Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
were fraught with danger to the rights of the American citizen.
The resurgent absolutism of Stuart times, with its doctrine of
the omnicompetent state, which the King was reviving through the
instrumentality of Parliament, was broken by the stubborn colonial
resistance. Absolutism under whatever form was doomed in America,
however slowly it might linger out its life. Jonathan Boucher might
seek to revive Sir Robert Filmer, and preach to Americans the dogma of
divine right through royal primogeniture from Adam, and other colonial
Tories might applaud; but they were fast becoming anachronisms.
The Revolution was to overthrow for Americans the principle of the
absolutist state, and substitute a modified sovereignty, circumscribed
by the utilitarian test of its relation to the common well-being of its
citizens. For the first time in modern history it was discovered that
“the true meaning of sovereignty,” as a recent student has put it, is
to be sought “not in the coercive power possessed by its instrument
[the state,] but in the fused good-will for which it stands.”[200]
III • Certain Social Consequences
The swift crystallization of colonial sentiment in favor of
republicanism, as the crisis developed, produced the American
revolution of which John Adams wrote. The long leveling process of
a hundred and forty years, with its psychology of decentralization,
fruited naturally in a new political philosophy fitted to new-world
conditions. Monarchy, with its social appanage of aristocracy, was
a caste institution wholly unsuited to an unregimented America. The
war brought this revolutionary fact home to the consciousness of
thousands of colonials; and the liberalism that before had been vaguely
instinctive quickly became eager and militant. The old order was
passing; the day of the Tory in America was over for the present; the
republican was henceforth to be master of the new world. Out of this
primary revolution were to come other revolutions, social and economic,
made possible by the new republican freedom.
The swift rise of a political philosophy traditionally regarded as
mean and traitorous was inexplicable to Tory gentlemen, and aroused a
fierce retaliatory opposition. A social war of the classes, bitter,
vindictive, followed upon hostilities against England. The arrogance of
the gentry during those brisk days when the new spirit was rising is
scarcely comprehensible to later Americans unused to such frankness.
The republicans were scorned by the superior classes as unprincipled
sedition-mongers, plotting treason against the King and society. If
commoners flocked to town-meetings and outvoted the gentlemen, the
latter were outraged at the presumption of the “mobsters” in flouting
their betters. For the plain people to take things into their own hands
was no other than anarchy. The familiar records of the day are filled
with such aristocratic jests as this:
Down at night a bricklayer or carpenter lies,
Next sun a Lycurgus, a Solon doth rise.[201]
“The dirty mob was all about me as I drove into town,” said Mistress
Peggy Hutchinson, as she looked out on turbulent Boston from her
father’s chariot; and her feminine contempt for the common people was
an echo of the universal Tory contempt for republican mechanics and
farmers. It was the duty of the vulgar, as loyal subjects, to pay taxes
and not lay them; to obey the law and not make it. By far the most
important consequence of the Revolution was the striking down of this
mounting aristocratic spirit that was making rapid headway with the
increase of wealth. It sifted the American people as the migrations
of the seventeenth century had sifted the English people, keeping
the republicans at home and sending forth the Tories, weakening the
influence of the conservatives and increasing the influence of the
liberals. Few experiences in our history have proved so momentous in
results as this shift of power and change in personnel that resulted
from the great schism. A middle-class America was to rise on the ruins
of the colonial aristocracy.
The unfortunate Loyalists were victims of their own blindness. They did
not rightly estimate the driving power of the liberal forces released
by the struggle, and failing to understand, they staked everything on
the issue, and lost, and were driven rudely out of the land by the
plebeian republicans whom they despised. The disruption of colonial
society resulting from the expulsion of the Loyalists was far graver
than we commonly assume. Shiploads of excellent gentlemen, and among
them the most cultivated minds in America, were driven from their
firesides and sent forth to seek new homes, whether in “Hell, Hull
or Halifax” mattered little to the victors. Upward of forty thousand
sought refuge in Canada; thousands more went to the Bahamas; and still
other thousands returned to the old home. “There will scarcely be a
village in England without some American dust in it, I believe, by
the time we are all at rest,” wrote the Loyalist Dutchman, Peter Van
Schaak. Much suffering was endured and much bitterness engendered, and
if for years the dominant temper in Canada was fiercely hostile to
the United States, the mood is traceable to the expatriated gentlemen
who transmitted to their children a grudge against the victorious
republicans. It was an unhappy business, but it was scarcely avoidable
once appeal was made to the sword. There was no longer place in America
for the foolish dream of a colonial aristocracy.
The change of temper that came over American society with the loss of
the Loyalists, was immense and far-reaching. For the first time the
middle class was free to create a civilization after its own ideals.
In rising to leadership it brought another spirit into every phase
of life. Dignity and culture henceforth were to count for less and
assertiveness for more. Ways became less leisurely, the social temper
less urbane. The charm of the older aristocracy disappeared along
with its indisputable evils. Although a few of the older wits like
Mather Byles lingered on bitterly, and others like Gouverneur Morris
accepted the situation philosophically, they belonged to the past. A
franker evaluation of success in terms of money began to obscure the
older personal and family distinction. New men brought new ways and a
vulgar clamor of politics went hand in hand with business expansion.
The demagogue and the speculator discovered a fruitful field for
their activities. The new capitalism lay on the horizon of republican
America, and the middle class was eager to hasten its development.
But a new economic order required a new political state, and as a
necessary preliminary, the spirit of nationalism began that slow
encroachment upon local frontiers which was to modify profoundly the
common psychology. Americanism superseded colonialism, and with the new
loyalty there developed a conception of federal sovereignty, overriding
all local authorities, checking the movement of particularism, binding
the separate commonwealths in a consolidating union. This marked
the turning point in American development; the checking of the long
movement of decentralization and the beginning of a counter movement of
centralization--the most revolutionary change in three hundred years of
American experience. The history of the rise of the coercive state in
America, with the ultimate arrest of all centrifugal tendencies, was
implicit in that momentous counter movement.
Footnotes
[193] An excellent short statement of the causes of the American
Revolution is given by A. M. Schlesinger in _New Viewpoints in American
History_, Chapter VII. Compare C. H. Van Tyne, _The Causes of the War
of Independence_.
[194] Letter to Mr. Niles, January 14, 1818.
[195] Van Tyne, _Causes of the War of Independence_, pp. 424-426.
[196] For an admirable study, see A. M. Schlesinger, _The Colonial
Merchants and the American Revolution: 1763-1776_.
[197] This important subject has been examined by C. W. Alvord, _The
Mississippi Valley in British Policies_: C. A. Beard, _An Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution_; C. H. Van Tyne, _The Causes of the
War of Independence_.
[198] For an excellent discussion of the constitutional questions
involved, see C. H. Van Tyne, _The Causes of the War of Independence_,
Chapters VIII and IX.
[199] For this see Van Tyne, _ibid._, pp. 234-238.
[200] H. J. Laski, _The Problem of Sovereignty_, p. 12; see also
Appendices A and B.
[201] Moore, _Diary of the Revolution_, Vol. II, p. 22.
Chapter II • The Mind of the American Tory
So nearly forgotten by later generations is the American Tory of
Revolutionary times that it will be well to examine the genus with some
care; for only by understanding the great authority inhering in his
traditional leadership can we measure his power to thwart the ambitions
of the republicans. In numbers the Tories were a very small minority;
unendowed with wealth and position they would have been negligible; but
as members of the local gentry they enjoyed great prestige which was
highly serviceable to the royal cause. Although native born they aped
the English aristocracy, and reproduced on a less magnificent scale
the manners of the English landed families. Less arrogant than their
old-world models, certainly much less corrupt in their politics, they
exuded the same aristocratic prejudices and the same narrow sympathies.
Their most cherished dream was the institution of an American nobility,
with the seal of royal favor set upon their social pretensions. They
were the embodiment of the aristocratic eighteenth century, in a world
instinctively hostile to all aristocracies. Out of a numerous company
of distinguished Tories, three will serve for consideration--Thomas
Hutchinson, Royal Governor, Daniel Leonard, lawyer, and Jonathan
Boucher, minister.
I • Thomas Hutchinson • Royal Governor
The career of the last royal governor of Massachusetts affords a
suggestive study in the relation of material prosperity to political
principles. Descended in the fourth generation from the Antinomian
enthusiast, Mistress Anne Hutchinson, whom all the authorities of
Boston could neither terrify nor silence, but who suffered contumely
and exile rather than submit her will to official censors, Thomas
Hutchinson reveals in his stiff conservatism the common change that
follows upon economic well-being. The House of Hutchinson had long
since abandoned all unprofitable radicalisms and had taken to the safer
business of acquiring property and respectability; in which work it
had by God’s blessing greatly prospered, until it came to be reckoned
the first house in the province. With growing wealth political honors
multiplied. The grandfather of the governor had been the first Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas, Commander of the Forces, Assistant,
and Councilor; and at his death in 1717 he was as eminent a citizen
as Chief Justice Sewall, the diarist. The governor’s father, Thomas
Hutchinson, Sr., devoted more attention to his calling of merchant than
to politics, nevertheless he sat in the Council for twenty-five years,
and was a colonel in the provincial militia. With the advent of Thomas
Hutchinson upon the scene, the respectability of the house was assured,
abundant wealth had been accumulated, and the path of political
preferment was open. The little colony was eager to confer honors on
so promising a son. He was ambitious and thrifty, and he coveted the
distinction and the material rewards which officeholding brought. No
Boston gentleman of his day had a sharper eye for the main chance. He
added office to office, and at one and the same time he was Member of
the Council, Judge of Probate, Chief Justice, and Lieutenant Governor;