Some of the difficulties in arriving at the truth concerning the Tories may also be apparent. Prior to 1774, it would be a distortion of the facts to picture the country as divided into two major parties, one representing blind attachment to the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy and the other a blind partisanship of the doctrine of colonial home rule. Rather, the American colonists, united in desiring a large degree of colonial autonomy, differed in opinion as to what limitations of home rule were admissable and as to what methods of opposition were best adapted to secure the relief they desired. In this period every true American was a loyalist in the sense that he favored the permanent integrity of the British empire. Indeed, to regard "Tory" and "loyalist" as equivalent terms would place the historian in the predicament of classing practically the entire colonial population as Tories until 1776.

Excepting always the royal official class and its social connections, the terms "Tory" and "patriot" became intelligible for the first time when the First Continental Congress set forth the radical program in the Continental Association and stigmatized those who opposed the program as "enemies of American liberty." As the radical program advanced from commercial coercion to armed rebellion, the local committees applied a new test of patriotism, that of allegiance to the rebellion. It should be remembered, however, that the original object of this armed uprising was not independence but, as often in English history, a change in ministerial policy. With the Declaration of Independence patriotism became for the first time synonymous with disloyalty to England. Many men, like Daniel Dulany and Joseph Galloway, who may rightly be considered broad-minded patriotic Americans in the earlier years of the revolutionary contest, became Tories by the new definitions; and John Dickinson is the example of a man who narrowly escaped the infamy of not making

up his mind in favor of independence as quickly as the majority of the Second Continental Congress. The disorders of the Confederation period were a justification of the decision made by the Tories; but the reconstructive forces in American society which built a nationalistic republic under the Constitution have eloquently vindicated the choice made by the revolutionists.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

A history of the histories of the American Revolution should go far toward revealing the ideals and purposes which have governed historical writing in this country in the various periods of the past and should explain why the Revolution has had to be re-discovered and re-constructed from the source materials by the present generation of historians. Sydney George Fisher has undertaken such a survey in his essay "The Legendary and Myth-Making Process in Histories of the American Revolution," originally published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 51 (1912), pp. 53-76, and reprinted in the History Teacher's Magazine, vol. iv (1913), pp. 63-71, and elsewhere. Pertinent information on the same subject may be found in the "Critical Essay on Authorities" in George Elliott Howard's Preliminaries of the Revolution, 17631775 (in The American Nation: a History, vol. 8; New York, 1905).

Charles Altschul's study, The American Revolution in Our School Text-Books (New York, 1917), is excellent, so far as it goes, in showing the one-sided and misleading treatment of the American Revolution contained in the school histories of a generation ago.

Reappraisement of the conflict by historians using scientific methods began in the nineties and the most valuable work along this line has been done since 1900. The pioneer labors of Charles McLean Andrews and Herbert Levi Osgood in showing that the history of the colonies must be studied as an integral part of British imperial history were of basic importance to this reappraisement. Their point of view, arrived at as the result of independent studies, was first presented in the form of papers before the American Historical Association in 1898. See "American Colonial History, 1690-1750" by Professor Andrews and "The Study of American Colonial History" by Professor Osgood in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1898, pp. 46-60, 63-73. The actual, as contrasted with the fancied, effects of the British acts of trade and navigation on the colonies were first set forth by George Louis Beer in his monograph The Commercial Policy of England toward the American Colonies (New York, 1893), developed by the English economist, W. J. Ashley, in his Surveys

Historic and Economic (New York, 1900), pp. 309-360, and further amplified by George Louis Beer in a series of volumes entitled British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765 (New York, 1907), The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (New York, 1908), and The Old Colonial System, 1660-1754 (New York, 1912).

The sectional and economic basis of colonial discontent, ignored or misunderstood by the earlier historians, has been the subject of careful study in such works as Mellen Chamberlain's "The Revolution Impending" in Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America (8 v.; Boston, 1884-1889), vol. vi, pp. 1-112; William Wirt Henry's Patrick Henry; Life, Correspondence and Speeches (3 v.; New York, 1891); John Spencer Bassett's "The Regulators of North Carolina (1756-1771)" in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1894, pp. 141-212; C. H. Lincoln's The Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania, 1760-1776 (Philadelphia, 1901); Carl L. Becker's The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (Madison, 1909); H. J. Eckenrode's The Revolution in Virginia (Boston, 1916); Charles McLean Andrews's "The Boston Merchants and the NonImportation Movement" in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. xix (1917), pp. 159-259; Arthur Meier Schlesinger's The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763-1776 (New York, 1918); and Edith Anna Bailey's Influences toward Radicalism in Connecticut, 1754-1775 (Northampton, 1920). Some light has been thrown upon the organization and methods of the popular party by Henry B. Dawson's The Sons of Liberty in New York (New York, 1859); Richard Frothingham's The Rise of the Republic of the United States (Boston, 1881); and_E. D. Collins's "Committees of Correspondence of the American Revolution" in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1901, vol. i, pp. 243-271.

The activities and views of the loyalist element of the population received partisan justification in such early works as Lorenzo Sabine's Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution (2 v.; Boston, 1864) and Egerton Ryerson's Loyalists of America and Their Times (2 v.; Toronto, 1880), and have since been studied from a disinterested viewpoint by George E. Ellis in "The Loyalists" in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History (cited above), vol. vii, pp. 185-214, by Moses Coit Tyler in The Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (2 v.; New York, 1897), by Alexander C. Flick in Loyalism in New York in the American Revolution (New York, 1901), and by Claude Halstead Van Tyne in Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York, 1902).

Religious and sectarian influences in the revolutionary movement have received attention in W. P. Breed's Presbyterians and the Revolution (Philadelphia, 1876); Mellen Chamberlain's John Adams, the Statesman of the American Revolution, with Other Essays (Boston, 1884); George E. Ellis's "The Sentiment of Independence, Its Growth and Consummation" in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History (cited above), vol. vi, pp. 231-255; Arthur Lyon Cross's

The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies (Cambridge, 1902); Martin I. J. Griffin's Catholics and the American Revolution (3 v.; Ridley Park, Pa., 1907); and Claude Halstead Van Tyne's "Influence of the Clergy, and of Religious and Sectarian Forces, on the American Revolution" in the American Historical Review, vol. xix (1913), pp. 44-64.

The best general summaries of the American Revolution today are Sydney George Fisher's The Struggle for American Independence (2 v.; Philadelphia, 1908); Edward Channing's A History of the United States, vol. iii (New York, 1912); Carl Lotus Becker's Beginnings of the American People (Boston, 1912), chaps. v-vi. A forthcoming book by Clarence W. Alvord under the projected title of Imperial Muddlers and the American Revolution: an Essay about Propaganda and Politics promises to be of great importance in this connection. Of the English accounts the best continues to be W. E. H. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century (8 v.; London, 1878-1890), vol. iii, chap. xii, edited in a separate volume by J. A. Woodburn under the title The American Revolution, 17631783 (New York, 1898).

An important conference devoted to a discussion of our present knowledge of the American Revolution was held in conjunction with the recent meeting of the American Historical Association at St. Louis (December, 1921). The principal papers were presented by Professor Van Tyne and Professor Alvord.

CHAPTER VIII

ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE MOVEMENT FOR THE

CONSTITUTION

I

In the year 1781 the Articles of Confederation were ratified by the last of the thirteen states and went into effect as the first written constitution of the federal union. In the same year occurred the battle of Yorktown, which from a military point of view assured independence to the struggling colonies. The war was practically at an end. Emerging from six years of armed conflict, the young republic had to solve even more difficult problems in the six years of peace that followed.

The population was deeply affected by post bellum unrest, and public life gave evidence of that lowering of moral tone that seems an inevitable aftermath of a great war. The frame of government under which the new nation made its start had been drawn up by men laboring under a desperate fear of centralized power as embodied in the British government and who were determined that the new federal government, notwithstanding its different source of authority, should exercise as little power as possible. Under the circumstances the Articles of Confederation could hardly be more than a feeble instrument. All essential powers remained with the individual states; and it was only by virtue of an extraordinary majority vote that the general government might perform certain carefully stipulated functions in behalf of all the states. Obviously, such a government was