How Americans are a revolutionary people.
The revolutionary online publication in which this note appears calls itself “The American Mind.” That memorable phrase was introduced into the American political tradition 200 years ago today, in a letter Thomas Jefferson sent to his Virginia neighbor, Henry Lee, on May 8, 1825.
Jefferson was at the time on the board of visitors of the University of Virginia, which he had founded just a few years earlier. Lee had written as one interested “in the renown of our ancestors, and the history of the Country” to call Jefferson’s attention to certain historical documents in Lee’s possession. “These papers,” Lee wrote, “might have formed the materials, out of which the fine propositions of the Declaration of Independence arose.”
Jefferson was already one of those ancestors in whose renown Lee was interested. He responded with a historic reflection that deserved to be remembered through the ages, explaining the purposes of the Declaration:
…with respect to our rights and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced therefore to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence—not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; [in] terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we [were] compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversations, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc.
“American Whigs” in 1776 were those who supported the Declaration of Independence. Opponents of the Declaration were called Tories. At that time, in John Adams’s estimation, about a third of Americans were Whigs, a third Tories, and a third were neither. Jefferson discounts the opinions of Tories and neutrals when he speaks of “but one opinion on this side of the water.” “The American Mind” was not simply the aggregated opinions of everyone residing in America, but the animating spirit of those who were already becoming Americans—those who, for support of the Declaration of Independence, mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
As many as 20% of the Tories fled the country during the Revolution. Those who remained, along with the neutrals, had to conform themselves to the victory of the Revolutionaries and their American mind, as expressed in the Declaration. We hold elections in America because we think “the just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.” We think this because we think “all men are created equal” in a decisive respect: some are not born with saddles on their backs and others booted and spurred to ride them by the grace of God or history. But not all political differences can be settled by elections.
Americans first expressed their consent as an aspiring sovereign people when, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence,” they pledged their all in support of Independence. That was the unprecedented, constitutive expression of the American mind. But what divided the American Whigs from the British Crown and Parliament—and therefore what divided American Whigs from American Tories—could not be decided by a vote alone. The American Whigs believed the British Parliament and Crown were attempting to impose on them what the Declaration of Independence called “absolute Despotism” and “absolute Tyranny.” Crown and Parliament—and American Tories—disagreed. Under the laws of nature and nature’s God, the American Revolutionaries believed they had an unalienable natural right to resist that despotism and tyranny. They argued it was their right and even their duty to alter or abolish that tyrannical government and replace it with one that “to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” This was the right of revolution: an acknowledgment that bullets may rightfully be appealed to, when necessary, to establish the possibility of ballots. A people whose maxim is “Give me liberty or give me death” cannot be expected to hold a vote to decide whether or not to be enslaved.
Jefferson wrote his letter to Henry Lee a little more than 50 years after the “shot heard round the world” at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. All subsequent American ballots would depend on the bullets of 1775-1783. Without those bullets, Americans would have had no ballots, no “We the People” for 250 years and counting. Those bullets were necessary if the American mind was to govern American destiny. The right of revolution underlies every American election. It is the primal expression of the authority and right of the people to govern themselves and will always be an animating principle of the American mind.
The American Mind presents a range of perspectives. Views are writers’ own and do not necessarily represent those of The Claremont Institute.
The American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, dedicated to restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. Interested in supporting our work? Gifts to the Claremont Institute are tax-deductible.
