The more I learn of history, I can’t help but wonder if the liberty the American forefathers desired was to make of themselves kings in the New World.
John Locke spoke in his treatises on government of the, “life, liberty, and property,” owed to all men, from which the inalienable rights of the 1775 Declaration of Independence were derived. His words opposed a then common idea of the omnipotence of kings who lead through divine right, chosen by God to attend their subjects; he argued rather, being made in the image of God, every man was to be sovereign over his life and no other’s, which Locke believed apparent even by natural law (reason). Property therefore had a material and spiritual premise, the ownership of land becoming the means for subsistence and self-determination.
(Of course, this does not account for the highly efficient societies of Native Americans, which lacked the notion of private property; nor the collective agrarian ejidos of the populations indigenous to the central and southern continents.)
Historians speculate that ,”property,” was changed to, “pursuit of happiness,” because Thomas Jefferson wished to avoid the implication of self ownership, as he himself bought and owned slaves. Happiness itself is also a broader term, which may have been to encourage the sentiment that fulfilment can be achieved through a myriad of ways, and that men shouldn’t confine themselves to presupposed definitions.
Jefferson, however, was lord over a 5,000 acre plantation at Monticello, another in Poplar Forest. George Washington’s Mount Vernon sat on 8,000 acres with an unobstructed view of the great Virginia river system.
Surely this had some effect on their ardor towards freedom.
I was able to visit the Monticello this past autumn, to spend the day touring the grounds and learning about the stories of Thomas Jefferson’s life. Lawyer, architect, diplomat, president. He was a man that elevated knowledge and utility. In the entrance hall there is a display of artifacts collected from excursions to the west; the parlor holds the framed canvases of John the Baptist’s severed head in a woman’s hands, and Jesus crucified before an idyllic setting of French Renaissance. Jefferson had acquired a mechanical device from Europe that would rotate his clothes, to help him look through outfits. He kept a pocket ledger made of ivory plates which he could erase and reuse. I found that practicality motivated a lot of his decisions, and to him the philosophies and inventions of man were to aide in the ultimate pursuit: convenience.
Perhaps, in the end, his morality conformed to his want of convenience, a sort of aestheticism that equates prosperity with character.
It seems often forgotten that the revolutions in America which ended in statehood were not orchestrated by indigenous peoples, a number of whom are still marginalized from political society and struggle for both property and human rights. Peninsulares (from the Iberian peninsula) and Criollos (Spaniards born in the New World) waged decades of war to maintain the viceroyalties of their conquest. After the Napoleonic Wars, Portugal relinquished Brazil to a royal court of their own making.
While certainly there were among them were people who held sacred the ideas of the American Revolution and beyond, who desired enlightenment and independence, it must be said that the war wasn’t fought to end chattel slavery, and would not be for another 100 years; they didn’t challenge the injustice of treaties signed with Native Americans to respect their land, which were subsequently and purposefully broken; there was no cause to prevent the immolation of women accused by zealots of the Church of England.
The American Revolution was fought over the price of tea.
I would imagine that the presidents were sincere, to the extent that they had allowed themselves. Jefferson once wrote of King George III, “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty […] of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.”
While their ideas of liberty and representation have inspired the generations of people around the world, these men also lived quite similarly to those they had sought to defeat.
twf.
The-Bleu-Bivouac 