Just how does Brad imagine patriots defended the revolution and basic political rights in the eighteenth century?
American revolutionaries, before the war of independence, organized a committee in every village, town, and city to enforce "the standards of proper revolutionary behavior," using real violence and threat of it, including such methods as tarring and feathering: <http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0304/2006.html>.
The term "lynching" traces its origin in the American Revolution: <http://www.bartleby.com/65/ly/Lynch-Ch.html>.
American revolutionaries were not civil libertarians:
***** The American Revolution did not look kindly on those who hesitated. In 1777 seventeen men from Farmington, Connecticut, were jailed for failing to answer a militia call during a raid on nearby Danbury....As James Allen reported from Philadelphia, "Many people who disapprove Independence have no other wish than to remain at peace, & secure in their persons without influencing the minds of others."
But this was not one of the available options. The choice, really, was to join the Revolution or suffer the consequences. In Farmington, as in most communities, the alternative to the Revolution was jail or banishment, but in Morristown, New Jersey, it was the gallows. There, the local court sentenced 105 suspected loyalists to hang, but it reprieved all those who enlisted for the duration of the war. Four prisoners who refused to bend were in fact hanged, while the others chose the army over death. "The love of life prevailed," explained James Moody, a loyalist whose friends had been arrested."...
On November 15, 1775, George Washington wrote to Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull:
Why should persons who are preying upon the vitals of their Country be suffered to stalk at large, while we know they will do us every mischief in their power? Would it not be prudence to seize of those Tories who have been, are, and that we know will be active against us?
But how were those Tories to be identified, and under what legal pretext might they be seized? The identification, according to Thomas Paine, was easy: "He that is not a supporter of the Independent states of America...is, in the American sense of the word, A TORY." The oaths of allegiance administered by each state turned this definition into law.
Most states, reflecting wartime fever, did not stop with oaths. In Virginia, wishing "health, prosperity, or success" to King George III constituted a crime; in Connecticut, declaring allegiance to the king could lead to a death sentence. In New York, "An Act More Effectually to Punish Adherents of the King" declared that "preaching, teaching, speaking, writing, [or] printing" opinions favorable to the Crown was a capital offense, commutable by a three-year tour on a ship of war. At the close of the war New York set the standard for discriminatory lawmaking: it declared that royalist creditors could not collect debts from Revolutionaries, and it excused any "Assault, Battery, or Trespass" which had been committed "with Intent to further the Common Cause of America."
Even as state and local governments outdid themselves in their efforts to punish enemies of the Revolution, "out-of-doors" citizens continued to act on their own accord. The leading patriots of Bedford County, Virginia, with Colonel Charles Lynch presiding, conducted trials and meted out harsh sentences; typically, a prisoner received thirty-nine lashes, and those who refused to shout "Liberty Forever" were suspended by their thumbs until they did so. These were the first "lynchings," administered from a large walnut tree in Judge Lynch's own yard. As with many latter-day lynchings, government officials knew about the proceedings but did not care to stop them. After the war the Virginia legislature officially exonerated Colonel Lynch and his friends "from all pains, penalties, prosecutions, actions, suits, and damages" that might arise from their having inflicted harm on their "prisoners" without official sanction.
Civil liberties, in the context of the Revolution, were perceived as unnecessary encumbrances to the administration of true justice....
Some patriots joined the loyalists in decrying the abuse of civil liberties....Most patriots, however, were not too troubled by the persecution of their political opponents. Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina stated it succinctly: "The hardships of particulars are not to be considered, when the good of the whole is the object in view."...
Many patriots claimed that Tories were granted too many freedoms, not too few. On August 5, 1779, a writer for the _Pennsylvania Packet_ held forth:
Among the many errors America has been guilty of during her contest with Great Britain, few have been greater...than her lenity to the Tories....Rouse, America! your danger is great -- great from a quarter where you least expect it. The Tories, the Tories will yet be the ruin of you! 'Tis high time they were separated from among you. They are now busy engaged in undermining your liberties. They have a thousand ways of doing it, and they make use of them all. Who were the occasion of this war? The Tories! Who persuaded the tyrant of Britain to prosecute it in a manner before unknown to civilized nations, and shocking even to barbarians? The Tories! Who prevailed on the savages of the wilderness to join the standard of the enemy? The Tories! Who have assisted the Indians in taking the scalp from the aged matron, the blooming fair one, the helpless infant, and the dying hero? The Tories! Who advised and who assisted in burning your towns, ravaging your country, and violating the chastity of your women? The Tories!...'Tis time to rid ourselves of those bosom vipers. An immediate separation is necessary. I dread to think of the evils every moment is big with, while a single Tory remains among us.
This inflammatory rhetoric was not unusual. Those who sacrificed for the cause of freedom expressed more antagonism toward the Tories than toward the British....Joseph Hodgkins, the minuteman from Ipswich featured in chapter 2, could not abide the "Cursed Creaters Called Tories" who hindered the patriot soldiers in New York. On July 17, 1776, he worte to his wife Sarah, "one of them was Tried on winsday Condemend on thusday and Exicuted on friday & I wish Twenty more whare sarved the same."...
(Ray Raphael, _A People's Hisotry of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence_, Perennial, 2002 [first published by the New Press in 2001], pp. 212-217) *****
As for the French Revolution:
***** The French Revolution: The Radical Stage, 1792-1794
The proof necessary to convict the enemies of the people is every kind of evidence, either material or moral or verbal or written. . . . Every citizen has the right to seize conspirators and counter-revolutionaries and to arraign them before magistrates. He is required to denounce them when he knows of them.
Law of 22 Prairial Year II (June 10, 1794)
Inflamed by their poverty and hatred of wealth, the SANS-CULOTTES insisted that it was the duty of the government to guarantee them the right to existence. Such a policy ran counter to the bourgeois aspirations of the National Assembly. The sans-culottes demanded that the revolutionary government immediately increase wages, fix prices, end food shortages, punish hoarders and most important, deal with the existence of counter-revolutionaries....
On AUGUST 10, 1792, enraged Parisian men and women attacked the king's palace and killed several hundred Swiss Guards. The result of this journee was the radicalization of the Revolution....
By September, Paris was in turmoil. Fearing counter-revolution, the sans-culottes destroyed prisons because they believed they were secretly sheltering conspirators. More than one thousand people were killed. Street fights broke out everywhere and barricades were set up in various quarters of the city. All this was done in order to consolidate the Revolution - to keep it moving forward. On September 21st and 22nd, 1792, the monarchy was officially abolished and a republic established. The 22nd of September, 1792 was now known as day one of the year one. In December, Louis XVI was placed on TRIAL for violating the liberty of his subjects and on January 21, 1793, Louis was executed like an ordinary criminal. From this time on, the Revolution had no recourse but to move forward.
After the execution of Louis, the National Assembly, now known as the National Convention, faced enormous problems. The value of paper currency (assignats) used to finance the Revolution had fallen by 50%. There was price inflation, continued food shortages, and various peasant rebellions against the Revolution occurred across the countryside. France was close to civil war.
Meanwhile, the revolutionaries found themselves not only at war with Austria and Prussia, but with Holland, Spain and Great Britain. As the Revolution stumbled under the weight of foreign war and civil war, the revolutionary leadership grew more radical. Up to June 1793, moderate reformers had dominated the National Convention. These were the Girondins, men who favored a decentralized government in which the various provinces or departments would determine their own affairs. The Girondins also opposed government interference in the economy.
In June 1793, factional disputes with the Convention resulted in the replacement of the Girondins with the Jacobins, a far more radical group. The Jacobins and Girondins were both liberal and bourgeois, but the Jacobins desired a centralized government (in which they would hold key positions), Paris as the national capital, and temporary government control of the economy. The Jacobin platform managed to win the support of the sans-culottes. The Jacobins were tightly organized, well-disciplined and convinced that they alone were responsible for saving and "managing" the Revolution from this point forward. On June 22, 1793, 80,000 armed sans-culottes surrounded the meeting halls of the National Convention and demanded the immediate arrest of the Girondin faction. The Convention yielded to the mob and 29 Girondin members of the Convention were arrested.
The Jacobins now had firm control not only of the Convention, but the French nation as well. They were the government. And they now had even more pressing problems: civil war was everywhere, economic distress had not been lifted, they had to keep the sans-culottes satisfied, they suffered continued threats of foreign invasion and the nation's ports had all been blockaded. They lived, dreading the possibility that if they failed, so too would the Revolution. Only strong leadership could save the Revolution. The Committee of Public Safety assumed leadership, in April 1793. As a branch of the National Convention itself, the Committee of Public Safety had broad powers which included the organization of the nation's defenses, all foreign policy, and the supervision of ministers. The Committee also ordered arrests and trials of counter-revolutionaries and imposed government authority across the nation. What is amazing is that only twelve men controlled the CPS, although the CPS was ultimately led by MAXIMILIEN ROBESPIERRE (1758-1794).
In Robespierre's utopian vision, the individual has the duty "to detest bad faith and despotism, to punish tyrants and traitors, to assist the unfortunate and respect the weak, to defend the oppressed, to do all the good one can to one's neighbor, and to behave with justice towards all men." Robespierre was a disciple of Rousseau--both considered the general will an absolute necessity. For Robespierre, the realization of the general will would make the Republic of Virtue a reality. Its denial would mean a return to despotism. Robespierre knew that a REPUBLIC OF VIRTUE could not become a reality unless the threats of foreign and civil war were removed. To preserve the Republic, Robespierre and the CPS instituted the Reign of Terror. Counter-revolutionaries, the Girondins, priests, nobles, and aristocrats immediately fell under suspicion. Danton, a revolutionary who sought peace with Europe, was executed.
The CPS also closed the numerous political clubs of the sans-culottes. The CPS feared spontaneous action, that is, that the revolutionary leadership might pass into other hands. About 17,000 people died as a result of the Terror. The choice instrument, was the guillotine -- it was quick and humane. In 1794, there were mass executions at Lyons. Boats were fired upon and sunk at Nantes -- 500 were killed in one execution. About 15,000 people perished officially and over 100,000 people were detained as suspects.
Robespierre and the CPS resorted to the Terror but not because they were blood-thirsty madmen. They did, however, wish to create a temporary dictatorship in order to save the Republic (a Roman idea). By the summer of 1794, there seem to be less need for the Terror. The Republic seemed a reality, an aristocratic conspiracy had subsided, the will to punish traitors decreased, and most sans-culottes went home to tend to business. And, as the need for the Terror decreased, so too did Robespierre's power and leadership. Some members of the Convention, fearing for their own lives, ordered the arrest of Robespierre. On July 27, 1794, (the NINTH of THERMIDOR) Robespierre was arrested and guillotined the next day -- the sans-culottes made no attempt to save him. With the 9th of Thermidor, the machinery of the Jacobin republic was dismantled. Leadership passed to the property owning bourgeoisie, that is, those men of the moderate stage of the Revolution (see Lecture 12)....
<http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture13a.html> *****
Anyone wants to hear about the Haitian Revolution? -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>