Was the Revolution Conservative?
Boorstin Says Revolution Was Not as Revolutionary as Commonly Held
Boorstin's thesis is that the American Revolution was not actually a revolution, rather a conservative movement back to the rights and privileges Englishmen once enjoyed. The Founders did not have a political theory, they merely wanted to be acknowledged as equal citizens of the Empire and be treated as such, despite living in America.
The Enlightenment in America
The reason the Revolution is thought of in the wrong terms, as more of a distinctively European struggle, is twofold. First, because of a stress on Enlightenment values in colonial America. Historians, Boorstin claims, have over stressed the importance of the Enlightenment in America in an effort to place the Revolution "in the main current of European history."
The second reason, which stems from the first, is the French Revolution has been made the model by which all other revolutions follow. Somewhat anachronistically, the vocabulary and events that took place in France are seen in America, even though no such pattern exists. The Revolution was significant, a triumph of constitutionalism and not just a social revolution as happened in Europe.
The Revolution a Conservative Movement
Further, Boorstin argues, the American Revolution was not a revolution at all, if continental revolutions provide the pattern. The American nation was born from a colonial rebellion, its leaders writing a Declaration of Independence and not a Declaration of the Rights of Man. While the Revolution did include elements of a social revolution, such as redistribution of property, that was but a small part of it. If it were only that, the American Revolution would be no different than populism, Jacksonianism, or the New Deal.
The American Revolution was less progressive and more conservative. The American leaders, whom Boorstin calls lawyers, did not seek radical change, instead they sought to go back to what they considered the purer British institutions. The Revolution did not come about from a nationalist spirit, but, as Boorstin says, the United States was a pis aller, a worst case scenario by men who were doubly reluctant to create a new state.
The Declaration of Independence
Boorstin points to two topics that prove the conservatism of the Revolution: the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration is a technical, legal document, completely in contrast with comparable documents from the French Revolution. While the French dealt not only with the rights of their own people, but also those of all mankind, the Americans wrote a "document of imperial legal relations." The majority of the Declaration is filled with historical instances, grievances of a people against their ruler. It points out the failures of King George III and seeks to remedy those constitutional failures.
Thomas Jefferson
The second topic, Thomas Jefferson, reveals a complete lack of interest in political theory amongst the founders. His letters make occasional reference to institutions, and the legality and policy of them, but rarely does he touch on political theory. Jefferson does not deal with abstract political thought, as the French did, because in his mind the institutions should not change. He did not imagine a complete revolution of the British system, merely a perfecting of it. Jefferson, along with the other early American leaders, were not avoiding basic philosophical problems, rather they had no need to do so.
The American Revolution, according to Boorstin, is then an affirmation in older British institutions. It was a conservative movement meant to keep those institutions, things Americans hold dear to this day such as trial by jury, due process of law, and the rights of free speech. It was not a revolution at all, following the European sense of the word.
