Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution

I. Revolutionary Vocabulary against Revolutionary Government

6 Usurpers and Dupes The Backlash I. Revolutionary Vocabulary against Revolutionary Government Bodies of men, under any denomination whatsoever, who convene themselves for the purpose of deliberating upon and adopting measures which are cognizable by legislatures only will, if continued, bring legislatures to contempt and dissolution. —Samuel Adams, 1784 The two decades following Independence were a laboratory where the Revolutionary conceptual package was tested. The environment had changed; justifying the war and the Patriot cause gave way to the practice of governing. At the same time, various groups began to voice their grievances in terms of the new language of rights popularized by the Revolution. This caused a good deal of friction with the new leaders, who were beginning to have second thoughts about the growing involvement of ordinary people. The tensions soon turned into a struggle over the meaning of new, republican liberty. The upper ranks increasingly worried that ‘‘the everlasting flattery of the people as sovereigns’’ would result in commoners redefining and ‘‘democratizing ’’ liberty. They warned that ‘‘no counterfeit sense of the people expressed in mob meetings, and dictated by the loudest bawls of the man who happens to rise upon a hogshead, ought to control or prevent the measures of the nation and its government.’’ This tension inspired first a disillusionment and then a backlash among the political class. Their response was aimed at regaining control over the meaning of liberty, holding back the spread of an 164 culture and liberty in the age of the american revolution egalitarian mentality, and, in cases of insurgency, countering the ‘‘spirit of rebellion’’ contained in the voices of the ‘‘usurpers,’’ who not only had ‘‘the insolence to wear badges of their character,’’ but whose ‘‘boldness [wa]s countenanced in many places by popular elections of them to local o≈ces.’’ This backlash was far from being a case of moral declension or, as we are sometimes told, a betrayal of previously proclaimed values. Instead, it con- firmed that there was nothing to betray; the rulers were only defending the logic of freedom tied to a social order they had always accepted as proper. The truly novel story of this period was that of the masses of common people seeking respect and independence by eagerly invoking the principles which the Revolutionary leaders designed for another vision of society—one inspired by classical republics ruled by virtuous elites. George Minot correctly identified this eagerness as ‘‘that thirst for freedom which the people have discovered in the late revolution,’’ even as he expressed fear that it might develop into ‘‘an unqualified opposition to authority.’’∞ The earliest and most prominent dispute about the meaning of the Revolutionary narrative was occasioned by the 1786 Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts. Most literature on this episode has focused either on the economic con- flict involved or on the influence of the event on the shape of the Constitution . At one level, it was certainly a confrontation over economic policy. The state legislature, overwhelmed by public debt, refused to reduce taxes, forcing many farmers into insolvency. Unable to pay debts with hard money, backcountry towns sent moderately phrased petitions to the legislature, which refused to act upon them. Only in response to this inaction did a convention of selectmen from several towns adopt a more dramatic agenda of political demands, including abolishing the upper house and establishing annual elections . They also assembled militiamen, led by former commanders of Revolutionary units like Joel Billings, Joseph Hines, and John Thompson, to block a number of county courts where debt cases were tried.≤ In all of this, the protesters did not have the destruction of the newly established political system as their aim; their interest was in easing the debt burden by putting pressure on the courts. It is striking that both the rebels and the governing bodies widely invoked the Revolutionary vocabulary of rights and liberties to justify their positions. This o√ered an early demonstration of the extraordinary versatility of this vocabulary as a political tool, a usefulness that would continue over the next two centuries. Both sides carefully framed the events usurpers and dupes 165 as a threat to American liberty. The farmers saw the relief of their debt burden as the duty of a government elected to represent the people’s will, and to pursue broader public good. Creditors and the well-to-do across America viewed it as an issue...