The Fraternal Compromise
Some opponents of British rule drew on the legacy of the Levellers. But the only published writer to directly challenge both slavery and patriarchy while demanding liberty for the colonies was James Otis, in his 1764 pamphlet, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved.
Whether white or black, he proclaimed, all colonists were by nature freeborn and women as free as men. The resulting firestorm of controversy caused him to back down.17 Thomas Paine stepped forward to denounce slavery in 1775 and later wrote an eloquent defense of both the American and French Revolutions in The Rights of Man. In that book and his later Agrarian Justice Paine condemned the inequality of wealth, called for a progressive income tax, and outlined the principles of a welfare state.18Paine also flirted with feminist ideas. His ‘‘Occasional Letter on the Female Sex’’ written in 1775, echoed Montesquieu, deploring the oppression of women in the despotic countries of Asia and calling for more appreciation of their contributions in Europe. His anonymously written Common Sense lashed out against the hereditary aristocracy. Like many of his more respectable counterparts, Paine chose to rally the troops around a youthful challenge to aging tyranny. That the colonies had prospered under British rule did not imply that they should remain under its thumb. As Paine put it, ‘‘We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat.”19 It was not in the interest of a man to be a boy all his life. But Paine never openly advocated democratic rights for women.
Like middle-aged men chafing at their fathers but mindful of the possible disobedience of their own sons, the founders of the Republic carefully delimited the bounds of legitimate authority. The King had overstepped the bounds of paternal authority even as his subjects had outgrown them.20 Revolutionary rhetoric suggested that Britain was an uncaring father, an unnatural mother, or perhaps a horrid combination of the two, a feminized male, Queen Georgianna.21 The British, for their part, reaffirmed parental authority.
They were quick to ascribe disloyalty based on the fictive kinship of race: those favoring independence were drawing upon the assistance of ‘‘redskins and yellow-skins”, ‘‘black-skins, blue skins”—savages rather than true men.22 At best, American freedom fighters were rabble, men lacking distinction or property. Royalists pointed to gender inconsistencies as well: if men should be governed only by direct representation how then could women be excluded?23The brothers united against their father, and fraternity helped forge a broad-based coalition of white men. Those with qualms regarding slavery set them aside in the interests of more unified resistance.24 Once the war was joined the British promised manumission to any slaves who would abandon their rebel masters to support the loyalist cause. They made good on that promise even after they conceded to the revolution, and more than 3,000 African Americans emigrated to freedom in Nova Scotia.
The women who had helped keep farms and businesses running during the war were urged to devote themselves to ‘‘republican motherhood”, raising a new generation of virtuous citizens.25 Abigail Adams's injunction to her husband to ‘‘remember the ladies'' while drafting the new constitution was fended off with the humorous objection that women would always be able to wield the ‘‘despotism of the petticoat''. John Adams was opposed to any such leveling of distinctions, as indicated by the letter to his son in this chapter's epigraph.26
Thomas Jefferson feared that the expansion of trade and commerce would corrupt men, not to mention women. Federalists like Alexander Hamilton, who believed that economic development would be a force for moral good, countered Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian, family-based economy.27 Hamilton insisted that factories could increase women’s productivity. Neither he nor Jefferson foresaw the ways that productivity might further undermine the patriarchal order.
Montesquieu’s metaphor of social engineering, the so-called ‘‘checks and balances’’ brought the framers to a compromise. Collective interests shaped these checks and balances. Although educated women played an important role in republican debates, they seldom challenged hierarchies of gender or race. Mercy Otis Warren, sister of James Otis and historian of the Revolution, criticized the Federalists for designing a constitution that gave the central government too much power. Judith Sargent Murray urged women to ambitiously pursue education and employment on the grounds that men themselves would benefit.28
The American Revolution has been described in terms of the ‘‘politics of liberty’’.29 But its long run success hinged upon a new sense of national identity, nourished by the hope that citizenship might also confer some protection against ill health and bad luck. Wagering that the status quo could be shaken in Britain and France, as well as the United States, Thomas Paine outlined a remarkably detailed proposal: Taxes on low- income families should be replaced by a progressive tax on wealth, providing revenues sufficient to provide retirement benefits and payments for children under fourteen (provided they attended school). British authorities immediately condemned The Rights of Man and charged Paine with treason. His ideas, however, shaped British and American radicalism for years to come.30