The Great American Story: The Revolution of Self-Rule

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Great American Story: The Revolution of Self-Rule
Hillsdale College Podcast Network Superfeed
Lecture by Wilfred McClay | April 1, 2026

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Overview

This episode delves into the historical journey that led to America’s revolution of self-rule, drawing on the rich traditions, experiments, and socio-religious dynamics that fostered a uniquely self-governing society. Host Jeremiah Regan and Juan Davalos introduce Wilfred McClay’s lecture, which traces the roots of American self-government from the religious fragmentation of Europe, through English colonial experiments, up to the defining moment of the Declaration of Independence. The lecture emphasizes how the revolution was the realization of ideas and behaviors Americans had been living for generations prior to 1776.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Accidental yet Intentional Evolution of Self-Rule

• [00:20] Juan Davalos notes the “miracle” of the American Revolution: it was both “accidental in the grand scope” yet “intentional in the decisions that the colonists made every day to live their lives well in accordance with their morality, religion, their possession of virtue.”
• [00:48] Jeremiah Regan underscores that American self-rule “did not begin with the Declaration in 1776, but with long community development, trying different forms of government, and learning over decades what practices would make self-government possible.”

2. The Religious Origins of European and English Unsettlement

• [02:53] Wilfred McClay opens the lecture emphasizing religious unsettlement in Europe, citing Lewis Mumford’s idea that “the settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe.”
  • Martin Luther and John Calvin’s theological revolts fracturing the religious unity of Western Europe.
  • Calvin’s particular influence: “he abolished [the hierarchy of bishops] in favor of elected bodies made up of ministers and laymen, which brought a principle of democratic self governance into the church.” ([04:26])

3. The English Reformation and Its Political, Not Theological, Roots

• [07:15] The English Reformation, driven by Henry VIII’s pursuit of a male heir, marks a political break from Rome, unlike the continent’s theological focus.
  • “Henry’s response was immediate and volcanic…” He severed the Church of England, made himself supreme head, and enforced an Act of Supremacy. ([07:48])
  • Resulting religious divisions birthed the Puritans, setting the stage for later American settlement.

4. The Shift from Spanish to English Colonization Policies

• The Spanish dominated early colonization but used “top-down, centralized control”—in sharp contrast to the English, whose colonization was “pretty haphazard... a collection of uncoordinated private undertakings.” ([13:11])
• The English victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 marked the decline of Spanish influence and allowed for "laws and government [to] reflect their English antecedents." ([16:39])

5. Contrasts Between Early Colonies: Virginia vs. New England

• Virginia: Founded for profit and material gain (tobacco), with early struggles due to settlers’ lack of practical skills. Survival only came through discipline and tobacco’s economic promise ([18:14]).
• New England: Settled by Puritans in pursuit of a religious mission—“to be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us” (quoting Winthrop; [22:14]). Their community focused on religious covenant, cooperation, and collective virtue.

6. Self-Rule Born from Necessity and Experimentation

• Because the British government was distracted by internal conflicts and lacked a coordinated policy, colonists were left to their own devices—“colonial life was experimental. It depended on the self rule of the subjects of their colonial masters who were far, far away and not able to really take part in the day to day act of governance.” ([26:37])
• The English tradition of “rights grounded in common law—trial by jury, protection from unwarranted searches—were woven into colonial society” ([14:47]).

7. Growth of American Identity and Crisis with Britain

• Post-French and Indian War: Britain won but was heavily in debt—triggering new taxes and policies on colonies, conflicting with their tradition of self-rule ([29:50]).
• American resistance (e.g. to the Stamp and Sugar Acts) intensifies, uniting colonists in policy and sentiment—“a new sensibility in America.” ([32:07])
• The Great Awakening and the Enlightenment both encouraged independence and skepticism of established authority; both influenced revolutionary energy. ([30:44])

8. The Road to Revolution: Key Events

• The creation of the Continental Congress (1774) and resistance such as boycotting British goods fostered new unity—“The Revolution was effected before the war commenced.” (John Adams quote; [34:53])
• Outbreak of fighting at Lexington in April 1775—the “shot heard round the world.” ([36:32])
• Britain’s use of German mercenaries (Hessians) and refusal to compromise solidified colonial resolve.
• Thomas Paine’s "Common Sense" ([38:12]) riveted support for independence—George Washington said, “Common Sense is working a powerful change in the minds of men.” ([38:55])

9. The Declaration of Independence: Core Principles and Unresolved Issues

• Adopted July 4, 1776—Jefferson’s words present “the common sense of the subject and formulate an expression of the American mind” ([40:01]).
• Declaration frames government as existing to secure God-given rights—“from the consent of the governed, not from the divine right of kings” [40:53].
• Unresolved Questions: What did “all men are created equal” really mean? Did it apply to women? What about slavery? ([41:38])
  • “How could [Jefferson] have failed to realize that these words could not accommodate an institution that traded in the flesh of human beings?” ([41:51])

10. The Principle of Self-Rule as Enduring Foundation

• The American Revolution ultimately vindicated “the principle of self rule… a republic in which men—and women—rule themselves, not by kings, not by monarchs, but they rule themselves. And this is a founding principle of the country they would come to be.” ([42:22])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe.” — Wilfred McClay citing Lewis Mumford ([03:03])
• “[Calvinism] brought a principle of democratic self-governance into the church.” — Wilfred McClay ([04:26])
• “It’s a miracle that the revolution worked. Part of that miracle... is that the Americans had been practicing the way of life that they wanted to live for about 150 years.” — Juan Davalos ([01:41])
• “We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” — John Winthrop, quoted by Wilfred McClay ([22:14])
• “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced.” — John Adams, as cited by McClay ([34:53])
• “Common Sense is working a powerful change in the minds of men.” — George Washington, as cited by McClay ([38:55])
• “The people had the right, even the responsibility, to abolish it, which is to say they had the right of revolution.” — Wilfred McClay ([41:17])
• “Self rule, the principle of self rule, was at the heart of it all.” — Wilfred McClay ([42:12])

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Important Timestamps

• [00:20] The “accidental” and “intentional” nature of the American experiment
• [02:53] Start of McClay's lecture: religious unsettlement in Europe
• [07:48] Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church
• [13:11] Comparison between Spanish and English colonial models
• [18:14] The founding and survival of Virginia
• [22:14] Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” speech for Massachusetts Bay
• [29:50] The aftermath of the French and Indian War and new tensions
• [34:53] John Adams on the revolution’s true nature
• [36:32] Lexington and the outbreak of war
• [38:55] Impact of Thomas Paine’s "Common Sense"
• [40:53] The Declaration of Independence's foundational philosophy
• [41:38] Unanswered questions on equality and slavery
• [42:22] Summary: the principle of self-rule as America’s foundation

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Conclusion

Wilfred McClay’s lecture, as presented by Hillsdale College, articulates the deep historical and cultural currents that led to America’s Revolution of self-rule. It was not the product of sudden invention, but a culmination of centuries of religious, political, and social learning and adaptation. The story highlights the enduring challenges—like the meaning of equality and the contradiction with slavery—that would shape the next centuries of American history, but also the powerful ideal at America’s founding: the right and duty of a people to govern themselves.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan.

[A]

And I'm Juan Davalos. We are back with the Great American Story, a Land of Hope lecture number three, the Revolution of Self Rule.

[B]

This is a great lecture. It talks about how Americans became a free society. And they did it gradually and almost accidentally accidental in the sense of the grand scope in which we became a constitutional republic of, for and by the people, but intentional in the decisions that the colonists made every day to live their lives well in accordance with their morality, religion, their possession of virtue. The decisions that they made set them up to be capable of governing themselves.

[A]

That's something that I appreciate about my studies here at Hillsdale especially. Sometimes we tend to think about, I think, America, and obviously it's beginning the country as we know it today in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration, as we prepare ourselves for the 250th anniversary of that momentous occasion. But we can forget because of that emphasis on what happened before, what happened prior to, and what led to the signing of the Declaration. It's not just, you know, people get together and decide to come up with these ideas. There was a whole process of people learning and being developed in communities trying different things and the colonies having different forms of government and learning things that help them reach that point of the revolution. And this lecture will go into some of those topics. Right.

[B]

It's a miracle that the revolution worked. Part of that miracle, the way the miracle unfolded, is that the Americans had been practicing the way of life that they wanted to live for about 150 years. They weren't making it up at the time of the revolution. They knew what they wanted. They knew what they believed to be right and true. They'd been living that way for a long time. And so they had a blueprint, a model for the type of society they wanted after the revolution. This lecture tells the story of that development.

[A]

And if you're interested in learning more about this period of American history, we have an entire course, it's really filmed like a documentary called Colonial America. And you can go to Hillsdale. Edu course, that's Hillsdale Edu course to watch Colonial America and learn about how America became, how Americans became the people that they did in order to be able to have the revolution that we had.

[B]

Bill Maclay is essential in the creation of the documentary Colonial America. Let's turn to him here for lecture three of the Great American Story, A Land of Hope, the Revolution of Self Rule.

[C]

Hello and welcome back. I'm Wilford Maclay. And this is the Revolution of Self Rule, a title I hope we'll explain as we go. Although I thought about calling it From Martin Luther to Thomas Jefferson. And that will give you a sense of just how much ground we're going to try to cover in the next few minutes or so. Let me go back to Lewis Mumford. The quotation that I mentioned last time about the settlement of America having its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. Of all the unsettlements that Europe experienced, the unsettlement with regard to religion was probably the most consequential. Which is not to say that it isn't connected to all sorts of other things relating to this downward movement from the high point of the high Middle Ages around the year 1300, in which all of Europe was unified around, at least Western Europe was unified around the Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church as its binding force and its presence was everywhere, from the structure of towns to the obligations of lords and vassals under the feudal system. This unity, of course, was not destined to last. All sorts of tensions and forces tore at it, and among those the rebellion initiated by Martin Luther and John Calvin, the two great Reformation figures whose combined efforts, not that they combined with one another, had the effect of leaving the religious map of Europe forever divided. They had legitimate and interesting complaints. Luther thought that the Bible taught a very different approach to justification, the way by which one makes one's relationship with God right and secure his salvation. That this was not secured by works, it was not a product of the institutional church, but was strictly grounded in the relationship of the individual believer to God, and that that belief was something that came through faith alone and not through works. Calvin agreed with much of this, but he importantly affected the future of the church by rejecting the institutional structure of the governance structure of the Catholic Church that Lutheranism had really largely kept held over from Calvinism, that is the hierarchy of bishops, he abolished that and in favor of elected bodies made up of ministers and laymen, which brought a principle of democratic self governance into the church. Some Calvinists, they even favored a congregational form of organization which each individual church governed itself and was not part of a hierarchical order of any kind. Without getting into too much further, more deeply into these issues, it suffices to say that Western Christianity was fracturing and fragmenting into a great many pieces. There are many others involved other than Luther and Calvin, but they, I think, will suffice for our purposes to give a sense of the degree of unsettlement and some of the Sour unsettlement. But let's narrow the focus a little bit to England, to the English Reformation, because the English Reformation was different than the Reformation on the continent, the Reformation in Germany and elsewhere, there's a lot about England. England is always different from the continent. And its Reformation was also different. Its unsettlement was different. At the time the Reformation was getting underway in Germany, Henry viii, King of England, was a fierce defender of the Catholic Church, so much so that Pope Leo X called him Defender of the Faith. But Henry was also a king, and he wanted, above all else, to keep the Tudor dynasty, which he'd inherited from his father, in charge and keep at bay the forces of disintegration that his father had had to tame in coming to power in the 15th century. So to do this, he felt he needed a male heir to his throne. And since his wife of 20 some odd years had not 23 years of marriage had not given him one, he requested a divorce, an annulment, really, by the Pope, to allow him to marry a second woman. The Pope denied this for political reasons that are too complicated to go into, but not really on theological grounds so much as political grounds. Henry's response was immediate and volcanic. He went on to sever the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, made himself the supreme head of the Church, had the Archbishop of Canterbury take care of the old marriage, and he went ahead and passed an act of Supremacy through the Parliament, to which all subjects were to be thenceforth required to pledge their loyalty and obedience, closed the monasteries and basically stripped the Roman Catholic Church of its power in England. In a sense, the English Reformation was the opposite of the Lutheran Reformation. Luther was driven by questions of theology, not by politics, and came to politics. He actually was fairly conservative, quite conservative, in fact. In the case of England, it was politics and not theology that provoked Henry's break from Rome. He was perfectly content to maintain the sacramental structure, the theological structure, the organizational structure of the Church. It was simply his political needs that had to be met. So once the dust settled and his daughter Elizabeth was queen, one of the great monarchs of English British history, the question remained, if England was going to be a Protestant country, was it to be Protestant and Catholic in the first place? But if it was going to be Protestant, what kind of Protestantism would this be? There were various elements, the residue of this peculiar separation that had occurred, various elements at work in the Church, some of which were High Church elements, that wanted to keep as Catholic capital C as possible in every respect other than the recognition of the papacy. Then there were Reformers who were influenced by Calvinism, who'd been educated on the continent, who thought the Reformers were right, that the church was corrupt, it needed to be purged of all of its un biblical, unworldly or all too worldly elements. So you had all kinds of divisions within the Church of England over what kind of direction it should take. And of course, the faction that wanted to see the Church cleansed of its corruptions came to be known as the Puritans. We'll come back to them in a moment. These developments matter so much. I'm talking about England so much because of the fact that England eventually becomes the predominant influence in the settlement of North America. But it's very important not to move too quickly to that without taking into account how dominant the Spanish were for the first hundred years or so of the Western hemisphere. After Columbus. The Spanish were utterly dominant in the settlement of the Western hemisphere for a mix of reasons, some of them naked. Materialism, the mercantilism to which the Spanish were committed made the New World a ripe plucking ground for precious metals that would boost the size and wealth of the Spanish treasury. There were also strong religious motives. A desire to convert the peoples of the New World to Catholicism. So it's no one thing, the extinction of native peoples, that's one of the really ugly parts of that story, actually happened mainly because of biological reasons. The epidemic spread of diseases to which New World inhabitants had no immunities. At any rate, here's the important thing to know about the Spanish. Politically speaking, the Spanish approach to colonization was top down. They wanted to centralize the undertaking. They wanted colonization to serve the interests of the mother country. They were not interested in creating, primarily interested in creating settlements that would become self sustaining entities. And that is quite a contrast to the English, as we'll see in a moment. The Spanish eventually came under attack. All those ships burying gold and silver back from the New World began to be attacked by French privateers, then Dutch, then English. In fact, the English privateers were quietly supported by Queen Elizabeth herself. And as a way of getting back at the Spanish, eventually, Spanish ruler Philip II had had enough of this and he decided he was going to assemble an invincible armada that would send 130 ships, the largest fleet ever seen in Europe, to take on and invade England. Well, this is the famous battle of the Spanish Armada. And through a series of favorable developments which some have seen as an expression of divine favor, because they are quite remarkable, the English defeated this armada soundly, decisively, and from 1588 on the Star of England was on the rise, and the star of Spain was drooping in irretrievable decline. This defeat of the Armada is important for us in American history because it helped to determine at least what kind of culture North America was not going to primarily have. This is not to say North America would be free of Spanish influence. And we know from the titles of the names of cities like Los Angeles and Santa Fe that that would not be so. But the defeat of the Armando opened the way for England to take the lead role in settling North America. And the result would be a continent whose institutions, laws and government would reflect their English antecedents. What were the implications of this? There are many, but I'll settle on a couple. The monarchies of France and Spain were embracing absolutism. This centralized control of power in the hands of a single sovereign whose prerogatives were grounded ultimately in divine fiat. They were seen as ruling by divine right. The English followed a very different route. The Crown had always had restraints on its power. The Crown had to share power with aristocrats and gentry, who convened independently as a legislative body called Parliament, that would control, among other things, the power of the purse, the ability to authorize and impose taxes. So the Crown didn't control everything, couldn't control everything. And its powers were limited, maybe above all else, by a conviction that the people possessed powers independently of the Crown, fundamental rights that no monarch could challenge or withdraw. These rights were grounded in the English tradition of common law, which was approached a law that relied on precedent rather than on judicial principles. So it had an historical dimension. Rights like the right to trial by jury or protection from unwarranted searches and seizures, were inviolable because they were enshrined in law and custom. They were woven into the warp and woof of English life. Second factor is the English approach to colonization. Unlike the Spanish, English colonization of the New World was a pretty haphazard thing. There was no blueprint, there was no master plan. It was a private undertaking, largely a collection of uncoordinated private undertakings taken by various kinds. A really motley collection of entrepreneurs, visionaries, religious zealots and such, each seeking the fresh opportunities, that new hope of freedom. In pursuing their ends without having to be steered by a larger national vision, they were free to do as they pleased. So each of these colonial enterprises had its own profile, its own aspirations, its own distinctive way of understanding America as a land of hope. The Hoops were different. The contrast among them. We could spend a lot of time talking about. Let me just talk about a couple the first two. Virginia. Virginia was first permanent English colony, started in 1607 at Jamestown. It was a nakedly materialistically oriented enterprise. Its goal was to dig, mine and search for all manner of mines of gold, silver and copper. There you go. It sounds very Spanish. Unfortunately, the men who came to Jamestown and subsequently to Virginia were supremely ill equipped for the kinds of tasks and kind of skills necessary to the founding of a new colony. They were city boys. They didn't know anything about farming. They didn't know anything about woodcraft or hunting or all the things one needed to know about. So they very nearly failed completely. It was only through the sort of heroic manhandling undertaken by Captain John Smith, who took control of the colony and forced only those who worked to be able to eat, put down rebellions and impose some order. But even with that, the the colony was barely hanging on. Finally, the big change that came was the discovery of tobacco and of tobacco's potential as a commercial crop. By 1639, the tobacco production had soared to £3 million per year, which was a solid basis for an economy. Not a particularly admirable basis, but even then, tobacco has never been regarded as a health product, but a solid basis nonetheless for prosperity, for the sustainability of the colony.

[D]

Charlie Kirk understood that before he could lead, he needed to learn. He didn't need a degree, but he did need a teacher. Hillsdale College was there to teach him wherever and whenever he wanted to learn. Charlie took many of Hillsdale's free online courses, studying the classics, the American founding, and the Bible. And you can learn like Charlie at Hillsdale. Edu Network. That's Hillsdale. Edu Network. Charlie Kirk strengthened his knowledge and courage by studying the great greatest thinkers, writers and leaders of history, all with Hillsdale College. Visit Hillsdale. Edu Network and you too can learn like Charlie. That's Hillsdale. Edu Network.

[E]

Hi there, it's Bill Gray from Hillsdale College. Before you skip ahead, can I ask you a question or two? If you could teach 50 million Americans one thing, what would it be? Would you teach our great American story that this nation is unique, founded on self government and individual liberty? Maybe you would teach the truth about free enterprise, how hard work and opportunity allow anyone to rise. Or would you teach the gospel and the Christian faith that helps us live good and meaningful lives? At Hillsdale College, we're doing exactly that, teaching the best that's been thought and said through our free online courses, K12 programs, Imprimis, podcasts and More. We reach and teach millions every year with the principles of liberty that make America free. And with your help, we can reach even more. Your tax deductible gift today will help us teach millions more people to pursue truth and defend liberty. Just text the word give to 7, 1844. You'll get a secure link to make your donation in seconds. That's give to 7, 1844. Thank you for standing with us. Now back to the show.

[C]

By contrast, New England was settled by Puritans, Puritans being those who believed the Church of England had not gone nearly far enough to purge itself of its Catholic corruptions and came to the conclusion that this renewal was not going to happen in England proper. So they came to New England and they very consciously saw themselves as carrying out a divine mission. They were creating a new Zion, a new Israel in a new land. This divinely ordained mission was an errand into the wilderness. They would create holy commonwealths, models for the reformation of the Church. There are important differences among the various Puritan or Calvinist colonies. The Pilgrims, so called, who came in 1620 were different from the ones who came later. I want to talk mainly about the later ones. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, which created what became Boston 1630, under the leadership of the lawyer John Winthrop. They had received a charter from Charles I to come to this colony before they made landfall. Winthrop preached what's been called a lay sermon, called a model of Christian Charity. He laid out the settlement's mission and its guiding purposes. Nothing like this happened in Virginia. It's a beautiful speech. It's one of the classics of American literature. And he says in the speech, the we are entered in a covenant with God for this work, for this end. We must be knit together in this work as one man. We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together. We must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. What an audacious statement. Considering they were landing on the other side of the world, the equivalent of the dark side of the moon. And they imagined this inhospitable place full of unfamiliar wild animals and peoples. Coming from a comfortable middle class background of England, what could they imagine? That the eyes of all people were upon them. It tells you something about the zeal behind their undertaking, that they saw themselves as reenacting the great exodus of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to come to the promised land. So their religious faith sustained them. And there were other variations in the themes of colonization. There were other religious colonies, There were other materialistically oriented colonies. There were utopian colonies. The colony of Georgia was a utopian idea of the philanthropist James Oglethorpe. Many of these colonies in one way or another did reflect idealistic aims on the parts of their founders. And a striking number of them were based on a kind of desire to renew the world, to restore it, to recover some portion of the unity that had existed before the great unsettlement, or to take elements of the great unsettlement and bring them to greater realization in an unpopulated or underpopulated land. Most of these efforts, in fact all of them in some respect failed if we hold them to their original intentions. Daniel Boorstin says the colonies were disproving ground for utopias. Well, that's probably true in a sense, but what did happen, and this makes up the theme of the rest of my remarks, is that they learned the capacity for self rule. Colonial life was experimental. It depended on the self rule of the subjects of their colonial masters who were from far far away and not able to really take part in the day to day act of governance. So they were Englishmen who had adapted English traditions of custom and customary usages, the English law, English common law and self rule. But they found themselves in a situation where they were apart from their English confreres. The fact of self rule is helped out by the fact I've already mentioned before, that the English really didn't have a plan for overall colonial policy. And they really, even if they had had one, they were not able to enact it because they were so busy fighting with one another all through the 17th century. This battle over the question of how Britain would relate to the question of the divine right of kings of absolutism, would it fall in line with the continental powers? Or would there be a distinctively English way of retaining powers over against the crown lodged in the people and in other representative bodies? Anyway, there was no appetite, no energy for an organized colonial policy to be imposed on the North Americans. So they went their own way. They protected by the fact that the deepest political traditions of the English people were opposed to absolutism. And in the end that tradition triumphed, notably by the time of the glorious revolution of 1688, which we won't go through too much except to say that it provided, as you'll see in a minute, a precedent for the American Revolution. So colonial affairs were on the back burner so far as Britain was concerned. But that had to change. Eventually the colonial powers would bump up against One another in North America, and push would come to shove and war would come about. And it happened finally in what we call the French and Indian War, the Seven Years War, same thing. And in a battle between France and England over dominance in North America. And to make a long story short, England decisively won the French and Indian War with some help from its American subjects. But it was mainly an English undertaking, and the victory was expensive. It was costly in terms of men and materiel and debt, and it forced a rethinking of the whole colonial enterprise. The Americans, after all, were the ones who were the beneficiaries, the chief beneficiaries of this war. Shouldn't they pay something for the execution of the war? And so the notion of taxing the colonies, of bringing to bear a more integrated approach to the governance of the empire, began to take hold. Every great victory brings new problems in its wake, and this was one. The British had to rethink the empire. They had to rethink an imperial system in which the Americans would pay their fair share. But the profoundly English tradition of self rule was hard to square with that. How were the Americans going to continue to rule themselves and yet be more subject than they had been to Parliament and the King at the same time? This is happening. The colonies, partly as a result of the French and Indian War and other things, began to have a stronger sense of themselves as a people. Not just Englishmen who happened to be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, but as people of English heritage who had their American ness in common. It's much too far to say that they had a national form of consciousness that's way off. But there are a couple of events. One that influence things, nudge things in that direction. A couple of developments, I should say. One is the rise of revivalistic religion, the Great Awakening, which swept through the seaboard, the Atlantic seaboard, in the 1730s and 1740s and introduced a new kind of worship, what we would call evangelical worship, energetic, emotional, enthusiastic worship that focused on the idea of a new birth, of a born again regenerative experience in the life of the convert. Figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were part of this. And the Great Awakening had the effect of destabilizing existing structures of authority and empowering individuals to be more independent. Similarly, the advent of the Enlightenment, which really took hold in America and was very consonant with American ideals, had emphasized a skepticism about inherited tradition, a willingness to reconsider practices and ideas in the light of reason alone. Benjamin Franklin, who was certainly a major figure at the time of the Revolution would be a perfect American exemplar of that Enlightenment way of thinking. And actually, both the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening shared this common element of skepticism about received tradition and established forms of authority. And both had the effect of weakening affiliation with traditional institutions. So back to the French and Indian War, the British had a problem. They now had an empire that encircled the globe. They controlled North America. The problem of imperial governance could no longer be put on hold. So it was time to begin to tighten the screws on the colonies. We could spend a lot of time talking about each act and how each effort caused the colonists to redouble and deepen their determination to be independent. And on the other side, caused British authorities to redouble their efforts to bring the colonies to heel, that it's now or never in that task. After the French Indie War, there's this series of acts. The Sugar act, the Currency act, the Stamp Act. You all may have learned about these in school, and I'm not going to go through all the details of them, except to say that they had the effect of trying to bring the colonists within an imperial system of taxation, of levying taxes, and they were resisted at every turn. Prime Minister Grenville at one point suggested that Americans were represented in Parliament by something called virtual representation, a concept the colonists rejected as a bunch of rubbish, and I think rightly so. A series of inconclusive acts, finally culminating in the coercive acts directed at Boston because of the Boston Tea Party and some other things, caused the colonies to unite in a kind of temporary way in creating something called the continental Congress in 1774. Politically speaking, they were beginning to act together, even though they never thought of themselves together except by terms of their linkage to England. But the Continental Congress and movements to boycott English goods and other forms of resistance were building a new sensibility in America. John Adams said the Revolution was effected before the war commenced. He said that when the people saw the behavior of the king, the laws and constitution derived to them from the God of nature and command transmitted to their ancestors, being violated and renounced by the King and Parliament. This radical change in the principles and opinions, sentiments and affections of the people occurred. That was the real American Revolution. So there was a change of heart, according to John Adams, that presaged a political change. The fuse of war was lit in 1775. April 1775, when orders reached the governor of Massachusetts, the royal governor, to move to stop the rebellion, General Thomas Gage, was sent to March 700 red coated British troops to Concord, where there was a colonial militia supply depot. They countered colonial resistance along the way. The shot fired in Lexington became the shot heard round the world. And the war was on, a hot war between the colonists and the mother country. Even some patriots balked at this. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania worried that once the colonies were separated, they would be at the mercy of foreign powers. There was no cohesive element to hold them together if they were torn from the body, to which, reunited by religion, liberty, laws, affections, relations, language and commerc, we will bleed in every vein. Several more things had to happen to get past those kinds of objections. First, the British refused to conciliate. Second, they started using hired mercenary troops, Hessians from Germany, to fight the colonies, which they took as a terrific insult that they were being treated in a way that English citizens would never be treated, being fought against by mercenaries. Then finally, there was a publication in 1776 of Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which had an enormous effect in riveting the attention of the colonists to the revolutionary cause and galvanizing them to accept it. He focused all of his ire on the king, not so much parliament as the king. And George Washington himself said, common sense is working a powerful change in the minds of men. It sold more than 150,000 copies, which is roughly the equivalent of 3 million copies today, in the first few months of 1776. So finally the Continental Congress met and decided to move decisively towards independence. And it was on the 4th of July in that year, 1776, that Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which is a remarkable document drafted mainly by the 33 year old Thomas Jefferson. And Jefferson said later, almost 50 years later, just before he died, he said, I did not consider it any part of my charge to invent new ideas. His goal in writing the Declaration was not to find out new principles, but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject and formulate an expression of the American mind that would draw its authority from the harmonizing sentiments of the day. It wasn't revolutionary in that sense. It didn't depart from what he understood to be the general sentiment, the consensus of the American people. He drew on various authorities in doing so, ranging from John Locke's Second Treatise on Government to the ideas of some of his fellow Americans, like the Virginian George Mason. Anyway, he propounded a document that has really been a document for the ages. And you notice in the quotation I read from Jefferson, he said, put before mankind the common sense of the subject. He was consciously speaking not only to his countrymen, but to the world. The Declaration of Independence was a kind of press release to the world, explaining not only why we were doing what we were doing, but the principles behind it. Accordingly, Jefferson declared, it was self evident, self evidently truth, that all men were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments existed solely for the purpose of protecting these rights, securing these rights. And they derive their powers, their just powers, from the consent of the governed, not from the divine right of kings, the consent of the governed, which is really a concise way of saying from self rule. This is the principle of self rule. Governments that fail in this task and fail to sustain the consent of the governed deserve to be replaced. The people had the right, even the responsibility, to abolish it, which is to say they had the right of revolution. A long list of grievances followed, not as familiar to us and to the world as the preamble. But all of it is well worth reading and taking to heart, particularly the Declaration at the very end of the Declaration, in which the signatories pledge their sacred honor to the task before them. It's a magnificent document and it deserves to be read again and again, maybe at least once a year by every American. But it also left some questions unanswered, and fortunately we have another chapter to deal with those. But our next lecture. But questions like what kind of union was this embracing? The document spoke of a colonial union of free and independent states. What does that mean? To be free and independent states and be in a union? How is that possible? And then finally, there were those pregnant words, all men are created equal. What did they mean? Did they include women? Was there a larger, more universal sense to these words, or did they only apply to men? Were they meant to distinguish, to link Americans and Englishmen and say that they are equal? And then what about the institution of slavery, the very existence of which in all the colonies at this time, not just the south, all the colonies, would appear to call into question the legitimacy of the entire structure of Jefferson's resonant words. What did Jefferson think he was saying? Jefferson, a slaveholder, when he said these words about all men? How could he have failed to realize that these words could not accommodate an institution that traded in the flesh of human beings? Well, these are questions that lay in the future and much of the future, Perhaps the next 250 years of the future, tasks waiting, the nation in its unfolding. But the point to close with is that self rule, the principle of self rule, the vindication of the principle of self rule was at the heart of it all. This was to be a republican form of government. It was to be a republic. And it was to be a republic in which the principle that men, generically speaking, men and women, rule themselves, not by kings, not by monarchs, but they rule themselves. And this is a founding principle of the country they would come to be thank you

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Sam.