Revolutionary Thinking

The Revolutionary era was the most creative period of constitutionalism in American history and one of the most creative in modern Western history.  During the five or six decades between the early 1760s and the early nineteenth century, Americans debated and explored all aspects of politics and constitution-making –the nature of power and liberty, the differing ideas of representation, the importance of rights, the division of authority between different spheres of government or federalism, the doctrine of sovereignty, the limits of judicial authority, and the significance of written constitutions.  There was scarcely an issue of politics and constitutionalism that eighteenth-century Americans didn’t touch upon. –Gordon Wood, Power and Liberty (2021), p. 2

Imperial Debate

Discussion Questions

  • What was the difference between the British (and Whiggish) view of “virtual representation” and the American (or revolutionary) view of “actual representation”?
  • Where did the American colonial leaders want their sovereignty to rest within the British empire?  How did their views evolve, and where did they sometimes disagree with each other?

The Colonial Crisis:  A Timeline of Documents

State Constitutions

Discussion Questions

  • Why was a written constitution considered to be such a revolutionary development in the eighteenth century?
  • What were some of the most significant innovations introduced by the various new state constitutions in the 1770s and 1780s?

“To those unenlightened conservatives who dare to ask, where is the king? tell them [wrote Thomas Paine in Common Sense] “in America THE LAW IS KING.'” (Wood, p. 1)

Jefferson

“In fact, said Thomas Jefferson in the spring of 1776, making the new state constitutions was ‘the whole object of the present controversy.'” (Wood, p. 33)

 

Adams

“[John] Adams had a vested interest in the state constitutions, for no one had been more important than he in influencing the structure and form of the new republics.” (Wood, p. 35)

Images of Paine from 1793, Jefferson from 1791, and Adams from 1788.  None of these men were present at the 1787 convention in Philadelphia.

Links to Revolutionary era state constitutions (via Avalon Project)

Handouts