The American Revolution marks an epoch in the elevation of enlightenment thinking and rationality to the mainstream of world political affairs. To this end it presents an obvious break with tradition and conservative values. But the question is in part paradoxical: how can any revolution be conservative? Is it possible to reconcile the dawn of Liberal political theory with any type of conservative philosophy? The answer, in this essayist’s opinion, is a resounding yes. The drama of the revolutionary war belied its evolutionary nature, disguising the fundamental truth that American society was heavily influenced not just by the concept of ancient English liberties – “the rights of Englishmen” (Foner 2005: 37-38) – but by classical republican thought, the principles of which it had in large part fused with monarchism under the English system. The new generation of American leaders cultivated their republic from the seeds of parliamentarian democracy that had evolved in England since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, demonstrating an institutional inheritance that would have been anathema to a generation of French revolutionaries, or 20th century Russian and Chinese radicals, all of whom wanted to tear down all structures of society and start afresh.
A truth of the revolution was that any sense of unity the new states had came in large part from their shared British identity. Without this common bond, any sense of nationhood would surely have disappeared. Any look at the friction between French and British colonies in North America during this period will reflect this, a cultural friction that exists – albeit reduced – in Canada to this day. This shared culture formed the basis of the united nation; “manners, morals and amusements of America in the mid 18th century were in a humbler degree…much the same…as in the mother country” (Wood 1993: 12). The question is simplistic but instructive: what inspired the colonies to fight together? To which the answer must surely be a sense of shared British identity and values that defined the new American nation in part by inheritance.
The degree to which, for example, American colonists were unique in revelling in the concept of individual liberty has been something distorted by the passage of time and America’s subsequent resistance to collectivist political ideals as promulgated by continental European polities in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is instead instructive to point to the degree that all 18th century Englishmen, be they in the home country or the colonies, valued their worldwide reputation for freedom (ibid: 16-17). Post-revolution ideas of ‘American exceptionalism’ and ‘the city on a hill’ have promoted the myth that America was the sole ideological repository of true liberty, a liberty freed from the shackles of monarchical rule, and fundamentally at odds with the hierarchical nature of European societies. The reality is somewhat different – the freedoms that Americans fought for in 1776 were as much a re-assertion of old values based on Anglo-Saxon individualism as they were about modernity and republicanism. Thus was John Adams able to describe the English constitution as late as the 1760s as: “the most perfect combination of human powers in society which finite wisdom has yet contrived and reduced to practice for the preservation of liberty and the production of happiness” (Bailyn 1992: 67).
For sure, Americans viewed the establishment of a republic as not just desirable, but an intrinsic part of the United States project. Their could be no room for monarchy and inherited privilege, but taken on its own this assertion risks associating the ideals of American liberty purely with a republican break from royalty. Wood makes this mistake in part by his assertion that republicanism “was as radical for the 18th century as Marxism was for the 19th century” (Wood 1993: 96). Without doubt, it was a new way of ordering society, but perhaps a better way of describing the relationship between monarchism, republicanism, and liberty is extolled by David Hume, who described British-style monarchy as owing “all its perfections” to republicanism (ibid: 97). Far from thinking republicanism to be a break from systems of old in the way Marxism was a signifier of a supposed historic break from capitalism, Hume viewed large parts of republicanism compatible with limited monarchism – the later institution obviously weakened as in England post-1688.
Montesquieu’s ‘The Spirit of the Laws’ (1748) provides further theoretical justification for this viewpoint. This study weighed the pros and cons of monarchy vie a vie republicanism and arrived at the conclusion that most modern governments were mixtures of both to one degree or another (ibid). For Hume, Montesquieu and countless others, monarchies in the modified British sense and republics shared certain ontological assumptions, and reflected much smaller differences than would exist a century later between the revolutionary philosophy of Karl Marx and the pluralist democracy of late 19th century societies.
In order for the American Revolution to have been truly radical, greater differences would have to have existed between the new republic and the system of old – as in the French Revolution. The American revolt was conservative in comparison, since the Glorious Revolution “most political leaders (on both sides of the Atlantic) were held to ancient republican standards” (Wood: 103), republican values having in part been institutionalised – the very epitome of political conservatism.
Wood reflects this view point in part by his declaration that “Americans did not have to invent republicanism in 1776; they only had to bring it to the surface”, and that transition was “as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes” (ibid: 109) – seemingly contradicting his earlier remarks that republicanism was as radical for its time as Marxism was in the 19th century. Implicit in such a statement is that republicanism was not a radical institutional and theoretical break form the past, but more evolutionary – in stark contrast to the bloody institutional and intellectual uplifts predicated on the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions (see Skocpal:).
In much of the writing on the American Revolution there are consistent references to “classical republican values” (see: Wood, and Bailyn) as espoused by the declared radicals of 1776. The likes of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison et al’s reverences for classical republicanism is in no doubt – reflected as it is in the architecture of Monticello and Washington DC, as well as the thought and proclamations of these men. Bailyn notes the usage of a “large portion of the inheritance of Western culture, from Aristotle to Moliere…Vergil, Shakespeare, Ramus, Pufendorf, Swift and Rousseau” (Bailyn: 23), “the heritage of classical antiquity” was accordingly most conspicuous in the writings of the revolutionary period (ibid). Colonists – it is noted – “evoked classical scholars of Rome who harked back to better times before corruption had beset the Republic – and drew parallels with their provincial values, rustic and old-fashioned (emphasis mine) challenged by the corruption of a centralised monarch (ibid: 25-26).
This emphasis on the classical history has a variety of implications in assessing the ideology of the revolution. Firstly, it demonstrated no incompatibility between “old-fashioned” “rustic” colonial values, and the dreams of American “radical” republicans; on the contrary, the antiquity and virtue of republicanism fitted perfectly with their contemporary colonial values. The corruption of the British monarchy provided a modern parallel with the decay of the Roman republic, republican values were to be defended not because they represented a radical break with the ideals of old, but because they could represent the very timeless Anglo-Saxon liberty that the revolutionaries believed had been corrupted in Britain by modernity. In that sense Bailyn accurately describes the revolutionaries as inspired by “enlightened conservatism” (Bailyn: 25-26).
Secondly, it denotes the importance of historical truths to the leaders of 1776. Classical Marxism believed in a narrative – revolution was an inevitable consequence of human development though historical stages; its narrative was deterministic, rejecting eternal truths and the idea that man could interpret or alter the inevitability of history for his own ends (Doyle: 1997). The American revolutionaries were avid scholars of history, but in contrast to Marxists of a century later they remained convinced of its modern utility, and rejected ideas of historical inevitability and the need to do disregard such variables as human nature, something reflected not just in their theoretical ideals, but their proposals for the structure of the United States government.
The fear of standing armies demonstrates this historical awareness perfectly – colonists able to account the tyrannical power of French, Turkish, Polish, Spanish and Russian aristocracies to their coercion of large standing armies (Bailyn: 61-63). The writing of James Madison in Federalist Papers 10 and 51 is littered with references to the “state of nature”, talk of government as “the ultimate reflection of human nature”, “the nature of man”, as well as his propensity to fall into “mutual animosities” and the subsequent steps that government should take – via checks and balances on power – to ensure minimal abuse of power (Hollinger 2001: 156-163).
Such writing is thoroughly Hobbesian, indicative of a conservative-realist mindset, prepared to expect the worst of man rather than plan for utopia, and learn from the path of history rather than discard it, as a generation of French revolutionaries did in 1789. It was after all, the patron saint of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, who first noted in 1771: "history is a preceptor of prudence, not of principles" (blupete.com). If ever there was an example of men learning the prudent – conservative – lessons of history, it was the leaders of 1776.
It was in the spirit of “enlightened conservatism” that the Founding Fathers could express the desire for a “classical republic of elitist virtue” (Wood: 369). They may have had a “passionate antagonism” to the prevalence of patronage and family influence in the ancien regime (ibid: 180), but this proletarian impulse was strongly tempered by their elitist principles – if men had talent and the potential to acquire liberal republican attributes then they would do so by attending such learned institutions as Harvard and Princeton, in the same way that there English elite contemporaries would have attended Oxford or Cambridge. This in turn would have honored them for service on the bench – where English common law was the lingua franca of the revolutionaries – or the army, navy, or learned professions. The ideal was a “natural aristocracy” (ibid), or the inherited structure of old world elite society minus inherited privilege. Elitism and the idea of a republican ruling caste, superior to the masses of uneducated commoners was essential to guaranteeing the order and structure of the new system – in this sense the America of the post-revolutionary period reflected the necessity of hierarchy and order that no amount of radical liberty rhetoric could disguise.
This inherent – conservative – fear of the masses is evident in the constitutionally allotted structure and style of US governmental institutions that exist unmodified to this day. What is the presidential Electoral College, other than an elitist, undemocratic, anti-populist institution the raison d’etre of which is to frustrate mass majority will? What of the structure of Congress, with a deliberate attempt to dilute power between Senate and House of Representatives and thus stifle the potential for populist wills excesses in either body? (Foner: 148-149). Or indeed, the powers of the Federal Supreme Court – a body of unelected learned scholars with the power to over-rule any other governmental body in the land via its sacrosanct role as protector of the Constitution?
It is self-evident that such institutional arrangements play a vital role in safeguarding “negative freedoms” – the freedom from rather than freedom to. But they also demonstrate a desire on the part of revolutionaries to impose a republic first, democracy second, the structure and solidity of governmental bodies taking precedence over untrammeled popular rule and the threat that the people may seek to fundamentally alter the constitutional structure of US government. Tension is clearly evident in part between form and liberty, or republic and democracy, in the same way that 19th century liberals such as John Stuart Mill experienced inconsistencies between their professed utilitarianism and their belief in Liberal governance. In the case of the Founding Fathers, government was to be as unresponsive to popular pressures as possible – a more Tory proposition hard to find.
It is within this context of true democracy versus order that further evidence of the decidedly un-radical nature of the revolutionary leaders can be deduced – in the shape of their decided electoral franchise and the position of blacks within society. This electorate consisted entirely of white males, and slavery was far from being an issue won for abolitionists – on the contrary, it took nearly a whole century and a bloody civil war for it to be finally annexed from American society. This again reinforces the idea that American society as designed by the revolutionaries was inherently conservative, with the federal system and diluted nature of power making radical change hard to achieve, in stark contrast to Great Britain, where unitary parliamentary authority made the abolition of slavery achievable as early as 1807.
It is however, unwise to see the issue of slavery to the revolutionaries in such (pun not intended) black and white terms. Though Jefferson was an owner – and impregnator – of slaves, he viewed it more as a necessary evil; something to be tolerated due to the negro’s inherent inferiority – but something that would die out with the passage of time, and the negro’s subsequent betterment via liberal republican institutions and practices (Hollinger & Capper: 185-189). Such an attitude is not that of a die-hard 18th century conservative, but nor is it the one of a radical, suggestive instead of a Whig evolutionary attitude. Wood makes this argument for that of Whiggish revolutionaries via his insinuation that the continuation of slavery – particularly in the south, it having all but died out in the north – was “doomed” by the radicalism of the revolution, and its incongruity with republican forces of equality and liberty that had hitherto been smothered by monarchist Toryism (Wood: 186-187). The problem with this argument is twofold: it not only ignores the superior record of the hierarchical, monarch-bound British in abolishing slavery with much less bloodshed and disorder than their American cousins some 60-odd years later, but disregards Americans, northern and southern, who – like Jefferson – sincerely regarded slavery as reflective of African-American inferiority, thus justifying its continuation – albeit temporarily (Hollinger & Capper: 189).
Though such arguments rely on the passage of history post-1776 for verification, they nonetheless shine an illuminating light on the ideology of the revolution. Far from seeing the revolution as the antithesis of radical 18th century ideals of equality, liberty and fraternity, it is more instructive in this essays view to see it more as an evolution of ideals – ideals in part incubated by the increased republicanisation of the British constitutional system, and the mismatch between fractured colonial governance and rapidly expanding colonies (Wood: 128-145). All these factors lend weight to the idea of an “enlightened conservative” revolution – in contrast to the dominant thesis of American exceptionalism and radicalism.
Bibliography
Bernard Bailyn; ‘The ideological origins of the American Revolution’, Harvard University Press, 1992
Michael Doyle; ‘Ways of War and Peace”, 1st edition, W.W. Norton & Company, 1997
Eric Foner; ‘Give Me Liberty’, W.W. Norton & Company, 2005
David A. Hollinger & Charles Capper; ‘The American Intellectual Tradition’, Oxford University Press, 2001
Gordon S. Wood; ‘The Radicalism of the American Revolution’, Vintage Books, 1993
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