Bernard Bailyn (1922–2020)

Summary: A study of the ideas conveyed through pamphlets that led to the revolution of the colonies against England.

The original edition of this work, published in 1967, won both Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes for Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn. What Bailyn does is to study the literature that preceded the revolution, much of it in pamphlets ranging from the more religiously based ones of Jonathan Mayhew to the more radical Thomas Paine. He identifies key themes that led to conflict and the show more Declaration of Independence.

Much of this was rooted in British pamphleteers including John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who protested what they saw as corruption in which royal ministers usurped the power of parliament. It was framed as a conflict of power versus liberty. The colonists began to seem themselves caught up in this conspiracy of power versus liberty, exemplified when the British quartered troops in Boston. Indeed, this conspiracy thinking, mirrored by the British acquired a kind of inevitability that led ineluctably to conflict. In one of his most sobering passages for our present moment, Bailyn writes:

“But the eighteenth century was an age of ideology; the beliefs and fears expressed on one side of the Revolutionary controversy were as sincere as those expressed on the other. The result, anticipated by Burke as early as 1769, was an ‘escalation’ of distrust toward a disastrous deadlock: ‘The Americans,’ Burke said, ‘have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them: we have made a discovery, or think we have made one, that they intend to rise in rebellion against us. . . we know not how to advance; they know not how to retreat. . . Some party must give way.’ “

The colonists took this basic opposition of liberty to power and transformed it to fit their context. Their cry of “taxation without representation” was a protest against the purported virtual representation they received in Parliament, in which measures could be decided in which they had no voice. Likewise, they challenged the abstract constitution of sovereign and Parliament, contending for a written constitution that clearly set the boundaries of government. Finally, in a colonial situation far removed from Parliament, they challenged its absolute authority, especially in matters of “internal” versus “external” taxes.

Bailyn then concludes with showing how this “contagion of liberty” spread to concerns about slavery, religious liberty, and the shape of their government, the idea of a democratic republic–one with no sovereign. Bailyn discusses the early deliberations including the fears that democracy could easily degenerate into anarchy, the developments of the ideas of bicameral legislatures, an executive, and of independent courts–designed to protect against both autocrats and anarchy.

Bailyn helps us understand not only the ideas that led to revolution but that led to how we constituted the United States, and the concern to uphold liberty against both absolute power and absolute disorder. It seems to me that what the early thinkers failed to anticipate was the partisan abyss that has developed that exacerbates the inefficiencies of a democratic republic resulting in a descent into disorder matched by the appeal of an authoritarian government that works. Ben Franklin, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was asked, “What kind of government have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” The question of our day seems to be “will we keep it?” Bailyn’s book can’t answer that for us, but it does trace the ideological heritage that led to the inception of our democratic republic. show less

Fractious tribes and fractious Britons clashed, constantly misunderstanding each other, with side orders of massacres, torture and cannibalism used by various tribes to assert dominance over the (temporarily) vanquished. Also, immigrants didn’t like each other much either—it’s funny now, but the folks of Massachusetts really thought the folks of Rhode Island were dangerous perverts. These were rough years, seemingly more full of failure than success, especially when religious/political show more reform began to make the kind of headway that various dissenting sects thought was impossible back in the home country, leaving the new colonies more rigid than Britain itself and making the inhabitants look like they might have fled out of unwarranted pessimism. show less

This book is a sweeping history of the early colonization of the "New World", beginning with glimpses of the lives of the myriad tribes of Native Americans, and continuing through the stories of not just the Pilgrims, but dozens of ethnic and religious groups who arrived on the American continent seeking a better or different life. It is clear that many arrived expecting Paradise only to find themselves thrust into often violent conflict, from public brawls to religious executions and show more genocidal campaigns aimed at the annihilation of natives. Because of this hostile environment in the mid 17th century, many settlers turned around and headed back for Europe to escape the bloody terror and misery. This period in American history is not one I knew a great deal about, even as a history major; this book explores the chaotic decades from the establishment of the English settlers' first permanent colony in the Americas, Jamestown, in 1607 up to the violent conflict that essentially routed the Native Americans from New England, King Philip’s War, in 1675-76. Professor Bailyn’s account provided a fresh, but unvarnished, account of how a patchwork of different settlers, both wealthy and poor, sought to recreate an idealized version of their former lives in this "barbarous environment” in the Chesapeake Bay region, the middle-Atlantic region, and New England. show less

This short book of five essays focuses on the role played by the unique circumstances of the American Revolutionaries as strangers in a strange land, and the effect of their isolation and newness (no landed aristocracy, no imbedded nobility, no grand manor houses generations old, no luxurious lifestyles as were possible on the Continent, no pomp, and constrained circumstances) on their creative thought. Bailyn writes with intelligence and vision without being abstruse, in five chapters on: show more American provincialism in general; Jefferson; Franklin; The Federalist Papers; and the influence of the American Revolution around the world. Adams, Madison and Hamilton are also discussed throughout.

Bailyn’s most controversial statements, in my opinion, are in the chapter on Jefferson. He acknowledges Jefferson’s contradictions, but spends much more time on his virtues than his failings. Further, he seems overawed about Jefferson’s encyclopedic interests and prodigious output. I’m sure there would have been others who accomplished as much if they owned over six hundred slaves during their lifetimes; Bailyn seems not to have considered how much one could have gotten done as a white male with a household full of slaves to address every quotidian (and not so quotidian) need.

Slavery aside, morality is a large topic of consideration throughout the essays, mostly in the sense of needing to balance freedom with control, in order to account for the “degree of depravity in mankind” (Madison). And, as Adams pointed out, since equality cannot be mandated, it is important to figure out ways to keep the plutocrats from taking over the body politic.

Bailyn rightly insists that since we still struggle with these issues, the concerns of the Founding Fathers remain our concerns. He charges us to continue “to probe the character of our constitutional establishment.” Good advice, and good reading. show less