The American Revolution

1
The American Revolution

• Using E.Q.U.A.L.
• The American Institute for History Education
• Dr. Yohuru Williams

2
Standards Correlations

• This lesson correlates to the National History
  Standards.
• Era 3 -Revolution and the New Nation (1754-1820s)
  
• Standard 1C -Demonstrate understanding of the
  factors affecting the course of the war and
  contributing to the American victory.
• This lesson correlates to the National Standards
  for Civics and Government.
• Standard IV.A.2. -Explain how nation-states
  interact with each other.
• Constitutional Connection
• This lesson focuses on the American Revolution,
  which encouraged the founding fathers' desire to
  create a government that would, as stated in the
  Preamble, insure domestic tranquility and provide
  for the common defense.

3
Two American Revolutions?

• The alleged critical period between the end of
  the Revolution and the Constitutions adoption
  was not dominated by economic depression,
  political turmoil, and international peril,
  jeopardizing the independent survival of the
  American experiment in liberty. Those who
  assembled at the Philadelphia Convention to write
  a new Constitution were not disinterested
  demigods, nor did they intend to establish a
  federal system of divided government powers. The
  Constitution did not have the support of most
  Americans. And finally, rather than representing
  the culmination of the previous Revolution, the
  Constitution represented a reactionary
  counter-revolution against its central
  principles.
• Source Did the Constitution Betray the
  Revolution? Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, William Marina
  January 1, 1981

4
The Classic Revolution After the Revolution The
Anti-federalists

• With the words, Give me liberty, or give me
  death, Patrick Henry sounded the keynote of the
  American Revolution. After the Revolution, Henry
  and his supporters blocked the Constitutions
  ratification until it bore the amendments known
  as the Bill of Rights. Mindful of these
  principles, the first generation of Americans
  reinvented themselves and their society.

5
The Classic Revolution After the Revolution

• The creation of the Constitution entailed hours
  of debate and compromise, and even when it was
  completed, some delegates were unhappy with it.
  The task of fixing the ailing Confederate
  government was not complete yet each state had
  to ratify, or approve, the Constitution.
  Basically, people divided into two groups, the
  Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. Each of
  their viewpoints is worth examining, as they both
  had sound reasoning and in a real sense appealed
  to the ideals of the Revolution.

6
The Classic Revolution After the Revolution The
Anti-Federalists

• The Anti-Federalists did not want to ratify the
  Constitution. Basically, they argued that
• It gave too much power to the national government
  at the expense of the state governments.
• There was no bill of rights.
• The national government could maintain an army in
  peacetime.
• Congress, because of the necessary and proper
  clause,' wielded too much power.
• The executive branch held too much power.

7
Betraying the Revolution?

• They envisioned that the spirit of the revolution
  would be betrayed and the new nation would be
  troubled by the same problems burdened the
  colonies under British Rule.

8
Shays Rebellion 1786 to 1787.

• When the fighting ceased and with their
  independence won, the American people were left
  with thirteen loosely united states. What seemed
  simple  that these individual states could be
  both independent and united as a nation would
  not be easy.

9
The Anti-Federalists and the American Revolution

• The way in which we conceptualize the revolution
  and engage its meaning for the Constitution can
  broaden our understanding of its deeper meaning.
  For example, how exactly did their values
  transform politics, economics, and culture in the
  new republic?

10
Breaking down the R.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N

• In order to do this we are literally going to
  break down the Revolution into its parts
  beginning with the letter R . . .

11
R Reason

• In light of their struggle with Britain the
  colonists saw themselves as a new society based
  on new principles of government. Governments are
  instituted among men, proclaimed Thomas
  Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence,
  deriving their just powers from the consent of
  the governed. This idea that the people, not
  their rulers, are sovereign was revolutionary .
  . . But it also must be understood in the context
  of World History.

12
From Reason to Revolution

• The eighteenth century is often called the Age of
  Reason or The Age of Enlightenment. During this
  time, the colonies, like many other European
  nations, were caught up in the ideas of such men
  as Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Diderot.
  In the popular coffee houses of Paris people from
  all walks of life were meeting to discuss these
  new philosophies. There were five basic ideas of
  the Enlightenment Reason, Nature, Happiness,
  Progress and Liberty.

13
Background The Power of Ideas

• The Ideas of the Enlightenment
• The Declaration of Independence
• The American Revolution
• The French Revolution
• The Haitian Revolution

14
Historical Fingerprinting

• What we will be looking for is the Core. The base
  of the argument or appeal. The crossover, how
  that argument or appeal builds on earlier or
  relates to later historical events. And in what
  ways is it unique or an island unto itself. So
  these five ideas Reason, Nature, Happiness,
  Progress and Liberty Reason are the fingerprints
  of the Enlightenment.

15
R Reason

• The Revolution Takes Place in the Age of Reason
• William Pitt

16
Sugar or Equal

• Sweetening your colonial coffee or more
  appropriately Tea

17
E.Q.U.A.L.

• The document should contain an Enumeration of
  basic rights and principles.
• The document should address Quality of life
  issues.
• The document should promote the cause of
  community Unity.
• The document should be an Antecedent, forerunner
  to the United States Constitution.
• The document should express an appreciation of
  freedom and or Liberty.

18
A City Upon a Hill

• Antecedent documents trace back to the Magna
  Carta (1215) which limited the power of the
  English King and include such diverse sources as
  John Winthrops City Upon a Hill and Nathaniel
  Bacons Declaration of the Rights of the People
  (1676) not to mention the West New Jersey Charter
  (1676).

19
City Upon a Hill

• Applying the E.Q.U.A.L.
• Enumeration
• Quality of Life
• Promote the cause of Unity
• Antecedent
• Expresses a desire for freedom or liberty.

20
The Declaration of Independence

• When in the Course of human events, it becomes
  necessary for one people to dissolve the
  political bands which have connected them with
  another, and to assume, among the powers of the
  earth, the separate and equal station to which
  the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle
  them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
  requires that they should declare the causes
  which impel them to the separation.

21
The Declaration of Independence

• 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 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.

22
The Declaration of the Rights of Man

• Approved by the National Assembly of France,
  August 26, 1789 There were 17 in total.
• 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in
  rights. Social distinctions may be founded only
  upon the general good.
• 2. The aim of all political association is the
  preservation of the natural and imprescriptible
  rights of man. These rights are liberty,
  property, security, and resistance to oppression.
  
• 3. The principle of all sovereignty resides
  essentially in the nation. No body nor individual
  may exercise any authority which does not proceed
  directly from the nation.
• 4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do
  everything which injures no one else hence the
  exercise of the natural rights of each man has no
  limits except those which assure to the other
  members of the society the enjoyment of the same
  rights. These limits can only be determined by
  law.
• 5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are
  hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented
  which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be
  forced to do anything not provided for by law.

23
E Emancipation

• The Revolution presented the opportunity for
  liberation for many people inspired by the
  language of the Enlightenment

24
The Paradox of American Slavery

• As Lawrence Goldstone provocatively makes clear
  in Dark Bargain, to a significant and
  disquieting degree, Americas most sacred
  document was molded and shaped by the most
  notorious institution in its history.

25
Paradox Defined

• How could the founding fathers who envisioned a
  nation where all men are created equal also
  hold other human beings in bondage and preserve
  the concept of slavery? This is a question that
  has plagued historians for decades.

26
The Unintended and the Unexpected

• Recognize the importance of individuals who have
  made a difference in history
• Appreciate the force of the non-rational, the
  irrational, and the accidental
• Understand the relationship between geography and
  history as a matrix of time and place.

27
Women, Slaves and Common Men

• Defending the British soldiers accused in
  perpetrating the Boston Massacre, John Adams
  attempted to calm the town by dismissing the
  waterfront characters who had been killed as "a
  rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes,
  Irish teagues, and outlandish jack tars."

28
The poetry of Grace Growden Galloway, 1760s

• ". . . I am Dead
• Dead to each pleasing thought each Joy of Life
• Turn'd to that heavy lifeless lump a wife."
• "never get Tyed to a Man
• for when once you are yoked
• Tis all a Mere Joke
• of seeing your freedom again."

29
Abigail Adams

• Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776
• I long to hear that you have declared an
  independency. And, by the way, in the new code of
  laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you
  to make, I desire you would remember the ladies
  and be more generous and favorable to them than
  your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power
  into the hands of the husbands.

30
Abigail Adams

• "Remember, all men would be tyrants if they
  could. If particular care and attention is not
  paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a
  rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by
  any laws in which we have no voice or
  representation.
• "That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a
  truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no
  dispute but such of you as wish to be happy
  willingly give up -- the harsh tide of master for
  the more tender and endearing one of friend.

31
Abigail Adams

• "Why, then, not put it out of the power of the
  vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty
  and indignity with impunity? 
• "Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs
  which treat us only as the (servants) of your
  sex regard us then as being placed by Providence
  under your protection, and in imitation of the
  Supreme Being make use of that power only for our
  happiness."

32
the despotism of the petticoat

• JOHN ADAMS TO ABIGAIL ADAMS APRIL 14, 1776
• "We have been told that our struggle has loosened
  the bonds of government everywhere that children
  and apprentices were disobedient that schools
  and colleges were grown turbulent that Indians
  slighted their guardians, and negroes grew
  insolent to their masters.

33
Republican Motherhood Petticoat Despotism

• But your letter was the first intimation that
  another tribe, more numerous and powerful than
  all the rest, were grown discontented. This is
  rather too coarse a compliment, but you are so
  saucy, I won't blot it out.

34
The power of the petticoat?

• "Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal
  our masculine systems. Although they are in full
  force, you know they are little more than theory.
  We dare not exert our power in its full latitude.
  We are obliged to go fair and softly, and, in
  practice, you know we are the subjects.
• John Adams to Abigail Adams April 14, 1776

35
The Cult of Domesticity

• "We have only the name of masters, and rather
  than give up this, which would completely subject
  us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope
  General Washington and all our brave heroes would
  fight."

36
Desperate First Wives

• ABIGAIL ADAMS TO JOHN ADAMS, MAY 7, 1776
• "I cannot say that I think you are very generous
  to the ladies for, whilst you are proclaiming
  peace and good-will to men, emancipating all
  nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute
  power over wives.
• "But you must remember that arbitrary power is
  like most other things which are very hard, very
  liable to be broken and, notwithstanding all
  your wise laws and maxims, we have it in our
  power, not only to free ourselves, but to subdue
  our masters, and without violence, throw both
  your natural and legal authority at our feet."

37
Good Wives Republican Wives and Mothers

• According to historian James Henretta,
  democratic-republican ideology encouraged
  demands for the legal emancipation of women even
  as republican practice denied them. A few
  American public leaders, he continued,
  responded positively to female demands for
  greater equality, but usually with male needs in
  mind.
• James Henretta, Society and Republicanism
  America in 1787 No. 15, Summer 1987.

38
Good Wives Republican Motherhood

• In his Thoughts on Female Education (1787),
  Henretta notes, . . . Benjamin Rush advocated
  intellectual training of women, so they would,
  be an agreeable companion for a sensible man.
  Rush and other men of affairs likewise praised
  republican mothers who instructed their sons
  in the principles of liberty and government.

39
The Haitian Revolution

• In August 1791, a massive slave revolt exploded
  in the French colony Saint Domingue, now known as
  Haiti.  This civil unrest lasted from 1791 to
  1804, and was a result of the conflicts between
  white planters, free coloureds, slaves and petit
  blancs.  Other Caribbean islands experienced
  similar revolts but no other country was able to
  defeat the planters, free the slaves, and make a
  successful bid for independence.

40
The Declaration of the Rights of Man

• 17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred
  right, no one shall be deprived thereof except
  where public necessity, legally determined, shall
  clearly demand it, and then only on condition
  that the owner shall have been previously and
  equitably indemnified.

41
Historical Agency and the Haitian Revolution

• The exceptional experience of Haiti can be
  explained by the fact that France, the colonizer,
  was also in a state of revolution from 1789. 
  This lit the flames of revolution in Haiti.  The
  principles of the French Revolution with
  its watchwords of Liberty, Equality and
  Fraternity, served as an inspiration for the
  inhabitants of Haiti.  The white planters saw it
  as an opportunity to secure independence from
  France, the free people of color wanted full
  citizenship, the petits blancs wanted active
  citizenship for all white persons, and the
  slaves wanted freedom.  The conflict between the
  free coloureds and the grand blancs gave the
  slaves a perfect opportunity to fight for their
  freedom.

42
V Victory

• The Declaration of Independence showed England
  and other countries that Americans were
  determined to become a free nation. If the
  colonists lost the war, all the men who signed
  the declaration would hang.

43
Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989

• On May 13 the hunger strike began in Tiananmen
  Square. Somehow that was a catalyst more and
  more thoughts began to cross the line Marx was
  replaced by Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and
  Martin Luther King. Never had I expected to see a
  Chinese student in Tiananmen Square with a
  headband bearing the English words, "I have a
  dream."

44
Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989

• When workers joined the demonstrations, a success
  few had dared to hope for, the students lost
  their ideological nerve. Those demonstrating for
  due process and separation of powers stood side
  by side with those who admired Mao together they
  faced down the army in the wee hours of May 21
  and held control of Peking. "You have won," I
  told my Chinese friends. "The army has
  disobeyed." "The army will never disobey," they
  replied. "This is China." My Chinese friends were
  right. The Chinese government is not designed to
  respond to public opinion. There is no way
  orderly change can occur in a totalitarian
  society. George Jochnowitz, The words of Marx,
  the methods of Lenin, (Tiananmen Square
  massacre, China) National Review August 4, 1989.

45
O Opportunity

• "I am sure America will be victorious finally,
  but her sufferings for want of union and public
  spirit may be great first. There is no people on
  earth that ever had so fair an opportunity to
  establish their freedom at so easy a rate, if the
  opportunity had been properly approved. God
  grant a happy issue to the war!" Letter from
  Gen. Greene to his wife, May 1777. Gen. Nathanael
  Greene (1742-1786), second-in-command to Gen.
  George Washington

46
L Liberty

• The only freedom which deserves the name is that
  of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long
  as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs,
  or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the
  proper guardian of his own health, whether
  bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are
  greater gainers by suffering each other to live
  as seems good to themselves, than by compelling
  each to live as seems good to the rest.
• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

47
Paradox Defined

• How could the founding fathers who envisioned a
  nation where all men are created equal also
  hold other human beings in bondage and preserve
  the concept of slavery? This is a question that
  has plagued both apologists and critics of the
  American system.

48
The Paradox of American Slavery

• Some also took action. Franklin became president
  of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the
  Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free
  Negros Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Washington
  provided in his will for the emancipation of his
  slaves after the death of his wife. John Adams
  never owned slaves, as a matter of principle, yet
  in his letter to two Quaker abolitionists he
  expresses the widespread fear that
  emancipationand agitation for itwould lead to
  violence. All three at various times expressed
  support for colonization.

49
The Paradox of American Slavery

• And again to Jefferson, who writes in 1809 that
  he has come to believe that black Africans "are
  on a par with ourselves" and that this awareness
  among citizens will hasten "the day of their
  relief." Someday. How one judges these men is
  problematic they have been lauded and condemned
  for their words here.

50
Imperfect gods?

• When he died in 1799 Washingtoncalled for his
  manservant William Lee to be freed immediately,
  and given a pension.  The other slaves were to be
  freed when his widow died.  Martha chose to free
  them  two years later.  According to Abigail
  Adams this was because she feared her life might
  be in danger,  since her death meant freedom for
  the slaves.  (Hirschfield, p 214) Ironically,
  neither Washington nor his wife could legally
  free the dower slaves which still belonged to the
  Custis estate.  

51
Dark Bargain created a fatal defect

• But in failing to address the issue of slavery
  fully in the hopes of securing a new
  Constitution, the founders allowed a deadly
  infection to continue to breed that would
  eventually result in the Civil War.

52
The Paradox of American Freedom

• In his book, American Slavery and Freedom (1975)
  Edmund S. Morgan moved the origins-of-slavery
  debate away from sectional differences and deep
  roots, relocating it in relation to the undoubted
  fact that late-eighteenth-century Virginia gave
  America its foremost exemplars of liberty. The
  link between what they proclaimed and how they
  lived was not, he suggests, mere happenstance or
  a regrettable but minor contradiction. It was
  fundamental.

Edmund S. Morgan American Slavery, American
Freedom The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, (New
York W. W. Norton Co., 1975).
53
What made the founding fathers experts on Liberty?

• The great paradox of the Revolution is slavery,
  and the men we call the Founding Fathers knew it.
  They talked and wrote about it, justified its
  survival under the Constitution, and northerners
  among them urged its eradication, someday.

54
U Unity

• Benjamin Franklins "Join or Die" Pennsylvania
  Gazette (Philadelphia), May 9, 1754 Newspaper
  Serial and Government Publications Division
  Library of Congress.

55
U Unity

• In response to the Coercive Acts (several acts
  designed to restructure colonial government and
  reduce colonial freedoms passed in 1774), the
  colonies (except for Georgia) met at Philadelphia
  in the First Continental Congress. Along with a
  declaration of principle, the delegates also
  elected to boycott all British goods and cease
  exporting American products to Britain and its
  possessions. Women like those in North Carolina
  joined with their male counterparts and refused
  to buy and use British products, especially tea.

56
Unity

• The colonists invented or adopted emblems --
  images accompanied by a motto -- and
  personifications -- allegorical figures -- to
  express their political needs. They used them as
  propaganda tools to draw together the country's
  diverse peoples (who spoke many languages) in
  order to promote national political union, the
  best hope of securing liberty and equal justice
  for all. Benjamin Franklin was responsible for
  suggesting the country's first emblem -- a native
  rattlesnake -- and its first personification --
  Hercules. Both were readily understood by his
  contemporaries the snake device conveyed the
  need for political solidarity among the colonies,
  while the strength of the infant Hercules was
  likened to that of the mighty young nation.

57
U The Great American Melting Pot
58
T Tension From the Revolution to the Civil War

• Using ESP. What social, economic and political
  tensions are occasioned by the Revolution and the
  adoption of the new Constitution and persist to
  the American Civil War some 80 years later

59
I Independence
60
I Independence

• What has this meant in terms of American social,
  economic and political traditions in the United
  States? American foreign policy? American popular
  culture and Americas image abroad?

61
O Order

• The leaders of the American Revolution, writes
  the distinguished historian Bernard Bailyn, were
  radicals. But their concern was not to correct
  inequalities of class or income, not to remake
  the social order, but to "purify a corrupt
  constitution and fight off the apparent growth of
  prerogative power." They wished, in other words,
  to mend a broken system and improve upon it. In
  doing so they drew on many traditions of
  political and social thought, ranging from
  English conservative philosophers to exponents of
  the continental Enlightenment, from
  backward-looking interpretations of ancient Roman
  civilization to forward-looking views of a new
  American people.

62
O Order "A New Order of the Ages"
63
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"

• "Novus Ordo Seclorum" was the motto suggested in
  1782 by Charles Thomson, the Founding Father
  chosen by the Continental Congress to come up
  with the final design for the Great Seal of the
  United States. He adapted it from a line in
  Virgil's Eclogue IV, a pastoral poem that
  expresses the longing for a new era of peace and
  happiness which was written by the famed Roman
  writer in the first century B.C.

64
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"

• He put the motto at the bottom of the reverse
  side where its meaning ties into the imagery
  above it the unfinished pyramid with the date
  MDCCLXXVI (1776). Thomson did not provide an
  exact translation of the motto, but he explained
  its symbolism Novus Ordo Seclorum signifies "the
  beginning of the new American Era," which
  commences from 1776.

65
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"

• The farsighted founders of the United States
  thought in terms of ages. They looked back into
  history as well as forward, realizing their
  actions would have long-lasting consequences.
• In January 1776, Thomas Paine inspired the
  Colonies with a vision of this new American Era.
  In Common Sense he wrote "The cause of America
  is in a great measure the cause of all mankind...
  'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an
  age posterity are virtually involved in the
  contest, and will be more or less affected, even
  to the end of time, by the proceedings now."

66
Thomas Paine, The Crisis -- December 1776

• "These are the times that try men's souls The
  summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in
  this crisis, shrink from the service of his
  country but he that stands it Now, deserves the
  love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like
  hell, is not easily conquered yet we have this
  consolation with us, that the harder the conflict
  the more glorious the triumph." 

67
O Order Novus Ordo Seclorum"

• In his farewell letter to the Army (June 8,
  1783), George Washington wrote "The foundation
  of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of
  Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when
  the rights of mankind were better understood and
  more clearly defined, than at any former period."

68
N Nationhood

• The Federalists had answers to all of the
  Anti-Federalist complaints. Among them
• The separation of powers into three independent
  branches protected the rights of the people. Each
  branch represents a different aspect of the
  people, and because all three branches are equal,
  no one group can assume control over another.
• A listing of rights can be a dangerous thing. If
  the national government were to protect specific
  listed rights, what would stop it from violating
  rights other than the listed ones? Since we can't
  list all the rights, the Federalists argued that
  it's better to list none at all.

69
N Nationhood

• Overall, the Federalists were more organized in
  their efforts. By June of 1788, the Constitution
  was close to ratification. Nine states had
  ratified it, and only one more (New Hampshire)
  was needed. To achieve this, the Federalists
  agreed that once Congress met, it would draft a
  bill of rights. Finally, New York and Virginia
  approved, and the Constitution was a reality.
  Interestingly, the Bill of Rights was not
  originally a part of the Constitution, and yet it
  has proved to be highly important to protecting
  the rights of the people.

70
Forging a new Nation

• Every time we revisit the issues posed in the
  bill of rights we revisit the Revolution and its
  meaning across time space, the good, the bad and
  the Ugly.

71
The Shot heard around the World. . .
72
Final Thought Gordon Wood

• Q. One of the most interesting observations you
  make is that Americans are unique in turning to
  the Founders of their country for guidance about
  current issues. Just recently Richard Brookhiser
  devoted an entire book to the subject, providing
  the answers he thinks the founders would give to
  the questions we face. Why do we do this?

73
Final Thought Gordon Wood

• I think we go back to the Founders to renew and
  reaffirm our faith in the values and ideals of
  the nation. We are not a nation in the usual
  sense of the term. To be an American is not to be
  somebody, but to believe in something. And that
  something is the ideals and values that came out
  of the Revolution and the framing of the
  Constitution. So the Founders give us a sense of
  who we are and what we believe in.. .

74
the Founders give us a sense of who we are and
what we believe in.. .

• Almost everything we believe as a people--our
  noblest ideals and highest aspirations--come out
  of the Revolution--our belief in liberty,
  equality, constitutionalism, self-government, the
  well-being of ordinary people--so it is not
  surprising that we should want to know about the
  men who created these ideas, institutions, and
  values.
• Source Interview with Gordon Wood Revolutionary
  Characters By Rick Shenkman, History News
  Network, 12-04-06

75
We, the people, are sovereign! Next Time
Teaching the Preamble . . .