In his later years, John Adams remarked:
What do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.
What are those “principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections”? They are stated most famously—and most eloquently—in the Declaration of Independence. But as Adams correctly observed, the Declaration was more of a culmination than the beginning. The true revolutionary change in ideas preceded it—and carried through to the drafting of the Constitution and beyond.
As the Enlightenment began to sweep Europe, new ideas about government and society found their firmest foothold on the outer fringes of the Western world, the English colonies of North America. Here, these philosophical justifications seemed tailor-made for the reality of the Thirteen Colonies. Largely self-governing—and often minimally governed at all—the colonies lacked any aristocracy or titled nobility. The establishment of a state church was minimal to nonexistent. They were founded in the combination of religious minorities seeking to escape oppression and the quest for commercial profit. They had few taxes, no standing army, and fee-simple land ownership that granted landowners unabridged control over their property and the ability to transfer it freely, an underappreciated development that revolutionized property rights by junking the oppressive, multi-tiered hierarchies of medieval feudalism.
The American Revolution was a complex event spanning millions of individuals over several decades, each acting from a wide diversity of motives. But the ideas of the day are astonishingly well-documented and preserved. No people in history till then made such prodigious use of the printing press, turning it into the first true popular mass media. It should perhaps be no surprise that this was the nation that would go on to pioneer the telegraph, radio, television, the internet, and social media. An endless cornucopia of newspapers, pamphlets, debates, almanacs, published speeches, diaries, letters, and public declarations accompanied the Revolution, largely free from any effective attempts at censorship. This discourse is what Thomas Jefferson was referring to when he downplayed the Declaration as merely an “expression of the American mind.”
“[T]he colonists’ ideas and words counted too, and not merely because they repeated as ideology the familiar utopian phrases of the Enlightenment and of English libertarianism,” explained historian Bernard Bailyn in his influential work The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.
What they were saying by 1776 was familiar in a general way to reformers and illuminati everywhere in the Western world; yet it was different. Words and concepts had been reshaped in the colonists’ minds in the course of a decade of pounding controversy—strangely reshaped, turned in unfamiliar directions, toward conclusions they could not themselves clearly perceive.
Understanding the principles underlying the Revolution and the complicated, seemingly contradictory, manner in which they interacted with each other is critical to understanding America and the modern world. They set in motion consequences that are still unfolding.
To wit, the Revolution was:
Liberal, in that its political theory placed a central primacy on individual liberty and freedom from oppression and coercion.
Republican, in that it rejected monarchy as superstitious tyranny in favor of a government of divided powers where a self-governing people, not a crown, were sovereign.
Democratic, in that one of its central rallying cries was to defend and expand the autonomy of popularly elected legislatures.
Traditionalist, in that it appealed to the history and laws of England for vindication of rights, specifically the English common law tradition that stretched from the Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution, and farther back to the fall of the Roman Republic and the lessons of the ancient Greek city-states.
Progressive, in that it celebrated the radical new idea that humanity was not consigned to a fate of perpetual poverty and drudgery. Rather, it intutively recognized the possibilty, nascent at the time, of improving the human condition and quality of life through both material and moral progress.
National, in that it forged a new common American identity, dedicated to a creed of individual rights and providing a means for the common defense of those rights.
Globalist, in that it viewed the outside world not as a threat but a source of riches. It embraced free trade and disapproved of both crony corporatist mercantilism (that “cut[ting] off our trade with all parts of the world” and denied Americans essential prosperity) and anti-immigration sentiment (criticizing Britain’s king who had “endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither…”).
Enlightened, in that it eagerly adopted Enlightenment rationalism and the belief that nature could be understood through logical reasoning and the scientific method and harnessed to improve human life through new technologies.
Egalitarian, in that it started from the proposition that “all men are created equal” as its logical first principle, and from that derived both principles of individual liberty and new social customs that swept away the old hierarchies of hereditary status.
Individualistic, in that it held that rights inhere in individual human beings as a matter of human nature and that a just society respects those rights.
Religious, in that it embraced biblical and theological justifications for this new order, emphasizing divine disapproval of tyranny and regarding freedom as a glorious gift from the creator.
Secular, in that many of its leaders were skeptical of organized religion and Christian orthodoxy. But even the religious ones envisioned a society of absolute religious freedom and secular government founded on principles not derived from or limited to any particular faith but instead grounded in universal laws of human nature.
Pluralistic, in that the authors of a new American nation reveled in its diversity and saw in that diversity not the fear of chaos but instead the hope for a world of toleration. They took to heart Voltaire’s observation, “If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace,” applying that pluralistic principle more generally than just religion.
Federalist, in that the Founders saw the solution to the “problem of the extended republic” as dividing power not just between branches of government but between local states and a federal government of limited powers.
Capitalistic, in that it built on a modern sensibility that viewed commerce and entrepreneurship as reputable and productive pursuits to be welcomed, not regarded with suspicion.
Civil libertarian, in that it passionately defended freedom from invasions of privacy and sought to protect due process rights through an independent judiciary not subservient to the executive and guaranteeing the accused a trial by a jury of their peers.
Constitutionalist, in that it advocated the grounding of government in a legal charter and sought to put in place a government that was less susceptible to the whims of the normal legislative process.
As Americans, this heritage is our cultural, political, and civic DNA.
The Revolution was drenched in its own hypocrisies, its blood-soaked failures to live up to its high-minded principles. The revolutionary generation tolerated—and committed—depravities. Most glaring was its morally catastrophic failure to abolish slavery while proclaiming freedom and equality, followed by the brutal treatment of Native Americans. These are far from the only examples, including the subjugation of women. Still, in even articulating the noble new ideals, the Founders set off the most consequential feedback loop in human history.
The Revolution became our standard of civic self-reflection, how we judge ourselves against our national mission statement. The Fourth of July should not just be an occasion for celebration but also for reflection on, and even condemnation of, our moral lapses. It has become our language for what it means to resist injustice.
We should celebrate not just the Founders, but also Frederick Douglass, in bitter irony, asking, “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” And the invocation of the Declaration’s words and logic at Seneca Falls to correct the omission of “…and women” from equal rights.
We should also cheer activists like Frank Kameny picketing Independence Hall on July 4 for their Annual Reminder that gay Americans, too, can lay claim to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We should embrace the Statue of Liberty shining its welcoming beacon to all those “yearning to breathe free” in a world of oppression. We should regard with reverence Abraham Lincoln’s call to action for the “unfinished work” at Gettysburg. And we should take to heart Martin Luther King’s challenge to America to make good on its “promissory note” and “live out the true meaning of its creed.”
The ideas of the American Revolution transformed the world, ushering in an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, moral progress, and human flourishing. And just as importantly, the task is still not finished. It may never be. That is part of its purpose, our perpetual call to live up to those self-evident truths.
The Revolution’s principles speak to us as we confront the injustices of today, from the evisceration of civil liberties and the horrors of mass incarceration, to the proliferation of rent-seeking laws and impoverishing economic interventions, to the dysfunction of our systems of elected representation, to wars and injustices around the world.
They exhort us to reject the rule of arbitrary power, to resist the appeal of strongman politics that makes a mockery of constitutional checks and balances, the recently revived idea that our head of state stands above the law rather than being subject to it, and the notion that power can be seized in defiance of the will of the people at a free and fair election.
Our ongoing American Revolution is worth celebrating, and worth defending, as self-evident today as it was in 1776.
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