Democracy vs. Republic

Building upon my last post...rule of law...I found this excellent YouTube video, "The American Form of Government," on the difference between forms of government.  Please take time to watch and comment.  The editor/creator of the film is not identified.



More to follow...

THE RULE OF LAW

Thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it is not worth while to tell thee.
– John Locke, Two Treatises of Government


Words, properly organized, become powerful expressions of ideas. The Revolutionary Era was full of powerful words; words such as tyranny, rights, slavery, and liberty. These words, coupled into ideologies, supplicate certain questions. What exactly is tyranny? Who controls individual and societal rights? Where is the line between social slavery and human slavery? Finally, what is liberty; or more specifically what is government’s role in relation to liberty? These next few blog entries seek to place into context the conflicting struggle between power and liberty. This first entry deals with the establishment of the rule of law. More specifically, it examines the progression of English law, and the legal foundation for the US Constitution. Some feel that history is old. “They” feel there is nothing to learn from history; that we are in a newer and wiser time. The true fear of this “wiser” generation is that YOU might actually learn more than you need to know. Friends, knowledge is not just power…it is freedom. And freedom is what the American Revolution was about. The American Revolution was also much more than just a war for independence; it was a social, political, legal, and military struggle to develop further the ideology of liberty.

Life, Liberty, and Happiness

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions…
– John Locke, Two Treatises of Government

Life for most American colonists was inherently English. “Although great diversity prevailed among the colonies, most colonists shared a common English heritage and clung to it tenaciously.”[i] This heritage included strong beliefs regarding the opinions of government power over life, liberty, and property. These perceptions grew from a common understanding of the rule of law, sown further through widespread colonial literacy rates, and encouraged through a long-enjoyed structure of the colonial governance. The average educated colonial was a self-informed lawyer.

There are three legal documents which every English man, woman and child idealized: the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and the Petition of Right.[ii] In 1215, the Great Charter, or Magna Carta, became one of the great documents of Western Civilization, limiting the power of the monarch and subjugating the ruler to the laws of the land.[iii] Essentially, this charter established a rudimentary rule of law. For the colonials, the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century were far more recent.

The ruthless King Charles I, sought an expansion of his authority. However, Parliament required restrictions to his power and the restoration of order. In 1628, Parliament forced the King’s hand with the Petition of Right:

The famous Petition of Right of 1628…asserted that the Crown had violated the laws of the land by forcing subjects to make loans and pay other levies that Parliament had not authorized, billeting soldiers in private homes, and proceeding in improper ways against persons accused of crimes, and asked that all such violations of English ‘laws and liberties’ cease.[iv]

The petition augmented the rights of English citizens to question monarchical authority, and reinforced the idea of rule of law. At the end of the civil wars, the people sought expansion of the ideas expressed in the petition.

Building upon this precedent, the English further defined the rights of English citizens in the English Declaration of Rights of 1688, a year later Parliament legislatively titled this the English Bill of Rights of 1689. The Bill of Rights “became for the colonists a sacred text, a document which…provided a statement of established, fundamental political and legal truths.”[v] The document solidified such rights as freedom of speech, the right to possess arms for defense, the right to a trial by jury, and the right to petition the monarch without threat of reprisal. Additionally, it made it illegal for the monarch to have a standing army in the land during times of peace, billet soldiers in private homes, impose taxes without the consent of parliament, and interfere with free elections. Finally, the Bill implied the people had the obligation to remove a monarch found in violation of these rights. Two reinforcing factors ensured the almost mythological incantation of these documents in colonial America.

The first, and primary factor, was availability of education coupled with high literacy rates. Although there was not an established school system, “almost every community had a church or parish school, and most towns had elementary schools for those of artisan stock, who attended until the age of thirteen, when their apprenticeship began.” In addition, several studies agree that literacy in America, at the time of the revolution, matched, or slightly lagged, that of European metropolitan areas. Lawrence Cremin’s research on literacy found, “statistics of newspaper circulation…a more dependable measure of literacy than signature counts,” and argued, “the character of American literacy changed fundamentally in the eighteenth century, from inert literacy to liberating literacy.”[vi] Another scholar conducted a similar study and found Pennsylvania and New England male literacy rates were approximately 70-75%, concluding that nearly two-thirds of men throughout America were literate.[vii] Widespread literacy and newspaper circulation enabled the free exchange of ideas, an ingredient necessary in the preservation of liberty.

The final factor ensuring the preservation of English law was a prevalent dabbling in the law. “The broad literacy and political involvement of the people in their democratic institutions helped turn the average American into a kind of citizen-lawyer.”[viii] Edmund Burke, the outspoken English politician, remarked:

Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our Colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this intractable spirit: I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most do read) endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science.[ix]

In addition to dabbling in the law, some who attended the universities became well versed in the subject. In addition, they learned other subjects such as Latin, Greek, philosophy, and government. Founders such as Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin were all familiar with topics such as the Roman and Greek republican experiments and philosophers such as John Locke. Finally, the long-standing liberties of self-governance enjoyed by the colonists since their founding solidified convictions regarding the rule of law, and government power within society.

The colonies varied from chartered business ventures to royal provinces and proprietary jurisdictions.[x] No matter the legal classification, each colony established some form of local government styled after the English model. Some colonies had more freedom of self-governance, such as Connecticut and Rhode Island, who refused to relinquish their original corporate Charters when King George III attempted to unify the New England colonies.[xi] Perhaps the most celebrated government in the colonies was that established in Virginia. It most directly reflected the structure found on the other side of the Atlantic. The King appointed a Royal Governor who governed the province through “a two-house Assembly, its upper house, the appointive Governor’s Council and its lower house, the elective House of Burgesses.”[xii]
It is within this legacy of English law, built upon a strong history of self-governance and established rights to life, liberty and property, the colonists found happiness. They lived in freedom in the greatest Empire on earth. It is to this jury, the rule of law, that the colonists submitted their closing arguments on self-evident liberty versus the iniquity of tyranny.

Conclusions

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.
– The Declaration of Independence

The words of the Declaration of Independence, scribed onto piece of ordinary parchment, furthered the colonial belief in the rule of law. The words, properly organized, became a powerful expression of an idea; one that breaks across language and cultural barriers. The powerful expressions defined other words such as tyranny, rights, slavery, and liberty. This post sought to place in context the conflicting struggle between power and liberty. Examining such philosophical concepts as the rule of law and the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” framed the perception of English colonial life. Remember, the American Revolution was more than just a war for independence; instead, it was an era, which DEFINED an ideology. It was a social, political, legal, and military struggle to further the ideology of LIBERTY. Do not let the voice of liberty die.

Yours Sincerely,
Jason Torgerson

ENDNOTES

[i] Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 1.
[ii] J. C. D. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660-1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1.
[iii] Arthur L. Cross, A History of England and Greater Britain (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1914), 143.
[iv] Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997; repr., New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 50.
[v] Maier, 51.
[vi] Lawrence A. Cremin, Traditions of American Education (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 32.
[vii] Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 74.
[viii] Benson Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 49.
[ix] Edmund Burke, Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America, ed. Hammond Lamont (New York: Ginn and Company, 1897), 23.
[x] Dorothy D. Volo and James M. Volo, Daily Life During the American Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 7.
[xi] Volo, 7.
[xii] Willard S. Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993), 92.

The Intent

The intent of this blog is to share my research sources, personal thoughts on the American Revolution, and create a forum for scholarly debate. During the last 4 years, I have worked on earning a Masters Degree in Military History, focusing on the American Revolution. I have done this while working full time as a military officer...deployed to OIF/OEF, on the "road" on missions that have taken me from Mongolia and Vietnam to Kabul and Baghdad. If I can do it...you can do it.

During this time I have uncovered several excellent Internet based sources, electronic archives, and online libraries. These all make the life of travel and the online student a whole lot easier--and the luggage a whole lot lighter. I intend on sharing those links here for others to use, and offer assistance for those in search of that "perfect source." I am a fan of finding primary sources, or transcriptions of the original, and have found many available online. However, they are not always easy to uncover in the commercial world of Google or Yahoo. You can access such transcriptions and images of George Washington, the Continental Congress, King George III, John Adams, and more.

Finally, as my time in the graduate student role comes to a close...hopefully this coming February...I want a place where I can continue to collect my thoughts on the American Revolution. I want to continue to pursue my passion for the defense of this Great Republic.

More to come...
Jason Torgerson