How America Took a Great Leap of Faith Toward Democracy and Independence

This July 4th weekend, read about the bold and radical experiment to test a wholly new form of government

When colonists began to argue with the British government in the mid-1760s, no one intended to question the very basis of the empire or the first principles of sovereignty. Instead, the rift started with an issue of taxes. Colonists were accustomed to taxes, which typically originated in the provincial assemblies that were supposed to represent the common people of the colonies. A royal governor could request revenues, but it was the assembly that had to pass such a law. After the French and Indian War (1754–63), however, the British Treasury faced a substantial debt. Convincing thirteen legislatures to help with funds would be inefficient if not impossible. So Parliament took a new approach. It passed laws—the Sugar Act and Stamp Act— to raise revenue directly, bypassing the legislative assemblies elected by colonial voters in each province.

Americans objected that Parliament lacked legislative authority over them. They insisted that those who enacted colonial laws and taxes needed to be chosen by colonial voters and share basic interests with their constituents and neighbors. Legislatures were authoritative only when they actually represented the people governed by their laws. A gathering of delegates from nine colonial legislatures, called the Stamp Act Congress, explained the principle in 1765: “The only Representatives of the People of these Colonies, are Persons chosen therein by themselves.” This was not opposition to government or to taxes, but rather a defense of the representative governments to which colonists were long accustomed.

“Patriots” in America also defended other familiar colonial institutions, including common law juries, locally chosen officials, and popular crowds (or “mobs”). Parliament saw colonists use these institutions to prevent the execution of the Stamp Act. In response, British leaders appointed their own officials in the colonies, provided them with broad authority to search private stores, and established courts with appointed judges (and no juries) to try disputed cases. Again colonists felt aggrieved. Now Parliament was bypassing colonial juries and local officials to make law enforcement less accountable to colonial public opinion. Britain went so far as to send troops to Boston in 1768 in order to defend royal officials and enforce the laws. For their part, patriots viewed the military occupation of a colonial city as an unconstitutional effort to suppress the voice of “the people” there. They saw evidence that British policymakers considered inhabitants of the colonies as having fewer rights and freedoms than Britons at home.

As colonial legislatures opposed British policies, many governors simply dissolved those assemblies. So leadership in the resistance fell to unofficial groups, such as local committees, often called “Sons of Liberty.” Patriots organized locally and used the public press to share their views with one another. Widespread literacy, especially among men, made possible the effective circulation of ideas through pamphlets, newspapers, and other print products. Even illiterate people could listen to and debate current events when someone read aloud in a tavern or a private household. Growing numbers of colonists discussed republican ideas of the common good, Enlightenment ideas of human rights, and liberal ideas of individual freedom.

The most inclusive arena of patriot politics involved ordinary free colonists and put their ideas at the heart of the movement. From 1765 to 1776, patriots created new economic networks by forming nonimportation and nonconsumption agreements. Merchants agreed not to import expensive British goods, and consumers agreed not to purchase such imports as fine fabrics, furnishings, or tea. Colonists hoped that the loss of revenue would convince British merchants and manufacturers to lobby Parliament for change.

Equally important, these associations helped bridge social divisions among Americans. Colonists who rarely participated in politics could sign such agreements and help to enforce them. Ordinary artisans and farmers contributed as patriotic producers of goods, and they insisted on serving alongside traders and professional men on the local committees that enforced the trade agreements. Women did not serve on formal patriot committees, but they could produce homespun fabrics to replace imports and sacrifice imported tea to show their political loyalties. The boycotts required the wealthy to put aside imported styles to buy plainer products from their neighbors—linen spun by colonial women and woven by colonial weavers; gloves made by colonial glovers, tanners, and farmers; and herbal brews sold by country people to replace tea. Elites renounced fine British clothing and donned homespun to show that they did not aspire to look or live like wealthy gentlemen or aristocrats. The movement thus promoted the idea that there were patriotic and unpatriotic economic choices. Patriots should put aside self-interest for the good of the whole community.

Not everyone readily embraced these values. Although the trade agreements were supposedly voluntary, dissenters faced social ostracism and economic boycott. Localities throughout the colonies set up committees to police these associations. The committees spoke privately with individuals who hesitated to join, and they published the names of the most recalcitrant in local newspapers, labeling them as “unfriendly” to American liberties. That was a signal to all “true patriots” to end their social and economic dealings with these individuals. In some places, flagrant violators of the pacts faced unruly crowds that destroyed property or even attacked their persons. There were dramatic acts of “tarring and feathering” to punish dissenters; more often, the mere threat of such treatment intimidated people into compliance. Perhaps the most famous event—a destruction of private property later called the Boston Tea Party—was an act to enforce a boycott of tea in 1773. Parliament had put a tax on tea and granted a monopoly on the tea trade to the East India Company and its infl uential stockholders. When they boycotted, seized, or even destroyed East India Company tea, patriots defied the most powerful corporation of the day. They asserted that the people of the British colonies—and not the Parliament across the Atlantic—would exercise jurisdiction over economic and political affairs vital to Americans.

In the process of organizing to resist Parliament, colonists underwent two key changes in identity: First, people who had not thought of themselves as political actors now saw that they could have a collective impact on governmental affairs. The inclusive nature of the movement generated new ideas about the ability of ordinary free people to take part in public decisions. People began to question the idea that politics should be reserved for elites. Second, as British authorities ignored colonial grievances, growing numbers slowly disconnected from Britain and their own Loyalist neighbors. They built new connections around shared commitments with one another. Patrick Henry, a delegate to the First Continental Congress, expressed the new identity powerfully in 1774: “I am not a Virginian, but an American.”

Other colonists were reluctant to embrace such a new identity, but events made it difficult to avoid taking sides. In the spring of 1775 fighting broke out between the king’s troops and local militias at Lexington and Concord. When George III sent foreign mercenaries to fight the rebellious colonists, the decision shattered colonial hopes for reconciliation. Then, in early 1776, radical pamphleteer Thomas Paine published a scathing attack on the very principles of monarchy and hereditary aristocracy. Paine argued that the common people were capable of establishing good governments of their own, on the basis of what he called “Common Sense.” His extraordinary pamphlet reached more American readers than any tract published before.

That summer, many Americans made a great leap to a new idea: maybe they could do without monarchy, aristocracy, and even the British nation. If they could unite with one another, “the people” of the colonies might form their own, more equal, society and government. Maybe “the people” were enough. The second Continental Congress adopted a declaration of independence. They resolved that “all men were created equal,” born with rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They stated that governments were created “by the consent of the governed.” On July 4, American patriots published that radical idea to the world and began to put it to the test.

For most of the next decade, Revolutionaries sought to implement their new ideas about government in the midst of a grueling war for independence. The new states scrambled to replace their now rejected colonial regimes with institutions consistent with the principle of popular sovereignty. The states’ revolutionary governments varied— some more directly reliant on ordinary voters, others more careful to entrust power to propertied gentlemen. Meanwhile, Congress conducted the war as best it could under an agreement called the Articles of Confederation.

Under these circumstances, the unity and patriotic sacrifice that the Revolution required were sometimes elusive. The states did not always cooperate with one another or raise their share of taxes to support the Continental Army in the field. Even with the coming of peace, the system of government seemed unsatisfactory to some. Critics complained that individual states placed restrictions on trade that crossed their borders. Congress was sometimes too weak to negotiate effectively with foreign powers or to settle conflicts within or between states. Moreover, some state governments were dominated by “new men,” without substantial property and social standing, and their measures to relieve debtors worried many among the well-to-do. Distressed by what they saw as disunity and disorder, some Americans declared the need for a new, stable, central government to “secure the blessings of liberty” to the nation.

To form such a government, twelve states (Rhode Island stood out) sent delegates to a constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Presided over by General George Washington, the convention decided to shift power from the states to the central government both to strengthen the nation and to lodge power more firmly in the hands of elite men such as themselves. At the same time they maintained the revolutionary commitment to popular sovereignty as the great principle of government. They provided that all branches of the federal government arise from the voters, either directly or indirectly. They established a “republic,” in which the people’s representatives would govern, checked by recurring elections from abusing the powers entrusted to them.

Over the following months, a contest over ratification of the proposed constitution sharply divided the nation. Americans were about to test, wrote Alexander Hamilton, “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” In newspapers, public debates, and private discussions, people offered their reflections on the convention’s plan. Many worried that it concentrated too much power in federal institutions; others worried that the nation was too expansive to sustain a truly representative government. Despite these and other concerns, the requisite three-quarters of the states approved the plan, and the U.S. Constitution went into operation in June 1788. The debate itself had shown widespread belief that the Constitution still needed amending. The first Congress passed the Bill of Rights in 1789. These ten amendments protected institutions that many Americans considered essential to a free people, including a free press, free institutions of worship, armed militias, public assemblies, trial by jury, and freedom from unlawful searches and seizures. With their passage, some who had opposed the Constitution became willing to give the new government their support.

Read more in American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith, which is available from Smithsonian Books. Visit Smithsonian Books’ website to learn more about its publications and a full list of titles. 

Excerpt from American Democracy © 2017 by the Smithsonian Institution

Barbara Clark Smith | Read More

BARBARA CLARK SMITH is the curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.