american revolution

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Understanding the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights


When it comes to understanding their own history, Americans are horrible. To be fair, the manner in which U.S. history is taught leaves a lot to be desired. However, that does not excuse Americans from having a basic understanding of the events that shaped our country. When America was founded the settlers believed they would be an equal part of the British Empire. They were, after all, born in England and never believed their moving to a new continent would in any way change their status as citizens of England.

Americans adopted English law as the basis of their government. And every English settlement was a certified English corporate entity. And to that end almost all trade by Americans was with England. Americans exported cotton, wool, indigo and other raw materials to England. In return they got cloth, tea, kitchen utensils and other finished products. This lasted into the early 18th Century when American industry started coming into its own. For example, all goods shipped on the water were supposed to be carried on English ships however American ship owners took exception to this. As part of the “triangle trade,” Americans were supposed to send sugar and molasses to England. But rum loving Americans thought it far more economical to ship their sugar to the Caribbean and get their rum on the return voyage and one their own ships.

Then starting in the mid-18th Century England instituted a series of measures designed to bring the colonists into line. Taxing goods was nothing new but the King sent troops to America to insure that taxes were paid and English authority abided. Then in 1767 Parliament passed a series of laws that became known as the Townsend Acts. There was the revenue act, the customs act, the admiralty act, which were added on top of the quartering act of 1765. And finally in 1774 it passed the Boston Port Act, a law designed specifically to punish the belligerent population of Boston.

The 1770s also saw England replacing colonial elected governors with military governors and sending English judges to America to decide the fate of Americans brought to trial. This was meant to quell American resistance to English admiralty law but was used in other situations.

Gen. Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts and commander of 5000 British regular soldiers, considered Massachusetts residents “bullies.” After the Boston Massacre, December 1770, Gen. Gage said, “America is a mere bully, from one end to the other, and the Bostonians by far the greatest bullies.”  In 1774 Gage was engaging in a series of sorties designed to remove stores of guns and ammunition, gun powder, from colonial militia stores.  Prior to his assault on Concord, he had sent troops to Salem, Somerville, Plymouth, and Portsmouth NH in an effort to control local militia.  And as troops arrived in Boston from England, Gage ordered Boston residents to give them room and board.  That was a month prior to the battles of Lexington and Concord.

When the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1789 it was a compromise document.  The writers of the Constitution, for example, had written in a clause putting an end to slavery.  But to gain the support of 9 of the 13 colonies such a clause was not yet viable.  That basic document established our government, how it would be run, how power was divided, how elections were to be held, and some other basic items.

The full force of the basic Constitution took effect when the first election was finished and the government formed in January 1789.  Congress immediately took measures to amend the Constitution to frame some basic rights for individual Americans.  The basic document makes no such assurances.  In the years leading up to the revolution Americans could not speak freely.  Any words seen as inflammatory to British rule were enough to have a person jailed for treason, sedition, or other acts of malfeasance.  Hence the 1st Amendment is such because it free speech, and particularly that regarding the press, was deemed necessary for a legitimate democracy.  The second part of the 1st Amendment, that government can make no law with regard to religion, was a reaction to the close ties of the Church of England to English government.  That any single religion had power over a people of many religions was not acceptable.

The 2nd Amendment was simply the reaction to Gen. Gage’s overt attempts to keep Americans from having their own organized militia.  The American Revolution was fought largely by individual state militias that fell under the control of Gen. George Washington.  Most Americans believed, and with good reason, that a standing army controlled by a central government would wield its power over state militias.  This was not ironed out until after Thomas Jefferson left office and the War of 1812 commenced.  But the amendment was written specifically to reassure each individual state that its ability to raise and maintain an organized militia would be guaranteed for all time.  But this amendment effectively required states to purchase weapons for its citizen soldiers.  Prior to and during the revolution, each man was required to purchase his own weapon.

The 3rd Amendment seems irrelevant in today’s world, and it probably is.  But the Amendment was a direct response to the British Quartering act.  The American military is banned from quartering its troops in private residences.

The 4th Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure.  This too was a direct response to common practice by British troops stationed in America.

The 5th Amendment guarantees due process and the right of Americans to remain silent in cases brought against them.  An important, though less known part of this amendment, is that it separates military law from civil law.  It also indemnifies Americans from double jeopardy.  Again, all these things happened to Americans while they were under British rule and particularly in the decade leading up to the revolution.

Amendments 6 through 8 insure that certain civil liberties in courts of law as being absolute with the 9th Amendment reinforcing the idea of equality under the law.

The 10th Amendment is the first amendment which arose solely from experience between the 13 original colonies.  Those colonies saw themselves as individual republics and were very mistrustful of a superior central government.  The southern colonies feared the power of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.  What they desired was a certain level of autonomy.  They wanted to be able to create laws of their own and that such laws be independent of any law made in any other state and the federal government.  For example, almost all the northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery.  The south was not ready for such legislation and did not want the influence of the abolitionist north affecting their individual state’s law.  This amendment guaranteed that.

There are a total of 27 Amendments, 26 in force the 18th, Prohibition, having been repealed.  It took a year to passed the first ten and the next 17 ever since.  Passing a Constitutional amendment requires agreement of two-thirds states.  With there being only 13 states that made the first ten fairly easy.  But in 1912, when Arizona became the 48th state, that meant an agreement of 32 states, a difficult feat.

Anyway, we call the first 10 amendments “The Bill of Rights.”  But that is a misnomer simply because the entirety of the Constitution is our Bill of Rights.  The elimination of poll tax, the right of women to vote, the end of slavery, all individual rights, are no less a part of a bill of rights.  But the ability of Americans to either misconstrue or not understand each portion of our constitution is shameful.  People cannot defend themselves against intrusion of their individual rights either by government or corporation or individual if they are not fully aware of what they are constitutionally guaranteed.

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Who Was Deborah Sampson, and Why Should We Care?


There are three words all men and women who join the military are made aware of: Duty, Honor, Country.  Men and women join the military do so for many reasons, but in the end, those who serve fully and honorably understand those words implicitly, and better than any who have never served.  This is not meant as a slight towards those who have not served, but as a point of divergance.  The idea, and ideal, of “duty, honor, country” goes back to April 19, 1775, when a few Massachusetts men bravely said, “no more!”  The knew they would either be hung as traitors to the crown, or heroes of a new country.  In those days we were largely a bunch of poorly trained, poorly armed, and raggedty bunch as has ever been seen.  There was no shortage of fear that our independence, as declared July 4, 1775, would be still-born.   Washington himself, upon arriving at Cambridge Massachusetts to review the tens of thousands of colonial soldier camped there, feared for the future.  They were ill-mannered, dirty, vulgar, and about the furthest things from a group of soldiers as could have been imagined.  But as Washington passed among these fledgeling soldiers, in support of a fledgeling cause, his six foot two frame mounted smartly upon a white stallion, and regaled in as smart a uniform as could be found in the colonies, every men paused to take measure of this man who they knew intuitively to be their new leader.  Each and every one of these men had come to fight the British regulars out of a sense of duty to their America, though such duty was more a feeling than anything yet written in words.

Image from the collections of the Massachusettts Historical Society.

The colonial army, though too oft defeated in singular battles, had clung on tenaciously, in spite of hunger, desertions, quarrels among the colonial officers.  The idea that a woman could fight as a soldier was not even a consideration, let alone a reality.  But on May 20 1782, Deborah Sampson (her image above) of Plympton Massachusetts, her breasts tied tightly to her chest, her hair cut short, and dressed as a New England farmboy, enlisted as Robert Shurtleff in the company of Captain Nathan Thayer of Medway Massachusetts.  Seven months prior to her enlistment, the British surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, and the October 1781 battle was the last large-scale one.  Guerilla warfare continued, however, and Sampson’s unit, the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, fought several small battles in upstate New York, especially near West Point and Tarrytown.  Sampson proved quite skillful, yet despite her ability in these hand-to-hand skirmishes, she was wounded.  In one skirmish, she received a head injury from a saber and was hit with a musket ball in the upper thigh.  She received medical attention for the head wound, but did not inform the doctor of her thigh wound for fear that her identity would be discovered.  After leaving the hospital, Sampson bravely removed the musket ball herself and went on fighting.

Sampson was one of the special soldiers selected to go to Philadelphia to defend Congress from soldiers who were upset that they had not been paid at the war’s end.  During this time, she grew sick and became unconscious due to a head fever.  The nurse thought that Sampson was dead and went to retrieve the doctor.  While searching for a heartbeat the doctor felt the wraps around Sampson’s chest and unwrapped them to inspect what he thought was an injury.  To his surprise he found that his patient was actually a woman.  Dr. Barnabus Binney decided to take her home to give her better care without revealing her identity.

Dr. Binney kept her secret, and Sampson returned with her regiment to New York.  There, General Henry Knox (who would become the nation’s first Secretary of War) honorably discharged “Robert Shurtleff” at West Point on October 25, 1783.

Sampson continued the ruse in face of talk in Stoughton Massachusetts, where she had returned to, that a woman, she, had fought in the war.  She denied such accusations.  But she was found out eventually.

Deborah Sampson Gannet (she had married Benjamin Gannet in 1785) was recognized by Massachusetts less than a decade after the war was over.  On January 19, 1792, she was awarded 34 pounds, which included the interest accumulated since her 1783 discharge.  A document praising her service was sent with the pension.  The document stated “that the said Deborah  Sampson exhibited an extraordinary instance of feminine heroism by discharging  the duties of a faithful, gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the  virtue and chastity of her sex unsuspected and unblemished and was discharged  from the service with a fair and honorable character.” It was signed by John Hancock.

The call to military service has always been a strange one, attracting one while repulsing another.  That call is no less plaintiff to women, as this relation has shown.  Though they were barred from any form of military service until World War 1.  Women, however, disguised as men, fought in every war until then.  The call to service is a strong one to all who answer.  It defies definition but its existence is without doubt.  Deborah Sampson, and everyone else who has answered the call, has always done so for country, and never for any political predeliction.  While war is an extension of political ambition, service, entirely unrelated, is an extension of ones duty to his, or her country.  Deborah Sampson was the first American woman hero, but far from the last.  She, like most others who have served, did so not because she had to, but because she wanted to, more, the need to.