11 Introduction to Revolution, Liberty, and Justice, Part 1
“The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815
In these readings we delve into the pivotal time when England’s 13 colonies transformed into the 13 states of The United States of America. If you grew up in the United States, you have most likely been inundated with true, false, accurate, and somewhat spurious information about this time and about our Founding Fathers. They have been both denigrated and deified.
Here is what we can say for sure. A group of extraordinarily well-educated, ambitious, well-respected, and often extremely wealthy men came together at first to attempt reconciliation with England, and once they believed that was not possible, to consider how they might form a new nation based on the philosophy of John Locke and on ideals rooted in the self governing city-states of Greece.
It was not a hasty decision, and the men who signed their name at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence were, in the perspective of England, committing High Treason. The punishment could be extraordinarily severe: Men found guilty of treason were sentenced to be drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, “hanged, cut down while still alive, and then disemboweled, castrated, beheaded and quartered.” As the Declaration says, They were indeed pledging “to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” If they lost the war—and it is extraordinary that they did not—they would have lost all of their property, their relatives would be disinherited, and they would be lucky if their certain executions were merely by hanging.
The American Revolution arose out of an era we call the Enlightenment. It was a time when educated people in Europe and the West anticipated that reason and natural philosophy—what we call science—would break the chains of suffering, ignorance, superstition, and oppression. One of the main philosophers who influenced our Founding Fathers is John Locke, who also had a profound influence on our first and possibly most brilliant “home grown” theologian, Jonathan Edwards, whose personal narrative you will read in a future module. Edwards also adapted Locke’s perspective on human reason in his philosophical treatise, A Divine and Supernatural Light. To put something very complex as simply as possible, Locke’s Treatise An Essay Concerning Human Understanding focused on what we can know via direct sensory experience and what we deduce or what ideas we create based on that direct sensory experience. Edwards put this thinking to the service of religion and theology—he writes about how God’s qualities can be observed and, within the limits of human understanding, known by observing the natural world that He created.
Edwards is a transitional figure, in many ways, between the Puritans and the Founding Fathers, and the founders of the United States, would inevitably view Locke’s and Edwards’s ideas in relationship to each other, whether they agreed with Edwards theology or not. John Locke profoundly influenced Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and young Thomas Jefferson who drafted one of the most magnificent assertions of human rights, the Declaration of Independence., the world has ever known These men had different levels of Christian beliefs, but all of them were far more secular and focused on this world than Edwards. And they all wanted to create a better world, a fairer and more just world, here. They were men of the Enlightenment, at the forefront of their time.
These three men, along with George Washington, are perennial favorites among our founding fathers. Our task as contemporary Americans is to balance our knowledge of their ideals with both the way they reached for and failed to be true to those ideals. Let’s take a brief look at who they were, and also at two other men of the time who were leaders despite being barred from participating in the formation of our republic based on their heritage.
Ben Franklin was a quick witted, self made man. His father only had enough money to send him to school for two years. But Franklin was apprenticed to his older brother, a printer, and it was during this time that he learned the power of the press to educate and sway the public. Despite his lack of formal education, in later life he was referred to as Dr. Franklin due to his vast knowledge, his patents, and his wisdom. Had he been younger, he would have been our first president. I consider Franklin and Mark Twain to be “Quintessential Americans.” Both these men embody many of the “ideal” American characteristics: clear-mindedness, hard work, a certain brand of humor, a deep understanding of the power of print, and the ability to make and remake themselves over the course of their lifetimes.
Early in his life, Franklin owned slaves (not many) and also participated and benefited from the slave trade. But over time and especially after he lived in London and Paris where he was influenced by anti-slavery thinkers and writers, he became increasingly convinced that slavery was unjust and evil. He became the President of the Philadelphia Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first abolitionist society in America. Two months before his death, he petitioned the new Congress of the United States to “cut the cancer of slavery out of the American body politic,” and grant liberty “to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage.”
John Adams was a graduate of Harvard University and it was there that he decided to devote himself to the practice of law. He was determined to be “a great Man”. He was devout, but he wrote to his father that he found among lawyers “noble and gallant achievements” but, among the clergy, the “pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces.” A lawyer and political activist prior to the Revolution, Adams was devoted to the ideals of the right to counsel and to the presumption of innocence—so much so that he defied anti-British sentiment and successfully defended British soldiers against murder charges arising from the Boston Massacre.
Integrity mattered greatly to John Adams; and he lived up to his anti-slavery views. He never owned a slave at any time. He was comfortably off, but less wealthy than Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. Due to his commitment to public service he was often separated from his wife, Abigail. They were passionately devoted to each other, but they suffered these separations for the principles they mutually shared. John Adams and Jefferson, originally the closest of friends, ultimately became rivals for the presidency, deeply disagreeing about the balance of power between the federal government and the States. Their relationship broke down for several years. Due to the continuing efforts of Benjamin Rush, it was rekindled and perhaps brought to even deeper levels after Jefferson expressed his sorrow to John upon the death of Abigail. A long correspondence ensued, and both men died on the same day, July 4, 1826. Unknown to Adams, Jefferson had died a few hours earlier, and Adams’s final words, unaware of his death, were: “Thomas Jefferson survives.” As for Jefferson, he faded in and out of consciousness on July 3rd and 4th. When he was awake, he inquired a few times as to whether or not it was the Fourth of July. When he was assured that it was, he made his final good byes and died sometime after noon.
This third pivotal founding father, Thomas Jefferson, is the most complex and divisive. As the owner of a Virginia plantation (which he inherited from his father), his business and livelihood depended on slave labor and rather complex management skills. Many Virginia planters tended to live lavishly and to be in constant debt. Both Jefferson and Washington lost revenue during the time periods where they put their private enterprises aside to concentrate on the needs of the new nation.
When Jefferson married the love of his life, Martha Wayles, he also signed up to take on his father-in-law’s extensive debts and the responsibilities of an unofficial but warmly attached interracial family. Technically, the descendants of John Wayles, Martha’s father, and Elisabeth Hemmings, his mixed race concubine, were indeed slaves. But they had lives and advantages that differed greatly from the field slaves, and there were ties of affection between John’s children with Elisabeth and his daughter Martha. When Martha Wayles died at age 33, she gave a bell to her half-sister, young Sally Hemmings. We have no verified images of Sally or of Martha, but both were described as extremely good looking, and there were rumors that they looked very much alike.
Why does this matter? Because when Thomas Jefferson was in Paris, he became smitten with two women—and one of them was the young Sally Hemmings. Jefferson brought Hemmings and her brother to Paris, knowing that one or both of them could decide to stay and be free, under French law. He had her brother, James Hemmings, trained as a Parisian Chef de Cuisine. As to the teenaged Sally, she became pregnant with the first of her children by Jefferson and quite seriously considered staying in France (much to his extreme distress). Eventually, she (and James) returned with him to Monticello. Jefferson had promised Sally that he would have each of their children trained in a viable trade and freed upon attaining “their majority” at age 21. Her trust in him was well placed, and he kept his promise. Sally remained with Jefferson the rest of his life, albeit on the “down low.” We know very little about their relationship and life together, as it was most assuredly NOT acceptable in that era. To the best of our knowledge, Jefferson never wrote of it or his feelings for Sally. As for James Hemmings, he served as chef for Jefferson at Monticello and the White House. He trained other slaves, notably Peter Hemmings, and when they had achieved culinary mastery of the techniques of French cooking, he was given his own freedom per his bargain with Jefferson. Indeed, the only slaves that Jefferson freed in his lifetime and after were members of the Hemmings family. He was in tremendous debt when he died, and the slaves at Monticello were sold off to pay that debt along with many of his possessions. Would he have followed George Washington and freed more slaves if he had had that option? We might never know.
It is impossible to reconcile Jefferson’s ideals and his behaviors. Jefferson was a passionate abolitionist in his youth. He called slavery “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot.” In his Notes on Virginia he wrote that because of slavery “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his Justice cannot sleep for ever” and that “There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.”
Perhaps one way he justified the disconnect between his life and his principles was with his questions about the intellectual aptitude of Africans—although he admitted that he did not know whether his observations were a result of the uneducated, degraded and deprived state that slaves lived in or a difference in natural abilities. As absurd as this argument seems (or should seem) to us today, this debate continued long after his lifetime. He did considered various ideas about how slaves could be taught the skills to live independent lives and at least elevate themselves to the level of “share croppers.” But ultimately, he abandoned the question and the atrocity to the future.
Why? What happened? In part, he had limited success convincing other slave holders and the leaders of the Southern colonies to even consider the idea of emancipation. And as he grew older, increasingly accustomed to a life with fine furnishings, fine food and wine, musical and scientific instruments, and a vast personal library, he realized that his life was inextricably bound up with and dependent on the labor of enslaved people. As many of us do, he lost the courage to live by his convictions.
I do not write these lines to exonerate Jefferson, but to provide context and to encourage us to look at our own hypocrisy. If you have a smartphone or watch, if you purchase items at the Dollar Store or Target or Walmart, if you purchase from discount brands like Shein, if you buy fruits and vegetables in a grocery store, then you too are dependent on the labor of human beings who are slaves, either literally or practically. Knowingly or not, you have made the decision that your budget and your ability to participate in society depends upon goods produced by slave labor. And so have I. What must and what can we do? I don’t have an easy to answer to that question, but I think it’s one we should all contemplate and that each of us can make an effort to reduce our “slavery footprint” as much as possible.
In addition to the Declaration of Independence, these readings include Ben Franklin’s Address to the Constitutional Convention, encouraging that the delegates ratify the constitution. Franklin was elderly and unable to deliver the speech himself, so James Wilson, a fellow delegate for Pennsylvania, read it in his stead. One of the reasons I include this reading is just how relevant it is for us today; your job is to ponder that relevance deeply. Franklin gives his reasons for assenting to the constitution as well as his reasons for remaining silent about his reservations once he leaves the chamber. He exhorts the other delegates to follow his example You do not have to be a Christian to recognize the wisdom of the words of Jesus Christ, or how Franklin reframes them in a secular context: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye (Matthew 7:5).”
In this module on Revolution, Liberty and Justice, I am including the perspectives of two men who could have added significantly to the founding of this new nation, but who were barred from doing so not because they were slaves, but because they were Black. Free African Americans did live in the colonies and new states (most of them chose the northern states as freedmen were sometimes kidnapped and enslaved, and the risk was higher in the Southern “slave” states). But they had fewer rights and liberties simply because of their skin—one of those rights that were denied them was the right to vote. It was not until after the Civil War that Black men were constitutionally granted the right to vote. Women—Black and White—could not vote until 1920.
You will read a letter to Thomas Jefferson from Benjamin Banneker and a reply from Jefferson to Banneker. Banneker was an African American naturalist, an astronomer, mathematician, and the creator of an almanack. He was the offspring of free African Americans, and he was a landowner, a surveyor, and a farmer. On any terms, he was a very accomplished individual.
The other document you will read is A Charge Delivered to the Brethren of the African Lodge by Prince Hall. Hall spent the first 25 years of his life as a slave, but was encouraged in entrepreneurial pursuits by his owner, William Hall, and granted, or allowed to purchase, his freedom. He became a leader of the free Blacks in Boston, and it is believed that he fought at the Battle of the Bunker Hill in 1775. Hall encouraged enslaved and freed blacks to serve in the American colonial military, believing that if blacks were involved in the founding of the new nation, it would aid in the attainment of freedom for all blacks. Hall was drawn to freemasonry because of its expressed ideals liberty, equality, and peace. Ironically, Hall and fourteen other free black men petitioned for admittance to the all white Boston St. John’s Lodge and were turned down. Although he was dedicated to the American Revolution, Hall and other free Blacks were initiated into Masonry on March 6, 1885 by members of Lodge No. 441 of the Grand Lodge of Ireland by soldiers who served in the British Army. After the British departed, they formed their own lodge, African Lodge No. 1, though it would be twelve years before they received a permanent charter. Hall became the lodge’s first Grand Master.
Hall used his position as “Worshipful Master” of the black Masons to speak out against slavery and the denial of black rights. For years, he protested the lack of schools for black children and finally established one in his own home.
It is against this background of individuals and historical events that I perceive our Declaration of Independence and the constitution as aspirational documents. They represent the ideals toward which we strive. To be American, in the truest and most significant way, is to share these ideals and to aspire to ever greater liberty and equality for all. It is not dependent on where your ancestors came from, the party you affiliate yourself with, how new you are to these shores, or even if you are an official “citizen” of this country or not. The great American experiment set into motion during the sweltering summer months of 1776 in stifling hot rooms in Philadelphia was intended to elevate and inspire all humanity
As Jefferson wrote in a letter dated June 24, 1826—10 days before his death:
May it [the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
