A Nation Like No Other (6 page)

Though the various American colonies had similar governing principles based on man's equality and personal sovereignty, by the close of the seventeenth century the colonies featured highly diverse political structures and economies. From British Army general James Oglethorpe's debtors' haven in Georgia to Virginia's plantation culture to New York's commercial hub, the colonies developed their own traditions and modes of life. Religious practice was particularly diverse; though a fraction of Britain's size, the combined colonies had hundreds of faiths evangelizing
and growing aggressively in the spiritual free market of America, in stark contrast to Britain's thirty socially proscribed “non-conformist” sects.
¹²

The transformation of the disparate colonial cultures into a common American identity occurred through a massive religious revival that began in the 1730s. As John Adams noted, “But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people: a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.”
¹³

Adams was referring to the Great Awakening, which swept from small New England towns through the mid-Atlantic ports and southern agrarian outposts. The movement, which de-emphasized religious ceremony and stressed an intense, emotional, and individual relationship with God, further democratized religion, as independent sects flourished, religious education became personalized, and crucially, “New Light” believers abandoned the government-established Church of England in droves. A key leader of the Awakening was the revivalist George Whitefield, who visited every colony in English North America, delivering an estimated 18,000 spellbinding sermons from the 1730s until his death in 1770. Whitefield's efforts were assisted by Benjamin Franklin, who became a friend of Whitefield's, though not a convert, and reprinted at great profit Whitefield's sermons in his newspaper.

True liberty had come to mean freedom of faith and conscience, while religion was deemed necessary to support liberty, a gift of God. The purpose of liberty was to give glory to God. If God was forsaken, liberty's purpose would be destroyed, and liberty itself would give way to tyranny. In the words of Gouverneur Morris, a key contributor to the U.S. Constitution, “Religion is the only solid Base of morals and Morals the only possible Support for free governments.”
¹⁴

The Great Awakening had a deep, unifying effect on the American colonists. As Paul Johnson writes, the Awakening “taught different colonies, tidewaters and piedmonts, coast and up-country, to grasp and appreciate what they had in common, which was a very great deal.”
¹⁵
With their common experiences, values, and beliefs, the colonists were transforming into a nation.

The New World, though created by men of the Old World, birthed wholly new expressions of ancient ideas. The American experience taught the Founders that self-government was not only possible, but effectual and just—that God's gifts of life and liberty were universal and good. These ideas had been bandied about in European universities and salons for centuries, being refined and debated by high-minded scholars, but they were made real by the citizens of the primitive townships of colonial America. The New World, as much as the Old, wrote the American Creed.

By the time that creed was codified in the Declaration of Independence, it was already widely known and understood, from Boston to Savannah. For the tinkers, farmers, soldiers, and cobblers in New York who heard it read aloud as the British Navy lurked off Staten Island, the source of their rights
was
self-evident. They were free and godly men, equal in God's eyes and self-sufficient in life. The natural rights of the Englishmen, derived from the Reformation, Enlightenment, and constitutional settlements, had now passed on to the colonists.

The Declaration of Independence was not radical in thought but in action. It took bold steps to enshrine these sacred principles as the basis of a new country. With the Declaration, America set itself apart, an exception from the ways of the other nations of the world, and embarked on a radically new course in history, in pursuit of neither wealth, nor power, nor racial or ethnic purity, but an idea: God-given liberty for all.

A
s the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were completing their work, Benjamin Franklin reportedly walked outside and encountered a woman who asked him, “Well, Dr. Franklin, what have you done for us?” Franklin responded, “My dear lady, we have given to you a republic—if you can keep it.”
¹

In a single sentence, Dr. Franklin summed up the extraordinary drama that would play out for all of American history between the two vital forces that sustain American Exceptionalism: freedom and responsibility.

In 1787, the American people created a government that maximized individual freedoms. In order to guard against the growth of unchecked federal power, the Founders carefully designed a republic that divided this power among three separate but co-equal branches of a central government of limited powers, with each having the authority to check and balance the powers of the others.

Moreover, the Founders recognized that the effectiveness of these safeguards, and of the nation's overall governmental structures, would ultimately depend upon the character of the American people. The people would have to exercise responsibility, both for themselves and for their neighbors, if they were to keep a republican form of government and the freedoms it was designed to protect.

Notably, the Founding Fathers created a republic instead of a direct democracy. In a direct democracy, legislation is passed by a direct majority vote of all the people, whereas in a republic the people elect representatives who then pass legislation. In a direct democracy, the source of authority is the people. In a republic, the source of authority is the rule of law, which is typically codified in a constitution.

Understanding both the flawed nature of man and historical precedent, the Founders were adamantly opposed to direct democracy, fearing such a system would fail to protect true liberty and would allow for the “tyranny of the majority”—the scenario in which a majority can adopt unjust policies and oppress a minority of voters solely on the basis of their numbers. James Madison argued that “democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
²
According to John Adams, “[D]emocracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
³

The Founders, however, were also aware of the shortcomings of republics—especially their historical tendency to decay into aristocratic and tyrannical government, as was the case with the ancient Roman republic and with the English Parliamentary Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. They understood that previous republics had failed due to man's susceptibility to the intoxicating temptations of power. As Sam Adams remarked, “The depravity of mankind [is] that ambition and lust of power above the law are ... predominant passions in the breasts of most men.”
⁴

Acknowledging this inherent weakness in man, the Founders sought to diffuse governmental power so that no single person, group, or governing branch could accumulate enough to encroach on the people's unalienable rights. In Federalist no. 51 James Madison wrote,

Similarly, in his presidential farewell address, George Washington stressed that the American people needed to develop the “habits of thinking” that would preserve limited government:

Controlling the federal government through checks and balances, and arraying the governing branches' power against each other, was a crucial innovation by the Founders to keep man's natural corruptibility from consuming the people's liberties.

Nevertheless, Madison candidly acknowledged that these constitutional safeguards were only “parchment barriers” to man's desire to accumulate power. Despite all its innovative bulwarks, the republic would still be administered by imperfect men whose vulnerability to corruption had to be tempered by a culture of virtue and responsibility.

The Founding Fathers understood that governmental safeguards were not enough to defend the people's natural rights—the republic's survival ultimately depended upon the good character of its citizens. The preservation of liberty in a republic would require personal responsibility, a vital quality they called “virtue.” John Adams maintained that “religion and virtue are the only Foundations, not only of Republicanism and of all free Government, but of social felicity under all Governments and in all Combinations of human society.”
⁵

Another signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, declared that “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”

Likewise, Alexander White, a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, wondered whether the American people had the qualities demanded by republican governance: “Have we that Industry, Frugality, Economy, that Virtue which is necessary to constitute it?”
⁶

Virtuous, responsible citizens are indeed indispensible for sustaining a free republic. They not only take responsibility for their own lives, but also are concerned for the welfare of their families, friends, and community, especially for those in need and those who have difficulty taking care of themselves.

In terms of politics, virtuous citizens become knowledgeable about the issues of the day so they can make informed decisions at election time, and so they will know how and when to hold their government officials accountable. When holding office, virtuous citizens exercise authority responsibly, recognizing and abiding by the proscribed limits of their power.

Crucially, since virtue is instrumental to our republic's survival, the Founders believed the people must develop and maintain institutions that cultivate virtue and responsibility in its citizenry. George Washington spoke of the need for sources outside of government that nurture these qualities. In his farewell address, he cited religion and morality as vital buttresses of liberty: