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We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

But the key point is that the debate was not resolved so much as built into the fabric of our national identity. If that means the United States is founded on a contradiction, then so be it. With that one bloody exception, we have been living with it successfully for over two hundred years. Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776...

And yet the test of battle was endurable, as we have seen. in part because the Continental army shared so much with the people who sustained it. In the long struggle of the war, what made the cause "glorious,'' besides its great principles, was the fact that so many believed in it. As it took hold of Americans' imagination, the glorious cause became, in the popular phrase, the "common cause."

The army's will to survive and to fight on short rations, its willingness to suffer, to sacrifice, made the inadequate adequate and rendered the failures of others of little importance. The army overcame the worst in itself and in others. It was indomitable.

Covet! My Countrymen, and fellow soldiers! Covet! A share of the glory due to heroic deeds! Let it never be said, that in a day of action, you turned your backs on the foe; let the enemy no longer triumph. - Washington, battle of Germantown

The British presented a threat because they were corrupt as well as powerful. They had to be resisted with everything America had; if they were not, virtue, piety, and liberty would be lost. These convictions governed Adams's conduct throughout the Revolution.

Self-government, in this view, rested on virtue, on righteousness, and in the conflict the Americans confronted a government, as John Hancock pointed out, that was not "righteous."

In all the outrage and the proposals for getting things changed there was a sense that the Americans faced evil and corruption which would spread to their own shores if they failed to defend themselves. The sources of this conviction lay deeply within Protestant culture, especially the belief that most conflict involved questions of good and evil, and right and wrong.

Having to stomach a standing army in their midst, observe the redcoats daily, pass by troops stationed on Boston Neck who occupied a guardhouse on land illegally taken it was said from the town, and having to receive challenges by sentries on the streets, their own streets, affronted a people accustomed to personal liberty, fired their tempers, and gnawed away at their honor.

Protests against Britain marked a broadening of participation, a process encouraged by the atmosphere of urgency and crisis and by the fact that official bodies on all levels proved incapable of defending American interests with the effectiveness and passion a larger public demanded.

These petitions and similar ones elsewhere came out of small informal meetings, organized by men with no social standing and no offices but with their own interests and the public's in mind. For the next three years more and more such men took part in politics, or in those political activities directed against British policy.

The right of Parliament to regulate trade seemed just as clear—it was a matter of "necessity,"' Stephen Hopkins wrote. The empire had a center, England, and it had constituent parts, the colonies. To pull it together, superintend its commerce, and make decisions relating to matters of common concern were necessary, and Parliament seemed the only agency capable of so doing.

For Pitt praised American resistance: "I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest."

For the Americans in countinghouses and legislatures, if not exactly confused, were at the least unclear about what they were up against. They had not had to face a Parliament committed to taxing them for revenue.They had enjoyed rights without having to think about them. Unexamined rights may always be something of a luxury. The Americans were soon to think so.

On the other side, a care of the Commonwealth.

I esteem it above all things necessary to distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion, and to settle the just bound that lie between the one and the other. If this be not done, there can be no end put to the controversies that will be always arising between those that have, or at Ieast pretend to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of men's souls, and,...

Let any one have never so true a claim to all these things, yet if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good-will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself.

People are not so easily got out of their old forms as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time or corruption, 'tis not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees there is an opportunity for it.

He acts also contrary to his trust when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes to their choice such whom he has by solicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs, and employs them to bring in such, who have promised beforehand what to vote and what to enact.

In all states and conditions the true remedy of force without authority is to oppose force to it. The use of force without authority always puts him that uses it into a state of war, as the aggressor, and renders him liable to be treated accordingly.

I say using force upon the people without authority, and contrary to the trust put in him that does so, is a state of war with the people, who have a right to reinstate their legislative in the exercise of their power.

The freedom, then, of man, and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own wil.

An acre of land that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and another in America which with the same husbandry would do the like are without doubt of the same natural intrinsic value; but yet the benefit mankind receives trom the one in a year is worth £5. and from the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian received from it were to be valued and sold here; at least, I may truly say, not one-thou

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. (Yet greed)

The tragedy, for the nation, is that Washington did not act upon his convictions during his lifetime. Had he freed his slaves in 1794 or in 1796, while in office, the effect might have been profound. He would have set the precedent that the chief executive cannot hold slaves.

the documents prove that Washington twice considered an emancipation during his presidency, that he was aware of the political implications, and that he tried to move forward with his plan anyway. It is possible that the political repercussions were not the obstacle but the goal, and that the plan failed because Washington looked around him for allies and even in his own family could find none.

But was the draft of a public statement in which Washington intended to announce that he had freed some of his slaves before taking office. The effect of such an act would have been profound. As the first president, Washington was well aware that his every public act set a precedent. (He later remarked in a private letter, "The eyes of Argus are upon me.")

Washington...stated that the single most important objective was guaranteeing the continuation of the Union: "In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existence."

But the planters regarded the preservation of slavery as the bedrock of their postwar society and economy. If the United States had won independence but put slavery on the road to extinction, then they would have lost the war. The planters were prepared to see their region fall to the British before they would arm three thousand slaves.

Thus in the first months of the war in Massachusetts, blacks had spontaneously joined the patriot cause; left to itself, the army had integrated sponntaneously. Change was occurring on its own without a formal policy imposing or urging it. The natural movement was towards freedom. Washington and other leaders would have to act to stifle this movement.