The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

[[Edmund Morgan (historian)|Edmund S. Morgan]] and [[Cold War liberal]] consensus historians had rendered the Revolution as "simply a colonial rebellion designed to preserve democracy" against aristocratic strains of "private property", as well as against elements of British [[mercantilism]] sustained in the imperial system. Bailyn could instead "concede all of the economic problems and social aspirations, all the hidden selfish interests motivating the patriots [in social conflict or consensus]...and still legitimately maintain that it was the colonists’ belief in a conspiracy against liberty that in the end propelled them into Revolution... I believe that his intellectual map of social and political reality can absorb and account for all the examples of propaganda expressed by the Revolutionary leaders to incite emotions and passions of the populace." Despite a given eighteenth-century pundit deploying "language not to express his personal emotions but to arouse the emotions of his audience", Bailyn concluded that "the actions of the British government triggered a set of signals on this intellectual and emotional switchboard" that propelled politicos and audiences alike into revolution.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wood |first1=Gordon S. |title=Reassessing Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution on the Occasion of its Jubilee |journal=The New England Quarterly |date=2018 |volume=91 |issue=1 |pages=78–109 |doi=10.1162/tneq_a_00661 |jstor=26405906 |s2cid=57561046 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26405906 |issn=0028-4866|url-access=subscription }}</ref> According to historian Craig Yirush, Bernard Bailyn described, in a pre-[[William Belsham|Belshamite]] manner, "the authors of ''Cato’s Letters'' (a text which, thanks to Bailyn, became central to the republican/liberalism debate), as 'spokesmen for extreme libertarianism', a term that recurs frequently in the book" as a linguistic paleonym.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Yirush |first1=Craig |title=Bailyn, the Republican Interpretation, and the Future of Revolutionary Scholarship |journal=Eighteenth-Century Studies |date=2017 |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=321–325 |doi=10.1353/ecs.2017.0015|s2cid=151921186 }}</ref>

[[Edmund Morgan (historian)|Edmund S. Morgan]] and [[Cold War liberal]] consensus historians had rendered the Revolution as "simply a colonial rebellion designed to preserve democracy" against aristocratic strains of "private property", as well as against elements of British [[mercantilism]] sustained in the imperial system. Bailyn could instead "concede all of the economic problems and social aspirations, all the hidden selfish interests motivating the patriots [in social conflict or consensus]...and still legitimately maintain that it was the colonists’ belief in a conspiracy against liberty that in the end propelled them into Revolution... I believe that his intellectual map of social and political reality can absorb and account for all the examples of propaganda expressed by the Revolutionary leaders to incite emotions and passions of the populace." Despite a given eighteenth-century pundit deploying "language not to express his personal emotions but to arouse the emotions of his audience", Bailyn concluded that "the actions of the British government triggered a set of signals on this intellectual and emotional switchboard" that propelled politicos and audiences alike into revolution.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wood |first1=Gordon S. |title=Reassessing Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution on the Occasion of its Jubilee |journal=The New England Quarterly |date=2018 |volume=91 |issue=1 |pages=78–109 |doi=10.1162/tneq_a_00661 |jstor=26405906 |s2cid=57561046 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26405906 |issn=0028-4866|url-access=subscription }}</ref> According to historian Craig Yirush, Bernard Bailyn described, in a pre-[[William Belsham|Belshamite]] manner, "the authors of ''Cato’s Letters'' (a text which, thanks to Bailyn, became central to the republican/liberalism debate), as 'spokesmen for extreme libertarianism', a term that recurs frequently in the book" as a linguistic paleonym.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Yirush |first1=Craig |title=Bailyn, the Republican Interpretation, and the Future of Revolutionary Scholarship |journal=Eighteenth-Century Studies |date=2017 |volume=50 |issue=3 |pages=321–325 |doi=10.1353/ecs.2017.0015|s2cid=151921186 }}</ref>

In 2021, historian Mark Peterson contended that the background for ''Ideological Origins'' shaped Bailyn's principal contribution to historiography--"taking ideas seriously." This emphasis, rather than "grandiloquent theoretical statements", contributed to Bailyn's belief that "language and rhetoric are not the only forms through which human beings express their thinking or convey their ideas", even if ideas initially derived from Bailyn's notion of "formal discourse." Peterson concluded that "the underlying premises about property and liberty of these eighteenth-century arguments lie at the heart of our altered condition of life." Peterson and his students continue to study not only the appropriation of Bailyn's "liberty", but also its "emotional switchboard", by partisans and peoples who politicked, included, and excluded each other in consonant dissonance. In this regard, Peterson sustains Bailyn's and Wood's disdain for scholars who designated both as consensus historians.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Peterson |first1=Mark |title=The Social Origins of Ideological Origins: Notes on the Historical Legacy of Bernard Bailyn |journal=Reviews in American History |date=June 2021 |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=360–75 |doi=10.1353/rah.2021.0034|s2cid=237960474 }}</ref> As [[Nicole Eustace]] has argued, "social feelings" among the landed gentry and merchants reified "liberty" as patrician disinterestedness, but the same patrician "liberty" also "covertly encouraged personal passions" that facilitated social mobility during the early Republic, in addition to Native American land dispossession, legal safeguards against slave insurrection, and partisan conflict. In contrast to Wood's alliance of "liberty and power", she describes the result, an "empire of liberty", as an "oxymoron."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Eustace |first1=Nicole |title=Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution |date=2011 |publisher=Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-3879-2 |pages=6-10 and 63-64}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Eustace |first1=Nicole |title=1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism |date=2012 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia |isbn=9780812206364 |pages=103-167 and 232}}</ref>

In 2021, historian Mark Peterson contended that the background for ''Ideological Origins'' shaped Bailyn's principal contribution to historiography--"taking ideas seriously." This emphasis, rather than "grandiloquent theoretical statements", contributed to Bailyn's belief that "language and rhetoric are not the only forms through which human beings express their thinking or convey their ideas", even if ideas initially derived from Bailyn's notion of "formal discourse." Peterson concluded that "the underlying premises about property and liberty of these eighteenth-century arguments lie at the heart of our altered condition of life." Peterson and his students continue to study not only the appropriation of Bailyn's "liberty", but also its "emotional switchboard", by partisans and peoples who politicked, included, and excluded each other in consonant dissonance. In this regard, Peterson sustains Bailyn's and Wood's disdain for scholars who designated both as consensus historians.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Peterson |first1=Mark |title=The Social Origins of Ideological Origins: Notes on the Historical Legacy of Bernard Bailyn |journal=Reviews in American History |date=June 2021 |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=360–75 |doi=10.1353/rah.2021.0034|s2cid=237960474 }}</ref> As [[Nicole Eustace]] has argued, "social feelings" among the landed gentry and merchants reified "liberty" as patrician disinterestedness. But the same patrician "liberty" also "covertly encouraged personal passions" that facilitated social mobility during the early Republic, in addition to Native American land dispossession, legal safeguards against slave insurrection, and partisan conflict. In contrast to Wood's alliance of "liberty and power", she describes the result, an "empire of liberty", as an "oxymoron."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Eustace |first1=Nicole |title=Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution |date=2011 |publisher=Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-3879-2 |pages=6-10 and 63-64}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Eustace |first1=Nicole |title=1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism |date=2012 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia |isbn=9780812206364 |pages=103-167 and 232}}</ref>

In 2022, ''[[The New England Quarterly]]'' dedicated an entire issue to the legacy of Bernard Bailyn. In addition to Peterson's previously published ''Notes'', select essays featured brief forays into the constellation of methodologies, prose, and interpretations at play in ''Ideological Origins''. Historian [[John Putnam Demos]], for instance, offered a summary of Bailyn's response to one of the most common questions elicited by ''Ideological Origins'': " '“How widely did this ideology extend?' " In his ''Illuminating History'', Bailyn examined a Boston shopkeeper's 1500-page newspaper cache from the American Revolution, which contained lively annotations "much in line with Bailyn’s ''Origins'' argument." Bailyn also scrutinized sermons and articles by a country preacher in Connecticut as well as myriad township commentaries on the 1777 Massachusetts state constitution, all to reveal the "deep 'penetration' of the leaders’ ideology." Demos added that "ideology shaped the cognitive framework of Revolutionary participation, while emotion supplied its passionate, propulsive energy. Admittedly, this is not exactly what Bailyn himself says. But no matter, it’s there—abundantly so—in his presentation of the documents themselves." Demos subsequently evaluated Bailyn's studies on Atlantic migratory patterns and their entanglement with [[Conrad Beissel|Johann Conrad Beissel]]'s compositional frameworks---the basis of [[serialism]] and sonic spirituality in the [[Ephrata Cloister]] until its Revolutionary decline.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Demos |first1=John |title=Book Review of Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades |journal=The New England Quarterly |date=1 September 2022 |volume=95 |issue=3 |pages=537–548 |doi=10.1162/tneq_r_00955|s2cid=252439901 }}</ref>

In 2022, ''[[The New England Quarterly]]'' dedicated an entire issue to the legacy of Bernard Bailyn. In addition to Peterson's previously published ''Notes'', select essays featured brief forays into the constellation of methodologies, prose, and interpretations at play in ''Ideological Origins''. Historian [[John Putnam Demos]], for instance, offered a summary of Bailyn's response to one of the most common questions elicited by ''Ideological Origins'': " '“How widely did this ideology extend?' " In his ''Illuminating History'', Bailyn examined a Boston shopkeeper's 1500-page newspaper cache from the American Revolution, which contained lively annotations "much in line with Bailyn’s ''Origins'' argument." Bailyn also scrutinized sermons and articles by a country preacher in Connecticut as well as myriad township commentaries on the 1777 Massachusetts state constitution, all to reveal the "deep 'penetration' of the leaders’ ideology." Demos added that "ideology shaped the cognitive framework of Revolutionary participation, while emotion supplied its passionate, propulsive energy. Admittedly, this is not exactly what Bailyn himself says. But no matter, it’s there—abundantly so—in his presentation of the documents themselves." Demos subsequently evaluated Bailyn's studies on Atlantic migratory patterns and their entanglement with [[Conrad Beissel|Johann Conrad Beissel]]'s compositional frameworks---the basis of [[serialism]] and sonic spirituality in the [[Ephrata Cloister]] until its Revolutionary decline.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Demos |first1=John |title=Book Review of Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades |journal=The New England Quarterly |date=1 September 2022 |volume=95 |issue=3 |pages=537–548 |doi=10.1162/tneq_r_00955|s2cid=252439901 }}</ref>