1688 and 1776 again: The Italian Prime Minister, Henry Kissinger, and the "five revolutions of world-historical importance"

Above: Francesco Cossiga and Henry Kissinger pictured in 1990.

This article was written by John O'Sullivan (Wikipedia here) during his time with National Review, for the 20 July 2009 edition which is online here. His 2009 context was Iran – very fitting for the moment in which we live now.

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“...This was explained, not long after the “velvet revolutions” of 1989 and 1991 [in Czechoslovakia], by the Italian president (and distinguished classical liberal) Francesco Cossiga (Wikipedia here), at a New York dinner party given by Henry Kissinger. He astonished the assembled guests, including some Wall Streeters expecting to hear a plea for greater investment in Italy, by presenting a brilliant and passionate analysis of modern history around the theme of five revolutions of world-historical importance.

He divided them into three liberal and two anti-liberal revolutions.

The first liberal revolution was England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. This revolution was, in effect, the founding constitution of the modern British state. It defeated Stuart autocracy, established the supremacy of Parliament over the crown, and entrenched a bill of rights, habeas corpus, and the principle of no taxation without the consent of Parliament. It was a liberal rather than a democratic revolution, but it opened the way to the gradual democratic evolution of the British polity. The Glorious Revolution used to be a central episode in British constitutional self-understanding, but it is now so neglected that its tricentenary in 1988 was celebrated by Margaret Thatcher’s government as “300 years of Anglo-Dutch friendship.”

1688 may be better remembered in America—it is certainly more discussed. In particular, Michael Barone wrote, in 2007, a fresh history of 1688 with the significant title Our First Revolution. His book was widely and favorably reviewed. It argued that the American Revolution of 1776 was the continuation of 1688 and thus, as Cossiga also had argued, the second great liberal revolution. The principles and even the words of 1776 are the same liberal ones first heard in 1688—no taxation without representation, freedom from arbitrary arrest, no cruel and unusual punishment—but they are universalized as the birthright of all. 

To be sure, the 1776 revolution, though compromised by slavery, was more democratic and even more liberal that that of 1688. Its endorsement of religious toleration, for instance, included Catholics—something that would not happen in Britain’s case until decades later. The circumstances of America as an open land with more abundant economic opportunities also made it easier to fulfill the material promises of both revolutions. Essentially, however, the two revolutions are the same liberal thing.

That is emphatically not true of either the French Revolution of 1789 or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. As Cossiga pointed out, these revolutions were anti-liberal revolutions hostile to the liberties, both real and procedural, central to 1776 and 1688. That is less clear in the case of 1789, because the early French revolutionaries thought they were introducing into France the same reforms they had admired in England and America. But as several scholars have observed, most recently Portuguese professor Joao Espada in his essay “Edmund Burke and the Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty,” very different conceptions of liberty underlay their reforms.

Whereas the Anglo-Americans saw liberty as a system of government that allowed people to pursue different ways of life, their Continental imitators saw it as a particular way of life that, if necessary, might have to be imposed on those mistakenly enslaved to tradition, religion, inequality, or whatever. Eradicating tradition, religion, inequality, or anything else to which people are strongly attached, however, requires abolishing their freedom, usually bloodily. Hence the revolution of 1789 became more plainly anti-liberal and more violent as it ground relentlessly on.

By 1917, the Bolsheviks had seen the logical necessities that flowed from imposing perfect freedom. They were anti-liberal even before the revolution began and brutally violent once in power. No system of government has ever been given such a free hand to reshape its subjects. Yet, after more than 70 years of such government, their subjects rose up in the velvet revolutions of 1989 and 1991 waving the Federalist Papers and quoting the 1688 Declaration of Rights. That was Cossiga’s third liberal revolution.

Where does the Iranian Revolution of 2009 fit into this picture? Is it liberal, anti-liberal, or in some third category we cannot now see? Ultimately these are questions that can be answered only in retrospect. But there are certain litmus tests that allow us to make an educated guess. The most important of these are violence and orthodoxy.

Both before and after taking power, anti-liberal revolutions tend to use and even to idealize violence. Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh—the list of anti-liberal revolutionaries who gloried in violence, employing it against their comrades as well as against “enemies of society,” is all but endless. Anti-liberal writers from Sorel to Fanon justify violence on almost romantic grounds. Their regimes rely on it fundamentally, since it is required to coerce reluctant subjects to embrace their ideas. For that reason, there is no obvious stopping point for it other than the exhaustion of the ruler...”

1688 & 1776 again – Willi Paul Adams "The First American Constitutions" (Williamsburg, 1980)

Willi Paul Adams (1940-2002; Wikipedia here) was a German political historian who wrote extensively about the American revolution. His 1980 book The First American Constitutions: 
Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era is regarded as one of the finest texts on the subject. It was a translation into English of his 1973 book Republikanische Verfassung und bürgerliche Freiheit. It is still in print – buy a copy on Amazon here.

It has a number of important references to the connections with the 1688 Glorious Revolution. Here are some of them.

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(p. 8-11)

• The English Constitution in the Eighteenth Century

American republicanism did not arise as a counterideology to what had preceded it. It was the product of a political life that from the first decades of colonisation had evolved in close conjunction with political developments in the mother country. The experiments in self-government that began in the first settlements were no less a part of British constitutional development than the concept of parliamentary sovereignty that had been taking shape in England since 1688. But it became clear from 1764 on that if both these principles were consistently adhered to, they would prove incompatible, even though both principles derived from the same political traction of opposition to unlimited government.

Ever since 1688 the English political system had used constitutional means to settle disputes between interest groups, that is, it had accepted some basic rules governing the division of power and the decision-making process. After the Seven Years' War, some of the colonies found their interests more at odds with those of the mother country than ever before, and this division between England and the colonies inevitably took the form of constitutional conflict. This does not mean that the constitutional quarrel over taxation in the colonies was the sole "cause" of the American Revolution. It was only one aspect of a many-faceted dispute. But the fact that this conflict expressed itself in the concepts and forms of Anglo-American constitutionalism determined to a large extent the course of developments leading to Independence and the founding of the new political order.

The Americans who advocated a system of colonial self-government within the framework of the empire, and the British who insisted on parliamentary sovereignty, both claimed adherence to the principles of the revolution of 1688. Although the exponents of the crown and of the parliamentary majority rejected the constitutional views of the colonists as incompatible with the English constitution, in reality the colonists were not setting up a new "republican" or "democratic' political theory in opposition to Parliament's claim to sovereignty. On the contrary, they justified their resistance to direct taxation by Parliament by referring to the rights the English constitution guaranteed to the subjects of the crown. They demanded only that the principles of 1688 be applied to the population of the colonies as well as to the mother country. The main argument in the Declaration of Independence - that if a monarch does not fulfill his obligations as a ruler, he nullifies the contract between himself and his subjects - was itself part of the constitutional theory of 1688.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the English constitution was regarded as the best model for achieving political stability and for protecting individual security from arbitrary acts of government. Ever since the last Stuart king fled England in 1688 and his daughter and son-in-law assumed the throne in 1689 at the invitation of and under the conditions dictated by members of the upper and lower houses, the monarchical component of the English constitution had not been based on legitimation by the grace of God. The coronation oath required the new monarchs to exercise their office in accordance with "the statutes in parliament agreed upon, and the laws and customs of the same."

The principles of 1688 derived primarily from the recognition of three independent decision-making entities that were obliged to cooperate in the legislative process: the crown, the upper house, and the lower house. Executive power rested solely with the king, the highest judicial function with the upper house. The degree of political influence of each entity varied with the personalities that held any particular office. The crown retained the political initiative, chose ministers, and tried to increase its influence over Parliament by rewarding cooperative members with lucrative offices, by gerrymandering, and by utilising other means of corruption. But the king could not keep a minister for any extended length of time against the will of the lower house, and neither the king nor his prime minister could take any major steps without considering the wishes of the majority in the lower house.

Over and above the limits this parliamentary system imposed on the crown, independent judges saw to it that individual legal rights were safeguarded under the common law and under Parliament's declaration of basic human rights. The deliberations between Parliament and William and Mary were constitutionally codified in the Bill of Rights of 1689, which was officially entitled "Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown." The law "declared" William and Mary king and queen of England, France, Ireland, and their dominions and clearly defined the prerogatives of the crown in order to prevent the abuses of absolutism. The law established those features of English government that Enlightenment thinkers would later praise so highly, It forbade the crown to nullify a law or to refuse to carry it out, to levy taxes without the consent of Parliament, to maintain a standing army in peacetime without Parliamentary consent, and to take any member of Parliament to court for statements made in parliamentary session. Parliament would no longer convene solely at the discretion of the king, but it would meet "frequently." The elections of members to the lower house would be "free." The law also prohibited the courts from setting excessively high bail or imposing cruel and unusual punishments. The Bill of Rights guaranteed Protestant citizens the right to bear arms, and it guaranteed to all citizens the right to petition the king without fear of retaliatory legal action.

Together with the Act of Toleration of 1689, the Triennial Act of 1694, the Act of Settlement of 1701, and the Septennial Act of 1716, which superseded the Triennial Act, the Bill of Rights formed the major part of the written English constitution in the eighteenth century.

...................................

(p 18)

• The American Concept of a Constitution

The central role played by British constitutionalism in justifying colonial resistance was carried over into American thinking about constitutions when the colonies began writing their own in 1776. The basic premise of the colonists' argument was that the political order created in 1688, though formulated only in statutes, could not be changed even by a majority decision in Parliament approved by the crown. This English constitution, the colonists argued, was a permanent code to which the stewards of governmental power - the king and Parliament - were subject and that they had no authority to alter. Decades before the colonists created their own constitutions. they emphasised, almost more than the Whigs in the home country had done, the inviolability of the rulings of 1688 and 1689. The colonists saw all constitutions as analogous to the constitutional documents with which they were most familiar - their charters.

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(p. 153)

Ever since the revolution of 1688, not only English patriots but also many political commentators in Europe looked upon the English constitution as the freest in the world, and well into the year 1776 numerous articles and pamphlets in the colonies continued to praise the English constitution because it protected freedom better than any other. The opponents of independence exploited this assumption for their own use and argued that freedom would be lost under an independent American regime. The removal of the constraints imposed by the British constitutional tradition would result in domination by the capricious will of the people. The main reply to Paine's critique of the British constitution, therefore, was the assertion that for all its defects this constitution effectively guaranteed the liberty of a British subject.

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(p. 170)

In December 1774, for instance, Massachusetts lawyer and supporter of the crown Daniel Leonard condemned the First Continental Congress for inciting to rebellion because they had tried to convince the people "that all men by nature are equal," that kings are servants of the people, and that the people can reclaim delegated power if they feel oppressed by it. John Adams responded to Leonard, contending that the colonists' views did not constitute any new revolutionary doctrine but were merely a reiteration of the "revolution principles" of 1689. Adams insisted that such principles had been propounded by Aristotle, Plato, Livy, Cicero, Harrington, Sidney, and Locke and were based on nature and reason." He glossed over the fact, of course, that parliamentary sovereignty had also been one of the principles of 1688.

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Elizabeth Craig (1757-1826) – the teenage maker of the "Don't Tread on Me" Hanna's Town flag, May 1775

The story goes that the Craigs were descendants of Covenanters who had fled from Scotland after the brutal defeat at Battle of Bothwell Brig, south of Glasgow, on 22 June 1679.

There's a family tradition that Andrew and Susanna Craig, from Dreghorn in Ayrshire, didn't stay long in Ireland and apparently crossed the Atlantic around 1684 – they "fled from religious persecution in Scotland to the North of Ireland, but finding it little better in Ireland came to America in 1684; exiles for their allegiance to the principles of Presbyterianism". They settled in New Jersey at Elizabethtown in Union County. Their graves can be seen in St John's Church there.

Almost a century later, a branch of the Craig family had moved further west – first to Lurgan Township in central Pennsylvania and then onwards to westernmost Pennsylvania. By now the father of the household was Samuel Craig. His first wife, Elizabeth McDonald, had died of smallpox along with two of their young children. His second wife was Ireland-born Jane Boyd. They arrived in Westmoreland County in 1772 and settled in Derry Settlement there.

The Westmoreland County community was one of many in the 13 Colonies to voice their opposition to the policies of the London government following the Boston Tea Party of December 1773, and especially so after the Battle of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775 – the famous "shot heard around the world". The Westmoreland County community gathered at Hanna's Town fort on 16 May 1775 and published their Hanna's Town Resolves. 

The community also decided to organise a new local battalion, to be led by Colonel John Proctor. Samuel, and his sons Alexander, John, and Samuel Jr., all joined up.

They planned to return to Hanna's Town on 24th May to muster the battalion. Samuel Sr. was appointed as the battalion's Color Bearer. So, they needed a flag.

Like so many American flags of that era, they just followed the familiar British Red Ensign design and customised it. It was Samuel's daughter, 18-year-old Elizabeth Craig, who made it. 

The original of the Rattlesnake Flag of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania is displayed in the William Penn Memorial Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It measures 76 inches by 74inches. It originally read “DON’T TREAD UPON ME”...

The Rattlesnake Flag was proposed in the meeting of May 16, 1775 at Hanna’s Town, Pennsylvania, where a group of local men drew up the “Hanna’s Town Resolves,” a letter of protest to King George III of England written before the Declaration of Independence. It was made with great care and handcrafted by Elizabeth Craig, daughter of Samuel Craig, Sr. (the Color Bearer). Elizabeth was 18 years of age at the time. It is the oldest banner representing what is now the United States.

It was brought home by Elizabeth’s brother General Alexander Craig and handed down to his daughter Margaret Craig and then to Jane Maria Craig, great granddaughter of General Alexander Craig.

When Jane Maria Craig moved to New Alexandria from the Craig farm, she brought the flag, wrapped in newspaper, with her. During the Civil War, when John Hunt Morgan threatened to raid this section, she hid the flag, determined that in any event, this highly prized relic should not be lost. She willed the flag to the state.

It found its way to the attic where it gathered dust until discovered in 1913 by Mrs. Gertrude Seanor, who bought the home of Jane Maria Craig. Gertrude took it to her parents William C. and Mary L. Steele who, having realised its great importance, had Gertrude take the flag to James Cook where he displayed it in his drug store. It was then taken to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for safe keeping by J. C. Gibson and William Cunningham.

The design includes the initials I.B.W.C.P –  “Independent Brigade Westmoreland County Pennsylvania”. Today the flag is in the Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburgh.

Lt. Samuel Craig, Sr. (Color Bearer) and his three sons (Brig. Gen. Alexander, John, and Samuel, Jr.) were with the army of General George Washington when it crossed the Delaware River to fight at Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey. Samuel Craig, Sr. carried the Rattlesnake Flag of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania throughout these battles.

 

• The Craigs were founder members of Unity Presbyterian Church, where William Findley was also a member.

• In 1778 Elizabeth married Joseph Thom, who had been born in Ireland in 1743. Elizabeth died in 1826, and Joseph three years later in 1829. They were both buried in Marling Cemetery in Jefferson County, Indiana.

• Summarised from Samuel Craig, Senior, Pioneer to Western Pennsylvania, and his Descendants

Compiled by Jane Maria Craig, Greensburg, Pennsylvania 1915. Online here.

• The Craig Family - Genealogical and Historical Notes about the Craigs of America is online here.

New podcast – WebbsWars - Senator James Webb.

Some of you will know (and maybe even have met) former Senator James Webb, the author of Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (published 2004). I met him in Washington DC in July 2007 when I was taking part in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. He has been to Northern Ireland a number of times. He turned 80 recently and, due to current events, he has come out of retirement to start a YouTube podcast. The first episode was released last week.

North Carolina 1775: The London government are Traitors – to the people, the King, the Constitution and the principles of the Glorious Revolution

One of the treasures of Revolutionary era America is the vast amount of print which tells us with great precision exactly what the people's thoughts and motivations were. In this example, published almost exactly one year before the Declaration of Independence, its future signers William Hooper and Joseph Hewes, and also Richard Caswell, spell out their concepts of liberty, loyalty and resistance:

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To the COMMITTEES of the several Towns and Counties of the Province of NORTH CAROLINA, appointed for the Purpose of carrying into Execution the Resolves of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.

GENTLEMEN,

WHEN the Liberties of a People are invaded, and Men in Authority are labouring to raise a Structure of arbitrary Power upon the Ruins of a free Constitution; when the first [Prime] Minister of Britain exerts every Influence that private Address or public Violence can give him, to shake the Barriers of personal Security and private Property; it is natural for us, Inhabitants of America, deeply interested in the Event of his Designs, to be anxious for our approaching fate, and the look up to the sources which God and the Constitution furnish, to ward off or alleviate the impending calamity…

… It becomes the Duty of us, in whom you have deposited the most sacred Truth, to warn you of your Danger, and of the most effectual Means to ward it off. It is the Right of every English Subject to be prepared with Weapons for his Defence...

... strengthen the Hands of civil Government, by resisting every Act of lawless Power. Stem Tyranny in its Commencement; oppose every Effort of an arbitrary Minister; and, by checking his Licentiousness, preserve the Liberty of the Constitution, and the Honour of your Sovereign.

Look to the reigning Monarch of Britain as your rightful and lawful Sovereign; dare every Danger and Difficulty in Support of his Person, Crown and Dignity; and consider every Man as a Traitor to his King, who, infringing the Rights of his American Subjects, attempts to invade those glorious Revolution Principles which placed him on the Throne, and must preserve him there.

We are, Gentlemen,

Your most obedient and very humble Servants, 

WILLIAM HOOPER,

JOSEPH HEWES,

RICHARD CASWELL

Philadelphia,

June 19, 1775

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Printed in The North-Carolina Weekly Gazette

New Bern, North Carolina · Friday, July 07, 1775

"Latimer and Ridley are Forgotten": 2018 article by Peter Hitchens on the Reformation – History and Mythology

I was sent this 2018 article by Peter Hitchens,  it is a long but very worthwhile read, contrasting the history of the Reformation with the mythologies which have arisen around it. 

(Pics here from a visit to Oxford in summer 2025).

Boston's Samuel Adams and the Glorious Revolution

Samuel Adams was a graduate of Harvard and was one of Boston’s founding Sons of Liberty. He

“… learned about more contemporary writers and philosophers such as John Locke and James Harrington. The events of the Glorious Revolution and the rise of Parliament had spawned a tidal wave of discussion about the relationship of power, liberty, government, and the right of revolution.

Adams nodded quick agreement with Locke's assertion that the goal of good government was to ensure men rights to life, liberty, and property. 

While based on more secular concerns, Locke's concept of the covenant between government and citizens was parallel to Adams's own deep-seated commitment to the covenant of his ancestors …”

– from Samuel Adams : Radical Puritan by Dr. William M. Fowler Jr. (1997)

This extract is from Dr Fowler's 2017 presentation in the video below

"... the first Irish to arrive in Boston were those from the northern part of the island - Ulster

Presbyterians driven off their lands in the late 18th century, they came to America by the tens of thousands. They were not welcomed in Puritan Boston where the the great eminent Divine Cotton Mather proclaimed that "the arrival of these people is simply one more way by which the devil is attempting to unsettle us". Most of these Scots Irish as we have come to call them moved West beyond the Appalachians but some did come to Boston. Of those a number left and trekked north to establish the towns of Londonderry in New Hampshire and the coastal town of Belfast in Maine – names that echoed from the land from which they had come. But others remained here often in distressed conditions. To attend to their needs in 1737 a group of gentlemen merchants and "others of the Irish Nation residing in Boston" founded the Charitable Irish Society "for the relief of their Irish Brethren poor aged and infirmed persons and such as have been reduced produced by sickness shipwreck and other accidental misfortunes". 

Professor Harvey J. Kaye on Thomas Paine – "if it was just a matter of independence the American Revolution would not have been worth pursuing".

Not merely a cosmetic change of nationality. Liberty.

"In fact, Paine later said that if it was just a matter of independence the American Revolution would not have been worth pursuing. What makes it worth pursuing is the opportunity to create a new kind of government and polity..."

1774: “a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster”

In the Belfast News-Letter, 22 March 1774, a report was published, entitled 'Diary of the Proceedings of the House of Commons, Thursday 10 March 1774'. 

It describes the servant markets of Philadelphia – the city where the First Continental Congress would meet from 5 September - 26 October of that year.  The report said that “a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster” – a servant was worth £15, a saddle horse worth between £25-£40. You could buy two Ulster human servants for the same price as a horse.

“… Dr. (John) Williamson's evidence went to prove, that on an average, for the fifty years preceding the late war, 3000 emigrants came yearly from the North of Ireland to settle in Pennsylvania; that since the war, the number varied from two to five or six thousand annually; that during the two last years they might amount to 7500 each year, as that was about the number he was informed, by the officer of health, came into the province; but that he understood this increase of emigration was owing chiefly to the riots, the rise of lands, and that among all he conversed with, none of them attributed it to the decline of the linen manufacture.

On being interrogated more closely, he confessed that some few said the badness of trade and want of employment was the cause, but he could not pretend to tell what trade or what employment they meant. He likewise said that none of them brought the implements of their trade with them, nor, if weavers, followed their trade.

While he was explaining this part of this evidence, he dropped and expression which called forth the attention of the committee. It was on his saying that a labouring man was of more value, or worth more, than a weaver, or almost any other, except a blacksmith, and one or two other trades; by which it appeared, that a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster.

Such of the unhappy natives of that part of Ireland as cannot find employment at home, sell themselves to the masters of vessels, or persons coming from America to deal in that species of merchandise.

When they are brought to Philadelphia, or to the port which is about thirty miles off, they are either sold a-board the vessel, or by public vendue, which sale or arrival there is public notice given of, either by hand-bill, or in the newspapers.

They bring generally fifteen pounds currency at market, are sold for the term of their indentures, which is from two to four years, and on its expiration, receive a suit of cloaths, and implements of husbandry, consisting of an hoe, an axe, and a bill from their task-masters.

Several gentlemen in the committee expressing their abhorrence of such a barbarous traffic, Mr. Cavendish* asked the value of an ox in that country, or the price of beef, to which he answered he did not know; but Mr Rose-Fuller**, resolving to have some information from him, in order to estimate the comparative value between a man and other animals, asked him the price of a saddle-horse, to which the Doctor replied, from £25 to £40 currency. 

The committee broke up at half after eight, and adjourned till Tuesday.”

  

* William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire.

** Rose Fuller was an MP from 1756-77, who owned plantations in the West Indies.

 

W.E.B. Du Bois - "the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America" - an example from South Carolina in 1751

Published in 1896, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 is a remarkable and comprehensive study - it's online here. Its author, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), was the first Black American to gain a PhD from Harvard - Carter G. Woodson was the second.

If you text-search it for "Ireland" you get various returns. Slave owners weren't the only ones to benefit from exploiting people. The colonial governments got a tax take from it too. Here's some pretty astonishing tax legislation from the General Assembly of South Carolina on 14 June 1751. It's quite the introduction –

"Whereas, the best way to prevent the mischiefs that may be attended by the great importation of negroes into this Province, will be to establish a method by which such importation should be made a necessary means of introducing a proportionable number of white inhabitants into the same...

 

Here's the section about 'negro' slaves –

"... That from and immediately after the passing of this Act, there shall be imposed on and paid by all and every the inhabitants of this Province, and other person and persons whosoever, first purchasing any negro or other slave, hereafter to be imported, a certain tax or sum of:

• ten pounds current money for every such negro and other slave of the height of four feet two inches and upwards;

• and for every one under that height, and above three feet two inches, the sum of five pounds like money;

• and for all under three feet two inches, (sucking children excepted) two pounds and ten shillings like money..."

And here's the section about 'poor foreign protestant' indentured servants –

"... the same is hereby applied for payment of the sum of:

• six pounds proclamation money to every poor foreign protestant whatever from Europe, or other poor protestant (his Majesty's subject) who shall produce a certificate under the seal of any corporation, or a certificate under the hands of the minister and church-wardens of any parish, or the minister and elders of any church, meeting or congregation in Great Britain or Ireland, of the good character of such poor protestant, above the age of twelve and under the age of fifty years;

• and for payment of the sum of three pounds like money, to every such poor protestant under the age of twelve and above the age of two years; who shall come into this Province within the first three years of the said term of five years, and settle on any part of the southern frontier lying between Pon Pon and Savannah rivers, or in the central parts of this Province," etc. For the last two years the bounty is £4 and £2."

Black people categorised and valued by height; Europeans categorised and valued by age. And the government getting its tax cut. What a shocking era. This is way beyond my area of knowledge, so I'm just posting it here for others to follow up on. 

• Du Bois Wikipedia page is online here.

William Smith of New York, 1777 – "I am one of King William's Whigs: for Liberty and the Constitution".

William Smith (1728-93) was one of the New York "Presbyterian Triumvirate" of lawyers who organised legal resistance to the 1765 Stamp Act. However, in later years, he decided to not support full independence for the American colonies.

In October 1777 British regiments burned down a number of Whig properties in New York state, including Declaration of Independence co-author Robert R. Livingston's home manor of Clermont. A few weeks later on Christmas Day,  Livingston and James Duane said to Smith "you'll become a Republican too". Smith told them –

"If you wanted a new Government, it should have been on the British model. I am a Whig of the old stamp - no Roundhead - one of King William's Whigs: for Liberty and the Constitution". 

• In 1780 during the War of Independence, Smith wrote The Candid Retrospect; or The American War Examined, by Whig Principles, the text of which is online here.

• The Library of Congress publication The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality: Papers presented at the first symposium, May 5 and 6, 1972 is online here, with excellent papers by a number of academics such as Caroline Robbins ('European Republicanism in the Century and a Half Before 1776'), Pauline Maier ('The Beginnings of American Republicanism, 1765-1776'), Mary Beth Norton ('The Loyalist Critique of the Revolution'), and Esmond Wright ('Men With Two Countries'). Here's some from Maier –

Americans of the mid 18th century held defined and emphatic views on government. They were “no friends to republicanism,” as Charleston’s Christopher Gadsden emphasised in 1763, but instead “ardent lovers” of the British Constitution, which was for them “the Work of Ages... the Envy and Admiration of the Universe, the Glory of the English Nation.” 

No form of government seemed so fitted for the preservation of liberty. King, Lords, and Commons shared power in a mixed structure that prevented any one of them from pursuing its own interests at the cost of the nation’s freedom. 

Even the colonial Sons of Liberty, who organised to resist the Stamp Act in 1765 and 1766, were outspoken in their conviction of “the Superior Excellence of the English Constitution to that of any other Form of Government upon Earth.” And should independence ultimately become necessary—a prospect the Sons of Liberty envisaged only with the “darkest Gloom and Horror”—they assumed that the institutions of a separate America would resemble those of the mother country, that ex-colonists would set about “erecting an Independent Monarchy here in America.”

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on William Smith is online here.

Daniel J. Boorstin on the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution (1965)

I still encounter people who can't, or won't, grasp that 1776 was the outworking of 1688. The Northern Ireland ingrained worldview - where every single thing is perceived only by how it applies to our two competing nationalisms - is a mental prison. Apparently it's a psychological condition called belief perseverance.

There's going to be a lot of it this year – 1688 was loyalty, 1776 was disloyalty. Wrong and wrong again. 1688 and 1776 were both about liberty.

Here's yet another evidence, from Daniel J. Boorstin. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and was the Librarian of Congress from 1975-1987.

"... The continuity of American history is impressive. It should not be obscured by any supposed “revolution.” To many thoughtful colonists the War for Independence seemed but a logical sequel to British history of the previous century and a half. 

From a British Whig point of view, it was a second civil war, a fight to extend and localize in America the principles of the Glorious Revolution of 1689. And it provided the basis for a secessionist tradition which shook the new nation in the 19th century. The struggle for a new nation was not to be completed until 1865 or after ..."

- from The Americans: The National Experience (1965).

• Boorstin also gave the BBC Reith Lectures in 1974, which are on iPlayer here.

Samuel Adams (and Dr Thomas Young?) – "The Rights of the Colonists" (1772)

Also known as The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, this was authored by the 50 year old Boston Puritan, the Harvard graduate and tax collector Samuel Adams - some sources say that he was assisted in it by 44 year old Dr Thomas Young. It's sparkling stuff. Adams is said to have been "vehemently Christian" whereas Young, despite his parents being Presbyterians from Ireland, was a Deist.

Here is the text. Much of it is straight out of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government - which is no surprise as it's known that Thomas Young discussed Locke with Ethan Allen in the 1760s, with whom he co-wrote Reason, The Only Oracle of Man.

Young relocated to Boston where he forged his revolutionary friendship with Samuel Adams. In one of Young's letters to Adams, he signed it off as "your friend and fellow countryman, fellow sufferer and incessant fellow laborer, Thos. Young.” 

The Rights of the Colonists states that there are three types of liberty: Natural Rights of the Colonists as Men; Natural Rights of the Colonists as Christians; Natural Rights of the Colonists as Subjects. It strongly hinted at independence for America –

"Our Ancestors received from King William and Queen Mary a Charter, by which it was understood by both Parties in the contract, that such a proportion or balance was fixed; and therefore every thing which renders any one Branch of the Legislative more independent of the other two than it was originally designed, is an alteration of the Constitution as settled by the Charter; and as it has been, until the establishment of this Revenue, the constant practice of the general Assembly to provide for the support of Government, so it is an essential part of our Constitution, as it is a necessary means of preserving an Equilibrium, without which we cannot continue a free State."

And this, against the establishment of a state religion which would empower one denomination over all of the others –

"As our Ancestors came over to this Country that they might not only enjoy their civil but their religious Rights, and particularly desired to be freed from the Prelates, who in those times cruelly persecuted all who differed in sentiment from the established Church; we cannot see without concern, the various at|tempts which have been made, and are now making, to establish an American Episcopate. Our Episcopal brethren of the Colonies do en|joy, and nightfully ought over to enjoy, the free exercise of their Religion; but as an American Episcopate is by no means essential to that free exercise of their Religion, we can|not help fearing that they who are so warmly contending for such an Establishment, have Views altogether inconsistent with the universal and peaceful enjoyment of our Christian privileges: And doing or attempting to do any thing which has even the remotest tendency to endanger this Enjoyment, is justly looked upon a great Grievance, and also an Infringement of our Rights; which is not barely to exercise, but peaceably and securely to enjoy, that Liberty with which CHRIST hath made us free." 

 

It was published under the auspices of the Boston Committee of Correspondence. Check it out online at the Massachusetts Historical Society website here.

• Then Again: Vermont wouldn’t have been Vermont without Thomas Young - article about Thomas Young on VTDigger.org here, by Mark Bushnell

• Then Again: American Revolution’s ‘necessary man’ mentored Ethan Allen - article about Thomas Young's friendship with Ethan Allan on VTDigger.org here, by Mark Bushnell

• Pauline Maier's paper for the 1976 Bicentennial, Reason and Revolution: The Radicalism of Dr. Thomas Young, is on JSTOR here.

Bernard Bailyn - "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" (1967)

(Photo above, of Bernard Bailyn and President Barack Obama, is from the New York Times website)

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If, like me, you're reading a lot about the Declaration of Independence, this book provides essential context. Bernard Bailyn (1922-2020; Wikipedia here) was one of the world's authorities on the pre-Revolution era. Published in 1967, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. There's a scanned version on Archive.org here. There is a page about it on Wikipedia here.

Liberty is woven throughout – as the antidote or counterbalance to power. Independence is not liberty, nationality is not liberty. Bailyn observes that the printing press was the wellspring of liberty, with 400 pamphlets printed on the subject before the Declaration:

"... pamphlets appeared year after year and month after month in the crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. More than 400 of them bearing on the Anglo-American controversy were published between 1750 and 1776; over 1500 appeared by 1783. Explanatory as well as declarative, and expressive of the beliefs, attitudes, and motivations as well as of the professed goals of those who led and supported the Revolution, the pamphlets are the distinctive literature of the Revolution. They reveal, more clearly than any other single group of documents, the contemporary meaning of that transforming event..."

And, revolution as duty when power threatens liberty. 

'... Samuel Adams, speaking for the Boston Town Meeting, declared, "that ambition and lust of power above the law are ... predominant passions in the breasts of most men." These are instincts that have "in all nations combined the worst passions of the human heart and the worst projects of the human mind in league against the liberties of mankind." Power always and everywhere had had a pernicious, corrupting effect upon men. It "converts a good man in private life to a tyrant in office" ... and nothing within man is sufficiently strong to guard against these effects of power...'

The Reluctant Rebels, by Lynn Montross (1950)

Of the 340 members of the Continental Congresses from 1774-1780, only one man was a constant. Charles Thomson. Read the published Journals of the Continental Congress which Thomson was responsible for keeping through all those years and you'll see, as this book title says, they were reluctant rebels. They didn't want to be independent. They were:

• Forced to resist a London government who had withdrawn the liberties they’d had since 1689.

• Forced to declare independence in 1776 from a London government and King who refused to restore those liberties to them. 

• Forced into a war to ensure that independence.

• Then, forced to resist the new American élite, to secure those liberties, in a new Bill of Rights in 1789, a century after the original.

• And despite all that, forced to accept new taxes when George Washington himself led an American army to crush their resistance in 1794.

 

Edward Rutledge to Thomas Bee, 25 November 1775 - "an abundance of letters from gentlemen in Ireland to their friends in Boston" – British Army recruitment efforts in Ireland, summer 1775

Context: War had started, at Lexington and Concord, on 19 April 1775. The Siege of Boston began too, with the Patriot colonists taking over the city, and seizing ships offshore...

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The father of Edward Rutledge (Wikipedia here) was from somewhere in Ulster, probably Co Tyrone. The family were likely to have been Border Reiver Routledges. He emigrated to South Carolina in 1735. 

Edward was born there in 1749. He was elected to the South Carolina General Assembly, and was later sent as a South Carolina delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

While there, Edward wrote to fellow South Carolina Assembly member Thomas Bee (Wikipedia here), about the recent seizure of letters on a ship that arrived at Boston from Ireland. These letters revealed remarkable detail about British Army recruitment efforts there. Check this out (the bulleting format is mine, to hopefully help with accessibility) –

November 25th, 1775.

I should have done myself the pleasure of writing to you by the return of the express, but was so ill at that time, that I found it impossible. I am now much better, but still greatly distressed with a cough, which I see no prospect of getting rid of till I bend my course to a warmer and better climate. — So much for myself.

Some time last summer, the officers at Boston fitted out a large schooner, and despatched her to Ireland for a supply of tongues, wines, &c.;

On her return a few days ago, she was intercepted by one of our armed vessels in continental pay, and brought into harbour, with all her prog, and an abundance of letters from gentlemen in Ireland to their friends in Boston. These letters have been opened, and have afforded much amusement and some intelligence —

We find by them, 

• that the administration are determined, at all events, to attempt the reduction of America, 

• that Boston will be made strong by twenty-two or twenty-five thousand men, in the course of next winter and spring; 

• that Lord Kenmare has added to the king's bounty, that of ten and sixpence per man, for all who shall enlist under Major Roche; that the city of Cork has followed the example, but more extensively; 

• that Lord Bellamont has the direction of the recruiting parties in that part of the kingdom; that the Roman Catholic priests have been applied to, to stimulate their flocks against us, which they have promised to do if the regiments to be raised be officered by gentlemen of their religious persuasion; in short, 

• that all the powers of hell are to be let loose upon us.

 

On the other hand, intelligence, by the same conveyance, informs us: 

• that all the whigs in the kingdom, (a very few excepted) are warmly interested in our cause, 

• that the common people are not less well affected; 

• that several towns have resolved not to permit any officers to recruit amongst them, and have destroyed the drums of those who have been hardy enough to attempt it; and 

• that the dislike to the service is so great and so general, that those employed therein meet with little or no success...

The letter continues with Rutledge's thoughts on how events were shaping up in America:

"... we have lived in so unsettled a condition, for such a length of time, that I now wish to fight it fairly out, and either establish a connexion consistent with the principles of liberty, and placed upon a permanent basis, or have nothing more to do with them;— the latter I think most likely to be the case. 

The destruction of our towns, and the wanton manner in which it has been effected, a mode of warfare totally exploded among civilized nations, give us little reason to think that they will attempt to make peace; indeed if it be not soon set about, it will be in vain to wish for it for a long while; the minds of the people will be so inflamed by the acts of cruelty hitherto exercised, and daily committing against them, that they will not endure a connexion with men of such savage dispositions."

William Gerard Hamilton MP, 1767 - "every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder ... you have no right to tax them"

William Gerard Hamilton (1729-96) was the Chief Secretary for Ireland and MP for Killybegs in Donegal. After all of the protests about the 1765 Stamp Act, and then its withdrawal, in 1767 Hamilton wrote a warning letter to John Calcraft:

"As to America, I wish we may not burn our fingers, and do our enemies work for them, by quarrelling among ourselves.

There are, in the different provinces, above a million of people, of which we may suppose at least 200,000 men able to bear arms; and not only able to bear arms, but having arms in their possession, unrestrained by any iniquitous Game Act.

In the Massachusetts government particularly, there is an express law, by which every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder, and a pound of bullets always by him: so there is nothing wanting but knapsacks (or old stockings, which will do as well) to equip an army for marching, and nothing more than a Sartorius or a Spartacus at their head requisite to beat your troops and your custom-house officers out of the country, and set your laws at defiance.

There is no saying what their leader may put them upon; but if they are active, clever people, and love mischief as well as I do peace and quiet, they will furnish matter of consideration to the wisest among you, and perhaps dictate their own terms at last, as the Roman people formerly in their famous secession upon the sacred mount.

For my own part, I think you have no right to tax them, and that every measure built upon this supposed right stands upon a rotten foundation, and must consequently tumble down, perhaps, upon the heads of the workmen."

Nationality is not the same as Liberty

 On 28 February 1776, Patrick Henry walked away from an offer to be a colonel in the Continental Army. He had famously announced "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" less than a year before, at the Second Virginia Convention in St John's Church in Richmond on 23 March 1775. He was the commander of all of the patriot militias in Virginia. So why a demotion? Orthodox histories have presented it as a personal affront, but it was an ideological difference.

Henry's focus was on the rights of the people in America. His objective was not to merely replace London rule with a new ruling class of American élites. As Tad Stoermer says in a recent YouTube video:

"the patriot resistance drew on mostly ... the idea that a community exists to promote the mutual safety and prosperity of its members - all of them - and that authority is only legitimate when it serves that purpose. Rights were what the community used to defend itself against power that had stopped serving it and started serving itself".

The danger of this year's USA250 commemorations is that they will reinforce nationalisms – American, British, and Irish – rather than explain rights and liberty. 

Here in the constitutional ambiguity of Northern Ireland, that means being dragged into the "two tribes" mire. People are so invested in their binary choice of nationality that they can't think beyond it. And challenging that binary risks a backlash.

Northern Ireland / the island of Ireland is a poisoned society – but there are many lucrative careers in poison management.

Nationality is not the same as liberty.

The Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, North Carolina, 27 February 1776

It was the backcountry's equivalent of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It was the last "Highland Charge"...

Thomas McKean, two weeks before the Declaration...

Thomas McKean's father was born in Ballymoney, and according to a 1970s biography, both of his grandfathers had come to Ulster from Scotland, and were involved at Derry and the Boyne. On his maternal side, his grandfather carried battle scars for the rest of his life.

McKean wrote this letter about two weeks before the Declaration of Independence, which he would be involved in finalising the wording of on 2-4 July, rallying the Associators militias of Pennsylvania:

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To the Associators of Pennsylvania :

Gentlemen: —

The only design of our meeting together was to put an end to our own power in the province, by fixing upon a plan for calling a convention, to form a government under the authority of the people. But the sudden and unexpected separation of the late assembly, has compelled us to undertake the execution of a resolve of Congress, for calling forth 4500 of the militia of the Province, to join the militia of the neighboring colonies, to form a camp for our immediate protection.. We presume only to recommend the plan we have formed to you, trusting that in a case of so much consequence, your love of virtue and zeal for liberty will supply the want of authority delegated to us expressly for that purpose.

We need not remind you that you are now furnished with new motives to animate and support your courage. You are now about to contend against the power of Great Britain, in order to displace one set of villains to make room for another. Your arms will not be enervated in the day of battle with the reflection, that you are to risk your lives or shed your blood for a British tyrant; or that your posterity will have your work to do over again. You are about to contend for permanent freedom, to be supported by a government which will be derived from yourselves, and which will have for its object, not the emolument of one man or class of men only, but the safety, liberty and happiness of every individual in the community. We call upon you, therefore, by the respect and obedience which are due to the authority of the United Colonies to concur in this important measure. The present campaign will probably decide the fate of America. It is now in your power to immortalize your names, by mingling your achievements with the events of the year 1776 — a year which we hope will be famed in the annals of history to the end of time, for establishing upon a lasting foundation the liberties of one quarter of the globe.

Remember the honor of our colonies is at stake. Should you desert the common cause at the present juncture, the glory you have acquired by your former exertions of strength and virtue, will be tarnished; and our friends and brethren, who are now acquiring laurels in the most remote parts of America, will reproach us and blush to own themselves natives or inhabitants of Pennsylvania.

But there are other motives before you. Your houses, your fields, the legacies of your ancestors, or the dearbought fruits of your own industry, and your liberty, now urge you to the field. These cannot plead with you in vain, or we might point out to you further, your wives, your children, your aged fathers and mothers, who now look up to you for aid, and hope for salvation in this day of calamity, only from the instrumentality of your swords.

Remember the name of Pennsylvania. Think of your ancestors and of your posterity.

Signed by the unanimous order of the conference,

Thomas McKean, President.

June 25. 1776.

William Findley on the separation of Church and State

(below is from the Online Library of Liberty, here).

"All who are acquainted with the nature of government, must at once see the absurdity of considering civil government, and the government of the church of Christ, as different branches of the same government.

In all free governments, the governing power is separated into different departments or branches, such as, the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. These three being exercised by one person, or by one body of men, is, in the opinion of the celebrated Montesquieu, the definition of tyranny….

Now, I enquire, what place or department, in this machine of government, has he left for the ecclesiastical branch, wherein to operate?

It could not act in passing laws—that belongs to the legislature.

It could not execute laws—that belongs to the executive.

It cannot be employed in applying the law to cases as they arise—this belongs to the judiciary. 

Ecclesiastical government, as instituted in national churches, by human authority, is in so far, the ordinance of man; but few of these governments give that branch much share even in its own government".

William Findley

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William Findley reminds us that there is no place within the checks and balances of the modern constitutional state for “ecclesiastical government” to influence the operation of civil government. It may serve a use for the voluntary members of a particular church or religious body to have an “ecclesiastical government” which governs their affairs and their affairs only, but given the enormous civil and military conflicts which emerged during the Reformation the presence of a “4th” branch within the civil government to serve the needs of “the church” would undermine the civil peace which had emerged as a result of religious toleration and “the separation of church and state”.

"the African Trade is injurious to this Colony" - The Rowan County Resolves, North Carolina, 8 August 1774

(pic above: 'Scotch Irish' township in Rowan County, North Carolina - Wikipedia here).

The Rowan County Resolves were drawn up in the town of Salisbury in North Carolina, and were the first to be issued in that colony. The "African Trade" wording is ambiguous, but it seems like the objection was economic rather than moral/ethical. Once again, this is a set of county Resolves which affirms loyalty to the King – but total opposition to the policies of Parliament.

Samuel Young (1735-1793) had been born in County Antrim, Moses Winslow was born and bred in Rowan County, William Kennon would also sign the Mecklenburg Declaration in May 1775. Kennon was a graduate of Princeton and probably wrote the Rowan County Resolves.

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Proceedings of the Freeholders in Rowan County.

August 8th 1774.

At a meeting August 8th 1774, The following resolves were unanimously agreed to.

Resolved, That we will at all times, when ever we are called upon for that purpose, maintain and defend at the Expense of our Lives and Fortunes, his Majesty's Right and Title to the Crown of Great Britain, and his Dominions in America to whose royal Person and Government we profess all due Obedience & Fidelity.

Resolved, That the Right to impose Taxes or Duties to be paid by the Inhabitants within this Province for any purpose whatsoever is peculiar and essential to the General Assembly in whom the legislative Authority of the Colony is vested.

Resolved, That any attempt to impose such Taxes or Duties by any other Authority is an Arbitrary Exertion of Power, and an Infringement of the Constitutional Rights and Liberties of the Colonies.

Resolved, That to impose a Tax or Duty upon Tea by the British Parliament in which the North American Colonies can have no Representation to be paid upon Importation by the inhabitants of the said Colonies, is an Act of Power without Right, it is subversive to the Liberties of the said Colonies, deprives them of their Property without their own Consent, and thereby reduces them to a State of Slavery.

Resolved, That the late cruel and Sanguinary Acts of Parliament to be executed by military force and Ships of War upon our Sister Colony of the Massachusetts Bay and Town of Boston, is a strong Evidence of the corrupt Enfluence obtained by the British Ministry in Parliament and a convincing Proof of their fixed Intention to deprive the Colonies of their Constitutional Rights and Liberties.

Resolved, That the Cause of the Town of Boston is the common Cause of the American Colonies.

Resolved, That it is the Duty and Interest of all the American Colonies, firmly to unite in an indissoluble Union and Association to oppose by every Just and proper means the Infringement of their common Rights and Privileges.

Resolved, That a general Association between all the American Colonies, not to import from Great Britain any Commodity whatsoever (except such things as shall be hereafter excepted by the general Congress of this Province) ought to be entered into and not dissolved till the just Rights of the said Colonies are restored to them, and the cruel Acts of the British Parliament against the Massachusetts Bay and Town of Boston are repealed.

Resolved, That no friend to the Rights and Liberties of America ought to purchase any Commodity whatsoever, except such as shall be excepted, which shall be imported from Great Britain after the general Association shall be agreed upon.

Resolved, That every kind of Luxury, Dissipation and Extravagance, ought to be banished from among us.

Resolved, That manufactures ought to be encouraged by opening Subscriptions for that purpose, or by any other proper means.

Resolved, That the African Trade is injurious to this Colony, obstructs the Population of it by freemen, prevents manufacturers, and other Useful Emigrants from Europe from settling among us, and occasions an annual increase of the Balance of Trade against the Colonies.

Resolved, That the raising of Sheep, Hemp and flax ought to be encouraged.

Resolved, That to be cloathed in manufactures fabricated in the Colonies ought to be considered as a Badge and Distinction of Respect and true Patriotism.

Resolved, That Messrs Samuel Young and Moses Winslow for the County of Rowan, and for the Town of Salisbury William Kennon Esqr be and they are hereby nominated and appointed Deputies, upon the Part of the Inhabitants and Freeholders of this County and Town of Salisbury, to meet such Deputies as shall be appointed by the other Counties and Corporations within this Colony at Johnston Court-House the 20th of this Instant.

Resolved, That at this important and alarming Crisis it be earnestly recommended to the said Deputies at their general Convention that they nominate and appoint one proper Person out of each District of this Province, to meet such Deputies in a general Congress, as shall be appointed upon the Part of the other Continental Colonies in America, to consult and agree upon a firm and indissoluble Union and Association for preserving by the best and most proper means their Common Rights and Liberties.

Resolved, That this Colony ought not to trade with any Colony which shall refuse to join in any Union and Association that shall be agreed upon by the greater Part of the other Colonies on this Continent, for preserving their common Rights and Liberties.

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A full list of the signatories of the Rowan County Resolves is on the Wikipedia page here.

The Hanover Resolves, 4 June 1774 - "our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles".

Loads of local documents, called Resolutions, or, Resolves, were published in the years before the Declaration of Independence. The communities spoke before the country did.

Charles Thomson organised the communities of Pennsylvania to put pen to paper. The first set of Resolves in Pennsylania were from Hanover County, on 4 June 1774. They were written by Colonel Timothy Green whose father, Robert Green, was from County Antrim. They wanted a "closer union" but in the event of the London government "attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles".

The official marker plaque is at Old Derry Presbyterian Church, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Robert Green had been one of its founders. In 1737 its minister was Rev Richard Sanckey, "a native of the North of Ireland".

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Twelve of the Pennsylvania Resolves are summarised in A Bid For Liberty, the resolutions and declarations of independence adopted in the colony of Pennsylvania, 1774 to 1776, published in 1957.

• It is on HathiTrust here.

The Whigs are Alright - "America and the Irish Revolutionary Movement in the Eighteenth Century" by Michael Kraus (1939)

George Taylor was one of the three Ulster-born signers of the Declaration of Independence. A later biographer wrote that "“He is of course almost forgotten, even in the country where he used to reside; but the old men of the neighbourhood who recollect him, when asked about his character, reply, that ‘he was a fine man and a furious whig’.”

Limited monarchy.

Sovereignty of the people.

Parliament first.

Liberty before loyalty.

Covenant.

They were neither unionists nor nationalists. They were Whigs.

• Benjamin Franklin's essay, Some Good Whig Principles, is online here

• In his 1944 book The Scotch-Irish in Colonial Pennsylvania, Wayland Dunaway wrote:

In time, the radical Whigs became known as the Constitutionalists and the moderate Whigs as the Anti-Constitutionalists. The Scotch-Irish, almost to a man, espoused the cause of the radical Whig party, furnishing its principal following and leadership throughout the Revolutionary struggle.

The actual means by which Pennsylvania was transformed from a proprietary province into an American commonwealth was the new political organization developed by the Scotch-Irish in alliance with the eastern radical leaders of the continental Revolutionary movement.

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This essay from 1939, by Michael Krauss, is excellent.

Although as you'll see below, TW Moody wasn't quite as impressed.