But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people…This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.
-John Adams to Hezekiah Niles February 13, 1813
The revolution of 1800…was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.
-Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane September 6, 1819
WHILE IT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS CHAPTER TO DEMONSTRATE the continuity of revolutionary ideas from the 1760s through the 1790s, I intend to analyze the idea of revolution during the period after the Constitutional Convention and refer to the period before 1787 only when necessary. Anyone who has read Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution will realize that to begin my narration in the 1760s would be mere repetition. Indeed those who are revolutionary "quick-witted" will have already noted, by their perusal of the table of contents, my indebtedness to Bailyn's masterful work.
I intend to establish an ideological framework for revolution as it developed during the decade after the Constitution. From that perspective this chapter will deal with revolution as a complicated idea, what its components were, and how it remained, at least in a definitional sense, a constant force in the minds of the revolutionary generation.
The most logical starting point, one used by Bailyn, is John Adams's oft-quoted remark on the American Revolution written fifty-five years after he believed it had begun. I begin with Adams's query because it throws into sharp relief, perhaps more succinctly than any other in eighteenth-century America, the most important elements regarding the nature of revolution.
It was characteristic of Adams to raise important questions like this-and fortunate for us that he did so with Thomas Jefferson-because it provoked a lengthy as well as an intriguing discussion between the two on the idea of revolution. They had both been pondering the American Revolution for years, writing back and forth, assessing the importance of that great event in their own lives and observing the success and the failure of all the revolutions that had taken place since then.[45]
REVOLUTION IS IN THE MIND
Adams always worried that his ideas were "peculiar, perhaps even singular." And often, as befits an irascible individual, they were. But when Adams asked Jefferson, "What do we mean by the [American] Revolution?" he was not being stubborn or peculiar. He was seeking clarification of the most significant event of their lives and the most complex political phenomenon known to man. Adams, aware that limitations had already been placed on understanding that revolution, that the secrecy of the major decisions had made it impossible to discern the truth, that adequate histories were not being written, even in his own lifetime,[46] must have had posterity in mind when he addressed Jefferson:
What do we mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington. The Records of thirteen Legislatures, the Pamp[h]lets, Newspapers in all the Colonies, ought [to] be consulted, during the Period, to ascertain the Steps by which the public Opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the Colonies. The Congress of 1774, resembled in some respects, tho' I hope not in many, the Counsell of Nice in Ecclesiastical History. It assembled the Priests from the East and the West, the North and the South, who compared Notes, engaged in discussion and debates and formed Results by one Vote and by two Votes, which went out to the world as unanimous.[47]
Adams stated explicitly that revolution was separate from war. Moreover, he believed that revolution had occurred over a long span of time and that not one drop of blood had been shed.
Revolution, then, had everything to do with ideas and opinions and less to do with battlefield confrontations. In his view the changing of ideas and opinions through the then-known media-newspapers, pamphlets, and legal records-was the real revolution. What Adams was also describing was a complete change of people's minds regarding the principles of their constitution (i.e., between their rights and the authority of Parliament).
Indeed, if one were to use the eighteenth-century definition of the term revolution and compare it with Adams's description, the meanings would be identical. In the Enlightenment all revolutions, whether political or mechanical in nature, were referred to in terms of the earth revolving around the sun, the full circle, and completion of a cycle.
And this was precisely what the American Revolution had been: the cyclical turning back to an original British constitution at the time of the Glorious Revolution.
Adams, far from being "singular," was supported by many of his generation in a general understanding of the term. For most of them, revolution also referred to the action of turning over an idea in the mind: reflection and consideration. Nathan Bailey described revolution as "the turning round, or motion of any body, till it returns to the same place that it was before," "a rolling back or change in government."[48]
Noah Webster gave several meanings to revolution that had a common theme: all dealt with changes in the principles of a constitution. Webster viewed revolution thusly: "In politics, a material change or entire change in the constitution of government. Thus the revolution in England, in 1688 produced…the restoration of the constitution to its primitive state." Webster also referred to revolutionized as "changing the form and principles of a constitution."[49]
REVOLUTION IS SEPARATE FROM WAR
John Quincy Adams noted how the change in people's minds related to revolution in this way: "For if the people once discover (and you cannot conceal it from them long) that you maintain the war for the army, while you tell them you maintain the army for the war, you lose their attachment forever, and their good sense will immediately side against you.…You will have effected in substance if not in forms a total revolution in the government…and the chaos of civil war will ensue."[50]
The younger Adams's observation is worthy of notice because it points to more than simply a change in ideas; it calls attention to what he says is the "substance" of revolution. In Adams's mind it was not necessary to change the form of government to have a revolution. Like his father, John Quincy Adams also made a distinct separation between revolution and war.
Implicit in Adams's remarks is another distinction: the intellectual separation of violence from revolutionary change. This refers to physical violence, of course, unless one wishes to include psychological anguish, a form of violence that tears one's affections from family, friends, and the institutions we have been taught to revere.
If one ponders Adams's query for still another moment, it is possible to detect perhaps the most important and enduring fact of all revolutions throughout history: the democratic nature of the revolutionary process as it occurred from 1760 to 1775.
The appeal to the people through written and verbal forms, the election of representatives to a congress, and the rational discussion and debate that defined the course of revolution-all were calculated to extend revolutionary ideas to as many people as possible.
This last point-the influence of reason in discussion-also implied that revolution, at least as it was understood by the revolutionary generation, was not an irrational phenomenon. The ability to reason in the midst of political crisis was indeed one of their proudest achievements and seems lost to most twenty-first-century anatomists of revolution.
While the Adams quotation succinctly raises many important questions regarding the fundamental nature of revolution, his colleague, Thomas Jefferson, in rambling fashion and over a longer period of time, provides us with a more extensive treatment of the subject in both theory and practice.
Like Adams, Jefferson reveals a lifelong fascination with the idea. Yet Jefferson's letters go beyond Adams's and his attempts to understand the subject philosophically. Throughout his correspondence Jefferson revealed a passionate commitment to and an involvement with revolution that not only surpassed any other American statesman's but spanned his entire adult life.
Whatever differences there were between them stemmed from their basic attitudes toward governmental authority, despite the fact that they had had similar, almost identical, political careers. It was Adams who nearly suffered a nervous breakdown making the psychological commitment to revolution in the 1760s.
By contrast, Jefferson, as a young lawyer, never gave the slightest evidence that he suffered in his decision to undermine British authority. Jefferson had a belief, as we shall see later, that authority, especially constitutional authority, was limited in duration and ought to be renewed periodically-that governments should adapt to change like a man refuses to wear the coat of a boy. His was a "generational" idea of change.
Adams, on the other hand, saw government and even administration as the repository of authority and, certainly in a new nation, even of tradition. No one admired tradition, especially the tradition of the British constitution, more ardently than John Adams.
Adams also had a longer view of constitutional government than Jefferson did. He believed that continuity, over time, provided stability without which any government would fail. Consequently, Adams's view of government was one that spanned many generations. His faith in human nature, more pessimistic than Jefferson's, failed to believe that man could change rationally or reasonably in a short time.
For Adams, men were creatures of habit. Writing to Jefferson in 1794, he remarked, "The Social compact and the laws must be reduced to writing. Obedience to them becomes a national habit and they cannot be changed but by Revolutions which are costly things. Men will be too economical of their blood and property to have recourse to them very frequently."[51]
This view expressed by Adams may be the source of their disagreement, for Jefferson firmly believed that rebellions and revolutions, like "a storm in the atmosphere," should be as frequent as necessary. Adams saw stable governments resisting or putting to rest all fears and threats of revolution. Contrarily, Jefferson, committed to his belief that any government could not enjoy stability for long, was certain that there could be no post-revolutionary society.
This meant Jefferson, more than Adams, feared that the social compact and the laws would have only limited success in checking the power of government. Revolution would then become a necessity to maintain liberty against the encroachments of tyranny.
At the same time, Jefferson realized that the state had been the enemy of revolution throughout history, and this was why revolutions had been so bloody and costly. He knew that if a people once lost their liberty, there was one recourse that the state would oppose over all others: revolution. For revolution was always directed against the existing political order, and those currently in power would resist being overthrown with all the resources at their command. Despotic rulers would, almost by instinct, develop engines of repression that in turn would make revolution inevitable.
To Jefferson this dynamic struggle had seemed to be the entire history of Western civilization.
REVOLUTION INVOLVES SYSTEMIC CHANGE
There was another dimension to this reasoning that placed Jefferson in sharp opposition to Adams. As we have seen, Jefferson was deeply committed to principles and to substantive change. This might be described more accurately, especially in reference to revolutionary theory, as "systemic change."
Jefferson's constant references to despotic regimes indicate that he viewed them as a system with an internal logic of their own. That logic had, as its prime motivation, the aggrandizement of wealth and power for a privileged few at the expense of the many. "History has informed us," said Jefferson, "that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible to the spirit of tyranny."[52]
As his statements about the character of parties and the men who choose sides according to the "few or the many" show, tyranny manifested a character and a condition that could be broken only by a complete constitutional (read systemic) revolution. This tension, this necessity to break apart an old system and replace it with a new one, was the primary reason why Jefferson believed revolutions would continue throughout history.
REVOLUTION IS A PERMANENT FORCE IN THE WORLD
Despite their basic disagreements, however, there were many areas where their opinions overlapped. Here is Jefferson anticipating Adams's separation of war and revolution almost thirty years before the latter's famous query:
There is always war in one place, revolution in another, pestilence in a third, interspersed with spots of quiet. These chequers shift places but they do not vanish, so that to an eye which extends itself over the whole earth there is always uniformity of prospect.[53]
Jefferson is recording here a profound observation on the nature of revolution: It is a permanent force in the world we inhabit. It does not vanish; it merely breaks out in another place. Jefferson's recognition of this permanence of revolutionary activity was in the classical political tradition. It meant that he saw revolution as others saw wars-a recognizable, permanent phenomenon in history that could be studied, analyzed, and perhaps made predictable. But this was an old story.
Polybius, one of the few who grasped the significance of revolution in ancient times, saw that all societies were subject to the dynamics of revolution and could look forward to one immediately or in some future time. This was a cyclical view of history, believed by most educated men in eighteenth-century America.
Like Polybius, what Jefferson was pointing to was a historical dialectic of revolution. Because the cycle of governments revealed a state of constant change, in principle as well as in form, it meant that changes, no matter what they might be (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, polity, tyranny, or oligarchy), would be constantly challenged by revolutionary forces and ideas.
From time immemorial revolution had been in opposition to the state. Indeed that was the very meaning of the word-against the regime in power. It was therefore the antithesis of "the system," hated, feared, and detested by rulers throughout history. By viewing itself as a negating force, revolution would be successful; otherwise it could be coopted, mere reform; or, worse, it would signify a return to greater repression. These conditions, recognized by Jefferson, fulfilled the requirements of a true dialectic in history and made his theories revolutionary.
In Jefferson's mind the Revolution of 1776 had taken on this dialectical, negating quality that over the years influenced the checkered pattern of war and revolution around the globe.
In fact, at the end of his life Jefferson saw the Revolution of 1776 as a permanent revolutionary force in the world. Included in this idea was the implication that the forces unleashed in a particular revolution, if universalized, might be the catalyst for revolutions elsewhere. That is, if a revolutionary "engine" could be developed capable of destroying the "engines" of despotism, systemic change could be accomplished on a world scale.
This was the dream of a true revolutionary: the creation of a theory of revolution that could be applied to any and every condition of man.
The evidence that Jefferson believed he had formulated a revolutionary ideology can be seen at varying intervals throughout his career. His family motto, Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God, nearly summed up his entire political philosophy. Jefferson's original Declaration of Independence firmly established the "right to revolution" among all mankind and introduced a notion of equality that, he believed, would democratize the idea of revolution. It was in this context of speaking for all men, in all future ages, "the memory of the American revolution will be immortal,"[54] that one can see Jefferson's identification with a world revolutionary perspective.
During the period of the French Revolution, Jefferson endorsed Tom Paine's universal application of the Rights of Man. All his life he subscribed to the revolutionary ideology of republicanism, which at the time no one knew how to translate successfully into a functional government. Republicanism was revolutionary simply because no one, for at least two thousand years, had seen a republic. Yet reminiscing on the origins of the nation's commitment to republicanism, Jefferson revealed that at the first idea of independence the revolutionaries were determined to try it: "From the moment that to preserve our rights a change of government became necessary, no doubt could be entertained that a republican form was most consonant with reason [and] with right."[55]
Jefferson thus made it a principle to urge it upon others whenever possible.
Jefferson wrote to Joseph Priestley in 1802, "We feel that we are acting under obligations not confined to the limits of our own society. It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind."[56]
Seven years later Jefferson would carry the torch of revolution even further and define the United States as a revolutionary nation: "The station which we occupy among the nations of the earth is honorable, but awful. Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth."[57]
Twelve years later Jefferson wrote Adams a letter that showed his consistent faith in the power of the revolutionary ideas he had helped formulate: " I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance…in short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776 have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism. On the contrary they will consume those engines, and all who work them."[58]
Thus Jefferson observed the struggle that has throughout history characterized the nature of revolution; that is, the struggle of men to become free of despotism.
We might also note ironically that Jefferson firmly believed that the Spirit of 1776, crystallized in the election of 1800, would make it impossible that this nation would ever ally itself with the despotic forces in the world but would work to destroy them.
REVOLUTIONS TAKE TIME TO ACCOMPLISH
Jefferson's optimism, within realistic bounds, had always comprehended a time span that reflected his understanding of the historical forces at work in any century, including his own. Writing to Adams again, he concurred with him on the difficulty that revolutions experience in their transition from despotism to freedom. In the letter Jefferson supplies us with his notion of revolution in history:
The generation which commences a revolution can rarely compleat it. Habituated from their infancy to passive submission of body and mind to their kings and priests, they are not qualified, when called on, to think and provide for themselves and their inexperience, their ignorance and bigotry make them instruments often, in the hands of the Bonapartes and Iturbides to defeat their own rights and purposes. This is the present situation of Europe and Spanish America. But it is not desperate. The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world. As yet that light has dawned on the midling classes only of the men of Europe. The kings and the rabble of equal ignorance, have not yet received its rays; but it continues to spread. And, while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his course. A first attempt to recover the right of self-government may fail; so may a 2d. a 3d etc., but as a younger, and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a 4th. a 5th. or some subsequent one of the ever renewed attempts will ultimately succeed.[59]
Jefferson's observation that the bourgeoisie, or "midling class," was emerging as a revolutionary class is worth noting here because it reveals Jefferson's dependence on it to advance the idea of revolution.
REVOLUTIONS ALWAYS POSSESS A DUAL CHARACTER
Pervading this statement is a doctrine of inevitability, as if the forces of revolution represented in the dialectic of history are so powerful they cannot be denied. In fact, what Jefferson was hinting at is a theory that reflects not just an emerging revolutionary dialectic but the logic of faction and the non-party state mentioned in chapter 1. Jefferson's description of revolution deals with a similar idea. Taking this view, one can read his letter as an analysis of the basic components of the idea of revolution.
The first component, Jefferson's description of an "eminently changed" condition in parts of the world, reflects his recognition of the potential for revolutionary societies in Europe and Latin America, something no statesman had ever referred to before.
Here Jefferson is painting a picture of the dual character of societies in which two cities exist, each opposing the other. This opposition, according to Jefferson, has taken on among the younger generation an ingrained "instinct," which in time produces "two competing cultural systems warring against each other in the same society."[60]
Next, Jefferson described the "institutional" and "ideological" components in this emerging two-city thesis. The institutions were monarchy and its trappings-religious superstition and ignorance-versus the more enlightened institutions of "self-government." The ideological components were the divine-right theories of the state versus the emerging republican ideology. The monarchical types represent "the establishment"; the successive generations represent the competing classes or counterculture.
Jefferson's notion of "intuitive" sentiments is merely another way of expressing the strengthening of the second city-the faction in society that challenges the establishment.
In the third component, represented by the historical view that Jefferson held, the revolutionary dialectic would increase in intensity until a crisis situation was reached. The influence of science and the printing press would spread among the younger generation, almost invisibly; yet it would be denied by the kings and the priests who refused to understand the changes around them. That was, and is, the characteristic behavior of an establishment that fails to respond to or solve its crises.
It also signaled to Jefferson that the second city would grow in strength and resolve. It might be ten, forty, or sixty years in the future, but when the crisis occurred-when traditional, institutional, ideological, and cultural reforms failed-the revolution would inevitably succeed.
REVOLUTIONS ALWAYS EXPERIENCE CRISES
Jefferson's realistic sense of what must be accomplished over generations was not limited to time. Included in his assessment was the toll that permanent revolution would exact in violence. He completed his letter to Adams by warning that the price would not be cheap: "To attain all this however rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over. Yet the object is worth rivers of blood…for what inheritance so valuable can man leave to his posterity?"[61]
This notion of leaving a legacy of revolution and violence to posterity was not the idle speculation of a philosopher in old age. Jefferson had, as a young man of thirty-one, been immersed in the political violence of the Revolutionary War. He had also seen firsthand limited violence at the beginning of the French Revolution and knew of the purges that followed his departure. Thus a recognition of potential violence had been a consistent part of Jefferson's experience from the beginning.
REVOLUTION MUST BE DISTINGUISHED FROM REVOLT AND REBELLION
This recognition expressed itself in the references Jefferson made to rebellion and revolution. Strangely, he seemed to have merged the two. At least he was not careful about making distinctions between them. But from past experience, Jefferson felt that revolt or rebellion was directed against individual rulers or specific abuses and not against states. He also felt that rebellion was spontaneous, often a reaction to specific grievances that had nothing to do with the society as a whole. Yet Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God was Jefferson's credo, and the inference is that he saw rebellion on a continuum with revolution. Had he lived in the seventeenth century, he might have founded a divine-right theory of revolution; as it was, the Declaration nearly amounted to the same thing.
While Jefferson might have acknowledged that rebellions rarely threaten the state, they had the potential to, and that made them important. Rebellions also had the potential to enlarge-at least in a ruler's mind-and therefore their utility lay in keeping rulers honest.
There was also another characteristic of rebellion that appealed to Jefferson's principles-that their actions were often directed against a consolidating and distant power. This consolidation of power was something that Jefferson feared. Moreover, if rebellions could prevent the gradual growth of power in the state, he wished to encourage them. If they occurred regularly, they would have the effect of maintaining society on a course consistent with its principles of government.
Thus Jefferson, in what amounted to a convergence theory of revolt and revolution, might be regarded as a rebel who was profoundly revolutionary. Incapable of tolerating injustice in any form, Jefferson seemed unwilling, like many nineteenth-and twentieth-century revolutionaries, to play a counterrevolutionary role. Rather than wait for the opportune moment in history, when the "objective conditions" were favorable, Jefferson simply wished to see injustice eradicated. Because injustice would always exist in an imperfect world, a theory of permanent rebellion emerged along with his idea of revolution through history.
Violence could not be divorced from either rebellion or revolution. Referring to the "rivers of blood" that would flow in the future revolutions of Europe and Latin America, Jefferson believed in the classical sense that liberty could grow and flourish only through bloodshed. Indeed it was as if violence against tyrants was liberty's "natural manure." Referring to Shays's Rebellion at the time of the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson stated explicitly his notion of rebellion and its relation to violence. No American statesman before or since has so completely embraced the idea of violence as a means to realize the end of state. He wrote,
Can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of its motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.…What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.[62]
Because Jefferson linked his idea of revolution to a constitution, he must have been considering total and systemic change. Revolution, then, must have a plan; it must be systemic in its approach. Rebellion, on the other hand, labors under misconception and ignorance. Therefore it could not be systemic in the changes it wrought unless, of course, it became something else.
In that same year, 1787, Jefferson again expressed his strong commitment to the idea of rebellion. Writing to James Madison in January of that year, he said with a warning: "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."[63]
THE SPIRIT OF REBELLION MUST ALWAYS BE KEPT ALIVE
Shays's Rebellion was one of those thunderstorms that Jefferson felt was necessary. Comparing the political events of Europe with those of America, he had determined that the furor over Shays's Rebellion was highly exaggerated. In strong language to his friend Madison, Jefferson warmed to his favorite theme, the topic of rebellions:
No country should be long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections. France, with all its despotism, and two or three hundred thousand men always in arms, has had three insurrections in the three years I have been here every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts and a great deal more blood was spilt. In Turkey, which Montesquieu supposes more despotic, insurrections are the events of every day. In England, where the hand of power is lighter than here [France], but heavier than with us they happen every half dozen years. Compare again the ferocious depredations of their insurgents with the order, the moderation and the almost self extinguishment of ours.[64]
What seems different about this letter is the comparison Jefferson is making between despotism and free governments and their relationship to rebellion. Normally, one assumes that a free society is the most tumultuous. Jefferson, however, seems to be saying the opposite: in those states where absolutism prevails, the citizens tend toward greater extremes of violence.
While his reference to "insurrection" is unclear in the sense that he is drawing a sharp distinction between it and revolution, the implication of his first sentence is crystal clear: no "degree of power" held by the state will prevent either rebellion or revolution from occurring. Both are natural phenomena.
As Jefferson went about his duties in France, the Constitutional Convention was meeting to decide the future of the American states. This event loomed significantly in Jefferson's mind, for, as we shall see later, it held the connotations of a "second" American revolution.
While Jefferson argued that we ought to have a revolution every century and a half, he was also pointing to the object of the revolution, namely despotism or governments "of force." In his mind those governments were synonymous with monarchies and aristocracies, the kind of regimes whose power to abuse was rarely limited. This is important because it registers the eighteenth century's great concern for the forms of government and the influence that form had on the conduct of administration.
On this last point, Jefferson seems to be sliding over distinctions between insurrection and revolution. The comparison between American and European governments keeps the distinction; but his hope is that a revolutionary change-in principle and systemic in nature-will emerge from insurrection: the proof that men can govern themselves without kings. This would indicate that the relationship between the two is almost indistinguishable for Jefferson in 1787.
A REVOLUTION MUST AVOID PROVOKING THE MILITARY
The role that violence would play in any revolution, measured against the nature of the regime, was crucial to the success the revolution would enjoy. Jefferson had agreed with Adams that revolution was separate from war. He had even observed to a friend that war "is not the most favorable moment for divesting the monarchy of power. On the contrary, it is the moment when the energy of a single hand shews itself in the most seducing form."[65]
Although Jefferson was, in this instance, observing the emerging revolution in France, his statement is in the form of a principle and can be generalized. His idea of revolution, which always seemed to be opposed to monarchy or aristocracy, was becoming practical.
Jefferson was developing an idea of peaceful revolution.
He was already aware of the connection between the idea of revolution and his own fame. His authorship of the Declaration of Independence had established his reputation as a hero to the most "ardent spirits" in Europe and especially to those in France. Wherever revolutionary activity was potential, contemplated, or in the process of taking place, Jefferson was a man to be consulted. His colleagues at home, many of whom did not understand, often caricatured him as a "man of some acquirements…but [having] opinions upon Government…the result of fine spun theoretic systems, drawn from the ingenious writings of Locke, Sydney and others of their cast which can never be realized."[66]
While this was true of those he would later accuse of courting the principles of "kingly government,"[67] his admirers in France and elsewhere appreciated his talents with deeper understanding. Even at the risk of violating his diplomatic neutrality, Jefferson was willing to engage in revolutionary intrigue.
Once, after presiding over a revolutionary dialogue in his own home "truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity," Jefferson felt moved to explain his behavior to the French minister, Armand Marc, Count de Montmorin. Montmorin's guarded reply furnishes a good insight into Jefferson's ability to influence, in a practical way, the developing idea of revolution. "He [Jefferson] told me…he earnestly wished I would habitually assist at such conferences, being sure I should be useful in moderating the warmer spirits, and promoting a wholesome and practicable reformation only."[68]
But in truth Jefferson did not need encouragement or flattery. By May 1787 he was already writing long letters to his friends in America, keeping them abreast of the progress of the idea of revolution throughout the world. Referring to Brazil he wrote,
The men of letters are those most desirous of a revolution. The people are not much under the influence of their priests, most of them read and write, possess arms, and are in the habit of using them for hunting. The slaves will take the side of their masters. In short, as to the question of revolution, there is but one mind in that Country. But there appears to be no person capable of conducting a revolution, or willing to venture himself at its head, without the aid of some powerful nation.…There is no printing press in Brazil. They consider the North American revolution as a precedent for theirs.…[And] in case of a successful revolution, a republican government in a single body would probably be established.[69]
Here Jefferson is making a distinction between those who may be expected to participate in revolution and those who will languish in despotism. Jefferson's assessment seems to be made on the basis of the population's literary skills and how receptive they are to written appeals. Noting the absence of a printing press, he seems to believe that this device, used to disseminate revolutionary ideas, is crucial-in practical terms-to a burgeoning revolution.
He also recognizes, in a limited way, that certain objective conditions must exist in the society before revolution is possible. For revolution to occur, there must be someone who has the will to lead it, someone who can assimilate a view of a future society and act on his vision. Jefferson would have argued that men must have some awareness of their place in history. They must know or realize from past examples in history that they can actually complete a revolution.
At the same time, he implied the people themselves must be conscious of their role in a revolution. Like their leaders, they must understand the idea of liberty sufficiently to expand it. If they are either ignorant or illiterate, with no understanding of the potential of a constitutional system, they merely endanger their lives and the few rights they enjoy.
A REVOLUTION MUST BE CONNECTED TO IDEOLOGY
We ought to note, too, that Jefferson assumes a "probable" connection of the revolutionary ideology of his time-"republicanism"-to the successful outcome of revolution. This would imply that Jefferson, like revolutionaries in all ages, linked the prevailing ideology to any successful revolution, whether probable, potential, or actual.
Jefferson was aware that you could not simply say you were going to start a revolution and then have one. His concern for "enlightening and emancipating the minds" of the people was uppermost in his notion of what was important in an emerging revolution. It was, he felt, the very first consideration one had to make in assessing the possibility of revolution.
To show his consistency on this position, Jefferson was still concerned about educating the people of Latin America thirty years later. He seemed to believe it was better to have revolution piecemeal than to endure a violent confrontation that would set back the cause of liberty, perhaps for generations. Answering a query from John Adams on the revolutionary potential in South America, he wrote,
I enter into all your doubts as to the event of the revolution of South America. They will succeed against Spain. But the dangerous enemy is within their own breasts. Ignorance and superstition will chain their minds and bodies under religious and military despotism. I do believe it would be better for them to obtain freedom by degrees only; because that would by degrees bring on light and information, and qualify them to take charge of themselves understandingly; with more certainty…as may keep them at peace with one another.[70]
Thus Jefferson, serving in the capacity of a revolutionary adviser, was always tailoring his advice to the conditions he found locally or nationally. No blanket theorist, he found himself making distinctions regarding the potential for revolutions in a way that many critics, and even a few revolutionaries in the twenty-first century, have lost sight of. Jefferson was always speaking of an "appeal to the nation…and yet not so much as to endanger an appeal to arms."[71]
A REVOLUTION MUST NOT INITIATE ARMED STRUGGLE
Jefferson's greatest fear was that revolutionaries would act prematurely, before the "public mind was ripened by time and discussion and was one opinion on the principal points."[72] He seemed to believe that without an understanding of what the forces of power were, what the delicate balance of the constitution was, even what was worth fighting for, any revolution would be strangled in its cradle.
At the same time, Jefferson also kept in mind that unity or agreement among the people was essential if only to demonstrate that a sufficient force of public opinion existed in the state. That was the first objective of any revolution. Means must be found to communicate that force to those in power, who, hopefully, would then change their policies or realize that resistance was futile. Jefferson never abandoned his hope that revolution could be successful without a resort to arms.
Thus Jefferson writes to Washington, informing him what the issue of revolution has been so far: "The nation [France] is pressing on fast to a fixed constitution. Such a revolution in the public opinion has taken place that the crown already feels its powers bounded, and is obliged by its measures to acknowledge limits."[73]
It is obvious that Jefferson is studying the emerging constitutional developments, hoping the French Revolution would continue its nonviolent course during this early period of consolidation.
One critical factor in furthering any revolution was to "cleverly" prevent any violent turn from taking place. It was the responsibility of the leaders to nurture a rational policy that would not provoke those in power to "draw the sword." Indeed Jefferson's reflections on the future of France, placed in the context of the favorable issue of the second American revolution, raised the question of whether other nations could imitate America.
As Jefferson had seen just two months earlier, the forces of despotism in France were so powerful that a peaceful solution was by no means guaranteed. Another critical factor he sees as a problem for any revolution is the question of the army. Writing to a friend, he notes rather sharply the tragic role that party and the armed forces play in producing counterrevolution:
We can surely boast of having set the world a beautiful example of a government reformed by reason alone without bloodshed. But the world is too far oppressed to profit of the example. On this side of the Atlantic [France] the blood of the people is become an inheritance, and those who fatten on it, will not relinquish it easily. The struggle in this country is as yet of doubtful issue. It is in fact between the monarchy, and the parliaments. The nation is no otherwise concerned but as both parties may be induced to let go some of its abuses to court the public favor. The danger is that the people, deceived by a false cry of liberty may be led to take side with one party, and thus give the other a pretext for crushing them still more. If they can avoid an appeal to arms, the nation will be sure to gain much by this controversy. But if that appeal is made it will depend entirely on the dispositions of the army whether it issue in liberty or despotism.[74]
By the middle of 1788, as the first sentence would imply, Jefferson has the model of the second American revolution firmly in mind. Moreover, he is now preparing that model on a global scale, explicitly stating that other nations would do well to imitate America's example.
His is a recommendation for revolution without violence and bloodshed. Yet nothing is lost in the sense that he and Adams defined the term almost three decades earlier. Pondering the potential violence of the emerging French Revolution, Jefferson made a distinction between the ongoing revolution and civil war.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR REVOLUTION
By March 1789 Jefferson was still optimistic that France would avoid bloodshed. One reason was a belief that the idea of revolution must be accepted by the people. And from his vantage point in Paris, he daily saw the public becoming deeply involved. Jefferson traced this involvement in a letter that outlined the essential politics of a developing revolution. The conditions included the following:
The nation's intellectual potential to become aware of a political crisis
The role of the press in shaping public opinion
An economic crisis, especially one related to taxes
The rate of nonviolent change
The differences between the newly emerging and the past forms of government
The people's understanding of their relation to the constitutional powers present in the government of the day and even of the hour
The degree of liberty expressed in a declaration of rights toward which the revolution aims
Each of these points must be seen in relation to the others as they occur. Considered collectively, they compose a near complete idea of revolution. Judged singly, they simply represent another problem in government or administration that can be adjusted to or solved.
In this letter to his friend David Humphreys, Jefferson is conveying the picture of a "complete revolution":
The change in this country, since you left it, is such as you can form no idea of.…The king stands engaged to pretend no more to the power of laying, continuing or appropriating taxes, to call the States general periodically, to submit letters de cachet to legal restriction, to consent to freedom of the press, and that all this shall be fixed by a fundamental constitution which shall bind his successors. He has not offered a participation in the legislature, but it will surely be insisted on. The public mind is so ripened on all these subjects, that there seems to be now but one opinion.…In fine I believe this nation will in the course of the present year have as full a portion of liberty dealt out to them as the nation can bear at present, considering how uninformed the mass of their people is.[75]
At the same time, Jefferson's optimism regarding the avoidance of bloodshed in a revolution was not without qualification. He even seems to be saying that despite all precautions, some merging of the two is inevitable. In what was to be a prophetic warning to his friend Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de La Fayette, Jefferson revealed his pessimism regarding the future progress of the French Revolution. On the eve of his departure, he wrote,
So far it seemed that your revolution had got along with a steady pace; meeting indeed occasional difficulties and dangers, but we are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty, in a featherbed. I have never feared for the ultimate result, tho' I have feared for you personally…Take care of yourself, my dear friend. For tho' I think your nation would in any event work out her salvation, I am persuaded were she to lose you, it would cost her oceans of blood, and years of confusion and anarchy.[76]
As Jefferson contemplated the idea of revolution during the year before he left France, he could not help but believe that the most important concern of any revolutionary movement must be the constitutional process.
ROLE OF ELECTIONS IN AN EMERGING REVOLUTION
From his own experience in the 1770s, Jefferson realized that only when the ideals of a revolution were written into law was it possible for the people to realize them. If ideals remained pure rhetoric, they would continue to divide the people and lead to confusion and anarchy.
One major part of this concern was the process of electing officials to represent the people. Elections had played a major role in Jefferson's rise to power during the American Revolution. Being a delegate to the Continental Congress had thrust him suddenly onto the national stage. But more significant was the fact that elections had made the revolution appear legitimate in the eyes of the people.
Like the "men of influence" in the midst of revolution in America, Jefferson had resigned his seat in Congress and taken his "place in the legislature of Virginia." There he introduced bills in 1776 that had as their goal the complete destruction of the British administration. Among them were the "establishment of courts of justice" and "trial by jury"; a "bill declaring tenants in tail to hold their lands in fee simple"; a "bill to prevent…the…further importation" of slaves, abolish primogeniture, abolish the tyranny of the Church of England, "establishing religious freedom"; and finally an attempt to revise the "whole code" of laws and adopt them to "our republican form of government."[77]
These were the revolutionary aims Jefferson had in mind in 1789, and he hoped that the French might also. Certainly, he believed they were capable of promoting those aims.
In sum, Jefferson's experience of constitution making had become an integral part of his notion of how a revolution was to proceed.
CRITICAL ROLE IN CALLING A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION IN THE MIDST OF REVOLUTION
A reflection of his American experience, a revolution emphasized principles, organization, and functions of every governmental entity. Indeed this emphasis was, in Jefferson's eyes, virtually an axiom for all the other revolutions he saw occurring in the world.
He never tired of believing that America could set an example that would ultimately provide a way to avoid civil wars. Thus in 1787, before he could know its results, he remarked upon hearing of the Constitutional Convention, "Happy for us, that when we find our constitutions defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of philosophers and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must have recourse to arms to restore their constitutions."[78]
Contrast Jefferson's axiom regarding initiating armed struggle with the military to avoid violence. Virtually all modern revolutions throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries-those led by Lenin, Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh and even those surrounding the "Arab Spring"-have uniformly resulted in not decentralizing the power of the state or maximizing the liberty of the individual. They have produced states dominated by military regimes, unending civil wars, and the denial of human rights, civil liberties, the Rights of Man, and the rule of law-in short, everything Jefferson believed a revolution should avoid. This axiom alone, of avoiding the initiation of violence, should enable the reader to appreciate the sophistication of Jefferson's idea of revolution.
His sense of optimism overflowing, Jefferson wrote to David Humphreys, "The operations which have taken place in America lately, fill me with pleasure. In the first place they realize the confidence I had that whenever our affairs get obviously wrong, the good sense of the people will interpose and set them to rights. The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the state, instead of assembling armies, will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we have given them."[79]
The transfer of constitutional power from one form of government to another, peaceably, with the will of the majority presiding, was for Jefferson the only successful idea of revolution.
This was systemic change-the true characteristic of revolution-achieved peacefully. Any other transfer of power that failed to produce an expansion of liberty, that remained attached to principles of monarchy or aristocracy, both forms of despotism, was not revolution at all. It was counterrevolution.
Because of this continuous possibility, the principles of government became just as important for revolution as the form. The fact was, as Jefferson had recognized earlier, those successive generations that "instinctively" demanded greater freedom were the core of the second city. As they continued to expand their idea of freedom, gradually and through written constitutional guarantees, the growth of the revolution, based on the principles of a new value system, was assured.
THE RIGHTS OF MAN IN THE CONSTITUTION
Jefferson saw that it did nothing for mankind to advocate revolution and then discover that the reasons for turning to revolution had been lost in the struggle. This is why he expressed concern over the failure of the "wise men" in Philadelphia to incorporate the Rights of Man into the Constitution itself. Declaring his willingness to accept the majority view, he nevertheless stated those rights which, if abused collectively in the minds of the people, formed the right to revolution.
Commenting on the new constitution, he wrote,
I am one of those who think it a defect that the important rights, not placed in security by the frame of the constitution itself, were not explicitly secured by a supplementary declaration. There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government, and which yet, governments have always been fond to invade. These are the rights of thinking, and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing: the right of free commerce: the right of personal freedom. There are instruments for administering the government, so peculiarly trust-worthy, that we should never leave the legislature at liberty to change them. The new constitution has secured these in the executive and legislative departments; but not in the judiciary. It should have established trials by the people themselves, that is to say by jury. There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation, and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors, that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army. We are now allowed to say such a declaration of rights, as a supplement to the constitution where that is silent, is wanting to secure us in these points.[80]
While Jefferson's optimism regarding the successful conclusion of the American Revolution remained strong, his imagination ranged over the possibilities of using reason and the "coolness of philosophers" to ensure that revolution in a single society would be permanent as well as bloodless.
By now he was not content to simply see the "chequers" shifted on the board. Recognizing that tensions in society that cause revolutions often result from oppressive regimes that over time have lost all touch with current problems or the needs of a new generation, Jefferson sought to provide a rationale that would prevent those tensions from accumulating.
If we recall his reference to the Constitutional Convention as the second American revolution, we may gain an insight into his changing idea of revolution. Perhaps, he believed, a society dedicated to rational principles could institutionalize revolution in a constitutional form.
In a little-known and even less understood essay titled The Earth Belongs to the Living, Jefferson was apparently sounding out his most trusted colleague, James Madison, to this possibility. Written at the height of his involvement with the emerging French Revolution, it answers the problems he saw developing there and elsewhere in the world:
No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished then, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.
It may be said that the succeeding generation exercising in fact the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to 19 years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be indeed if every form of government were so perfectly contrived that the will of the majority could always be obtained fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils. Bribery corrupts them. Personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise so as to prove to every practical man that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.
This principle that the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead is of very extensive application and consequences in every country, and most especially in France. It enters into the resolution of the questions Whether the nation may change the descent of lands holden in tail? Whether they may change the appropriation of lands given antiently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, order of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity? Whether they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on lands, including the whole catalogue ecclesiastical and feudal? It goes to hereditary offices, authorities and jurisdictions; to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts or sciences; with a long train of et ceteras.[81]
The essay turned out, in Jefferson's own words, to be the "dream of a theorist," for he never attempted to have it written into law. In truth, Jefferson's essay was too revolutionary even for his most intimate colleagues-all members of the power structure. Reading it over, they most likely realized that nothing in the society would remain untouched or unchanged; no one's base of power would or could remain secure.
Jefferson's departure from the one-dimensional vision of change that characterized nearly all of his eighteenth-century contemporaries was too powerful.
HOW TO RECOGNIZE A PREREVOLUTIONARY SOCIETY
Yet the idea had profound revolutionary implications. As Jefferson realized, its principle had very "extensive application" and would serve as an obstacle to despotism around the globe.
The essay went to the heart of every important power relationship in the commonwealth, specifically those that Jefferson, in his own revolutionary experience, had drafted legislation to remedy. But most significant, within Jefferson's essay were leveling principles, institutionalized, that would democratize the idea of revolution.
What Jefferson saw himself doing was anticipating the normal development of a prerevolutionary situation. Those conditions he enumerated at the end of his letter had been present in all despotisms throughout history and were particularly characteristic of the ancient regimes yet in power. Further, they could be summarized as those conditions that existed in America from 1760 to 1775: attempts by the government in power to maintain its authority were gradually undermined; laws became arbitrary; "obligations," once bearable, "became impositions"; traditional loyalties faded and new forms of attachment (outside the existing circle of government) became noticeable-the second city; the idea of community-defined by the establishment-no longer held people's attention to the interests of the nation; factions arose that exploited the frustrated classes in society; representatives no longer were representative but spoke for a privileged few; accepted forms of wealth and income suddenly appeared corrupt; existing concepts of prestige changed; those in positions of power were viewed with hostility and suspicion; and, finally, those with talent, normally integrated into society, began to feel "left out."
This is the picture of an emerging two-city theory of revolution: a "dialectic of two competing cultural systems warring against each other in the same society."[82] This was a condition that, if allowed to develop over a long period of time, would inevitably produce a "crisis of community," "political, economic, psychological, sociological, personal, and moral at the same time."[83] The conflict of values could plunge the nation into civil war.
Revolution need not be the culmination of these conflicts, but the loss of liberty and harmony most certainly would be. What was needed at a time like this-and Jefferson had seen this condition in America and in France-was the intelligent search for a new sense of community, a new set of principles or a return to older ones, and a way to reestablish conditions that would become acceptable to those who were disillusioned and felt "left out."
A new constitution for every generation was one way to establish this new sense of community. It was an exercise guaranteed to keep the government responsive to the people while inhibiting the growth of factions that established oligarchies and corrupted the laws. It would, Jefferson pointed out, make government and constitutions respect the rights of the individual and not become the instruments of force. If every generation had to decide what to throw away, as well as what to keep, in a constitution, it would be an educational process that would force it to understand, as well as to protect, its rights. This was consistent with Jefferson's belief that the Rights of Man were at the heart of every revolutionary struggle.
Jacques Ellul has observed that in the eighteenth century the idea of "revolution was a juridical concept that met the demands of reason."[84]
Jefferson's revolutionary essay was an expression of this eighteenth-century Age of Reason belief in reason as the supreme arbiter in society. It was also a recognition of the political nature of revolution. Only reason could avoid the fanaticism, the excesses, and the bloodshed that ultimately defeated the cause of liberty. Accordingly, Jefferson's essay was this juridical concept carried to its logical conclusion: a system of abstract laws designed to ensure that each generation would be able to construct its own system of political relationships. Jefferson's system was not likely, as other revolutions would prove, to perpetuate and increase the power of the state at the expense of the individual.
His theory was designed to do the opposite: to signal a radical departure from the theme of centralization that has characterized all revolutions before or since. His theory would enable each generation to use established laws and institutions to decentralize anew the power of the state every twenty years.
INSTITUTIONALIZING PERMANENT, PEACEFUL, CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION
Further, Jefferson, in his long essay, guaranteed that every twenty years there would be a certain amount of chaos in the transition to the new government. This meant that, instead of increasing its power by placing succeeding generations in awe of its immortal sovereignty and majesty, the state would become a means to an end and not the end in itself. The essence of Jefferson's revolution every twenty years was to humanize the prospects of remodeling society.
It meant that and more: Jefferson's essay was the philosophical expression of a device that, assuming the worst situation developed, any trend toward tyranny would be abolished or altered every second decade; that those who accumulated wealth at the expense of their fellow citizens would see it redistributed; that class rivalry would be eliminated or started anew; and that mobility would be ensured.
Finally, the hope was that liberty and justice would be renewed with each generation. Because of its thoroughness, its near-complete alteration of the relations of established society, it was a system that would channel all of society's discontents and integrate them in a radical yet nonviolent solution.
Jefferson's logic culminated in what would be the greatest benefit of all. Because each generation would have complete control over its own life span, plus the ability to enact laws regulating its own behavior, it would have no need to resort to violence or civil war to change the government's form or principles.
Liberty and the Rights of Man embedded in the constitution would therefore never be endangered. In sum, The Earth Belongs to the Living was intended by Jefferson to be a theoretical statement of the possibility of institutionalizing permanent, peaceful, and constitutional revolution.
What we have been describing thus far is an idea of revolution propounded by a few eighteenth-century men. But not every part of that description has been limited to the pure idea of revolution. The dominance of politics, in an architectonic sense, has asserted itself in every phase of revolution we have discussed.
CLASSICAL POLITICS AND REVOLUTION
The nature of revolution in eighteenth-century America was, above all, political. Neither Jefferson nor Adams nor anyone else who discussed the topic ever divorced it from its classical political framework. Constitutions, ideologies, wars, committees, factions, and congresses are political ideas and forms that were known before Aristotle. They were in Adams's and Jefferson's time viewed as part of one's natural political constitution. This framework, then, was rooted in human nature and was as old as man himself.
While many of these concepts relate to forms as well as ideas, they have a dialectical relationship that makes it impossible to discuss one meaningfully without the others. It is important then, in rounding out the idea of revolution, to consider these forms in some detail and establish their connection with the politics that will be reviewed in the remaining chapters.
We have seen both Adams and Jefferson associate their revolutionary experience in the 1770s with revolutions that occurred for the rest of their lives. Their concern for opinion, elections, constitutional forms, declarations of rights, the power of the press, and so forth-all were carryovers from their experience. As they well knew, these specific forms of organization had given form and energy to the American Revolution.
Jefferson, in his search for a new mode of revolution, was attempting to maintain a similar energy level that he had experienced in 1776 but not so much that it would commit revolution to violence.
THE CYCLE OF REVOLUTIONS
This distinction is important because it reveals Jefferson's imagination at work, spinning out a theory that would enable him to realize his goal of permanent world revolution.
He knew already that governments are not free once and then for all time. He realized, perhaps more fully than anyone in his century, that the nature of man made it inevitable that a government would sooner or later founder in corruption. When this occurred, the two-city thesis of revolution asserted itself. Principles needed to be reestablished, constitutions reaffirmed, and liberty renewed in an ongoing natural process. It was this transition in the cycle of revolutions, the division of society into two warring camps, that fascinated Jefferson and spurred him on in pursuit of a nonviolent theory of revolution.
The cycle of revolution had occurred at least three times within Jefferson's lifetime. The Revolution of 1800 was, in more ways than not, a repetition of the Revolution of 1776, and, by Jefferson's own description, another was the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
The one major difference was a shift from form to principle almost exclusively; another lay in the peaceful transition made by the Revolution of 1800. Yet this peaceful transition did not occur by accident.
THE FORMS AND PRINCIPLES OF REVOLUTION
We have seen how Jefferson always placed the framework of revolution in a struggle between the principles of despotism and those of freedom-between monarchy or aristocracy and the democratizing efforts of the people. This formulation of principles had looked back to Jefferson's original revolutionary experience (the classic example of an imperial power opposed to granting freedom to a colonial people). As the concern for principle arose, Jefferson again looked to his own experience and realized that he must rely on the trusted "old-fashioned" or classical forms of organization.
Of the organizational principles used to combat despotism all over the world, quite a number had been invented in America and had become, after the 1770s, the bag and baggage of revolutionaries everywhere.
The formation of conspiratorial caucuses "to concentrate leadership abilities," the organization of clubs, committees of correspondence, the post, circular letters, newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides, speeches, elections, legislative resolves, and constitutional resolutions-all were used to advance the cause of revolution.
The culmination of these political forms after the election of congresses was the establishment of courts of law and provisional governments.
These organizational forms and principles all took place within, but were opposed to, the existing system of government. They were literally "the state within the state," "the city within a city," the result of a group of organized factions cooperating to achieve similar revolutionary ends. Together they created a democratic ideology and a fashioned unity. They won the minds and the hearts of the people and laid the foundations for a new government.
It is in this framework that we must view Jefferson's approach to politics and revolution in the coming decade. Knowing his deep concern for republican principles and the revolutionary Spirit of 1776, plus his absence of nearly six years, we might place his idea of revolution into a perspective that has not been made explicit before.
That perspective, moreover, is consistent with the classical definition of revolution: a cyclical return to the time when the rights and the liberties of the people were untainted by corruption, when the ideals and the principles of the American Revolution were accepted by all, and when the American Revolution was-in a word-glorious.
In 1789 Jefferson, enthused with the optimism of the emerging French Revolution, contemplated his return to America. He wrote to a friend, "I hope to receive permission to visit America this summer, and to possess myself anew, by conversation with my countrymen, of their spirit and their ideas. I know only the Americans of the year 1784. They tell me this is to be much a stranger to those of 1789. This renewal of acquaintance is no indifferent matter to one acting at such a distance."[85]
As he would soon find out, the distance between ideas was great, if not greater than the width of the ocean he would cross. And it would take time, almost a decade in fact, before he could report that the Spirit of 1776 was "not dead. It…[had] only been slumbering."[86]
