Differing Concepts of Freedom

Jim Pederson      Dyed-in-the-Wool History            January 20, 2025

​

Freedom is commonly assumed to mean the ability to do with your life as you see fit within the constraints of not directly limiting the ability of others to do likewise. In these matters, there may be a need for government to address common costs and common benefits, but apart from that, people are to be left alone to manage their own affairs. To many of the founders, especially those of Puritan or, to a somewhat lesser extent, Episcopalian backgrounds, there was a bit more to the concept that must be understood for the context of the term to be fully grasped.

​

Referring back to John Adam’s concerns about the moral state of colonial America, when he looked across Boston or Philadelphia what would he have really seen?  The following observations taken from “Renegade History” give a representative view of what towns and, seaport towns in particular, were like around the time of the revolution.

​

• During the meetings of the Continental Congress in 1777, as he walked from his residence on Walnut and Third streets to what is now Independence Hall four blocks away, he would have passed a dozen of more than 160 licensed taverns in Philadelphia which had only a population of 24,000 at the time. There were also many unlicensed taverns producing a total count of at least one tavern for every 100 residents. Comparing this to 2007, there was one alcohol-serving business for every 1,071 residents in Philadelphia. (40 p. 5)

• Other early American cities were even worse. In Boston in the middle of the century, it was estimated that liquor was sold at one of every eight residential houses. “The cities,” according to Sharon V. Salinger, the author of Taverns and Drinking in Early America, “were packed with taverns.” (40 pp. 5-9)

• Within these establishments, the crowd was typically ethnically mixed including both free blacks and slaves (laws in some colonies forbade this but they were largely ignored and not enforced), accompanied with music that was a combination of African and Borderland musical heritages. Women bartenders were common as were prostitutes actively marketing their product.

• Drinking was frequently done before work, or at work, and even instead of work. These patterns were so well ingrained and the labor supply was tight enough that employers didn’t or couldn’t do much about it in many places. Sunday was followed by another day of rest known as “Saint Monday,” which, Benjamin Franklin was irritated to see, “is as duly kept by our working people as Sunday; the only difference is that instead of employing their time cheaply in church, they are wasting it expensively in the alehouse.” (40 p. 7)

• Women owned and operated a large percentage of American taverns during the colonial period, especially in port cities. Roughly 40 percent of the taverns in Boston during the 1760s were owned by women. In Charleston in the fifteen years before the Revolution, a majority of taverns were owned by women.

​​

“Tavern culture” worked against discipline or authority and didn’t respect or elevate the status of elite society. There were also the common social problems that are associated with alcoholism along with a degrading of the nuclear family. Births to unwed mothers were very high with one out of twenty people between 1790 and 1799 having at least one illegitimate child. Divorce was also easy to obtain for women as well as men.

​

While colonial America might have had overall lower standards of morality, in a libertine sense, they enjoyed a high degree of personal freedom. To the extent there were vice laws of any sort, they were generally not enforced or even acknowledged. Many prominent New Englanders had promoted laws to address taverns and drinking including Benjamin Franklin who charged that “Many bills have been presented to late Governors to lessen the number, and to regulate those nurseries of idleness and debauchery, but without success.” (40 p. 25) For monarchy’s this was actually more of a historical norm.  While some monarchs certainly did have an interest in the spiritual wellbeing of their subjects, the economic balance point was for them to be able to extract enough tax revenue for the government to operate while providing a high enough standard of living and protection to avoid rebellion. To the extent that external controls were applied, they were done so directly and acted to set a boundary as to what would be tolerated as opposed to gradually “nudging” the population towards higher common standards.

​

Liberty in the context of the time addressed political liberty which attempted to replace external constraints on behaviors with voluntary restraints willingly adopted by the citizenry. Political liberty could in many respects be seen as intentionally constraining personal liberty much in the same way that the phrase “freedom from sin” in the context of church means to first control one’s behavior as not to sin. This sort of thinking can broadly be traced to Protestant enlightenment thought but is especially prevalent in puritanism. Adams observed the relative freedom of the monarchy saying, “It would produce so much Taste and Politeness, so much Elegance in Dress, Furniture, Equipage, so much Musick and Dancing, so much Fencing and Skating, so much Cards and Backgammon, so much Horse Racing and Cockfighting, so many Balls and Assemblies, so many Plays and Concerts that the very imagination of them makes me feel vain, light, frivolous, and insignificant.” (40 p. 22) Adams understood that political liberty and collective self-determination required people to turn away from pleasures and surrender their personal freedom, because they would have to assume the responsibility of managing society. “Under a well-regulated Commonwealth, the People must be wise virtuous and cannot be otherwise. Under a Monarchy they may be as vicious and foolish as they please, nay, they cannot but be vicious and foolish … [T]here is one Difficulty which I know not how to get over. Virtue and Simplicity of Manners are indispensably necessary in a Republic among all orders and Degrees of Men.” (40 pp. 22-23) Revolutionary leaders actually saw boycotts of British goods as a way to increase discipline and selflessness in the population. The Boston Evening-Post editorialized that Americans “of late years insensibly drawn into too great a degree of luxury and dissipation.” But, as a result of boycotts, they have learned that, “by consuming less of what we are not really in want of, and by industriously cultivating and improving the natural advantages of our own country, we might save our substance, even our lands, from becoming the property of others, and we might effectually preserve our virtue and our liberty, to the latest posterity.” (40 p. 26)

​​

John Locke, who was central in defining the concept of Democratic self-rule, observed, “It seems plain to me that the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires, where reason does not authorize them.” He understood that running a society and government took enormous discipline and knowledge to avoid catastrophe. The people would have to turn away from temporal desires and pursuit of pleasure and the best way to accomplish this would be to teach them to feel shame for their selfish desires. “Esteem and disgrace are, of all others, the most powerful incentives to the mind, when once it is brought to relish them. If you can once get into children a love of credit, and an apprehension of shame and disgrace, you have put into ’em the true principle, which will constantly work and incline them to the right” (40 p. 24). Referring to physical punishments, he went on to say these methods only “patches up for the present, and skins it over, but reaches not to the bottom of the sore; ingenuous shame, and the apprehensions of displeasure, are the only true restraint.” (40 p. 24)

​

Another notable character in the founding of the country and the moral advancement of the population was Benjamin Rush.  He was a signer of the declaration, participant in the Continental Congress, and Surgeon General to the Continental Army. Concerned that the war might end too soon before the people had been forced to develop the appropriate moral and spiritual discipline, he wrote, “I hope the war will last until it introduces among us the same temperance in pleasure, the same modesty in dress, the same justice in business, and the same veneration for the name of the Deity which distinguished our (Puritan) ancestors.” Expanding on these points, he went on to state, “Luxury and Extravagance are in my opinion totally destructive of those Virtues which are necessary for the Preservation of the Liberty and Happiness of the People” (40 p. 29). Rush, who was regarded as the leading medical authority of his day, wrote a paper on the Effects of Spiritous Liquors, which saw more than 170,000 copies distributed. He contended that drink and democracy could not mix and that drunkenness was a biological disease. Rush also recommended the elimination of fairs, horse racing, cockfighting, and Sunday amusements, which led to “gaming—drunkenness—and uncleanness” as well as “habits of idleness and a love of pleasure.” (40 p. 32)

​

Over time the shame of pleasure and comfort made its way into the American psyche and church, especially in the Puritan regions of the North, and then spread through the awakening movements. Protestant evangelical churches elevated vice type offenses in the hierarchy of sins to the point, where up until recent times, these behaviors in the minds of the unchurched largely defined the faith. These sorts of sins were victimless in that they didn’t directly involve anyone against their will, but collectively they break down the nuclear family structure and erode society. Legislation aimed at enforcing personal morality became more standard and accepted over time initially addressing drinking and then expanding into sexual practices and divorce laws, and less directly into forms of leisure activities that were considered frivolous. This could be seen as the initial projection of the Yankee soul onto the other cultures that made up the new nation. It also played a role in the treatment of Blacks in the North, leading to the establishment of Black codes, as well as anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant persecution. These were groups who were seen as being unable or unwilling to conform to the common vision of what American society needed to aspire to in order to thrive as a Republic.

​

As to how successful this shaping of society was, in many respects, at least through the mid-20th century, it would seem to have been remarkably successful although requiring a good deal of patience. While John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were political adversaries, later in life they became friends and regularly corresponded with each other. In the last years of his life, Adams wrote to Jefferson this fundamental question: “Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of temperance and industry? Will you tell me how to prevent riches from producing luxury? Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice, and folly?” Jefferson had no answer to this. (40 p. 38) So while religion, especially in the North, became more legalistic, society also became more materialistic and government more intrusive. We’re left then with this key question, if the success of the Republic is dependent on the people to which it is entrusted achieving and holding to high moral, along with spiritual and intellectual standards, what happens when these prerequisites are not met? What becomes of us when the political behaviors of both the electorate and the rulers are driven principally by lust for wealth and power?

​

Bibliography

​

Russell, T. (2010). A Renegade History of the United States. New York New York: Free Press.