Personal blog of Mark Thompson. Formerly Managing Director of GCAS Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland (from 1999 - 2006) and Chairman of the Ulster-Scots Agency (from June 2005 - June 2009). Thoughts on Ulster-Scots heritage, identity, evangelical Protestant faith, music and other stuff I stumble upon.
American academic Tad Stoermer has been putting out some terrific content over the past few years, almost "iconoclastic" in nature, challenging the usual mythological narratives about the Declaration of Independence. He's rapid-fire and content-rich.
He's in blistering form in this one, showing that (contrary to what the Declaration said), it was the London Parliament that was the problem, having eroded rights and liberties over the previous 16 years. The election of 1774 made everything worse. Most political leaders in America and Britain knew that.
However, the PR campaign needed a villain, and a simple story... so they pinned it on the King. But the system was the real issue.
As Stoermer says "Jefferson made a tactical choice in 1776 to put the blame on a single figure because the patriots needed a story for two audiences who could not be sold the real one. And that choice worked..."
He also points out how institutional, corporate, history – what he calls in this video liberal nationalism - skews storytelling to comply with the cultural gatekeepers' already-defined orthodoxies. Jump to 5:55 for this section –
"...The distinction between Parliament doing the thing and the King doing the thing is the point, then and now. Pointing the patriots at the King when the problem was Parliament masked the structure of power for people who needed to see it.
Pointing you at Trump when the problem is the regime around Trump is doing the same exact thing. Misdirection then misdirection now. The harm's the same.
Can't fight a problem you've been trained not to see. Think about what got the patriots to independence. Right? It was not their first move. It was not where they started.
For more than a decade, they tried to work in, with, through, around, and against the imperial system. Petitions, protests, boycotts, congresses, pamphlets, legal arguments, constitutional arguments, appeals to British rights, appeals to the empire's own functioning rules - now, the monarch and the monarchy (notable absences in much of that escalation after 1763). The resistance instead grew through permitted channels, until those channels stopped working and then were shut down altogether.
One of the last straws came when the patriots pinned their hopes on an election.
The fall 1774 British general election was supposed to change everything. A hostile Parliament and ministry they hoped might be replaced. The Coercive Acts might be reversed. The empire might be pulled back from the edge. That's not what happened. The election returned Lord North and his allies with a working majority and a mandate to enforce the Coercive Acts.
Now for form, the Continental Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition directly to George III a few months later. Now he refused it, but it's not because he woke up that morning with a special hatred of the Colonies, but because by then the King, the ministry, Parliament closed ranks. The British state had chosen coercion and King George backed it because that's what he thought he was supposed to do – back parliament.
Independence was not the patriot's first move.
It was what was left for many of them after every other move failed..."
• You can subscribe to Tad Stoermer's YouTube channel; his forthcoming book A Resistance History of the United States will be published by Penguin Random House next month.
The dim thinkers will continue to insist that the American Revolution was about nationality, because they can't understand liberty, and that concepts of liberty might be transatlantic and transnational. You might expect the penny to drop with the line "that all men are created equal"...
There were prominent people in Britain and Ireland who supported the American colonists' cause. They understood, as this sermon title says, that there are circumstances in which revolution was vindicated.
This sermon was preached in the University of Cambridge just six weeks before the Declaration of Independence, and by the most unlikely source – Richard Watson (Wikipedia here) who was King George III's Professor of Divinity. Full text on Archive.org here
The House of Lords, the House of Commons, and the King himself - Watson blasts all of them. An extract here:
“if the Nobility, forgetting the duty they owe the people in return for the rank and distinction they enjoy above the other members of the community, should ever abet the arbitrary designs of the Crown;
if the Commons should become so wholly selfish and corrupt, as to be ready to support any Men and any measures;
if lastly, the King should be so ignorant of his true interest, or so ill advised, as to use such degenerate Parliaments as the tools of a Tyrannic Government;
then we have no doubt in asserting, that the people will have a full right to resume the reins of Government into their own hands, to lop off the rotten gangrened members, and to purge the corruptions of the body politic in any manner they shall think”
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From The Principles of the Revolution Vindicated: A Sermon preached before the University of Cambridge, Wednesday 29 May 1776, by Richard Watson DD FRS, Regius Professor of Divinity and Archdeacon of Ely.
(PS: 'theology of liberty' is not the same as 'liberation theology')
Jacob Duché (1737-1798) has a complex story. He was the grandson of Anthony Duché, a French Huguenot refugee who had fled the tyranny of France in 1682; one tradition says that he arrived in America on the same ship as William Penn.
Jacob attended the New London Academy founded by Donegal emigrant Rev Francis Alison, later the College of Philadelphia. Duché was a member of the Sons of Liberty, a brother-in-law to Francis Hopkinson, and was the first Chaplain to the Continental Congress from 6 July 1776. But later that year Duché's patriotic fervour began to waver.
At the height of his career, on 7 July 1775, he preached this sermon in Christ Church in Philadelphia, addressed to His Excellency George Washington Esquire, General and Commander in Chief of all the Forces of the United English Colonies in North America.It's on Google Books here.
Christ Church still exists today; its graveyard was the final resting place for five signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many other renowned historical figures, including John Dunlap the Strabane-born printer of the Declaration.
Caleb Evans (1736-1791) was a Particular (Reformed) Baptist in Bristol, England, at Broadmead.
His sermon, preached on the anniversary of William Prince of Orange's arrival at Torbay in 1688, and with American independence on the horizon, is on GoogleBooks here. It's brilliant. It was reprinted in Belfast by James Magee in 1776.
Evans' lengthy gravestone inscription in Latin includes the words: Libertatis amore flagrans, jura hominum audacter propugnabat, which in English is: Burning with the love of liberty, he boldly defended the rights of men.
(PS 'theology of liberty' is not the same as 'liberation theology')
The Provincial Congress of Georgia met on 4 July 1775 at Tondee's Tavern in Savannah. They agreed 19 Resolves which were issued by a few days later, on Saturday 8 July 1775 (text online here). The Secretary was George Walton, who would become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
On the evening of 4 July, one of the delegates, Switzerland-born Rev. John J. Zubly, the Princeton-educated minister of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, preached a sermon entitled The Law of Liberty (online here) in which he said:
Detaining the inhabitants of Boston, after they had, in dependance on the general's word of honour, given up their arms, to be starved and ruined, is an action worthy of the cause, and can only be equalled by the distresses of Protestants driven under the walls of Londonderry, at which even a James relented.
and he later reiterated the point:
the like was never heard since the cruel Siege of Londonderry, and is a species of cruelty at which even that hard-hearted bigot James II relented.
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WHEREAS, By the unrelenting fury of a despotic ministry, with a view to enforce the most oppressive acts of a venal and corrupted Parliament, an army of mercenaries, under an unfeeling commander, have actually begun a civil war in America; and whereas, the apparent iniquity and cruelty of these obstructive measures have, however, had this good effect, to unite men of all ranks in the common cause; and, whereas, to consult on means of safety and the method of obtaining redress the good people of this Province of Georgia have thought proper to appoint a Provincial Congress; the delegates met at the said Congress, now assembled from every part of the province, besides adopting the resolutions of the late Continental Congress, find it prudent to enter into such other resolutions as may best express their own sense and the sense of their constituents on the present unhappy situation of things, and therefore think fit and necessary to resolve as follows, viz.:
Resolved, That we were born free, have all the feelings of men, and are entitled to all the natural rights of mankind.
Resolved, That by birth or incorporation we are all Britons, and whatever Britons may claim as their birthright, is also ours.
Resolved, That in the British Empire, to which we belong, the constitution is superior to every man or set of men whatever, and that it is a crime of the deepest dye in any instance to impair, or take it away, or deprive the meanest subject of its benefits.
Resolved, That that part of the American continent which we inhabit was originally granted by the crown, and the charter from Charles the Second expressly makes its constitutional dependence upon the crown only.
Resolved, That those who would now subject all America, or this province, to dependency upon the crown and Parliament, are guilty of a very dangerous innovation, which in time will appear as injurious to the crown as it is inconsistent with the liberty of the American subject.
Resolved, That by the law of nature and the British constitution no man can be legally deprived of his property without his consent, given by himself or his representatives.
Resolved, That the acts of the British Parliament for raising a perpetual revenue on the Americans by laying a tax on them without their consent and contrary to their protestations, are diametrically opposite to every idea of property, to the spirit of the constitution, and at one stroke deprive this vast continent of all liberty and property, and, as such, must be detested by every wellwisher to Great Britain and America.
Resolved, That the subsequent laws, made with a view to enforce these acts, viz.: the Boston Port Bill, the Alteration of their Charter, the Act to carry beyond sea for Trial, and (what refines upon every species of cruelty) the Fishery Bill, are of such a complexion that we can say nothing about them for want of words to express our abhorrence and detestation.
Resolved, That the loyalty, patience, and prudence of the inhabitants of New England under their unparalleled pressures, having been construed into timidity and a dread of regular troops, a civil war in support of acts extremely oppressive in themselves hath actually been begun, and there is too much reason to believe that plans have been in agitation big with everything horrible to other Provinces; plans as rash, barbarous and destructive as the cause which they were intended to serve.
Resolved, That in these times of extreme danger, our assembly not being permitted to sit, we must either have been a people without all thought or counsel, or have assembled as we now are in Provincial Congress, to consult upon measures which, under God, may prove the means of a perpetual union with the Mother Country and tend to the honour, freedom, and safety of both.
Resolved, That this Province bears all true allegiance to our own rightful Sovereign, King George the Third, and always will and ought to bear it agreeable to the constitution of Great Britain, by virtue of which only the King is now our Sovereign, and which equally binds Majesty and Subjects.
Resolved, That we are truly sensible how much our safety and happiness depend on a constitutional connection with Great Britain, and that nothing but the being deprived of the privileges and natural rights of Britons could ever make the thought of a separation otherwise than intolerable.
Resolved, That in case his Majesty or his successors shall, at anytime hereafter, make any requisition on the good people of this Province by his representative, it will be just and right that such sums should be granted as the nature of the service may require, and the ability and situation of this Province will admit of.
Resolved, That this Province join with all the Provinces in America now met by Delegates in Continental Congress, and that John Houstoun and Archibald Bullock, Esqrs, the Rev. Dr. Zubly, Lyman Hall, and Noble Wimberly Jones, Esqrs., be the delegates from this Province, and that any three constitute a quorum for that purpose.
Resolved, That a Committee be appointed, whose duty it shall be to see that the resolutions of the Continental Congress and Provincial Congress be duly observed, and that every person who shall act in opposition thereto have his name transmitted to the Continental Congress, and that his misdeeds be published in every American paper.
Resolved, That with all such persons, except the indispensable duties we owe to all mankind (bad men and enemies not excepted) we will have no dealings nor connection; and we extend this out resolution also to all such persons or corporations in Great Britain who have shown themselves enemies to America.
Resolved, That we will do what in us lies to preserve and promote the peace and good order of this Province; and should any person become an innocent sufferer on account of these grievances, we will do whatever we justly may for his relief and assistance.
Resolved, That in such calamitous times as the present, every possible indulgence ought to be given to honest debtors; that it would be ungenerous {unless there appear intention of fraud) in any gentleman of the law to sue without previous notice ; and any person so sued may apply to the Committee; and should it appear to them that the creditor is in no danger of losing his money, or that he can be properly secured, they shall interpose their friendly offices to persuade him to drop the prosecution; and every prosecutor that snail appear to take advantage of the confusion of the times to distress his debtor, ought to be publicly pointed out and held in abhorrence.
Resolved, That, notwithstanding, in a late Bill for restraining the trade of several Provinces in America, this Province is excepted, we declare that we look upon this exception rather as an insult than a favour; as being meant to break the union of the Provinces, and as being grounded on the supposition that the inhabitants of such excepted Province can be base enough to turn the oppression of America into a mean advantage.
By Order of the Congress
A true Copy from the Minutes
George Walton, Secretary
Reported in the South Carolina Gazette, 1 August 1775
