freedom and enlightenment were always rooted in the given nature and the necessities of his Virginia community and always balanced harmoniously against competing claims.

Post #2: an early essay from Russell Kirk on efforts by progressive historians to distort Jefferson's views, combined with an earnest plea for Jeffersonian principles to form the basis of American renewal: Thomas Jefferson and the Faithless. As the young Kirk writes from the midst of the New Deal era:

To plan effectively the nation’s future we must foster Jeffersonian principles. We must have slow but democratic decisions, sound local government, diffusion of property-owning, taxation as direct as possible, preservation of civil liberties, payment of debts by the generation incurring them, prevention of the rise of class antipathies, a stable and extensive agriculture, as little governing by the government as practicable, and, above all, stimulation of self-reliance. If we are to have a planned economy, collective action, we must have these forces to maintain it. And as yet the national administration, or any other national administration, has been unable to reconcile Jeffersonian ideals with authoritarian methods. If one of these two standards must fall, for the happiness of mankind let it be that of the authoritarian.

Post #3: Ross Lance explains the rhetorical and philosophical grounding of Jefferson's use of natural rights to support American independence: Thomas Jefferson and the American Declaration of Independence: The Power and Natural Rights of a Free People.

Looking to Read Up on the Father of Our Country?

Historian Thomas Kidd has posted some book recommendations for those interested in learning more about the indispensable man in the American struggle first for independence and then for constitutional government:  Five Great Books on George Washington. I've got three of the books already, and am going to order the other two just as soon as I finish my next law review article.

The Founders and Classical Education: It Wasn't Just About Latin, It Was About Virtue

To a degree difficult for many modern Americans to understand, the Founding Generation was heavily shaped by classical literature from ancient Greece and Rome. Virtually every literate person had at least passing acquaintance with the stories, myths and literature of the ancient West, and a surprisingly large percentage of Americans could read those works in one or both of their original languages -- Greek and Latin. Yet, classical education in colonial and early republican America wasn't primarily about learning Latin, it was about training people in virtue and civic responsibility. E. Christian Kopff explores this aspect of early American education over at The Imaginative Conservative: Inspired by Liberty & Virtue: the Classical Education of the Founders of the American Republic. Tolle, lege.

Edmund Burke, faith and religious liberty

William F. Byrne explores that topic over at The Imaginative Conservative: Burke's Wise Counsel on Religious Liberty. While Burke was an 18th century English statesman friendly to America but loyal to the crown, his views on religious liberty track closely with those of many of the American Founders, evidence perhaps of a deeper English tradition of religious liberty that was supportive of religious freedom while emphasizing the need for orthodox faith to function as a limitation on arbitrary government power:

We’ll never know exactly what Burke’s theological views, or private religious views, were. (At a personal level he never gave any sign of being anything other than a pious and orthodox Christian.) We do know that politically he devoted his career to fighting against “caprice.” To him caprice inevitably led to abuses of power, and to tyranny or anarchy. His fight was, effectively, against the postmodern sense of arbitrariness, which he saw appearing on the horizon. Burke teaches us that religion plays a critical role in fighting against arbitrariness or caprice. For him, a humane, stable, and free state requires not just religious tolerance and an acceptance of pluralism, but a broad embrace of a particular sort of religiosity—orthodox religiosity—in private and public life. Only religion of this sort can stand above society and the state while heightening our awareness of the sacred, thereby setting bounds to our politics and elevating our lives.

Read it all.

Clarity about the Declaration of Independence

This time of year those of us who are historically inclined tend to turn our thoughts towards the Declaration of Independence.  But there's a lot of confusion out there about what the Declaration is and what it isn't.  In my day job, I've published on the non-binding legal character of the Declaration, and over at the Law & Liberty blog Greg Weiner has published a helpful post reinforcing that point by pointing out the nature of the document: What the Declaration Doesn't Say. In words that echo the fundamental insights of men like Russell Kirk and M.E. Bradford, Weiner writes:

[T]he Declaration must be properly contextualized. It is a founding document but not a framing document, which is to say it does not have legal standing in the same way the Constitution does. When Justice Brennan, for example, grounded his activist jurisprudence partly in the ideals of the Declaration, he imported a document into constitutional law that simply has no place there. But this is not a liberal trope alone. As Ralph Rossum has shown, the Declaration plays a prominent role in Justice Thomas’ jurisprudence as well: the Constitution, in his understanding, was meant to fulfill the aspirations of the Declaration.

While there is no question that the Declaration is a key document in American history and expresses in a unique and almost sacred way the key principles of the American Revolution, it is not a constitutional document. It is a pre-constitutional one, establishing the conditions upon which the American Republic could frame its fundamental legal charters -- first the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution of 1789.  While the Constitution builds upon many of its insights (particularly in the due process clauses of the 5th and the 14th Amendments), the Declaration is not a legally authoritative document.

RIP Edmund S. Morgan

I'm getting to this a bit late due to my current work schedule, but here's the New York Times obit for Edmund S. Morgan, one of the major lights in scholarship about 18th century America: Edmund S. Morgan, Historian Who Shed Light on the Puritans, Dies at 97.  That's a good run.  Morgan was a professed atheist who nevertheless acknowledged and studied the key role of religion in colonial America and the early Republic. Most critically, he took the ideas of the people of the past seriously, and looked at their own words and convictions in seeking to understand the motivation for their actions. As he is quoted by the Times as saying, "I argued that the American Revolution was really what the revolutionaries said it was." What a refreshing approach to looking at the people of the past!

Religion and revolution: France and America contrasted

Over at Patheos.com Thomas Albert Howard takes a look at the French and American Revolutions' differing approach to religion:  July 4, July 14, and the Religious Questions. America's relative religious pluralism and diversity served to prevent a radically secular regime from arising from our revolution, while the situation in France with a religious tradition overwhelmingly allied with the ancien regime helped to foster a powerful anti-religious prejudice in that country's revolution.

Another example of the truth that America's Revolution built on customary principles of order, traditional rights and freedom of conscience, while the French Revolution began in abstraction and quickly degenerated into tyranny and and terror.

Life in the year of America's independence

I'm getting to this a bit late, but the Wall Street Journal published a short op-ed by historian Thomas Fleming explaining in rather broad terms what life was like in the American colonies at the dawn of American independence.  An interesting take to provide some perspective on just how prosperous and middle class America was even when it was just a part of the British Empire: What Life Was Like in 1776.

One point in Fleming's discussion provides the answer to a long-standing question that I have had, namely, how did some of the most patriotic subjects of the British Empire move from being enthusiastic supporters of the Crown to breaking free and setting up a new country allied, at least on paper, with their historic enemy France? As Fleming writes:

By 1776, the Atlantic Ocean had become what one historian has called "an information highway" across which poured books, magazines, newspapers and copies of the debates in Parliament. The latter were read by John Adams, George Washington, Robert Morris and other politically minded men. They concluded that the British were planning to tax the Americans into the kind of humiliation that Great Britain had inflicted on Ireland.

Thanks to the flow of information from England, the colonists ceased to trust believe that the Empire was looking out for their interests. Increased transparency, in other words, lead to the erosion of people's trust in government, as people got a good look at what the government was up to. The more things change...