68. Conservative Counter-Revolution: Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in 1780

Ironically, just as the great havoc wreaked by the flood of paper money was fading away, with the money collapsing and passing out of circulation, the conservatives, especially those of New York and Pennsylvania, were preparing to use the paper emergency to put through a veritable counterrevolution in the American economy and society. These men had long yearned for the reestablishment in America of the British system without Great Britain: a strong, centralized government dictating to the people of the various states, centralizing and controlling the vital money power through a central system of taxation. Now that the financial oligarchy had unto itself so much of the federal public debt, it was newly inspired to found a strong central government so that its greatly depreciated securities might be redeemed in full, and so that they could establish a new form of paper inflation which they could control. Instead of Continental paper, which, after its emission, travelled haphazardly into the economy, they would found a commercial bank in America. This would be a private bank to function as a public monopoly central bank and insure that public operations could be skillfully employed for the oligarchs’ private profit. This counter-revolution was also carried through to save the war effort— at a time when the war was almost over.

The way was paved for the triumph of conservatism in the latter years of the war by changes in two pivotal states, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In Massachusetts, the people in a referendum had overwhelmingly rejected the conservative constitution of 1778. Bowing to the inevitable, the conservatives realized that they would have to accede to the longstanding radical demand for a constitutional convention for the state separate from the existing legislature, the General Court. The towns, for example, had urged a separate convention by a majority greater than two-to-one. In June 1779, therefore, the General Court called such a convention for early September, with voting for delegates by universal manhood suffrage. In another concession to radical demands, the various articles of any proposed constitution would have to be ratified by two-thirds vote at a popular referendum.

The constitution of 1780 was drafted, at the convention, by three people: the extremely wealthy conservative James Bowdoin and the two Adams cousins, with John Adams as the major author. Like its aborted predecessor, the constitution was a highly conservative document, a reflection of the willingness of Sam Adams to tag along with John, despite the former’s radical instincts. A high property-value qualification for voting (60 pounds) was imposed for all state elections. This was substantially higher than that called for by either the old colonial charter or the rejected constitution of 1778. Furthermore, the sole qualification for officeholders was now to be in real estate, so that money or other personal property would not suffice to be eligible for holding office. A strong independent executive and upper house were imposed; and the governor could veto a legislative act which could be overridden only by a two-thirds vote.

A bill of rights was appended to the new constitution, but it was rather weak. Part of this “declaration of rights” authorized the legislature to require the towns to tax the public for church support, thus giving a constitutional mandate for a religious (i.e., a Congregational) establishment in Massachusetts.

The military was to be under the complete control of the governor, who could also appoint all judges. The governor was to be fully as powerful as in the New York constitution where he had a right of veto. Furthermore, judicial tenure was to be on good behavior (for all practical purposes for life), thus setting up an unchecked and long-lasting judicial oligarchy.

The heaviest opposition to the constitution came over the declaration of rights and its weakness in insuring freedom of speech or habeas corpus. Many towns opposed the property qualifications, as well as the appointive power of the executive and the oligarchy of independent judges. Also bitterly fought in the press and in the towns was the clause on establishment of religion. The conservatives insisted that a government religion was crucial to the government’s own existence, as well as to the existence of religion. As one clergyman fulminated, “Let the restraints of religion once be broken down, as they infallibly would be by leaving the subject of public worship to the humor of the multitude, and we might well defy all human wisdom and power to support and preserve order in government and state.” One rightist attributed much of the opposition to religious establishment to “profane and licentious deists” and “avaricious worldlings.” Even so, many towns rebuffed the religious establishment clause, including Boston, Bristol, Granville, and eight towns in Berkshire as well as seven in Middlesex County.

The towns objecting to the high property qualifications were concentrated in the West. They cogently raised the all too familiar issue of taxation without representation. Entering the lists once more for battle against the restricted suffrage of the new Constitution was Joseph Hawley, the only leading Massachusetts radical at the outbreak of the Revolution to keep firmly to the left path. He pointed out that the suffrage requirement was in direct contradiction to the constitution’s professed devotion to the equal natural rights of all. The provision violated the principle of taxation only with representation.

Other demands by opposition towns were for election of local officials, a tight rein on the governor, a unicameral legislature, and a loosening of the highly restrictive provisions for amendment of the constitution.

Even though such articles as the bill of rights really failed to receive the required two-thirds ratification by the people, the Massachusetts Convention fraudulently declared the entire constitution ratified. On June 16, 1780, the precedent of popular ratification was thus continued, but with a heavy admixture of chicanery. The first American constitution formed and ratified by democratic processes was therefore a highly conservative one—more conservative, indeed, than the one it replaced. In part this reflected and foreshadowed the growing conservative sentiment in America beginning in 1780; in part, too, it reflected the absence of radical leadership in Massachusetts to give a statewide lead and cohesion to the opposition towns. Sam Adams’ complete adherence to the conservative line of John is a case in point. Of the eminent leaders in the state, only the ailing Hawley could give even partial leadership to the radical cause. Even the town of Pittsfield, the Reverend Thomas Allen, and the Berkshire Constitutionalists, weary of their long struggle, yielded now and meekly submitted to the new constitution, eliminating their own raison d’etre.

But old Hawley did his best. As his biographer states, “Unlike most of his old colleagues, he had not turned away from political liberalism.”* Bitterly critical of the religious establishment and the constitution’s requirement that all legislators take a church oath, he was not allowed to take his seat in the Massachusetts senate because he refused to take the oath. Hawley decried this as an infringement on free elections and on the rights of the individual.

The constitution of 1780 disoriented what remained of the Massachusetts left, and conservatism swept into power in the state. The opportunistic conservative John Hancock, personally very popular in the state as a charismatic symbol of the Revolution, was easily elected governor. His efforts to drive Sam Adams from political power culminated in Adams’ ouster from the Continental Congress in 1782.

Conservatives also took control of the pivotal state of Pennsylvania during 1780. The high-water mark of radical control of Pennsylvania had come on October 4, 1779, when radical hatred of the leading conservative “Republicans” erupted in mob action. For some time before, the radicals had been planning to seize the families of all defecting Tories, and to deport them to British-occupied New York City. But at a Philadelphia militia meeting on October 4, their goal spontaneously changed to ousting the major conservative leaders from Philadelphia. This mob of militia seized three Tories and advanced upon the house of the hated James Wilson. Wilson, Gen. Thomas Mifflin, and other Republican leaders gathered there with arms, and a battle ensued at the Wilson home. The mob broke in and several persons were killed at this “Battle of Fort Wilson,” but Pennsylvania President Joseph Reed managed to arrive with a “silk-stocking” troop of light horse militia, and they carried the day.

As the war dragged on, the radical leadership of Pennsylvania was inevitably saddled with all the errors and excesses of the war effort, including the Battle of Fort Wilson, but more particularly the economic chaos caused by inflation and price controls. Even so, the upheaval of the October 1780 elections in Pennsylvania came as a sudden surprise. Philadelphia, in particular, turned out its radical constitutionalist representatives and swept the conservatives into power by a three-to-one vote. With the overthrow within Pennsylvania as their base, the conservatives were able to change drastically the ideological complexion of that state’s delegation in Congress. The stage was set for Robert Morris’ accession to almost supreme power in the United States.

In Virginia, the moderate administration of Gov. Thomas Jefferson was discredited by the British invasion and by the defeats in the war. These led to his replacement by the ultraconservative Thomas Nelson, who had opposed independence. Thus Virginia, too, was ripe for a swing to conservatism. The old Adams-Lee radical junto was no more, Richard Henry Lee having abandoned Congress during 1781. As for the remainder of the South, invaded, war-torn, and battered, it was hardly in any position to play a leading role in national politics. And in New York, George Clinton’s centrist administration permitted the conservative oligarchs plenty of room for maneuver, while at the same time its existence frightened the conservatives sufficiently to turn to national centralization as a refuge against political insecurity in New York.

*E. Francis Brown, Joseph Hawley: Colonial Radical (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), p. 177.