ENGLISH TYRANNY VERSUS AMERICAN LIBERTY
BEARING ARMS IN REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA
In June of 1768 John Hancock's schooner Liberty returned to Boston from the Portuguese port of Madeira with its cargo hold laden with wine. Crown officials were eager to make an example of Hancock, whose penchant for smuggling was well known. After inspectors confirmed their suspicions that the appropriate duties had not been paid, customs officials seized the ship. Making an example of the Liberty proved to be a grievous error in judgment. "The popularity of her owner, the name of the sloop," and a "general aversion" to customs officials and "parliamentary taxation" worked to "inflame the minds of the people." Hancock was a particularly poor choice to single out for prosecution since he was also an influential member of Bostons branch of the "Sons of Liberty," the group that had sprung up in cities and towns across America during the Stamp Act tax protests three years earlier. An angry crowd soon assembled on Hancock's wharf to protest the seizure. Wielding "clubs, stones and brickbats," Hancock's supporters attacked the revenue officers and drove them from the scene. As word of the Liberty Riot spread throughout the town, large crowds began assembling, and by evening more than a thousand Bostonians had taken to the streets. An angry crowd attacked the homes an crown officials and forced them to seek refuge aboard a Royal Navy vessel anchored in the harbor. Incensed by Boston's defiance and lawlessness, the royal governor, Frances Bernard, requested that British troops he dispatched to the town to restore order. Americans now faced the nightmarish prospect of a standing army garrisoned in their midst, enforcing the dictates of a distant government with little concern for their liberties. 1
The Liberty Riot was a decisive turning point in American relations with Britain. Samuel Adams, an outspoken champion of American rights and another prominent Son of Liberty, urged Bostonians io "behave like men" and "take up arms immediately and be free." Adams -was hardly the only Bostonian to suggest this course of acrioa. Governor Bernard reported that the mob had been harangued by leaders who declared, "We will support our Liberties, depending upon the strength of our own Arms." The use of a standing army without the legislature's consent was a clear violation of British constitutional principles. Such an unconstitutional use of force could have no legal sanction and might legitimately be met with force of arms. Adams and others did not claim to be asserting novel arguments, but rather based their opposition to British policy on well-established English legal principles.2
The legal and constitutional arguments made by Adams gained additional force from history itself. The Bostonians who took to the streets to protest the seizure of the Liberty were steeped in the lessons of the past, the struggles of the Roman Republic and the more recent battles between English Whigs, the champions of Parliamentary power, and Tories, the supporters of Royal prerogative. History was not simply a subject consigned to the pages of leather-bound volumes detailing the events of bygone days. Americans looked to the past for guidance. An impressive parade of essays signed with the names of historical figures appeared in the press to offer comments on contemporary politics, forging a close link between past and present Essays signed "Brutus," a hero of the Roman Republic, or "Algernon Sidney," a more recent hero from seventeenth-century English history filled the pages of newspapers. The use of pseudonyms shielded writers from reprisals and allowed them to affirm their kinship with a host of heroic figures who personified liberty and virtue. Among the favorite pen names adopted by Samuel Adams during this troubled time was "Vindex," a provincial Roman statesman who had opposed the tyranny of the corrupt monarch Nero and denounced the decadence of Imperial Rome. Once again, it was time for virtuous citizens, the modern heirs of "Vindex," to step forward to oppose tyranny. One Boston almanac placed an image of Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government on its cover. For those readers unfamiliar with this work, the publisher noted that Sidney was a noble martyr to English liberty who had been "beheaded during the Reign of Charles II." Described as the personification of virtue, a man in whom "the spirit of the ancient Republics revived," Sidney's influential treatise became an important political textbook for Americans of Adams's generation. It affirmed a principle that would become the cornerstone of American thinking about the relationship between liberty and arms. "In a popular or mixed government," Sidney wrote, "the body of the people is the public defence, and every man is arm'd and disciplin'd." When Adams and other Bostonians urged citizens to take up arms to defend their liberty against British tyranny, they did so with a confidence derived from their belief that America had taken Sidney's maxim to heart. In America, the body of the people were armed and well organized.3
While Bostonians debated the appropriate course of action to take in response to British policy, the town's selectmen issued an order that their public arms be cleaned and placed on display in the town hall. Governor Bernard viewed the gesture as deliberately provocative, and he informed the Crown that the muskets were placed on view "to remind the People of the Use of them." Despite this assertive gesture, Bostonians had not yet abandoned all hope of seeking a peaceful resolution to their disagreement with the Crown. The town meeting petitioned the governor, stating the colonists' grievances and asserting their understanding of their rights as English subjects. The petition was deemed sufficiently important that copies were printed as a broadside and widely distributed. Colonists asserted three interrelated constitutional principles grounded in their own views of British law.
First, a standing army garrisoned among the people without their consent was inconsistent with liberty.
Second, colonists had a right to "have Arms for their Defenses." To support these two legal claims they invoked the authority of the English Declaration of Rights of 1689, one of the most influential statements of English constitutional principles. The Declaration of Rights declared that "the subjects being Protestants may have arms for their defense." Bostonians put their own distinctive gloss on this English idea, framing it in strongly collective terms by noting that it was a legal principle that was "well adapted for the necessary Defense of the Community."
Finally, colonists anchored their claims by referring to their colony's militia law; describmg it as a "wholesome law of the Province" that required each householder to provide himself with a musket to meet his obligation to participate in the militia. Citizens of Massachusetts had done more than simply invoke Sidney's injunction about the necessity of an armed citizenry; they had written its underlying principle into their own laws. 4
If a standing army symbolized tyranny a citizens' militia was its antithesis, embodying virtue and liberty. The response of Massachusetts to British policy was decisive and included a colony-wide convention to assemble to discuss the crisis. Towns across the province readily complied with this request. In addition representatives to the convention, individual towns readied their militia for action. Indeed, one week after the Boston town meeting's petition was published, the Boston Gazette reported that selectmen in a neighboring town had ordered that a sufficient store of gunpowder be acquired to equip the local militia. The colonel of the local militia in that town "has declared his intention to order a strict Enquiry into the state of his Regiment, respecting Arms, Ammunition, etc." Colonists who bore arms did not act as isolated individuals, but rather acted collectively for the common defense, and did so within a clear set of legal structures established by colonial and British law.5
It would be impossible to overstate the militia's centrality to the lives of American, colonists. For Americans living on the edge of the British Empire, in an age without police forces, the militia was essential for the preservation of public order and also protected Americans against external threats. One contemporary writer observed that for New Englanders the "near neighbourhood of the Indians and French quickly taught them the necessity of having a well regulated militia." The militia served an important social role as well. Musters were occasions for friends and neighbors to come together to drill and celebrate. Before the development of modern political parties, the militia was one of the central means for organizing citizens. When American colonists spoke about the importance of a well-regulated militia, they were not simply reciting a tired political cliche lifted from the pages of an esteemed political treatise; they defended an institution that was central to their way of life.6
THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS AS A CIVIC OBLIGATION
Given the centrality of the militia to the everyday lives of the colonists, one can appreciate their horror when they discovered that the British intended not only to foist an oppressive standing army upon them, but also to disarm the colony's militia. Rumors of British treachery spread quickly. A writer for the Boston Gazette reported that the royal governor intended to punish Americans in a fashion "more grievous to the People, than any Thing hitherto made known." The governor's plan included three components:
1st that the inhabitants of this Province are to be disarmed.
2d. The Province to be governed by Martial Law.
TO BE CONTINUED
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