Am Rev – must-use quotes/text ~ Gr Crourses

Course INTRO-Overview

II. In canvassing American political thought, we will touch on five recurring themes:

1. The first is American exceptionalism, which takes on sectarian and secular forms.
2. The second is the dynamic malleability of liberalism, which allows one core philosophy to adjust its contours to changes in context.
3. Third, we will see that rather than having one “founding,” America has experienced at least three “reconstitutions.”
4. Fourth, we will look at the concept of “the people,” which has been an expansive idea, with pressures for greater inclusion pressing on the polity from the time when 55 white, property- holding Englishmen gathered in Philadelphia to write the Constitution.
5. Finally, we will explore the distinctly American notion of space, which in the context of the vast virgin continent becomes a multifaceted and central part of the political thought that emerges from it.

Before there was an America in the European mind, the seeds of the American experience were sown by what Thomas Paine would later call “the principal ruffian of some restless gang.”

William the Conqueror is the focal point for the genesis of the British state; 450 years later, descendants of that state traveled to the New World. Much had changed in England over those years, and these changes came in the baggage the colonists brought with them to America.

It has been said that “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” It is significant that the British colonized America. The “tree of liberty,” with its conception of rights, law, and legitimate governance, was planted in England and transplanted, with all the growth it had experienced, in America. From this plant grew a uniquely American field of political thought, thought with roots in the British historical experience. To understand where we ended up, we must understand where we started, and to understand where we started, we must look back.

Outline

1. America did not fall from the heavens fully formed.
   1. The first European settlers to the “virgin” continent were English. They brought with them pre-formed conceptions of society and government.2. These conceptions framed their approach to life in the New World.
      3. To understand American thought, we need to unpack the baggage its first settlers brought with them.
   2. The next lecture will look at the theoretical baggage they carried; in this lecture, we look at the historical.
2. Any thumbnail sketch of historical development will be incomplete, but here, we look at signal events in the development of the British constitution.

1. signal importance in defining the British norms of governance that the colonists carried to America:
   1. The institution of the English state in 1066.
   2. The Salisbury Oath taken by the barons in 1086.The Oath of Salisbury is an event in August 1086 when William I of England summoned his tenants-in-chief and “landowning men of any account to William I, ‘The Conqueror'” to Old Sarum where they swore allegiance to him and to be faithful against all other men.
      

      @The Oath of Salisbury August 1086

       @@ http://conclarendon.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-oath-of-salisbury-august-1086.html @@

      On Lammas Day 1086 [August 1st], William the Conqueror, king of England, summoned 170 of his tenants-in-chief and other landowning men of any account to Old Sarum, where they all swore allegiance in person to him and to be faithful against all other men.

      Statuimus, ut omnes liberi homines faedere et sacramento affirment, quad intra et extra universum regnum Angliae Wilhelmo regi domino suo fideles esse volunt; tenas et honores illius omni fidelitate ubique servare cum eo, et contra inimicos et alienigenas defendere. @@@

      Known as the Salisbury Gemot (oath) in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,  this was the act which first established feudalism in England.

   3. Development of the Curia Regis during the reign of Henry II (1154–1189) A royal curcit court system in which the King’s ministers /justices adjudicated disputes at the local level but soon began to record the cases and the rulings, and to create a body of jurisprudence known as “Common Law” — ie. how specific situations were commonly decied.
      Curia regis is a Latin term meaning “royal council” or “king’s court.” It was the name given to councils of advisors and administrators who served early French kings as well as to those serving Norman and later kings of England.

      Curia regis – Wikipedia

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curia_regis

      The acceptance of the Magna Charta byThe name “court” comes from the fact that most kings held court and made judgments. They would hear certain complaints and issues, especially issues between the most powerful barons and lords.King John in 1215.

      1. The decision in Bonham’s Case (1610) by Chief Justice Edward Coke — the first ‘judicial review‘ in a case involving a doctor who was arrested and jailed at the request of the Royal College of Physicians for practicing medicine without being a member of the College
      2.  
      3. The Petition of Right (1628) presented to Charles I.
      4. The English Civil War (1642–1651), the Interregnum (1649–1660), and the Restoration (1660).
      5. The Habeas Corpus Act (1679).
      6. The Glorious Revolution (1688–1689).
      7. The English Bill of Rights (1689).
      8. The Act of Settlement (1701).

III. English constitutional governance was born of a long political struggle for power.

1. This struggle created a conception of proper governance.
   1. The power of government is limited.
   2. Citizens have rights against the state that cannot be infringed.
   3. Executive authority must coexist with popular authority.
2. As Englishmen, American colonists followed and learned from this history.
   1. Many of these events occurred during the early American settlements.
   2. In part, they reflected some of the religious concerns that animated the migration to America.

3. They informed the “English way” of governance.

@@@ Chapter 3

Protestant understandings of social and political life unleashed by the Reformation. Second, we examine the thought of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

The American tradition was born from an interplay of theory, and history, thought and action. Locke provided the colonists with a logic and vocabulary of politics that grew in importance over the 18th century: liberalism. Central to it were concepts of individualism, rights, freedom, equality, contract, and limited government.

The English (and Calvinist) version of the Reformation arrived in the colonies earlier and brought its own distinct arguments. In these competing visions of liberalism and Calvinism, we find the beginnings of the cycles of American political thought.

Historical events do not exist in a vacuum. As events occur, people attempt to make more general sense of them. One way to do this is to create explanations for events that put them in a larger interpretive context. The birth of liberalism was an interpretive response to this historical drama.

In addition to the political tumult that shook England in the 17th century, there was also significant religious ferment.