A302, Revolutionary America

Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

Thomas Jefferson was in this moment a 31-year-old Virginia politician, not yet the national political figure he would become as a so-called Founder who would, two years after this, play a major role in drafting the Declaration of Independence.  Jefferson produced this political pamphlet to denounce the British Parliament and to assert the “rights” — an unclear concept at the time — of British North American colonists.  Jefferson was addressing an extralegal Virginia convention which had simply authorized itself as a governing entity, albeit one which issued resolutions rather than made laws.  In turn, that Virginia convention was selecting delegates to attend the first “continental congress” in Philadelphia, which would become another extralegal governing entity.  In other words, Jefferson wrote as grievance and resistance were being turned into rebellion and revolution.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Thomas Paine was a newcomer to the United States, who in 1774 had emigrated from Britain upon the advice of Benjamin Franklin after Paine had suffered business and family setbacks.  There was nothing in his background or experience to suggest that Paine would write an extraordinarily influential political pamphlet in 1776:  Common Sense.  The pamphlet carried Jefferson’s arguments about the separate historical status of the colonies to their logical extreme:  a call for independence from the British empire.&bnsp; This meant severing the colonies from what was perhaps the strongest force of allegiance to the British empire, a radical step — a choice theretofore unimaginable — that Paine articulated in stark and compelling terms.

Continental Congress, Tory Acts (1775-1776)

The Tory Acts sought to suppress dissent in the colonies — i.e., to suppress those who disagreed with the violent actions of street mobs, and with the unauthorized actions of extralegal governing entities like the Continental Congress and the numerous committees of safety.  The Continental Congress’s definition of a so-called Tory changed significantly in a relatively short period of time between late 1775 and mid 1776, as did the actions that it sanctioned to suppress Tories, which became increasingly severe.  As such, it became increasingly difficult not to choose sides in all the surrounding disputes.

Peter Van Schaack, personal letters (1776-1777)

A well-known lawyer, Peter Van Schaack was one of many colonists who preferred not to choose either side.  Van Schaack had his allegiance to the British empire, as well as his misgivings about some of the actions taken by the British Parliament.  But he also had his misgivings about some of the actions taken by colonial rebels, along with his allegiance to his — what might one call it? — homeland, namely the town of Kinderhook in the colony of New York.  Amid the escalating turmoil in the British North American colonies, Van Schaack was invited to be on the local committee of safety and ironically it was there that his political identity came under question when he refused to take the requisite oath, one which would have sworn him to take up arms against the British empire.  Van Schaack certainly concurred with some of the colonists’ political grievances against the British Parliament, but at the same time he was not ready to renounce his lifelong British identity and allegiance.