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Self-Interest, Labor, and the Power of the People In "WE SWEAT AND TOIL": SELF-INTEREST, LABOR, AND THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE IN EARLY AMERICAN POLITICS, 1607-1692 By Kevin S. Vanzant Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History August, 2013 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Daniel H. Usner, Jr. Catherine Molineux Jane G. Landers Dana D. Nelson i Copyright © 2013 by Kevin S. Vanzant All Rights Reserved ii For Eve, Henry, and my Parents iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION....................................................................................................................II Chapter I. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................1 II. "WHERE EVERY MAN SEEKES HIMSELF, ALL COMMETH TO NOTHING": THE TRIUMPH OF SOCIAL ORTHODOXY IN THE EARLY ENGLISH COLONIAL LITERATURE.................................................................................27 III. "NOTHING MORE PLEASURABLE THAN PROFIT": SELF-INTEREST, INDUSTRY, AND A NEW APPROACH TO OLD PROBLEMS IN THE MID- CENTURY VIRGINIA PROMOTIONAL LITERATURE..................................68 IV. "ANY WHO WILL BE INDUSTRIOUS, MAY LIVE COMFORTABLY HERE": THE LIBERAL LANGUAGE OF EMPIRE IN THE LATE STUART PERIOD...............................................................................................................120 V. "WEE ADVENTURED OWR LIVES FOR IT": MIGRATORY AMBITIONS AND THE POLARIZATION OF COLONIAL POLITICS IN EARLY MARYLAND......................................................................................................162 VI. BY "VOICE, AND VOTE, AND CONSENT OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE": THE NEW ENGLAND REBELLION OF 1689 AND THE CREATION OF "THE PEOPLE" IN EARLY AMERICA......................................................................214 VII. CONCLUSION: THE POLITICS OF "PEOPLING" THE NEW WORLD.......263 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................273 iv INTRODUCTION "We Sweat and Toil" is a study of the origins of early American political thought and argues for a more expansive approach, both chronologically and methodologically, to our understanding of colonial politics. Most studies of the political history of early America begin with the end of the French and Indian War. In this well-known telling of Anglo-American history, the debts accrued by England in fighting to secure their Atlantic holdings left the home government in dire need of new sources of revenue, which led it to implement a series of new taxes on the colonies. These imperial acts redefined the relationship between colony and metropole, one that, from the perspective of the colonists, newly encroached upon the political power and autonomy of colonial leaders. The change in imperial policy was vital to the emergence of a uniquely American political thought because it forced colonists to justify their claims to political authority and to explain their role and place within the empire. Political thought in America, or at least its formal articulation in print, has thereby been understood as being largely reactive, pushed into existence by imperial actions. Given the concentrated nature of this brief gestational period of American political thought, historians have examined these years in microscopic detail and have identified the key issue as one of ideological origins, giving rise to two distinct versions of the politics of the Revolution, one liberal and the other republican. In the "republican thesis," the classical politics of virtue dominated American political thought, which explained the fears, goals, and governing solutions of 1 the rebelling colonists.1 The republican interpretation of the Revolution has been highly influential, peaking in prominence in the 1970s and 80s, but never fully succeeded in supplanting the older "liberal thesis." Historians have continued to find evidence that liberal ideas of rights, property, and consent were central to Revolutionary ideology.2 The importance of this debate in understanding early American political thought, however, is connected to and largely dependent upon the particular periodization that posits its creation in the late eighteenth century.3 A new, revisionist approach to the study of early American politics has emerged that is intent on expanding its chronological parameters. The pioneering voice in these 1 For the classic account that captures the older "liberal" thesis, see Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study of the History of Political Ideas (New York: Knopf, 1942). On the republican challenge to the "liberal" explanations, see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1967); Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969); and J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). For a direct attempt to downplay the importance of Locke in Revolutionary politics, see John Dunn, "The Politics of John Locke in England and America in the Eighteenth Century," in John Yolton, ed., John Locke: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). The 1970s and 1980s marked a high point for the influence of republicanism in the historiography of the late English empire and early United States. A prominent article in the 1990s, though, exposed the broad and sometime vacuous definition of the term that become prominent with its rising popularity and criticized its often excessive application. See, Daniel T. Rodgers, "Republicanism: The Career of a Concept," Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (June 1992): 11-38. Michael Winship has attempted to test with the falloff of the use of the term "republican" in the historiography with modest, but still largely indicative results. See fn. 2 in "Godly Republicanism and the Origins of the Massachusetts Polity," The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 63 (Jul., 2006): 427-462. For an argument pushing for more specific definition of the term, see, Blair Worden, "Republicanism, Regicide, and Republic: The English Experience," in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 307-308. 2 For the liberal response to the "republican" thesis, see Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); Paul Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Steven Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism and the American Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), and Yuhtaro Ohmori, "The Artillery of Mr. Locke": The Use of Locke's "Second Treatise" in Pre- Revolutionary America, 1764-1776 (Ph.D. Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1988). 3 See Michael Zuckert's "amalgam" thesis in his Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 164-166. For a recent account of the debate and where it stands, see Alan Gibson, Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2007). 2 efforts has been Craig Yirush and his recent work on the roots of American political theory.4 A key piece of evidence for Yirush and the revisionist position is the set of instructions given by the Massachusetts General Court in 1762 to its London agent, Jasper Maudit, one year before the French and Indian War had reached its conclusion. The instructions were complex and offered numerous justifications of colonial rights. Clearly influenced by Locke's Second Treatise, the instructions referenced the "natural rights" of all British subjects as well as "of all humankind" and laid claim to the liberty "of all men" to live free from any arbitrary power. Beyond a claim to "natural rights," they also pointed to their allegiance to the sovereign, which they argued did not dissipate over long distances, so neither should the various privileges that accompanied their birthright as Englishmen. And finally, the instructions put forth an additional argument, appealing to the economic "interest" of the Nation, which they argued would be best served by the continuing grant of certain liberties to the English colonists.5 For Yirush, the colonial position in 1762, as reflected in these instructions, was too sophisticated for this to have been its first iteration. This document, he claims, even falls outside of the standard chronological parameters of most studies of early American political thought and is proof of a developing colonial political theory far earlier than 1763.6 The complex justification of colonial rights in 1762 was the result of numerous battles between colonial elites and English officials that preceded the French and Indian 4 Craig Yirush, Settlers, Liberty, and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675-1775 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1-26. 5 On the language of "interest" and its prevalence by the end of the seventeenth century, see Alan Houston and Steve Pincus, "Introduction. Modernity and later-seventeenth-century
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