A QUALIFIED FEDERATION

 

As a last word or two about the First Great Awakening, this posting offers a short review of how it affected women and African Americans.  The overall effect was to enhance the status of women and to a limited degree, it allowed an inclusion of blacks into white society.  While in no way should this be seen as liberating the status of these people, one can ascribe a first step quality of sorts, in that direction.

          One can detect the Awakening played a significant role in changing the lives of many women.  Through the enthusiasm that the Awakening stirred in their lives, they began taking a more robust sense of the importance of those lives.  They took a newfound motivation to look introspectively as to who they were, what they were about, and how they affected others. 

This led to an outpouring of written accounts from many women of that time.  Those accounts, many surviving to this day, reflected women analyzing their feelings.  They could, by these recorded efforts, often daily diary entries, share those feelings with other women and reflect a more independent spirit in controlling more aspects of their lives.  For example, one can detect more independence in the choosing of a marriage partner. 

While the Awakening led to this surge of limited independence, they were not invited to take on leadership roles within the church.  Despite that, many of these written accounts are available today such as those of Hannah Heaton, Phillis Wheatley, and Sarah Osborn.

 

·       Hannah Heaton efforts give one an insightful view of farm life as it was in Connecticut in the 1700s.[1] 

·       Phillis Wheatley, an African born black poet, shares an account of her trip to America and how her exposure to Christian preaching delivered her from the “pagan” influences of her native land.[2]

·       Sarah Osborn produced a memoir and, anonymously, a collection of her letters, entitled The Nature, Certainty, and Evidence of True Christianity.[3]

 

As for African Americans, there was a limited advancement in several areas within the colonies.  That included “[George] Whitefield[4] preached to common people, slaves and Native Americans.  No one was out of reach.”[5] Thomas Kidd reports that in various pockets, awakened preachers strove to convert black people.  This included the Tidewater and Low Country and northern Baptists and Methodists.[6]  He, Kidd, goes on to describe these conversions as initial socializing across racial boundaries and the assigning of church roles to these converts.  Some, a very limited number, were recruited to preach.

Part of the awakened messaging was the claim of spiritual equality.  These early days saw the first significant numbers of African Americans joining the Christian ranks and would lead to a very powerful role in the history of that racial group in America.  Also, in the South, part of the religious sermons was the encouragement to white slaveholders to educate their slaves to read so that they, the slaves, could then read the Bible.[7]

Whitefield, while a supporter of slavery, did preach an egalitarian message that ascribed a spiritual equality to African Americans.  It should be mentioned that he eventually owned slaves.  There were others who preached to slaves in the South, but as to their effects, other than converting slaves, one cannot detect large changes in how slaves were treated. 

If anything, the Christian message, this writer fears, was, to an extent, allowed to spread among slaves because it was perceived as messaging that instilled among slaves, the slaveholders’ version of morality.  That would emphasize compliance of slaves to those in charge.  Unfortunately, organized religion has played, among some believers, that role throughout history.

Overall, the Awakening strengthened congregational views of social arrangements.  This promotes federation among the people, but at the same time it undermined people being able to overcome preconceived notions of unfounded biases.  Many of those biases held that people of other races or nationalities did not share the same level of human worth as they did.  As has been stated in this blog, this strengthened the notions of a parochial/traditional federalism view and stood in the way of true inclusion among the populous. 

The next posting will look more directly at how tolerance – both religious and political forms – evolved in the 1700s.  While this overlaps with the Awakening and its general tensions with Enlightened ideas on social attitudes, it can be analyzed on its own merits.  Of course, these particular attitudes and even values will spur Americans toward entertaining and then acting upon their wishes to become independent from the British.

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[1] See Barbara E. Lacy, The World of Hannah Heaton:  The Autobiography of an Eighteenth-Century Connecticut Farm Woman (n.d.), accessed May 24, 2021, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1922328?seq=1 .

[2] For a sample of Wheatley’s poems, see “Poems by Phillis Wheatley” (n.d.), accessed May 24, 2021, Poems of Phillis Wheatley (vcu.edu) .

[3] “Five:  The Nature, Certainty, and Evidence of True Christianity, 1755,” Sarah Osborn’s Collected Writings (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2017), accessed May 24, 2021, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300188318-008/html .

[4] George Whitefield was introduced in the last posting.

[5] “Great Awakening,” History Channel (September 20, 2019/March 7, 2018), accessed May 24, 2021, Great Awakening - HISTORY .

[6] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening:  The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2007).

[7] Jon Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried:  The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction,” Journal of American History, 69, 2 (September 1982), 305-325.  Access through https://www.jstor.org/stable/1893821?refreqid=excelsior%3Ad6f8696e1d7edb9f1c17ff76d5aea940&seq=1 and the facility of a subscribing library or school.

THE SOCIAL AND COMMUNAL INDIVIDUAL

 

In the last posting, this blog left the reader with the claim that the First Great Awakening was not antagonistic toward federalist values, but if anything, was supportive of them in a parochial way.  One might question that claim in that the spiritual experience promoted by the Awakening was described as a personal, individual one; a person on a his/herself basis accepts God’s grace. 

This smacks of being individualistic and not communal as federal values emphasize.  But the outward manifestation of this process – acceptance of God’s grace – was very social and celebrated out in the open.  Here is how Allen Guelzo describes this,

 

The promotion of piety became [Jonathan] Edward’s particular burden in the 1730s, especially when, in 1734, “a very remarkable blessing of heaven” fell on Northampton.  In the Puritan past, the experience of religious conversion had been largely a matter of individual spiritual renewal, under the careful direction of pastors and family elders.  The novelty introduced by the awakeners of the 18^th century was to turn the experience of grace into a communal experience, a group revival of religion that could involve whole towns, sometimes entire regions … Not only the numbers [of participants], but the character of the revived was, Edwards said, “unprecedented.”  It involved, not only males and females alike, but children as young as four years, and outbursts of enthusiasm in worship.[1]

 

And this distinction between individualism in terms of one’s relationship to God and the communal essence of revivals should be unraveled a bit. 

Regarding this aspect of the individual – his or her religious commitment – it reflects more an aspect of federal theory that this blog tends to ignore.[2]  That is, federal theory, along with its emphasis on communality is equally concerned with what constitutes the individual’s integral self.  This blogger’s interpretation is that that individualism associated with Puritanical worship was not a promotion of self-interest, per se, but an attempt or actualization, in terms of the belief, to define one’s integrity. 

Federal theory holds as of equal importance with one’s federation with others that that associating be the product of one’s individual commitment.  In turn, that counts on a person establishing to him/herself, and to others, that person’s individual integrity and that includes his/her beliefs and priorities.  Those beliefs are that integral to who the person is.  Puritanical commitment to a bonding with God is so self-defining, it contributes self-awareness.  And along these lines, Edwards provided, through his written work, clarification as to what this self-identity means.

          In his best received philosophic work, Freedom of the Will, he takes on an Enlightenment argument that has profound implications on all Christian theology.  The subject of that argument is rooted all the way back to the ancient Greeks, more specifically the Stoics.  That is the argument that claims that all of reality is material, as opposed to spiritual, and that includes human behavior and the processes by which behavior is determined.  In a few words, it denies the existence of free will.  That argument was taken up by Thomas Hobbes and to a more moderate degree by John Locke.  During the mid-1700s, the concern over free will was an active topic of discussion.

          So threatening was this denial of free will, that even predestination Calvinists felt they had to come out against this anti free will position.  Edwards, through the use of logical claims, bridged the gap between the belief that God determines everything and the claim that people are free to behave as they choose, i.e., they have freedom or free will.  And by doing so, he provided the rationale that one could hold on to spiritualism and avoid devolving into materialism. 

In this, one should see Edwards not as an enemy of the Enlightenment, but one who respected the philosophic tradition that movement was establishing.  He, Edwards, did not rely on the scholastic model – based on biblical text – of rational thought, but built his claims on psychological arguments.  And in that, he relegated the sole attractiveness of reason and nature – that Enlightened thinkers held – as being superficial.

          What was needed to enrich pure reason was the incorporation of emotions.  What Puritanical thought – especially among awakeners – argued for was to upgrade what one believed to what one might describe as a conversion of the heart.  In that effort, Edwards is a rare thinker who was able to generate a creative fusion between the Enlightenment and piety (or stated another way, coalescing reason and un-reflected beliefs).[3]

          Despite the work of such leaders as Edwards, and on another front, the Great Awakening did cause conflicts among religious communities.  These became serious.  The outbreak of schisms became somewhat common.  Usually, these pitted supporters of revivalist groups, “New Lights,” and those offended by these newer upstarts, “Old Lights” against each other.  The more established leaning believers saw New Lights as disruptive, over emotional, and non-anchored, i.e., being ministered by traveling preachers.  This all seemed to Old Lights as upsetting the established order in their churches, that they wished to preserve. 

In response, it became common for the established church goers to categorize revivalists as ignorant, unruly (needlessly attacking the orthodoxy of their beliefs), and/or, more cynically, out and out con artists.  In return, New Lights attacked the establishment church goers as overconcern with their statuses and with not having enough concern for the welfare of the souls of their church members. 

In terms of their reliance on traveling preachers, New Lights seemed to hold with little regard the territorial allocation that ministers honored among themselves – one minister had an area to minister to and avoided transgressing into their neighboring ministers’ areas.[4] 

Overall, the area that experienced the highest incidences of these schisms was New England and given those colonies’ association with Puritanism, this was not surprising. A denomination that experienced increased membership from these events was the Baptists especially in New England. [5]

To reiterate, this is not meant to be an exhaustive review of the First Great Awakening and its theological positions.  This blogger is attempting to sypher out those elements of the movement he feels had a political effect on colonial Americans and to give an overall description of those elements.  The next posting will review the social impact it had on woman and African Americans of that time.  These two groups and their social statuses changed as a result of the First Great Awakening. 

While the separate effects of this religious movement varied in their influences, the main goal here is to outline which effects strengthened or weakened how people held onto federalist values of that time.  In doing so, this blog will highlight how religion affected political thinking and its related values.  It will point out, as matter of course, that federalism focuses on two levels of the human experience:  on the humanness of the individual as he/she chooses to federate under communal bonds.

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[1] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – transcript books – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005), 55.

[2] The reason for this bias has to do with this blogger seeing the main challenge to federalist thinking is self-centered behavior by Americans.  This is usually addressed as being a product of the prevalence of the natural rights construct.

[3] Guelzo, The American Mind..

[4] Howard John Smith, The First Great Awakening:  Redefining Religion in British America, 1725-1775 (Vancouver, British Columbia:  Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015), this source addresses the First Great Awakening as a legitimate movement AND Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening:  The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2007).

[5] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People – 2^nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1972).

A REACTION

 

As this blog continues the story of the political culture in America and how it either promoted or discouraged a federated view among its people, the next chapter concerns a great reaction.  The First Great Awakening, beginning roughly in the late 1720s – with a definite presence in the 1730s – can mostly be seen as a reaction.  That reaction was to the Enlightenment.  But as was the case with most other movements in America of that time, its origins can be traced to Europe.

          As this posting will describe below, religious Protestants and some Catholics found the secular arguments of Enlightened thinkers as being either blasphemous to God or out and out mistaken.  In the United Kingdom, the reaction took on the name Evangelical Revival.  In America, the term American evangelicalism was used to denote a trans-denominational reaction constituting this Great Awakening.  And this thrust was aimed not at a group level of focus, but at the personal – individual – level.

          Commentary here is limited to the Awakening’s effects on the political culture of the colonists.  The messaging by such leaders of the movement as George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards centered on having believers look introspectively at their morality.  What they called for was a personal conviction and how each is dependent on salvation secured by Jesus’ sacrifice.  They rebelled directly to Enlightened thinking and its view of objectifying reality or what was believed to be reality. 

Instead, these Revivalists emphasized a conversion not based so much on intellectual acceptance, but on a “new birth” which one experiences in the heart.  This appealed to those who looked at the importance of having an emotional commitment.  This placed a heightened emphasis on the practice of revivals – open demonstrations of emotional commitments.  And by doing so, it appealed to common folks not privileged to have higher educational experiences.  So, for example, in England, evangelical Anglicans took on prominence within the Church of England.  There were contingencies within Methodism (influenced by the work of Whitefield and Wesley).  Denominations not so affect were Lutherans and initially Quakers.[1]

Another point of note in terms of the developments in England was certain retention of what this blog has described as basic Puritanical beliefs.  The evangelistic move, in effect, meant increased pastoral or spiritual guidance by church ministers.  This led to appointing or naming non ministers to take on these responsibilities.  It also meant an increased effort to seek out those shunted by the established Church of England, democratizing these religious concerns.  Part of the message was that Christianity was also meant for the “neglected.”

More specifically, Methodist congregations or societies arranged themselves around “classes.”  Those were meetings in which individual attendees were urged to confess their transgressions to others and, by doing so, the aim was to bolster each other.  In addition, meetings would conduct “love feasts” in which practitioners shared testimonies.  This had the effect among many to develop an associated identity – a federal aim.  Here, the Methodists proclaimed three beliefs:

1.    People are, by their nature, “dead in sin.”

2.    Only faith can “justify” them.

3.    The faithful exhibit, both inwardly and outwardly, holiness.[2]

This might remind the reader of Puritanical beliefs (TULIP) in that it is not good works that merit a heavenly reward, but in this case faith – in the case of Puritans it was being chosen by God.

          So, what did this movement find when it first hit the colonies?  The Great Awakening found a willing public but a diverse audience.  As this blog has already established, the New England colonies had adopted a Puritanical, congregational view.  The middle colonies, being more tolerant, had established a more diverse religious landscape populated by Quakers, Dutch Reformers, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, and Baptists.  They were all treated equally by law and conducted their services openly.  And in the Southern colonies, one found an official Anglican church, but also a good number of Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians.[3] 

But it has also been recorded that at that time a general low level of church membership was prevalent due to population growth – high immigration – and the effects of the Enlightenment.  Many, especially among the higher educated, turned to atheism, Deism, or Unitarianism, this last belief rejected the trinity (belief in the three-person God) and predestination.  This state of affairs, of course, stirred a reaction by those attending established churches.

That reaction took on the revivalist ideas described above.  Led by New England Puritans, Scots Irish Presbyterians, along with a belief in European Pietism, the faithful took on the messaging of revival and piety which was making their way across the Atlantic.  The result was an American version of evangelical Protestantism.  This placed an emphasis “on seasons of revival, or outpourings of the Holy Spirit, and on converted sinners experiencing God’s love personally.”[4] 

Some of these activities can be traced in New England to the 1710s.  But given the limited means of spreading the “good news,” such activities were limited in New England to local occurrences.  Interestingly, an earthquake and the ensuing “press” coverage led to the dissemination of these practices beyond local churches.  And with the “importation” of European developments, the Great Awakening took off in America.

For readers who might be interested in these developments, they might look up the work of a couple of early ministers.  They are Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen and William Tennent.  The first, ascribed by some as the “father” of America’s version of the Great Awakening, influenced the second who argued that one needed a definite personal conversion to a faith experience followed up by an “assurance of salvation” which was necessary to claim one’s Christianity. 

Through Tennent’s efforts, one finds the ideas of the Great Awakening making their way to the New Jersey/New York area[5] and one cannot deny how this would affect political ideals of Americans in general.  The next posting will continue in this vein.  To this point, though, one can but identify that these developments had no to little effect on how Americans felt about their federated values – if anything, they were strengthened but in a parochial way.

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[1] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People – 2^nd ed. (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1972).

[2] Alan Taylor, American Colonies:  The Settling of North America (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 2001).

[3] Howard John Smith, The First Great Awakening:  Redefining Religion in British America, 1725-1775 (Madison, NJ:  Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015).

[4] Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening:  The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2007), xiv.

[5] Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People.

A GOOD PLACE FOR A BELL

To continue from the last posting, this entry looks at the development of Pennsylvania in mostly the 1700s.  But before the turn into the eighteenth century an event in the seventeenth century is going to have a good deal of an effect on the new one.  And that would be the conversion of William Penn to Quakerism.  That happened in 1663.  The effect would be that Penn used his land grant to establish Pennsylvania so as to, in part, provide refuge for his fellow Quakers.  And that would initiate the initial migration to this granted area in North America.

          But Quakers would soon be joined by emigrating Germans and Scot Irish people.  Despite that, Quaker beliefs had profound influence on Penn and his original ideas of governance.  First, Quakers were considered radical Puritans, but unlike other radicals, they, in their beliefs, democratized the dispensing of God’s grace.  They believed that each person shared in God’s grace in some varied way so that each person has a special or unique value or worth. 

Therefore, according to this resulting aura in each person, each is unique with the potential to make his/her own contribution.  The belief further sees each person as equal, and it projects a responsibility for each to look after all others.  This includes for one to do what is necessary, and within one’s power and ability, to protect others from harm.  In addition, Quakers emphasize that people rely on their inner conscious experiences – one’s conscience serves as a basis for a moral life.[1]  One can observe the effects of such a belief system on the actions of Penn and of his cohorts.

One aspect of this bias can be detected, and mentioned in the previous posting, about how Penn interacted with indigenous people.  Despite his land grant, he initiated and completed a series of agreements with the local tribe leaders to attain tracts of land.  Some of the details of these additions are involved, but one can judge Penn’s actions as above board in every case.

Another aspect of this bias was how it attracted its early “fellow travelers” – they have been described as the dredges of society.  It was from those ranks that the first immigrants were recruited.  And it is those who, once on this side of the Atlantic, started what was to become a very industrious and successful colony.  To be measured, though, Quakers never accounted for more than ten percent of the immigrants that would populate this land mass.  Eventually, the immigrant population became anglicized (including Penn’s son).[2]

          One uncommon result of the Quaker influence, uncommon as compared to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, was that religion’s anti formal education bias.  Unlike the other colonies, Pennsylvania delayed any establishment of an academy or higher educational facility.  To recall, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia each had one – Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary. 

In 1740, the Academy of Philadelphia was started, and that institution became first the College of Philadelphia and then the University of Pennsylvania.  Despite, or because of its later start, the institution took on an Enlightenment prone curriculum almost from its beginning.  Some of the famous names of Enlightened thinkers one can associate with the University of Pennsylvania include William and John Alison, John Ewing, Benjamin Rush, and, of course, Benjamin Franklin.[3]

And this short overview of the Pennsylvania colony should share some information as to the beginnings of Philadelphia and, by doing so, more information can be added as to Penn’s efforts in this settlement.  And one question the reader might ask, why did Charles II grant the initial lands that were to become Pennsylvania and Delaware to a Quaker.  Well, the grant was to satisfy a loan the king had with Penn’s father, Admiral Penn, mentioned earlier in this blog.  And part of the story includes a conflict with Maryland since the Penn grant overlaid with territory issued to Lord Baltimore and a resulting armed conflict, Cresap’s War, settled the dispute.

Shortly after that conflict, Penn organized a colonizing expedition.  Penn himself led this effort and upon landing (in New Castle, Delaware) set out to establish a peaceful change of government from Baltimore’s claims in which its people pledged allegiance to the new proprietor, Penn.  This led to the first structured government, previously described. 

Moving up the Delaware River, Penn, along with a group of fellow Quakers, then founded Philadelphia in order to secure religious freedom of the group.  Without going into the details, these developments had as a backdrop a complicated set of antagonism with local tribes.  These pitted settlers in Maryland against Susquehannocks and the settlement of nearby areas by other European immigrants, e.g., Dutch, Swedish, and English in what would become Delaware and New Jersey.

As for the general areas of what became Philadelphia, they drew the interest of European explorers all the way back to 1609 when Henry Hudson was actively seeking a Northwest Passage to the Far East.  Some years later the New Sweden Company engaged in fur trade activities.  This included the building of a fort.  A series of claims and establishment of business enterprises followed – including the establishment of New Sweden – but it had difficulties remaining viable.  But as far as establishing a permanent settlement, it was the Penn group that did so.

He, upon arriving at that area, found about fifty people – mostly subsistence farmers – making their livings there.  From the start, he foresaw a city as a safe zone for people of all faiths.  They would be able to practice their religions in freedom and be able to live peacefully together.  Penn personally appreciated this vision because he had experienced discrimination due to his Quakerism. 

He also was an early visionary who saw the Enlightened urban plan of a grid outlay that would mimic English rural towns rather than its crowded cities.  He also advocated spacious house plots which could have gardens and even orchards.  The first purchasers would be allotted plots along the river.  He planned for a commercial center, a state house, and some other key buildings.[4]

In this Philadelphia story, one does not see any diminution of federated values.  If anything, Penn encouraged those foundational elements that would enhance the institutional qualities that not only allowed it to influence how the various polities got started but encouraged people to think in terms of adopting federal values in how they saw governance should occur.  This included high degrees of tolerance for believers of other faiths and even accommodation of indigenous people. 

In short, the combination of Puritanical thinking and Enlightenment ideas and ideals, while contrary on many levels, did not contradict each other in this area of concern at least under the leadership of Penn.  Here is how the History Channel describes Pennsylvania’s origins:

 

Philadelphia, a city in Pennsylvania whose name means City of Brotherly Love, was originally settled by Native American tribes, particularly the Lenape hunter gathers, around 8000 B.C.

By the early 1600s, Dutch, English and Swedish merchants had established trading posts in the Delaware Valley area, and in 1681, Charles II of England granted a charter to William Penn for what would become the Pennsylvania colony.

Penn arrived in the new city of Philadelphia in 1682. A Quaker pacifist, Penn signed a peace treaty with Lenape chief Tamanend, establishing a tradition of tolerance and human rights.

But in 1684, the ship Isabella landed in Philadelphia carrying hundreds of enslaved Africans. Tensions over slavery, especially among local Quakers, resulted in the 1688 Germantown Petition Against Slavery, the first organized protest against slavery in the New World.

Penn’s colony thrived, and soon Philadelphia was the biggest shipbuilding center in the colonies. Among those attracted to the city was Benjamin Franklin, who in 1729, became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette.

The Pennsylvania State House—later known as Independence Hall—held its first Assembly meeting there in 1735. State representatives ordered a large bell for the building in 1751 with a Biblical inscription: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”[5]

 

Of course, Philadelphia would play a central role in the events leading up to the Revolution.

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[1] See “Quakers,” BBC (July 3, 2009), accessed May 12, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/subdivisions/quakers_1.shtml#:~:text=of%20the%20Quakers-,Quakers%20believe%20that%20there%20is%20something%20of%20God%20in%20everybody,as%20the%20basis%20of%20morality.

[2] Allen C. Guelzo, The American Mind, Part I – a transcript book – (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2005). 

[3] Ibid.

[4] “History of Philadelphia,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed May 12, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Philadelphia#:~:text=The%20written%20history%20of%20Philadelphia,inhabited%20by%20the%20Lenape%20people.

[5] History.com Editors, “Philadelphia,” History Channel (March 8, 2019), accessed May 13, 2021, https://www.history.com/topics/us-states/philadelphia-pennsylvania .  

PENN PENS-IN INCLUSION

 

The next colonial tale this blog wishes to review is that of Pennsylvania, but as promised in the last posting, a short overview is helpful.  That would be a comparison between initial natural rights view and a federal view.  The reason for this insertion at this time is that the development of Pennsylvania took place mostly during the 1700s – it started its existence as a colony in 1681 when William Penn was issued the land grant by King Charles II.  And, the ensuing years, as this blog has already described, saw an increased influence of Enlightenment ideas.

          Along with those ideas, John Locke’s arguments were being considered by the American educated class.  Locke would pose serious questioning of prevailing either feudalistic notions, to the extent they existed in America, but also Puritanical rationales that promoted a more equitable social arrangement – as opposed to an Anglican/Roman vertical view that supports hierarchical church structures and power distributions.  Locke’s ideas, as he initially proposed them, promoted what would he called a “social contract” approach to the founding and development of polities.

          In formulative language, he described polities being initially created by free-standing individuals.  With complete freedom to act as each person wished, to formulate an authoritative entity for mutual benefits, each would surrender those rights – and only those rights – that allow for such an arrangement and retain all other rights.  This is a social contract.  And given the retention of each person’s bulk of rights – naturally endowed – this approach to government and politics can be called the natural rights approach or view.  These ideas were part of the array of Enlightenment ideas which also supported non-Lockean arguments.

Here is how Stanford Encyclopedia describes Lock’s contribution:

 

In the Two Treatises of Government, [Locke] defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society.  Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property.  Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments.  Locke is thus also important for his defense of the right of revolution.  Locke also defends the principle of majority rule and the separation of legislative and executive powers. In the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke denied that coercion should be used to bring people to (what the ruler believes is) the true religion and also denied that churches should have any coercive power over their members.  Locke elaborated on these themes in his later political writings, such as the Second Letter on Toleration and Third Letter on Toleration.[1]

 

What this blog has shared is that the ideas of Locke have been misinterpreted today – a philosophic point of contention – and have, therefore, helped lead the nation to the current polarized political landscape.  So, to help understand Pennsylvanian history and to help understand the current political debate, it is useful to review a set of distinctions between natural rights view and federal view.

          This review is organized by comparing the positions of these views in relation to a list of issues.  The issues are general conception amongst people, moral role of government, era of dominance in American history, and expectations of individuals.

 

·       General conception amongst people:  natural rights view sees that political order is equal to marketplace relationships (competing interests); federal view sees that political order is equal to a commonweal (undivided interests)

·       Moral role of government:  natural rights view is neutral to this issue, it provides protection for individual moral positions and its emphasis is on governmental procedures (e.g., due process rights); federal view provides structural prerequisites for self-rule by which local/communal moral positions vie in the consideration of proposed policy

·       Era of dominance:  natural rights view has been dominant in the last 70 plus years; federal view was dominant from the beginning of colonial existence to the late 19^th century with strong influence, if not dominance, through the New Deal and World War II period

·       Expectation of individual:  natural rights view expects people to be respectful of others’ rights and behavior from a self-interest point of view; federal view expects active participation in creating a common environment and caring attitudes of fellow citizens and for the whole community.

 

So, with these general distinctions, one can better understand Pennsylvania evolvement.

          Pennsylvania (or Penn’s Woods) was granted to Penn late in the 1600s.  Actually, the territory is named for Penn’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn.  The family retained ownership of the grant until the American Revolution at which time the family was expelled.  The grant would eventually lead to two colonies, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

          Original settlers were mostly Penn’s fellow Quakers.  That religion was originally a radical form of Puritanism.  In addition to British Quakers, the area attracted large numbers of Germans and Scot Irish people.  One can detect that German influence by the number of towns or areas in Pennsylvania holding German or German derived names.  Roughly 30 percent of current Pennsylvanians claim German ancestry.[2]  And while initial relations with indigenous people, the Lenape, were cordial, eventual war broke out between settlers and local tribes (especially as extensions of the French and Indian War hostilities).

          The first efforts to establish a government was an extension of the land grant.  William Penn was the appointed governor, although he did not live there, and a 72-member council and larger general assembly constituted the colonies governance.  This did not work, and subsequent “frames of government” were written and put into effect in 1683, 1696, and 1701.  The last instrument was known as the Charter of Privileges and served as an organizing document until the American Revolution.  The next frame was to be a constitution, i.e., a compact-al instrument.

          Admittedly, Penn’s initial and subsequent “constitutions” were not occurrences in which a people gathered to hammer out an organizing document to arrange for a structure of governance and spelling out the other functions of government.  But Penn can be judged as being highly influenced by federal principles.  Here is a short overview of his handiwork:

 

[Upon visiting America in 1699], he put forward a plan to make a federation of all English colonies in America.  There have been claims that he also fought slavery, but that seems unlikely, as he owned and even traded slaves himself.  However, he did promote good treatment for slaves, and other Pennsylvania Quakers were among the earliest fighters against slavery.[3]

 

One can readily read that he was biased toward inclusion and, given his Puritanical view, was biased against hierarchical structures.       

          But in all of this, one should not lose sight that Pennsylvania was a business arrangement and, unfortunately, Penn was not above racists attitudes prevalent during his time (and one can argue, still exist today).  But he had a demonstrable federal bent.  He attempted inclusive policies and even sided at times against his commercial interests.  And to put a finer point on this portrayal, this blog has clearly indicated that the federal views that existed at the time limited their inclusiveness to white, European peoples and has given that version of federalism the name parochial/traditional federalism.

          This blog will at this point stop this story and pick it up in the next posting with the political developments that characterize that colony’s experience in the years leading up to the Revolution and independence.  What one generally sees in that history is the story of an industrious people and the development of the colonies’ first prominent urban center, Philadelphia.

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[1] “Locke’s Political Philosophy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005/2020), accessed May 10, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/#:~:text=Locke%20used%20the%20claim%20that,better%20ensure%20the%20stable%2C%20comfortable .  What exactly Locke’s views mean is of great philosophic debate.  This blog, from time to time, has alluded to the fact that even Locke did not believe what has come to be seen his ideas to mean today.  This citation goes on to describe this point.  There are those who emphasize, even to the exclusion of other concerns, that Locke posed a position of natural rights.  This position argues everyone can do what he/she wishes as long as he/she does not interfere with the rights of others.  But there is another interpretation:  that is, once formulated under governance, individuals have certain duties and obligations under a principle of natural law.  Here, the door is opened to consider religious notions of what makes up natural law.  Be that as it may, the point is that a purely hedonistic view of rights would be averted if this latter view was adopted.

[2] See “Pennsylvania German Language,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed May 10, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_German_language .  Of note also has been the immigration of a good number of Dutch people.

[3] “Brief History of William Penn.” William Penn (n.d.), accessed June 8, 2020, https://www.ushistory.org/penn/bio.htm .