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A Further Perspective
America’s Just Revolution
A reply to Professor John Keown on whether the American Revolution was a just war.
Responding to my critique of his rejection of the American Revolution based on traditional Christian Just War teachings, Georgetown University Professor John Keown insists that two thirds of colonial Americans agreed with him.
Unless he has previously undisclosed early American polling data, his point is unproven. Probably he references an aging John Adams’ famous supposed conjecture, 40 years after the war, that one third of early Americans supported revolution, one third were unsure, and one third were partial to Britain. One writer has surmised that Adams was actually referring to American attitudes towards the French Revolution and its British adversary, a chief issue during Adams’ presidency.
Some scholars estimate that 15 to 20 percent of American colonials favored Britain. Possibly about 2 percent of the newly independent United States’ population migrated to Canada because of their British sympathies. America’s war for independence remarkably united 13 previously disparate colonies, as expressed by their elected representatives. Americans sustained an often ill clad, unfed but still viable and spirited multi-racial army for more than 7 years, against superior invading forces that occupied American cities and frequently ravaged the countryside. As a percentage of population, the Revolution’s death toll would equal about 2-3 million fatalities today, making it the most deadly American conflict after the Civil War.
Not once after the conflict began did the cash-strapped and often fleeing Continental Congress seriously consider surrender or anything less than full independence. Such perseverance had to have required considerable popular support. In contrast, dissent against the war in the British Parliament was considerable. And Britain’s merchant class, among others, loudly protested the war’s costs and impact on trade. Although Britain was far more populated and wealthier, and it did not endure attacks on the homeland except for a spirited naval foray by John Paul Jones, it was British public opinion that turned; America’s never did.
Keown disparages the “planned aggression” of the American rebels at Lexington and Concord. The famous “shot heard round the world” came only after 10 years of American political and economic protests against British attacks on freedoms that had been historic for Englishmen and their once loyal colonists. And no one knows who fired it while the farmers and tradesmen lined up on Lexington Green against invading British regulars. These uninvited royalist troops sought to seize the arsenal of the Massachusetts colony, arms purchased by Massachusetts taxpayers, for their own defense, through the Massachusetts militia. The British military commander in Boston had already dissolved Massachusetts’ legislature and aspired to crush the colony’s new provincial congress. Britain’s own revolts against royalist tyranny in the 1640s, after King Charles dissolved Parliament, and in 1688, after King James II dissolved militias in favor of his own royalist army, were fought over similar outrages. As Winston Churchill smilingly observed to Americans, during World War II, American Revolutionaries fought in defense of ancient English liberties against a Germanic king (George III’s family was from Hanover) and his German (i.e. Hessian) mercenaries.
Keown questioned whether the American Revolution employed force as a “last resort.” But after 10 years of appeals for redress of grievances, appeals supported by British statesmen like the Earl of Chatham and Edmund Burke, how much longer should the Americans have persisted? Should they have waited until all their legislatures were dispersed, their leaders imprisoned, their arms seized, their cities occupied, and their courts usurped by British military judges? How could they possibly have met Just War teaching’s calls for legitimate authority and probability of success at that late hour?
As Chatham, Britain’s famed premier during the French and Indian War, declared in Parliament in 1777, two years after war began: “If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms — never — never — never! You cannot conquer America.” And at the start of the political struggle with Britain, in 1766, Chatham was similarly sympathetic: “I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.”
Chatham understood what Keown evidently does not. Britain’s Tory regime of that time was assaulting not just American liberties but ultimately English liberties, in pursuit of what Burke denounced as “injustice, oppression and absurdity.” America’s struggle was more than a mere tax dispute but an assertion of inalienable rights rooted in British custom and law and further refined in the Declaration of Independence. Keown faults Americans for all the war’s inevitable horrors. But why not fault instead the Tory regime’s dispatch of troops to America to suppress their previously faithful subjects? Does Just War permit colonial governments unlimited license upon their colonists, while allowing the colonists no resort at all, except to suffer endlessly until both law and liberty are extinguished?
As to slavery, Keown’s connection of it to Just War teaching in this case is unclear. The British were not fighting to end slavery, and Americans were not fighting to defend it. Colonies where slavery least existed, in New England, were the most adamant for independence. Deep South colonies were more reluctant. British Tories who fled to Canada took their slaves, protected by British law. Thousands of black Americans fought in the American Army, influencing George Washington’s own eventual anti-slavery views. In contrast, the infamous British General Banastre Tarleton, author of the “Waxhaw Massacre” in South Carolina, later served in the British Parliament as a fervid defender of the slave trade. Britain abolished slavery, which was confined mostly to its Caribbean colonies, only more than 50 years after the war and could do so only by agreeing to compensate the owners. Could Britain have afforded this enormous expense had America’s slaves added several times to the cost? And did not the words of the Declaration of Independence, affirming human equality, fan the tide of eventual abolition by both Britain and America?
Uncharitably, Keown berates the Declaration’s author for supposedly having enslaved his own children. In fact, all of Sally Hemmings’s children eventually were freed or permitted to escape. Their paternity remains unproven. And the latest scholarship argues against an aging Jefferson fathering multiple children with a young slave mistress while also living with his grown daughters, their husbands, his grandchildren, and hundreds of house guests, with none of them apparently noticing. Unlike Washington, Jefferson failed to free all but a few of his slaves, partly thanks to enormous debts that deprived him of ownership. But when signing the law outlawing America’s external slave trade (permitted but not mandated by the Constitution, as I incorrectly said in my earlier article), contemporaneous to Britain’s own ban, he became the last president publicly to denounce slavery until Abraham Lincoln.
Of course, America’s religious and secular left commonly deride America as little more than a long catalogue of crimes against the Indians, slaves, later immigrants, Japanese internees, and countless ostensible global victims of American imperialism, in stark comparison with an otherwise supposedly blameless humanity outside America. For them, the American Revolution is a petty tax dispute waged by hypocritical slave masters, ushering in an infamous empire. These scoffers are also typically campus lounge pacifists, who see Just War teaching primarily as a tool for proving no war is just.
Keown is more sophisticated than this crowd and, as an orthodox Catholic, cannot be easily counted among the utopians of the Religious Left. But his analysis shows a bias against America. And his stringent portrayal of Just War teaching begs the question of whether he would ever support any armed conflict. Even the most noble among fallen humanity are unlikely to neatly thread all the needles that academics like Keown demand. And Just War teaching, traditionally, is not just a limitation on war but is also, no less strongly, a command for force when required by justice.
America’s flawed but heroic founders, who risked their livelihoods and shed their blood that future generations might live better than they, pursued justice. The whole world has benefited from their sacrifice. If their cause was not just, then whose cause is?
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (50) | Leave a comment
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Old Soldier| 8.20.10 @ 7:48AM
It was freedom against tyranny. No further nonsense academic debate is necessary.
"I'd rather die than live down on my knees"
(Five Finger Death Punch - "Death Before Dishonor" - one of our troops' favorite bands)
Alan Brooks| 8.20.10 @ 12:17PM
Doesn't matter-- the real estate was taken from the natives, anyway.
A nonstarter. But go ahead, waste your precious time with it.
stmichrick| 8.21.10 @ 11:22PM
Which natives, Alan?
The ones who sold land for the cool colonist gadgets (guns) and alcohol?
The natives ( Indian Givers) who, in New England, started a war when they realized they had traded all their land?
Their problem was that there was no authority that said they ever owned it in the first place.
Larry in Iowa| 8.22.10 @ 6:37PM
Alan Brooks, Typical tripe from the left. America supposedly bears a special shame for doing to the Indians what the Indians often did to each other and what every strong and expanding society has done to every land holding but weak and static society in history. Moved in and took over. Apparently Alan believes we would have been better off leaving the vast majority of the continent to the tender mercies of the Spanish. I can see it now, Tijuana and Juarez in the Poconos or the Alleghenies instead of where they are.
Ret. Marine| 8.22.10 @ 6:33AM
ooooorah.
A. C. Santore| 8.20.10 @ 7:58AM
Georgetown University Professor John Keown is merely following Michelle Obama's directive that "we must rewrite American History," and pressing on with the Proto-Dictator's never-ending drive to denigrate this country.
What in the name of all that's holy did we do to deserve this?
Mimi| 8.20.10 @ 10:14AM
WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT'S HOLY DID WE DO TO DESERVE THIS ???
We did NOTHING...... It was a mistake in 2008.
We can fix it in November. Also...WATCH the angry Obama as he capitulates.....He is on the verge of making FATAL ERRORS!
Jim Hunter| 8.20.10 @ 8:10AM
Mr. Tooley,
I left a comment on Mr. Keown's article that you might find of interest regarding the legal separation of Great Britain from the American colonies.
Also, if you have not read it, buy the book "The Minute Men: The First Fight: Myths and Realities of the American Revolution" by John R. Galvin. It is well researched and a fascinating account of what happened at Lexington and Concord.
Jim Hunter
Tim*| 8.20.10 @ 8:27AM
We , Catholic Tea Party Rebels reject Brit LawBoy Keown's attempt to sell his American Cousins A Crap Sandwich .
Aaaand ,
" Keown acknowledged that many Roman Catholics in revolutionary America enthusiastically supported independence from Britain. John Carroll, later America's first Catholic bishop, famously accompanied Benjamin Franklin to Quebec to persuade (unsuccessfully ) Quebecers to join them against Britain. John's brother, the statesman Charles Carroll, became the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. "
The Tea Party Rebellion Escalates .
Watch & Learn .
We Can See November From Valley Forge .
Louis Jenkins| 8.20.10 @ 9:09AM
"For them, the American Revolution is a petty tax dispute waged by hypocritical slave masters, ushering in an infamous empire. "
Taxes had a lot to do with it, but it's not the full story. Bravo Mr. Tooley, I'm with you on this topic. Well written and understandable.
Derek Leaberry| 8.20.10 @ 9:33AM
The American Revolution was a conservative and just revolution, very different from the French bloodfest that came a few years later. However, the Revolution was betrayed by Alexander Hamilton and his centralizing schemes which included an elastic interpretation of the Constitution that only a leftist could love. By the end of the Hamilton neo-Presidency of the 1790s, Americans not only paid more in taxes than they did in 1773, the seeds of today's massive centralized government were ably planted. Consider Alexander Hamilton the first in a long line of big government quislings, the lodestar for Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and the modern Democratic Party.
Walking Horse| 8.20.10 @ 10:36AM
Emphatically agree. See Thomas DiLorenzo's book, _Hamilton's Curse_,
http://www.amazon.com/Hamilton.....amp;sr=1-1
Derek Leaberry| 8.20.10 @ 11:26AM
I am reading Ron Chernow's hagiography of Hamilton right now. I didn't realize how thoroughly Hamilton set the stage for the centralized state with a strong executive. The Chernow book has led me to downgrade George Washington in my esteem.
Vern Crisler | 8.20.10 @ 12:06PM
Nonsense....Neither Hamilton nor Lincoln can be classed with TR, WW, FDR, or LBJ. That's just purist libertarian claptrap.
Evanston2| 8.20.10 @ 4:25PM
Regarding taxes, 100% of what Americans paid in the 1790s was then expended on (at least superficially) American interests. Despite British claims that they were losing money on America (i.e., subsidizing the colonies), were these taxes really spent for the benefit of the colonies, or to hamstring them (lousy terms of trade, maintenance of monopolies, stopping westward expansion)? Also, I assume you're saying that the taxes were higher per capita, not just in total, in the 1790s as compared to 1773.
kingsmill| 8.23.10 @ 10:36AM
Read a true conservative's life of Hamilton-Forrest MacDonald.
Petronius| 8.20.10 @ 10:05AM
The "just war" template is codification of cowardice in the face of aggression. It provides an out to those who, when faced by a predator, will do anything but fight him. The only thing worse is that license to loaf called The Declaration of Interdependence, which is now being taught in the schools to bolster the self esteem of those who refuse to compete.
Evanston2| 8.20.10 @ 4:36PM
Yes, Mr. Keown must be proud of the historic symbiosis between Romanism and dictatorships of both the "right" and Left. Pesky protestants should learn Just War doctrine and bow down to centralized authority in both their faith and daily lives. Then they'd be "good" according to the non-Biblical code of the academics, clergy, and judges who do evil under the cover of their robes.
Patrick| 8.22.10 @ 5:15PM
Well, I'm glad that you actually know the basis of the Just War Doctrine, and aren't cursing it out of hand as more Romish bull*&^*.
Mr. Keown uses a distorted and unrealistic approach to Just War. Remember that the Catholic Church was able to not only justify, but earnestly support the Crusades, the Reconquista, and numerous other wars.
Remember friends, liberalism is an affliction upon all of us, and there are plenty of twits with elbow patches to scandalize any religion.
drgene| 8.20.10 @ 10:59AM
As a Catholic scholar/professor of religious studies let me say to Prof. Keown:
1. The Just War theory is obsolete--even modern
Catholic Ethics goes far beyond it in light of new
war technologies, the human right to revolution
in pursuit of God-given freedoms etc.
2. Let the antiquated Professor identify a list of all
modern wars & revolutions, even riots & civil
disobediences that meet all of these antique just
war criteria.
3. Is the professor so pacifistic because he thinks
(erroneously)Jesus rejected all violence?
His essay is merely academic silliness isolated from reality and from a deeper ethos about violence found in Jesus, Buddhism,Hinduism,
Taoism,Confucianism--in contradiction of the
ethos found in Islam(the QUR'an!) and light-
headed Catholic ethicists infatuated with the
"Social Gospel of Social Justice"as enunciated by
dumb American bishops for more than 4o years!
W. L. Barton| 8.21.10 @ 2:25PM
A Catholic scolar?
Thanks for the laugh. The web sure is full of liars and deluded psychos.
Keep worshipping the Beast, and it's evil representative , Benedict, worker for Satan.
The Great Whore, just ask Alexander, the Borgia Pope, and their historical correlation to Revelation.
ds80| 8.22.10 @ 11:00AM
Barton, you exude invincible ignorance. Thank God for the grace of final penetance.
Todd H in Lakewood, Ohio| 8.20.10 @ 11:03AM
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2308. All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.
2309. The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
However, "as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed."
2310. Public authorities, in this case, have the right and duty to impose on citizens the obligations necessary for national defense.
Those who are sworn to serve their country in the armed forces are servants of the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honorably, they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of peace.
This is the ACTUAL teaching of the Catholic Church on Just War...straight out of the catechism.
And my favorite part of this section of the Catechism:
2321. The prohibition of murder does not abrogate the right to render an unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. Legitimate defense is a grave duty for whoever is responsible for the lives of others or the common good.
AMDG
W.L. Barton| 8.20.10 @ 11:46AM
The catholic church is nothing but a group of apostate evil, led by the Beast representative, the Pope, who are the Great Whore.
"out of the ashes, the Beast shall rise". and out of the ashes of the Roman Empire, the revelation proved true.
RCV| 8.20.10 @ 11:55AM
Go crawl back into your hole, you ignorant bigot.
Tim*| 8.20.10 @ 1:34PM
Keyboard Leftist Religious CrankBoy is Very Upset Today .
W.l. Barton| 8.20.10 @ 11:43AM
Look's like Sharron Angle has a soul mate, the kind of gutless armchair warriors the net is full of.
I wish you punks would stop talking, and bring on your sedition.
And thanks to Bush and Cheney once again, for 8 years of murdering innocents civilians in Iraq, letting the best Americans die for NOTHING, but the wallets of bush/Cheney, and their Military Industrial Complex Mmammon whores.
All in my humble opinion of course.
Mammon Whore| 8.20.10 @ 12:36PM
I have heard much about this Military Industrial complexity, and would very much aspire to join in its most prifitable Mayhem, as well as enlarge my own Wallet in so doing.
Thank you, Sir, for bring this most dastardly Plot to my Attention! I shall get busy at once!
Tim*| 8.20.10 @ 1:29PM
Why don't ya stop talkin' Keyboard Toughie Girl and make us.
james wilson| 8.20.10 @ 11:48AM
Completely unlike the British colonies anywhere else, these grew without their direction and usually without their understanding. It was an entirely voluntary affair of tradition and custom.
Then one day the British awoke and realized they had valuable colonies, and Empire not of the American colonies had imposed great costs. That is when things unraveled.
Ray| 8.20.10 @ 12:50PM
"Georgetown University Professor John Keown insists that two thirds of colonial Americans agreed with him."
Then why did the Brits lose? I guess those "agreeable" colonists really didn't agree enough to, you know, SUPPORT the British troops.
Derek Leaberry| 8.20.10 @ 2:02PM
The Americans won because 1) their army proved spunky, 2) French intervention, and 3) Britain found further prosecution of the war worth the effort, especially monetarily.
Derek Leaberry| 8.23.10 @ 11:39AM
British found further prosecution of the war NOT worth the effort
Big Leo| 8.20.10 @ 2:02PM
As old Captain Putnam said to a reporter in the eighteen forties who asked why he fought, he said, "Young man. We had always governed ourselves. We intended to go on doing so."
WRJonas | 8.20.10 @ 5:34PM
Apparently we wound up up with the superior gene pool . We are still resisting today while the British have for all practical purposes surrendered to liberal /socialist propaganda .
George S| 8.20.10 @ 5:40PM
Keown may have his own theories on war, but a guy named Sun Tzu also has a thing or two to say on the subject. First and foremost, Sun Tzu describes the Moral Law:
"The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger."
Meaning, if people believe that they have the moral right on their side (i.e., defeat is worse than death for an enslaved people) then victory is assured because they will follow their leaders through anything. Sun Tzu recognized this as the basis for victory, regardless of army, generals, terrain, tactics, etc.
This is why we won the war. It was "Just" in our perspective. But Keown has a different definition of "Just" which has to do with the morality based on taking lives rather than upholding individual, God-given liberty.
All Keown has to know is that the Declaration of Independence was the People's moral stance put in writing which gave them the right to break free of tyranny. And the Constitution, which followed, was written to safeguard the return of that tyranny.
Easy stuff, if you are not a deep thinker or an intellectual.
Dick Simmons| 8.20.10 @ 9:51PM
Can we lay off Hamilton and give the man a break? He single-handedly brought a dead economy run on bushels of worthless paper only good for wiping, back to life. It won't be long and we'll need his like again.
Yosemeti Sam| 8.21.10 @ 1:33AM
Face it - this Keown fellow is a sore loser on behalf of his perhaps dual citizenshiped country the UK.
JimP| 8.21.10 @ 10:02AM
John Keown is just another revisionist leftist hack historian attempting to undermine the validity of the U.S.A. by selectively pointing to 'facts'. Maybe his too smart for their own good students fall for this bunk, but no one else does.
Believer| 8.21.10 @ 7:01PM
I look at the revolution from a different angle, If our forefathers knew that the Nation would turn out like it is today, they would'nt have wasted their time. All the lives lost in past Wars have been sacrificed for nothing, My personel opinion is in 100 years our Nation will look like Europe today, A Continent with many small Nations. Probably not but thats just my opinion.
John DuBose| 8.21.10 @ 7:59PM
The American war of national independence was mostly just. We were not nice to the indians. But the Brits had it coming. In any case, nations rise and fall in time frames of a few centuries. We may be on the donward slide. But with some wisdom about which fights to join and stay out of, we have a shot at a couple hundred more good years.
Michele San Pietro| 8.22.10 @ 5:32PM
Of course it was a just war! No true American should have any doubt about that.
Anne Erskine| 8.22.10 @ 9:09PM
GEORGETOWN IS PATHETIC ANYWAY - WHO WOULD LISTEN TO ANYONE FROM THAT HYPOCRITICAL "INSTITUTION" ANYWAY - The American Revolution was a just war and if Congress and the rest of our government don't start abiding by the Constitution and protecting our freedoms for which the American Revolution was fought, another is in the making! If the Federal Government wants war, the American people will give it to them!
Live Free or Die - those who fought in the American Revolution understood that freedom from tyranny is the only way to live - Dope and Nope in DC have no clue what America is - THROW THE FASCIST BUMS OUT IN '10 AND '12.
emo| 8.22.10 @ 10:30PM
This is what underlies the present day Left. They think the creation of the USA, was unjust and are trying to undo it.
Michele San Pietro| 8.23.10 @ 5:39PM
If they think the creation of the USA was unjust, they should simply leave the country in my opinion. I really can't stand those who bite the hand that feeds.
Spook | 8.23.10 @ 6:31PM
Mr. Keown is a liberal/fascist. In their world they believe that if they think it, it must be true. Evidence be damned.
http://tellmewhy.blogtownhall.com/
Michele San Pietro| 8.24.10 @ 5:46PM
All liberals are fascists.
martin j smith| 8.27.10 @ 3:40PM
I am glad the United states sis not stay under British control and under the crwon. Our tradition of Freedom and the Bill of Rights is much more to my liking. No we have a New Civil War and I think that we now have to preserve our Rights in an electoral revolution. I do not expects Socialist Democrats to think we are just. But we have to. So to hell with what people think of our Revolution. They most important thing is to WIN.
Same thing s applies now.