As a student of the American Revolution, I must always remind myself that, during the Stamp Act riots of 1765, the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and even on the eve of Lexington and Concord in 1775, the Revolution itself was not a foregone conclusion. No one knew how the British would react to further attempts at rebellion. No one knew if every colony could unite behind the common cause of independence from Parliament and King George III. While the Revolution brought together unlikely coalitions — laborers and merchants, South Carolina's planters and Philadelphia's shipwrights — that agreed on the concept of home rule, many disagreed on who exactly would rule at home if the Revolution succeeded. These patriots were lawbreakers and their riotous actions led them onto uncertain legal and ethical grounds. If they failed and the British restored authority in the colonies, our Founding Fathers most certainly would have been hanged for treason.
Looking back today, it is almost impossible to remove that foregone conclusion — that the United States of America came into existence out of the Revolutionary period — from our analysis of the events that preceded it. We are able to say the Boston Tea Party was a right and good thing from hindsight, but on the night of December 16, 1773, the act was illegal and the consequences unknown.
During the Revolution, infinite economic, political and ideological factors moved in wheels, entangling and interlocking, causing many fractured and regional movements to ultimately coalesce into a Continental Army and Congress and, in 1789, a constitution. This constitution set forth for posterity a system of government conceived in liberty and equality, but one adaptable to new social conditions and contexts, leaving us the burden of completing the work of the American democratic experiment.
But we tend to ignore all the complexities and hypocrisies of the Revolution. We prefer to remember a glowing portrait of our Founding Fathers, hallowed in wisdom and deference, infinite in their judgment and ultimately, justified in their actions. And though this image is convenient, it is often wrong. Few today remember the Loyal Nine of Boston, the precursors to the Sons of Liberty, leading the poorest segments of the population on riotous marches against Boston's wealthiest Tories and government officials, burning and sacking and drinking from the South End to the North. These riots were not always coordinated efforts to bring the Crown to heel, but more often they took the form of uncontrolled crowd action that would not be tolerated in the United States today. We would call in the National Guard in a heartbeat if we saw today in Boston what happened there on the nights of August 14 and 26, 1765, as mobs violently took to the street to protest the Stamp Act.
And all of this makes me call into question the use of the Boston Tea Party or any other distorted popular memory of American Revolution today in service of a political agenda. How can anyone claim the Tea Party as justification for action today when we are a nation so removed from the context of the 18th century? How can anyone claim the Tea Party today when we are a nation with established principles of self-government and enough responsive political institutions at the federal, state and local levels to make Samuel Adams blush? We do not live an ocean away from lawmakers who ignore our pleas and petitions for redress.
Those who invoke the Tea Party and the Revolution today in service of an expedient political agenda should be ashamed. Not because they are ignorant — I can accept that — but because they continue to distort our perception of the creation of the United States. It was with the utmost knowledge of their actions that the Sons of Liberty dumped crates of tea into Boston harbor. It was illegal and dangerous, but it was in service of a cause they believed to be higher than the scoring of political points. That is not the case today. Hiding behind the Tea Party, these protesters hope to give credibility to their political beliefs and, in so doing, obfuscate the true meaning of the American Revolution for their finite purposes and agendas.
If it is time for another revolution, it is not that time now because we wish to give health care coverage to the 48 million Americans who do not have it. If it is time for another revolution, it is not that time now because we wish to simplify the student loan process for those seeking higher education in this country. And if it is time for revolution, it is not that time now because we sit, poised on what appears to be a defining period in American history, a period where we must decide how to respond to crises, national and global, that force us to adapt to uncertain contexts we do not yet fully comprehend. Global credit and finance whirl overhead like dark storm clouds as domestic inequalities and foreign wars fracture our existing coalitions and political frameworks.
Like the old revolutionaries, we cannot look into the future with absolute clarity. The challenges we face as a nation are complex and require reasoned dialogue, not horrific epithets and banal generalizations. The challenges we face today deserve more debate than misleading claims about our revolutionary past. And if today we choose to respond to these crises with fear-mongering and not courage, with acceptance of mediocrity instead of the challenge of reform, and with an emphasis on temporal political agenda over a belief in the common welfare, we might as well give up the experiment of democracy for we are not worthy of its mantle .
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Andrew Helms is a senior majoring in history.
