In Our Time - Washington and the American Revolution

Episode Date: June 24, 2004

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the first President of the US, George Washington, and the people and ideas that caused the American Revolution. In 1774 a tobacco farmer from Virginia with nice manners and a quiet lifestyle was moved to put himself forward as the military leader of the most massive rebellion the British Empire had ever suffered. George Washington had been a stout upholder of the status quo, regularly lending money to his ne’r-do-well neighbour simply to keep him in the plantation to which he had become accustomed. He even wrote a book on how to behave properly in polite society.What drove mild mannered George Washington to revolution? Washington may have been a moral man, but by anyone’s account he was no scholar, so who provided the intellectual inspiration behind that grandest of Enlightenment documents, the American Constitution. With Carol Berkin, Professor of History at The City University of New York; Simon Middleton, Lecturer in American History at the University of East Anglia; and Colin Bonwick, Professor Emeritus in American History at Keele University.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In 1774, a wheat farmer from Virginia with refined manners and acquired lifestyle was moved to put himself forward as the military leader of the most massive rebellion the British Empire had ever suffered.

George Washington had been a stout upholder of the status quo, regularly lending money to his near-do-well neighbour simply in order to keep him in the plantation to which he'd become accustomed. He even wrote himself a book on how to behave properly in polite society. What drove him to revolution? Washington may have been a moral man that by anyone's account he was no scholar, yet the American Constitution is one of the great Enlightenment documents

who provided its intellectual inspiration, inspiration, and where does that come from? With me to discuss George Washington and the American Revolution is Carol Birkin, Professor of History at the City University of New York, and author of A Brilliant Solution, Inventing the American Constitution. Colin Bonnewick, Professor Emeritus in American History at Keel University, and Simon Middleton, lecturer in American history at the University of East Anglia. Carol Berkin, let's start with events that led up to the American Revolution.

There were 13 states in continental America that participated in the war. how far was, how was their governance organized prior to the revolution? Well, they were colonies of the king prior to the revolution. Their governments varied, but by the eve of the American Revolution, they were really relatively similar. And I think the key point is that the local assemblies, the representative assemblies, local men who were chosen by local voters, came to see themselves, had come to see themselves,

as many parliaments, that is, as the real government, of the colony, not the governor, not the council. And I think much of the conflict that ensued after the French and Indian War comes from their notion that they had the right to make the laws for their colony. The French Indian War, the dates of that way? 1754 to 1763. And that is the, in America, it's called the Great War for Empire between France and England. And this is what really leads to a regal organization of,

the British governance policy toward the colonies, and this is when the conflict occurs. We're talking about 13 colonists. Do they owe each of the most direct allegiance to London, as I go to the British Republic? So we're not talking about United States. Not at all. Not at all.

And this is one of, I think, the hardest things for my students to grasp is that people thought of themselves as Marylanders, as Virginians, as Connecticut men, And in fact, when George Washington asks the New Jersey troops during the American Revolution to swear allegiance to the United States, they say, no, my country is New Jersey. And so you really have to think of them as 13 very separate entities that have developed the same kind of governance structure, almost organically. I mean, it just arises. But they are in no way think of themselves as American. The first time they brought together was in 1774 for a continental Congress.

What triggered that event? The Boston Tea Party, where Americans destroy private property, which is a very distressing experience for the British, and they close the port of Boston and say, until you pay the money back to the East India Tea Company, you cannot engage in trade. Then they call a continental Congress. And this is the beginning of this kind of cooperation of these 13.

colonies soon to be states. And it's prompted by British policy. I mean, in a way, the British drive the Americans into cooperation. Those these 13 colonies into cooperation. Yes, yes. In 64 and 74. Simon Middleton, Boston, in those days, was a very long way from George Washington's plantation in Virginia. What was going on that would make a farmer who would probably rather regard himself as English, who had fought alongside the British and the French in the French and Indian War who wanted a commission in the British Army, what drove him to offer his services as a military leader against King George III? I think in order to understand George Washington's motivation, we've got to look at what he did

between the periods in which he was engaged in military activities in the French Indian War and then as a great leader of the Continental Army. And what he did between those two periods was concentrate on tobacco farming in Virginia. And it's the nature of tobacco production and the nature of the economy surrounding tobacco, I think that provides the best explanation for Washington and men of his ilk and why they get involved in the revolution. Tobacco is a crop which encourages a kind of culture around it because the people who plant it and grow it share many things. They share the difficulties of producing the leaf, which is very difficult to do. They share the economic relationships

with the merchants in London who they supply the tobacco too. And it's out of the commitment to tobacco, where the standard of the leaf that the man produces, can become identified as part of his reputation. They get very invested in this crop and a collapse of the tobacco market in the 1760s and early 1770s that Washington's motivation and people like him come. But I think the insight that we have is that the guys in London who Washington ships his crop to are basically financiers. But in the world of Virginia tobacco growing, they call them friends. They call these merchants in London friends.

And in many ways they were, when they sent their kids to London to school or to visit, their contacts in London who brought their crop would also look after their children and so forth. But at the end of the day, it was a commercial relationship. And the war debts that Carol just spoke about after the French and Indian War caused a serious contraction in the credit around the empire in the 1760s and 70s. And it's a consequence of that that these supposedly, quote-unquote, friends in London begin to call in Washington's notes and begin to refuse to extend the crime of credit that they have done

up until that point. When this happens to a single person on a single plantation, it causes them immediate distress. But when they go to the House of Burgesses in Virginia to meet and discuss policy, or they go to sit as members of the court or at a militia gathering, and they get talking to each other. And they found out that all these merchants in London are doing it to all of their neighbours as well.

That's when they begin to fear there's something else going on behind this. They begin to worry about conspiracies, and they begin to worry about plots to try and, you know, to deprive them of their liberties. And it's out of that experience that Washington becomes a revolutionary. Just to clarify two things. I introduced Washington as a wheat farmer

because he was a failure as a tobacco farmer. And he made more of a living as a wheat farmer. So I gave him the benefit of the wheat in that one. And secondly, when we're talking about the continental army, we're talking to people about the American army. After the second Congress in 75. Do you agree then with the... Which was suggested by Carole,

the strange thing about the stamp duty in 64 is that it didn't lead to revolution. The general theory is punitive taxes from London on these lusty growths of British persons over 3,000 miles away across the sea and then more than that way inland led to the revolution. Now, what about the punitive taxation theory? It seems a long way, a bit of a long way after the stamp duty, doesn't it? Long time after it. That's the problem that people have had

trying to explain the motivation for the revolution. Because I don't think it's the taxes in and of themselves. It's not the monetary value of the taxation because actually they weren't that punitive. And this is the problem that the English legislators had. The Sugar Act in 1764 actually I think reduces the duty on molasses. But what it does is it enforces it more strictly and it cuts down on the smugglers

because people had always evaded the taxes. It's more what the taxes represent as an act. authority, an act which is considered arbitrary. And I think the explanation we can maybe get into this a little bit later is the nature of Republican political theory. Because the argument that these people had gotten used to governing themselves and then suddenly there was this very kind of ham-fisted government policy which people were not happy about paying these taxes doesn't really explain, as you've raised yourself, the timing of the

revolution. Why is it 1776 and not 1764? Indeed, you know, Americans had complained about duties and about regulations of their trade for 100 years or more, but they submitted to it. What is it about the 1760s and 1770s that leads to this break, this seizure in the imperial relationship? And I think it's to do with the ways in which those taxes are, the framework they're placed within is a Republican framework. And that Republican framework tells Americans to be very worried about arbitrary power, to suspect conspiracy, to look for tyranny. and it's that that impels them into revolution. Well, we're certainly going to come in on that,

but just to take the story forward, Colin Balmwick, hostilities break-eyed at Lexington and Concord, the shot that rang around the world in 1775. Can you just tell our listeners what happened there and how this thing began, as it were, this revolution began? Yes, indeed. The Continental Congress in 1774 had enacted what they called an association,

which is essentially a protest movement, and that developed through, a network of committees throughout the 13 colonies and in the winter of 74-75 in Massachusetts in particular the local members of the committee began collecting arms with a view

to resisting if necessary by force and the British work comparably to that and there is a British governor who is also a military man General Gage in Boston and then in the early months of 75

it really simply drifts onwards. And General Gage sends out a party to capture what he believes correctly, in fact, to be a store of armaments in Concord. The American militias, who are still only local farmers, really, prepare to protect their stores. And in the course of events the British Party goes out in the early morning and they bump into a small group of militiamen on Lexington Green. They call it a battle, and indeed the shot did fire throughout the world.

But in a trivial event, the British simply push them up the side and go on to Concord. And it's there that the real determining battle takes place a little later in the same day because the British are prevented from getting the armaments. They are forced back into Boston. they suffer significant casualties and from that point on, once they're bottled up in Boston. Can I ask you at this stage, Conn-Bonwick,

I've read that at this stage you have about a third of the people, roughly, who are four at this fight, as it were, a third who were really against it and a third who are indifferent. When did it begin, when did the colonists and colonists

begin to think we are fighting for independent, because you use the word drift, which I think is a very good word from what I've read. It drifts on for quite a few months, doesn't it? It isn't as if we will rise up, we will storm this or storm that. There's this brush on Lexington Green. There's this sort of... We're talking about, can you just take us through the next 14 months? Yes, it is a drifting process,

and you can look at the correspondence of virtually all the mega figures who survive, and they're all saying at the beginning of that 14 months, This is a problem that we can resolve within the context of the British Empire to which we are committed, providing, of course, our interest, and in particular what we see as our political rights are safeguarded. Then you can follow them through the late months of 75 onwards into the beginning of 76, and you see them slowly one after the other beginning to change their minds. And one of the things that crystallizes that is the point.

publication of Thomas Paine's common sense in January of 76. Now this is a brilliant piece of writing. It's absolutely sparkling piece of literature as well as a political propaganda. And it persuades

a lot of people. Even extremely conservative Virginia gentlemen like Carter Braxton is persuaded by common sense. That it is necessary to declare independence. He destroys the argument that the American colonies owe allegiance to the crown. Can we talk briefly, Carl, about the people who drafted this great declaration,

a minute, one or two of them. Who was in their drafting? Where did they come from? Well, actually, independence is declared when Richard Henry Lee stands up and passes a motion and says, we are independent and they vote yes. And then they decide they have to have a public declaration about this. They're highly legalistic. They want to state the reasons why it is justifiable that they make this revolution. And most people, they appoint a committee, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams. There's someone else on the committee. And everybody says, you write it, you write it. And they finally tell Thomas Jefferson, who's the junior member of the committee from Virginia

to write the declaration. Partly because they want to tie Virginia to this revolution. Where did it come? Why did this idea, the ideas in it come from? Well, it has two parts. The first part which most Americans think is the important part, the preamble, that says basically people have a right to overthrow a government that has been unjust to them,

that we are created equal. This was actually boiling. plate. That was not the important part of the declaration to them. To them, the important part of the declaration were the statements that said, this is what the king is done that justifies us breaking the contract with him. It's a very John Lockhean notion that the governed and the governors have a contract with one another, and when the governors don't govern in the interest of the people, the people have a right to rebel. And so they list scores of things in theory the king has done that proves he's a tyrant.

And that was the part that mattered to them because to justify a revolution against your legitimate king, your ruler, they had to persuade the American people who were, after all, going to fight the war. These men were the leaders. They weren't Washington accepted going to fight. So that's the part of the declaration that matters.

Let's go back to this great preamble, Simon Middleton. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is a declaration which comes out of a classical education, really, doesn't it? I mean, you can't put Hobbes, Locke, but back to Cicero and so on. So can you just give us some of the intellectual background to that? And we're talking about some scholars, the people you've mentioned, Carl, I mean, Jefferson, so on.

They admire the republic, the idea of the great Roman Republic. There's been considered... It's part of the Enlightenment, because of it. in Britain at the same time, we're going back to Rome. They're looking at Roman virtues. We're getting our ideas directly from British riders. There is a kind of Pan-Atlantic and light on the Atlantic. Absolutely. Absolutely. It crosses the Atlantic.

And one of the nicest symbols of that is that the transit of Venus, which crossed the sun in 1769, was observed not only by Captain Cook and Tahiti on behalf of the British, but it was also observed by David Rittenhouse in Philadelphia and Joseph Brown in Providence. Rhode Island, there is an enormous sense of the enlightenment of being a cultural world which crosses the Atlantic. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what they, I mean, people like Jefferson and even people like Payne weren't saying anything that was highly original. It was all borrowed and picked up from European thinkers, particularly English thinkers.

There is a tension, though, I think within the Declaration of Independence and actually within the whole period, around the themes of individualism and collectivism. And I think that scholars have argued back and forth over whether the Declaration of Independence is purely a Lockean document concerned with individual rights and the protection of them or whether there aren't also strains of Scottish Enlightenment, people like Francis Hutchinson and Cain and Smith,

and a sense in which a man as a moral being has a sense and a faculty to distinguish between good and evil and virtue and corruption and so forth. And that's why that much store has been put by the claim that, by the sentence, by the use of pursuit of happiness rather than protection of property. Because the introduction of this notion of pursuit of happiness and that this is something that the government should be judged by, whether or not its people are happy, it seemed to be a theme within more of the Scottish Enlightenment than the English Enlightenment of the late 17th century. And I think it's a bit of a stretch, frankly, and I think that not to try and argue lock out of the Declaration independence is mostly a fruitless exercise. It's interesting this swirl, isn't it?

because it's not just, we're talking about London, Edinburgh, we're talking about Virginia, in America, we're talking about Paris as well, this great swirl of similar ideas going around. And they're driven by the Enlightenment notion, they're driven by going back to a republican idea, in the sense of what they envisaged slightly ideologically as the great Roman republic.

Yes, I think they do. And what they certainly mean about a republic is a great deal more than simply a system without a king. And there is, I think, a battle going on here between two intellectual traditions, each of which of course derives from

classical origins in the world of Greece and Rome, and it is the tradition of what they call classical republicanism, which stretches the importance of community as the context within which men exist.

As a citizen, a man as a citizen with duties as well as right, and in particular the duty to place the interests of the corporate community over the private individual interests of the individual citizen. Can I use that as an introduction, to bring Washington back into it now,

Colin Bonwick. The idea he was very much of that nature and he would not be paid for the presidency. He was a man who served, although he loved being at Mount Vernon and on his farm, he would, Cincinnati, he liked the, farmer in Roman times who would pack up his bags and go and serve his country.

That idea of you... Can we say a little more about Washington as a military leader, as a man, how did these ideas come to him? Because the impression that one gets is that he was not a man of these sort of ideas. He went along with them. He probably liked to talk about them. But they didn't infect him like they didn't say Jefferson. He was not a man who speculated, at least not on paper, about intellectual ideas. Washington was a planter. He was also a man who was interested in military affairs.

He'd been a colonel of militia he'd shared in British campaigns during the seven years war. In fact, at one point, he was desperate for a commission in the British Army, which he was denied. That was a mistake. That was a terrible mistake. Depends on the Atlantic era of course. Although Gates and Arnold were better generals, so they probably might still have won the war with Gates and Arnold. Exactly. And with the French. Don't forget the French. Let's stick to Washington from.

He was a man well chosen because he represented Virginia, tied Virginia in. Virginia was important because it was very rich. It's very rich. It's by far the largest state. And the largest. And so if you had a southerner coming north to the end, then it made it feel as if it were a sort of hand. The 13 colonies were uniting by that fact alone. Virginia in the 18th century was far more important relative.

of the other states than even California or New York are now. And Washington had some limited military experience. He was chosen to represent Virginia. It turned out to be a good choice because although he made some catastrophic mistakes in the early months of the war, he was able to learn from his experience. And in particular, what he learned

was as long as he kept his continental army intact in existence, the revolution. would survive. I think Washington was famous for being a micro-manager, above all else. I mean, I read somewhere recently that there are 25 volumes of wartime correspondence. I mean, you think the war has only lasted for five years. I mean, he was constantly writing to Congress and constantly managing the relationship between the military and the civil, constantly responding to complaints and then by the 1778 mutinies and then these kinds of problems, defending himself from other officers

who there was a plot even to oust him after the loss of New York. And it comes back to really, I mean, we've got to try and not think of this. I mean, earlier on we were talking about, when did the colonists become united behind the cause? I don't think they ever became united behind the cause. One of the shibbolists of 18th century American history with regard to the revolution is that this was a war for who should rule at home as well as home rule. This was a war that was fought between Americans, between families. And it was a war in which many people, it was a kind of passing thing. The armies would pass through your neighborhood and maybe you would become embroiled in this struggle for a period of months.

but then it would be happening in the south or in the north. So there's never really a great collective struggle that unites. Well, there's always the standard story about the farmers who had a British flag and an American flag. When the British Army marched through, they put rang up, and they sold crops and horses to anybody who would pay. The key about the American Revolution is it was an actual civil war in the South. In the Carolinas, this was a brutal war between backcountry farmers who felt oppressed by the time.

tidewater planters in exactly the same way that the tidewater planters were describing themselves as oppressed by the British government. Brutal fighting between South Carolinians where atrocities of war were committed that were just extraordinary. So this wasn't involved the British at all. It didn't involve British at all. Wars like this unleash or release an enormous number of longstanding conflicts and tensions. And yet Yorktown, that's where we have the victory of Washington

with this overwhelming number of French and so on. There are certain things about Washington, I cannot tell a lie, refusing fears. Never said. This is all rubbish, is it? But what sort of person, can we just have an accurate character study in a thumbnail sketch of his character? Well, he was physically an extremely large man, and he was said to be a superb horseman. He was, of course, a rich man,

but he also had an enormous sense of his own self-worth a great sense of gravitas. It said that one rather daring, originally New Yorker, Governor Morris, for a bet, said he would go up to Washington and slap him on the back. Well, he did. Washington fixed him with such a ferocious stare

that Governor Morris virtually disappeared through the floor. No, he was a very essential man precisely because he had, he'd managed to keep the Continental Army intact. He'd been responsible more than anyone else for victory in this extremely long, and also I think worth saying, uncertain war. And he represented the richest and the largest, the most important state. So that when you get to a proposal to reconsider the structure of the federal government, Washington really is the only possible man to elect as president under the new regime.

There's still this fascination that ideas are working inside this quite deeply, the ideas of good governance, the ideas which come from the American European Enlightenment and going back to, and we're not really talking about democracy. Not at all. Not at all. Not. People think American Revolution and Democracy, all man equal a way we get. We're not talking about that.

Not at all. Not at all. Not yet. It's a process of becoming. It's a process of becoming democratic. But it's a representative government thereafter, aren't they? Yes. People can be on juries, but people can't be judges.

Absolutely. That is a sharp distinction that they have common sense to make judgments, but they don't have the intellectual capacity in the experience to be judges. So we're not talking about it. They thought, Democracy was the equivalent of mob rule. They believe very firmly that if you didn't have anything to risk, you should not make decisions. The old stake in society, which was an English notion, that men of property, men who had something to risk, would judge wisely.

But what makes Washington, I think, so much a representative of this Republican virtue notion is he believed that the decisions you made as the governors, must be for the welfare of the people. And so that's, you had to place your trust, in essence, in this idea that men who govern would govern for the people, for the common wheel. It's back to the platonic idea of wise men running. Yeah, many of the men at the Constitutional Convention wanted to Senate for life so that these men would be above strife and above electoral politics. And they would, and the assumption was then that they would be wiser and more judicious

in their judgment. And then they became concerned, well, maybe they won't, because look what happened to all the republics. The lessons of history were very clear that all republics eventually degenerate into tyrannies of some sort. This tension is never resolved. And when you read the records of the Constitutional Convention, this belief that you had to empower virtuous men to govern wisely, but you had to watch them constantly and check. their power constantly. That's the essence of the constitutional convention. I think one of the stories of the American Revolution is a kind of collapse of idealism. I think they start out in way more idealistic terms and there is a commitment, especially amongst the ruling class, that this men of virtue will work out. But then it's when George Washington is trying to get the money to feed and clothe the Continental Army and the men of virtue in Massachusetts won't pay up or the men of virtue in South Carolina. They realize that in fact, this is, you know, this is not going to work out. And this is when the liberal

themes, the themes of individualism and the theme and the theme and the men of, and the men of You could say one of the greatest insights in terms of political theory that comes out of America Revolution is Madison's Federalist 10, Madison's argument that, in fact, it's fruitless to try and build a body politic and based on the supposition of harmony, and that virtuous men will rule in the interest groups will not assert themselves. We have to develop a political structure which recognizes and in fact embraces faction and interest and uses them against each other to balance off their ill effects. Thank you very much, dear Carol Birkin, Simon Middleton and Colin Bonnewick. We're off the air now until September, and the meantime there's a quiz on our website, and we're thinking of kicking off next season with The Origins of Life.

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