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CHAPTER TWENTY

Different Gods, Different Revolutions

The American Revolution was an unprecedented event, which is why it is so vital to study it and discover why the Americans succeeded where so many others have failed. Wars of independence are constantly being waged, but few have accomplished anything more than replacing one dictator with another.

The American Revolution was different because, as Irving Kristol writes: It "was a mild and relatively bloodless revolution. A war was fought to be sure, and soldiers died in that war. But . . .there was none of the butchery which we have come to accept as a natural concomitant of revolutionary warfare. There were no revolutionary tribunals dispensing ‘revolutionary justice'; there was no reign of terror; there were no bloodthirsty proclamations by the Continental Congress."

Most startilling of all was that when the gunfire ceased and the war came to a close, the end product was a constitutional republican democracy. The American people had become a truly free people. There were more opportunities for economic, political and social advancement in America than in England, where the people still had to contend with hereditary privilege and court favor. In America, titles of nobility were abolished; there were no more aristocratic shackles on private aspirations; and the possibihties for individual achievement were unprecedented. The guiding principle of political philosophy that prevailed in America at this time was that all was permitted so long as it did not harm someone else.

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Many modern historians have spent great energy trying to demonstrate that the architects of the American Republic were attempting to recreate Rome and the classical world on the American continent. To prove this, they select quotations from the founding fathers citing Cicero, Tacitus, and the Greek philosophers, most notably Plato and Aristotle. The point these historians are trying to make is that America became a free nation as it moved away from Christian "superstition," and that the American Revolution embodied the ideal of secular humanism.

It is worth looking for a moment at Greece, because Greece was the most advanced and enlightened of pagan cultures. Secular humanism, as it relates to the world today, had its origins with the Greeks. It is often asserted that ancient Greece laid the foundation for democracy, which is in part true. But the lesson to be learned from the Greek example is not that democracy is the secret to protecting liberty, but that democracy, not anchored in a "Higher Law," can be just as tyrannical as other forms of government. Both Socrates and Jesus, after all, were victims of the vote.

An even casual examination of Athenian life reveals a society run by an elite. Slaves made up one-third of the population of the city. A census taken in Athens in the fourth century B.C. showed that only 21,000 Athenians were considered to be citizens, even though the total population numbered 431,000. Aristotle believed that "the slave is a piece of property which is animate," and that "slavery is natural. In every department of the natural universe," observed Aristotle, "we find the relation of ruler and subject. These are human beings who, without possessing reason, understand it. These are natural slaves." Aristotle concluded this discussion on "natural slaves" by saying: "Slavery is condemned by some; but they are wrong. The natural slave benefits by subjection to his master" (Politics, Book I, Ch. 3-7).

Now, it is true that America tolerated slavery on its soil. But Americans, unlike the pagans, understood slavery to be counter to Christian principles. Indeed, it was the Puritan churches of New England and the revivalist ministers of the 18th and 19th centuries who became the most ardent opponents of this abominable institution of pagan origin. The subject of slavery was an explosive issue in the colonies throughout the Revolutionary War. Under the Articles of Confederation, slavery was abolished north of the Ohio River.

Christians have often behaved with cruelty toward their fellow man. The history of Christianity can be summed up as the story of men continuously and consistently disobeying God. But whereas the Christian knows when he is doing evil, Aristotle believed slavery both natural and just, and here lies the difference between the plantation owner and Nero. Southerners, such as Charles Pickney and John Rutledge of South Carolina, may have seen slavery as a "necessary evil," but it was an evil; indeed, the South was continuously on the moral defensive until slavery was eliminated from American life. But Aristotle saw slavery, not as necessary, but as wholesome and good. His moral standards were different precisely because his god was different. The contrast between America and ancient Greece is as stark as the contrast between the God of Scripture and the god of Reason.

Plato, another pillar of pagan thinking, is also a good illustration of where the human intellect, left to its own devices, will take us. Oblivious to man's fallen state, Plato laid the philosophical basis for the totalitarian slave state. He believed, as the secular humanists of today believe, that education will produce the perfect ruler: "Unless either philosophers become kings in their countries and rulers come to be inspired with a genuine desire for wisdom; unless, that is to say, political power and philosophy meet together. . . this commonwealth which we have imagined will never see the light of day and grow to its full stature."

What Plato is saying here is frightening. He believed the ideal society - which Christians know can never exist in the material world - would be built by "philosopher kings" directing the industry of others: "The philosopher, who is in constant contact with the ideal order of the world, will reproduce that order in his soul and, so far as any may, become Godlike." Such a man, thought Plato, "will take society and human character as his canvas, and begin by scraping it clean." This was Pol Pot's idea for Cambodia (to create the "New Man"), which resulted in the extermination of one-quarter of that country's population.

Aristotle and Plato were the best thinkers the pagan world produced. Indeed, they made an enormous contribution to human knowledge in that they asked crucial questions about who man is, and tried to discover the meaning of existence through logic and systematic thought. But they found few answers. Reason, unaided, could not take them far, as can be proven by examining the kinds of societies their minds produced.

That the founders often cited writers from pagan antiquity is, of course, true. But the framers considered these citations to be little more than window dressing, necessary to make their points on independence and self-government more convincing to the European elite who were heavily influenced by En lightenment skepticism. As Alexander Hamilton put it: "No friend to order or to rational liberty can read without pain and disgust the history of the Commonwealths of Greece." "Generally speaking," said Hamilton, Greece was "a constant scene of the alternate tyranny of one part of the people over the other, or of a few usurping demagogues over the whole." Thomas Jefferson said of Plato's Dialogues that they were full of "sophisms, futilities, and incomprehensibilities." The Americans often gave an obligatory nod to the classical world, but they certainly did not embrace it. Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn says that "the classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but they are everywhere illustrative, not determinative of thought."

Another major enterprise of liberal historians has been to recast the American Revolution in the image of the French Revolution. The tendency of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin toward deism is often cited as evidence of America's trend toward "enlightened rational humanism" during the period of America's founding. Whatever still remained of the Christian faith in America was merely a fading remnant - or so we are told.

It is very instructive, therefore, to turn for a moment to the revolution in France, whose announced aim was to duplicate the American Revolution, which had been such an obvious success. In fact, Thomas Jefferson traveled to Paris in order to assist Lafayette and his associates to draft their own Declaration of Rights. "Everyone here is trying their hands at forming a declaration of rights," Jefferson wrote in a letter to Madison, and included in his correspondence several drafts. "As you will see," Jefferson observed, "it contains the essential principles of ours accommodated as much as could be to the actual state of things here." Article Four of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, drafted in August of 1789, for example, states that "liberty consists in the ability to do whatever does not harm another." France's Declaration abolished slavery, titles of nobility, and the remnants of feudalism and serfdom. In many respects, the French Declaration appeared superior to Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. But whereas the American Revolution ended in the establishment of a constitutional democracy, a government under law, the French Revolution ended in tyranny and government by the guillotine, followed by the rise of Napoleon. The ob vious question is: What went wrong in France?

The French Declaration did not acknowledge that the source of man's rights is man's "Creator," as Jefferson had affirmed in America's Declaration of Independence. The French Declaration did not even state that rights are inherent, in-alienable, or derived from any transcendent authority. Rights for the Frenchman were granted by an "enlightened" government. Tocqueville noted the striking contrast when he explained to his countiymen a half century later that America's experiment in liberty was firmly rooted in the fact that "in the United States the sovereign authority is religious." The French Revolution was explicitly anti-religious, and could not replicate the American example on a secular humanist foundation. Moreover, the prevailing sentiment in the American colonies was to preserve liberties they already enjoyed, to prevent the British monarchy from taking over their churches and subverting their colonial ways of life. But the driving force behind the French Revolution was a fanatical determination to tear down established ways and institutions, which the disciples of Rousseau saw as responsible for corrupting human nature.

Rousseau did not believe in original sin or private property. He hated European civilization precisely because he saw it as a product of Christianity. Rousseau stated flatly that "our souls are corrupted in proportion to the advance of arts and sciences. His society rejected all forms of Christianity, and put in its place the gospel of the "General Will." Against it no individual rights would stand, because, in Rousseau's view, the protection of individual rights stood in opposition to the sovereignty of the people. Following Rousseau's doctrines, the French executed their king, even after he had accepted their constitution.1 From here, conditions rapidly degenerated into anarchy, with the outbreak of internal ideological war and, in the words of historian Henry May, the subsequent "executions of deviants, the lukewarm and the suspect," culminating in the Reign of Terror presided over by Robespierre. In just two years 20,000 people-considered allies of the Old Regime-were executed. France's complete break with the past and with Christianity was symbolized by the introduction of a new calendar that took 1792 as the year One, the first year of the Republic.

The revolution finally turned against itself and began to devour its own. Robespierre denounced the Encyclopedists, even though they were a symbol of Enlightenment thinking, for their compromises with the monarchy. Robespierre was himself guillotined in the summer of 1794. The French Revolution was a grim example of how people behave when they are unchecked by a sense of religious obligation.

The British statesman Edmund Burke, a Whig, saw this point clearly. After making a trip to Paris and talking with the French philosophes, he told Parliament as early as 1773 that their political theories could only produce tyranny. "The most horrid and cruel blow that can be offered to civil society is through atheism," Burke predicted. After the fall of the Bastille in 1789, he wrote his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke placed the blame for France's miseries on a philosophy that denied God. Remarking on the beheading of the beautiful Marie Antoinette in 1793, Burke wrote: "The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."

Burke, by contrast, called the American Revolution a "glorious revolution." In his speech on conciliation with the American colonies, delivered on the floor of the House of Commons on March 22, 1775, he made the case for Britain leaving America alone: "England, Sir, is a nation which I hope respects, and, formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideals, and on English principles." Moreover, said Burke, "the people are Protestants; and of that kind which is most adverse to all implicit subjection of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it." William Penn agreed: "If man is not governed by God," he wrote, "then he must be governed by tyrants."

Thomas Paine failed to make a distinction between the revolution in America and the one in France. He was a political agitator and ideologue, pure and simple, and was not disposed to looking closely at the facts. Paine traveled to France to help topple the monarchy there, and published The Rights of Man. Paine's behavior in France was rebuked by John Quincy Adams, who challenged Paine's latest political tract designed to throw fuel on the flames of the French Revolution. Adams objected principally to Paine's main premise that "whatever a whole nation chooses to do, it has the right to do," echoing Rousseau. Adams replied: "Nations, no less than individuals, are subject to the eternal and immutable laws ofjustice and morality." Paine's "doctrine," said Adams, "annihilated the security of every man for his inalienable rights, and would lead in practice to a hideous despotism, concealed under the party-colored garments of democracy."

Paine, Adams pointed out, had missed the entire point of the American Revolution, which was the assertion of rights that cannot be deprived from an individual even by a majority. Adams rejected Paine's contention that the people of Great Britain should follow the example of France and "topple down headlong" their present government on the grounds that the Anglican Church did not allow religious freedom: "Happy, thrice happy the people of America!" said Adams, "whose principles of religious liberty did not result from an indiscriminate contempt of all religion whatever, and whose equal representation in their legislative councils was founded upon equality really existing among them, and not among the metaphysical speculations of fanciful politicians, vainly contending against the unalterable course of events, and the established order of nature [emphasis added]."

Thomas Paine eventually learned through personal experience that the revolution in France was radically different from the one in America. He was jailed by Robespierre for protesting the execution of the King and having qualms about the direction of events. It took the intervention of Thomas Jefferson to rescue Paine from the guillotine. Prior to this, Paine had spent much of his political life crusading against Christianity, again failing to make distinctions between the true Christianity of Scripture and the often corrupt version taught by religious establishments. His relentless attacks against the hypocrisy of clergymen and religious institutions could be fully endorsed by the most fervent Separatist Puritans and Great Awakeners who lambasted the "dead faith" of the standing order churches. But Paine's attacks were of a different order, often denouncing the substance of the faith itself. "What is it the Testament teaches us? - to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."

It is easy to see how a demagogue such as Paine could be attracted to the cause of an extremist like Robespierre. But his experience in France seems to have altered his thinking. He began to see how the philosophy of atheism plays itself out in actual politics. His final work, The Age of Reason (1794-96), although very critical of Christian institutions, indicates something of a change of heart. He had become a defender of reHgious faith against atheism: "Lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lost sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true." On his deathbed he went still another step, embraced faith, and retracted any and all attacks against Christianity in The Age of Reason: "I would give worlds, if I had them, if The Age of Reason had never been published. O Lord, help me! Christ, help me! Stay with me! It is hell to be left alone." Paine, as vocal a debunker of Christianity as there was in the colonies, died believing passionately in God and hoping for a future life. He had learned the hard way the lessons of the French Revolution.

In contrast to the hatred and loathing driving the French Revolution, the American Revolution was strictly defensive. Historian Russell Kirk prefers to call it America's "War for Independence," because, says Kirk, it was actually "a revolution prevented." America's leaders had no desire to impose an alien structure on society; but instead sought to preserve life as it already existed, and to protect the liberties they had enjoyed for a century and a half. In this sense, the real revolutionaries were the British. The Crown had altered the colonial governments and imposed its own governors and place-men to carry out an obnoxious policy over the objections of the local colonial assemblies. The American Revolution succeeded because it was a conservative revolution; it sought merely to return to old ways. The radicals were not the Americans, but the British, who were attempting to uproot customary laws and traditions.

The colonists had a deep and abiding Christian respect for legitimate authority, and we see in the Declaration of Independence the extreme reluctance with which the colonists decided to revolt: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that all mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a government, and provide new guards for their future security." What the Patriots stood for was the time-honored right of the colonies to manage their own affairs. That right had been usurped by a grasping British government attempting to consolidate its empire.

With the dissolution of British rule, the world expected chaos to ensue in the colonies. The British wholeheartedly believed that the Americans would soon beg for the return of rule by London, so intolerable would be conditions without government. Instead, almost before the ink was dry on the Declaration, constitutional governments were instituted among the states with very little internal disruption, even while the war against British rule raged. Ten constitutions were drafted in 1776. In the minds of the framers, it was essential that each state be free to establish its own government so that they would learn the principles of government from experience, suffering under their mistakes and reaping the rewards of their successes. "When this is done," Samuel Adams predicted, "the colonies will feel their independence." John Adams advised in his classic Thoughts on Governnzent that the states "proceed in all established modes, to which the people have been familiarized by habit."

The tried and tested path to which most states returned was government rooted firmly in a traditional, Puritan understanding of human nature. All the constitutions, for example, demonstrated suspicion of a single executive authority. Recent experience with the British monarch had much to do with this, but it only confirmed the long-held Puritan belief about the unreliability of human authority in spiritual or political matters. The American Protestants had rejected popes and bishops, just as Oliver Cromwell had shattered the doctrine of the divine right of kings. If vesting ecclesiastical authority in one man, or group of men, is dangerous, then it follows that trusting one man, or a group of men, with unbridled political power is also a bad idea. Dispersion of authority, separation of powers, and accountability to the voters became central features of all the state constitutions, just as this structure had been an integral part of virtually all the American Protestant churches. A pastor of a Protestant church in America was accountable to his congregation, served at the pleasure of his flock, and did not claim the same spiritual authority as a priest in the Catholic or English Church. Similarly, the executive in American government would not have the same powers as a European monarch.

Suspicion of power, especially if it was concentrated in one individual, was part of the fabric of American culture, inherent in its religious assumptions as well as its historical experience. This is why we find in most state constitutions of the period that the governor was stripped of the royal grandeur he had enjoyed under British rule and was reduced to a mere figurehead. Pennsylvania completely abolished the office. Abolished, too, were titles of nobility and hereditary privilege -not from any utopian socialist idea, but because privilege was counter to long-held Puritan religious conviction. "All men are created equal," says the Declaration of Independence, which, of course, is a Christian concept: all men are equal in the eyes of God, and therefore should be equal under the law. The abolition of royal titles and hereditary privilege was not done out of hate and envy (as in France), but out of deep-seated religious conviction held by the vast majority of the American people.

A fixed code of law was an essential feature of every state constitution. The colonists had had an unpleasant experience under England's unwritten "flexible" constitution. Consequently, rigid restrictions were placed on government powers. Most state constitutions had bills of rights. Frequent elections to keep government close to the people was the rule, with 10 states having annual elections. A common American belief was that "where annual elections end, tyranny begins." Judges were appointed, usually by the legislature, but sometimes by the governor, to interpret the laws and settle disputes. In all the states, elected assemblies held the dominant power, but governed by the consent of the people.

Not surprisingly, the Massachusetts Constitution was widely acknowledged as superior. In drafting it, John Adams adopted John Winthrop's views of mixed government, today more commonly called "checks and balances." In fact, Adams essentially copied the charter of the old Massachusetts Bay government, as codified under Winthrop. The Massachusetts Constitution would serve as a model for the Federal Constitution. In 1780, the Massachusetts courts interpreted its bill of rights as having abolished slavery, demonstrating that Puritan New England was still on the cutting edge of the debate on what constitutes a free society. Indeed, Massachusetts held the first constitutional convention, involving representatives from all the towns, of which a two-thirds vote was required to ratify the state constitution. While in other states constitutions were written and then simply promulgated by the legislatures, Massachusetts believed a legitimate government had to be ratified by the people themselves. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 declared: "The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals; it is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good." The Federal Constitutional Convention was a virtual copy of the one that took place in Massachusetts.

By the conclusion of the war, the states were functioning as 13 little republics, all formed according to the same basic pattern for an identical purpose: the protection of individual liberties. The enactment of grand schemes for transforming man into a new kind of egalitarian social animal in order to conform to a theory invented by some philosophe was a notion that could not have been further from the American mind. The main concern of the Continental Congress after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown was to establish a stable national government that could pay its debts, mediate trade and boundary disputes between the several states and provide for the common defense. The Articles of Confederation was passed on March 1, 1781, and provided the first constitution for the operation of a national government. Actually, it did little more than ratify what the Continental Congress had already been doing since 1776. Its guiding principle was to acknowledge that there was a union, but also, at the same time, the states were to be independent and sovereign. The concept was taken from John Winthrop's New England Confederation, which was an attempt to provide an overall unity of purpose while maintaining diversity in particulars.

Much has been said to denigrate the Articles of Confederation. It certainly had serious problems, as we will see in a moment. Nevertheless, it was the best national frame of government that had ever been devised up until that time, and compiled a record of some remarkable achievements. It established a three-man Treasury Board to work out a system of paying back the tens of thousands of American citizens who had lent the Continental Congress money to finance the war. The new national government also acquired title to the vast territory north of the Ohio River. It then passed the celebrated Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery in the area, and admitted as equal states regions that attained a population of 60,000.

In a way, this revolutionized the theory of empire-building. Instead of conquering new lands, the United States would make itself so attractive that new territories would voluntarily join the union. Thus, instead of 13 sovereign little republics jealously guarding their borders, the Articles of Confederation, by allowing so much local autonomy, laid the groundwork for making America a unified whole. The result was that the U.S. -though coercing no one - rapidly grew into a world power. The contrast between the growth and prosperity of the United States and the isolated and atomized republics of Latin America, which formed without the benefits of the federalist principle, is striking. For the most part, the new nation prospered under the Artides of Confederation. After the war, people were free to apply themselves steadily to agriculture and business and the economy grew swiftly. Most Americans were well fed, well clothed, and even had leisure time.

But there were difficulties. Under the Articles, the Congress had many responsibilities, but almost no authority to carry them out. It was responsible for Indian affairs and the nation's foreign policy, refereed disputes between the states, coined money, operated the postal service, and managed the Western territories. But the central government had no power to levy taxes directly on the people to finance these operations. It had to rely on requisitions from the state legislatures, which, in turn, had to get the money from the people; this in itself was no easy feat given that the Americans had just fought a war in large part over the tax issue. As a result, the Congress was almost always bankrupt.

On the other hand, the Articles of Confederation never would have been ratified at all had it given the central government the power of taxation, and for good reason. Americans understood the connection between private property and liberty. If the government can take the people's earnings at will, freedom is in jeopardy, which is exactly what was occurring when the colonies were under the authority of the Crown and Parliament. The communists certainly understand this principle, which is why their first step on the road to establishing a tyranny is to seize private property, and then redistribute it according to political loyalties. The Americans saw private ownership as a major bulwark for individual freedom, which is why they were so reluctant to permit the central government to tax it. So suspicious were Americans of central government that it took five years for the Congress to pass the Articles of Confederation, first proposed in 1776, but not ratified until 1781. The Articles of Confederation, which in essence provided for a central government without the power to tax, as inefficient as it was, was the most efficient central government Americans were willing to accept at the time. Americans were not interested in efficient government; they were interested in liberty. Given the growth of the federal government in recent decades and the enormous increase in taxes since the New Deal, the fears of these early Americans were not unfounded. Central government, even in a constitutional democracy, has proven itself very efficient at what it does best: taking people's money.

Nevertheless, most Americans were willing to tolerate a few modest changes. Ensuring a stable legal environment for the free flow of commerce was a major concern. In 1785-86, seven states were issuing their own paper money, which was considered by the legislatures legal tender in payment of debts. Many creditors were outraged because in their view the money was worthless. There were also trade wars developing between the various states, with some enacting tariffs and other trade barriers to protect assorted indigenous industries. In addition, many states had so-called ‘stay laws" that made it difficult, sometimes impossible, for creditors in one state to collect debts in another. Prior to the convention in Philadelphia, there was a serious depression in large part due to the difficulty of engaging in interstate business.

In March 1785, George Washington invited the leaders of Virginia and Maryland to his home at Mount Vernon for the purpose of arriving at some agreement over navigation rights to the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. This led to a general discussion of commercial problems, upon which Virginia Governor John Tyler the elder, James Madison, and others proposed a national convention on the subject of commerce to meet in Annapolis in September 1786. Invitations went out to all 13 states to send delegates. But only five states bothered to attend, demonstrating the lack of consensus on the need for any additional national authority. Nevertheless, Alexander Hamilton, perhaps the staunchest nationalist of all the framers, used the occasion to propose still another convention which would convene at Philadelphia in order to make the necessary minor changes in the Articles of Confederation to solve its deficiencies.

The catalyst event leading to the famous convention was Shays' Rebellion in rural Massachusetts in the fall of 1786. Massachusetts wound up paying more of the war's expenses than any other state - as much as Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland combined. Because of its Puritan sense of morality, the Massachusetts legislature was determined to pay back every cent of its war debt in real money, not in bogus depreciated paper. "A bargain's a bargain and must be made good," went the old Puritan saying. To do this, taxes were raised, which fell hardest on the rural subsistence farmer, such as Daniel Shays. He and about 3,000 armed men roamed the countryside, prevented the seating of some town courts, and generally frightened the people.

The rebellion was easily crushed by the Massachusetts militia and a volunteer force with minimal bloodshed. But the episode presented the impression that a condition of general anarchy was about to break out - a truly grave threat to private property. There was a sense that government was not doing an adequate job of either maintaining law and order or protecting people's legitimate business interests. Rumors, unfounded, circulated throughout the states that Shays' Rebellion was only the beginning, that indeed a second revolution was being planned. None of this was remotely true, but the fear that it might be true propelled Congress on February 21, 1787, to approve the Madison proposal that states send delegates to Philadelphia "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation," in order to "render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of government." Had the people been aware that the Constitutional Convention that convened in Philadelphia beginning in May 1787 was to produce an entirely new frame of government, there would have been no Constitutional Convention and no national constitution.

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