One of the most acclaimed books about the ideas which fuelled American independence is Trevor Colbourn's The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution, first published in 1965. Colbourn had an MA from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, so maybe his interest is no big surprise. The book title was taken from Patrick Henry's historic speech of 1775 at the Second Virginia Convention at St John's Church in Richmond, Virginia. But who were the Whigs?Every society has a ruling class, no matter whether it's a monarchy or a republic, or something else. Why do supposedly socialist dictators live in luxury with palaces just like kings? Power, and human nature. Colbourn quotes Charles Carroll, saying “power is apt to pervert the best of natures.”
Even a change of nationality will not solve the problem, because the need is liberty.
As the 'Scots-Irishman' poet of Pennsylvania, David Bruce, wrote in 1801, a change of nationality may do nothing other than change the rope that tethers the horse. Or a different flag, but attached to the same old chains - or attached to something even worse.
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The system isn't really the core point. The real issue is how much power the ruling class claims, and how much liberty the ordinary person possesses. And the ideas on how each of those operate are what truly shapes the nation. Colbourn's intro says:
One of John Adams’s favorite questions was, “What do we mean by the revolution? The War?” No. “That was no part of the revolution. It was only an effect and consequence of it.” As he told Hezekiah Niles, “the real American Revolution” was the “radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people.” Effected between 1760 and 1775, this took place “before a drop of blood was shed.”
Colbourn points out, over 300 pages, that the ideas of the 1688 Glorious Revolution, and previous eras such as Magna Carta, were rediscovered with fresh relevance in 1760s & 1770s America. The same patterns were seen, the same outcomes anticipated. And many of the writers of the Glorious Revolution era – like John Locke - were republished in America. Locke and others of his time and mindset had been known as Whigs.
Where does that term come from? The Presbyterian Covenanters of south west Scotland.
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In September 1648, ten years after Scotland's National Covenant had been signed by almost the entire adult population (and by many communities in Ulster), a rising of particularly militant Covenanters began in the west of Scotland, led by Archibald Campbell, the 1st Marquis of Argyll and Alexander Montgomerie, the 6th Earl of Eglinton in Ayrshire (he was a cousin of 'our own' Sir Hugh Montgomery of the Great Ardes). Their purpose was to stop their opponents, known as the 'Engagers', coming to any potential compromise with King Charles I.
Montgomerie mustered his men at the Ayrshire village of Mauchline. Mostly rural peasant farmers, they were known as Whigamores or Whiggamores, from the Scots word 'whiggam' which they called out when driving cattle and horses. The combined force of 6000 of them marched on Edinburgh and took control of the historic Castle. On 12 September there was a skirmish at Stirling Castle.
However on 15 September 1648, the Whiggamores and the Engagers negotiated a settlement. The King's ambitions had been stopped. As this website says:
The “Whigamore Raid” was less a military conquest than a political coup, accomplished by a mass movement whose very ordinariness—farmers on workhorses, tradesmen in mismatched armor—symbolized the Kirk party’s claim to represent “the godly” common people against aristocratic Royalist scheming.
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• the entry for Whiggamore in the Dictionary of the Scots Language website
• the full text of The Lamp of Experience is online here.
• Wikipedia entry on the Whiggmore Raid is online here.
• A recent article by Bradley J Birzer on the importance of Trevor Colbourn's book is online here.
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