The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Republicanism infused itself in English-speaking societies all around the world. The American colonists emulated their English counterparts, but there was a disconnect to the monarchy. Governments in the colonies were still largely local and lacked a centralized institution. This is a stark contrast to the harmony between the monarchy and republican ideals that was well-established in England. Wood observes, therefore, that when the monarchy attempted to assert itself after 1763 many colonists saw it as an intrusion.

Wood argues that religion in England was essentially a branch of the government, since the Church of England was firmly in control of the monarchy. However, in the colonies, there were many churches, no central bishop, and patronage was never strong in the churches. Aristocracy was weak in the colonies as well. As Wood outlines, the wealth of the most successful colonists was small compared to their English counterparts, and American gentlemen struggled to maintain freedom from the marketplace. Colonists struggled to keep the tradition of tenantry that was an important aspect of personal independence. Tenants were hard to find as most colonists owned their own land, and landowners were less willing to maintain their land. Wood states that the closest comparison to the independent aristocrat in England were landowners in the south. These gentlemen enjoyed the leisure that was part of the independent ideal due to the labor of those they enslaved. These men were able to serve the local government, but even they needed to run side businesses for extra cash or act as overseer on their property and so were not always able to achieve the ideal of independence that traditionally characterized the aristocracy.

Wood also describes political shifts whereby American aristocrats began to question the laws of primogeniture and entail because they worried their heirs would mishandle their inheritances. British creditors began calling in loans, leaving landowners scrambling to come up with the funds while protecting their reputation. Many colonists began to turn from farming to other forms of occupation to support their families. Many colonists attempted to keep up appearances by building country homes, but many of those homes were smaller and cheaper than those built by aristocrats in England. Several merchants in New England were wealthy enough to compare to lesser English aristocrats, but even they did not have the freedom their counterparts had because their businesses required constant attention. Merchants also struggled because they relied on farmers who didn’t have surplus to sell to them and had to sell in markets that weren’t always buying.

While there were some colonists who filled the requirements of an independent and disinterested leader, Wood notes that they were so few that they often struggled with the requirements placed on them. Therefore, most leadership was fulfilled either by men who were not considered gentlemen or by wealthy gentlemen who too often excused themselves from political duty due to conflicts with their business. Many local governments saw a great deal of fraction, but others, like Virginia and Rhode Island, enjoyed a stable leadership. The stability of these colonies had little to do with royal authority, however, and more to do with the strength of the leading families.

Although England had more aristocrats compared to the colonies, the colonists were more likely to own their own land than people in England, where 60% of the population were not landowners. The economy in the colonies was still mostly based on agriculture with few commercial opportunities available. This restricted the ability of a colonial aristocrat to reach higher successes. At the same time, the close connections of colonial society were weakening.

In this chapter, Wood notes that the structure of American society was changing in ways that even the people experiencing it didn’t understand. This was brought on not only by changing views of the monarchy and differences between the colonists and their European cousins, but by other factors impacting their society. A growing birth rate, low death rates, and high numbers of immigrants caused the population of the colonies to grow exponentially. Wood argues that this created movement that saw established villages losing residents only to have them quickly replaced by incoming populations. North Carolina increased its population so quickly between 1750 and 1775 that it went from an insignificant colony to the fourth largest. When the British conquered the French in 1759, it opened up a half billion acres between the Appalachians and the Mississippi.

Farmers in the well-established New England area began to move as well, searching for land that had become scarce in their home territories. Wood notes that these people moved as far north as Nova Scotia or as south as the lower Mississippi. The more colonists there were, the more land they required. Land was generally cheap and available, but desirable areas began to see an influx of buyers, so prices went up. In the Shenandoah Valley alone, land was bought and resold for up to 10 times its original price between the years of 1745 and 1754. The result, argues Wood, was that land went from being seen as patrimonies to commodities.

Wood states that this put a strain on the family and social ties that had been a bedrock of colonial society from the beginning. The growth and movement within the colonies began a shift in politics as well as adding to the number of constituents a single politician was responsible for. Where once the leaders of a community knew everyone in their district and were responsible for a few hundred heads of households, they were now responsible for on average over 1,000 heads of households.

As communities grew larger, connections became strained. Children no longer stayed home to await their inheritance but went out to find their own land. Moving allowed people to avoid their debts and dependencies. The number of poor in large cities increased, with Philadelphia experiencing an increase of eight times its poor in 1772 as compared to 20 years previously. New England villages began building workhouses for their poor, where the number of transients and wandering poor had tripled. This situation put strain on the old warning-out laws that had been part of the previous paternalist society, a system that was supposed to absolve communities of the care of the poor from other regions. After several adjustments, this law was finally abandoned and movement within a single state was made legal.

Wood notes that the formation of new communities created issues with government as well. Wood cites the example of a new county formed in Virginia called Lunenburg. It was difficult to get all the citizens to listen to one, centralized leader; as a result, the 12-seat council saw a turnover of 39 different justices in the first few decades of its existence. Continued immigration into the area prevented Lunenburg from building the same sort of social hierarchy as other, more established communities in Virginia. The area remained a place where leaders were not gentlemen in behavior or financial independence, and the community continued to test authority. This sort of wild, uncivilized community was seen throughout the colonies, such as areas of Orange County, North Carolina, where whole communities failed to build schools, churches, or stores or to lure doctors, lawyers, or preachers. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister, toured these areas of North Carolina and reported the people to be “savages,” often packing more than 10-15 children in a single cabin and practicing unsanitary cooking habits.

The economy, notes Wood, also began to shift during this time, with imports and exports rising in the 1740s and 1750s. A switch took place from the production of tobacco to corn and wheat, and the colonies became a primary source of grain for Europe. With this boom in import/exports, whole communities emerged to move the products, and new businesses opened in cities to provide services to those engaged in the import/export business. Farmers began producing surpluses for the first time, and common people were capable of buying goods that had once been restricted to the upper classes. This created a mentality whereby inferiors attempted to surpass their superiors. This encouraged people to work harder and changed the view that work was only to satisfy basic needs.

The colonies saw a great influx of imports from England, an increase of 4 million pounds by 1772. This allowed for smaller operations to get involved, causing established merchants to fight to keep the smaller groups out of their business. However, the willingness of the English exporters to work with anyone made this difficult. This weakened the traditional patronage of the port cities. Inland trade began to grow as well with more men going into trades or crafts as well as farming. Homespun cloth became a large local industry, producing thousands of yards of cloth a year, mostly in the middle and New England colonies. Visitors to the colonies often remarked on how it seemed everyone was focused on earning capacity and everyone had something to sell.

With this shift in the economy, borrowing money to purchase new lands or finance projects became more common. The colonists moved away from the book debts of the paternalist society and contracts between strangers. No longer was there personal trust between families or friends, and a feeling of distrust increased the number of cases the courts handled regarding debts. While bartering continued to be a mode by which people traded, paper money became the preferred method. Paper money allowed more impersonal interaction and independence. This method worked well in Rhode Island, where social hierarchy was weak, but it was less effective in Massachusetts, where patrons and overseas merchants were still dominant and distrusting of paper money. Parliament restricted the use of paper money in 1751 and 1764, but this did little to slow the issuing of paper money in the colonies.

In the 1730s, Scottish merchant houses opened in the Chesapeake area. They bought tobacco groups directly from the farmers and sold them imported goods while extending credit, reducing the small farmers’ dependence on the aristocratic planters. Wood observes that this allowed for more access to the markets and independence among the small planters. These small planters began to voice their opinions in regard to politics by calling out corruption. This change was so sudden that many gentlemen felt that the colony was failing. This change in the hierarchy also impacted religion as new churches began to move into the area and convert members from the Anglican church. The Anglican clergy blamed the gentry, the gentry blamed the clergy, consequently weakening the authority of both.

Wood argues that the increased population, movement throughout the colonies, economic shifts, and changes to social relationship all led to what was called the Great Awakening. As Wood reasons, because religion was still the primary way that the common people explained the world, they began to question their religious ideals in the wake of these shifts. Revivalist clergy encouraged people to live their lives through self-examination and independence, moving them away from the obedience on which the monarchy relied.

Social hierarchy in the mid-18th century came into question, no longer seen as the natural way of things. Instead, it was viewed as more of a man-made convention. Colonists began questioning authority, refusing to play their role in the hierarchy of society. The English monarchy had always been successful because of its ability to gain the affection and respect of their subordinates. Wood notes, however, that this was no longer working in the colonies because the social bonds had begun to come apart.

This change in social bonds began with the move away from the superior-subordinate relationship within families. The head of household no longer had the control over his dependents that he’d had before. Wives were initiating divorces, and children were leaving home and choosing their own marriage partners. Families shifted away from a structure with a head of household and dependents and towards a nuclear family structure with father, mother, and child. Servants were no longer as intimate with family members. Parents began to focus less on discipline and more on affection with their children.

Wood notes that, during this time, questions of how to parent a child became a popular topic. It became the subject of popular literature, spawning books and articles on the subject. Some look as far back as John Locke’s Thoughts on Education (1693) as a source for this change in parental philosophy. Locke believed children were all blank slates and learned from their senses, suggesting that a child’s character was formed primarily through their interaction with their parents. This changed the way people looked at parenthood, but it was a slow change, and many continued to cling to the hierarchy of class even as they embraced the idea of raising children with affection. As an example, Wood refers to the Robert Munford play, The Patriots, in which a young woman is raised by kind farmers but learns that she is the child of a gentleman, allowing for her to marry a gentleman of rank.

Locke also taught in his book that parents should avoid corporal punishment with their children. Instead, they should earn the respect of their children, and from this, Locke argued, respectful children would follow. However, John Witherspoon wrote that failing to discipline children could lead the parents to be obedient to their children. Witherspoon suggested discipline that was somewhere in the middle.

With all this contradictory advice, notes Wood, parents became confused and anxious. This can be seen in the diary of Colonel Landon Carter. Carter, a member of one of Virginia’s distinguished families, a county magistrate, and a member of the House of Burgesses, struggled to remain in control of his home, with children who were disrespectful even as adults and a grandchild whose behavior was shocking. Carter’s experience was not unusual in the colonies, and colonial children gained a reputation for being unruly.

Government was still seen in paternalistic terms, but since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the beginning of the Hanoverian monarchy in 1714, the ideas of patriarchism began to fade. Locke’s writings during the Enlightenment underscored this change: He argued that parental and political authority are two different things. However, with the confusion arising from Locke’s views on parenthood, parents and sovereigns alike became less sure of themselves in a world that now blamed the parents for the mistakes of the children. Wood argues that this spread into religion as well, with many judging God by the same measure as ordinary parents and turning from their beliefs in the absolution of the Old Testament to the New Testament and Christ.

The changing view on paternalism caused great insult to those who still believed in the monarchy. Thomas Hutchison, the royal governor of Massachusetts Bay, was greatly offended that he had been burned in effigy during the Tea Party despite being a properly educated and distinguished man. He argued that he was knowledgeable of Locke’s work and had practiced kindness toward his constituents, unaware that it is these very kindnesses that likely led to the lack of regard for him as a royal governor.

Along with the changing views on paternalism, the nature of contracts began to change. Rather than relying on the reputation of the people entering into contracts, written contracts became the norm. This spread into all aspects of life, including marriage contracts and the military. When large groups of young men joined to fight the Seven Years’ War in the 1750s, they disobeyed the British leaders, claiming their contracts didn’t include the fact that they would be serving in joint service with the royal troops. Soldiers mutinied or deserted en masse. Wood concludes that contracts were a way of life in the colonies; they colored everything, including the relationship between the colonists and the crown. Government was no longer seen as a natural extension of the family, but more of a man-made arrangement.

However, many still clung to the idea of the parent-child relationship. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine expressed the idea that the king was a brute who pretended to be “Father of His People” (168). A year later, however, he returned to the parent-child metaphor: Explaining the Revolution, he argued that the revolutionaries were akin to children who had come of age.

In this chapter, Wood argues that republicanism’s encroachment into American life changed society as well as government. With republican ideals came freedom and equality. However, with these new freedoms came fear that they could be taken away. This new society was complicated and confusing, and class distinctions were disappearing. The rich were getting richer, and the number of poor was increasing. There was a sense of transience to success throughout the colonies, but especially in the south, which caused colonists to be particularly sensitive about their liberty and independence. The fact that members of their society were still being held in enslavement only added to their apprehensions.

More people began to take an interest in politics, and there was an increase in the number of people willing to run for public office. This was a concern to crown officials, who attempted to restrict the actions of local assemblies and even considered restructuring colonial governments. At the same time, George III became king in 1760 and was disrespecting of Parliament and the constitution, also attempting to corrupt the colonies. Colonists, consequently, began to turn on local crown officials. This was not just a political but also a social rebellion. Lines were drawn between patriots and loyalists. About 20% of the colonies were loyalists, and many of them fled the country, mostly patrons whose absence was felt as a shockwave that continued to tear away at the basic paternalistic nature of colony society.

To further institute independence, Virginia created a law according to which only landed men could vote; this prevented the undue influence of great landholders in elections. Jefferson even went so far as to suggest giving 50 acres to men who didn’t have that much land. Those without land were seen as dependent and easily corrupted. Republicans wanted to open political offices to all men, though what they had in mind was for the male children of farmers and tradesmen to better themselves by attending college and becoming landowners before running for office. Revolutionaries felt a great deal of anger and resentment toward hereditary aristocracy, as illustrated in the writings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. In his autobiography, Adams describes how he personally worked to take down dominating paternalistic families, and, similarly, Franklin declared himself a man who never inherited a single thing from his ancestors.

As part of the move away from dependence, inheritance laws changed, allowing greater equality among sons and daughters and offering more rights to widows. Women’s rights began to change, with many colonies giving women the right to own property and to divorce. Views on enslavement, Wood notes, began to change as well, and the practice of indentured servants began to be phased out. Apprentices were no longer dependents but became trainees outside of the family. A spotlight was placed on the enslavement of African people at this time, and it was attacked from several angles, foreshadowing some of the issues that would later lead to the American Civil War.

The government moved away from the idea that patrons should pay for social infrastructure and began taking on that burden themselves. Citizens began to demand that they have a say in what the government did. However, striking a balance between limiting government and protecting people’s property became a challenge.

The revolutionaries saw the design of their new country as the fulfillment of the Enlightenment: They were coming out of the dark into a new, bright future. There were changes in religion, a move away from the supernatural, and a tempering of enthusiasm. There was an embrace of scientific discovery that made life less painful. Enlightenment was seen in material prosperity, but also in a sense of moral awakening. Americans saw themselves as kinder and more humane than their British counterparts, as reflected in changes to criminal punishment that switched from physical punishments to reform. Wood connects this to changes in social mannerisms, which became more polite and elegant.

The definition of a gentleman changed as well. The emphasis moved away from family connections and the size of one’s estate and toward a focus on good morals, high character, and a solid education. Many of these men were not born to aristocracy but worked their way into it. Many of the founding fathers were first generation gentlemen of this kind. Washington focused on the idea of civility and wrote a list of rules of etiquette when he was 16 that he followed all his life. For example, Washington was anxious not to offend and often altered his writing to fit the person he was writing to. He was conscious of his appearance and was embarrassed by the fact that he’d never obtained a liberal arts education.

Many gentlemen attempted to move beyond their origins, often taking pains to separate themselves from their fathers, and Wood cites several examples. Franklin was also uneducated, but he spent his life moving above his circumstances to become his definition of a gentleman. James Otis Jr.’s father was an uneducated businessman who was an important politician in Massachusetts but failed to rise in Massachusetts society. Otis elevated himself beyond his father’s social position by focusing his education on Greek and Roman culture and making sacrifices for the people. Adams was similar in that he was well-educated but remained outspoken in his opinions on paternalism. Jonathon Mayhew became pastor of West Church in Boston, where he preached on his liberal congregationalism and denounced the Anglican church. Jefferson was the first in his family to go to college and received an eclectic education. He was well-read and developed a fascination with European fashion. Nathanael Greene was born into a Quaker family and had to overcome the superstitions of his family’s religion. He was uneducated and focused his education on virtue. Samuel Adams was well-educated and despised anything to do with genealogy and patronage. He shunned fame and lacked concern for his own appearance.

Wood cites the example of George Washington to demonstrate the influence of these republican values. Wood argues that these values clearly inspired Washington’s decision to retire from service at the end of the Revolutionary War. His move stunned many, including George III, as they all assumed Washington would become king of the new country. Washington was well aware that he was an extraordinary man, and he embraced it, spending much of his life protecting his reputation. In the 1780s, Washington faced several incidences in which he had to measure his reputation against his desires. In 1783, he was offered the presidency of the Order of the Cincinnati, but eventually turned it down due to its hereditary character and the impact that would have on his reputation. In 1784, Washington was offered shares of the James River and Potomac canal companies, but upon advice from Jefferson, gave them to the college that would become Washington and Lee. In 1787, Washington hesitated to attend the Philadelphia Convention, but he decided to go out of fear that his absence would be seen as a lack of support for the new government. Washington was made president of the convention, and he enthusiastically supported the new constitution. Finally, when Washington was offered the first Presidency, he weighed its impact on his reputation before accepting. This strong attention to virtue shows how enlightened values impacted the actions of the revolutionary leaders.

In a similar vein, Wood notes that several merchants of the time shed their wealth in order to be virtuous republican leaders, such as Hancock, who purposely destroyed his merchant business. Robert Morris, a successful merchant through the Revolutionary War, shifted his interests into land in order to create an aristocracy for himself. He wanted to be a proper republican leader and secured a Senate seat in 1789. However, Morris was so successful at ridding himself of his self-interest that he fell into debt and ended up in debtors’ prison.

Wood argues that the revolutionaries of the 18th century weren’t interested in just swapping one ruling class for another. Instead, they wanted to break the hidden ties that held society together, like family connections and personal influence, and replace them with new bonds based on republican values. Committees and congresses got to work reshaping society, while suspicious mobs interrogated anyone suspected of being too cozy with the old regime. Oath-taking became a way to show loyalty to the new order. Without a strong sense of nationalism, people started focusing on their relationships with each other rather than with the government. The old-fashioned, tough virtues of the past gave way to a softer, more polite way of behaving. Instead of being governed by a powerful ruler, society began to promote happiness by bringing people together through kindness and cooperation.

Looking ahead with hope, rather than dwelling on the past, helped bridge the gap between old and new ideas. Writers and thinkers explored the natural ways people connected with each other. Benevolence, or kindness, became the cornerstone of moral science, spreading from families to communities and beyond. America, with its lack of feudal distinctions, seemed ready for this new spirit of togetherness.

Freemasonry, observes Wood, played a big role in this social change. Despite disruptions during the Revolution, membership boomed, reaching even isolated areas and reshaping society. Freemasonry provided a sense of worth and belonging for those wary of traditional religion. Compassion and gratitude became key values, replacing old notions of hierarchy and deference. Yet, challenges remained as Americans grappled with the inequalities inherent in their new society.