It doesn't take long in any political discussion to which I am party for my general opinions on the value of tradition to come out. In short, Tavion and I don't quite see eye to eye. I opine that unless the acts in question are worth doing, or the rituals worth enacting, on their own merits, then claiming that it is traditional should not make it worth time and effort. Traditions, I hold, are things to be created or cast aside on the basis of whether or not they're actually useful or beneficial. Tradition is often an excuse for something cruel, stupid, or wasteful.
This is not always the case, obviously. Some traditions are worth hanging on to. One of my favorites is an old American tradition: dissent.
Not just random dissent. Political dissent, coupled with significant action, and lasting changes.
The Puritans are an obvious starting point. They were religious dissidents from England. Unfortunately, they fled one form of religious oppression simply to enforce another. While they managed meaningful political dissent, they didn't really learn from it. They turned from dissidents into exactly what they had dissented from. Whoops.
Many years later, in the wake of the Stamp Act, would come a different group. Well, a set of groups, really. They started as the Loyal Nine, a group of shopkeepers and artisans in Boston. They planned, grew, organized, and on August 14, 1765, took to the streets. They hung, beheaded, and eventually burned in effigy the man who was to be commissioned the Distributor of Stamps for Massachusetts, Andrew Oliver. They burned his business property, and both stoned and ransacked his house. The forces of the English kept of the streets of Boston, that night. They were afraid of what the Loyal Nine had become. They were the Sons of Liberty, and they ruled Boston.
Before long, the Sons of Liberty existed in every colony. From there, they began to correspond and organize. Many of their members were printers and publishers, and many who weren't were sympathetic. After all, one of the taxes was on paper, meaning they had to paid high duties. As a result, the activities of the Sons of Liberty were widely publicized, with each dramatic act emboldening others to do the same. They are, doubtless, best known for the Boston Tea Party. I trust I need say no more on that subject.
What became of the Sons of Liberty? Well, as I said, they got organized. Eventually, they were subsumed into the larger Revolution at hand. They had made indelible their mark upon the pages of history.
I'm going to skip the American Revolution itself. Suffice to say, it is without a doubt the single greatest instance of American dissent in history.
The next item is Shays' Rebellion. This was an armed uprising in western Massachusetts, mostly small farmers, in 1786 and 1787. The state of the economy, combined with other factors such as a poll tax and the barter economy that existed in much of western Massachusetts, left these farmers deeply in debt and with little hope of escape. They could not get a fair price selling their land, and if they did not pay, they would find themselves in debtor's prison and their lands seized by the court. As voting rights at the time were tied to land ownership, the aggrieved found themselves deprived of the ability to protest. In essence, they were out and out screwed.
So, as some of them had done years before during the American Revolution, they took up arms. The progress of their rebellion is unimportant, save to say that they really didn't pull it off. More important are the political effects. First, the local militias were effectively paralyzed, in part by sympathy, and in part by the sheer magnitude of the uprising. This made clear the need for some form of standing army. Second, it brought George Washington out of retirement, and convinced him of the need for a strong central government. Shays' Rebellion had a significant impact on the Constitutional Convention, which occurred months after its conclusion. Shortly thereafter, the Militia Law of 1972 was passed. Third, and perhaps best known, Shays' Rebellion prompted Thomas Jefferson to write the following passage:
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. …God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Certainly, Jefferson's sentiment would have gone over well with those who still remembered the struggle for independence. However, the next event would change everything for political dissidents: the Whiskey Rebellion.
In an effort to pay off debts accumulated from the American Revolution, an excise tax on whiskey was put into place in 1791. One notable aspect of it is that small distillers, such as farmers, had to pay nine cents a gallon. Larger distilleries paid six. Due to the geographic and economic issues involved, this struck directly at a major source of income for many Appalachian farmers. They took to arms, and adopted the tactics of the Sons of Liberty.
They conducted a multi-year campaign of harassment. Eventually, President Washington decided to end things. He exercised Martial Law to call out the militias of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and several other states. After raising a force of about 13,000 thousand men, they went hunting for the rebels.
Either the rebels were too intimidated to act against this army, or the very presence of the army was scary enough to put down the rebellion entirely. After a great deal of effort, a total of twenty men were caught. One died in prison. Two others were convicted of treason, but pardoned by President Washington. The hated tax remained in place until 1803, even if it was largely unenforceable.
The message was clear, though. Armed and violent political dissent was no longer a viable option. The Federal Government could and would put down any such threats with greater force than any rebel group might muster. Thus, relatively peaceful means would be required.
As later history shows, peaceful political dissent would be quite popular. Witness the movements for abolition, women's suffrage, and civil rights. Peaceable assembly and petition would become the mode of choice for dissent, occasional rumblings about violence and instances like Bleeding Kansas aside.
I expect that one or the other of us will blog more on the history of dissent, but not now. For now, it is enough to bask in awe that the vibrant American political life came from such roots. I'm no Tavion, but this is one tradition worth keeping. The tradition of fire in the belly, of impassioned dissent when the government does wrong, is among the greatest and most important of any in this nation. Too many forget.
Sources:
Wikipedia pages on Shays' Rebellion, Sons of Liberty, and Whiskey Rebellion
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