Common Sense Nation. Robert Curry
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Common Sense Nation - Robert Curry страница 7
Название: Common Sense Nation
Автор: Robert Curry
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9781594038266
isbn:
Beyond his enormous influence as an educator and church leader, Witherspoon was also one of the most important of the Founders. He was an early and influential champion of American independence, and much more than merely a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, he played a central role in the signing.
When the Declaration was completed and ready to be signed, the signers-to-be wavered. For two days they hesitated to affix their signatures. To sign it, after all, was to provide the British with documentary evidence of treason, punishable by death. Witherspoon rose to the occasion, speaking in his famously thick Scottish accent:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time. We perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to content to our own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, which ensures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not respond to its accents and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is unworthy the name freeman.”
His speech broke the logjam and, as we all know, the delegates then swiftly signed the Declaration.
BENJAMIN RUSH’S STORY
“The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people . . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”
—JOHN ADAMS
The people of the thirteen colonies had to break free of the idea that they were subjects in order to become citizens. As Gordon Wood writes in The American Revolution:
“Since the king, in the words of the English jurist William Blackstone, was the ‘pater familias of the nation,’ to be a subject was in fact to be a kind of child . . . [The people] had to be held together from above, by the power of kings who created trains of dependencies and inequalities, supported by standing armies, strong religious establishments, and a dazzling array of titles, rituals, and ceremonies.”
To declare, as the Founders did, that the people are sovereign was to think and feel in a new way. After all, at that time “the sovereign” was the chief of state, that is, the king or the queen.
Benjamin Rush provides a fascinating example of how that change in feeling and thinking occurred, and at the same time his story tells us something very important about the American Founding.
A signer of the Declaration of Independence and surgeon general in Washington’s army, Rush was an early and influential agitator for American independence who wrote of “the absurdity of hereditary power.” Yet when he had set out for Scotland to study medicine, he was a thoroughgoing monarchist: “I had been taught to consider [kings] nearly as essential to political order as the Sun is to the order of our Solar System.” By the time he returned home to Philadelphia in 1769 he was a revolutionary committed to republican government.
After graduating from Princeton, Rush traveled to Scotland to study medicine at Edinburgh. In the colonial era, Scottish universities were generally recognized as the world’s best, and Edinburgh was considered the world’s foremost medical school. Rush studied there under William Cullen, then the medical school’s star attraction. Cullen was one of the luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the other luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment were his patients and friends. A cousin of Thomas Reid became one of Rush’s closest friends. Rush had, quite characteristically for him, landed in the center of the action.
Rush had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of John Witherspoon’s role in the Founding—and Rush, while studying in Scotland, played a key role in persuading Witherspoon to accept the invitation to become the president of Princeton and also in overcoming Mrs. Witherspoon’s resolute opposition to moving to America.
It is equally difficult to overestimate the importance of Tom Paine’s Common Sense. Common Sense was read by virtually every American who could read, and read aloud to those who could not. It had a decisive influence on American public sentiment in favor of the Revolution. In it Paine elevated the idea of common sense thinking in America while at the same time subjecting monarchy and especially hereditary monarchy to a devastating critique:
“One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an Ass for a Lion.” [Italics in original]
After Rush returned to America, he urged Paine to write Common Sense, supplied Paine with many of the ideas and even convinced Paine to use that title.
Rush seemed always to be where the action was, even when it came to the effort of getting the Constitution approved. At first, the prospects for approval looked dim. As the struggle played out, the battle in Pennsylvania became critical. Pennsylvania’s eventual vote for approval helped to turn the tide. How did that vote come about? Much credit goes to Rush. With James Wilson playing the lead, together they conducted the very effective campaign that made the difference in Pennsylvania.
Rush was what today we would call a networker. He knew everybody, and everybody knew him. What is remarkable about his network is the story it tells about the Founding. Rush’s network of contacts is a who’s who of the Scottish Enlightenment and of the American Founding. Before leaving this page, ponder for just a moment the fact that Rush’s network included Adam Smith and David Hume, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION AS DRAMA
“After Madison, [James] Wilson’s was the most important hand in shaping the Constitution . . .”
—PAUL JOHNSON, A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Remarkably, the actual course of events during the Constitutional Convention, as if by dramatic intent, seems designed to draw our attention to the enormous importance of the Scottish Enlightenment in America’s Founding.
If we consider the Constitutional Convention as a dramatic work, James Madison and James Wilson got the roles that drove the action. Madison opened with the Virginia Plan; Wilson played a central role in the debate and in the final decisive action, the drafting of the Constitution by the committee that gave it the shape we know today.
Their central roles dramatize the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment because Madison and Wilson taken together perfectly symbolize that impact.
Madison symbolizes one half of the story of the Scots in America. He represents the Revolutionary generation of Americans trained by the wave of Scots who brought the Scottish Enlightenment to America. As we have seen, Madison’s tutor, Donald Robertson, was a product of the Scottish Enlightenment at its peak, and Madison’s mentor was the Scottish educator John Witherspoon. Madison was steeped in the Scottish tradition. His education was so strongly Scottish in its character that until the end of his life he spoke French with a marked Scottish accent.
As for Wilson, he is a perfect symbol for the other half of the story. He was actually a part of that wave of Scots in America. A member in good standing of the Scottish Enlightenment, he was educated at St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh at the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. On stage, in our Constitutional-Convention-as-drama, we would be constantly reminded of the Scottish influence by Wilson’s strong СКАЧАТЬ