6 - The American Republic – a case study: civic virtue and the public good

Summary

THE IDEOLOGICAL ROOTS OF THE REPUBLIC

Historians and political philosophers differ widely concerning the influence of John Locke upon the Revolutionary generation in America. Although Locke was often cited in support of theories of a social compact, limited government, religious toleration, and natural rights, these ideas had already become deeply embedded in the colonial consciousness as a product of its own distinctive political and religious history. That history included their experience under English domination, their involvement in colonial government, and a long legacy of political resistance and religious dissent reaching back through the Civil War and the Commonwealth (1649–1660) to the Magna Carta in 1215. Their understanding and response to these events was informed, in turn, by a variety of broader intellectual movements which contributed to the development of their own political and religious ideas generally and to their understanding of justice in particular. These ideological traditions were rooted not only in their common English heritage but more broadly and deeply still in the Enlightenment and in medieval and classical thought. Based upon the writings and speeches of the colonial and revolutionary periods, the most influential of these traditions included English common law, the Enlightenment, radical “opposition” – or “country” – political tracts, classical republican virtue, and Puritanism, especially in the form of covenant theology.

It is extremely difficult to assess the relative importance of each of these broader patterns of ideas in the shaping of early American political thought, for none of these traditions existed in isolation from the rest.