|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
While Americans struggled to win the independence of the United States, they were also creating new republican institutions of government to replace royal authority. In the process they had to work out the full implications—political, social, and intellectual—of life in a republican nation. A. New Political Institutions The collapse of royal authority in America in 1775 did not lead to a breakdown of public order. Instead, the provincial assemblies, local county courts, and town meetings simply added the tasks previously performed by the imperial government to their traditional functions. The transfer of power was given legitimacy by state constitutions, which were written and ratified by the assemblies between 1776 and 1780. The new constitutions were republican because they derived their legitimacy from the consent of the people—also known as the doctrine of popular sovereignty—and created representative political institutions. However, in structure, the new governments closely resembled those of the colonial period. Most states had an elected governor, a legislature of two houses, and property qualifications for voting. There were, however, several significant variations. The most democratic of the new constitutions was that of Pennsylvania, ratified in 1776. It bestowed the vote on all adult white taxpayers and, to encourage majority rule, provided for only one house in the legislature and curtailed the powers of the governor. In sharp contrast, the aristocratic constitution of South Carolina imposed high property qualifications for voting and even higher restrictions for officeholding. These political differences reflected the contrasting societies of the two states. Pennsylvania's democratic institutions resulted from the coming to power, during the revolution, of a coalition of social groups from the middling ranks: independent farmers, established artisans, and Scots-Irish Presbyterians. South Carolina's elitist government was designed to protect the interests of a relatively small group of rich, slaveowning white planters. Other constitutional provisions had historical or ideological origins. Some state charters included a bill of individual rights while most of the others had specific clauses that guaranteed traditional English legal rights, such as freedom from arbitrary searches, trial by jury, and protection of property. The documents also reflected Enlightenment values, such as guaranteeing religious toleration. In some states, such as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the new constitutions were approved only after fierce political battles. In other states, primarily those in the South, the governmental institutions given legitimacy in the new documents excluded the majority of the people—white as well as black—from a role in the political process. But everywhere the new charters were generally accepted, allowing a stable transition to republican government. B. The Articles of Confederation The Continental Congress was a temporary government without clearly defined powers. To establish its authority, the Congress in November 1777 enacted the Articles of Confederation, drafted by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, and declared they would go into effect when ratified by all of the states. The Articles proposed a loose confederation in which each state kept its sovereign independence and control over all of its internal affairs. However, certain powers, primarily relating to diplomacy and defense, were delegated to the Confederation Congress. It was given the power to declare war, make treaties, borrow and print money, and requisition funds from the states. At first, a number of states refused to ratify the Articles. Some state governments hesitated to create a central political authority that might restrict their autonomy like the British Parliament had done. Other states demanded recognition of their colonial-era land claims that, in some cases, stretched to the Pacific Ocean. Gradually, the pressures of war overcame this reluctance. “Unless Congress are vested with powers, by the separate states, competent to the great purposes of war ...,” General George Washington warned the country in 1780, “our cause is lost.” Congress did its part, persuading the states to give up their western land claims and to allow creation of a national domain. Finally, in 1781, under the threat of British invasion, Maryland became the final state to ratify the Articles. The central government created by the Articles was simple in structure and limited in authority. There was no governor or chief executive and no system of courts. The legislature was a one-house Congress in which each state had one vote, regardless of population or wealth. The Congress had military and diplomatic powers, but no authority to regulate commerce or to levy taxes. It could ask the states for needed funds, but it could not force them to comply. Furthermore, the powers of the Confederation could be changed only by the unanimous consent of the states. Although the Confederation was created primarily to fight the war against Britain, its structure and powers had deeper roots in American history. Indeed, they represented a fragile compromise between two contradictory aspects of the colonial experience. On the one hand, there was the tradition of local political control. For decades the colonial assemblies had sought to expand their powers and to diminish those of the central government in London. Now that they were independent states, they had no wish to subject themselves to external control. On the other hand, the individual colonies had prospered because they were part of a larger political and economic entity. Under the British imperial system, goods had moved freely between one colony and another without being subject to local tariffs, and people were free to migrate as well. Now that the Americans were independent, some sort of national authority was necessary to ensure unrestricted travel and trade among the independent republican states and to resolve other common peacetime problems. Issue 73 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM, quarterly journal of the Socialist Workers Party (Britain) Published December 1996 Copyright © International Socialism WHO MADE THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION? Megan Trudell The Declaration of Independence was signed 220 years ago, marking the triumph of America's first bourgeois revolution and the defeat of the world's foremost imperial power at the time, Britain. Famously, the language of the declaration asserted the importance of liberty and rights: `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.'1 These rights, which would be more clearly spelt out in the Bill of Rights the first ten amendments to the Constitution in December 1791, were of central importance to the rule of the bourgeoisie. They sprang from the way in which it had waged its revolution, and contained its more radical elements: freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to peaceable assembly, the right of people to bear arms, and, crucially, the security and protection of property. These would in turn be adopted and extended by the French bourgeoisie in the course of the French Revolution. They represented a great step forward from absolutism, though they did not eradicate real social or economic inequality. We are taught, in as much as we are taught about it at all, that the American Revolution was a purely political event in which the few founding fathers, guided by these high principles, fought a `tidy little war'2 which left the existing class structure intact. Textbooks generally agree that the revolution's `main significance was unquestionably political'.3 The American Revolution is thus reduced to an avoidable squabble. Even The Guardian's Edward Pearce in a review of Draper's book argues that the `colonies might have been kept longer to be relinquished without conflict'.4 The revolution did raise the banner of liberty through democratic slogans of the rights of man, and representation, but it had its roots in deep contradictions between Britain and the colonies and was marked by violent struggles, not polite confrontation. The revolution was both a fight against British rule and a struggle for power between different forces on the American side. It paved the way for dramatic economic and social change. `The American Revolution shattered the old colonial system'.5 It was more than simply an exchange of control between Britain and the emergent American ruling class. It transformed the colonies from mere extensions of British markets overseas into a unified country with a vigorous manufacturing base in the North. It set the stage for enormous expansion westwards which did not simply involve the heroic pioneering West of the myth, but also the systematic expulsion from the land of the native American population and their eventual extermination and the growth of large scale slavery in the South. The revolution eliminated the rule of British officials, royal governors, and the semi-feudal land arrangements which included passing titles down through families. It freed the capitalist class in America to embark unfettered on the capitalist road. The revolution provided the state institutions necessary to give maximum encouragement to merchants' interests developing commerce, the free market, trade and the development of manufactures. The expansion of farming to the West and the spread of the plantation system initially served the bourgeoisie, who bought raw materials and supplied finished goods. It was not until the 1860s that the clash between the North's industrial revolution and the South's slave economy, still tied to Britain, resulted in the vast and bloody second stage of America's bourgeois revolution the American Civil War. Against the standard view, Theodore Draper's book argues that the clash between Britain and the American colonies was inevitable the clash between an existing empire and a rising economic power. He points to `a "real cause" that "made war inevitable" the growth of the power of the Americans, and the alarm this inspired in Great Britain.'6 Draper moves away from the interpretations of the revolution as purely about ideological struggle, and concentrates on `a struggle for power between the power the British wished to exercise over the Americans and the power the Americans wished to exercise over themselves'.7 Draper's study traces the causes of the revolution back to the colonial arrangement with Britain. It takes us in great detail through the growing tensions that ultimately led to the colonies uniting to force the break with their imperial master, researched from many contemporary pamphlets and the letters of British officials from both sides of the Atlantic as well as, to a lesser extent, the writings of leading colonists. Britain and the colonies Britain was already a powerful nation by the 1770s. The defeat of France in the Seven Years War meant Britain was not only the world's greatest naval power, but was also pre-eminent in European trade with Africa and Asia. Especially important was the `triangular' trade of slaves, staples like sugar, tobacco and tea, and manufactured goods between Britain, North America and the West Indies. Trade aided the growth of investment in manufacturing mainly metals and woollens as well as shipping and shipbuilding. Though Britain's industrial base was growing, the explosion of growth of the industrial revolution was still a few years off and at this stage Britain was building up and protecting its burgeoning industry. From Britain's point of view, its colonies were there to provide the raw materials essential to British manufacture and to provide sure markets for finished British goods. The Navigation Acts enacted after the English Revolution ensured that all colonial trade was carried in English ships with English crews. Certain `enumerated' goods that were especially important to Britain as raw materials (tobacco, furs and indigo among them) had to be traded via London, unloading and paying duties before continuing on to their ultimate destination. The colonies were not permitted to be traded between themselves, or to issue paper money. The Molasses Act of 1733 aimed at cutting colonies' trade with France by slapping 100 percent duty on non-British sugar. Although a lot of these restrictions were avoided through widespread smuggling allowing New England especially to build up a rapidly growing and profitable trade in molasses, rum and slaves with France and the West Indies the relationship with Britain was still heavily weighted towards the imperial power. The revolution would be led by a coalition of two classes the emergent Northern bourgeoisie and the large scale planters of the Southern colonies. To understand the reasons why these people, many made wealthy by the relationship with Britain, would be in the forefront of the struggle that would sever that relationship, we have to look at the economic and social relations within and between the different colonies. Unfortunately Draper's study does not give the fullest picture of these relations. The American colonies of the 1760s and 1770s were not a unified state, but a loose collection of 13 provinces, with a combined population of only 3 million. They were economically weak, certainly in comparison with Britain. They had separate histories and no tradition of acting together. What, if anything, united the different colonies was a shared notion of Britishness, that America was part of a free nation in an age of absolutist monarchy. This was an important identification that was to prove easier for some to break than others. Even the political parties in America reflected those in Britain Tories, loyal to the crown and to British rule, and Whigs, the British parliamentary opposition to the Tories and forerunners of the Liberal Party. Ninety percent of colonists worked the land, producing crops for export. The Southern colonies produced vast amounts of staple goods on increasingly large plantations tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in South Carolina and Georgia. The plantation system rested on slavery, which provided labour and helped to bind whites to the planters and offset any chances of united revolt. Plantation owners produced for the world market but all their produce was marketed by the British, who handled three quarters of all the Southern trade in their ships, compared to New England which handled three quarters of its trade in American ships. Thomas Jefferson, who was to become one of the sharpest revolutionary minds, and a Virginia planter himself, described the relationship: They [British merchants] reduced the prices given him for his tobacco, so that...they never permitted him to clear off his debt. These debts had become hereditary from father to son for many generations, so that the planters were a species of property annexed to certain mercantile houses in London.8 It is little wonder that the majority of planters were firmly anti-British throughout the revolutionary period, while those small farmers and the poor ruled over by rich planters in the South were often loyal to the crown. The colonists were by no means united in their opposition to Britain, a factor Draper does not discuss. The merchants in the North were the other key force, though generally subject to greater pulls towards loyalism and compromise than the planters. New England was predominantly commercial, with growing industry that was linked to trade.
Approximate Word count = 9734
Approximate Pages = 38.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|