148 Chapter VII
violence of mobs. Whether the British constitution really assured no taxation
without representation was, after all, uncertain. It was far more certain that the
British constitution secured a man against physical violence, against his having his
house plundered and wrecked by political adversaries, or against being tarred and
feathered for refusing to join a non- import agreement decided on by some unau-
thorized assembly which had no right to use force. As events unfolded, men took
sides, and Americans found themselves disputing with each other on a new sub-
ject, the attitude to be taken to British law.
What happened to Plymouth Rock offers a parable. The stone on which the
Pilgrims of 1620 had supposedly first set foot already enjoyed a local fame, as a
symbol of what was most ancient and natively American in the New World. In
1774 a party of patriots decided to use it as the base for a liberty pole. They tried to
haul it, with twenty oxen, from the shore to the town square. Under the strain, it
broke in two.^14
The Revolution: Democracy and Aristocracy
Fighting between the King’s troops and the people of Massachusetts began at Lex-
ington and Concord in April 1775. In the following December the British govern-
ment put the insurgent colonists outside the protection of the British crown. The
Americans were now in what they would call a state of nature, and what was in fact
a condition of anarchy. Lawful authority melted away. Governors, unable to control
their assemblies, undertook to disband them, only to see most of the members
continue to meet as unauthorized congresses or associations; or conventions of
counties, unknown to the law, chose delegates to such congresses for provinces as a
whole; or local people forcibly prevented the sitting of law courts, or the enforce-
ment of legal judgments by the sheriffs. Violence spread, militias formed, and the
Continental Congress called into existence a Continental army, placing General
George Washington in command.
In whose name were these armed men to act? To what civilian authority were
they to be subordinated? How could the courts be kept open, or normal court de-
cisions and police protection be carried out? If American ships, breaking the old
navigation system, should enter the ports of Europe, in whose name should they
appear? If diplomatic agents were sent to Versailles or the Hague, whom were they
to say that they represented? If aid was to be sought from France, would the French
give it for any purpose except to break up the British empire, and undo the British
victory of 1763? These practical needs, together with the inflaming of feeling
against England by war and bloodshed, and the extraordinary success of Thomas
Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, induced the Congress, more than a year after the
battle of Lexington, to announce the arrival of the United States of America
“among the powers of the earth,” able to do “all acts and things which independent
states may of right do.”
14 For this curious episode see W. F. Craven, The Legend of the Founding Fathers (N.Y., 1956), 32.