The Mentor: The Revolution, Vol. 1, Num. 43, Serial No. 43 / The Story of America in Pictures

by Albert Bushnell Hart

THE CIVIL REVOLUTION

A revolutionary overturning came whenever the Union Jack was hauled down and the Stars and Stripes hauled up. But the revolutionary army was not the Revolution: it was like the line in a football match, desperately holding back the other line while the backs get into play. The real Revolution was an overturning of governments, and charters, and political power. The revolving wheel whirled the old colonies out of existence, and cunningly framed and polished new state governments. The Revolution turned the British empire down, and pushed the United States of America up. The Revolution rolled to the bottom of the wheel Governor Gage of Massachusetts, and Governor Tryon of North Carolina, and Governor Dunmore of Virginia; and up to the top revolved Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. The Revolution was like a religious conversion: it set the American people out of their old ways, and into a new upward path.

JOHN PAUL JONES

Commander of the first American navy. From the portrait by C. W. Peale.

BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN PAUL JONES

John Paul Jones, the “founder of the American navy,” was born in this cottage at Kirkbean, in Scotland, in 1747. He died in Paris in 1792.

All that seems natural to us; for we have been brought up on the tyranny of George III, and the misgovernment and plunder of the colonies by the British government. We realize the bad state of things much better than did the Americans at the beginning of the Revolution. In truth the colonies were freer from harsh and arbitrary government than England, Scotland, and Wales, to say nothing of what was then the separate kingdom of Ireland. Every colony had its local assembly: not a single English county had one. In every colony any freeman who had the necessary pluck and health could acquire land and become a voter: in England not a twentieth part of the adult men could vote. The colonists laid their own taxes and expended them for their own purposes: Englishmen paid taxes levied by a Parliament over which only a few of them had control.

Apparently the main cause of the Revolution was that the colonists could do so much for themselves that there was no reason why they should not do substantially everything for themselves. They had a personal attachment for England, the king, and the English system of government, very like that now felt by the Canadians, and would have been quite satisfied with the degree of self government that England has since freely given to Canada. John Adams says, “That there existed a general desire of independence of the Crown in any part of America before the Revolution, is as far from the truth as the zenith is from the nadir.”

OLD BELFRY, LEXINGTON MASSACHUSETTS

From this belfry was rung out the alarm on the morning of April 19, 1775, calling the minute men to assemble on the common.

PAUL REVERE’S HOME IN BOSTON

The tablet that may be seen between the second and third stories of the house was placed there by the Paul Revere Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

PAUL REVERE

From the painting by the famous American artist, Gilbert Stuart.

Then why revolt, especially when above a third of the thinking people in America were opposed to the Revolution, and had to be driven out or silenced? To the original grievances of the Revolution was added a stupid John Bull obstinacy, concentrated in George III, but shared by a good part of the British nation. These mistakes made by England are a fine example of what comes to a country that falls into the hands of what are called the “Interests”; for Parliament was really nothing but a combine of great titled families, who took in some representatives of the cities and the merchant class. One of the best results of the Revolution was that it shook up the British aristocracy; and the best proof that the Revolution was right is the admission of Lord North, when the war was all over, that it had been a great mistake, but that the nation had made it, and not simply the prime minister.

The Revolution was worth all the blood and treasure that it cost, because it lighted a new torch of popular government. There had been plenty of government of the people in ancient and medieval times; but at the epoch of the American Revolution the formerly democratic Swiss and Dutch, and the free citizens of the German and French and Spanish cities, had lost faith in themselves. It was fashionable to revere Demosthenes and Cato and Brutus and the Populus Romanus; but real republican government had about ceased on the earth when the new constellation of the United States appeared on the horizon.

The colonies had very tidy little governments, schools of politics, in which the speaker of the assembly was commonly the leader of a healthy opposition to the governor; and on that foundation they built tidy little state governments, which showed the prevalent belief that governors were dangerous creatures who ought to have as little power as possible; while legislatures were a reflection of the people’s will which could not err. The wheel of revolution has twirled backward in our day; for we make governors and presidents great political leaders, and set our legislators on a one-legged race against the initiative and referendum. In the midst of the confusion of the Revolution, when town after town was picked up by the British, and nobody knew whether the Revolution would win out, it is wonderful how well the state governments worked, and how successful they were in putting on record the great principle of the two kinds of law,—fundamental or constitutional law, and statute law.

PATRICK HENRY ADDRESSING THE VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY IN 1765.

He is famous for his speech supporting the resolutions to resist the Stamp Act. At one point he exclaimed, “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third”—“Treason! treason!” shouted the Speaker of the Assembly, “Treason! treason!” shouted the members—“and,” Henry continued, “George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!”

THE CHAIR AND TABLE USED AT THE SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

The finest work of the Revolution was the making of a national government; for which the army and the navy were in part responsible, because a central national power was all that could save the army from capture and the navy from destruction. The Continental Congress became a government before it knew it, authorizing an army and navy, borrowing money, issuing many times more paper notes than it could ever redeem, appointing George Washington commander in chief of the Continental forces, sending ambassadors to foreign countries.

Were men greater on the average then than now? Would Speaker Clark and Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, and Senator Beveridge bulk as big as Patrick Henry and Sam Adams and John Dickinson, if revolution broke out now? “These are the times that try men’s souls,” said Tom Paine, and it was also a time that made men’s souls! The one indispensable man in the Revolution was George Washington; for there was no other in the colonies who was so central, so immovable, a force. But the Revolution would also have failed but for Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, and the other civilians who built up the new government.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

THOMAS JEFFERSON