The Religious Conspiracy Theory of the American Revolution: Anglican Motive

1976 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Hogue
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
American Religion ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
The Revolution

The historian of American religion seeking to establish the relevance of his specialty to the event of 1776 labors under something of a handicap, a disability epitomized in the cold silence about religion in those documents which have become the secular scriptures of the nation's political faith. Neither the official justification for the Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, nor the popular contemporaneous one, Paine's Common Sense, accords the remotest of influences to formal religion. If the Revolution had a religious dimension, evidence for it must be sought elsewhere. Both the exegete, hoping to throw new light upon old truth, and the skeptic, to whom a received dogma is a standing challenge, have perforce turned to the antiquarian's shelves, stuffed with the literary remains of a pamphleteering age.

The Unexpected Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. D. Clark
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Rights Theories ◽  
New View ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter 4 offers a new view of the American Revolution in terms more of negations than of affirmations: not the instantiation of modernizing natural rights theories or republicanism, but the result of older and passionate negations on both sides of the Atlantic, often religious. It reinterprets Paine’s Common Sense against the older contexts proposed in this book, and argues that the pamphlet, although important, was not transformative and ubiquitous. It traces Paine’s subsequent writings while in America, responding to and interpreting the course of the Revolution, and concludes that Paine’s understanding of that important episode was less than has been thought; rather, he largely remained within an English frame of reference, as did, indeed, most American colonists. He understood the American Revolution, then, in English terms.

scholarly journals Utopiens grænser i Den amerikanske revolution

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (64) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Birk Jespersen
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Farmer ◽  
Political Logic ◽  
The Revolution

Mikkel Birk Jespersen: "Utopiens grænser i Den amerikanske revolution - Om utopiske tekststrategier i Common Sense og Letters from an American Farmer"AbstractMikkel Birk Jespersen: “Boundaries of Utopia in the American Revolution: On Utopian Text Strategies in Common Sense and Letters from an American Farmer”The article discusses the relations between utopia, literature and revolution in the American Revolution through an analysis of Tom Paine’s Common Sense (1776) and J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782). It is arguedthat utopia constitutes a textual function whose ‘non-place’ or ‘point zero’ is not reducible to a political logic, but rather presents a challenge to it. In the revolution, however, the different logics of utopia and of the political can be said to confront each other, hereby illuminating the contradictions of both. The constellation of the two texts brings out the contradictory nature of utopia, as the texts have opposed approaches to the revolution and are characterised by two different utopian logics.

“THE POWER OF FEELING”? EMOTION, SENSIBILITY, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH M. S. PEARSALL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
American History ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Emotional Culture ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
The Revolution

In January 1776, Thomas Paine demanded to know whether “the Power of feeling” did not require that American colonists declare independence from Great Britain. Paine's efforts included an appeal to “common sense,” to the idea that it was only natural for colonists to end their ties with Britain. For Paine, independence did not depend on elaborately wrought arguments; instead, it should be obvious to all, even the most unlettered. His own emotionally charged language—the king was akin to a “crowned ruffian” descended from “a French Bastard landing with an armed Banditti”—sought to stir even those who still longed for reconciliation to “examine the passions and feelings of mankind” and to throw off the yoke of oppression. Paine's formulations, like these two books, raise numerous questions. How significant has the expression of emotion been in American history? How far can scholars go in attributing to it sufficient momentum to effect major historical change? Can something so universal be harnessed into nationalist political trajectories? Should America be seen as having a unique emotional culture in the eighteenth century? Did this exceptional culture of feeling contribute to the Revolution itself? These two authors answer yes to the last three questions, thus prompting re-evaluation of the “power of feeling” in the American Revolution itself.

British Imperial Policy and the American Revolution

2019 ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Native Populations ◽  
British Policy ◽  
George Iii ◽  
Imperial Reforms ◽  
Central Form ◽  
The Revolution

In the 1760s and early 1770s, British policy towards America was similar to a series of parallel initiatives throughout the British Empire. There was a concerted attempt by the home government to reform the empire, increase revenues, regulate trade, improve colonial defence, incorporate native populations, and strengthen metropolitan control which also resembled similar reforms in the empires of France and Spain. The chapter contends that the causes and aims of those policies are more comprehensible when understood in the broader imperial context which illuminates the origins of the American Revolution. It traces and explains a shift in policy towards more direct metropolitan rule that increasingly involved intervention in colonial affairs by Parliament. The chapter shows that the implications of these novel policies made colonial fears far from groundless even if overstated in the Whig conspiracy theory of a deliberate plan of tyranny by George III and Lord North. Nevertheless, it was one of the ironies of the revolution that the newly independent nation felt obligated to adopt many of the earlier imperial reforms including a more central form of government with the power to tax.

Power and Liberty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon S. Wood
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The State ◽  
British Government ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
The Public ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
The Revolution

This book covers major issues of constitutionalism in the American Revolution. It begins with the imperial debate over taxation and representation between the colonists and the British government. That debated climaxed with the Declaration of Independence. Each of the former colonies became republics and drew up written constitutions with several of them including bills of rights. These constitutions established patterns that later influenced the federal Constitution created in 1787, including bicameral legislatures, independent executives, and independent judiciaries. But because the Confederation of the states lacked the power to tax and regulate trade and the state legislatures were abusing their considerable power, the revolutionaries sought to solve both problems with a new federal Constitution in 1787. In addition to having to recognize the equality of each state in the Senate, the Convention faced the problem with slavery. Although most Americans thought that slavery was gradually dying, South Carolina and Georgia wanted to import more slaves and forced the Convention to guarantee twenty more years of slave importations and some protections for slavery in the Constitution. The institution that benefited most from the Revolution was the judiciary. It became very important in monitoring the demarcation between the public and the private realms that emerged from the Revolution.

A Matter of Honor and a Test of Virtue

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-97
Author(s):  
Craig Bruce Smith
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Ethical Question ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
French And Indian War ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Indian War ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter traces the period from the end of the French and Indian War to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It analyzes the formation of a communal sense of self before and during the Revolution, based on recognition of British slights to Americans’ personal honor. The origins of the American Revolution are thus cast as a defense of honor on the part of the patriots. This chapter illustrates how ethical changes that occurred during the colonial period directly led to the American Revolution. The central theme is the progression of American honor, virtue, and ethics from simply a direct British offspring to something that is more individualized under the context of a nascent proto-nationalism. This chapter contends that the patriots viewed the American Revolution as a matter of honor and a test of virtue. Men like Washington felt that British policy had attacked their honor, and they were forced to react. America would win or lose based upon maintaining its virtue. It also offers new causes of the war. The chapter shows that the coming of the Revolution was understood by the patriots as more of an ethical question than a question of taxation or sovereignty.

A Political Age

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Mitchell Sommers
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Political Events ◽  
London Corresponding Society

This chapter places Ebenezer and Manoah Sibly in the dramatic political events of their day, especially the American and French Revolutions, and the Treason Trials of the 1790s. Ebenezer is frequently cited as a radical Whig, who opposed slavery and supported the American Revolution and other radical causes. Little is said about Manoah’s politics, other than that as a New Church minister, he was of necessity a loyalist. However, a close examination of Ebenezer’s writing, and especially the timing of the publication of his comments on the American and French Revolutions, reveals him as much more moderate than has been asserted, especially in discussions of his nativity for the Declaration of Independence. On the other hand, Manoah’s work as shorthand taker for the London Corresponding Society and acceptance of Swedenborg’s dramatically radical theology reveal him as a profoundly radical thinker—and one who was moved to act on his convictions.

Conclusion: Legal and Constitutional Legacies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Military Life ◽  
American States ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
British Military ◽  
Reign Of Terror ◽  
Property Destruction ◽  
The Revolution

The conclusion makes two arguments. First, it takes the position common in the historical literature that the American Revolution was a comparatively placid one, with few killings of civilians, little property destruction, and no reign of terror. It argues that the placidity was a consequence of legal continuity—the same courts, judges, and juries that had governed the colonies in 1770 in large part continued to govern the new American states in 1780. During the course of the War of Independence itself, legal and constitutional change occurred almost entirely at the top, and, except in the few places occupied by the British military, life went on largely as it always had. The conclusion also argues that old ideas of unwritten constitutionalism persisted during and after the Revolution, but that a new idea that constitutions should be written to avoid ambiguity emerged beside the old ideas.

Patriot vs. Patriot: Social Conflict in Virginia and the Origins of the American Revolution

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-256
Author(s):  
MICHAEL A. McDONNELL ◽  
WOODY HOLTON
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
North American ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Social Consensus ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Mount Vernon ◽  
Widespread Agreement ◽  
Northern County

Virginia, Britain's most populous and arguably most important North American colony, once seemed the perfect fit for the “consensus” interpretation of the War of Independence. Indeed, the percentage of white colonists who became loyalists was probably lower in Virginia than in any other rebelling colony. The widespread agreement on secession from Britain should not, however, be mistaken for social consensus. The reality was that revolutionary Virginia was frequently in turmoil. One of the most intriguing of the local insurrections broke out in the northern county of Loudoun just five months before the Declaration of Independence. In February 1776, the county erupted into a heated confrontation pitting gentlemen against their less wealthy neighbours. Lund Washington, who was managing Mount Vernon, warned his cousin, General George Washington, who was outside Boston training his fledgeling patriot army, that the “first Battle we have in this part of the Country will be in Loudon” – not against British soldiers, but against fellow patriots. Within a week, the revolutionary government in Williamsburg, the Committee of Safety, felt compelled to send troops to quell the disturbances. Yet, for months afterwards, gentry Virginians worried that their effort to suppress the rebellion had failed. In mid-May, Andrew Leitch told Leven Powell of Loudoun, “I really lament the torn and distracted condition of your County.” The “troublesome times,” as another gentleman called them, were slow to abate.

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