Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution

IV. Inventing Patriotic Traditions

the revolution 105 the authority of the British ruling class, retained its power after its original target had lost its significance, and, like Banquo’s ghost, returned to haunt its authors. IV. Inventing Patriotic Traditions To one however who adores liberty, and the noble virtues of which it is the parent, there is some consolation seeing, while we lament the fall of British liberty, the rise of that of America. Yes, my friend, like a young phoenix she will rise full plumed and glorious from her mother’s ashes. —Arthur Lee to Samuel Adams, 1772 On august 22,1768, the Boston Evening Post carried an announcement of an ‘‘extraordinary festivity’’ in town to commemorate the original demonstration by the Sons of Liberty on August 14, 1765, when the e≈gies of Stamp Act supporters had been hanged. At dawn, ‘‘the British flag was displayed on the Tree of liberty, and a discharge of fourteen cannon, ranged under the venerable elm, saluted the joyous day.’’ At 11 o’clock, ‘‘a very large company of the principal gentlemen and respectable inhabitants of the town, met at the hall under the tree, while the streets were crowded with a concourse of people of all ranks.’’ This was followed by music, ‘‘performed on various instruments,’’ and the singing of the ‘‘universally admired American Song of Liberty,’’ providing ‘‘sublime entertainment to a numerous audience , fraught with a noble ardour in the cause of freedom.’’ Then followed more firings of cannon, fourteen toasts, more music and cannon, an elegant dinner for the gentry at the Greyhound Tavern at Roxbury, and, finally, a ‘‘slow & orderly procession thro’ the principal streets, and round the state-house.’’≥≥ Rapid political change in the early modern Western world was usually accompanied by a struggle to control the collective memory, as such change was much more easily accepted when dressed up in a costume tailored from the cloth of familiar history. Because this memory is an important glue that bonds and stabilizes society, it has also usually been (and remains) an area of 106 culture and liberty in the age of the american revolution intense political competition. Until collective remembrance is successfully restructured—a job that by and large fell to the speaking class—no major upheaval could be considered complete. American Revolutionary leaders understood early and well that the core values and grand principles of their struggle needed to be expressed and kept alive by encouraging and cultivating new traditions. Soon after the implementation of the Stamp Act, a set of existing customs were converted into patriotic ceremonies, with the explicit aim of uniting the people. Such practices—as acts of collective communication —proved especially valuable as strategies of political inclusion. They are of particular interest to us because they provided incentives for the expansion of the sphere of liberty. When we speak of traditions, we are usually referring to recurring values, customs, and expectations, expressed both in ideologies and in social rituals. Traditions tell us about the normative order that dominates a given society and that allows its various groups and circles to thrive. They also tell us much about a society’s ethos, that is, the disposition or orientation of the whole culture, its ‘‘style’’ expressed in systems of values and ideals.≥∂ Examining traditions allows us to peek into the hierarchy of these values. A specific ritual, for instance, can be indicative of the values which at the time were considered essential enough to be honored by public celebrations. Since a number of popular rituals during the Revolution and the early national period symbolized liberty, the question to ask is what they meant to their organizers and to their participants. The newly invented traditions of the Revolutionary era, such as popular celebrations of Washington’s birthday and of the Fourth of July, revolved around a number of stock concepts: republican virtue, sovereign people, public spirit, natural rights, and equality before the law. Within a short span of years, the now abandoned components of the traditional British ethos, such as the loyalty of subjects to the Crown and deference to nobility, had been replaced by veneration for an idealized American liberty. By the 1790s, with the emergence of parties and the rivalries between them, celebrations and street rituals had taken on a more partisan character, but the propaganda of all factions continued to make use of abstract, sweeping visions of liberty, aimed at engaging a wide circle of supporters. Such festivities not only nourished the emerging national selfhood...