Revolution of the Mind

Creating the Declaration of Independence | Creating the United States Constitution | Creating the Bill of Rights

Revolution of the Mind | Battle Joined | Founded on a Set of Beliefs | Peace

The American Revolution emerged out of the intellectual and political turmoil following Great Britain’s victory in the French and Indian War. Freed from the threat of hostile French and Indian forces, American colonists were emboldened to resist new British colonial policies that raised issues of inequalities of power, political rights, and individual freedoms. People such as John Adams and Mercy Otis Warren believed that the British policies stimulated the minds of Americans to demand independence and expanded individual rights.

This revolution of the mind had physical consequences as Americans openly and sometimes violently opposed Great Britain’s new assertions of control. The right to representation, political independence, separation of church and state, nationalism, slavery, the closure of the Western frontier, increased taxation, commercial restrictions, use of the military in civil unrest, individual freedoms, and judicial review were some of the salient issues that boiled up in the revolutionary cauldron of Britain’s American colonies.

John Mitchell. Map of British and French Dominions in North America, with Roads, Distances, Limits, and Extent of the Set[tlements] by Jno. Mitchell, d.f. with Improvements. Amsterdam: I. Covens and C. Mortimer, ca. 1755. Hand-colored engraved map. Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress (1)
[Digital ID# np000009]

The American Colonies

British and French colonies, with their Indian allies, challenged each other for dominance of North America on the eve of the era of republican revolution. Freed from the threat of hostile French neighbors after the British victory in the French and Indian War in 1763, Britain’s American colonies increasingly demanded rights of political and economic independence.

Another copy of this map by John Mitchell (1711—1768) was used to define the boundaries of the new United States during negotiations for the peace treaty of 1783 that ended the American Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin. Plan of Proposed Union (Albany Plan), 1754. Manuscript. Hazard Papers in the Peter Force Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (2)
[Digital ID# us0002 — us0002_2]

Benjamin Franklin’s Idea for National Confederation

Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790), America’s consummate “wise man,” was among the first to imagine a national confederation. In 1754, he proposed a union of American provinces at a conference of provincial delegates at Albany, New York, to better battle the French and their Indian allies.

The Albany Plan, calling for proportional representation in a national legislature and a president general appointed by the king of Great Britain, served as a model for Franklin’s revolutionary Plan of Confederation in 1775.

John Locke. Two Treatises of Government.… The Latter is an Essay Concerning the True, Original Extent, and the End of Civil Government. London: Awnsham Churchill, 1690. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (3)
[Digital ID# us0003 — us0003_5]

Locke's Influence on the American Ideas of Natural Rights

The works of John Locke (1632—1704), well-known English political philosopher, provided many Americans with the philosophical arguments for inalienable natural rights, principally those of property and of rebellion against abusive governments. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson did not incorporate Locke’s emphasis in his “Second Treatise of Government” on the right to property but gave the right to rebel a prominent place.

Henry Home, Lord Kames. Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, in Two Parts. Edinburgh, 1751. Thomas Jefferson Library Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (4)
[Digital ID# us0004]

“Pursuit of Happiness”

When Thomas Jefferson asserted the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence, he was influenced by the writings of Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696—1782). Kames was a Scottish moral philosopher who argued for the right to “the pursuit of happiness” in his acclaimed work Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion. Jefferson owned and annotated this copy.

Thomas Frye. His Most Sacred Majesty George III. London: H. Parker, E. Bakewell, and J. Boydell, 1762. Mezzotint engraving by William Pether. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (5)
[Digital ID# ppmsca-15713]

America’s Last Monarch—George III

George III (1738—1820) of Great Britain had the misfortune to become king in 1760, shortly before the drive to revolution in his American colonies began to gather momentum.

Many historians and contemporaries have blamed the stubborn, inexperienced, and mentally unstable monarch for the repeated British miscalculations and mistakes that led to the independence of the United States. Certainly George III displayed no creativity or imagination in the formulation of policies toward the British colonies in America.

An Act for Repeal [of] the Stamp Act, March 18, 1766, At the Parliament Begun and Holden at Westminster. . . . London: Mark Baskett, Printer to the King, 1766. Marian S. Carson Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (8)
[Digital ID# us0008_1]

Protests Lead to Repeal of Stamp Act

The British government enacted the Stamp Act to raise revenue from its American colonies for the defense of North America. Prime Minister George Grenville (1712—1770) also wanted to establish parliament’s right to levy an internal tax on the colonists.

Viewing the act as taxation without representation, Americans passionately upheld their rights to be taxed only by their own consent through their own representative assemblies. Future revolutionists saw the act as a harbinger of greater direct taxation and the loss of political rights. Widespread American opposition led to repeal of the act in 1766.

The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp, [1766]. Engraving. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (9)
[Digital ID# ppmsca-15709]

Mock Funeral Procession for the Stamp Act

This 1766 cartoon depicts a mock funeral procession along the Thames River in London for the American Stamp Act. The act generated intense, widespread opposition in America and was labeled “taxation without representation” and a harbinger of “slavery” and “despotism” by the Americans. Colonists convened a Stamp Act Congress in New York in the fall of 1765 and called for a boycott of British imports.

Bowing to the pressure, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. In this cartoon, a funeral procession to the tomb of the Stamp Act includes its principal proponent, Treasury Secretary George Grenville (1712—1770), carrying a child's coffin, marked "Miss Ame-Stamp born 1765, died 1766."

“An Attempt to Land a Bishop in America.” Cartoon in the British Political Register, 1768. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (10)
[Digital ID# ppmsca-13637]

American Opposition to Anglican Bishop

Reports that the Church of England (Anglican), the established church, was going to appoint a bishop in America stoked fears of increased and oppressive government limitations on religious freedoms. In this political cartoon, angry American colonists chase a British bishop aboard a ship labeled “Hillsborough” for the British Colonial Secretary, Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough (1718—1793), and then use long poles to push the ship away from the dock.

Thomas Jefferson. A Summary View of the Rights of British America. Williamsburg: Clementina Rind, 1774. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (17)
[Digital ID# us0017 — us0017_7]

The Right to Rebel

Thomas Jefferson's Summary View of the Rights of British America declared America’s right to rebel against an oppressive and despotic government and heralded the arrival of an independent America. Jefferson’s pamphlet was originally drafted as instruction for Virginia's delegates to the Continental Congress in 1774.

Petition of the Continental Congress to King George III, October 26, 1774. Manuscript document in the hand of Timothy Matlack. Benjamin Franklin Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (18)
[Digital ID# us0018]

Continental Congress Seeks to Resolve Grievances

In the fall of 1774, the Continental Congress prepared this petition to King George III stating the grievances of the American provinces and asking for the King’s help in seeking solutions. King George refused to accept the petition, which was signed by fifty-one delegates to the First Continental Congress.

Thomas Jefferson. Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, 1775. Manuscript. Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (19)
[Digital ID# us0019_1a — us0019_3b]

Causes and Necessity for Rebellion

The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms puts forth the reasons for America’s rebellion that were raised in the 1775 congressional declaration.

Although the final manifesto stressed a hope for the restoration of peace, Thomas Jefferson's draft was a “Spirited Manifesto,” according to John Adams (1735—1826). The spirited and creative qualities of Jefferson’s writing helped secure his selection as chair of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

[Britannia toe] Amer[eye]ca. [London: Mary Darly, May 6, 1778.] Hand-colored etching. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (20.1)
[Digital ID# ppmsca-17533]

A Political Satire on French Alliance

A rebus, in which pictures represent words, was a favorite amusement in the eighteenth century. [Britannia toe] Amer[eye]ca (Britannia to America) is the first of a pair of political satires concerning Britain’s last attempt to end the Revolution through diplomatic means by sending to Philadelphia an unsuccessful delegation known as the “Carlisle Peace Commissioners.”

The rebus portrays Britannia as a mother urging her daughter who is planning to marry a Frenchman to jilt him and stop rebelling, a reference to the American alliance with France.

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