A History of the American People

Jefferson's achievement, in his tract, was to graft onto Locke's meritocratic structure two
themes which became the dominant leitmotifs of the Revolutionary struggle. The first was the
primacy of individual rights: The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.' Equally important was the placing of these rights within the context of Jefferson's deep and in a sense more fundamental commitment to popular sovereignty:From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within
itself the sovereign powers of legislation.' It was Jefferson's linking of popular sovereignty with
liberty, both rooted in a divine plan, and further legitimized by ancient practice and the English
tradition, which gave the American colonists such a strong, clear, and plausible conceptual basis
for their action. Neither the British government nor the American loyalists produced arguments
which had a fraction of this power. They could appeal to the law as it stood, and duty as they saw
it, but that was all. Just as the rebels won the media battle (in America) from the start, so they
rapidly won the ideological battle too.
But they had also to win the emotional battle-the war for men's hearts-before they could begin
the battle of bayonets. In the events leading up to the fighting, ordinary men and women in
America were roused by a number of factors. There was the desire for a republic-the
commitment to place each selfish and separate interest in the search for the res publica, the public thing,' the common good. Let us not underestimate this. It was strongly intuited by a great many people who could barely write their names. It was vaguely associated in their minds with the ancient virtue and honor of the Romans. When James Otis gave the address at the public funeral ofthe fallen' of the Boston Massacre, he wore a toga. And republicanism was a broad
concept-every man could put into it the political emotions he felt most keenly. But there was also
fear. The early 1770s were marked by recession throughout the English-speaking world. There
were poor crops in England in 1765-73, with a primitive cyclical downturn, 1770-6. A fall in
English purchasing-power hit American exports in most colonies, and this came on top of
economic disruption caused by boycotts. Exports from New England hit the 1765 high only
twice in the decade 1765-75, after many years of uninterrupted increases. Exports from Virginia
and Maryland fell below the 1765 high every year until 1775. There was distress in England,
which stiffened the resolve of parliament to make the Americans pay.' But there was profound unease among Americans that the exactions of the British government were bringing the good times-most colonists had never known anything else-to a close. There was another fear, and a more deep-rooted one. Next to religion, the concept of the rule of law was the biggest single force in creating the political civilization of the colonies. This was something they shared with all Englishmen. The law was not just necessary-essential to any civil society-it was noble. What happened in courts and assemblies on weekdays was the secular equivalent of what happened in church on Sundays. The rule of law in England, as Americans were taught in their schools, went back even beyond Magna Carta, to Anglo-Saxon times, to the laws of King Alfred and the Witanmagots, the ancient precursor of Massachusetts' Assembly and Virginia's House of Burgesses. William the Conqueror had attempted to impose what Lord Chief Justice Coke, the great early 17th-century authority on the law, had calledThe Norman Yoke.'
But he had been frustrated. So, in time, had Charles I been frustrated, when he tried to reimpose
it, by the Long Parliament. Now, in its arrogance and complacency, the English parliament,
forgetting the lessons of the past, was trying to impose the Norman Yoke on free-born
Americans, to take away their cherished rule of law and undermine the rights they enjoyed under
it with as much justice as any Englishman! Lord North would have been astonished to learn he
was doing any such thing, but no matter: that is what many, most, Americans believed. So