The purpose of this article is to describe briefly, over a certain period of time in American colonial history, the genesis of how the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution came into being. In other words, (what significant events) occurred and why they succeeded. There is an old adage that “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”. My hope is that by reading this article the reader will develop a thirst for more knowledge about the U.S. Constitution.
In order to celebrate Constitution Day/ Week some factual information is required to fully understand what the constitution means to the American people. One of the most important elements of the constitution came into play in 1734, in the trials of John Peter Zenger, a printer of a newspaper in New York. Zenger (who apprenticed with Benjamin Franklin) was charged with libel and jailed, for refusing to give up the names of two authors who wrote articles critical of the Governor (a despot appointed by King George of England).
That act of defiance is pertinent to the U.S. Constitution because it led to Freedom of Speech in the First Amendment. For more information read Indelible Ink. A well-known lawyer from Philadelphia, named Alexander Hamilton, defended John Zenger.
Next, we can look to John Locke’s treatise about the natural rights of man, namely the rights to life liberty, and property. Locke was an English philosopher (1634 – 1704) who wrote Two Treatises of Government which our founders used in writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Keep in mind that our founders were well educated at the time, having studied the histories and political theories of earlier civilizations; among those different forms of government, a suitable model was not found.
The founders also studied the ancient philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Machiavelli, as well as others. Here is an excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
“Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property. Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments. Locke is thus also important for his defense of the right of revolution. Locke also defends the principle of majority rule and the separation of legislative and executive powers. In the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke denied that coercion should be used to bring people to (what the ruler believes is) the true religion and also denied that churches should have any coercive power over their members. Locke elaborated on these themes in his later political writings, such as the Second Letter on Toleration and Third Letter on Toleration”.
These concepts of the rights of man were absorbed by the colonial clergy.
The precise meaning of Locke’s Right to Revolution was clarified by Thomas Paine in his The Rights of Man, as, a revolution in the principles and practice of governments. The Americans had done something, Paine explained, that no other people in history had ever achieved: they founded their new governments
“on a moral theory … on the indefeasible, hereditary rights of man.”
In The American Revolutionary Mind, the philosophies of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon are also presented. Their ideals were accepted willingly by most colonists of the time, who were exposed to these ideas by their clergy, who adopted the God-given rights espoused by Locke and others. The people were aware of King George’s whims and tyranny; that the British citizens had more rights and freedoms than the colonists.
Additionally, following the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the punitive Sugar, Stamp, Townshend, Tea, and Intolerable Acts. All these together were designed to restrict trade, levy taxes, and take away self-governance. Interestingly, with the limited circulation of newspapers at the time, the people took upon themselves the distribution of information, passing around their copies and engaging in a lively discussion.
