In 1776, numerous individuals, families, committees,
congregations, localities, and states had already proclaimed their
independence, and almost no remaining imperial structure could continue to
operate with any legitimacy in what would very soon become thirteen
states. By the very beginning of
July of 1776, it became clear that members of Congress would have to catch up
quickly to the more activist localities, hoping to rein in the movement of
independence before it got out of hand and splintered from lack of central
direction and a coherent philosophy.
While the passage of the Declaration came on July 4, the
members of the Second Continental Congress did not sign the venerable document
until August 2.
Here are ten facts about the American founding that are
worth knowing and contemplating as our country celebrates its independence on
the Fourth of July.
1. At the time of the passage and signing
of the Declaration, roughly 2.15 million persons lived in the 13 colonies. Of those not enslaved, the vast
majority was of Anglo-Saxon-Celtic descent and nearly 100% were
Protestant. The “fierce spirit of liberty
is stronger in the English Colonies probably than in any other people on the
earth. . . . Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no
way worn out or impaired,” Edmund Burke stated publically in 1775. “The people are Protestants; and of
that kind which is most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion.”
2. Within Parliament and English
governance, a debate had raged regarding the nature of the British Empire
itself. Should it exist as a
decentralized empire—an extended commonwealth of like-minded peoples held
together by language, religion, and economic interests? King George II, William Pitt the Elder,
Lord Newcastle, and Edmund Burke had favored this, believing it essential to
keep the colonies as free and productive as possible. “The Americans are the SONS, not the BASTARDS of England,”
Pitt had argued. King George III
had a very different vision for the empire, and he began to push his notions of
a centralized empire from the very beginning of his reign.
3. The first real cry
against George III’s centralizing drive came from an unlikely source, lawyer
James Otis (1725-83), in 1761.
Interrupting a judicial trial, Otis gave a four-hour oration. John Adams later described the scene:
“But Otis was a flame of fire with a promptitude of classical allusions, a
depth of research a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion
of legal authorities. A prophetic
glance of his eye into futurity and a torrent of impetuous eloquence, he
hurried away every thing before him. American independence was then and there
born. The seeds of patriots and
heroes were then and there sown to defend the vigorous youth . . . . Every man
of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did ready to take arms
against writs of assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first
act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the
child Independence was born. In fifteen years namely in 1776 he grew up to
manhood and declared himself free.” [n.b. all punctuation added]
4. The level
of education for Americans at the time was astounding. Though no public schools existed in any
recognizable sense in the eighteenth century, some “Common Schools” did. At a Common School, tutors and teachers
drilled students for hours in Greek and Latin. Even if a student only attended school from, say, ages 6-8,
he would learn only classical languages.
Parents were expected to teach their children to read, almost always
from the King James Bible. The colonists met with great success,
and the American colonies probably contained the single most literate people in
the world at that time. For those
attending one of the several colleges in the American colonies (Harvard, Yale,
William and Mary, King’s College (Columbia)), a liberal education was the only
real education. As the grand
historian of the period, Forrest McDonald, has revealed, when a student
entered college (usually at age 14 or 15), he would need to prove fluency in
Latin and Greek. He would need to
“read and translate from the original Latin into English ‘the first three of
[Cicero’s] Select Orations and the first
three books of Virgil’s Aeneid’
and to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into
Latin, as well as to be ‘expert in arithmetic’ and to have a ‘blameless moral
character.’” Keeping this in mind,
Americans should not be surprised to see the seventy-plus classical references
in The Federalist Papers or the
architecture of the Capitol building.
Americans were, second only to their Protestantism, a classically
oriented people.
5. The revolution
was, therefore, not surprisingly, a “revolution prevented, not made,” as Burke
explained it. When asked, for
example, where he derived the ideas contained within the Declaration of
Independence, Jefferson revealed how historical and “backward looking” the document
was. “This was the object of the
Declaration of Independence,” Jefferson explained in 1825, not long before his
death. “Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought
of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place
before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as
to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we
are compelled to take. Neither
aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any
particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the
American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called
for by the occasion. All its authority
rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in
conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in elementary books of public
right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”
6. The
first shots fired in what became the War for Independence were calculated to
lead neither to a full-scale war nor to the independence of the colonies from
her mother. Instead, the men of
Lexington, Massachusetts, followed what they believed to be the strongest form
of protest—not an act of secession.
Jonas Clarke, the Calvinist pastor at the Lexington church and one of
the leading intellectuals of the colonies, had been exploring Christian notions
of liberty for well over a decade.
“And it is a truth, which the history of the ages and the common
experiences of mankind have fully confirmed,” he stated in 1765, “that a people
can never be divested of those invaluable rights and liberties which are
necessary to the happiness of individuals, to the well-being of communities or
to a well regulated state, but by their own negligence, imprudence, timidity or
rashness. They are seldom lost, but when foolishly or tamely
resigned.” After debating a response to the British march toward Concord for
hours in the local pastor’s house, the town pub, and on the town green (all
three places adjoining), about forty Lexingtonians stood on the village green
at 5:00am, April 19, 1775, arms placed in parade formation. When the British demanded the
Lexingtonians disperse, shots were fired and eight Massachusetts men were
slaughtered in full view of the entire community.
7. The most important and stalwart defender of American
liberties and American independence in Great Britain was Edmund Burke, one of
the two greatest statesmen of the age.
Indeed, the issue of American independence dominated the first seventeen
years of his career in Parliament.
From his first speech delivered to the august body in 1766 to the
signing of the Peace of Paris in 1783, Burke defended the rights of Americans
as he also defended the rights of the Irish, Roman Catholics in Great Britain,
and the Asian Indians. Burke went
so far as to secede from Parliament in protest of the war in the Americas, and
he even openly implied that King George III was satanic for waging war against
the Americans.
8. A friend and disciple of Burke’s, Maryland’s
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was the only Roman Catholic signer of the
Declaration of Independence.
Maryland had possessed the most anti-Catholic laws in the colonies prior
to the War for Independence.
Catholics could not worship publicly, and children could even, by law,
be removed permanently from their parents and sent to live with Protestant
families in England should the Catholic parents attempt to educate their
children in a “Catholic fashion.”
Consequently, Charles Carroll’s father not only refused to claim him as
a child, but he also sent him abroad for seventeen years to be educated by
Catholics in France and elsewhere.
Carroll earned his B.A. and M.A. while in France, and he studied law in
France and England. For fear of
the law, Charles’s father waited to recognize the legitimacy of his son and the
son’s mother until Charles had earned his M.A. When Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence, he did
so for reasons of religious freedom and tolerance. “When I signed the Declaration of Independence, I had in
view not only our independence of England but the toleration of all Sects,
professing the Christian Religion, and communicating to them all great rights,”
he wrote in 1829. “Happily this
wise and salutary measure has taken place for eradicating religious feuds and
persecution.”
9. Maryland had not been the only place
harboring anti-Catholic feelings in the colonies. Indeed, every colony had some form of anti-Catholic law
except for Pennsylvania. The
farther north one journeyed, the stronger the anti-Catholicism became. As early as the 1640s, for example, the
New England colonies had passed a law that a man could enter a congregation
only if armed with his weapon and firearm, in case of a Catholic or Indian
attack. Along the same lines, the
men exited Sunday service in scouting formation, securing the area for the
defense of the women and children.
When New England militia went into battle during the war for
independence, their war cry was “No king, no popery!” As General John Sullivan of the Continental Army had
claimed, the Quebec Act, which gave rights to Canadian Catholics, was the “Most
dangerous to American Liberties among the whole train.” Should the Catholics gain power, he
continued, “no God may as well exist in the universe.”
10. None of this should suggest, however, that all Americans held anti-Catholic views. Some of the most prominent Americans held absolutely no tolerance for intolerance. The most important was George Washington who accepted, without reservation, Catholics and Jews as fully republican citizens. In a March 1790 address to the Roman Catholics in the United States, he stated:
"As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality. And I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution, and the establishment of their government; or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed. . . . And may the members of your society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity."
Another critic of anti-Catholicism was one of the least
religious of the founders, Ben Franklin.
In the spring of 1776, Franklin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and
Jacky Carroll (Charles’s cousin and close friend) traveled to Canada in a
failed mission to convince the Canadians to join the American cause. Along the way, Franklin and the two
Carrolls struck up a strong friendship.
After the success of the American war for Independence, the Vatican
decided it was time to name a bishop in North America. No bishop, not even
Anglican/Episcopalian bishops, had ever stepped foot in the thirteen colonies
(or, states, after 1776). Hoping
not to offend republican sensibilities, the Vatican contacted Franklin through
two agents. Franklin said the man
for the job was Jacky, and the Vatican consequently appointed John Carroll as
the first archbishop in the United States.