Roots of Revolution:
John Winthrop
“We shall be as a city upon a hill. The
eyes of all people are upon us.”
(Political Science 565)
Big Questions
• What is the appropriate balance between state
and federal power?
• Is the United States a single nation or a
confederation of states?
• Who is, and who can be, an American?
• What is an American?
• How can the legacies of slavery be addressed?
• What does it mean to be free? What does it
mean to be equal?
• What counts as power?
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The English Civil War
• 1642-1651
• Charles I & Parliament
– Charles I tried for treason, executed 1649
• Anglicans, Catholics, Puritans
– Puritans desire a life that is more, not less,
regulated
• Republic, Constitutional Monarchy, Absolutist
Monarchy
• Oliver Cromwell & the New Model Army
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John Winthrop
• 1588-1649
• Leader of 1630 wave of
Puritan immigrants
– Left for New England after
Charles I married a Catholic
& cracked down on nonconforming religious groups
• Governor of Massachusetts
Bay Colony for 12 years
• Favored clerical
government, placed
religious law above civil law
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Puritans in America
• The previous migrants, the Pilgrims, had been driven
out of England, but The Great Migration of 1630 was
different:
– Not driven out of England, they left by their own decision
• A contract between the community and God
– Winthrop: “Thus stands the cause between God and us.
We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We
have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave
to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise
these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We
have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing.”
• Community emphasis pervasive
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Covenant
• “Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in
peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this
covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a
strict performance of the articles contained in it;
• but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles
which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling
with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and
prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for
ourselves and our posterity,
• the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and
be revenged of such a people, and make us know the
price of the breach of such a covenant.”
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City on a Hill
• “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon
a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we
shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have
undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His
present help from us, we shall be made a story and a
by-word through the world.
– We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the
ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall
shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and
cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we
be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.”
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• “[W]e are commanded this day to love the Lord our
God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and
to keep his Commandments and his ordinance and his
laws, and the articles of our Covenant with Him, that
we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our
God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess
it.
– But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey,
but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our
pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded
unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good
land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.”
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Transformation
• The mission had been to demonstrate the possibilities
of Puritan government for imitation in in Europe
– Winthrop: “We shall find that the God of Israel is among
us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our
enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that
men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the Lord
make it like that of New England.’”
• But the mission failed
– But victorious English Puritans moved to toleration,
abandoning the political project of the New England
Puritans
– NE Puritans like actors on empty stage
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Why had the mission failed?
• Can’t be God’s fault, so must look to
themselves
• Self-criticism & jeremiad
• It must have been because we did something
wrong
• Alone with themselves in America
• Without the divine mission, who are they? What
are they doing?
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Christian Republicanism
• In the colonies that would become the United
States, republican and Protestant convictions
merged as they did nowhere else in the world.
• Initially, concerns with transcendental religious
concerns leaves republicanism a secondary
concern
• The terms of slavery, citizen, freedom, virtue
and vice become key terms of colonial
Christianity
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Mid-18th C. conflicts between
France and Britain in N. America
• Anti-Catholicism
– Samuel Davies, 1755: “‘Our religion, our liberty,
our property, our lives, and everything sacred to
us are in danger,’ especially of being ‘enslaved’ by
‘an arbitrary, absolute monarch’ enforcing
conformity to ‘the superstitions and idolatries of
the church of Rome.’”
• A fusion of republican and religious values
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Toward the Republic
• The fusion of religious and republican language acted as a
‘disinfectant’ for republican ideas of which believers might
have otherwise regarded with suspicion.
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense
• Religious language used to generate support for the
revolution
– “a new Israel”
• Arguments for split from Britain acquired the emotive force
& legitimacy of religion. I
– Religious values migrated along with religious terms into the
political speech and so changed political values.
– But the migration also moved the other way: A religious
language put to political use took on political values that altered
the substance of religion.
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Causes of Revolution
• Economic exploitation by England
– Taxation, forcible quartering of soldiers, violation of
property rights
• Legal domination
– British soldiers to be tried only in England, forced
alteration of MA charter, restriction of town meetings
• Governmental oppression
– Colonies have no say in taxation, diminished voice in
own gov’t
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Thomas Paine
• B. Feb. 9 1737, Thetford,
England
• Arrives in American colonies
1774
• Common Sense: 1776
• Rights of Man: 1790,
supporting French Revolution,
elected to National
Convention, imprisoned by
Robespierre 1793
• Age of Reason: 1794, 1795,
1807
• Returns to US 1803
• Dies 1809
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Common Sense
• January, 1776
• Massively influential
– Before its publication, about 1/3 of American
colonials supported the break from Britain, 1/3
opposed, and 1/3 were undecided
– After, it was closer to 2/3 in favor of Revolution
• Focused strongly on the containment of
governmental power
– Reason vs. passion, tradition
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Common Sense
• Against the power of tradition & emotion:
– Disinterested reason should be the guide to political action
• “In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple
facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no
other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he
will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and
suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for
themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not
put off, the true character of a man, and generously
enlarge his views beyond the present day.” (section 4)
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Common Sense
• Against the power of tradition & emotion:
• “Wherefore, laying aside all national pride and
prejudice in favor of modes and forms, the
plain truth is, that it is wholly owing to the
constitution of the people, and not to the
constitution of the government that the crown
is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey.”
(section 2)
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Common Sense
• Against the influence of interest & bias:
– “Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary
offence, yet I am inclined to believe, that all those who
espouse the doctrine of reconciliation, may be included
within the following descriptions:
• “Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men
who cannot see; prejudiced men who will not see; and
a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the
European world than it deserves; and this last class by
an ill-judged deliberation, will be the cause of more
calamities to this continent than all the other three.”
(sect. 4)
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Common Sense
• Reason is believed to be
– Impartial & unbiased
– A method of reaching universal & definitive truth
• All rational individuals will agree
– Comprehensible by anyone not blinded by passion or bias, regardless
of social station (“common sense”)
• Rationality as freedom
• What do we do with irrational people?
– Inherently democratic
• Thus, it is for Paine the source of just political authority
– The sole reliable means of accessing truth
• Not an opinion
– The revolutionary potential of the claim to new truth
– Reason as totalized social critique
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Common Sense
• By grounding political authority in reason,
Paine is able to make a persuasive argument
undermining the foundations of British
government, which is based in tradition,
religion, and custom.
– “I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or
resentment to espouse the doctrine of separation
and independence; I am clearly, positively, and
conscientiously persuaded that it is the true
interest of this continent to be so.” (sect. 4)
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Common Sense
• What’s so bad about kings? (section 3)
– The State of Nature as tool of criticism
– “But there is another and greater distinction for
which no truly natural or religious reason can be
assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into
KINGS and SUBJECTS.” (sect. 3)
• A government must not make things worse than they
are in the State of Nature if they are to deserve
compliance
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• What’s so bad about kings?
The Bible, often used as a source of legitimacy by kings,
is in fact anti-monarchical
• Samuel vs. a King for Israel (1 Samuel 8)
– God & Samuel oppose (only God is king)
– People demand king
– Taxation, war, oppression the costs of kingship
• Capturing the past
Thus, kingship is purely a human creation, no
more inherently valid or necessary than any
other.
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Common Sense
• Why is independence necessary? (sect. 4)
– England is violently oppressive, exploiting America
for the good of England
– England is too far away to govern America
effectively, even if it wanted to.
– Being a part of the British Empire will inevitably
involve America in unnecessary imperial conflicts.
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Common Sense
• “Society is produced by our wants, and
government by our wickedness; the former
promotes our happiness Positively by uniting
our affections, the latter negatively by
restraining our vices. The one encourages
intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The
first is a patron, the last a punisher.”
– The true end of government is security. (sect. 2)
– To what extent are gov’t & society analytically
separable?
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Common Sense
• Freedom, happiness, & efficiency the basis of just
government
• How to achieve this?
– Commerce
• Trade  Peace
– Local government with weak central government
•
•
•
•
Each colony equally represented
Each colony retains sovereignty
Weak executive (needs 60% congressional approval to pass laws)
Continental Charter, guaranteeing political freedom, property,
freedom of religion
– Religious toleration
– Rule of Law
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Common Sense
• Rule of Law (sect. 5)
• “Let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the
charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine
law, the word of God;
• let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world
may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy,
that in America THE LAW IS KING.
• For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free
countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no
other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the
crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished,
and scattered among the people whose right it is. A
government of our own is our natural right.”
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Common Sense
• American exceptionalism:
– “The sun never shined on a cause of greater
worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a
province, or a kingdom, but of a continent of at
least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis
not the concern of a day, a year, or an age;
posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and
will be more or less affected, even to the end of
time, by the proceedings now.” (sect. 1)
• The city on a hill & cause of all humanity
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Common Sense
• “Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct;
and let none other be heard among us, than
those of a good citizen, an open and resolute
friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS
of MANKIND and of the FREE AND
INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA.” (sect. 6)
– What does it mean to define your cause as that of
all humanity?
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