An eye-opening, meticulously researched new perspective on the influences that shaped the Founders as well as the nation's founding document From one election cycle to the next, a defining question continues to divide the country’s political parties: Should the government play a major or a minor role in the lives of American citizens? The Declaration of Independence has long been invoked as a philosophical treatise in favor of limited government. Yet the bulk of the document is a discussion of policy, in which the Founders outlined the failures of the British imperial government. Above all, they declared, the British state since 1760 had done too little to promote the prosperity of its American subjects. Looking beyond the Declaration’s frequently cited opening paragraphs, Steve Pincus reveals how the document is actually a blueprint for a government with extensive powers to promote and protect the people’s welfare. By examining the Declaration in the context of British imperial debates, Pincus offers a nuanced portrait of the Founders’ intentions with profound political implications for today.
Steve Pincus is the Bradford Durfee Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of several books on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British history.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Mount Vernon: Patriot Estate 25
2 Patriots and the Imperial Crisis of the 1760s 51
3 Making a Patriot Government 89
Epilogue 137
Notes 153
Index 199
Interviews
Your thesis is that the Zeitgeist of the founding era was not about a minimalist government as current originalist political conservatives believe, but actually the opposite—and that the Declaration of Independence shows a political sensibility embracing an activist government. What do you mean, exactly?
Many American politicians defend their own preferences for small government by asserting that the Founders believed government to be, at best, a necessary evil. In fact, they shared a similar conviction with the British Patriot Party—that government played a fundamental role in promoting the happiness or welfare of citizens. The Founders wanted powerful activist government.
Can you point to a part of the Declaration that articulates the notion of a more robust relationship between citizens and the government?
The authors of the Declaration complained bitterly that the British imperial government after 1763 did too little to promote the development of the British American colonies. The Founders concluded the Declaration by calling for the new government to have “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” The Declaration was America's first constitutional document.
What do you want your readers to take away from this book?
Politicians frequently have mistaken conceptions of America's founding document. Instead of calling for a minimal government, the authors of the Declaration wanted a government that would support immigration, intervene to promote commerce, and put an end to the slave trade. America's Founders in 1776 called for a state that would stimulate the economic development of the newly independent republic.
