The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, published in 1967 by renowned historian and Harvard University professor Bernard Bailyn, is considered the most important book ever written about the American Revolution. In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Bailyn transforms the historical interpretation of the Revolution by identifying the ideology that generated “a logic of rebellion” for the colonists. Bailyn won the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in 1968 for The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and the 1975 National Book Award for History with his study of the Loyalist governor of Massachusetts, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (1974). He won another Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America (1986). Bailyn’s eminence in the field of early American history was acknowledged by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963, his appointment as Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1998, and his reception of a National Humanities Medal in 2010.

Summary

Scholars had long recognized the influence of English common law, the centuries-old legal rules and customs that protected the rights of British subjects, as well as the influence of Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke, whom the colonists frequently cited on natural rights and the social contract, on patriot writers. However, when Bailyn examined over 400 pamphlets related to the Anglo-American struggle produced in the colonies through 1776, as well as newspapers and letters, he discovered that another intellectual tradition had provided the essential animating power to the American Revolutionary generation. Bailyn began to realize that terms used by the patriot authors, including “conspiracy” and “corruption,” that had been previously dismissed as mere Revolutionary propaganda held genuine meaning in this particular system of thought, which had been publicized by 18th-century Commonwealthmen and Radical Whigs in England, who were admirers of the Commonwealth period (1649-1660) when England had been a republic. The “Country” Party (opposition writers who distrusted the rise of ministerial power and influence in England) and colonial Americans applauded the Whig denouncement of conspiring royal officials. Cato’s Letters, written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, embodied this Radical Whig tradition warning against corruption in British political life and advocating popular vigilance to preserve liberty from tyranny. Cato’s Letters was widely reprinted and quoted in the American colonies. Bailyn argues that the colonists developed a coherent political ideology from these writings that operated as a kind of “intellectual switchboard wired so that certain combinations of events would activate a distinct set of signals” (22). This ideology prompted the colonists to view the missteps of British policy after 1763 not as well-intentioned mistakes but as evidence of a deliberate plan to subvert the colonists’ liberty, therefore creating the “logic of rebellion.” Bailyn also asserts that the historical understanding generated by this worldview (in addition to influences from Puritan covenant theology and Enlightenment thought) gave colonists a sense of America’s special purpose as a defender of freedom for humankind.

In addition to providing this new interpretation for why the American Revolution occurred, Bailyn also traces the transformative effects of the Anglo-American debate on formal constitutional issues. During the decade of controversy following the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, the colonists reshaped traditional British political concepts, such as representation and consent, rights, the definition of a constitution, and the nature of sovereignty, which both innovated and systematized realities that had haphazardly emerged over time in the colonies. Therefore, the traditional concept of an indivisible, unlimited sovereignty was redefined as divisible in a federalist system of “government sovereignty among different levels of institutions” (228) in accordance with the conditions that existed in British North America.

Finally, Bailyn examines the liberating power of Revolutionary thought in unintended areas of life. Although Bailyn points out that the main goal of the Revolutionary War was “not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution” (19), the spirit of Revolutionary idealism was contagious, releasing forces that would have consequences in the future relating to the institution of slavery, state-supported religious establishment, the legitimacy of a democracy, and the requirement of deference to social superiors.