Not long ago acclaimed historian David McCullough noted, "For at least 25 years we've been raising young Americans who are, by and large,historically illiterate. The founding of our nation, the Civil, World War II--they should be common knowledge, but they are not . . The historian Daniel Boorstin put it very well [when he said] 'Trying to plan for the future without a sense of past is like trying to plant cut flowers.'" More recently it was announced on the news that in a poll among Americans below the age of 40, a full 40% were unable to identify which nation America won her independence from at the conclusion of the American Revolution. This essay will focus on the concept of liberty and freedom, terms that have been used in various ways for specific purposes inside political circles stretching all the way to the Founding Fathers.
The American Revolution took place because of several key forces in play in the middle and late eighteenth century in colonial America. Most importantly, the colonies were being forced (through the imposition of taxes from the British Crown) to help finance the debt of an expensive global conflict between England and France. George Washington cut his military teeth in the French and Indian War, experiences which would later help him in leading his new country to victory over their ally in that earlier conflict. American veterans from the French and Indian War had been led to believe their rewards would include land grant from the Northwest Territories (present-day Ohio and Indiana), but England prohibited any incursion by the colonists into the area, an edict which was summarily ignored by people like Daniel Boone and George Washington himself. It is not too far a stretch to suggest British intransigence in not officially permitting American expansion beyond the Appalachians contributed somewhat to the Revolution that followed a decade later.
Taxation without representation was very much on the minds of patriots like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, John Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Hamilton, never mind George Washington. The housing of British troops as the colonies grew more and more restive in the 1760s and 70s was another sore point of contention between the Mother Country and the colonies. Another lesser known conflict between America and England was economics. As the Industrial Age gathered momentum, England prohibited the manufacture of cotton gins and other 'factory equipment' inside the colonies (see the history of Samuel Slater's Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which exists because blue prints for textile machinery were smuggled out of England just before the 19th century began), while seeking cheap imports of cotton and many other raw materials not only from America, but from India, thereby putting more financial pressure on the colonies.
With the war finally won in 1783, exactly what constituted 'liberty and freedom' for the newly formed United States was yet another sore point among the Founding Fathers, only this time the conflicts were internal. Alexander Hamilton's blue print for America was for her to establish herself as a global military and economic power. This could only mean there had to be a standing army and navy, a strong central-federal government wielding the power to tax states and incur debt through issuing bonds and other financial tools, which in turn meant that a strong central bank whose the fiscal policies would supercede the fractured financial mess individual states found themselves in as the U.S. Constitution was being framed to replace the anemic Articles of Federation.
Thomas Jefferson, an ardent political foe of Hamilton, envisioned an agrarian society in America, with a skeletal (or no) standing military forces, a weak central government underpinned by the primacy of state rule. These concepts of 'liberty and freedom' were essentially diametrically opposite those of Hamilton's. As a result, the political infighting between the Federalists (Hamilton, Adams, and Washington to a lesser degree) and the Democrats (Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe) was extremely intense: all the nasty politicking we see in political campaigns (personal smears, charges of corruption and personal ambition) marred America's political system from its inception. Anyone foolish enough to believe the Founding Fathers were one uniform political body pursuing a commonly held vision of what America would become, and what "liberty and freedom" truly meant, is simply deluding himself. There was no unanimity among post-Revolutionary War political leaders.
It should be emphasized that aside from the emergence of the two-party system during John Adams and Thomas Jefferson's presidencies, a regional conflict between a rapidly industrializing North and the slave economy of the South created fractures in the American political framework that would require a bloody Civil War to correct, began to present itself. The North stood for high tariffs which made their products competitive with imports from Europe, the South arguing instead for low tariffs to permit the expanded export of raw material to Europe. In the second decade of the 19th century the New England states threatened to secede from the union over these arguments.
Interestingly enough, four of the first six American Presidents were sons of the South (Virginia), the other two Presidents (John Adams and John Quincy Adams from Massachusetts). NONE of the Founding Fathers embraced a democratic form of government where all Americans (both property owners and non-property owners, women, and minorities) would be permitted the ballot. They liked the indirect method of state governments electing U.S. Senators and the roll of the Electoral College to avoid the direct influence of the "unruly masses" when it came to voting for political leaders. America was to be a Republic, not a democracy. That is something present-day propagandists for the Founding Fathers willfully ignore in pining for the original blueprint(s) for America.
Andrew Jackson's meteoric rise to power as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans in the late 1820s marked a new milepost in American political history. Claiming to be a Jeffersonian Democrat, a "representative of the common man," in fact Jackson's legacy was the consolidation of power in the Presidency (upsetting the delicate checks and balances of the American system of government), blatant abuse of the patronage system where friends of Jackson were installed in many levels of government to ensure Jackson's longevity (Jackson was hardly alone in this regard, but the practice flew in the face of his argument that he was an agent of the 'common man,' because many honest government employees were tossed out on their heads when it became known they were not Jackson supporters), and his perpetuation of slavery and his removal of Indians from Georgia to west of the Mississippi River in violation of federal treaties signed by his predecessors. Undoubtedly, Jackson was personally courageous and a dynamic leader. But he was a power grabber, largely ignoring the will of the Supreme Court, and picking and choosing those laws passed by Congress that suited him. Henry Clay's reference to Jackson as a "tyrant" definitely had much more merit than the Tea Partiers of today attempting to a fix a similar label on Barack Obama.
Finally, when words like "freedom" and "liberty" were invoked by the Texas Republic in the run up to the Mexican War in 1846, historians generally agree that the conflict was little more than a blatant land-grab. No amount of retro white-washing of history can alter this fundamental truth.
My point is this: our concepts of "liberty" and "freedom" have been points of contention since America was founded. Any yearning or "wanting our country back" directly suggests that there was a time in this country's storied history where there was uniform agreement on what liberty and freedom really meant.
If I were black (I am not), any suggestion that the Founding Fathers had things right in constructing a Constitution that included defining slaves as 3/5 of a person, while agreeing to perpetuate that peculiar institution, is anathema to the liberties all citizens in America are entitled to.
The Constitution (and the ongoing unfolding history of this great country), is a living and breathing concept, something that cannot be etched in stone.
What was "liberty and freedom" for the Founding Fathers has changed drastically over the past two centuries. They would not recognize the current day system of government.
We have the citizens and politicians of the American Revolution to thank for their sacrifices and courage in creating the United States of America. We can never forget those brave citizens who gave their lives for America over the centuries, either. But not for a minute should we argue that in reference to our Founding Fathers, THEIR vision, THEIR intent(s), THEIR efforts were uniformly shared and coherent in comparison to each other. They were not.
That is the beauty of America today.
rh