The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (134 page)

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one of those defenders, and in 1784 he gratefully took up the fight for the church again. He saw his opportunity in a question raised in the act of 1776 of "Whether a general assessment should not be established by law, on every one, to the support of the pastor of his choice, or whether all should be left to voluntary contributions." Henry revived the question apparently with the argument that the corruption of society inevitably followed the disestablishment of the church. For a time the dissenting clergy found this line, and the prospects of full treasuries, irresistible. Such distinguished Virginians as Edmund Pendleton and Richard Henry Lee also backed Henry.
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Laymen in and out of the establishment did not share the ardor of their clerical leaders. Episcopal laymen had long governed their church, and they recognized that a general assessment could only strengthen the clergy, still faintly tainted with loyalism. Lay Baptists and Presbyterians were suspicious, not of their own ministers but of anything that would enable the old establishment to rise again. And these dissenters seem to have been moved by the argument that held that to protect religious freedom the state must be denied any part in religious life. Madison
"Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments"
offered as a petition at this time drew considerable support -- in all 1552 signatures were collected. In it Madison cited the article in the
"Declaration of Rights"
which holds that religion "can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence" and which denies the legislature jurisdiction in matters of religion and opinion. As for rulers who interfere with churches and opinion about religion -- they are "tyrants," and the people who submit are "slaves." It soon became evident that Virginia would not submit to a general assessment for churches, and in 1785 the bill quietly went to its grave without even the dignity of having been voted on.
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The next year, in January, the Assembly passed Jefferson
"Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom".
This act disestablished the church and made clear the legislature's intention that the establishment should never be restored. The rights the Assembly was protecting, it explained, "are of the natural rights of mankind," and "any act [that] shall be hereafter

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passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right." Before the Assembly approved Jefferson's bill it stripped out some of his most forceful phrases declaring his faith that religion must be founded on reason and the free operations of the mind. But it included his statement "that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
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The making of the constitution in 1776 and Jefferson's attempts at reform suggest much about the Revolution in Virginia. Jefferson's efforts followed a decade of protest at Parliament's designs on colonial rights. Virtually all of those rights bore on governance, especially on the right of the individual to give his consent through his representative to measures affecting his life and on the freedom of traditional institutions of self-government. The Americans in the ten years before 1776 signified their devotion to principles of self-government, and in 1776 they announced them clearly in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson and such thoughtful Virginians as James Madison believed that Virginia had an opportunity to extend the limits of freedom announced in the Declaration so as to affect the arrangements of ordinary life -- the way land was held, the punishment of crimes, the legal status of blacks, the education of the young, the maintenance of religion, and the freedom of expression. Jefferson indeed thought that the Assembly should act immediately to encourage liberty while American passions were still engaged in the great struggle of the Revolution. For, he observed in 1781, "It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."
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From several perspectives Jefferson failed. The constitution of 1776 did not provide for a more effective expression of the consent of the governed. Slavery remained almost what it had always been; the punishment of criminals continued to be an exercise in savagery; and the state could not bring itself to educate the children of the poor.

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Where Jefferson and his friends succeeded -- and the Declaration of Rights, the destruction of entail and primogeniture, the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom were remarkable achievements -- they did so by making explicit the connection of their reforms to the great principles of the Revolution. Success came, for example, in disestablishing the church through the demonstration that religious and political liberty could not be separated.

Even linking the reforms to the Revolution did not inevitably carry the day. The gentry of Virginia, however seriously devoted to the principles of republicanism, did not usually agree that their radical extension would serve Virginia or the Revolution. The gentry saw themselves as the heart of the Revolution, their interests were vital to it, their leadership and power held society together. They were used to the deference of the lower orders, and they could not understand why they should be expected to undermine it. Nor could they see why racial slavery should be ended. It had served everyone well just as most of the institutions of society and government had.

Men who have more than their lives to lose make one sort of revolution, and those who have only their lives to lose make another. The Virginians, like almost all the Americans, were of the first sort. Had they had nothing to lose, they might not have stopped with the disestablishment of the church, they might have destroyed it. They might not have freed access to the land; they might have abolished private property or they might have destroyed small owners. They might have encouraged the slave trade and made slavery even more barbarous. They might have toughened an already tough criminal code. They might not have simply rejected the British constitution, they might have converted constitutionalism into authoritarianism. Nowhere in America were there many men who felt they had nothing to lose; and nowhere did such men seize power.

New men, some called them "outsiders," had made their way into the unofficial committees that had helped organize resistance to Britain before independence. In Pennsylvania, the outsiders or radicals exercised more power than anywhere else in America, especially in 1776 when they captured the informal government of the state and replaced the elected Assembly. These men located themselves firmly within the movement against Britain, and they advocated independence before other patriots could bring themselves to the break. Thomas Paine served as the mentor of many of the radicals. Their deepest ties, however, were

to farmers, especially in the West, and to skilled craftsmen, men of small property and ambitious to make their desires public policy.

The most important desire of radical leaders and their followers was to extend the power of ordinary people -- democratic aspirations provided the cement for the radical movement. The leaders included at least two men of considerable wealth, George Bryan, a merchant, and the Quaker, Christopher Marshall, a retired druggist. Timothy Matlack was one of the most popular among workers and artisans. Not an ignorant man-he read papers before the American Philosophical Society -- he had the common touch, brewing beer for a living and racing horses and fighting cocks for sport. The enlisted men of his militia regiment elected him a colonel in 1775. James Cannon, a teacher in the College of Philadelphia, assumed an important place among the radicals almost as soon, as they began to form. He had emigrated from Edinburgh in 1765, and he came with an ability to write, a skill he demonstrated in the convention that drafted the constitution of 1776. There was at least one itinerant agitator among the radicals, Thomas Young, the son of Irish immigrants. Young popped up in several places during the Revolution, always as an advocate of liberty. The radicals could also claim a fine mathematician as one of their own, David Rittenhouse, a skilled watchmaker who won fame for his orrery, a mechanical representation of the relative positions and movements of bodies in the solar system. Charles Willson Peale, a captain of Philadelphia militia, was a radical. Peale, a silversmith and watchmaker for a time, painted the portraits of many of the great revolutionaries. After shoving the Assembly to the side in 1776, these men and others like them got a convention called and wrote the most democratic constitution of the era.
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The Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 abandoned any pretense of mixed government. The radicals believed that the people's interest was one, andany attempt to construct a government on any other assumption would deny the principles of republicanism. Thomas Paine had taught them that the structure of American society departed from Europe's. Those state constitutions which sought to balance the traditional orders of society simply ignored the important differences between Europe and America. Paine was right about society in America -- there was no heredi-

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to farmers, especially in the West, and to skilled craftsmen, men of small property and ambitious to make their desires public policy.

The most important desire of radical leaders and their followers was to extend the power of ordinary people -- democratic aspirations provided the cement for the radical movement. The leaders included at least two men of considerable wealth, George Bryan, a merchant, and the Quaker, Christopher Marshall, a retired druggist. Timothy Matlack was one of the most popular among workers and artisans. Not an ignorant man-he read papers before the American Philosophical Society -- he had the common touch, brewing beer for a living and racing horses and fighting cocks for sport. The enlisted men of his militia regiment elected him a colonel in 1775. James Cannon, a teacher in the College of Philadelphia, assumed an important place among the radicals almost as soon, as they began to form. He had emigrated from Edinburgh in 1765, and he came with an ability to write, a skill he demonstrated in the convention that drafted the constitution of 1776. There was at least one itinerant agitator among the radicals, Thomas Young, the son of Irish immigrants. Young popped up in several places during the Revolution, always as an advocate of liberty. The radicals could also claim a fine mathematician as one of their own, David Rittenhouse, a skilled watchmaker who won fame for his orrery, a mechanical representation of the relative positions and movements of bodies in the solar system. Charles Willson Peale, a captain of Philadelphia militia, was a radical. Peale, a silversmith and watchmaker for a time, painted the portraits of many of the great revolutionaries. After shoving the Assembly to the side in 1776, these men and others like them got a convention called and wrote the most democratic constitution of the era.
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