Mr. President Read online

  A century and a half later, this was all common knowledge for the educated men in Philadelphia who held their tongues when James Wilson introduced his motion. They knew the grisly details of England’s catastrophic civil wars that stemmed from the fallout between Parliament and King Charles I: the beheading of the king in 1649, the rise of Oliver Cromwell, his conquest of Ireland and Scotland, and the transformation from a nominal republic to a dictatorship under his rule. They knew that British people had recoiled and reinstituted a monarchy in 1660, that the old rivalries between Parliament and the Crown continued, and that in 1688 the Glorious Revolution had affirmed forever Parliament’s standing as a governing body.

  They also knew that Parliament, to restore security and ensure continuity, placed a new pair of monarchs on the throne, William and Mary, even as it constrained royal authority with a Bill of Rights. Henceforth, Britain would be governed by Parliament and the Crown simultaneously. By distributing power rather than concentrating it, the revolutionaries of 1688 had inoculated the British polity against tyranny.

  At least that was the plan. Over the next eighty-eight years, while the American colonies remained within the British realm, two emergent political parties—Whigs and Tories—squabbled over the meaning and operation of this mixed system. Broadly speaking, Whigs viewed themselves as the upholders of the Glorious Revolution, trumpeting individual liberties and pushing back against any hint of monarchical abuse, while Tories favored the stability that comes with established hierarchies, often siding with the Crown in its inevitable tugs-of-war with Parliament.

  That’s the simplistic picture, comprehensible to us today, but the men who gathered at the Pennsylvania State House in the summer of 1787 to establish a new set of rules for the fledgling United States, having been raised within this political matrix, had a much richer understanding of the complexities of Whiggism and Toryism. Although their ideas might differ on how to weight the elements, they all believed in the superiority of a mixed governmental system. Had they been asked to devise a constitution in 1760, before their quarrels with the mother country, they would no doubt have come up with a plan closely resembling the British model, which all agreed was the best in the world. Wilson’s motion for a single executive would have passed by acclamation in a moment, and they would have haggled only over the particulars. They all would have wanted to fashion their government around both a monarch—whether selected by birth, appointment, or election—and a body representing the people, something akin to Parliament.

  Much had happened between 1760 and 1787, however. When Charles Pinckney, the first speaker on the subject of establishing an executive office, warned against endowing that office with powers over “peace & war &c.,” all he needed to do was utter the m-word—“monarchy.” The term that had once inspired such reverence was now the kiss of death.

  The tectonic shift in political philosophy did not come easily. In fact, the Revolutionary generation—the “rebels” of the 1760s and 1770s—were so deeply imbued with the notion of monarchy that they refused to renounce their allegiance to the British Crown until the bitter end, long after empirical evidence had proved the king an adversary. For more than a decade, colonists blamed all their troubles on Parliament, the king’s ministers, and their “Tory” allies in America, while excusing the king himself.

  On August 14, 1765, when a Boston crowd hung a straw man and a giant boot from an elm tree at the south end of town, they identified the figure with the initials “A.O.,” signifying Andrew Oliver, the local official who would be collecting money for the stamps that Parliament required on all colonial court documents, contracts, licenses, newspapers, almanacs, and even playing cards. The boot needed no explanation; everyone knew it represented the Earl of Bute, nicknamed Jack Boot, the former tutor to King George III who had now become his chief adviser. The sole of the boot was painted green, an oblique reference to the British prime minister George Grenville, author of the infamous bill. Even in the most provocative street theater, the king was excused. In the minds of the protesters, the Stamp Act was thrust upon colonial Americans by his advisers and by Parliament, and it was to be executed by appointed officials, but King George III, who presumably had been duped into supporting the measure, lay blameless. Indeed, when the act was repealed the following year, colonial protesters sang his praises for releasing them from the burden imposed by Parliament. One New England minister told his congregation that when the king signed the repeal, he said that “if he had known it would have given his good subjects in America so much uneasiness, he never would have signed the former act.”5

  In 1767 John Dickinson, in his influential Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, urged colonists to apply economic pressures to force the repeal of a new round of taxation, but he simultaneously entreated them to eschew any measures that would alienate them from their mother country, and in particular from their king. “We have an excellent prince, in whose good dispositions toward us we may confide,” he wrote. Even if the king was momentarily deceived “by artful men,” he would not become “cruel or unjust,” and his “anger” would not be “implacable.” “Let us behave like dutiful children who have received unmerited blows from a beloved parent,” he concluded. “Let us complain to our parent; but let our complaints speak at the same time the language of affliction and veneration.”6

  Through the late 1760s and early 1770s, as Parliament continued to thrust taxes on American colonists, and as colonists continued to resist, not even the wildest rebel dared question the king himself. In part to prove they were patriots rather than traitors, protesters continued to profess allegiance, to celebrate the king’s birthday and the anniversary of his coronation, and to begin all their raucous toasts with a drink to his health. Patriots believed that if the king would only cast away his devious advisers and listen to the colonists’ complaints without prejudice, he would side with his American subjects. At least publicly, they had to profess that belief; otherwise, they would be challenging the very heart of British government and culture.

  With each new round of repression, colonists selected appropriate scapegoats. In 1768, for instance, the villain of choice was Earl of Hillsborough, the newly elected secretary of state for the colonies, who ordered a clampdown on those resisting the Townshend duties. When crowds covered the doors of Tories with dung, they labeled it “Hillsborough paint.”

  In the Tea Act controversy of 1773, colonials directed their ire at Parliament, Prime Minister Lord North, the East India Company directors, and the agents who expected to sell tea in the colonies, whom they reviled as “political bombardiers.” When thousands upon thousands of citizens met in Boston’s Old South Church to protest the three boatloads of tea anchored in the harbor nearby, their angry speeches never tied King George III personally to the Tea Act, the East India Company, or any foul deed, even though he certainly had been a willing partner and active agent.

  Even in September 1774, as citizens throughout Massachusetts cast off all British rule outside of Boston, and as they riddled their protests with such rancorous phrases as “ransack our pockets,” “the parricide which points the dagger to our bosoms,” “numberless curses of slavery upon us,” and “unparalleled usurpation of unconstitutional power” (these quotations from the Suffolk Resolves), their resolutions always included a deferential disclaimer, offered at the beginning. Again, from the Suffolk Resolves:

  That whereas his majesty, George the Third, is the rightful successor to the throne of Great-Britain, and justly entitled to the allegiance of the British realm, and agreeable to compact, of the English colonies in America—therefore, we, the heirs and successors of the first planters of this colony, do cheerfully acknowledge the said George the Third to be our rightful sovereign, and that said covenant is the tenure and claim on which are founded our allegiance and submission.7

  The patriots’ ability to engage in actual rebellion while professing deference appeared to have no bounds. A final caveat in the Suffolk Resolves offers a clue to the
ir collective cognitive dissonance. Although “some unthinking persons” would understandably be tempted to engage in excess, patriots should at all costs abstain from rioting, for “in a cause so solemn, our conduct should be such as to merit the approbation of the wise, and the admiration of the brave and free.” Virtually all documents produced during the Massachusetts rebellion of 1774 contained similar disclaimers against mobs and riots. Rebels were trying not to tear down society but to shore it up and reset its course. They were good people, not traitors, and to prove this, they continued to profess allegiance to the crown that embodied their nation and culture—even as King George III opposed their every move.

  In November 1774, upon receiving the latest news from Massachusetts, King George III wrote to Lord North, his prime minister: “The New England governments are in a state of rebellion. Blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.” Both the king and Lord North resolved at that moment to squelch the uprising with additional troops. The following spring, the first wave arrived in Boston and was dispatched to Lexington and Concord, where they met armed resistance from people who considered themselves patriotic subjects of the British Crown. The war was on, yet colonial rebels still refrained from leveling verbal abuse at the king. Through the summer and fall of 1775, even George Washington, as he commanded an opposition army, blamed the British suppression on the “diabolical ministry” rather than on King George III, who, as commander in chief of the British forces, had actually ordered the military offensive. Routinely, Washington called his opponents on the battlefield “ministerial troops,” in preference to the traditional “King’s troops.”8

  Delegates to the Continental Congress, continuing the mental gymnastics, implored King George III, with the “utmost deference for your Majesty,” to intervene with his ill-willed ministers. His Majesty’s closest councillors, they informed him, were “artful and cruel enemies who abuse your royal confidence and authority, for the purpose of effecting our destruction.” Unrealistically, they asked the king to renounce the people he had been trusting to administer his regime for more than a decade.9

  Finally, on October 27, 1775, in front of a joint session of Parliament, King George III himself chided the rebels and vowed to suppress them. The Americans “meant only to amuse by vague expressions of attachment to the Parent State, and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me, whilst they were preparing for a general revolt,” he told the MPs. Since “the rebellious war now levied … is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire,” the king vowed “to put a speedy end to these disorders by the most decisive exertions. For this purpose, I have increased my naval establishment, and greatly augmented my land forces.” He also planned to make use of “foreign assistance” to squash the rebellion.10

  How would Americans respond to this categorical affirmation of enmity from their beloved Majesty?

  In Philadelphia, where the Second Continental Congress was meeting, news of the king’s speech arrived on January 8, 1776. Moderates like James Wilson, refusing to accept the evidence at hand, thought that if Congress made an unequivocal denial of any proclivities toward independence, maybe that would finally convince the king to alter the course of his ministers. Others, however, reasoned that since the king himself had broached the subject of independence, that option could finally be placed on the table here in America. The next day, January 9, an anonymous pamphlet called Common Sense appeared on the streets of Philadelphia. In truth it was authored not by an American but by a recent English immigrant, Thomas Paine, who had arrived penniless scarcely a year before. Paine was unencumbered by the local patriots’ fear of being labeled a traitor; in fact, because he had no reputation to lose, he didn’t have to worry about any label whatsoever. He could just speak his mind, and that he did.

  Paine’s aim was to promote independence, but first he challenged the colonists’ habitual support for the British monarch. Not only the king’s ministers were at fault, Paine argued, nor even just King George III; the heart of the problem was the institution of monarchy, which was inherently destructive to the people’s liberties. The very existence of a monarch, according to Paine, contradicted a fundamental tenet of the Enlightenment’s natural rights philosophy, the basic equality of human beings. He opened his assault with a rhetorical question: “How a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.” This “inquiry” into the origin of kings led him to conjure the image of William the Conqueror in 1066: “A French bastard landing with armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original.—It certainly hath no divinity in it…. The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into.”

  For Paine, “hereditary succession” offered final proof of the “evil of monarchy.” Even if one man somehow convinced his contemporaries that he should serve as their king, this offered no assurance about the prowess of his descendants. “One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.”

  So a king was simply an ass? Here was an argument presented in the language of tavern-goers, who constituted a hefty proportion of adult male colonial Americans. For years, much of the political discussion had been taking place in taverns, so these made natural venues for public readings of Common Sense. Throughout the early months of 1776, patriotic men lubricated with hard cider and rum punch read, listened to, and discussed Paine’s daring book, and by and large they embraced it. Imagine hearing Paine’s closing argument against kings, in that setting and at that time:

  In England a k—— [the foul word “king,” suddenly rendered too foul to write, was no doubt scornfully used in public readings] hath little more to do than to make war and give away places [lucrative governmental positions]; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.11

  Then the jeers—from the same men who had shouted “Huzzah!” for the king a short while back.

  Had Thomas Paine been writing in a historical vacuum, his words would hardly have had the impact they did, but during the early months of 1776, as Americans read and debated Common Sense, external events confirmed that the British imperial government, a mixed monarchy, was hell-bent on destroying the American struggle for liberty and equal representation. Late in February, patriots learned that Parliament, with George III’s enthusiastic support, had prohibited trade with the rebellious colonies and declared all American vessels, even those anchored in port, to be property of the Crown. Warships from the Royal Navy were setting American ports ablaze, while the king’s army had recruited mercenaries from small states in Germany—foreigners!—to fire on American freemen.

  Suddenly Americans no longer spoke only of the “diabolical ministry”; now they placed the blame for all their troubles, openly and unabashedly, on “Kingly persecution.” Almost in an instant, King George III was transformed from friend and protector to enemy. The British monarch, the ultimate symbol of national unity, became instead the devil incarnate.12

  Colonists had not deserted their king, they claimed; their king had deserted them. He had violated the original bargain, for instead of protecting his people, as a king must do, he was waging war against them, and for his betrayal King George III would pay a price. Like jilted lovers, Americans turned with a vengeance on the man they had once revered as a “Patriot King.”

  In July 1776, when the splinter colonies made their final break from Great Britain, Congress declared its reasons to the world, an
d this time, in the Declaration of Independence, angry accusations against the British Crown replaced deferential posturing. The body of that document was a full-throated diatribe directed primarily against one man: King George III. “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States,” the Declaration of Independence stated boldly, and to prove its point, it listed seventeen specific grievances in venomous terms, each complaint starting with the simple pronoun “He”—referring to a king they now disowned. “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people,” the document read. “He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.” By contrast, Congress made no mention of the wicked ministers who had served as whipping boys for patriot propagandists over the previous decade, nor of Parliament, certainly a full partner in the oppression of American interests and liberties. With contorted diction, Congress managed to blame even the laws passed by Parliament on the person of King George III: “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.”

  The moment of independence became deeply engraved in American consciousness and, with it, the complete and total disavowal of the British monarch. In the six years of military struggles that followed, every time American troops faced off against the king’s soldiers, and every time the king’s soldiers ran roughshod over civilians in occupied territory, their antipathy toward the king, and by association all things royal, was reinforced. Antimonarchical sentiments became intrinsically linked to the nation’s emergence, and therefore to its collective self-definition.