The field of "legal history" studies the relationship that “law” and legal institutions have to the society that surrounds them. "Law” means everything from local regulations and rules promulgated by administrative agencies, to statutes and court decisions. Legal history is interested in how “law” and legal institutions operate, and how they change over time in reaction to changing economic, social, and political conditions.
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This Human Rights Day, commemorating the 10 December 1948 proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we embark on a year-long observance of the 50th anniversary of the two International Covenants on Human Rights: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966.
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By Joy Hakim
Surprisingly, in a country that cares about its founding history, few Americans know of Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom, a document that Harvard’s distinguished (emeritus) history professor, Bernard Bailyn called, “the most important document in American history, bar none.”
Yet that document is not found in most school standards, so it’s rarely taught. How come? Maybe because it is a Virginia document, passed by Virginia’s General Assembly. Or maybe because its ideas found their way directly into the Constitution’s First Amendment and that seems enough for most Americans.
Why do Bailyn and some others think it so important? Because it was radical, trailblazing, and uniquely American: no government before had ever taken the astonishing stand that it takes. In essence it says that religious belief is a personal thing, a matter of heart and soul, and that government has no right to meddle with beliefs, or tax citizens to support churches they may disavow. That wasn’t the way governments were expected to operate.
Imagine you live in 18th century Virginia: According to a law on the books you have to go to church—every day–usually for both morning and evening prayer. If you don’t go you could be whipped, sentenced to work on an oceangoing galley, or worse. And you don’t have a choice of churches. In Virginia the established church is Anglican. That means you are assessed taxes to support that church whether you believed in it or not. You couldn’t be a member of the legislature unless you are a member of the Established Church. So the legislation of the House of Burgesses reflect the world of its Anglican delegates.
But the colonies are home to independent folk who braved a turbulent ocean to be able to think for themselves. Roger Williams, kicked out of Puritan Massachusetts, talks of “freedom of conscience” and lets anyone who wishes settle in the colony he founds on Rhode Island. The Long Island town of Flushing has a charter that promises settlers freedom of conscience, so leaders there petition New York Governor Peter Stuyvesant concerning the public torturing of Quaker preacher Robert Hodgson. In the Flushing Remonstrance they write, “We desire in this case not to judge lest we be judged.” In Virginia, Jemmy Madison stands outside the Orange County jail and listens as a Methodist preacher, behind bars, spreads the word of the Gospel. Why are Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians being put in jail, Madison asks?
In 1777 Jefferson writes the eloquent Statute for Religious Freedom, introducing it into the legislature in 1779. This is a Revolutionary time and England’s church has to go. Will an established American church succeed it?
Patrick Henry, popular and powerful, introduces a bill that seems enlightened: it calls for public assessments to support all Christian worship. James Madison counters in his remarkable Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, arguing the case for full religious freedom. Most legislators are perplexed. Every nation has its state church. George Washington is on the fence. If citizens are not forced to go to church will they sink into immorality? What is the role of government?
John Locke has written a famous letter on religious tolerance, but Jefferson and Madison are clear: this statute is not about tolerance, it is about full acceptance — and jurisdiction. Jefferson’s point is that governments have no business telling people what they should believe. In his Notes on Virginia he says,
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or one god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. […] To suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion. . .is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty.”
Meanwhile Patrick Henry’s bill passes its first two readings. A third and it becomes law. Jefferson writes to Madison from Paris where he is ambassador, “What we have to do is devotedly pray for his death.” (He’s talking about Henry.) Madison takes a pragmatic path. He gets Patrick Henry kicked upstairs into the governor’s chair, where he has no vote. Then he reintroduces Jefferson’s bill for establishing religious freedom. It finally passes, on 16 January 1786.
It turns out that Virginians are no more, nor less, moral than they were when they were forced to go to church. George Washington becomes one of the biggest fans of the idea of religious freedom. In a famous letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island, he says,
“The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy–a policy worthy of imitation. . .It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”
Joy Hakim, a former teacher, editor, and writer won the prestigious James Michener Prize for her series, A History of US, which has sold over 5 million copies nationwide. From Colonies to Country, one of the volumes in that series, includes the full text of Jefferson’s statute. Hakim is also the author of The Story of Science, published by Smithsonian Books. A graduate of Smith College and Goucher College she has been an Associate Editor at Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot, and was Assistant Editor at McGraw-Hill’s World News.
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Image Credit: Official Presidential portrait of Thomas Jefferson. 1800. By the White House Historical Association. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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It’s not a commonly asked question – just how many times do independent and self-published authors cite the American Constitution in their work; there are no reliable figures or clear guidelines on how to quote from the Constitution to be both legally accurate and grammatically correct. In this new series of posts, Schiel & Denver Book Publishers and Christian Book Publishers will examine the issues and over writing tips and advice. We start with an overview of that oft-cited, Boston Tea Party literature.
The Tea Party of 1773 wasn’t just the dumping of tea in Boston Harbor. It was the signal to the world that man was sovereign, had natural rights protected by laws in common, and that those rights were foremost amongst all nations. The local, Boston issue of taxation without representation only heightened the inalienable, organic rights of man.The chronology leading to the Tea Party of 1773 did not just happen with a bunch of rogues deciding to rebel against the English oppressors in a spur of the moment. There were many abuses of power leading to the Boston Tea Party; however, it is most important to historically note that it was not the Americans who signaled the first rebellion. It was Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawa Indians. And Benjamin Franklin, in 1754 then published the “Join or Die” cartoon.
Although the rough picture of a snake separated into eight pieces marked with the initials of New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, was first used in an attempt to unite the colonies as early as 1754 as the Albany Plan of Union, it was premature and not supported by the Colonists until revived by Pontiac’s attack upon the British in May, l763, and made a standard by the Tea Party patriots two years later when the British passed the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, thereby allowing British soldiers to be quartered throughout the colonies.
Alarmed, the Colonists prepared to unite as they struggled to peacefully remain a colony of English rule. It simply did not work. On May 10, l773, England passed the Stamp Act claiming sovereignty over America, and resulting in Patrick Henry’s famous resolutions: the fifth summed it all.
“Resolved, therefore, that the General Assembly of this Colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes upon the inhabitants of this Colony.”
It was now clear: every attempt to vest such power in any…persons…other than the General Assembly would destroy British as well as American freedom. No taxation without representation. America would have to assert its exclusive rights.Suddenly, with this speech, Patrick Henry became a spokesman for the common people, and the two parties: Patriots, or Whigs; and Loyalists – those who remained loyal to England – also called ‘Tories”, were born.
Henry’s words became the general outcry for the Tea Party and was the beginning of the revolutionary movement in the American colonies.
The Patriots were the backbone of the Republic. The Boston Tea Party formulated between 1773 and 1776. Our country is that Nation uniting all of the colonies into one nation: the United States of America embracing a Republican form of government wherein man, the citizen, was to become the ultimate law of the land possessing original ordained rights.The Boston Tea Party was known as the “Destruction of the Tea”; but when the Patriots, as Mohawk Indians marched into town, with axes and tomahawks on their shoulders, a fifer playing by their sides, within a few days, a Boston street ballad called: “The Rallying of the Tea Party” not only identified the two leaders—Warren and Revere—by name, but gave the Tea Party its origin and history in protecting common rights.
It is no wonder, then, that this is the hallmark of liberty and freedom for every man as foreseen and upheld by our forefathers when creating the ninth and tenth Amendments to our Constitution.
“The enumeration In the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The people, again, were the ultimate beneficiary of all rights and powers within a Republican form of government. They were protecting their voice and guarding the limited powers to be relinquished to a federal government after granting it federal authority to govern, and to become a nation subservient to the desires and wishes of the sovereign states, ultimately, represented by the people as: sovereign man.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Tea Party of yore is very much alive today. All over America the strong desires and morals which our founding fathers clearly laid down in 1776 return for all mankind to re-assert and claim once more.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that amount these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
The expression reverberated in the hearts and minds of all men then, and needs to be restored today. Its effect, as expressed by the concluding paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, is as much alive in meaning and intent for all mankind as when expressed in 1776. The Spirit of ’76, which was so near exhaustion at Valley Forge, was kindled by such resolve.
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved, and that as Free and Independent States they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things, which Independent States may of right do — and for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
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