tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/declaration-of-independence-36503/articlesDeclaration of Independence – The Conversation2024-01-04T19:35:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2202022024-01-04T19:35:55Z2024-01-04T19:35:55Z2 colonists had similar identities – but one felt compelled to remain loyal, the other to rebel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567761/original/file-20240103-29-h271tj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C4%2C3246%2C2038&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Martin Howard, left, and Stephen Hopkins came to opposing conclusions about their colonial British identities.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-2b3d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">Howard: John Singleton Copley via Wikimedia Commons; Hopkins: New York Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Through the early 1750s, two men in the British colony of Rhode Island – Martin Howard and Stephen Hopkins – had similar backgrounds and led strikingly similar lives. They knew each other, were both supporters of libraries with successful legal careers, and were politically active.</p>
<p>Their writings in the 1760s demonstrate that they were both assessing the political relationship between the North American colonies and Britain.</p>
<p>Both men claimed that they felt truly British – but from their shared identity they arrived at violently opposing conclusions. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=00sDajMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">My historical research</a> into Rhode Island’s politics and economics during the colonial period has found these two men’s approaches to the issues of the day are a microcosm of the decisions faced by thousands of British colonists on the eve of the American Revolution. </p>
<p>And they are a lesson about how what might appear to be common values about shared political and cultural identities can at times serve not as a bridge joining people together but a wedge driving them apart.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The facade of a building, with four columns supporting a portico." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567771/original/file-20240103-23-y8y8bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In the 1750s, Martin Howard served as librarian at Newport’s Redwood Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Redwood_Library_and_Athenaeum_-_Newport,_RI_(51487895396).jpg">ajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Parallel paths</h2>
<p>The stories of Martin Howard and Stephen Hopkins begin as mirror images of each other, including growing up in Rhode Island. </p>
<p>Howard worked as an attorney in his hometown of Newport. <a href="https://collections.newporthistory.org/Collections/index">The Newport Mercury</a> newspaper chronicles his many civic and political activities. He served as Overseer of the Poor, Smallpox Inspector, and in the Rhode Island General Assembly. In the early 1750s, he served as the librarian at Newport’s <a href="https://ageofrevolutions.com/2021/01/13/loyalists-and-the-birth-of-libraries-in-new-england-the-marriage-of-martin-and-abigail-howard/">Redwood Library</a>. And he was one of two men elected to represent Rhode Island at the 1754 gathering of representatives from the northern colonies known as the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750-1775/albany-plan">Albany Congress</a>.</p>
<p>Hopkins, for his part, became a <a href="https://archive.org/details/afj7768.0001.001.umich.edu">justice of the peace</a> in Scituate, Rhode Island, in 1730, and served multiple terms as Rhode Island’s governor in the mid-18th century. In 1753, he was a founding member of the <a href="https://archive.org/details/providence-athenaeum-inquire-within">Providence Library Company</a>. And he was the other Rhode Island representative at the Albany Congress in 1754.</p>
<p>In the early 1760s, their paths might have seemed closely aligned. But then, in 1763, everything changed.</p>
<p>That year, the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War – known in the American colonies as the French and Indian War, and called “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/summary/Key-Facts-of-the-Seven-Years-War">the first world war</a>” by historian and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At the end of a multinational conflict spanning continents and oceans, Britain took over almost all of France’s territory and trade in North America and India. But the triumphant empire had <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750-1775/treaty-of-paris">incurred enormous debts</a> to fund its war effort. </p>
<p>Seeking to repay its debts and expand its North American influence, the British Parliament passed the <a href="https://ahp.gatech.edu/sugar_act_bp_1764.html">Sugar Act</a> in 1764 and the <a href="https://ahp.gatech.edu/stamp_act_bp_1765.html">Stamp Act</a> in 1765.</p>
<p>These laws <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/sugar-and-stamp-acts.htm">imposed significant tax burdens on colonists</a>, though they had no representatives in Parliament to voice their concerns. Howard’s and Hopkins’ reactions to these laws marked a key phase of division between them, and across colonial North America.</p>
<h2>Dueling pamphlets</h2>
<p>Most political activity in the late 18th-century Anglo-American world was fueled by private groups who advocated for a wide range of causes. </p>
<p>Howard was a founding member of the Newport Junto, which supported both the Sugar and Stamp acts and advocated for Rhode Island to come under greater Parliamentary control. Hopkins supported the loose coalition of organizations collectively known as the Sons of Liberty who campaigned against imperial taxation. </p>
<p>Many members of these groups turned to the printing press to reach audiences across the Atlantic world. Rhode Island had two printing presses: Howard published his ideas via the <a href="https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-the-franklin-press/">Franklin-Hall press in Newport</a>, while Hopkins used the <a href="https://americanantiquarian.org/content/first-press-providence">Goddard press</a> in Providence. </p>
<p>A close read of the pamphlets published by Howard and Hopkins in the mid-1760s shows they both invoke their common Anglo-American heritage – but only one would eventually come to the conclusion that it was necessary to sever that link.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A printed cover of an 18th century pamphlet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/567767/original/file-20240103-25-ym5ncx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Stephen Hopkins made his case in this 1764 pamphlet about the American colonies’ relationship with Britain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:303438/">Brown University Library</a></span>
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<p>For example, in November 1764, Hopkins published a pamphlet entitled “<a href="https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:303432/">The Rights of the Colonies, Examined</a>.” It began with the premise that because he was a British subject, he was entitled to all the relevant rights and privileges those subjects held. To him, that included the right to have a voice in Parliamentary deliberations about colonial taxation, because he lived in Britain’s North American colonies.</p>
<p>Less than two months later, in January 1765, Howard published a reply: “<a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N07847.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext">A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax to his Friend in Rhode Island</a>, Containing Remarks Upon a Pamphlet Entitled ‘The Rights of the Colonies, Examined.’” Like Hopkins, he began with the premise that because he was a British subject, he was entitled to all the relevant rights and privileges. But in Howard’s view, this did not include a right to vote in Parliamentary elections: Not all British people could vote, even if they lived in Britain.</p>
<h2>A split based on shared identity and values</h2>
<p>The distinctions between the rhetoric of Hopkins and Howard are representative of those between most British North American colonists in the 1760s. Howard and others who wanted to remain subject to the crown continued, through the end of the American Revolution, to believe that their rights were untrammeled. By contrast, Hopkins and the other proponents of revolution with Britain would come to believe in the mid-1770s that the only way to preserve their rights and privileges was to break away completely from the United Kingdom. </p>
<p>It was a revolution, but those who sought to break from Britain did so as a way of preserving their British identity. This seeming contradiction helps illustrate why groups of people who shared Anglo-American identity and heritage fought on both sides of a violent war to preserve their divergent views of that identity and heritage.</p>
<p>The story of Hopkins and Howard ends on either side of a divide as geographic as it was political, with Howard in permanent exile in London, and Hopkins, having <a href="https://library.brown.edu/cds/portraits/display.php?idno=258">signed the Declaration of Independence</a>, living in the Rhode Island town where he was born – in the smallest of the British North American colonies, which had become the smallest state in the United States of America. Nevertheless, the commonalities between them remain as important as the differences, and truly understanding their story requires keeping both elements in mind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abby Chandler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What might appear to be common values about shared political and cultural identities can at times serve not as a bridge joining people together but a wedge driving them apart.Abby Chandler, Associate Professor of History, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1985772023-02-02T13:24:36Z2023-02-02T13:24:36Z5 facts about John Witherspoon, a slaveholder and the only university president to sign the Declaration of Independence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507168/original/file-20230130-22-lu3394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C13%2C4312%2C4305&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A statue of John Witherspoon overlooks a common area at Princeton University.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-a-statue-of-princeton-university-president-john-news-photo/135223386?phrase=john%20witherspoon%20princeton&adppopup=true">Oliver Morris via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since 2001, a bronze statue of the Rev. John Witherspoon has loomed over a busy pedestrian plaza at Princeton University, where he served as president from 1768 to 1794. During his tenure at Princeton, Witherspoon made history by signing the Declaration of Independence. He was the only university president to do so.</p>
<p>But even as Witherspoon <a href="https://worldcat.org/title/1065294500">preached</a> and <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/391.html">argued</a> that American Colonists should separate from British monarchy – or else become its slaves – Witherspoon was enslaving people himself.</p>
<p>To his defenders, Witherspoon’s support for slavery represents “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/06/wokeness-attack-on-princeton-statue/">human imperfection</a>” and should not overshadow his role as a Founding Father and a leader of what is now one of the nation’s oldest and most esteemed educational institutions.</p>
<p>But to a growing group of Princeton students and faculty, Witherspoon needs to be <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOFsk6bIFvhAuWptVMZDWtd8-3pvjlBhA5pU-gk8ToFrbE9A/viewform">knocked off his pedestal</a> – literally.</p>
<p>“We believe that paying such honor to someone who participated actively in the enslavement of human beings, and used his scholarly gifts to defend the practice, is today a distraction from the University’s mission,” states a petition to get the statue of Witherspoon removed. The prominent location of the monument, the petitioners argue, is especially insulting to “community members descended from enslaved peoples.”</p>
<h2>Scorned in Scotland</h2>
<p>The contempt for Witherspoon goes beyond the campus at Princeton. And it is not confined to just the United States.</p>
<p>In June 2020, protesters <a href="https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/paisley-statue-vandalised-twice-anti-22405433">painted</a> “Slave Owner” in large letters across the base of an <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/news/2001/11/05/larger-life-twin-statues-honor-witherspoons-towering-contributions-unveiling-nov-10">identical sculpture</a> of Witherspoon that stands outside the University of the West of Scotland, where Witherspoon served as a Presbyterian minister before immigrating to America.</p>
<p>Scottish officials promised a “historical audit” to determine its fate – although the statue remains in place. In November 2022, administrators at Princeton took a similar step, <a href="https://namingcommittee.princeton.edu/witherspoon-statue">inviting feedback</a> on the petition to remove the Witherspoon monument. The feedback process is still ongoing as of the writing of this article.</p>
<p>The debate over Witherspoon’s legacy is familiar to me. Together with a team of over 50 scholars and students, I helped construct the <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu">Princeton & Slavery Project</a>, which explores the university’s involvement in slavery and its repercussions. Launched in 2017, the project website features hundreds of primary sources and over 100 academic essays. It has been <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/263/article/744238">praised</a> as “a model for how universities might reckon with their troubled pasts.”</p>
<p>We conducted <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/john-witherspoon">extensive research</a> on Witherspoon. We even commissioned <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rNx8ONX6Y8">a play</a> in which his statue comes to life and debates a Black student protester. We also examined the social context in which Witherspoon lived and the influence he wielded.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8rNx8ONX6Y8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In this play, the statue of John Witherspoon comes to life.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Since Princeton serves as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-graduates-of-elite-universities-dominate-the-time-100-and-what-it-means-for-the-rest-of-us-122119">training ground for the nation’s ruling elite</a>, from James Madison and Woodrow Wilson to Michelle Obama and Sonia Sotomayor, what happens on its campus can have a significant impact on the rest of the world.</p>
<p>With that in mind, here are five facts about Witherspoon’s life that show how he felt about slavery and enslaved people and shed light on whether he was simply a flawed human or someone who used his education, position and privilege to participate in and profit from slavery.</p>
<h2>1. He baptized a young man who was enslaved in Scotland</h2>
<p>Before immigrating to America, Witherspoon baptized James Montgomery, who was born in Virginia and sold to a merchant located near Glasgow, Scotland, where Witherspoon was a minister. Jamie – as he was called in his <a href="https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/slavery/the-montgomery-slavery-case-1756">bill of sale</a> – arrived in Scotland in 1750, when he was around 16 years old.</p>
<p>After Witherspoon baptized the young man, he reportedly told him “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2016.1220582">over and over</a>” that baptism “by no means freed him” from enslavement.</p>
<p>Yet the need to repeat the instruction suggests that Montgomery saw the matter differently. Threatened with return to Virginia, in April 1756, Montgomery, now in his early 20s, escaped to Edinburgh, Scotland. But his freedom was short-lived.</p>
<p>He was discovered less than a month later, jailed, and died awaiting trial. His captors <a href="https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/database/display/?rid=29">identified him</a> using a certificate Witherspoon had given him that allowed him to travel between Christian congregations.</p>
<p>In 1768, Witherspoon sailed from Scotland to New Jersey to assume leadership of Princeton. There, running away was a <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/runaways">common occurrence</a>, and he soon found himself surrounded by resistance to slavery.</p>
<h2>2. He personally tutored two African men</h2>
<p>Enslaved as children in what is now Ghana, Bristol Yamma and John Quamino endured the horrors of the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-middle-passage.htm">Middle Passage</a> before settling in Newport, Rhode Island.</p>
<p>Thanks to a lucky lottery ticket and friends in the ministry, both men managed to buy their freedom, and they resolved to become missionaries, which offered perhaps the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/831669306">surest route</a> back home.</p>
<p>In late 1774, they arrived in Princeton for private lessons with Witherspoon, who taught them reading, writing and “the Principles of the Christian faith.” Both men were in their 30s. Quamino left his wife behind in Rhode Island, where she was enslaved by one of Witherspoon’s former students. After several months, interrupted by the chaos of the American Revolution, Yamma and Quamino ended their studies.</p>
<p>Neither returned to Africa. Although others of African descent found ways of working and studying on campus over the years, Princeton refused to admit Black undergraduates until <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/integrating-princeton-university-robert-joseph-rivers">World War II</a>.</p>
<h2>3. He condemned the British for offering freedom to enslaved Africans</h2>
<p>Witherspoon <a href="https://worldcat.org/title/1065294500">preached</a> and <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/391.html">argued</a> that American Colonists would become slaves to Britain if they did not break free from British rule. The analogy had a special resonance for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/03/july-4th-the-56-people-who-signed-the-declaration-of-independence/39636971/">nearly three-quarters of whom were slaveowners</a>. Indeed, fear of slave rebellion was a <a href="https://worldcat.org/title/960055682">major factor</a> in the American Revolution.</p>
<p>Witherspoon became <a href="https://worldcat.org/title/1901915">outraged</a> at the British for “proclaiming liberty to slaves, and stirring them up to rebel against their masters.” The irony was not lost on contemporary observers. After British troops destroyed the Princeton University library, abolitionist Granville Sharp sent Witherspoon copies of his <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/sources/letter-from-granville-sharp">anti-slavery pamphlets</a>. In addition to Sharp’s plans for emancipation, they warned of “God’s temporal vengeance against tyrants, slave-holders, and oppressors.”</p>
<h2>4. Witherspoon’s family profited from slave labor</h2>
<p>While the logic of the American Revolution pushed some patriots, such as Princeton graduate Benjamin Rush, to embrace anti-slavery activism, Witherspoon took a different path. Beginning in 1779, he acquired two enslaved laborers for his country estate. About eight years later, both mysteriously disappeared. <a href="https://princetoniansforfreespeech.com/fuller-measure-witherspoon-slavery">New research</a> suggests that at least one may have been freed and settled on his own land. Their demise, sale or escape are other, less cheery, possibilities. Another two enslaved individuals were listed among Witherspoon’s possessions in <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/87277">an inventory</a> dated November 1794, alongside six cows, 10 horses, 12 pigs and 24 sheep.</p>
<p>His daughter Anne became a slaveholder when she married Princeton professor Samuel Stanhope Smith. In 1784, Smith casually <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/slavery-in-the-witherspoon-family">announced the sale</a> of a “negro servant, about 25 years of age, who is well acquainted with the business of a plantation.” Witherspoon’s son David married into a wealthy family in North Carolina, where he eventually claimed ownership over more than 100 people.</p>
<h2>5. He recruited Southern slaveholders to finance Princeton</h2>
<p>Witherspoon deliberately recruited the sons of wealthy Southern planters to finance Princeton through donations and tuition. Before his presidency, students from south of the Mason-Dixon line rarely exceeded 20% of their graduating class. Under Witherspoon’s guidance, the number of Virginian students tripled in the decade between 1770 and 1780, and Southerners made up 67% of graduates in the Class of 1790. This far surpassed other Northern universities and established <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/origins">a pattern at Princeton</a>, with Southerners often outnumbering Northerners on campus in the decades preceding the Civil War. </p>
<p>Indeed, more Princetonians <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/counting-princetonians-in-the-civil-war">fought for the Confederacy</a> than for the Union. Their presence on campus under Witherspoon’s successors created an atmosphere steeped in white supremacy in which abolitionists were <a href="https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-and-abolition">ridiculed, undermined and assaulted with impunity</a>. Enduring across generations, this racist institutional culture may be Witherspoon’s most profound and lasting legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198577/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I was the project manager and lead developer for the Princeton & Slavery website.</span></em></p>Founding Father and Princeton University president John Witherspoon told American colonists to resist the ‘slavery’ of British rule, even as he held slaves himself.Joseph Yannielli, Lecturer in History, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1772082022-03-08T13:17:16Z2022-03-08T13:17:16ZCanada has long feared the chaos of US politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447793/original/file-20220222-15-ym6xzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C1519%2C1000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-Catholic riots, like this one in Philadelphia in 1844, worried Canadians.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2003654121/">H. Bucholzer via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the nation of Canada was founded in 1867, its people deliberately chose a form of government meant to avoid the mistakes and problems they saw in the U.S. government next door.</p>
<p>That helps explain why Canadian police used emergency powers to arrest <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/blockades-trudeau-emergency-powers-needed-83028675">hundreds of people and tow dozens of vehicles</a> while ending the <a href="https://theconversation.com/canada-in-crisis-why-justin-trudeau-has-invoked-the-emergencies-act-to-end-trucker-protests-177017">trucker protests in Ottawa</a>, Canada’s capital.</p>
<p>Since its founding, Canada has taken a <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/02/14/the-bundy-takeover-is-now-complete-how-the-has-embraced-pro-terrorist/">very different view of liberty</a>, democracy, government authority and individual freedom than is known in the United States.</p>
<p>As early as 1776, the Declaration of Independence stated that the purpose of the U.S. government was to preserve “<a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness</a>.” The Canadians chose a different course. </p>
<p>The 1867 British North America Act – since renamed the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/FullText.html">Constitution Act</a> – declared that the goal of modern Canada was to pursue “<a href="https://hillnotes.ca/2017/04/26/welfare-of-a-nation-the-origins-of-peace-order-and-good-government/">Peace, Order, and good Government</a>.” </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://miamioh.academia.edu/OanaGodeanuKenworthy">scholar</a> of North American culture, I have seen that Canadians have long <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793635525/Between-Empire-and-Republic-America-in-the-Colonial-Canadian-Imagination">feared the sort of mob rule</a> that has always been a feature of the U.S. political landscape. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A photograph of a painting of a group of men sitting in a meeting room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447805/original/file-20220222-25-14zeqdc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘Fathers of Confederation,’ as the founders of Canada are called, were concerned about creating a nation that might fall prey to the same problems they saw in the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fathers_of_Confederation_LAC_c001855.jpg">Photograph by James Ashfield of the Robert Harris painting 'Fathers of Confederation,' via Library and Archives Canada via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Casting a wary eye southward</h2>
<p>The United States had been independent since the Revolutionary War ended with the <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/ar/14313.htm">Treaty of Paris in 1783</a>. But in the mid-19th century, the provinces that make up Canada were still British colonies. As they deliberated their future, the options seemed straightforward: a form of self-government within the British Empire and subject to the king or queen of England – or independence, possibly including absorption into the United States.</p>
<p>To some Canadians, the U.S. seemed a success story. It boasted a booming economy, vibrant cities, a successful <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/193818/manifest-destinies-by-steven-e-woodworth/">westward expansion</a> and a <a href="https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1840/1840v3/1840c-26.pdf">steadily growing population</a>. </p>
<p>But to others, it provided a cautionary tale about weak central institutions and rule by the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021989414567694">undisciplined masses</a>.</p>
<p>In the early and mid-19th century, the U.S. was plagued by rampant inequality and deeply divided over <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15439.html">race and slavery</a>. An unprecedented wave of immigration in the 1840s and 1850s fomented social unrest because the newcomers <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/">were viewed with hostility</a> by locals. In East Coast cities, angry mobs <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2566375">burned immigrants’ homes</a> and <a href="https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/journal_of_human_rights/vol4/iss1/10/">Catholic churches</a>.</p>
<p>Canadians of all classes and religious persuasions <a href="https://cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1872/3136">watched with anxiety</a> the deepening societal divisions in the U.S. as the republic spiraled toward civil war. In May 1861, in an editorial for the Toronto-based newspaper The Globe, editor and politician George Brown reflected on the mood in Canada: “While we admire the devotedness to the Union of the people of the Northern United States, we are glad we are not them; we are glad that we do not belong to a country torn by [internal] divisions.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of a fort being fired upon and burning" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447807/original/file-20220222-25-i6otxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When Confederate forces fired on U.S. troops at Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Civil War began – and Canadians were concerned about their neighbor’s unstable government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.19520/">Currier & Ives via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Different views on liberty and freedom</h2>
<p>Canadians and people in the United States understood the role of the government differently. U.S. <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/idea-of-liberty-in-canada-during-the-age-of-atlantic-revolutions--1776-1838--the-products-9780773544017.php">institutions were created with the understanding</a> that individual freedoms should exist separate from interference from the state.</p>
<p>But colonial Canadians started with the collective, not the individual. Liberty to them was not an aggregate of individual pursuits of happiness. It was the sum of the fundamental rights that a government had to guarantee and protect for its citizens, and which enabled them to be fully part of the collective endeavors of a stable and safe community. </p>
<p>This view did not mean everyone could – or should – <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487523701/violence-order-and-unrest/">participate directly</a> in politics. It even acknowledged hierarchies and inequalities, <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/transatlantic-subjects-products-9780773533349.php">either social</a> or <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442615854/the-invisible-crown/">imperial</a>.</p>
<p>It was a trade-off between unfettered individual freedom and social stability that people seemed willing to accept. Most Canadians had long been open to the idea that <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442638983/the-capacity-to-judge/">they should have a say in their own government</a>. But they did not totally embrace the U.S. model. </p>
<p>Many people in the U.S. believed then – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-boogaloo-and-who-are-the-rioters-who-stormed-the-capitol-5-essential-reads-153337">and now</a> – that violent action is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-legitimate-political-discourse-and-does-it-include-the-jan-6-attack-on-the-capitol-176513#comment_2713107">legitimate form of political expression</a>, a demonstration of popular opinion, or the revolutionary means to achieve a democratic end. </p>
<p>Big cities, like <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807841983/the-road-to-mobocracy/">New York</a> or <a href="https://www.hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/thephiladelphiariotsof1844.pdf">Philadelphia</a>, were periodically the stage of street riots, some persisting for days and involving hundreds of people. </p>
<p>To Canadians, American institutions appeared unable to protect individual liberties in the face of populism or demagogues. Whenever the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis">voting rights</a> of particular groups were expanded or debated, what followed was political instability, civil unrest and violence. One such example was the 1854 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23375884?addFooter=false">Bloody Monday rioting in Louisville, Kentucky</a>. On Election Day, Protestant mobs attacked German and Irish neighborhoods, prevented immigrants from voting and set fire to property throughout the city. A congressman was beaten by the crowds. Twenty-two people died and many others were injured. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/18745/">key vulnerability</a> in the U.S., as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23546560">19th-century Canadians saw it</a>, was its decentralization. They feared the disruption that could result from the constant deferral of authority and law to the popular will at a local level. They also were worried about the stability of a political system whose policies and laws could be overthrown by angry masses at any moment. </p>
<p>In 1864, <a href="http://biographi.ca/en/bio/haviland_thomas_heath_1822_95_12E.html">Thomas Heath Haviland</a>, a politician from Prince Edward Island, lamented this state of affairs: “The despotism now prevailing over our border was greater than even that of Russia. … Liberty in the States was altogether a delusion, a mockery and a snare. No man there could express an opinion unless he agreed with the opinion of the majority.” </p>
<h2>A Canadian experiment in democracy</h2>
<p>Eventually, the provinces chose to form a strong federal union under the British crown, and Canada became a <a href="https://www.ourcommons.ca/about/OurProcedure/ParliamentaryFramework/c_g_parliamentaryframework-e.htm">parliamentary liberal democracy</a>. The head of the Canadian state is the queen, and the head of government is the prime minister, answerable to Parliament. By contrast, the U.S. is a presidential democracy. In this system, the president is simultaneously head of state and head of the government, and is constitutionally independent from the legislative body. </p>
<p>In 1865, during the opening speech of the confederation debates, the man who would become Canada’s first prime minister, <a href="https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/MLIConfederationSeries_MacdonaldSpeechF_Web.pdf">John A. Macdonald</a>, expressed his hopes for the future: “We will enjoy here that which is the great test of constitutional freedom – we will have the rights of the minority respected.” </p>
<p>[<em>Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-150ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Another Canadian founding father, <a href="https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/MLIConfederationSeries_CartierSpeechF_Web.pdf">Georges-Etienne Cartier</a>, reflected upon the historical significance of creating a Canadian confederation at a time when “the great Federation of the United States of America was broken up and divided against itself.” </p>
<p>He declared that Canadians “had the benefit of being able to contemplate republicanism in action during a period of eighty years, saw its defects, and felt convinced that purely democratic institutions could not be conducive to the peace and prosperity of nations.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177208/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy received funding from the Fulbright Commission and The Library of Congress.</span></em></p>‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ were the founding principles of the US. In Canada, the goals are ‘Peace, Order, and good Government.’Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy, Associate Teaching Professor of American Studies, Miami UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1690822021-10-06T12:28:20Z2021-10-06T12:28:20ZAs American independence rang, a sweeping lockdown and mass inoculations fought off a smallpox outbreak<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424543/original/file-20211004-15-1sh5x21.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C48%2C2106%2C3266&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The first reading of the Declaration of Independence in Boston, July 18, 1776.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/wh246s47c">Tichnor Brothers Collection, Boston Public Library via Digital Commonwealth</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many Americans of the founding era denounced government tyranny, celebrated the Declaration of Independence – and favored lockdowns and mass inoculations to combat a viciously contagious disease.</p>
<p>Unchecked, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox">smallpox</a> kills more than one in 10 of its victims, leaving many of the rest blind, disfigured and sometimes sterile. Many <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/jmh.2004.0012">historians</a> say the reason George Washington never had children was his near-fatal bout of smallpox in 1751.</p>
<p>The summer of 1776 was a time of crisis for the budding republic. A <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/pox-americana-the-great-smallpox-epidemic-of-1775-82/oclc/872598533">smallpox outbreak in the Continental Army</a> killed hundreds. And as the soldiers came home from a failed invasion of Canada, they brought the disease to Boston.</p>
<p>Yet the country badly needed healthy men: <a href="http://www.ouramericanrevolution.org/index.cfm/page/view/p0217">The British landed on Staten Island on July 2</a>, the same day <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-the-declaration-of-independence-is-officially-signed">Congress declared independence</a>. </p>
<p>A perfect solution beckoned: <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/pox-americana-the-great-smallpox-epidemic-of-1775-82/oclc/872598533">inoculation</a>, the 18th-century precursor to vaccination. As <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/pox-americana-the-great-smallpox-epidemic-of-1775-82/oclc/872598533">historian Elizabeth Fenn explains</a>, the physician would make small incisions in the patient’s skin, then introduce scabs or pus from a person with smallpox. The inoculee would then contract a mild form of the virus, only one-tenth as lethal as the accidentally acquired version.</p>
<p>It would be 20 years before English scientist <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/">Edward Jenner</a> pioneered the practice of immunizing people against smallpox with the similar cowpox virus, which is harmless to humans. Since the Latin word for cow is “vacca,” that process became known as vaccination.</p>
<p>In Colonial times, people who got inoculated generally did so in groups in order to keep down the cost and logistical complications. For the several weeks that they remained contagious, they would take over a home or tavern and proclaim it a <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/pox-americana-the-great-smallpox-epidemic-of-1775-82/oclc/872598533">smallpox hospital</a>: off-limits to everyone but inoculees.</p>
<h2>Imposing a lockdown</h2>
<p>Boston and other towns required people undergoing inoculation to remain indoors and post <a href="https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/04/newspapers-on-flag-at-liberty-tree.html">red warning flags</a> around the immunization site. Sometimes, though, restless individuals would slip out, endangering neighbors who either could not afford the expensive procedure or chose not to undergo it. Even when inoculees remained indoors, townspeople so feared catching this horrific disease that they often <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25652028">rioted</a> against doctors who set up inoculation sites.</p>
<p>But by early summer 1776, the majority of not-yet-inoculated Bostonians were eager for the procedure – and so were many out-of-towners. Abigail Adams, famous today for imploring the Continental Congress to “<a href="https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760331aa&bc=%2Fdigitaladams%2Farchive%2Fbrowse%2Fdate%2Fall_1776.php">Remember the Ladies</a>,” acted quickly to inoculate herself and her children. Traveling from the nearby town of Braintree to Boston for the treatment, she wrote her husband, future president John Adams, “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/12/12/abigail-adams-smallpox-coronavirus-vaccine/">Our Little ones stood the operation Manfully</a> … The Little folks are very sick then and puke every morning, but after that they are comfortable.”</p>
<p>Still, others refused, and Boston’s selectmen (city council) could not just let everyone decide for themselves. A patchwork of families, some undergoing and some refusing inoculation, would assuredly have set off an epidemic. So Massachusetts legislators made a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002355939u&view=1up&seq=557&skin=2021">bold decision</a>. Since most Bostonians wanted to be inoculated, they would not, per usual, have to confine themselves to smallpox hospitals. </p>
<p>Instead, they would have the run of Boston, and the anti-inoculators would be the ones who had to either <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002355939u&view=1up&seq=557&skin=2021">lock down or get out of town</a> before inoculation began. </p>
<p>Until the city was deemed safe, guards would be posted at the sole road and several ferry landings connecting Boston to the wider world. Only those who had already had smallpox would be allowed in, and no one could leave until the selectmen deemed them smallpox-free.</p>
<p>By July 18, when Col. Thomas Crafts stepped out onto the balcony of the Massachusetts State House to read the just-received Declaration of Independence, no one in attendance needed to fear either catching smallpox or giving it to someone else.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of a woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424545/original/file-20211004-15-79s80p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abigail Adams remarked upon the cheering crowds in a locked-down Boston.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abigail_Adams.jpg">Benjamin Blyth via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Abigail Adams was among the “<a href="https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760721aa">Multitude</a>” who attended the reading. As Crafts finished the Declaration of Independence and shouted, “God Save our American States,” Adams reported, “<a href="https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760721aa">the Bells rang … the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed and every face appeard joyfull</a>.” </p>
<p>As late as August 26, Boston leaders were still trying to stamp out vestiges of the smallpox virus, but their bold action had prevented an epidemic. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/02/we-can-repeat-bostons-1776-freedom-summer/">Nearly 5,000 people</a> had been inoculated. That was equivalent to a <a href="https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/largest-cities-in-the-united-states-in-1776-and-in-2076">third of Boston’s population</a>, though about half of the inoculees were actually out-of-towners like the Adams family.</p>
<h2>Conflicting notions of freedom</h2>
<p>At the time, Boston had five newspapers, but no one used their pages to complain about the lockdown and other enforcement measures.</p>
<p>Some people took their belief in the individual’s responsibility to the community to extremes. The claim that “<a href="https://archive.csac.history.wisc.edu/Benjamin_Rush.pdf">Every man in a republic is public property</a>” came not from some crazed utopian but from Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And Benjamin Franklin, in a Christmas 1783 letter advocating federal taxes to pay off the Revolutionary War debt, conceded that citizens have the right to retain enough property for their survival and for “the Propagation of the Species.” But he added: “<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0231">all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick</a>.”</p>
<p>Few Americans today would go as far as Rush and Franklin, but their comments, like Boston’s July 1776 decision to turn itself into one giant immunization site, remind us of the American Revolutionaries’ provocative conviction that communities have rights, too.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169082/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Woody Holton received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Henry E. Huntington Library, and Newberry Library.</span></em></p>In the summer of 1776, Boston offered smallpox inoculation to everyone and required those who declined to leave town or stay in their homes.Woody Holton, Professor of History, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1550182021-08-30T21:09:16Z2021-08-30T21:09:16ZUnderstanding Islam – a brief introduction to its past and present in the United States<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416131/original/file-20210813-19-1l8mj4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5455%2C3645&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Historians believe Muslims first arrived in the U.S. in the 17th century</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TrumpAmericanMuslims/6f451048e3b942d58fe4a1355fa74c94/photo?Query=American%20AND%20muslims&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=3749&currentItemNo=6">Julie Jacobson/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>For people who would like to learn more about Islam, The Conversation is publishing <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/understanding-islam-108919">a series of articles</a>, available on our website or as <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/understanding-islam-79">six emails delivered every other day</a>, written by Senior Religion and Ethics Editor Kalpana Jain. Over the past few years she has commissioned dozens of articles on Islam written by academics. These articles draw from that archive and have been checked for accuracy by religion scholars.</em></p>
<p></p><hr> <p></p>
<p>For much of my childhood in India, the sound of the adhan – the Muslim call to prayer broadcast from the minaret of a mosque – was what I heard upon waking each morning.</p>
<p>In the shared religious life of my small hometown, we celebrated the festivals of Eid with our Muslim neighbors and they joined us at the time of Diwali, a holiday primarily celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. Religious education happened quite informally in these day-to-day interactions.</p>
<p>In my new home in the United States, I learned not many Americans have the opportunity for such daily interactions. A <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/07/U.S.-MUSLIMS-FULL-REPORT.pdf">2017 Pew study</a> found that <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/08/in-the-u-s-and-western-europe-people-say-they-accept-muslims-but-opinions-are-divided-on-islam/%22">less than half of the American population</a> personally knows someone who is a Muslim.</p>
<iframe title="Muslims around the world" aria-label="Map" id="datawrapper-chart-lIAo1" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lIAo1/9/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none;" width="100%" height="413"></iframe>
<p>This unfamiliarity can often lead to Islam being viewed as a foreign religion – and can even lead to <a href="https://www.ispu.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ISPU-Infographics_1_WEB.pdf?x46312">Islamophobia</a>. </p>
<p>Former President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/09/politics/donald-trump-islam-hates-us/index.html">said in a March 2016 media interview</a>, “Islam hates us.” This comment and others by the former president, scholars found, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3149103">quickly led to an increase in hate crimes</a> against Muslims. Trump also signed an executive order <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/01/2017-02281/protecting-the-nation-from-foreign-terrorist-entry-into-the-united-states">banning nationals from seven Muslim-majority nations</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-islam-hatecrime/u-s-anti-muslim-hate-crimes-rose-15-percent-in-2017-advocacy-group-idUSKBN1HU240">further stoking anti-Muslim sentiments</a>. The ban was <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/proclamation-ending-discriminatory-bans-on-entry-to-the-united-states/">overturned by President Joe Biden</a> within the first few hours of his taking office. </p>
<p>As an editor of the religion and ethics desk at The Conversation, I have tried to improve the understanding Islam and its long history in the United States, with the help of articles from our scholars.</p>
<p>For example, historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/denise-a-spellberg-212270">Denise A. Spellberg</a> of the University of Texas at Austin wrote a piece exploring how <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-jeffersons-vision-of-american-islam-matters-today-78155">Muslims first arrived in large numbers to North America as enslaved people during the 17th century</a>. Muslims constituted as much as 30% of the enslaved West African population of British America, though that number is hard to verify. Nonetheless, their presence in the U.S. was so notable that Thomas Jefferson bought a Quran as a 22-year-old law student in Williamsburg, Virginia, 11 years before he drafted the Declaration of Independence. For Jefferson, Muslims were very much part of the United States. </p>
<p>In that same spirit of acceptance and discovery, The Conversation brings you a series of six articles that will explain Islam and its diversity and try to clear common misconceptions.</p>
<p>We will explore the history of American Muslims and gain a deeper understanding of their faith. </p>
<p><em>This article was reviewed for accuracy by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ken-chitwood-160245">Ken Chitwood</a>, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures & Societies at Freie Universität Berlin. He is also a journalist-fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture.</em></p>
<p><strong>In the next issue: <a href="https://theconversation.com/understanding-islam-knowing-your-muslim-neighbor-155023">What do Muslims believe and how do they pray?</a>?</strong></p>
<p></p><hr><p></p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418525/original/file-20210830-33-yznmc8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>You can read all six articles in this <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/understanding-islam-108919">Understanding Islam series on TheConversation.com</a>, or we can deliver them straight to your inbox if you <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/understanding-islam-79">sign up for our email newsletter course</a>.</em></p>
<p></p><hr><p></p>
<h2>Articles from The Conversation in this edition:</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-jeffersons-vision-of-american-islam-matters-today-78155">Why Jefferson’s vision of American Islam matters today</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Further Reading and Resources:</h2>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-thomas-jefferson-owned-qur-1-180967997/">Why Thomas Jefferson Owned a Qur'an</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://bridge.georgetown.edu/">Bridge</a>, a Georgetown University initiative, conducts research on Islamophobia and provides valuable research-based information.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Fewer than half of Americans report knowing someone who is Muslim. Here we explain Islam, its diversity and its long history in the United States.Kalpana Jain, Senior Religion + Ethics Editor/ Director of the Global Religion Journalism InitiativeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1626402021-06-29T13:53:02Z2021-06-29T13:53:02ZThe Declaration of Independence wasn’t really complaining about King George, and 5 other surprising facts for July Fourth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406241/original/file-20210614-131717-1i6kpgm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5100%2C3389&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fireworks shows commonly celebrate the nation's birthday.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/fireworks-exploding-over-cruise-ship-in-bay-seattle-royalty-free-image/514409225"> Pete Saloutos via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: Americans may think they know a lot about the Declaration of Independence, but many of those ideas are elitist and wrong, as <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/history/our_people/directory/holton_woody.php">historian Woody Holton</a> explains.</em></p>
<p><em>His 2021 book “<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Liberty-Is-Sweet/Woody-Holton/9781476750378">Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution</a>” shows how independence and the Revolutionary War were influenced by women, Indigenous and enslaved people, religious dissenters and other once-overlooked Americans.</em></p>
<p><em>In celebration of the United States’ birthday, Holton offers six surprising facts about the nation’s founding document – including that it failed to achieve its most immediate goal and that its meaning has changed from the founding to today.</em></p>
<h2>Ordinary Americans played a big role</h2>
<p>The Declaration of Independence was written by wealthy white men, but the impetus for independence came from ordinary Americans. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/106260/american-scripture-by-pauline-maier/">Historian Pauline Maier</a> discovered that by <a href="https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2005/nr05-83.html">July 2, 1776</a>, when the Continental Congress voted to separate from Britain, 90 provincial and local bodies – conventions, town meetings and even grand juries – had already issued their own declarations or instructed Congress to. </p>
<p>In Maryland, county conventions demanded that the provincial convention tell Maryland’s congressmen to support independence. Pennsylvania assemblymen required their congressional delegates to oppose independence – until Philadelphians gathered outside the State House, later named Independence Hall, and threatened to overthrow the legislature, which then dropped this instruction.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woodcut of people in colonial dress gathered in the street" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407071/original/file-20210617-16-110l2ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A depiction of the reading of the Declaration of Independence by John Nixon, from the steps of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 8, 1776.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/95501786/">Edward Austin Abbey, Harper's Magazine, via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>American independence is due in part to African Americans</h2>
<p>Like the U.S. Constitution, the final version of the Declaration never uses the word “slave.” But African Americans loomed large in the <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0176-0004">first draft</a>, written by Thomas Jefferson.</p>
<p>In that early draft, Jefferson’s single biggest grievance was that the mother country had first foisted enslaved Africans on white Americans and then attempted to incite them against their patriot owners. In an objection to which he gave <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0176-0004">168 words – three times as many as any other complaint</a> – Jefferson said George III had encouraged enslaved Americans “to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them.”</p>
<p>Numerous other white Southerners joined Jefferson in venting their rage at the mother country for, as one put it, “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Forced_Founders/fV_qCQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22pointing+a+dagger+to+their+Throats,+thru+the+hands+of+their+Slaves%22&pg=PA159&printsec=frontcover">pointing a dagger to their Throats, thru the hands of their Slaves</a>.”</p>
<p>Britain really had forged an informal alliance with African Americans – but it was the slaves who initiated it. In November 1774, James Madison became the first white American to report that <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-01-02-0037">slaves were plotting to take advantage of divisions between the colonies and the mother country</a> to rebel and obtain their own freedom. Initially the British turned down African Americans’ offer to fight for their king, but the slaves kept coming, and on November 15, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia, finally published an <a href="https://allthingsliberty.com/2019/12/lord-dunmores-proclamation-information-and-slavery/">emancipation proclamation</a>. It freed all rebel- (patriot-) owned slaves who could reach his lines and would fight to suppress the patriot rebellion. </p>
<p>The Second Continental Congress was talking about Dunmore and other British officials when it claimed, in the final draft of the Declaration, that George III had “<a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">excited domestic insurrection amongst us</a>.” That brief euphemism was all that remained of Jefferson’s 168-word diatribe against the British for sending Africans to America and then inciting them to kill their owners. But no one missed its meaning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2975%2C1969&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of five men presenting papers to a group of men" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2975%2C1969&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406231/original/file-20210614-72954-5p5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The drafters of the Declaration of Independence present their document to the Continental Congress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Declaration_of_Independence_(1819),_by_John_Trumbull.jpg">John Trumbull via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The complaints weren’t actually about the king</h2>
<p>Britain’s king is the subject of 33 verbs in a declaration that never once says “Parliament.” But nine of Congress’ most pressing grievances actually were about parliamentary statutes. And even British officials like those who cracked down on Colonial smuggling worked not for George III but for his Cabinet, which was in effect a creature of Parliament.</p>
<p>By targeting only the king – who played a purely symbolic role in the Declaration of Independence, akin to modern America’s Uncle Sam – Congress reinforced its novel argument that Americans did not need to cut ties to Parliament, since they had never had any.</p>
<h2>The Declaration of Independence does not actually denounce monarchy</h2>
<p>As Julian P. Boyd, the founding editor of “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,” pointed out, the Declaration of Independence <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nHL_wD5DngUC&pg=SL1-PA4080&lpg=SL1-PA4080&dq=%E2%80%9Cbore+no+necessary+antagonism+to+the+idea+of+kingship+in+general.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=HQI_CnW-zh&sig=ACfU3U37X1bdDRuBqSaqqp24deu73VS3Ow&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2i5b42pfxAhXsUd8KHdSOCrwQ6AEwAHoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cbore%20no%20necessary%20antagonism%20to%20the%20idea%20of%20kingship%20in%20general.%E2%80%9D&f=false">“bore no necessary antagonism to the idea of kingship in general.”</a></p>
<p>Indeed, several members of Congress, including John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, openly admired limited monarchy. Their beef was not with all kings and queens but with King George III – and him only as the front man for Parliament.</p>
<h2>The Declaration of Independence fell short of its most pressing purpose</h2>
<p>In June 1776, delegates who supported independence suggested that if Congress declared it soon, France might immediately accept its invitation to an alliance. Then the French Navy could start intercepting British supply ships bound for America that very summer. </p>
<p>But in reality it took French King Louis XVI a long 18 months to agree to a formal alliance, and the first French ships and soldiers did not enter the war until June 1778.</p>
<h2>Abolitionists and feminists shifted the Declaration of Independence’s focus to human rights</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of a man in a heavy coat" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/406245/original/file-20210614-130393-1196d98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lemuel Haynes, a free Black man, was one of the first to interpret the Declaration of Independence’s words as applying to individual liberties.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-a0a0-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99">New York Public Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In keeping with the Declaration of Independence’s largely diplomatic purpose, hardly any of its white contemporaries quoted its now-famous phrases about equality and rights. Instead, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6sZkGXyEuM&t=2m39s">as the literary scholar Eric Slauter discovered</a>, they spotlighted its clauses justifying one nation or state in breaking up with another.</p>
<p>But before the year 1776 was out, as Slauter also notes, Lemuel Haynes, a free African American soldier serving in the Continental Army, had drafted an essay called “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1919529?seq=1">Liberty Further Extended</a>.” He opened by quoting Jefferson’s truisms “that all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” </p>
<p>By highlighting these claims, Haynes began the process of shifting the focus and meaning of the Declaration of Independence from Congress’ ordinance of secession to a universal declaration of human rights. That effort was later carried forward by other abolitionists, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-22-02-0049">Black</a> and <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N12457.0001.001/1:2.4?rgn=div2;view=fulltext">white</a>, by <a href="http://www.teachushistory.org/second-great-awakening-age-reform/resources/sarah-grimke-argues-womens-rights">women’s rights activists</a> and by other seekers of social justice, including <a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm">Abraham Lincoln</a>.</p>
<p>In time, abolitionists and feminists transformed Congress’ failed bid for an immediate French alliance into arguably the most consequential freedom document ever composed.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Woody Holton received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry Library, and the Henry E. Huntington library.</span></em></p>A scholar of early US history celebrates the country’s birthday with six under-appreciated ideas about the founding document.Woody Holton, Professor of History, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1530932021-01-14T23:44:01Z2021-01-14T23:44:01ZWhy the alt-right believes another American Revolution is coming<p>The alt-right, QAnon, paramilitary and Donald Trump-supporting <a href="https://twitter.com/HannahAllam/status/1349328144969457664?s=20">mob</a> that stormed the US Capitol on January 6 claimed they were only doing what the so-called “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/founding-fathers-united-states">founding fathers</a>” of the US had done in 1776: overthrowing an illegitimate government that no longer represented them. </p>
<p>This was the start of what they called the “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-01-06/the-second-revolution-begins-today-armed-right-wing-groups-celebrate-attack-on-capitol">second American Revolution</a>”. </p>
<p>This is why the <a href="https://theconversation.com/yellow-gadsden-flag-prominent-in-capitol-takeover-carries-a-long-and-shifting-history-145142">“Don’t Tread on Me” flag</a> was visible in the chaos — a symbol of resistance that dates back to the (first) American Revolution and was <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125184586">resurrected</a> a decade ago by Republican <a href="http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1922169,00.html">Tea Party activists</a>. </p>
<p>It is not hard to understand the appeal of this history to Trump’s followers. The era of the “founding fathers” has always <a href="http://www.andyschocket.net/fighting-over-the-founders/">loomed large in the minds of most Americans</a>. And stories about the past are, after all, how <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-presence-of-the-past/9780231111485">individuals, families</a>, and <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095958187">communities small and large</a>, make sense of themselves. </p>
<p>Yet, it is worth noting these recollections of the past are necessarily selective. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1344376500699672577"}"></div></p>
<h2>The right to life, liberty — and to abolish government</h2>
<p>Alt-right extremists, following conservative politicians, have also drawn succour from the Constitution, particularly when it comes to their “rights”, such as the right to free speech and bear arms. </p>
<p>These and other rights were not actually enumerated in the original Constitution, but rather tacked on in the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript#toc-the-u-s-bill-of-rights">Bill of Rights</a> — a set of ten amendments passed <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809016433">to appease opponents of the Constitution</a> and get it ratified.</p>
<p>These rights are fused together with the more vague yet “unalienable” rights enunciated in the 1776 <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">Declaration of Independence</a> — chief among them being the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-were-the-capitol-rioters-so-angry-because-theyre-scared-of-losing-grip-on-their-perverse-idea-of-democracy-152812">Why were the Capitol rioters so angry? Because they're scared of losing grip on their perverse idea of democracy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Drawing on philosopher John Locke’s <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2007/januaryfebruary/feature/building-the-bill-rights">ideas</a>, the Declaration of Independence proclaims “we the people” come together to form a government to protect these rights. </p>
<p>And crucial to Trump supporters today, it says, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was the sentiment voiced on January 6 when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol. They <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/capitol-riot-photos-inside-trump.html">chanted</a> “This is our America” and “Whose house? Our house!” </p>
<p>Trump himself <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2021/january/trump-language-capitol-riot-mcintosh.html">encouraged this thinking</a> when he told the crowd before they marched to the Capitol, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness.”</p>
<p>The question is: who do Trump and, more broadly speaking, the alt-right think has taken the United States from them?</p>
<h2>Rights for only a select few</h2>
<p>The answer is evident in how the alt-right imagines the past: their vision of history omits or callously ignores the fact their constitutional rights have come at the cost of the lives and rights of others. </p>
<p>Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence it was a “self-evident” truth “that all men are created equal.” Generations of enslaved and free Black activists and their allies have <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1592&context=faculty_scholarship">worked towards</a> <a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/08/28/daily-circuit-march-on-washington">realising this goal</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-far-right-and-white-supremacists-have-embraced-the-middle-ages-and-their-symbols-152968">Why the far-right and white supremacists have embraced the Middle Ages and their symbols</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But for the founding fathers, and many of their white supremacist heirs, true “citizens” were exclusively white and male. A few years after penning the declaration, Jefferson denounced <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h490t.html">Black people as inferior</a>. He owned hundreds of slaves. Even his own children, whom he fathered with Sally Hemings, <a href="https://ushistoryscene.com/article/hemings-jefferson/">were born into slavery</a>.</p>
<p>Almost all of the founding fathers, in fact, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-many-u-s-presidents-owned-slaves">were slaveholders</a> or <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/05/03/the-clear-connection-between-slavery-and-american-capitalism/?sh=7f3d78c7bd3b">profited from the slave trade</a>. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution freed any of the half million enslaved people in the new United States — <a href="http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0064">one-fifth</a> of the population.</p>
<p>Rather, the Constitution purposefully <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/how-the-constitution-was-indeed-pro-slavery/406288/">entrenched</a> the institution of slavery. By protecting the rights of slaveholders to pursue their happiness by holding on to their “<a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-price-for-their-pound-of-flesh-9780807067147">property</a>”, it doomed <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/maps-reveal-slavery-expanded-across-united-states-180951452/">four more generations</a> to enslavement. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Signing of the Declaration of Independence" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378773/original/file-20210114-23-1u1vavy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378773/original/file-20210114-23-1u1vavy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378773/original/file-20210114-23-1u1vavy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378773/original/file-20210114-23-1u1vavy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378773/original/file-20210114-23-1u1vavy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378773/original/file-20210114-23-1u1vavy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378773/original/file-20210114-23-1u1vavy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Signing of the Declaration of Independence, by Armand Dumaresq.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The White House Historical Association (White House Collection)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the start of the Civil War in 1861, there were <a href="https://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/placesinhistory/archive/2011/20110318_slavery.html#:%7E:text=March%2018%2C%201861&text=Of%20those%2031%20million%2C%20as,the%201850%20and%201860%20census.">4 million people</a> enslaved in the US.</p>
<p>The Constitution also gave the government the power to raise an army. After the American Revolution, this power was used time and again <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300218121/surviving-genocide">to wage a long genocidal war</a> against Native Americans across the continent. </p>
<p>When enslaved and free Black people and their white abolitionist allies acted against slavery, slaveholders invoked the Revolution. They claimed they were undertaking God’s will to complete the work begun in 1776 of creating a free nation, and made <a href="https://ericaarmstrongdunbar.com/nevercaught-ericaarmstrongdunbar">slave-holding former President George Washington</a> <a href="https://www.historynet.com/george-washington-hero-of-the-confederacy.htm">their hero</a>.</p>
<p>It took an unprecedented and destructive Civil War to finally put an end to slavery, and another century or so for African Americans to achieve full rights as citizens in the United States. Every step of the way, they were <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_uncivil.html">contested</a> and <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/separate-but-equal.html">blocked</a> by <a href="https://www.professorcarolanderson.org/white-rage">individuals, groups, states and judges</a> who claimed they were upholding the principles of the Constitution.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-confederate-flag-so-offensive-143256">Why is the Confederate flag so offensive?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Rights trump equality</h2>
<p>It should be no surprise, then, the alt-right movement is invoking the same “Revolution” today. </p>
<p>After Barack Obama’s presidency, Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/us/politics/donald-trump-white-identity.html">gave a voice</a> to the grievances of his largely white supporters who feared they were being displaced in their own country.</p>
<p>And following the summer of the Black Lives Matter movement and Trump’s baseless claims the 2020 election was stolen, the Capitol Hill insurrectionists firmly believed “they” had lost control of the United States. They were no longer the “we the people” in charge. </p>
<p>As in the past, they also had the support of prominent politicians beyond Trump. One of their supporters, the newly elected Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (who is also a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/03/qanon-marjorie-taylor-greene-wins-congress">QAnon supporter</a>) declared before the January 6 move to block the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory,
“<a href="https://fb.watch/2_0CO1eCeS/">This is our 1776 moment</a>”. </p>
<p>And Congressman Paul Gosar, a prominent Trump supporter, wrote an op-ed entitled “Are we witnessing a coup d’etat?” in which he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/trump-loyalists-in-congress-fanned-flames-before-capitol-riot.html">advised followers</a> to “be ready to defend the Constitution and the White House”.</p>
<p>It has never been entirely clear when exactly the United States <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-has-made-america-nostalgic-again-for-a-past-that-never-existed-149449">was last great</a> in the minds of Trump supporters wearing their “Make America Great Again” caps. It might be the Ronald Reagan presidency of the 1980s for some, or sometime prior to the civil rights, women’s and gay liberation movements and the <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078&content=reviews">US defeat in Vietnam</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s no doubt as to when this mythical greatness started. The yearning for the founding era — a time when slaveholders overthrew a government to protect their rights (including the right to hold people as property) — is palpable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153093/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Corbould has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Australian Greens.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael McDonnell receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Trump supporters have staked a claim to the US Constitution and the founding era of the country in their battle against what they perceive as an ‘illegitimate’ government.Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin UniversityMichael McDonnell, Professor of History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508192020-12-11T16:49:55Z2020-12-11T16:49:55ZMasks and mandates: How individual rights and government regulation are both necessary for a free society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373708/original/file-20201208-23-t491lr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C25%2C4130%2C2502&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Residents line up in their cars in late November at a food distribution site in Clermont, Florida, where many are hungry because of the pandemic. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/volunteers-direct-traffic-as-residents-line-up-in-their-news-photo/1229725644?adppopup=true">Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about the tension between demanding “individual rights” – in the sense of deciding whether or not to wear a mask – and calling for more action on the part of our government to protect us from the coronavirus pandemic. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/martha-ackelsberg-519759">I’m a political theorist</a>, which means I study how communities are organized, how power is exercised and how people relate to one another in and between communities. I’ve realized – through talking to friends, and thinking about the protests against COVID-19-related restrictions that have taken place around the country – that many people do not understand that individual rights and state power are not really opposites. </p>
<p>The laws and policies that governments enact set the framework for the exercise of our rights. So, inaction on the part of government does not necessarily empower citizens. It can, effectively, take away our power, leaving us less able to act to address our needs.</p>
<h2>‘War of all against all’</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">The Founders stated in the Declaration of Independence</a> that “governments are instituted among Men … to secure their rights … to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” </p>
<p>Those goals cannot be pursued individually without governments to help create the conditions necessary for collective life. As Thomas Hobbes recognized almost four centuries ago, if everyone just does what they please, no one can trust anyone. We end up with chaos, uncertainty and a “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/">war of all against all</a>.” </p>
<p>Rights become worthless.</p>
<p>This paradox – of the need for government to enable the effective pursuit of individual aims – is particularly extreme in the situation of COVID-19 and its attendant economic crisis. Amid a rampaging pandemic, people have rights to do many things, but are they really free to exercise them? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A bus in West Reading, PA, with the message 'No Masks No Ride' displayed on its digital sign." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373709/original/file-20201208-15-12vsgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373709/original/file-20201208-15-12vsgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373709/original/file-20201208-15-12vsgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373709/original/file-20201208-15-12vsgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373709/original/file-20201208-15-12vsgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373709/original/file-20201208-15-12vsgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373709/original/file-20201208-15-12vsgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A bus reminds people ‘No Masks No Ride’ in September 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bus-with-the-message-no-masks-no-ride-displayed-on-its-news-photo/1272483926?adppopup=true">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It may not feel like you can enjoy the benefits of your individual rights when you have to be engaged in a continuous process of risk-assessment: Is it safe to leave my house? To go to work? To send my child to school? To visit my loved ones?</p>
<p>Even more, people confront those questions from very different perspectives: <a href="https://www.thenationshealth.org/content/50/6/1.1">“Essential” workers</a> have had to make decisions about whether to go to work and risk disease or death, or to stay home to protect themselves and their families and risk hunger and homelessness. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2024046">Those who are unsafe in their homes</a>, because they live with <a href="https://theconversation.com/intimate-partner-violence-has-increased-during-pandemic-emerging-evidence-suggests-148326">abusive parents or partners</a> must choose between the danger of staying in and the dangers of leaving. Even those who work remotely <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-whats-safe-to-do-in-the-new-normal">make an assessment of risk every time they leave home</a>, especially now that infections have surged, given the absence of clear, shared norms about social distancing, mask-wearing and other precautions against the spread of disease.</p>
<h2>Collective framework</h2>
<p>Each person experiences these as personal choices, however, because federal and state governments have <a href="https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/state-data-and-policy-actions-to-address-coronavirus/">failed to provide a truly collective framework</a> within which people can be safer. </p>
<p>People may know, for example, that if everyone wore a mask in the presence of others, maintained social distance and avoided large crowds, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/need-to-know.html">it would be relatively safe</a> to be out in public. But that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2006740">goal cannot be achieved by voluntary individual actions alone</a>, since the benefits are achieved only when most or all of us participate. </p>
<p>The only way to assure that everyone will be wearing a mask — understood as an act of community and collective care, an action taken to protect others, as well as ourselves — is for the government to require mask-wearing because it is needed for the protection of life. </p>
<p>It’s well accepted that governments can <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/minimum-car-insurance-requirements">mandate that drivers must have insurance</a> if they are to be allowed to register and drive a car, or that <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/immunizations-policy-issues-overview.aspx">all children be vaccinated before they can attend school</a>. These requirements are justified out of the recognition that our individual actions (or inactions) affect others as well as ourselves.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Maine Independent Sen. Angus King sets up a sign describing a bipartisan proposal for a Covid-19 relief bill on Capitol Hill." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373711/original/file-20201208-14-1qe7i2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maine Independent Sen. Angus King sets up a sign describing a bipartisan proposal for a COVID-19 relief bill on Capitol Hill on December 1, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-angus-king-sets-up-a-sign-alongside-a-bipartisan-group-news-photo/1288861346?adppopup=true">Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course — and here is where questions about individual rights come up against the need for government policy — in the absence of government economic support for individuals and families, for example, <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/from-our-experts/the-unequal-cost-of-social-distancing">the costs of actions taken to protect others fall unequally</a>. </p>
<p>If businesses close to slow the spread of disease, they protect both workers and consumers. But without government aid, they and their workers are the ones who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/12/small-business-used-define-americas-economy-pandemic-could-end-that-forever/">bear the financial burdens of these actions</a> as individuals.</p>
<h2>Interdependence and mutual responsibility</h2>
<p>That is why <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/03/26/821457551/whats-inside-the-senate-s-2-trillion-coronavirus-aid-package">the CARES Act</a>, which provided income for those who lost jobs and loans or grants to those who kept their workers on payroll, was critical. </p>
<p>It was government policy that recognized that collective caring behavior cannot be sustained without communal support. The CARES Act articulated, through a series of government programs, the idea that no one should be forced to be a martyr — say, to lose their livelihood — for the benefit of others.</p>
<p>Government policy of this sort (such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/11/945339594/discussions-drag-on-for-another-coronavirus-relief-bill">the relief bills now being considered by Congress</a>) aims to ensure that those who forego work to protect others — or go to work to protect others, like essential workers — will not have to pay a personal price. </p>
<p>The ability to exercise the rights to work, to shop or to go to school depends upon having a relatively safe public space in which to operate. In turn, that requires all of us to attend to the rights and safety of others, as well as of ourselves. </p>
<p>Government is the means by which such attending — caring — is expressed and accomplished. It is only when people can count on others to be concerned for one another that they can truly be free to act, and exercise their rights, in the public arena.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am not now receiving any funding; but I have, in the past, held a National Defense Education Act fellowship for graduate study, and research fellowships from Smith College, the American Association of University Women, the Mellon Foundation, the Danforth Foundation. I have also served on review panels for the National Science Foundation (for which I receive a small stipend).</span></em></p>The absence of effective government policy doesn’t make citizens free. It takes away their power, leaving them less able to act to address their needs. That’s especially clear during the pandemic.Martha Ackelsberg, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government, emerita, Smith CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1335992020-03-18T12:09:04Z2020-03-18T12:09:04ZCoronavirus reminds Americans that pursuit of happiness is tied to the collective good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321089/original/file-20200317-60894-n64oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People practice social distancing by standing apart during a news conference in Washington D.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-Washington/f5763cdc2f77412b95ce1ec804c5b8c6/22/0">AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At its core, the United States <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">Declaration of Independence</a> argues that all human beings have “unalienable rights.” These include right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” </p>
<p>These rights apply to all human beings, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/04/are-our-rights-inalienable-or-unalienable/">cannot be given away</a>. </p>
<p>What is more, the Declaration says that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” In other words, the primary objective of government is to afford citizens the opportunity to exercise these rights; the right to be left alone and to be free to pursue their own notion of happiness. </p>
<p>These ideas – that all people have the right to freely pursue their own self interest, and that government is concerned primarily with defending that right – show that the United States is, speaking philosophically, a very liberal society. </p>
<p>I have been researching questions about American political philosophy since I was a graduate student studying social ethics in the 1990s and those questions <a href="https://democracy.psu.edu/">still occupy my research</a>. With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, one question in particular has emerged as front and center: </p>
<p>Is a society founded on liberal principles able to preserve itself when confronted with an existential threat, such as the coronavirus pandemic? </p>
<h2>Is liberalism insufficient?</h2>
<p>With the end of the Cold War, Soviet-style communism was banished to what President Ronald Reagan called “<a href="https://www.historyplace.com/speeches/reagan-parliament.htm">the ash heap of history</a>.” Several countries throughout the former Soviet bloc, and throughout the world, <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1990-09-01/democracy-global-revolution">embraced the ideals of civil rights, free enterprise and democratic equality</a>. </p>
<p>This dominance of Western liberalism was also reflected in American political philosophy. In the 70s and 80s, political theorists like <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/joseph-raz">Joseph Raz</a>, <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nozick-political/">Robert Nozik</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/">John Rawls</a> all sought to refine <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/#NewLib">the features and implications of liberal thought</a>. </p>
<p>For example, John Rawls, in my opinion, the most important American political philosopher of this time, argued that liberal society required as much freedom and as much equal distribution of resources as possible. Any inequality or restriction of rights was only acceptable when it made society better off. </p>
<p>But neither Rawls nor any of these eminent theorists questioned the idea that liberalism was the best way to organize society. </p>
<p>In fact, political scientist <a href="https://fukuyama.stanford.edu/">Francis Fukuyama</a> famously argued for liberalism saying that <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1992-03-01/end-history-and-last-man">the question about how people should live together was effectively over</a>. </p>
<p>But at the time, there also emerged a group of scholars who did question the sufficiency of liberalism. Political philosophers <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/sandel/home">Michael Sandel</a> <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/philosophy/people/emeritus-faculty/taylor">Charles Taylor</a> and sociologist <a href="https://sociology.columbian.gwu.edu/amitai-etzioni">Amitai Etzioni</a> all came to be identified as <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/">Communitarians</a>. </p>
<p>They shared the belief that individual rights were not a sufficient foundation on which to build and sustain a good society. Communitarians agreed with Aristotle’s famous phrase: Humans beings are “<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:1:1253a">political animals</a>.” In other words, society is more than just a collection of individuals. </p>
<h2>It’s not about individual rights</h2>
<p>This philosophical debate, in my view, is suddenly very relevant again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321086/original/file-20200317-60889-13igdp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">People wait in line outside a grocery store in Spring, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-Texas/6fa97d2263cb4b8a94b6bcac0d09fe1d/12/0">AP Photo/David J. Phillip</a></span>
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<p>As the coronavirus spreads, appeals about social distancing, washing one’s hands and the like appear to be focused primarily on the individual’s self-interest of not falling ill. </p>
<p>Such appeals would seem to fit nicely with liberalism and its focus on individual rights. </p>
<p>But the pandemic is at the same time demonstrating that these kinds of appeal are not enough. Just a few days ago, for example, Today’s Parent magazine offered the <a href="https://www.todaysparent.com/kids/kids-health/hand-washing-kids/">following advice</a> about how to talk to children about the coronavirus and washing their hands: “Assure them that kids don’t tend to get seriously ill with it, but other people in society are more susceptible, and they can do this small thing to help others stay healthy.”</p>
<p>Data is still sketchy, but it appears that for young people, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lamvo/coronavirus-death-rates-age-charts-us-china">the mortality rate from the coronavirus</a> is not much different from seasonal flu. But even so, they can still transmit the virus to those who are more vulnerable – especially older people and those with underlying health conditions. </p>
<p>Also, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/02/n95-face-mask-coronavirus/">people are being urged not to load up on hand sanitizer and surgical masks</a>. Neither of these are absolutely necessary to keep the average person from contracting the virus. </p>
<p>But they might be very helpful for someone else – health care professionals, for example, need their patients to wear masks so they don’t get infected. Because of their repeated interactions with those same sick people, they are in more frequent need of the hand sanitizer as well. </p>
<h2>Obligations to each other</h2>
<p>This crisis makes it all too clear that pursuing one’s own self-interest is not enough. While every one of us has the legal right to purchase as much hand sanitizer as we can find, if that is all we think about, the welfare of others and society itself are at risk. </p>
<p>Like the Communitarians from 30 years ago, Americans need to challenge the idea that everyone is just pursuing their own happiness as individuals. When we live together in society, we depend on each other. And therefore we have obligations to each other. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Beem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the coronavirus spreads far and wide, a political philosopher argues that it is a time to understand that the idea of individual happiness does not work without thinking of the larger good.Christopher Beem, Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1299692020-02-13T14:02:47Z2020-02-13T14:02:47ZThe power of a song in a strange land<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314568/original/file-20200210-109912-p5sg2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A studio group portrait of the Fisk University Jubilee singers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print">James Wallace Black/American Missionary Association</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From the moment of capture, through the treacherous middle passage, after the final sale and throughout life in North America, the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2956.html">experience of enslaved Africans</a> who first arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, some 400 years ago, was characterized by loss, terror and abuse. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/abolition.htm">Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807</a> made it illegal to buy and sell people in British colonies, but in the independent United States slavery remained a prominent – <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=40">and legal</a> – practice until December 1865. From this tragic backdrop one of the most poignant American musical genres, the Negro spiritual, was birthed. </p>
<p>Sometimes called <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/ritual-and-worship/spirituals">slave songs, jubilees and sorrow songs</a>, spirituals were created out of, and spoke directly to, the black experience in America prior to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, that declared all slaves free. </p>
<h2>West African roots</h2>
<p>Spirituals have been a part of my life from childhood. In small churches in Virginia and North Carolina, we sang the songs of our ancestors, drawing strength and hope. I went on to <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Art_Songs_and_Spirituals_by_Contemporary.html?id=ydzZuQAACAAJ">study</a>, perform and teach the spiritual for over 40 years to people across the U.S. and in various parts of the world. </p>
<p>Despite attempts, white slave-owners could not strip Africans of their culture. Even with a new language, English, and without familiar instruments, the enslaved people turned the peculiarities of African musical expressions into the African American sound.</p>
<p>Rhythms were complex and marked by syncopation, an accent on the weak beat. Call-and-response, a technique rooted in sub-Saharan West African culture, was <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ad802e59cc6835890d7c7c/t/59af147e197aea0fbfcc2e1f/1504646271536/THE+HYMN+Review.pdf">frequently employed</a> in spirituals. Call-and-response is very much like a conversation – the leader makes a statement or asks a question and others answer or expound. </p>
<p>An example of this is the spiritual, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/ritual-and-worship/spirituals">Certainly Lord</a>. The leader excitedly queries, “Have you got good religion?” and others jubilantly respond, “Certainly, Lord.” Using repetition and improvisation, the conversation continues to build until everyone exclaims, “certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord!”</p>
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<p>In Africa, drums were used to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode86/">communicate</a> from village to village because they could be used to mimic the inflection of voices. </p>
<p>As early as 1739 in the British colonies, drums were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode86/">prohibited by law</a> and characterized as weapons in an attempt to prevent slaves from building community and inciting rebellion. </p>
<p>As a result, enslaved people “played” drum patterns on the body. Hands clapped, feet stomped, bodies swayed and mouths provided sophisticated rhythmic patterns. This can be observed in Hambone, an example of improvised body music. </p>
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<h2>Oral tradition</h2>
<p>Some spirituals were derived from African melodies. Others were “new,” <a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=6&smtID=6">freely composed songs</a> with a melodic phrase borrowed from here and a rhythmic pattern from there – all combined to create an highly improvised form. </p>
<p>The spiritual was deeply rooted in the oral tradition and often created spontaneously, one person starting a tune and another joining until a new song was added to the community repertoire. The sophisticated result was beautifully <a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=6&smtID=6">described</a> in 1862 by Philadelphia musicologist and piano teacher <a href="http://www.njwomenshistory.org/discover/biographies/lucy-mckim-garrison/">Lucy McKim Garrison</a>. </p>
<p>“It is difficult to express the entire character of these negro ballads by mere musical notes and signs,” she said. “The odd turns made in the throat; the curious rhythmic effect produced by single voices chiming in at different irregular intervals, seem almost as impossible to place on score.” </p>
<p>Textually, the spiritual <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2293924?seq=1">drew from the Hebrew-Christian Bible</a>, particularly the Old Testament, with its stories of deliverance and liberation. Songs like “Go Down Moses” direct the awaited deliverer to “go down” to Southern plantations and “tell ole Pharaoh” – the masters – to “let my people go.” </p>
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<h2>Songs of survival</h2>
<p>For the slaves, the spiritual proved to be an ingenious tool used to counter senseless brutality and the denial of personhood. In order to survive emotionally, resilience was critical. In the spirituals, slaves sang out their struggle, weariness, loneliness, sorrow, hope and determination for a new and better life. </p>
<p>Yet these are not songs of anger. They are <a href="https://www.ecu.edu/african/sersas/Papers/WrightJ.pdf">songs of survival</a> that voice an unwavering belief in their own humanity and attest to an abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of good over systemic evil. </p>
<p>Interspersed within these seemingly hopeless texts are phrases that reflect the heart’s hope: the words “<a href="https://youtu.be/KiJx1Hbn_KM">true believer</a>” amid the acknowledgment that “sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” for example; and “glory, hallelujah” interjected after the text, “<a href="https://youtu.be/O977l4bkv-U">nobody knows the trouble I see</a>.” </p>
<p>Songs declaring, “<a href="https://youtu.be/CUNrEtS0KeY">I’ve got a crown up in a dat kingdom. Ain’t a dat good news</a>” proclaimed the certainty of a future hope totally unlike the day-to-day reality of enslavement. </p>
<p>People whose every movement was dictated audaciously declared, “I’ve got shoes. You’ve got shoes. All God’s children got shoes. When I get to heaven gonna put on my shoes, gonna walk all over God’s heaven.” In the same song they denounced the hypocrisy of the slaveholders’ religion: “Everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t going there.” </p>
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<p>Spirituals weren’t simply religious music. In his seminal work, “Narrative Of The Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave,” published in 1845, the abolitionist <a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Douglass/Narrative/Douglass_Narrative.pdf">explains</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The spirituals were <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/songs-of-america/articles-and-essays/musical-styles/ritual-and-worship/spirituals">also acts of rebellion</a>. They were used to <a href="https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1202&context=reprints">organize clandestine meetings</a>, and announce activities of the Underground Railroad. For example, songs like “<a href="https://youtu.be/OEPpI0Nnd3c">Great Camp Meeting</a>,” were used to announce when secret gatherings were being planned.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The spiritual served as a mediator between the dissonance of oppression and the belief that there was “<a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498536493/The-Motif-of-Hope-in-African-American-Preaching-during-Slavery-and-the-Post-Civil-War-Era-There's-a-Bright-Side-Somewhere">a bright side somewhere</a>.” </p>
<p>Four hundred years after the birth of slavery, as the world still struggles with racial division, injustice and a sense of hopelessness, spirituals can teach how to build hope in the face of despair and challenge the status quo.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rev. Dr. Donna M. Cox has received funding from the University of Dayton Research Council and The Ohio Humanities Council. She is affiliated with Doxology Ministries International, Inc, a 501c3 charitable organization. </span></em></p>Spirituals were created out of the experience of enslaved people in the US. They weren’t songs of anger – but of an abiding belief in the victory of good over evil.Donna M. Cox, Professor of Music, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1199002019-07-04T12:19:31Z2019-07-04T12:19:31ZFourth of July: national celebrations mask America’s centuries-old divisions<p>President Donald Trump’s extravagant celebration of the Fourth of July in 2019 – with special sections for favoured VIP guests, and political donors able to purchase tickets to the event – has <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/02/politics/donald-trump-fourth-of-july-plan/index.html">attracted intense criticism</a>. Many of his compatriots, for whom the nation’s birthday should have been a moment to celebrate unity and consensus, fear that Independence Day has been hijacked by narrow, partisan interests. </p>
<p>But while <a href="https://www.penncapital-star.com/commentary/check-out-this-map-of-americas-partisan-bitterness-thursday-morning-coffee/">many commentators argue</a> that contemporary US politics is marked by an unprecedented bitter and divisive tone, others are recognising that deep ideological divisions have been <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/america-divided-its-been-way-our-founding-opinion-905606">part of the nation’s heritage</a> since its birth. Debates over the meaning of the Fourth of July, in particular, highlight that forgotten history.</p>
<p>For many Americans who were alive on July 4 1776, the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript">Declaration of Independence</a>, approved that day by the Continental Congress, represented not a new found liberty but a wrenching separation from an empire of which they were loyal subjects. When <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Robertson_(British_Army_officer)">General James Robertson</a>, governor of New York from 1779 to 1783, wrote that “I never had an idea of subduing the Americans; I meant to assist the good Americans subdue the bad”, the “good Americans” he referred to were these Loyalists.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282683/original/file-20190704-51273-m4rydi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282683/original/file-20190704-51273-m4rydi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282683/original/file-20190704-51273-m4rydi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282683/original/file-20190704-51273-m4rydi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282683/original/file-20190704-51273-m4rydi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282683/original/file-20190704-51273-m4rydi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282683/original/file-20190704-51273-m4rydi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Committee of Five presenting the Declaration of Independence to Congress in 1776.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Trumbull (1756-1843)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/10-fun-facts-about-original-patriots-180962032/">American Patriots</a> who fought for independence, derided these Loyalists as “Tories”. The name <a href="https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/tory">derived originally</a> from the Irish Gaelic word <em>tóraidhe</em> (outlaw). During the “<a href="http://stuarts.exeter.ac.uk/education/moments/exclusion-crisis/">Exclusion Crisis</a>” of 1679-1681, the label had been attached, pejoratively, to the faction in parliament who supported the right of the Catholic James Stuart (later <a href="http://stuarts.exeter.ac.uk/education/biographies/james-ii-and-vii/">James II and VII</a>) to the throne. Those Tories, in turn, labelled their opponents, who wanted James excluded from the succession, “<a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/whig">Whigs</a>”, (an obscure word of Scottish Gaelic origin, originally associated with rebellious Scottish Presbyterians). Thus were laid the foundations of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Whig-Party-England">British party politics</a>. </p>
<p>American Patriots understood their revolution in these same terms. They were radical Whigs, often religious dissenters, opposed to royal prerogatives and <a href="http://www.nlnrac.org/earlymodern/radical-whigs-and-natural-rights">advocates of natural rights philosophy</a>. Inevitably, they castigated their local opponents as “Tories”, caricaturing them as the craven tools of monarchy and <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/high-church">High Church Anglicans</a>.</p>
<h2>Liberty’s exiles</h2>
<p>This one-dimensional view of the Loyalists endured for two centuries. Outside of Canada, where the contribution of Loyalist exiles from the rebellious colonies has <a href="http://www.uelac.org/">long been celebrated</a>, neither American nor British historians really challenged the negative “Tory” stereotype. For British historians, such as <a href="http://www.exmoor-nationalpark.gov.uk/Whats-Special/culture/literary-links/john-william-fortesque">Sir John Fortescue</a>, the tendency was to blame the Loyalists for their disjointed and uncoordinated support of regular forces. </p>
<p>American historians, such as <a href="https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/%7Eatlantic/aboutBailyn.html">Bernard Bailyn</a>, who turned their attention to the “Tories”, generally thought them uninspiring and unprincipled. Yet historians, more conscious of the deep ideological divisions that have always shaped US society, are now revising their understanding of American Loyalists.</p>
<p>Andrew O’Shaunessy has argued that loyalism was <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13383.html">a powerful force</a> in preserving the empire in North America, where 13 out of 26 colonies rejected revolution and remained British. Maya Jasanoff has <a href="https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/maya-jasanoff">told the story</a> of “liberty’s exiles” – a global history of the 60,000 Americans who fled the independent US and went on to shape the post-revolutionary world. </p>
<p>Ruma Chopra <a href="http://www.sjsu.edu/history/faculty/ruma_chopra/index.html">has established</a> that the Loyalists did have a principled position – although they were sometimes quite “Whiggish” in their own politics, they rejected the extremes of “unnatural rebellion”. Joseph Teidemann, meanwhile, has drawn attention to the diverse backgrounds of “<a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-4777-the-other-loyalists.aspx">ordinary Loyalists</a>” – farmers, Quaker pacifists, Anglicans, merchants, recent immigrants and military veterans who had settled in the colonies.</p>
<p>It is now generally recognised that such individuals <a href="http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/history-1994/the-road-to-independence/loyalists-during-the-american-revolution.php">numbered about 500,000</a> (around 20% of the rebellious colonies’ population). Yet these white Loyalists were not the only allies the Crown had in North America.</p>
<h2>Fighting an American oppressor</h2>
<p>Jim Piecuch <a href="http://www.jimpiecuch.com/">has demonstrated</a> how “three peoples” (white Loyalists, enslaved African-Americans and Native Americans) rallied to support the British Crown. Some 50,000 African-Americans escaped slavery on the plantations of their Patriot masters. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282684/original/file-20190704-51273-gl0ygq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282684/original/file-20190704-51273-gl0ygq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282684/original/file-20190704-51273-gl0ygq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282684/original/file-20190704-51273-gl0ygq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282684/original/file-20190704-51273-gl0ygq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282684/original/file-20190704-51273-gl0ygq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282684/original/file-20190704-51273-gl0ygq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black Loyalist fighting with British troops in the Battle of Jersey, 1781.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Singleton Copley</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>About 30,000 of these reached British lines. Many volunteered to take up arms and <a href="http://blackloyalist.com/cdc/story/revolution/pioneers.htm">fought alongside</a> the white Loyalists. After the conflict, <a href="https://blackloyalist.novascotia.ca/about/black-loyalist-heritage-society">20,000 were evacuated</a> by the British, where many joined other “Empire Loyalists” in settling Nova Scotia.<br>
Many Native Americans, although under no illusions about the self-interest of the British, thought they posed less threat to their lands than the expansionist colonists and they too joined the Loyalist cause. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Brant">Molly Brant</a> and her <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Brant">younger brother Joseph</a>, who <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iroquois-people">led four of the six Iroquois Nations</a> during the conflict, were particularly important allies. Like many Loyalists, they paid a high price for their service – in defeat, the power of the Iroquois Confederacy was broken. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, it was frequently Loyalist women who suffered most during the war. Their menfolk away serving in Loyalist regiments, they often faced the wrath of their Patriot neighbours. Flora Macdonald, of <a href="http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2009/04/flora-macdonald.html">Skye Boat Song fame</a>, was, <a href="https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/10/scotland-american-revolution/">like most Scottish migrants to America</a>, a staunch Loyalist (as adherents to the Stuart cause and thus longstanding enemies of “Whiggery”, former Jacobites in particular <a href="https://britishheritage.com/jacobite-rebellion-1745/">were natural “Tories”</a>). After her <a href="http://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Info/extras/MacDonald-Allan/Allan-MacDonald-by-Brian-McConnell.pdf">husband Allan MacDonald</a> was taken prisoner, her home in North Carolina was ransacked and Flora spent much of the war in hiding.</p>
<p>The fate of Loyalists such as Flora Macdonald is a reminder that the search for consensus in the history of the United States is an illusion. Intense and partisan ideological divisions have always been integral to the nation’s politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gervase Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Declaration of Independence was not greeted with universal acclaim and many Americans stayed loyal to the crown.Gervase Phillips, Principal Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/900582018-01-12T21:01:27Z2018-01-12T21:01:27ZWhat activists today can learn from MLK, the ‘conservative militant’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201793/original/file-20180112-101518-1v277rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protestor holds a sign with a quote from civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. at the South Carolina Statehouse.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the turbulent days following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists launched resistance movements: Greenpeace activists climbed a large construction crane near the White House and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/greenpeace-resist-banner-protest-trump.html?_r=0">unfurled a large banner</a> with the single word – “Resist.” </p>
<p>Similar protests took place elsewhere. Thousands of protesters used their bodies to <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Protesters-spell-out-resist-on-Ocean-Beach-10927336.php">spell the word “resist”</a> on a San Francisco beach. And at the Grammys, the very next day, rapper <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/q-tip">Q-Tip</a> <a href="http://deadline.com/2017/02/donald-trump-attacked-grammy-awards-a-tribe-called-quest-muslim-ban-1201910151/">yelled “resist”</a> no less than four times from the stage. </p>
<p>A year later, demonstrations like these have not disappeared. A <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-womens-march-2018-story.html">second women’s march</a> is planned for later this month. But the resistance has moved beyond street protests. Activists are now embracing the hard work of political organizing. <a href="https://www.runforsomething.net/book/">“Don’t Just March Run for Something”</a> – the title of a best-seller by Amanda Litman, email director of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, crystallizes this transition. </p>
<p>I have <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498511438/Democratic-Humility-Reinhold-Niebuhr-Neuroscience-and-America%E2%80%99s-Political-Crisis">studied the words and actions</a> of Martin Luther King Jr. for decades. The very change we are witnessing now – the transition from protest to politics – is exactly the kind of transition that King called for during the civil rights movement. </p>
<h2>MLK: A ‘conservative militant’</h2>
<p>In the words of historian <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2003/in-memoriam-august-a-meier">August Meier,</a> who wrote a seminal book, <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/22712/negro_thought_in_america_1880_1915">“Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915,”</a> published in 1963, King succeeded because he was <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewPolitics-1965q1-00052">“a conservative militant.”</a> </p>
<p>The word, “conservative” has a specific meaning here. King was a <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/martin-luther-king-socialist/">democratic socialist</a>, he opposed the Vietnam War, and he called for massive investment in the inner cities. He was not conservative in any political sense. But what Meier showed was that King nevertheless manifested a <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewPolitics-1965q1-00052">conservative core</a> – one that resonated with millions of Americans and thereby helped achieve the movement’s remarkable success. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewPolitics-1965q1-00052">Meier’s words</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“American history shows that for any reform movement to succeed, it must attain respectability. It must attract moderates, even conservatives to its rank.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>King understood this. And to that end, he was indeed conservative – both in the arguments he made and the manner in which he presented them.</p>
<p>King argued that racism in America meant the United States was not living up to its own ideals. At the very core of the <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/DECLARATION/document/">Declaration of Independence</a> and thus at the center of American life was the belief that “all men are created equal.” But in America in the 1960s, and especially in the South, African-Americans lived out their lives as <a href="http://www.authentichistory.com/1946-1960/8-civilrights/1946-1953">second-class citizens</a>. In King’s words, American culture was <a href="http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/2015/01/some_will_have_to_face_physical_death_dr_martin_luther_king_jr_in_syracuse_1961.html">“the very antithesis”</a> of what it claimed to believe. </p>
<p>King did not want to challenge, let alone replace, ideals of freedom and equality. He wanted America to better embody them. He argued that the civil rights movement was just the <a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/184971711/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-A-Testament-of-Hope-1969">latest in a long American tradition</a> that was both grounded in those ideals and sought to make them more authentic. </p>
<p>King compared the civil rights movement with the abolitionist movement, the populist movement of farmers and laborers in the late 19th century, and even to the American Revolution itself. The American ideal “all men are created equal” constituted what King called a <a href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm">“promissory note.”</a> In each case, ordinary citizens demanded that that promise be honored. And through their actions, the nation was made more free and more just.</p>
<p>By framing the cause of civil rights in words and ideas that most Americans strongly identified with, King was able to appeal to their innate patriotism. What’s more, those who stood against his cause were, by implication, the ones who could be seen as un-American. </p>
<h2>King’s strategy</h2>
<p>King’s resistance was also strictly nonviolent. Following the model of civil resistance developed by M.K. Gandhi, the leader of Indian independence, King argued for nonviolence <a href="https://swap.stanford.edu/20141218225500/http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/6-Feb-1957_NonviolenceAndRacialJustice.pdf">within the terms of his own Christian faith</a>.</p>
<p>King said that by responding to injustice with civility and to violence with nonviolence, the resister was fulfilling <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_nonviolent_resistance/">“the Christian doctrine of love.”</a> For King, that love was <a href="https://swap.stanford.edu/20141218225500/http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/6-Feb-1957_NonviolenceAndRacialJustice.pdf">best reflected</a> in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-fractured-nation-needs-to-remember-kings-message-of-love-68643">Greek word “agape,”</a> an “understanding, redeeming good will for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.” This was the love that Christ epitomized, and which his followers were called to emulate. </p>
<p>But King also insisted that nonviolent resistance spoke to a respect for the law that can only be called conservative. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” where he was imprisoned in 1963, King insisted that while unjust laws must be broken, they must be <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">broken “lovingly,”</a> such that the act demonstrates a respect, even a reverence, for the law. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_nonviolent_resistance/">King argued</a> that this nonviolent strategy was not simply the most Christian response. It was also “the most potent instrument the Negro community can use to gain total emancipation in America.” <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/19/alex-haley-s-1965-playboy-interview-with-rev-martin-luther-king-jr.html">He said that</a> violent protests gave the white man “an excuse to look away,” to ignore those who want to claim the mantel of equality.“ </p>
<p>Conducting the struggle <a href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm">"on the high plane of dignity and discipline,”</a> dressing well, using respectful language and accepting violence without responding in kind – all this gave protesters a moral standing that attracted moderates to the cause. It also sought to change the hearts and minds of the bigots. Even if that effort failed, the bigots were nevertheless defeated. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/14301/slavery-by-another-name-by-douglas-a-blackmon/9780385722704/">Jim Crow system of racial segregation</a> rested on the idea that African-Americans were inferior to whites. By rigidly adhering to the high road, the actions of protesters proved that that entire system was based on a falsehood.</p>
<p>Indeed, if anything, actions on both sides demonstrated the opposite. </p>
<h2>Acting politically</h2>
<p>Many protesters in the 1960s sought to bring down an established order that they saw as irredeemably racist and corrupt. But to <a href="http://www.detroits-great-rebellion.com/Watts">those who said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Burn, baby, burn,” </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/01/18/mlk-speaks-philadelphia-middle-school/">King said</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Organize, baby, organize.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fundamental purpose of resistance was to effect political change and that meant operating within existing political institutions.</p>
<p>It also often required compromise. For example, at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, a crisis developed when the newly created and integrated <a href="https://theconversation.com/voter-id-laws-why-black-democrats-fight-for-the-ballot-in-mississippi-still-matters-63583">“Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party”</a> demanded they be recognized and seated instead of the all-white “official” Mississippi delegation. They argued they were the truly democratic representatives of the state as they were the product of procedures fair and open to all. </p>
<p>Party leaders <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_mississippi_freedom_democratic_party/">worked out a compromise</a> that allowed the Mississippi delegation to remain. King accepted this compromise, but many advocates condemned it as an illegitimate accommodation to racism. </p>
<p>King did not disagree, but he argued that this face-saving gesture would help to ensure that the South would not abandon then-candidate Lyndon Johnson. One year later, President Johnson <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_voting_rights_act_1965/">signed the Voting Rights Act</a>, which ensured voting rights for all African-Americans, and brought federal control over elections in the South. </p>
<h2>Resistance through politics is conservative</h2>
<p>The notion of conservative militancy is not one that many of Trump’s opponents would likely affirm. Some see this moment is an opportunity to grow and <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/01/social-media-powered-berniecrats-try-move-party-left/">strengthen the left</a>; others see it as an opportunity to <a href="https://greenpartywashington.org/2016/11/09/resist-trump-failed-two-party-system/">move beyond</a> the two-party system altogether. But the transition from marching to politics show that many understand that opposing Trump requires mobilizing the power necessary to make that happen. </p>
<p>The civil rights movement expressed a similar operating principle: Keep your <a href="https://library.wustl.edu/spec/filmandmedia/collections/hampton/eop/">“eyes on the prize.”</a> Here too, the thought was that opponents should not allow themselves to be satisfied with simply articulating their dissatisfaction. Rather, they should continually orient themselves and their actions such that they advance the movement toward the ultimate goal. </p>
<p>Right now, those Americans who oppose the president contend that longstanding democratic procedures, norms and ideals are under attack. Because they seek to defend those core American ideals, those who resist have become, by default, conservatives and patriots. And now, one year after his inauguration, that defense has moved from protest to politics. </p>
<p>Whether they know it or not, in both regards, these Americans are following King’s example. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/lessons-in-resistance-from-mlk-the-conservative-militant-73506">originally published</a> on March 5, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Beem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>King led one of the most successful resistance movements in American history. A scholar explains King’s strategies in resistance.Christopher Beem, Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/735062017-03-06T02:16:46Z2017-03-06T02:16:46ZLessons in resistance from MLK, the ‘conservative militant’<p>Just days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, activists from Greenpeace climbed up a large construction crane near the White House and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/greenpeace-resist-banner-protest-trump.html?_r=0">unfurled a large banner</a> with the single word: Resist. </p>
<p>On Feb. 11, thousands of protesters used their bodies to <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Protesters-spell-out-resist-on-Ocean-Beach-10927336.php">spell the word “resist”</a> on a San Francisco beach. The next day, at the Grammys, rapper <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/q-tip">Q-Tip</a> <a href="http://deadline.com/2017/02/donald-trump-attacked-grammy-awards-a-tribe-called-quest-muslim-ban-1201910151/">yelled “resist”</a> no less than four times from the stage. </p>
<p>And on Feb. 26, at a rally outside Washington, Maryland Congressman John Delaney <a href="http://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2017/02/top-md-democrats-hold-trump-bashing-rally-silver-spring/">said to the audience</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“What do we have to do? We have to resist. This is a defining moment. It’s stirring our hearts and stirring our emotions and we’re committed to resisting with you.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All of these examples speak to a widespread and resolute discontent with the election of President Trump. They express a rejection of his agenda and of what they see as his degradation of our democracy. “Resist” reflects their desire, insofar as they can, to stop this from happening. </p>
<p>But what exactly does it mean to resist? And most importantly, how can Americans make sure that their resistance is most likely to effect change?</p>
<p>I have studied the words and actions of Martin Luther King for decades. King led one of the most successful, nonviolent resistance movements in American history. I believe his example is especially germane to these questions. </p>
<p>What can today’s resisters learn from King and the civil rights movement? </p>
<h2>MLK: A ‘conservative militant’</h2>
<p>In the words of historian <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/september-2003/in-memoriam-august-a-meier">August Meier,</a> who wrote a seminal book, <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/22712/negro_thought_in_america_1880_1915">“Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915,”</a> published in 1963, King succeeded because he was <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewPolitics-1965q1-00052">“a conservative militant.”</a> </p>
<p>The word, “conservative” has a specific meaning here. King was a <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/martin-luther-king-socialist/">democratic socialist</a>, he opposed the Vietnam War and he called for massive investment in the inner cities. He was not conservative in any political sense. But what Meier showed was that King nevertheless manifested a <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewPolitics-1965q1-00052">conservative core</a> – one that resonated with millions of Americans and thereby helped achieve the movement’s remarkable success. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewPolitics-1965q1-00052">Meier’s words</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“American history shows that for any reform movement to succeed, it must attain respectability. It must attract moderates, even conservatives to its rank.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>King understood this. And to that end, he was indeed conservative – both in the arguments he made and the manner in which he presented them.</p>
<p>King argued that racism in America meant the United States was not living up to its own ideals. At the very core of the <a href="http://www.ushistory.org/DECLARATION/document/">Declaration of Independence</a> and thus at the center of American life was the belief that “all men are created equal.” But in America in the 1960s, and especially in the South, African-Americans lived out their lives as <a href="http://www.authentichistory.com/1946-1960/8-civilrights/1946-1953">second-class citizens</a>. In King’s words, American culture was <a href="http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/2015/01/some_will_have_to_face_physical_death_dr_martin_luther_king_jr_in_syracuse_1961.html">“the very antithesis”</a> of what it claimed to believe. </p>
<p>King did not want to challenge, let alone replace, ideals of freedom and equality. He wanted America to better embody them. He argued that the civil rights movement was just the <a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/184971711/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-A-Testament-of-Hope-1969">latest in a long American tradition</a> that was both grounded in those ideals and sought to make them more authentic. </p>
<p>King compared the civil rights movement with the abolitionist movement, the populist movement of farmers and laborers in the late 19th century, and even to the American Revolution itself. The American ideal “all men are created equal” constituted what King called a <a href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm">“promissory note.”</a> In each case, ordinary citizens demanded that that promise be honored. And through their actions, the nation was made more free and more just.</p>
<p>By framing the cause of civil rights in words and ideas that most Americans strongly identified with, King was able to appeal to their innate patriotism. What’s more, those who stood against his cause were, by implication, the ones who could be seen as un-American. </p>
<h2>King’s strategy</h2>
<p>King’s resistance was also strictly nonviolent. Following the model of civil resistance developed by M.K. Gandhi, leader of Indian independence, King argued for nonviolence <a href="https://swap.stanford.edu/20141218225500/http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/6-Feb-1957_NonviolenceAndRacialJustice.pdf">within the terms of his own Christian faith</a>.</p>
<p>King said that by responding to injustice with civility and to violence with nonviolence, the resister was fulfilling <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_nonviolent_resistance/">“the Christian doctrine of love.”</a> For King, that love was <a href="https://swap.stanford.edu/20141218225500/http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/primarydocuments/Vol4/6-Feb-1957_NonviolenceAndRacialJustice.pdf">best reflected</a> in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-fractured-nation-needs-to-remember-kings-message-of-love-68643">Greek word “agape,”</a> an “understanding, redeeming good will for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.” This was the love that Christ epitomized, and which his followers were called to emulate. </p>
<p>But King also insisted that nonviolent resistance spoke to a respect for the law that can only be called conservative. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, where he was imprisoned in 1963, King insisted that while unjust laws must be broken, they must be <a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">broken “lovingly,”</a> such that the act demonstrates a respect, even a reverence, for the law. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159331/original/image-20170303-29012-59mc7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_nonviolent_resistance/">King argued</a> that this nonviolent strategy was not simply the most Christian response. It was also “the most potent instrument the Negro community can use to gain total emancipation in America.” <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/19/alex-haley-s-1965-playboy-interview-with-rev-martin-luther-king-jr.html">He said that</a> violent protests gave the white man “an excuse to look away,” to ignore those who want to claim the mantel of equality.“ </p>
<p>Conducting the struggle <a href="http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm">"on the high plane of dignity and discipline,”</a> dressing well, using respectful language and accepting violence without responding in kind: All this gave protesters a moral standing that attracted moderates to the cause. It also sought to change the hearts and minds of the bigots, but even if that effort failed, the bigots were nevertheless defeated. </p>
<p>The Jim Crow system of racial segregation rested on the idea that African-Americans were inferior to whites. By rigidly adhering to the high road, the actions of protesters proved that that entire system was based on a falsehood.</p>
<p>Indeed, if anything, actions on both sides demonstrated the opposite. </p>
<h2>Acting politically</h2>
<p>Many protesters in the 1960s sought to bring down an established order that they saw as irredeemably racist and corrupt. But to <a href="http://www.detroits-great-rebellion.com/Watts">those who said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Burn, baby, burn,” </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/01/18/mlk-speaks-philadelphia-middle-school/">King said</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Organize, baby, organize.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The fundamental purpose of resistance was to effect political change and that meant operating within existing political institutions.</p>
<p>It also often required compromise. For example, at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, a crisis developed when the newly created and integrated <a href="https://theconversation.com/voter-id-laws-why-black-democrats-fight-for-the-ballot-in-mississippi-still-matters-63583">“Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party”</a> demanded they be recognized and seated instead of the all-white “official” Mississippi delegation. They argued they were the truly democratic representatives of the state as they were the product of procedures fair and open to all. </p>
<p>Party leaders <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_mississippi_freedom_democratic_party/">worked out a compromise</a> that allowed the Mississippi delegation to remain. King accepted this compromise, but many advocates condemned it as an illegitimate accommodation to racism. </p>
<p>King did not disagree, but he argued that this face-saving gesture would help to ensure that the South would not abandon then-candidate Lyndon Johnson. One year later, President Johnson <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_voting_rights_act_1965/">signed the Voting Rights Act</a>, which ensured voting rights for all African-Americans, and brought federal control over elections in the South. </p>
<h2>Today’s resistance is conservative</h2>
<p>The notion of conservative militancy likely does not, however, resonate with today’s resisters. For many of them, this moment is an opportunity to grow and <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/01/social-media-powered-berniecrats-try-move-party-left/">strengthen the left</a> either within or outside the Democratic Party; for some, it is an opportunity to move beyond the two-party system altogether. </p>
<p>But within the civil rights movement, similar designs were often met with the operating principle: Keep your <a href="https://library.wustl.edu/spec/filmandmedia/collections/hampton/eop/">“eyes on the prize.”</a> What it meant was that individuals should not allow themselves to be distracted. Rather, they should continually orient themselves and their actions such that they advance the movement toward the ultimate goal. </p>
<p>Right now, many Americans contend that longstanding democratic procedures, norms and ideals are under attack. Because they seek to defend those core American ideals, those who resist have become, by default, conservatives and patriots.</p>
<p>Contemporary resisters would therefore do well to remember King’s example. </p>
<p>By accepting their own role as “militant conservatives” and accommodating their actions accordingly, they are <a href="https://library.wustl.edu/spec/filmandmedia/collections/hampton/eop/">more likely</a> to resist effectively, and thereby achieve the ends they seek.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Beem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>King led one of the most successful resistance movements in American history. It was related to his Christian faith. He urged his followers to emulate the love that Christ epitomized.Christopher Beem, Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.