further that end and to which they promised “all due
submission and obedience.” From the beginning, this
Puritan political thought was more democratic than
the British monarchy, from the Calvinist Christian the-
ology that held all individuals equal before God as
creatures of God. An early governor of Massachusetts,
John WINTHROP, described this Puritan ideal of a Christ-
ian commonwealth in his writings and speeches. He
saw the community as in a covenant with God, as
those covenants in the Bible between the Lord and his
people. As in the Old Testament covenants, the people
promise to live according to God’s law, and God, in
return, promises to bless and protect them. Governors,
then, covenant or contract with the people to rule
them justly, and citizens agree to obey and respect
them. Thus, Winthrop makes a distinction between
“natural LIBERTY,” which is the sinful human’s freedom
to do whatever he wants, and “moral liberty” which is
the individual’s freedom to follow God’s law and will
and be blessed. The government, for Puritans, must
only preserve that “moral liberty” because it leads to
peace, order and happiness; the natural liberty of sin-
ful humans leads to selfishness, crime, and destruc-
tion. For the Puritans, the devil is continually
tempting individuals to sin and trying to destroy the
Christian commonwealth, so vigilance and prayer are
continually necessary.
Puritan political thought dominated New England
through the 1600s and early 1700s, but by the time of
the American Revolution in 1776, it had been supple-
mented there and in other American colonies by other
political ideologies.
Scholars still debate the exact origins and ideals of
early American political thought, but general agree-
ment has settled on three main sources of that theory:
(1) Calvinist CHRISTIANITY; (2) the British liberalism of
John LOCKE; and (3) REPUBLICANISMthat is CLASSICAL.
Calvinist Christianity, like the New England Puritans,
also dominated the Presbyterian and Reformed
churches in the middle and southern American co-
lonies with its covenant theology, individualism, and
resistance to monarchy. The philosophical liberalism of
John Locke, with its belief that individuals possess nat-
ural rights (to life, liberty, and property) and form a
government through a SOCIAL CONTRACT, which is lim-
ited to protecting those rights, was popular in the
American colonies. Classical Republican ideas came
from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers (such as
ARISTOTLEand CICERO) and emphasized the virtue of
small democratic communities in which all citizens
helped in governing. All of these ideas contributed to
the case for the American Revolution against the
British Empire and national independence for the new
United States. Calvinist Christians feared the estab-
lished Church of England and Roman CATHOLIC
Church, Lockean liberalism portrayed the British Par-
liament and king as violating the rights of the Ameri-
can colonists, and classical Republican ideals saw the
empire as corrupt and immoral. The combination of
these ideologies united most Americans against Great
Britain (as, for example, expressed in Thomas JEFFER-
SON’s famous DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.)
After America won its independence from Great
Britain, the idea of the Revolutionary era found expres-
sion in conflicting views of the new U.S. government.
Two main parties emerged at this time, each with a dis-
tinct theory of democracy: The FEDERALISTS(such as
George Washington, James MADISON, and Alexander
HAMILTON) favored a strong national government over
the states to protect individual rights to private prop-
erty and to promote commercial development and mil-
itary power; the ANTIFEDERALISTS (such as Patrick
HENRY, Thomas Jefferson, and Samuel Adams) favored
a weaker central government, more politics at the state
level, and a continued agrarian economy. The Federal-
ists drew more from Calvinist ideas (with an emphasis
on human sin, requiring a federal system of limited,
divided power through constitutional CHECKS AND BAL-
ANCES) and the liberalism of John Locke, with its insis-
tence on central government’s role in protecting
individual rights against community encroachment.
Antifederalists drew more on classical Republican
ideals of small-scale democracies (STATES RIGHTS), com-
munity control over the individual, and suspicion of
strong central government. Both parties ended up
compromising to a certain extent, and American feder-
alism became a kind of blending of the two theories,
though Federalists continued somewhat in the
probusiness end of the later REPUBLICAN PARTYand the
Antifederalists were concerned with social equality
and community in the modern DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
The next great impetus for political thought in the
United States was the Civil War or War Between the
States (1861–65), which was seen by Northern ABOLI-
TIONISTS as over the issue of black slavery but by
Southerners as over states rights. Black ex-slave Fred-
erick DOUGLASSargued that the federal government had
a constitutional right (and duty) to end slavery in the
South legally; John C. CALHOUNinsisted, however, that
states held the ultimate authority over the matter andAmerican political thought 9http://www.ebook3000.com