In A Constitutional Culture, Adrian Chastain Weimer uncovers the
story of how, more than a hundred years before the American
Revolution, colonists pledged their lives and livelihoods to the
defense of local political institutions against arbitrary rule.
With the return of Charles II to the English throne in 1660, the
puritan-led colonies faced enormous pressure to conform to the
crown’s priorities. Charles demanded that puritans change voting
practices, baptismal policies, and laws, and he also cast an eye on
local resources such as forests, a valuable source of masts for the
English navy. Moreover, to enforce these demands, the king sent
four royal commissioners on warships, ostensibly headed for New
Netherland but easily redirected toward Boston. In the face of this
threat to local rule, colonists had to decide whether they would
submit to the commissioners’ authority, which they viewed as
arbitrary because it was not accountable to the people, or whether
they would mobilize to defy the crown. Those resisting the crown
included not just freemen (voters) but also people often seen as
excluded or marginalized such as non-freemen, indentured servants,
and women. Together they crafted a potent regional constitutional
culture in defiance of Charles II that was characterized by a
skepticism of metropolitan ambition, a defense of civil and
religious liberties, and a conviction that self-government was
divinely sanctioned. Weimer shows how they expressed this
constitutional culture through a set of well-rehearsed
practices—including fast days, debates, committee work, and
petitions. Equipped with a ready vocabulary for criticizing
arbitrary rule, with a providentially informed capacity for
risk-taking, and with a set of intellectual frameworks for divided
sovereignty, the constitutional culture that New Englanders forged
would not easily succumb to an imperial authority intent on
consolidating its power.
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