---------- Forwarded message --------- From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <[email protected]> Date: Mon, May 31, 2021 at 1:30 PM Subject: H-Net Review [H-Nationalism]: Chervinsky on Pearl, 'Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State' To: <[email protected]> Cc: H-Net Staff <[email protected]>
Christopher R. Pearl. Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State. Charlottesville University of Virginia Press, 2020. 320 pp. $49.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8139-4455-5. Reviewed by Lindsay Chervinsky (Center for Presidential History, Southern Methodist University) Published on H-Nationalism (May, 2021) Commissioned by Evan C. Rothera In Conceived in Crisis, Christopher R. Pearl challenges the accepted argument that the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 was ineffectual because it was too democratic. Instead, he suggests that Pennsylvanians actually wanted more government, capable of enforcing laws and justice for the protection of the public good. Accordingly, they created a government in 1776 that powerfully asserted legal control over the population. Pearl's work rejects the previous Federalist versus Antifederalist or executive versus legislature framing of the power question, and instead challenges readers to consider the governance question as one of empowered versus enfeebled. It's a provocative interpretation and one that has certainly convinced me to rethink how I conceptualize Pennsylvania politics in the eighteenth century. _Conceived in Crisis_ begins with the formation of the colony under William Penn's supervision, but quickly the colonial project fails to live up to the idealistic standards envisioned by its proprietor. Penn expected well-planned towns to serve as the driving force behind settlement, with standard-size lots and an emphasis on community building and social cohesion. Penn's own financial motivations quickly undermined this vision, as he forked over enormous land parcels to speculators. As a result, settlements sprang up in a haphazard manner with great distances between town centers, and neighbors found few reasons to care for each other. Several other factors undermined social cohesion as well. Pennsylvania experienced high rates of transience as indentured servants and poor farmers moved west in search of cheap land, and wage laborers pursued work. Violence on the borders, instigated by white seizure of Native land, provoked unrest and resentment between the western and eastern regions of the state, who demanded very different trade and defense policies. The western counties also protested their relative lack of representation in the state assembly and the political impotence that resulted from this unequal representation. These internal tensions bubbled to the surface after the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which required an official permit to trade with Native Americans. Many rich merchants ignored this edict and continued to trade anyway; then, when confronted for their misdeeds, they exploited their contacts with local justices of the peace and royal officials to avoid punishment. As it became clear that law enforcement did not apply to the western regions of the state, other nefarious actors seized the opportunity to steal, murder, destroy, and intimidate as they wished. Pennsylvanians submitted countless petitions to the colonial government begging for action, but to no avail. While the assembly was sympathetic and eager to adopt reforms, the deputy governors (royal appointees) had received strict instructions to sign no legislation that limited royal prerogative, and the assembly refused to pass reforms that granted additional authority to the executive. When the laws went unenforced, local citizens took matters into their own hands. They enforced trade restrictions, attacked local Native Americans, bullied government officials, and more. While roving bands enjoyed widespread public support, most Pennsylvanians would have preferred the government act in the best interest of the public, instead of a select few. These resentments were compounded by the royal taxation legislation imposed after the Seven Years' War. Many Pennsylvanians argued that the Stamp Act would not be necessary if the royal system did not support corrupt justices of the peace that sapped funds from the empire. And they were not particularly interested in paying additional taxes to a system that did not provide for their daily needs and safety. These imperial measures, and the colonists' response, merged the local governing crisis with the imperial struggle. In 1775, Pennsylvanians petitioned the king and his ministers to assume management of the colony, which put the king's appointees in a tight spot. They could not deny that the system had failed, but acknowledging incompetence inherently undermined royal prerogative in the colonies. When the king rejected the petition, the upsurge in public resistance broke down the existing cultural and regional divisions among the state. In fact, the colonial resistance of 1770s offered a common purpose and an opportunity for all factions to channel their energies behind one goal. Their collective opposition lent the cause legitimacy. Royal efforts to preserve their authority through increasingly coercive measures only drove further resistance. The deputy governor went so far as to refuse to convene the assembly--a choice that completely backfired when colonists spontaneously organized a committee system to elect new representatives. The new committees abolished land and property requirements for the franchise, which swept in officials who were far more radical and representative of the people they were elected to serve. The state constitution of 1776 reflected the enormous shift in political power in the state. It expanded suffrage, limited executive authority, and addressed several of the "governance" concerns in the text of the document, including judicial reform, updated land policies, more equitable representation, and officers to investigate vice and immorality. The demands of war fueled the growth of state power and the radically democratic government imprisoned, tortured, and terrorized citizens who remained loyal to the king and their families. While the state constitution was crafted with the best of intentions, the internal geographic and political divisions in the state, financial crises, and a failure to live up to the lofty promises of 1776 ultimately disaffected the public and stymied government growth. As the economy began to languish in 1777, many poorer Pennsylvanians objected to the rising prices which threatened their version of the "public good," and demanded the government crack down on traders and merchants exploiting the system. The National Bank is another example of disappointed expectations. Many Pennsylvanians initially supported the Bank as an opportunity to obtain credit more freely. But as the economy restricted, so too did the Bank's loans, and the public turned against the Bank as another vestige of elite control. Pennsylvanians voted to revoke the charter--not because they wanted to abolish the Bank, but because they wanted more control over the Bank's management. In the late 1780s, a new opposition to the Constitutionalists--or supporters of the 1776 constitution--emerged to replace the royal officials. This opposition called themselves Republicans and were led by Benjamin Rush, James Wilson, Thomas Mifflin, and Thomas McKean. They brought unimpeachable Revolutionary credentials to the political fight and assailed the instability of the 1776 government. While they valued the improvements to "governance," the mob-like mentality displayed by the legislature threatened personal liberty. As economic conditions continued to deteriorate over the 1780s, they were able to paint the Constitutionalists as anti-reform, undermining their popularity. The state government's inability to protect trade against other states proved most damning for the Constitutionalists and revealed the need for a new national government to coordinate economic policy among the thirteen states. The groundswell for national reform offered the Republicans an opportunity to elect reform candidates who also supported revising the state constitution. The final product, the constitution of 1790, merged the concepts of good governance, which had driven the protests of the early eighteenth century, and personal liberty, which had reemerged during the Revolution. I find Pearl's arguments convincing, with only a few hesitations. In the introduction, he argues that his analysis can be applied to all of the colonies and that this story is actually a national story. I am not sure that is a fair claim. He is correct that "the demands of the Revolutionary War ... pushed the states to new heights of power and authority" (p. 3), but that process looked quite different in a state like Massachusetts, which cultivated a strong central authority (embodied in church and town authorities) from almost the beginning of its colonial history. While many of the other disrupting factors--warfare, border crises, and tensions within the empire--challenged the Massachusetts colony, a lack of community organization was not a driving force. Massachusetts' residents also rejected a more radical constitution, like the one adopted in Pennsylvania in 1776, because it did not protect separation of powers and did not provide a statement of individual rights. A far cry from the public-good preoccupation in Pennsylvania. Pearl also argues that we should see the imperials acts of the 1760s and 1770s as the trigger for the Revolution, not the cause. Rather, the colonists had been disaffected with royal government for decades before finally declaring independence. This interpretation presents a very different picture than other scholarship, which argues that colonists considered themselves to be the most loyal British citizens. I would have liked to see Pearl explain how we should square his argument with the cult of monarchy described by Brendan McConville, Steven C. Bullock, Linda Colley, and others that developed in the colonies, especially during the Seven Years' War.[1] I had a few methodological questions as well. Pearl makes a few claims about the messaging power of the state, such as the conflation between disloyalty and criminality on display in local parades (p. 201) or the "purpose of the gallows [shifting] from a space meant to reform the community to a spectacle that projected the state's sovereign power" (p. 203). While these arguments make sense, I would have liked to see more evidence about how we know the community received these messages. It is far too easy to read values and symbolism into past actions, but without explicit evidence, we can't know that contemporaries interpreted state action in the same way. Additionally, petitions make up a significant portion of Pearl's evidence and he emphasizes the sheer numbers of petitions that focused on governance issues. I would have liked a note, or even a long footnote, explaining his methodology for calculating what percentage of the petitions focused on each subject (p. 51). Despite these small qualms, _Conceived in Crisis_ offers an important contribution to the Revolutionary literature, especially the historiography on Pennsylvania. In my opinion, the first section about colonial Pennsylvania makes a stronger contribution than the material on the Revolution and statehood. Pearl's biggest intervention is his demonstration that the colonists clamored for both safety from government _and_ safety by government. Most previous work emphasize the safety from government argument, so _Conceived in Crisis_ will rightfully challenge readers to think anew about the importance of governance and the public good in the colonies. I certainly will be reconsidering my conceptions of colonial and Revolutionary Pennsylvania. Note [1]. Brendan McConville, _The King's Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776_ (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Steven C. Bullock, _Tea Sets and Tyranny: The Politics of Politeness in Early America_ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Linda Colley, _Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). Citation: Lindsay Chervinsky. Review of Pearl, Christopher R., _Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State_. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. May, 2021. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55630 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. -- Best regards, Andrew Stewart -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8866): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8866 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/83220623/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
