Key Principles of the American Revolution

Kerry Sautner, I'm going to begin recording. Welcome everybody. Excited to have you in class today. I'm Kerry Sautner. I'm the Chief Learning Officer at the National Constitution Center and I'm here with one of our top scholars, Tom Donnelly. Tom, you want to say hi to everybody? Tom Donnelly, Hey everyone, great to see you. Kerry Sautner, Tom and I are unbelievably excited about today's class because it's all about the principles of the American Revolution. We're going to look at those principles. What were the big ideas that kind of powered and energized the American Revolution? And then how did they help to frame what came next, you know, over a decade next, with the Constitution next? So we'll look not just at the battles and the acts and the massacres of the revolution, but really those guiding principles, because that's what we think is really important to hold on to. And it helps us understand how our government is structured today. So Tom, does that sound like a good general game plan to dive into the principles, figure out how to do that? how, where they came from, how they work with us during the revolution, and then how we explore them today. Sounds perfect. Awesome. So let's get officially started. And everybody, as we go through class today, please remember, we love questions, clarifying questions, shares in the chat box, share ideas with each other, or just questions to really understand or to see where we're going next. So we always have big framing questions around our classes. There's a lot of factors. What factors brought us to the American Revolution? But let's begin with those three big principles, understanding what they are, and then we can dive into the time period and say, how did they influence the revolution? Tom, can you walk us through these three big ideas? Thomas Donnelly Absolutely. Yeah. These are the three big principles of the American Revolution. Part of what we're trying to answer, the question that we're trying to answer in class today is, why did we declare independence? Why did we? fight a revolution. With these principles, we're trying to explain to you really what, as a matter of principle, the revolutionaries were fighting for. Let's dig into each of these principles. Let's first give maybe quick definitions, Kerry, and then a little bit about each. Does that sound good? Kerry Sautner-Love definitions. Jeffrey Rosenman, Jr.: Great. Let's start with popular sovereignty, which is one of my favorites. The big idea here is that the most legitimate form of constitutional government is a government driven by us, not a king, not an aristocracy, not the few, not the elite. but by us, the people. So that's popular sovereignty, big idea number one. Big idea number two is natural rights. And so this is the idea that these are rights that are given by God or by nature and thus come not from any law passed by government. These aren't rights that come from government, but they're inherent to all human beings from birth. So we get them simply from being born, not from a government, not from anyone else. So that's natural rights. The third big idea is the rule of law, which the rule of law is the basic idea here that we have a government of laws, not a government by man or by arbitrary rule. The big idea really is that no one is above the law. So that's popular sovereignty, natural rights, rule of law. Let's say a little bit about each and then we'll move to the revolution itself and try to really give good examples and give life to each of these ideas. So starting with popular sovereignty, what do we mean by that? Well, the simplest way to think about it is think of the opening words of the Constitution, we the people. So generally speaking, when we talk about popular sovereignty, we're talking about rule by the people. And the idea that ultimate power, ultimate authority rests not with the government itself, but by the people themselves. So even if we think of our government today, it's that the president, Congress, the courts, they're all limited by this idea. We the people are their boss, and they work for us. So that's popular sovereignty. And the thing to remember is that this is an idea that's a key engine throughout American history. It's throughout American history. It's really from the founding all the way through. And it's a source of the Constitution's legitimacy. So at its core, really, is this idea that over time, all power derives from the people. And as a result, the people have the power to alter or abolish their government as they see fit, whether it's in the face of tyranny. So we'll talk a bit about King George III and the British Empire today, but also just over time when they see something wrong with the Constitution or the country. So this could be big changes like revolution or a new constitution or even small changes like new laws or constitutional amendments, but that's popular sovereignty. I'll pause there, Kerry. That's great. So when we think about, you know, having an argument and defending your case, just like John Adams did in that case that we were talking about earlier, or what... students are asked to do in class all the time, like, give us the reasons for your argument. This is one of the reasons for an argument to break off with the British Empire, that popular sovereignty, the people have the right. to alter, to abolish, to change, and to blow up our government when we see fit. And I love that idea that it's government by us and for us. So anything from a revolution, or I love this image of women protesting and marching and calling for the right to vote. So they're just amending the Constitution, but they're calling on that same idea that we have power and voice in our government. We the people. So great. So that's one of the big, like, founding arguments of the revolution is standing on. It's three strong arguments that hold it up. The next one is always my favorite, and you're going to go into more detail, natural rights. Talk about my favorite one. Yeah, so natural rights, this is again the idea that there are rights that come from God or nature, not from government. And see, these are rights you get for just being a human being, for being born. Where does this idea come from? Well, intellectually, it most famously comes from John Locke's Second Treatise and the idea of a social... contract. So Locke takes us from a state of nature to a political society with a government. He discusses the social contract, but that's just a fancy way of saying in the beginning, the people have the power and then the people that give part of that power up to the government. And so they make an agreement. And so as they do that, there are certain things, there are certain rights that are alienable. These are rights and powers that you can give to the government. Sort of the classic example here is the right to self-defense. So what we do when we create a government is I give away to the government my right to self-defense. The government then takes on a duty to protect me and the rest of us. So once we have a government, I can't just take the law into my own hands. I can't just use violence against someone who does something wrong to me. Instead, it's the government's job to keep us safe and to protect us. So that's the bargain that's made in the social contract. But the idea of natural rights is that there are certain rights that we simply can't surrender to government. These are rights that are unalienable or inalienable. And so here the classic example is the right of conscience. And so the idea is that because my religious beliefs or my lack of religious beliefs are the product of my reason, I'm not able to give them up. So we have a right and duty to make up our own minds about matters of conscience. And at the same time, the founders also believed deeply, as we've already said, in our right to alter. or abolish government. This is another natural right that they thought we had. And this shouldn't be a surprise because we're a nation that's born in revolution. And the whole point of the social contract is to promote the happiness and security of the people. And so when the government doesn't keep up its end of the bargain, we then have a right to alter or abolish it, either changing it into a new constitution, as we did once after the revolution, or even fighting a revolution itself. That's okay. That's great. And, you know, for the students, you can start to see these things are connected. So the popular sovereignty, natural rights, they're connected. So you always have that power to be able to pull back the contract. So when Tom was talking about a state of nature, he literally was saying like, okay, we're in the middle of the woods all by ourselves. And life is really tough and hard. But if we come together and create a government, we have more liberty, we have more freedoms in some ways, and we have more safety and security. But then we have to make a deal. with each other about what powers we're going to give the government. It literally is like a deal shake, like a handshake. That's that social contract. And so that social contract should work. And if it doesn't, we can go back to popular sovereignty and pull that ripcord and make it change things. So they're very closely connected. And now as we were thinking about how are the founding generation saying this is why we can have a revolution against the largest superpower at the time, that's what they're basing their argument off of. first popular sovereignty, now natural rights under the social contract theory, connecting those together. And one more thing, Tom, one more really strong thing that kind of brings it home and says, you're not following the rules. You're not doing what's right. So can you walk us through that last part, rule of law? Yeah. So rule of law, again, it's the basic idea that we have a government of laws, not a government by man or by arbitrary rule. The idea that no one is above the law. Recently, Justice Neil Gorsuch gave us a great example of the rule of law, or rather when the rule of law is violated in a class that he did for the National Constitution Center. He gave the classic example of the Roman Emperor Caligula. What did Caligula do? Caligula wrote the law down, wrote it in very small print, and put it all the way way up high where no one can see it. The emperor was able to say, we have law. I wrote it down. I published it. It's out there for everyone to see. But as a practical matter, no one had access to the law. No one knew how to comply with it. No one could actually see it because it was up so high. And no one knew when they'd be punished. No one knew how to follow the rule of law. And that's a classic example of when the rule of law itself is violated. Anyone could be punished for anything. It's all up to one person in that case. It's the emperor. It's up to the emperor's whim. There's no process. no fairness, no equality, no requirement to follow reason, just the whims of that one person. And so what we learned from this story is that to satisfy the rule of law, laws should be knowable by the people. They should be possible to understand, possible to follow. They should treat people equally and fairly, and they should provide advanced notice of what's expected. And so to satisfy the rule of law too, government officials themselves must also be accountable to the law. So those are the three big principles, Carrie, popular sovereignty, natural rights, and the rule of law. And I love it. And I think that's so important. And I love every time we talk about rule of law, we talk about the word arbitrary. You know, things can't be arbitrary. They can't be uneven, unfair. They have to be clear, direct, and consistent that you know that it's coming. Just like when we have school or class that we have the same classes every day, we have consistency. So all three of those kind of big pillars hold up. the reasoning behind why the colonists said, we're going to break away with you. We're going to have the biggest breakup ever in world history. And they wrote some of those ideas down. And we talk about this so often, but we never put those lenses on it. So do you want to dive into how they wrote it down and where we can see some of these ideas bubble up in the Declaration? Absolutely. So, yeah, the Declaration of Independence, it's the formal declaration by Congress that the United States is an independent nation. And so it brings up a lot of different specific complaints about the king in parliament, which we'll talk about later in the class. But also it says some big things about our three big principles, popular sovereignty, natural rights and the rule of law. And perhaps it's best to just walk through those famous passages that open the declaration just to get a sense of where these ideas are found. So here are the key words here. They hear the. maybe the most famous passage in all of American history. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Here we see a powerful vision of natural rights. We are born free and equal. We get our rights from God. We get them just for being us, just for being born. And these rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's the first key passage. Let's go to the next one. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed. Here we see a powerful vision of popular sovereignty tied to the social contract that Kerry was talking about earlier. We give up certain rights, we give up certain powers to the government, and the government agrees to protect us. Now, the next big passage here, Kerry, is that-Kerry Sautner You were in a role. I didn't want to break you off. Jeffrey Rosen I wanted to hop in or not. Sorry for the awkward silence. Kerry Sautner I was like, you go. Jeffrey Rosen Let's go to this last passage here and then we can pause. But that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to then shall seem most likely to affect. their safety and happiness, and everything is in there packed into this passage. We see the rule of law. In other words, we made an agreement with the government. The government agrees to keep us safe, to protect our lives, our liberty, and our happiness. And again, we see popular sovereignty and their ultimate power lies with we, the people. If the government breaks that agreement that we made, we can take the power back. And then finally, we see natural rights. What's the most fundamental natural right of all? The right of revolution. the right to alter or abolish a government that doesn't promote our safety and happiness, the right to form a new government. So it's all in there in those famous passages, all three principles, popular sovereignty, natural rights, and the rule of law. And I love this. And students, if you're in the class or you're at home and teachers, you can highlight these and like rule of law is yellow and natural rights is blue and popular sovereignty is pink. And you can literally see the words connecting the dots and how they weave them together. shared in the chat this great quote, and it's perfect for rule of law. It's from John Adams, a government of laws, not of men. So the idea that they stand consistent no matter who's in charge, no matter who they're applying to. There's consistency and expectations that they will be for all of us. So I love this kind of big ideas. We're really talking about how they built this argument to say, how are we going to break up with England? We're going to go through a revolution and why we're right. They were trying to prove why they were right on this. But the thing that always blows me away, Tom, is they went from being British to being revolutionaries, creating an insurrection and blowing it up with these great principles in under two decades. right? It's really quick. It's 15 years from when King George III becomes king. So how does it go so wrong so fast is really my question. You know, we get King George, we'll start with him, but like, how does it really fall apart this quickly? And, you know, make such huge, talk about, I know, you know, Akil's going to be with us on Friday, but like, this feels like a Big Bang moment. I know the Big Bang takes 15 years. But it's a big bang moment for us, at least. Yeah, absolutely. If you want a great new account of the American Revolution, I strongly recommend Akhil Rita Mar's, the words that made us his chapters in the revolution are really just a terrifically capture the constitutional arguments that drove the push to independence. What I love about the book is it does begin with King George III, and King George III becoming king on December 27th, 1760. It's a reminder that For the American colonists, they were thrilled. They loved their king. They were proud British subjects. They thought that the British constitution was the best in the world, that they were the freest and most prosperous people in all the land. And so they felt just as English as people, you know, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. At the same time, if you were to ask the king, the royal officials, parliament, what do you think about the American colonists in 1760? They'd probably say, we don't really think about them much at all. You know, and as a result of that, it creates this practical reality where largely the British Empire is allowing the American colonists to govern themselves. And this creates an interesting problem as we get into the 1760s and onwards, all the way to the Declaration of Independence. What are the American colonists going to do once the British Empire takes greater interest in what's happening in America? What happens if, as the British Empire needs more money? they start turning to the American colonists and impose new taxes on them, and also begin to burden some of the rights, some of the rights as English subjects that the American colonists value most greatly. And so maybe it makes sense, Kerry, here to just begin with a few of the new laws that the British Empire is putting on the books in these years that begin the push towards independence. Does that sound good to you, Kerry? It does. And I think that's, I just want to echo your point, because I think it's really important. And then we sometimes... skip over it when we talk about this topic is that the colonies had so much freedom and they had so much ability to grow and be more democratic and then started to get you know that power put back on them in a very undemocratic and without voice and agency in their government and that shift is like no no we've had freedom we know what it's like you either make sure we're going to do this in a way that's in contract with each other in an agreement with each other you or we're going to back out of this relationship. And it really is a fascinating look at all those pieces. So yeah, so what ticked through kind of, what were the big things that started to chip away at that connection between the colonists and the empire? Yeah, so I mean, the one thing to note is that the British empire had always passed laws that regulated certain things in the American colony. So it's not as if they had no control, but these laws were often not really enforced. And so we initially see like a wave of the British Empire enforcing different trade laws, cracking down on smuggling. But then we see also beginning in 1764, a series of new taxes imposed on the American colonies. And so the big thing here is that Great Britain was coming out of the Seven Years'War. It had a lot of war debt. It expended a lot of the war debt, a lot of the money that they spent on that war, defending the American colonists. And so what they're trying to do with these new taxes in part. is to raise money to pay down their own debt. The Americans were paying very little in taxes at all, and now they're trying to get them to finally pay some. And so in 1764, the parliament passes the Sugar Act, which is a new tax on imported molasses. It also sets up a new process to end illegal smuggling. And so for the colonists, this hits on two big constitutional principles. One is that the colonists are saying that they're looking at these new taxes and they're saying, these are new taxes. They're imposed by Parliament. We have no representatives in Parliament. They're a relatively small tax. But nevertheless, we have to be really careful about setting a new precedent, having a new practice where Parliament's imposing taxes. If it's small taxes today, what's going to stop them from imposing really, really big taxes later? So there's this concern that you have taxes being imposed from abroad where you have no representatives in that government. The other one, Kerry, is that to crack down on illegal smuggling, the British Empire also puts in place... a new system of courts or they start using what are called vice admiralty courts to enforce these anti-smuggling laws. And what that means is that if you're charged under these anti-smuggling laws, rather than standing before a colonial American jury, so having a right to a jury trial, you're going to be placed in court in front of a vice admiralty judge with no jury trial. And so again, this may seem maybe not the biggest deal in the world to us today, because we don't think a lot about juries. But for them, the jury trial right was one of the most cherished rights of being a British subject. And so in both of these cases, on the one hand, taxation without representation, that being one key principle, they see that being violated. And the other is this idea that we as British subjects are entitled to a right to a jury trial. These are two big constitutional principles they're seeing violated by the Sugar Act. And that, I think, is that so clear that they're having less rights than other British citizens. is the biggest issue with this. So they're not just behaving poorly because all of a sudden the parent comes back in the scene and tells them what to do. They're really saying like, no, it's not fair. We're supposed to have representation. We're supposed to have a jury of our peers. And we can see where that comes into our system later and why it was so important to put into the constitution. And I have to be honest, when I served in the jury, it was, I felt like it was such an honor because you're among your people and you're saying we are doing this as a collective community. So- I get it. I totally get it. You want to have people that understand your world and your experiences being able to be the ones that say, how do we, is this right or is this wrong under the law? So there, it wasn't just the Sugar Act though. There's a lot of other kind of pieces along the way. Where would you like to jump to next? Well, let's tip through the other two big acts and then fast forward, just to place them on the table. So you have the Sugar Act in 1764. In 1765, you then have the Stamp Act. which the parliament is now placing new taxes on paper. If you have a diploma, court filing, even newspapers, colonists had to purchase an imperial stamp and place it on that paper. This form of taxation swept more broadly. It really applied to a lot of colonists, especially a lot of colonial leaders who were lawyers and politicians. Again, to enforce this act of alleged violators had to be tried before vice, admiralty courts, and the colonists to both of these things, they fought back. So in response to the Stamp Act, what did the Bostonians do? Well, they basically destroyed the would-be stamp office. They trashed the would-be stamp collector's house, and the stamp collector then didn't take the job. They trashed the house of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and eight other colonies joined in this fight. And again, these are all dramatic things, but the big principles they're fighting for and what they're arguing is no taxation without representation and jury rights for Englishmen. Those are the two big things. And out of the Stamp Act— Importantly, we also see the first big meeting of the colonies, the Stamp Act Congress, which brought together 27 delegates from nine different colonies in New York City Hall, all acting in response to the Stamp Act. Parliament would repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766. It would also pass its own declaratory act, where Parliament then explains its own big constitutional theory, which is that we're Parliament, we're in charge, we can effectively do what we want inside the colonies. We don't care about the arguments that you're making. One great question is, do you know what the words on the skull and cross bone stamp? You know that, Tom? I do not. I do not. Oh, here it is. Sorry. I'm looking. Of the stamp, an emblem of the effects of the stamp of, oh, the fatal stamp. I think that's what it says exactly. So I'm sure that was a political cartoon that was really just trying to, you know. muster up support for kind of all the pushback on these pieces. So now we have the colonists and the British and American going back to back and then each saying they're on the right side of this, on the right side of the law, on the right side of moving this forward. And then we get to the Townsend Act. So walk us kind of through this piece. Yeah, so this is a new set of taxes in 1767. It's covering various imported goods, including glass, paint, paper, and of course, most famously, tea. And so here the colonists are again, they're railing against these taxes and there are massive protests. And because of all of the mobbing that we saw in Boston the first time around, the people who were asked to collect these taxes are concerned. They're writing back to Britain and saying, can you please protect us? And in response, the British government sends 2000 British troops to America. By late 1768, there were more than a 1,000 British troops in Boston. For the colonists, this again, this violates yet another key constitutional principle, no standing armies in time of peace. For the colonists, they just fear that these standing armies like British troops sitting here on American soil could be key tools of tyranny. The way they read this was that the British government's trying to intimidate them. We're pushing back against their taxes and against their various moves against our constitutional rights. And so they're sending troops here on their own British subjects. And so what's the fallout, Corey? What's the most famous fallout? It's the Boston Massacre. So this is March. And Tom, what is, when you say a thousand troops in Boston, like that doesn't feel big for Philadelphia right now, but back then, what's the ratio between every troop at every Bostonian? So we know like how heated this got. And then we'll talk about the explosion with the Boston Massacre. Yeah, so at the highest point, British troops represented more than a third of Boston's adult male population. So it's a lot of troops when, you know, yeah, when you're talking about a city of that size. Yeah, so this is really like taking over with the military. It's a military, you know, compound going on. It is, you know, just talk about not de-escalating the situation and what a huge escalation factor. And this is why we get the Boston Massacre. So tell our students all about the Boston Massacre. Yeah, so British soldiers, they're standing guard at the British Customs House, and there's a crowd of about 50 around them. It's a rowdy crowd. They're throwing snowballs. They're throwing ice balls. They're throwing hard, hard objects at the troops. And then shots are fired. Eleven colonists are wounded. Five died on the street. And then Governor Thomas Hutchinson comes, tries to calm the scene. And notably, he also makes sure that the troops actually stand trial before a colonial jury. And who represents them? It's not a royal official. It's not a great loyalist. It's a son of liberty, John Adams. John Adams defends the British soldiers in court. And Adams didn't throw the case. That's a really important point. He wanted to win it. He wanted to show the king. He wanted to show the British empire. He wanted to show the world that the people of Massachusetts, the people of Boston, they're not just a lawless mob. You can continue to trust American juries to do the right thing. So that's the Boston Massacre. But we also see growing out of this the Boston Tea Party. So that's three and a half years later. It's December 1773. By April 1770, the parliament's gotten rid of most of the towns and duties, but it keeps the tea tax in place. And for many colonies, this is okay. They figure we won all of these big battles over these other taxes with the powerful British empire. We're just going to take this bargain. But the Bostonians said no. And so they respond and they say, no, no, we're going to keep bribing customs officials and drink untaxed tea. And we're going to make sure that tax tea doesn't find its way in Boston. What's their resolution? While the Sons of Liberty get together, they board ships in the Boston Harbor and they throw the tea. How much tea is it? 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor. John Adams describes the Boston Tea Party as this is the grandest event which has ever yet, ever since the controversy with Britain opened, the sublimity of it charms me. And how did the British Empire respond, Curry? With an iron fist. So they respond with what's called the coercive acts. And these become a key turning point. for the relationship between the colonies in Great Britain in many ways. So the course of acts, they closed the Boston Harbor. They curbed town meetings, take away powers of the Massachusetts General Assembly. They say for British soldiers and royal officials that they don't have to stand between local juries. They can instead, if accused of crimes, be tried back in England. The colonists would call this the Murder Act, give you an idea of how much this one really annoyed them. Then they passed a new Quartering Act, which cleared the way for Britain to send more troops and even house those troops in the Bostonians. homes. The colonists would call these the intolerable acts. Of course, the British Empire is thinking, you know, what we're going to do is Boston, or they're the worst actors here, we're going to try to isolate Boston from the rest of the colonies. But instead, the colonies rallied to Boston's side. So I'll sort of pause there, Curry. Yeah, and I think this is, it's unbelievable, because you're seeing kind of this, we need to make this work, we need to make this work, we need to make this work. And then by this point in time, this is when you start to see some major leaders who were trying to work things out and trying to make it better, say, I don't think we can come back from this. They have gone too far. We have gone too far. So we have about two minutes to kind of pull this, wrap this up. You know, one of the things that we talk about is, you know, we always talk about the battles. We talk about Lexington and Concord. We talk about Concord Hill. We talk about the Continental Congress and the meetings. But Tom, I know you love to look at common sense. So maybe we end with looking at common sense and how that kind of brings. together this ideas behind the principles that move us forward to say we can move forward and lead. That's great. So we have the course of acts. You're right, Kerry. Then we have the meetings of the First and Second Continental Congress. We have shots fired at Lexington and Concord. We have the Battle of Bunker Hill where roughly a thousand people are killed. And as we're getting to the end of 1775, the colonists really have to make their choice. Are they going to go with the revolutionaries? Are they going to remain loyal? And colonists remain divided. And then we have Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which hits the American colonies like a thunderbolt. It's published in January 1776. It's not written. for the elite, it's written for the middle class of the age, and it ends up becoming a publishing sensation. What Paine does in many ways is he popularizes a lot of the high and fancy constitutional theory of the day for the average American colonists. Paine here, in the broadest sense, is calling for American independence, but he attacks monarchy itself, arguing that the idea of a king hereditary power has, quote, laid the world in blood and ashes. He builds from John Locke in social contract theory. So he looks at King George III here. He's saying that he owed the colonists protection and happiness and protection of key liberties and rights, and that the king violated the social contract. Therefore, the American colonists under social contract theory had a right to revolt against the king. But Paine went even further. In Paine's view, monarchy itself ran against common sense. America, you know, what we learned from Locke is that we are all born free and equal. None of us are born to rule. None of us are born to follow. So in place of monarchy, Paine argues that the colony should establish independent Republican states driven by the people themselves, not a king. And finally, he said, look, it's absurd for a big, dynamic, growing nation like this America to continue to be governed by a small. island across the sea. And so in the end, that violates common sense more than anything else. And what's amazing, Kerry, if I could just end on the Declaration, because we started there, is that? Yeah, perfect. That's where I was going. Yeah. So what we end up seeing here is that the common sense, a lot of these arguments then filter their way into the Declaration of Independence. So we began with this question of why did the American colonists declare independence? And I would just say, go back to the Declaration of Independence itself. It's in there. It's in there. It's where the colonists are explaining what the King George III in Parliament did wrong. In effect, they abused the rights of the Americans. They said, quote, engaged in a long train of abuses. The British government had imposed taxation without representation. It violated the cherished right to a jury trial. It sent corrupt and abusive judges and royal officials to America. It sent standing armies in times of peace without the approval of the government. approval of the colonists. It closed the door to colonial assemblies. It shut down American ports. And the king himself had let the colonists down. He hadn't stood up to parliament. He didn't stop the abuses of his royal officials. And in fact, he himself had abused the rights of the colonists, is what they say in the Declaration of Independence. He declared war on them. He violated the social contract. And finally, he hadn't listened. Throughout all of this period, Congress and the various meetings of the colonists, they're petitioning the king. They're saying King George III, here's what's going wrong. Here's what parliament's doing. Here's what your royal officials are doing. Hear us, help us. And he simply ignored these pleas. And so in the colonists'view in the Declaration of Independence, here is the key language. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms or repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of- free people. And so King George III and the British Empire had to go. And I think that's amazing because what they're saying here is we followed all the rules. We played by your game and still you never, ever did it. So going back to those three big ideas from the beginning, that the people then have that power. They took away natural rights. They didn't follow rule of law. So we're going to engage popular sovereignty. and rule of law and natural rights and take back this country and have a revolution. So again, it is a balance between the three. It is not under light terms that people have a revolution. And they clearly show that even though it's quick in those 15 years, over and over again, I think that's so important to hear that, you know, we petition the government, we ask you, we ask you over and over again, to follow the rules of the game so we could be a part of it. And again, explains why we have that in the first place. Amendment. Tom, thank you so much. That was a great class. We got through a ton, and I love the big ideas and how we can see them happening or not happening in each state of the revolution. So thank you so much. Students, great conversation today. If you have any questions, we'll hang around for a couple of minutes, but thank you all so much and have a great day. Great. Thanks so much, Kerry. Thank you, everyone. Cheers.

Kerry Sautner, I'm going to begin recording. Welcome everybody. Excited to have you in class today.

I'm Kerry Sautner. I'm the Chief Learning Officer at the National Constitution Center and I'm here with one of our top scholars, Tom Donnelly. Tom, you want to say hi to everybody? Tom Donnelly, Hey everyone, great to see you.

Kerry Sautner, Tom and I are unbelievably excited about today's class because it's all about the principles of the American Revolution. We're going to look at those principles. What were the big ideas that kind of powered and energized the American Revolution? And then how did they help to frame what came next, you know, over a decade next, with the Constitution next?

So we'll look not just at the battles and the acts and the massacres of the revolution, but really those guiding principles, because that's what we think is really important to hold on to. And it helps us understand how our government is structured today. So Tom, does that sound like a good general game plan to dive into the principles, figure out how to do that?

how, where they came from, how they work with us during the revolution, and then how we explore them today. Sounds perfect. Awesome. So let's get officially started.

And everybody, as we go through class today, please remember, we love questions, clarifying questions, shares in the chat box, share ideas with each other, or just questions to really understand or to see where we're going next. So we always have big framing questions around our classes. There's a lot of factors.

What factors brought us to the American Revolution? But let's begin with those three big principles, understanding what they are, and then we can dive into the time period and say, how did they influence the revolution? Tom, can you walk us through these three big ideas?

Thomas Donnelly Absolutely. Yeah. These are the three big principles of the American Revolution.

Part of what we're trying to answer, the question that we're trying to answer in class today is, why did we declare independence? Why did we? fight a revolution. With these principles, we're trying to explain to you really what, as a matter of principle, the revolutionaries were fighting for. Let's dig into each of these principles.

Let's first give maybe quick definitions, Kerry, and then a little bit about each. Does that sound good? Kerry Sautner-Love definitions.

Jeffrey Rosenman, Jr.: Great. Let's start with popular sovereignty, which is one of my favorites. The big idea here is that the most legitimate form of constitutional government is a government driven by us, not a king, not an aristocracy, not the few, not the elite.

but by us, the people. So that's popular sovereignty, big idea number one. Big idea number two is natural rights.

And so this is the idea that these are rights that are given by God or by nature and thus come not from any law passed by government. These aren't rights that come from government, but they're inherent to all human beings from birth. So we get them simply from being born, not from a government, not from anyone else. So that's natural rights.

The third big idea is the rule of law, which the rule of law is the basic idea here that we have a government of laws, not a government by man or by arbitrary rule. The big idea really is that no one is above the law. So that's popular sovereignty, natural rights, rule of law.

Let's say a little bit about each and then we'll move to the revolution itself and try to really give good examples and give life to each of these ideas. So starting with popular sovereignty, what do we mean by that? Well, the simplest way to think about it is think of the opening words of the Constitution, we the people.

So generally speaking, when we talk about popular sovereignty, we're talking about rule by the people. And the idea that ultimate power, ultimate authority rests not with the government itself, but by the people themselves. So even if we think of our government today, it's that the president, Congress, the courts, they're all limited by this idea.

We the people are their boss, and they work for us. So that's popular sovereignty. And the thing to remember is that this is an idea that's a key engine throughout American history. It's throughout American history. It's really from the founding all the way through.

And it's a source of the Constitution's legitimacy. So at its core, really, is this idea that over time, all power derives from the people. And as a result, the people have the power to alter or abolish their government as they see fit, whether it's in the face of tyranny. So we'll talk a bit about King George III and the British Empire today, but also just over time when they see something wrong with the Constitution or the country.

So this could be big changes like revolution or a new constitution or even small changes like new laws or constitutional amendments, but that's popular sovereignty. I'll pause there, Kerry. That's great. So when we think about, you know, having an argument and defending your case, just like John Adams did in that case that we were talking about earlier, or what...

students are asked to do in class all the time, like, give us the reasons for your argument. This is one of the reasons for an argument to break off with the British Empire, that popular sovereignty, the people have the right. to alter, to abolish, to change, and to blow up our government when we see fit.

And I love that idea that it's government by us and for us. So anything from a revolution, or I love this image of women protesting and marching and calling for the right to vote. So they're just amending the Constitution, but they're calling on that same idea that we have power and voice in our government. We the people. So great.

So that's one of the big, like, founding arguments of the revolution is standing on. It's three strong arguments that hold it up. The next one is always my favorite, and you're going to go into more detail, natural rights.

Talk about my favorite one. Yeah, so natural rights, this is again the idea that there are rights that come from God or nature, not from government. And see, these are rights you get for just being a human being, for being born.

Where does this idea come from? Well, intellectually, it most famously comes from John Locke's Second Treatise and the idea of a social... contract.

So Locke takes us from a state of nature to a political society with a government. He discusses the social contract, but that's just a fancy way of saying in the beginning, the people have the power and then the people that give part of that power up to the government. And so they make an agreement.

And so as they do that, there are certain things, there are certain rights that are alienable. These are rights and powers that you can give to the government. Sort of the classic example here is the right to self-defense. So what we do when we create a government is I give away to the government my right to self-defense.

The government then takes on a duty to protect me and the rest of us. So once we have a government, I can't just take the law into my own hands. I can't just use violence against someone who does something wrong to me.

Instead, it's the government's job to keep us safe and to protect us. So that's the bargain that's made in the social contract. But the idea of natural rights is that there are certain rights that we simply can't surrender to government. These are rights that are unalienable or inalienable. And so here the classic example is the right of conscience.

And so the idea is that because my religious beliefs or my lack of religious beliefs are the product of my reason, I'm not able to give them up. So we have a right and duty to make up our own minds about matters of conscience. And at the same time, the founders also believed deeply, as we've already said, in our right to alter.

or abolish government. This is another natural right that they thought we had. And this shouldn't be a surprise because we're a nation that's born in revolution. And the whole point of the social contract is to promote the happiness and security of the people.

And so when the government doesn't keep up its end of the bargain, we then have a right to alter or abolish it, either changing it into a new constitution, as we did once after the revolution, or even fighting a revolution itself. That's okay. That's great.

And, you know, for the students, you can start to see these things are connected. So the popular sovereignty, natural rights, they're connected. So you always have that power to be able to pull back the contract. So when Tom was talking about a state of nature, he literally was saying like, okay, we're in the middle of the woods all by ourselves.

And life is really tough and hard. But if we come together and create a government, we have more liberty, we have more freedoms in some ways, and we have more safety and security. But then we have to make a deal.

with each other about what powers we're going to give the government. It literally is like a deal shake, like a handshake. That's that social contract. And so that social contract should work. And if it doesn't, we can go back to popular sovereignty and pull that ripcord and make it change things.

So they're very closely connected. And now as we were thinking about how are the founding generation saying this is why we can have a revolution against the largest superpower at the time, that's what they're basing their argument off of. first popular sovereignty, now natural rights under the social contract theory, connecting those together.

And one more thing, Tom, one more really strong thing that kind of brings it home and says, you're not following the rules. You're not doing what's right. So can you walk us through that last part, rule of law?

Yeah. So rule of law, again, it's the basic idea that we have a government of laws, not a government by man or by arbitrary rule. The idea that no one is above the law.

Recently, Justice Neil Gorsuch gave us a great example of the rule of law, or rather when the rule of law is violated in a class that he did for the National Constitution Center. He gave the classic example of the Roman Emperor Caligula. What did Caligula do?

Caligula wrote the law down, wrote it in very small print, and put it all the way way up high where no one can see it. The emperor was able to say, we have law. I wrote it down.

I published it. It's out there for everyone to see. But as a practical matter, no one had access to the law.

No one knew how to comply with it. No one could actually see it because it was up so high. And no one knew when they'd be punished.

No one knew how to follow the rule of law. And that's a classic example of when the rule of law itself is violated. Anyone could be punished for anything.

It's all up to one person in that case. It's the emperor. It's up to the emperor's whim. There's no process. no fairness, no equality, no requirement to follow reason, just the whims of that one person.

And so what we learned from this story is that to satisfy the rule of law, laws should be knowable by the people. They should be possible to understand, possible to follow. They should treat people equally and fairly, and they should provide advanced notice of what's expected. And so to satisfy the rule of law too, government officials themselves must also be accountable to the law. So those are the three big principles, Carrie, popular sovereignty, natural rights, and the rule of law.

And I love it. And I think that's so important. And I love every time we talk about rule of law, we talk about the word arbitrary. You know, things can't be arbitrary. They can't be uneven, unfair.

They have to be clear, direct, and consistent that you know that it's coming. Just like when we have school or class that we have the same classes every day, we have consistency. So all three of those kind of big pillars hold up. the reasoning behind why the colonists said, we're going to break away with you.

We're going to have the biggest breakup ever in world history. And they wrote some of those ideas down. And we talk about this so often, but we never put those lenses on it. So do you want to dive into how they wrote it down and where we can see some of these ideas bubble up in the Declaration?

Absolutely. So, yeah, the Declaration of Independence, it's the formal declaration by Congress that the United States is an independent nation. And so it brings up a lot of different specific complaints about the king in parliament, which we'll talk about later in the class. But also it says some big things about our three big principles, popular sovereignty, natural rights and the rule of law.

And perhaps it's best to just walk through those famous passages that open the declaration just to get a sense of where these ideas are found. So here are the key words here. They hear the.

maybe the most famous passage in all of American history. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Here we see a powerful vision of natural rights. We are born free and equal. We get our rights from God.

We get them just for being us, just for being born. And these rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's the first key passage. Let's go to the next one. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.

Here we see a powerful vision of popular sovereignty tied to the social contract that Kerry was talking about earlier. We give up certain rights, we give up certain powers to the government, and the government agrees to protect us. Now, the next big passage here, Kerry, is that-Kerry Sautner You were in a role.

I didn't want to break you off. Jeffrey Rosen I wanted to hop in or not. Sorry for the awkward silence. Kerry Sautner I was like, you go.

Jeffrey Rosen Let's go to this last passage here and then we can pause. But that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to then shall seem most likely to affect. their safety and happiness, and everything is in there packed into this passage. We see the rule of law. In other words, we made an agreement with the government.

The government agrees to keep us safe, to protect our lives, our liberty, and our happiness. And again, we see popular sovereignty and their ultimate power lies with we, the people. If the government breaks that agreement that we made, we can take the power back. And then finally, we see natural rights. What's the most fundamental natural right of all?

The right of revolution. the right to alter or abolish a government that doesn't promote our safety and happiness, the right to form a new government. So it's all in there in those famous passages, all three principles, popular sovereignty, natural rights, and the rule of law.

And I love this. And students, if you're in the class or you're at home and teachers, you can highlight these and like rule of law is yellow and natural rights is blue and popular sovereignty is pink. And you can literally see the words connecting the dots and how they weave them together. shared in the chat this great quote, and it's perfect for rule of law. It's from John Adams, a government of laws, not of men.

So the idea that they stand consistent no matter who's in charge, no matter who they're applying to. There's consistency and expectations that they will be for all of us. So I love this kind of big ideas. We're really talking about how they built this argument to say, how are we going to break up with England? We're going to go through a revolution and why we're right.

They were trying to prove why they were right on this. But the thing that always blows me away, Tom, is they went from being British to being revolutionaries, creating an insurrection and blowing it up with these great principles in under two decades. right?

It's really quick. It's 15 years from when King George III becomes king. So how does it go so wrong so fast is really my question. You know, we get King George, we'll start with him, but like, how does it really fall apart this quickly?

And, you know, make such huge, talk about, I know, you know, Akil's going to be with us on Friday, but like, this feels like a Big Bang moment. I know the Big Bang takes 15 years. But it's a big bang moment for us, at least.

Yeah, absolutely. If you want a great new account of the American Revolution, I strongly recommend Akhil Rita Mar's, the words that made us his chapters in the revolution are really just a terrifically capture the constitutional arguments that drove the push to independence. What I love about the book is it does begin with King George III, and King George III becoming king on December 27th, 1760. It's a reminder that For the American colonists, they were thrilled.

They loved their king. They were proud British subjects. They thought that the British constitution was the best in the world, that they were the freest and most prosperous people in all the land. And so they felt just as English as people, you know, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean.

At the same time, if you were to ask the king, the royal officials, parliament, what do you think about the American colonists in 1760? They'd probably say, we don't really think about them much at all. You know, and as a result of that, it creates this practical reality where largely the British Empire is allowing the American colonists to govern themselves. And this creates an interesting problem as we get into the 1760s and onwards, all the way to the Declaration of Independence. What are the American colonists going to do once the British Empire takes greater interest in what's happening in America?

What happens if, as the British Empire needs more money? they start turning to the American colonists and impose new taxes on them, and also begin to burden some of the rights, some of the rights as English subjects that the American colonists value most greatly. And so maybe it makes sense, Kerry, here to just begin with a few of the new laws that the British Empire is putting on the books in these years that begin the push towards independence.

Does that sound good to you, Kerry? It does. And I think that's, I just want to echo your point, because I think it's really important.

And then we sometimes... skip over it when we talk about this topic is that the colonies had so much freedom and they had so much ability to grow and be more democratic and then started to get you know that power put back on them in a very undemocratic and without voice and agency in their government and that shift is like no no we've had freedom we know what it's like you either make sure we're going to do this in a way that's in contract with each other in an agreement with each other you or we're going to back out of this relationship. And it really is a fascinating look at all those pieces.

So yeah, so what ticked through kind of, what were the big things that started to chip away at that connection between the colonists and the empire? Yeah, so I mean, the one thing to note is that the British empire had always passed laws that regulated certain things in the American colony. So it's not as if they had no control, but these laws were often not really enforced. And so we initially see like a wave of the British Empire enforcing different trade laws, cracking down on smuggling. But then we see also beginning in 1764, a series of new taxes imposed on the American colonies.

And so the big thing here is that Great Britain was coming out of the Seven Years'War. It had a lot of war debt. It expended a lot of the war debt, a lot of the money that they spent on that war, defending the American colonists.

And so what they're trying to do with these new taxes in part. is to raise money to pay down their own debt. The Americans were paying very little in taxes at all, and now they're trying to get them to finally pay some. And so in 1764, the parliament passes the Sugar Act, which is a new tax on imported molasses. It also sets up a new process to end illegal smuggling.

And so for the colonists, this hits on two big constitutional principles. One is that the colonists are saying that they're looking at these new taxes and they're saying, these are new taxes. They're imposed by Parliament. We have no representatives in Parliament.

They're a relatively small tax. But nevertheless, we have to be really careful about setting a new precedent, having a new practice where Parliament's imposing taxes. If it's small taxes today, what's going to stop them from imposing really, really big taxes later?

So there's this concern that you have taxes being imposed from abroad where you have no representatives in that government. The other one, Kerry, is that to crack down on illegal smuggling, the British Empire also puts in place... a new system of courts or they start using what are called vice admiralty courts to enforce these anti-smuggling laws.

And what that means is that if you're charged under these anti-smuggling laws, rather than standing before a colonial American jury, so having a right to a jury trial, you're going to be placed in court in front of a vice admiralty judge with no jury trial. And so again, this may seem maybe not the biggest deal in the world to us today, because we don't think a lot about juries. But for them, the jury trial right was one of the most cherished rights of being a British subject. And so in both of these cases, on the one hand, taxation without representation, that being one key principle, they see that being violated. And the other is this idea that we as British subjects are entitled to a right to a jury trial.

These are two big constitutional principles they're seeing violated by the Sugar Act. And that, I think, is that so clear that they're having less rights than other British citizens. is the biggest issue with this.

So they're not just behaving poorly because all of a sudden the parent comes back in the scene and tells them what to do. They're really saying like, no, it's not fair. We're supposed to have representation.

We're supposed to have a jury of our peers. And we can see where that comes into our system later and why it was so important to put into the constitution. And I have to be honest, when I served in the jury, it was, I felt like it was such an honor because you're among your people and you're saying we are doing this as a collective community. So- I get it.

I totally get it. You want to have people that understand your world and your experiences being able to be the ones that say, how do we, is this right or is this wrong under the law? So there, it wasn't just the Sugar Act though. There's a lot of other kind of pieces along the way.

Where would you like to jump to next? Well, let's tip through the other two big acts and then fast forward, just to place them on the table. So you have the Sugar Act in 1764. In 1765, you then have the Stamp Act.

which the parliament is now placing new taxes on paper. If you have a diploma, court filing, even newspapers, colonists had to purchase an imperial stamp and place it on that paper. This form of taxation swept more broadly.

It really applied to a lot of colonists, especially a lot of colonial leaders who were lawyers and politicians. Again, to enforce this act of alleged violators had to be tried before vice, admiralty courts, and the colonists to both of these things, they fought back. So in response to the Stamp Act, what did the Bostonians do?

Well, they basically destroyed the would-be stamp office. They trashed the would-be stamp collector's house, and the stamp collector then didn't take the job. They trashed the house of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and eight other colonies joined in this fight.

And again, these are all dramatic things, but the big principles they're fighting for and what they're arguing is no taxation without representation and jury rights for Englishmen. Those are the two big things. And out of the Stamp Act— Importantly, we also see the first big meeting of the colonies, the Stamp Act Congress, which brought together 27 delegates from nine different colonies in New York City Hall, all acting in response to the Stamp Act. Parliament would repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766. It would also pass its own declaratory act, where Parliament then explains its own big constitutional theory, which is that we're Parliament, we're in charge, we can effectively do what we want inside the colonies.

We don't care about the arguments that you're making. One great question is, do you know what the words on the skull and cross bone stamp? You know that, Tom? I do not.

I do not. Oh, here it is. Sorry.

I'm looking. Of the stamp, an emblem of the effects of the stamp of, oh, the fatal stamp. I think that's what it says exactly.

So I'm sure that was a political cartoon that was really just trying to, you know. muster up support for kind of all the pushback on these pieces. So now we have the colonists and the British and American going back to back and then each saying they're on the right side of this, on the right side of the law, on the right side of moving this forward. And then we get to the Townsend Act. So walk us kind of through this piece.

Yeah, so this is a new set of taxes in 1767. It's covering various imported goods, including glass, paint, paper, and of course, most famously, tea. And so here the colonists are again, they're railing against these taxes and there are massive protests. And because of all of the mobbing that we saw in Boston the first time around, the people who were asked to collect these taxes are concerned.

They're writing back to Britain and saying, can you please protect us? And in response, the British government sends 2000 British troops to America. By late 1768, there were more than a 1,000 British troops in Boston.

For the colonists, this again, this violates yet another key constitutional principle, no standing armies in time of peace. For the colonists, they just fear that these standing armies like British troops sitting here on American soil could be key tools of tyranny. The way they read this was that the British government's trying to intimidate them.

We're pushing back against their taxes and against their various moves against our constitutional rights. And so they're sending troops here on their own British subjects. And so what's the fallout, Corey?

What's the most famous fallout? It's the Boston Massacre. So this is March. And Tom, what is, when you say a thousand troops in Boston, like that doesn't feel big for Philadelphia right now, but back then, what's the ratio between every troop at every Bostonian?

So we know like how heated this got. And then we'll talk about the explosion with the Boston Massacre. Yeah, so at the highest point, British troops represented more than a third of Boston's adult male population. So it's a lot of troops when, you know, yeah, when you're talking about a city of that size. Yeah, so this is really like taking over with the military.

It's a military, you know, compound going on. It is, you know, just talk about not de-escalating the situation and what a huge escalation factor. And this is why we get the Boston Massacre.

So tell our students all about the Boston Massacre. Yeah, so British soldiers, they're standing guard at the British Customs House, and there's a crowd of about 50 around them. It's a rowdy crowd. They're throwing snowballs. They're throwing ice balls.

They're throwing hard, hard objects at the troops. And then shots are fired. Eleven colonists are wounded. Five died on the street.

And then Governor Thomas Hutchinson comes, tries to calm the scene. And notably, he also makes sure that the troops actually stand trial before a colonial jury. And who represents them? It's not a royal official. It's not a great loyalist.

It's a son of liberty, John Adams. John Adams defends the British soldiers in court. And Adams didn't throw the case. That's a really important point.

He wanted to win it. He wanted to show the king. He wanted to show the British empire.

He wanted to show the world that the people of Massachusetts, the people of Boston, they're not just a lawless mob. You can continue to trust American juries to do the right thing. So that's the Boston Massacre. But we also see growing out of this the Boston Tea Party. So that's three and a half years later.

It's December 1773. By April 1770, the parliament's gotten rid of most of the towns and duties, but it keeps the tea tax in place. And for many colonies, this is okay. They figure we won all of these big battles over these other taxes with the powerful British empire. We're just going to take this bargain.

But the Bostonians said no. And so they respond and they say, no, no, we're going to keep bribing customs officials and drink untaxed tea. And we're going to make sure that tax tea doesn't find its way in Boston.

What's their resolution? While the Sons of Liberty get together, they board ships in the Boston Harbor and they throw the tea. How much tea is it?

342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor. John Adams describes the Boston Tea Party as this is the grandest event which has ever yet, ever since the controversy with Britain opened, the sublimity of it charms me. And how did the British Empire respond, Curry? With an iron fist.

So they respond with what's called the coercive acts. And these become a key turning point. for the relationship between the colonies in Great Britain in many ways.

So the course of acts, they closed the Boston Harbor. They curbed town meetings, take away powers of the Massachusetts General Assembly. They say for British soldiers and royal officials that they don't have to stand between local juries. They can instead, if accused of crimes, be tried back in England.

The colonists would call this the Murder Act, give you an idea of how much this one really annoyed them. Then they passed a new Quartering Act, which cleared the way for Britain to send more troops and even house those troops in the Bostonians. homes.

The colonists would call these the intolerable acts. Of course, the British Empire is thinking, you know, what we're going to do is Boston, or they're the worst actors here, we're going to try to isolate Boston from the rest of the colonies. But instead, the colonies rallied to Boston's side. So I'll sort of pause there, Curry.

Yeah, and I think this is, it's unbelievable, because you're seeing kind of this, we need to make this work, we need to make this work, we need to make this work. And then by this point in time, this is when you start to see some major leaders who were trying to work things out and trying to make it better, say, I don't think we can come back from this. They have gone too far. We have gone too far.

So we have about two minutes to kind of pull this, wrap this up. You know, one of the things that we talk about is, you know, we always talk about the battles. We talk about Lexington and Concord. We talk about Concord Hill.

We talk about the Continental Congress and the meetings. But Tom, I know you love to look at common sense. So maybe we end with looking at common sense and how that kind of brings. together this ideas behind the principles that move us forward to say we can move forward and lead.

That's great. So we have the course of acts. You're right, Kerry. Then we have the meetings of the First and Second Continental Congress.

We have shots fired at Lexington and Concord. We have the Battle of Bunker Hill where roughly a thousand people are killed. And as we're getting to the end of 1775, the colonists really have to make their choice.

Are they going to go with the revolutionaries? Are they going to remain loyal? And colonists remain divided. And then we have Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which hits the American colonies like a thunderbolt.

It's published in January 1776. It's not written. for the elite, it's written for the middle class of the age, and it ends up becoming a publishing sensation. What Paine does in many ways is he popularizes a lot of the high and fancy constitutional theory of the day for the average American colonists. Paine here, in the broadest sense, is calling for American independence, but he attacks monarchy itself, arguing that the idea of a king hereditary power has, quote, laid the world in blood and ashes. He builds from John Locke in social contract theory.

So he looks at King George III here. He's saying that he owed the colonists protection and happiness and protection of key liberties and rights, and that the king violated the social contract. Therefore, the American colonists under social contract theory had a right to revolt against the king. But Paine went even further. In Paine's view, monarchy itself ran against common sense.

America, you know, what we learned from Locke is that we are all born free and equal. None of us are born to rule. None of us are born to follow.

So in place of monarchy, Paine argues that the colony should establish independent Republican states driven by the people themselves, not a king. And finally, he said, look, it's absurd for a big, dynamic, growing nation like this America to continue to be governed by a small. island across the sea. And so in the end, that violates common sense more than anything else.

And what's amazing, Kerry, if I could just end on the Declaration, because we started there, is that? Yeah, perfect. That's where I was going.

Yeah. So what we end up seeing here is that the common sense, a lot of these arguments then filter their way into the Declaration of Independence. So we began with this question of why did the American colonists declare independence? And I would just say, go back to the Declaration of Independence itself.

It's in there. It's in there. It's where the colonists are explaining what the King George III in Parliament did wrong. In effect, they abused the rights of the Americans.

They said, quote, engaged in a long train of abuses. The British government had imposed taxation without representation. It violated the cherished right to a jury trial.

It sent corrupt and abusive judges and royal officials to America. It sent standing armies in times of peace without the approval of the government. approval of the colonists. It closed the door to colonial assemblies.

It shut down American ports. And the king himself had let the colonists down. He hadn't stood up to parliament.

He didn't stop the abuses of his royal officials. And in fact, he himself had abused the rights of the colonists, is what they say in the Declaration of Independence. He declared war on them. He violated the social contract. And finally, he hadn't listened.

Throughout all of this period, Congress and the various meetings of the colonists, they're petitioning the king. They're saying King George III, here's what's going wrong. Here's what parliament's doing. Here's what your royal officials are doing. Hear us, help us.

And he simply ignored these pleas. And so in the colonists'view in the Declaration of Independence, here is the key language. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms or repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of- free people.

And so King George III and the British Empire had to go. And I think that's amazing because what they're saying here is we followed all the rules. We played by your game and still you never, ever did it.

So going back to those three big ideas from the beginning, that the people then have that power. They took away natural rights. They didn't follow rule of law.

So we're going to engage popular sovereignty. and rule of law and natural rights and take back this country and have a revolution. So again, it is a balance between the three.

It is not under light terms that people have a revolution. And they clearly show that even though it's quick in those 15 years, over and over again, I think that's so important to hear that, you know, we petition the government, we ask you, we ask you over and over again, to follow the rules of the game so we could be a part of it. And again, explains why we have that in the first place. Amendment. Tom, thank you so much.

That was a great class. We got through a ton, and I love the big ideas and how we can see them happening or not happening in each state of the revolution. So thank you so much.

Students, great conversation today. If you have any questions, we'll hang around for a couple of minutes, but thank you all so much and have a great day. Great. Thanks so much, Kerry.

Thank you, everyone. Cheers.

Transcript for:Key Principles of the American Revolution

Transcript for:
Key Principles of the American Revolution