In his bracing account of the reasons for the clash of American and British forces at Lexington and Concord, Richard Ryerson has touched on several of the most vital themes of both British and American constitutional history, running from Magna Carta (1215) to the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) to the American Revolution (1776). He concludes his account with a question about the meaning of American independence and notes that our answer to that query is “ever-evolving, never resolved.” In considering this topic further, an excellent place to begin would be with the original sources that informed the interpretations of the colonists of the events of 1775.

　　Ryerson has provided a number of primary source references in his essay from which to begin such an exploration, noting, among others, the writings of “Sidney, Harrington, and Montesquieu.” Each, in his own way, warned of the dire consequences for liberty that would come from the assertion of military over civilian government. That understanding has long been associated with the Constitution’s protection of the people’s right to bear arms, but it was also correlated with the concern for standing professional armies not constrained by the rule of law.

　　Sidney thus wrote that of all the Roman tyrants, “Caesar did worse: He favour’d Catiline and his villainous associates; bribed and corrupted magistrates; conspir’d with Crassus and Pompey; continued in the command of an army beyond the time prescribed by law, and turned the arms with which he had been entrusted for the service of the commonwealth, to the destruction of it.”

　　In the United States, the law under which the military power is contained is found in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. “To declare War,” “to raise and support Armies,” “to provide and maintain a Navy,” and “to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the Land and Naval Forces” are all powers expressly granted to Congress. In this way, the Founders hoped that the military would always be kept under civil power.

　　It is true that Article II, section 2, designates that “the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States,” but the presumption is that these powers will conform to the purposes imposed by Congress as provided in the previous article. That concern drew directly from the experience of the Revolution.

　　In the Declaration of Independence, the eleventh and twelfth grievances noted respectively that the king of England “has kept among us in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures,” and “has affected to render the Military independent and superior to the Civil Power.” These complaints drew directly from the experience of the Coercive Acts, and as Ryerson has noted, it was to General Gage that the power was given for their enforcement, establishing him as superior to the established civil authority in Massachusetts.

　　British tyranny animated not only an “ancient republican spirit” but also assured that it would become part of the distinctive constitutional tradition of a whole new and independent country.

　　In the Suffolk Resolves (1774), Gage’s rule was described as that “unparalleled usurpation of unconstitutional power, whereby our capital is robbed of the means of life; whereby the streets of Boston are thronged with military executioners; whereby our coasts are lined, and harbors crowded with ships of war.” Very much in line with Ryerson’s explanation of American reactions to Gage, was the loyalist’s understanding of the colonists’ particular view of British constitutionalism. Writing but six weeks after Lexington and Concord, Jonathan Sewall contended that the entire rebellion was “so truly astonishing, so entirely out of the course of nature, so repugnant to the known principles which most forcibly actuate the human mind, that we must search deeper for the grand and hidden Spring which causes so wonderful a movement of the machine.”

　　And what was that “hidden Spring”? Sewall went on:

　　And this, in my Opinion, is none other than that ancient republican independent Spirit, which the first Emigrants to America brought out with them; and which the forms of Government, unhappily given to the New England Colonies, early took deep root; and being nourished by the Beams of civil and ecclesiastical Government … have given it fresh Growth; but never before, with that Luxuriance with which we now see it spread.

　　Sewall hit his mark. That “ancient republican independent Spirit” was well recognized as growing out of those Old or Radical Whig thinkers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. They were the subject of both Caroline Robbins’s classic 1957 study, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, and Bernard Bailyn’s monumental 1967 work, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. In both cases, the early writings of such radicals as John Trenchard, Walter Moyle, and John Somers, took a prominent place in Colonial thought. How did these sources get to America? As the recent selection of pamphlets by Jack Greene makes plain in Liberty Fund’s online collection, A Call to Liberty!, the American cause had considerable British support.

　　Chief among these sympathizers was, quite early on, Thomas Hollis, a wealthy if somewhat eccentric and largely self-educated philanthropist concerned for what he believed to be the ever-growing threat to English liberties. To address these fears, he had copies made of the earliest republican, Old Whig tracts, which he had handsomely bound and given out to both college and private collections in the New World. Among his main beneficiaries was none other than Harvard College, to which he donated in 1767 the principal essays warning against standing armies and the need to preserve civilian over military authority. In 2020, these writings were made available together in a single volume for Liberty Fund’s Thomas Hollis Library collection: Writings on Standing Armies. In one such tract, A Treatise Concerning the Militia (1752), the author openly opines,

　　Perhaps the Advocates for aMilitia, have urged their Objections too home, against theStanding Forcesin this Country. Permitted byParliament, and under the Command of ourSovereign, we may flatter ourselves, that they will never be prostituted to the Purposes ofEgyptian Mamalukes, orTurkish Jamizaries: That no General will ever start up likeCaesaramong theRomans, or likeOliverinEngland, to make the Army dependent on himself; and then establish aMilitary, instead of aCivil Government. How vain these Apprehensions may be, I know not; but it is now commonly said, thatwe cannot be governed without an Army. But, I say,God forbid, that we should ever be governed by Soldiers!

　　General Gage appeared to Americans to be just that, a military ruler. His attempt to disarm the militias of Massachusetts by moving on Lexington and Concord fit the expected pattern of behavior. In that attempt, he animated not only that “ancient republican spirit,” but he also assured that it would become part of the distinctive constitutional tradition of a whole new and independent country.

　　Any opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Liberty Fund.