American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika
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Название: American Democracy in Context
Автор: Joseph A. Pika
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежная публицистика
isbn: 9781544345208
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The Second Continental Congress
After the violence in Lexington and Concord, the colonies quickly sent representatives to the Second Continental Congress to oversee steps toward independence and manage the impending war. By the time the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, full-fledged war had already erupted. The congress officially created the Continental Army and appointed George Washington to command it. But more than a year would pass before the Second Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence. The congress then turned to writing the first, ill-fated national constitution: the Articles of Confederation.
The delay in formally declaring independence occurred because many colonists, who came predominantly from Britain, remained reluctant to make a full break with their homeland. Breaking their allegiance to the king—a powerful symbolic figure—proved especially difficult. Then, in January 1776, Thomas Paine anonymously published his 48-page pamphlet, Common Sense. Saying, “I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense,” Paine provided a compelling justification for independence, and did so—as historian Joseph J. Ellis put it—“in language that was simultaneously simple and dazzling.”15 Paine took aim at King George III himself and sharply dismissed the institution of monarchy. The pamphlet’s timing could not have been better: Colonists had just learned that the king had rejected any effort to resolve the dispute with them diplomatically and would instead seek to smash the rebellion with military force.16 Breaking allegiance to the crown no longer seemed so difficult. And even though Parliament had been the source of the legislation that had prompted the dispute between Britain and the colonies, the king now became the symbolic enemy.
Common Sense was an instant best seller, with some 120,000 copies sold in the first three months alone and 500,000 copies sold within a year. This was at a time when the official population count of the colonies (excluding slaves and Native Americans) was only about 2.5 million.17 A work would need to sell nearly 62 million copies to reach a proportionate number of Americans today.18 Clearly, Paine’s rallying cry for independence had hit a nerve.
This British cartoon dismisses Thomas Paine as a radical revolutionary. His best-selling pamphlet Common Sense (skewered on the scroll he is holding as “Common Nonsense”), helped fuel the fight for revolution.
The Declaration of Independence
In May 1776, only four months after the publication of Common Sense, the Virginia House of Burgesses instructed its delegates to the Second Continental Congress to propose independence—making Virginia the first of the colonies to call for such a resolution. That same month, the Continental Congress urged colonies to adopt constitutions in anticipation of impending independence and statehood. Then, on June 7, Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee proposed before the Continental Congress “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”19 To implement Lee’s resolution, the Continental Congress created a committee consisting of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman to prepare what would eventually become the American Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,20 that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
In writing these words, Jefferson drew upon John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689). Locke believed that people enjoy certain natural rights, including “life, liberty, and property,” that cannot be taken away without their consent. Through a social contract, people come together in a society under a government whose authority they agree to obey. If, however, a government deprives them of their natural rights without their consent, the social contract is broken, and the people have a right to rebel and replace that government with one that will honor the terms of the social contract. This concept of a social contract led the newly independent states, and eventually the new federal government, to adopt written constitutions. These constitutions served as contracts spelling out the powers of government and the rights of the people.
Declaration of Independence A statement written by Thomas Jefferson and approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, that asserted the independence of the American colonies from Great Britain.
social contract The idea, drawn from the writings of John Locke and others, that government is accountable to the people and bound to protect the natural rights of its citizens. If the government breaks this contract, the people have the right to rebel and replace the government with one that will enforce it.
In making his case for rebellion in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson listed a specific set of grievances against Britain. In doing so, he did not even mention Parliament but rather took aim exclusively at King George III: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Jefferson listed 27 specific grievances and, finally, declared that
these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.
Popular uprisings, such as the Yellow Vest movement in France, which calls for economic justice for the working class, illustrate citizens claiming a broken social contract in the contemporary world.
Kiran Ridley / Getty Images
Meanwhile, some delegates to the Continental Congress thought it premature to declare independence. South Carolina and Pennsylvania opposed independence in a preliminary vote on July 1, and New York abstained because its delegates did not have clear instructions from home about how to vote. (Each colony had a single vote in Congress determined by a majority vote of the delegates from that colony.) In an attempt to secure unanimity among the colonies, Congress delayed the final vote on Lee’s resolution until the next day. The tactic worked. South Carolina reversed its vote and, as the result of strategic abstentions by two of its delegates, Pennsylvania now voted 3–2 in favor of independence instead of 4–3 against it. New York still abstained, but the New York Provincial Congress formally voted to support independence a few days later. Congress approved the final language of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and the first public reading of the Declaration took place four days later in Philadelphia. The next day, July 9, George Washington ordered that the Declaration be read to members of the Continental Army in New York.
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