American Revolution: Seeds of Independence & Literary Evolution
Seeds of Independence: The Road to Revolution
The East India Company played a crucial role in bringing Indian goods, such as tea, coffee, and spices, to Europe and the Americas. The existence of these companies created a monopoly, forcing customers to buy exclusively from them. After the Boston Massacre, colonial leaders continued to oppose British policies. They decided to take action when ships from India arrived in Boston, leading to the Boston Tea Party. This event provoked a new confrontation between British authorities and dissenters in North America.
The Militia, an informal group of armed men, existed in Colonial America, particularly on frontier territories, to defend their towns against Native American attacks. An example of this is The War between Virginia and North Carolina in 1728. Later, militias were organized by The Sons of Liberty to defend their interests against the official army. This Boston Militia contributed to the beginning of a war situation.
The merchant elites sought support from neighboring colonies and established contact with other colonial leaders, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Between 1773 and 1775, the situation became increasingly dangerous for the commercial elites and the militia. Some leaders began to support a general meeting to discuss the situation. While nobody wanted an open war or political separation, the future Founding Fathers began to emerge. Due to the escalating conflict, Boston was deemed unsafe. New York was proposed as a meeting place, but ultimately, Philadelphia, with its intense intellectual atmosphere and the presence of Benjamin Franklin, was chosen.
Thomas Paine: Advocate for American Independence
Thomas Paine, an English intellectual and representative of the English Enlightenment, supported pre-Romantic ideas. He wrote documents defending the American cause, justifying the actions of the Continental Congress, and applying Enlightenment theories, such as political liberalism and natural philosophy, to practical problems. Paine was the first to suggest political separation from Britain.
He addressed the issue of the colonies having a Charter, which meant recognition of the monarchy’s rights and privileges over the territories. After the Boston Massacre, the assembly was dissolved, and the charter was abolished. Paine proposed two key measures:
- Creation of a new Charter with representatives to achieve a common purpose.
- Creation of a Charter of the United Colonies, emphasizing that the colonies should remain united, not independent.
A future Continental Charter should address key issues, such as individual freedom, property rights, and freedom of religion. These became the most relevant foundations of the newly created country and were later included in the Constitution. Paine introduced the possibility of a Constituent Assembly with the objective of creating a constitution. After fulfilling its purpose, the assembly would be dissolved, and its members would return to their territories, laying the foundations for the system of federalism.
Paine was invited to leave the Continental Congress and return to Europe. He became an advocate for the American cause in England but never returned to America. After independence, he engaged in strong debates with Jefferson, as seen in his works The Rights of Man and Agrarian Justice, which addressed the future organization of the American Congress. Paine’s views were more radical than Jefferson’s, who held a more conservative stance, believing that the US economy should be based on agricultural expansion. Paine, however, argued that agriculture should also be the basis of social justice.
Early American Literary Trends
Here are some examples of early American literary trends:
- Fiction: Moll Flanders, Manon Lescaut.
- Sentimental Novel: William Hill’s The Power of Sympathy, a perfect recreation of the English sentimental model; Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, imitating the European model with an American twist.
- Quixotic Novel: Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, satirizing sentimental novels; Tabitha Tenney’s Female Quixotism, the first American quixotic novel, following a woman’s literary descent into madness; Hugh Brackenridge’s Modern Chivalry, his only textual production and the most important work of American Quixotism, set in Western Pennsylvania.
The American Renaissance: A Literary Awakening
The American Renaissance was a fruitful literary period in America prior to World War I. During this time, American literary tradition became independent from European influence. In his commencement speech at Harvard, The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson explained that Americans had completed their journey, acknowledging that the influence of Europe had been necessary to learn from the best traditions.
The term “American Renaissance” was proposed by F.O. Matthiessen to express the importance of the European Renaissance for the American Revolution. In his essay American Renaissance, Matthiessen included authors and traditions crucial to understanding the American tradition, particularly those linked to transcendentalism, while excluding Gothic authors.
Leslie Fiedler, in her essay Love and Death in the American Novel, analyzed how the dark tradition of American literature contributed to shaping the American Renaissance, including Gothic authors in her analysis. The American Renaissance began in the first half of the 19th century, although some authors, like Emerson, started writing earlier. Most chronological definitions place the period between 1812 and 1861 (the Civil War). For instance, 1850, the year of publication of The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick, also marks the beginning of Leaves of Grass, a poetic collection belonging to the next literary generation.