The Forces in Conflict 149
With the Declaration of Independence, and the new constitutions which most
of the states gave themselves in 1776 and 1777, the revolutionary colonials began
to emerge from the anarchy that followed the collapse or withdrawal of British
power. They sought liberty, it need hardly be said; but they also sought authority, or
a new basis of order. A revolution, it has been wisely observed, is an unlawful
change in the conditions of lawfulness.^15 It repudiates the old definitions of rightful
authority, and drives away the men who have exercised it; but it creates new defini-
tions of the authority which it is a duty to obey, and puts new men in a position to
issue legitimate commands. The new lawfulness in America was embodied in the
new constitutions, which will be considered shortly. Meanwhile, what happened in
America was against the law.
The Revolution could be carried out, against British and loyal American opposi-
tion, only by the use of force. Its success “was impossible without a revolutionary
government which could enforce its will.”^16 Let us look simply at the case of New
Jersey. Late in 1776 the danger to the patriots became very pressing, as the British
pursued Washington’s army across the state. One of the New Jersey signers of the
Declaration of Independence was forced to recant; the man who had presided over
the convention which had proclaimed independence of the state went over to the
British. The state was full of open and hidden enemies of the new regime. Taxes
were neither levied nor collected with any regularity; the paper money which fi-
nanced the Revolution flooded the state, swollen by counterfeits that poured from
loyalist presses in New York. Prices soared; price controls were imposed, but were
generally ineffective. The new government had no means of enforcing its authority
except the thirteen county courts carried over from colonial times. These proved
ineffectual under conditions of civil war. Revolutionary leaders thereupon created a
Council of Safety as a temporary executive. Its twelve members were chosen by the
state legislature. They toured the state to arouse local patriots and speed up action
of the courts. They took the law into their own hands wherever they wished,
hunted out suspects, ordered arrests, exacted oaths of allegiance, punished evasion
of militia service, and instituted proceedings to confiscate the property of those
who openly joined the British. One member of this Council of Safety was William
Paterson, born in Ireland, son of a storekeeper. His career had been made by the
Revolution, during which he became attorney- general to the state. He became a
heated revolutionary, detesting more than all others, as he once said, that “perni-
cious class of men called moderates.” His position allowed him to buy confiscated
lands on advantageous terms; he became a well- to- do man. He lived to be a justice
of the United States Supreme Court, and a terror to democrats in the days of the
Alien and Sedition laws.
15 For a philosophical discussion, see P. Schrecker, Work and History: an Essay on the Structure of
Civilization (Princeton, 1948), 206: “In the political province, a revolution may accordingly be defined
as an unlawful change of the constitution, and since the constitution represents the established condi-
tions of lawfulness, the revolutionary event appears as an unlawful change of the very conditions of
lawfulness.”
16 R. C. Haskett, “Prosecuting the Revolution,” in American Historical Review, LIX (April 1954),
- In addition, for this paragraph, see Lundin, op. cit., and the unpublished doctoral dissertation on
William Paterson, by Mr. Haskett, in the Princeton University Library; also J. C. Miller, Crisis in
Freedom: the Alien and Sedition Acts (Boston, 1951), 108, 125.