58 TWENTIETH CENTURY SCHOLARS exceptions, of course, but by and large the colonial governments were in the hands of the economic upper classes. Exceedingly conscious of its local rights, the ruling aristocracy was willing to use democratic arguments to defeat the centralizing policies of Great Britain, but it had no intention of widening the base of political power within the colonies to accord with the conclusions which could be, and were, drawn from those arguments. On the contrary, it had kept itself in power through the use of a number of political weapons. As wealth accumulated and concentrated along the coast, as the frontier moved westward and became debtor and alien in character, and as the propertyless element in the colonial towns grew larger, the owners of property demanded "a political interpretation of their favored position"- that is, po- litical supremacy - as a protection against the economic pro- grams of debtor agrarians and the town poor. Encouraged by the British government, they gradually secured the political safe- guards they demanded - property qualifications for participation in government and representation disproportionate to their num- bers. The imposition of property qualifications for the suffrage and of even higher qualifications for office effectively quelled the political ambitions of the greater part of the town population, and the denial of proportional representation to the newly settled areas prevented the growing West from capturing control of colo- nial governments. Laws of entail and primogeniture insured the economic basis of colonial society, so much so that Thomas Jeffer- son believed that their abolition in Virginia would annul the privileges of an "aristocracy of wealth.” But the economic-political aristocracy which Jefferson hoped to abolish had not always been characteristic of the American colonies. In early Virginia and Maryland every free man, whether holding a property or not, could vote. The first serious attempt to impose a property qualification for the suffrage came with the Restoration and it met with bitter opposition. One of the sig- nificant acts of Bacon's Assembly in 1676 was the abolition of the property qualification imposed by the Berkeley regime. But JENSEN: "THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION" 59 the victory of the poorer elements was short-lived at best, and in Virginia, as elsewhere in the colonies by the end of the seven- teenth century, the property qualification was an integral part of the political system. During the eighteenth century the tend- ency was in the direction of ever higher qualifications, and colo- nial assemblies continued to refuse adequate representation to the expanding West. By the middle of the century a small minor- ity of the colonial population wielded : economic and political powers which could not be taken from them by any legal means. This political oligarchy was able to ignore most of the popular demands, and when smoldering discontent did occasionally flare up in a violent outburst, it was forcibly suppressed. Thus democ- racy. was decreasingly a characteristic of constitutional develop- ment in the American colonies. Opposition to the oligarchical rule of the planters and mer- chants came from the agrarian and proletarian elements which formed the vast majority of the colonial population. Probably most of them were politically inert, but from their ranks never- theless came some of the effective leadership and much of the support for revolutionary activity after 1763. In the towns the poorer people, although a small part of the colonial population, far outnumbered the large property-owners. Most of them - laborers, artisans, and small tradesmen -- were dependent on the wealthy merchants, who ruled them economically and socially. Agrarian discontent, too, was the product of local developments: of exploitation by land speculators, "taxation without representa- tion," and the denial of political privileges, economic benefits, and military assistance. The farmer's desire for internal revolu- tion had already been violently expressed in Bacon's Rebellion and in the Regulator Movement, events widely separated in time but similar in cause and consequence. To a large extent, then, the party of colonial radicalism was composed of the masses in the towns and on the frontier. In Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston the radical par- ties were the foundation of the revolutionary movement in their 60 TWENTIETH CENTURY SCHOLARS towns and colonies. It was they who provided the organization for uniting the dispersed farming population, which had not the means of organizing, but which was more than ready to act and which became the bulwark of the Revolution once it had started. Located at the center of things, the town radicals were able to seize upon issues as they arose and to spread propaganda by means of circular letters, committees of correspondence, and provincial congresses. They brought to a focus forces that would otherwise have spent themselves in sporadic outbursts easily sup- pressed by the established order. inistering Colonial radicalism did not become effective until after the French and Indian War. Then, fostered by economic depression and aided by the bungling policy of Great Britain and the desire of the local governing classes for independence within the em- pire, it became united in an effort to throw off its local and inter- national bonds. The discontented were given an opportunity to express their discontent when the British government began to enforce restrictions upon the colonies after 1763. The colonial merchants used popular demonstrations to give point to their more orderly protests against such measures as the Stamp Act, and it was only a step from such riots, incited and controlled by the merchants, to the organization of radical parties bent on the redress of local grievances which were of far more concern to the masses than the more remote and less obvious effects of Brit- ish policy. Furthermore, there arose, in each of the colonies, lead- ers of more than ordinary ability, men who were able to create issues when none were furnished by Great Britain, and who seized on British acts as heaven-sent opportunities to attack the local aristocracy - too strongly entrenched to be overthrown on purely local issues - under the guise of a patriotic defense of American liberties. Thus, used as tools at first, the masses were soon united under capable leadership in what became as much a war against the colonial aristocracy as a war for independence. The American Revolution thus marks the ascendancy of the radicals of the colonies, for the first time effectively united. True, JENSEN: "THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION" 61 this radical ascendancy was of brief duration, but while it lasted an attempt was made to write democratic ideals and theories of government into the laws and constitutions of the American states. Fulfillment was not complete, for the past was strong and in some states the conservatives retained their power and even strengthened it. And once independence was won, the conserva- tives soon united in undoing, so far as they could, such political and economic democracy as had resulted from the war. Never- theless it is significant that the attempt at democratization was made and that it was born of colonial conditions. The participa- tion of the radicals in the creation of a common government is all-important, for they as well as the conservatives believed that a centralized government was essential to the maintenance of conservative rule. Naturally, the radicals who exercised so much power in 1776 refused to set up in the Articles of Confederation a government which would guarantee the position of the con- servative interests they sought to remove from power. The conservatives gradually became aware that internal revolu- tion might be the result of continued disputes between them- selves and Great Britain, but they were not agreed on the meas- ures necessary to retain both “home rule" and the ne rule" and the power to "rule at home.” Some of them, like Joseph Galloway, sought to tighten the bonds between the colonies and the mother country and thus to consolidate the power and bulwark the position of the colonial aristocracy. Other conservatives, like John Dickinson, denied that Parliament had any authority over the colonies and cared little for a close tie with the mother country; what they demanded was a status that was in effect home rule within the British Empire. Complete independence was to be avoided if possible, for it was fraught with the danger of social revolution within the colonies. As these men became aware that conservative rule had as much or more to fear from the people of the colonies as from British restrictions, they sought more and more for reconciliation with the mother country, in spite of her obvious intention to enforce her laws by means of arms. But they made the fatal yet unavoid- 62 - TWENTIETH CENTURY SCHOLARS able error of uniting with the radicals in meeting force with force. They made themselves believe that it was neither traitorous nor illegal to resist with arms the British measures they disliked. When independence could no longer be delayed, the conserva- tives were forced to choose between England and the United States. Some became "Tories," or "Loyalists." Others, the victims of circumstances partly of their own creation, fearfully and re- luctantly became revolutionists. But in so doing they did not throw away their ideals of government. They were too cool, too well versed in checkmating radicalism and in administering gov- ernments in their own interest, to be misled by the democratic propaganda of the radicals. Not even John Adams, one of the few conservatives who worked for independence, was willing to stomach the ideas of Tom Paine when it came to the task of forming governments within the American colonies. point of view The continued presence of groups of conservatives in all the states, weakened though they were by the Revolution, is of pro- found importance in the constitutional history of the United States. They appeared in strength in the first Continental Con- gress. In it their ideas and desires were expressed. They were still powerful at the beginning of the second Continental Con- gress, but gradually their hold was weakened by the growing revolutionary movement in the various states. They were strong enough, however, to obstruct the radical program during 1775 and to delay a declaration of independence in 1776 until long after the radicals believed that independence was an accom- plished fact. In the bitter controversies which occurred the con- servatives stated their ideas of government. In its simplest form their objection to independence was that it involved internal revolution. When forced to accept independence, they demanded the creation of a central government which would be a bulwark against internal revolution, which would aid the merchant classes, which would control Western lands, which would, in short, be a "national” government. In this they were opposed by the radicals, who created a "federal" government in the Articles of Confedera- JENSEN: "THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION 63 tion and who resisted the efforts of the conservatives to shape the character of those Articles while they were in process of writing and ratification. It is against such a background of internal conflict that the Articles of Confederation must be considered. Naturally any statement of the issues or principles of the Revolution, however broad the terminology, is likely to be misleading, for, as John Adams wrote, “the principles of the American Revolution may be said to have been as various as the thirteen states that went through it, and in some sense almost as diversified as the individ- uals who acted in it.” There are inconsistencies and contradictions that cannot be forced into a logical pattern. Generalizations must therefore be understood as statements of tendencies and of pre- sumed predominance rather than as unexceptionable statements of fact. Thus when the Revolution is interpreted ... as pre- dominantly an internal revolution carried on by the masses of the people against the local aristocracy, it is not without recognition of the fact that there were aristocratic revolutionists and pro- letarian loyalists; that probably the majority of the people were more or less indifferent to what was taking place; and that British policy after 1763 drove many conservatives into a war for inde- pendence. Any interpretation of the American Revolution is subject to such qualifications, discomforting as it is to those who want com- plexities reduced to simple formulas. Any collection of facts must, however, be grouped around a theme, and particularly is this true of a movement having so many aspects as the American Revolu- tion. Such grouping is unavoidable if one seeks to understand how the course of events, how the course of social revolution within the several states, often played a far more important role in determining political attitudes than did the more remote dan- gers of British policy. In spite of the paradoxes involved one may still maintain that the Revolution was essentially, though relatively, a democratic movement within the thirteen American colonies, and that its sig- Chron 64 TWENTIETH CENTURY SCHOLARS nificance for the political and constitutional history of the United States lay in its tendency to elevate the political and economic status of the majority of the people. ... The Articles of Confederation were the constitution of the United States from 1781 to 1789, when the Confederation Con- gress held its last session and turned over the government of the thirteen states to the new national government. The fact that the Articles of Confederation were supplanted by another constitu- tion is no proof either of their success or of their failure. Any valid opinion as to the merits of the Articles must be based on a detailed and unbiased study of the confederation period. Though no such comprehensive study has yet been made, it is possible to draw certain tentative conclusions by approaching the history of the period from the point of view of the American Revolution within the American states rather than from the point of view that the Constitution of 1787 was a necessity, the only alternative to chaos. An analysis of the disputes over the Articles of Confederation makes it plain that they were not the result of either ignorance or inexperience. On the contrary, they were a natural outcome of the revolutionary movement within the American colonies. The radical leaders of the opposition to Great Britain after 1765 had consistently denied the authority of any government superior to the legislatures of the several colonies. From 1774 on, the radicals continued to deny the authority of a superior legislature whether located across the seas or within the American states. The reitera- tion of the idea of the supremacy of the local legislatures, coupled with the social and psychological forces which led men to look upon "state sovereignty" as necessary to the attainment of the goals of the internal revolution, militated against the creation of such a centralized government as the conservative elements in American society desired. It can be said that the constitution which the radicals created, the Articles of Confederation, was a constitutional expression of the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence. JENSEN: "THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION" 57 took place in America during the revolt against Great Britain. Read this selection carefully and try to answer the following questions: 1. How does Jensen define the nature of the struggle that took place within America during the Revolution? 2. What kind of government and what kind of policies did the "radicals” want, according to Jensen? 3. What, according to Jensen, were the purposes of the "conservatives” in regard to the organization of the government for the Confederation? 4. Does Jensen's interpretation indicate that conflict was more important than consensus in the American Revolution? The American Revolution was far more than a war betwen the de ho perts ha Che American Revolution was far more than a war between the colonies and Great Britain; it was also a struggle between those who enjoyed political privileges and those who did not. Yet the conclusions which may be drawn from the history of social con- Alict within the colonies and applied to such matters of mutual concern as the writing of a common constitution are seldom drawn and applied. Ordinarily the Revolution is treated as the end of one age and the beginning of another; a new country was born; political parties sprang into being; political leaders, full of wisdom learned during the Revolution, sought to save the new nation from the results of ignorance and inexperience. So runs the story. 15. MERRILL JENSEN: "The Problem of Interpretation" very Professor Merrill Jensen of the University of Wisconsin has writ- ten a provocative analysis of the history of the Articles of Con- federation. He is particularly concerned to relate the constitu- tional questions which were raised in the debates over the Articles of Confederation to the political and social struggles of the Revolutionary period. The following selection is a good example of Professor Jensen's views about the "internal revolution" that • Reprinted with permission of the copyright owners, The Regents of the University of Wisconsin, from pp. 6-15, 239, of Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation (1959 edition), The University of Wisconsin Press. But the story is true only in an external sense. The basic social forces in colonial life were not eliminated by the Declaration of Independence. There was no break in the underlying conflict be- tween party and party representing fundamental divisions in American society. Those divisions had their roots in the foundation of the colonies, and by the middle of the eighteenth century there had arisen broad social groupings based on eco- nomic and political conditions. More and more, wealth and po- litical power were concentrated along the coast, in the hands of planters in the South and of merchants in the North. There were
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