Was America Founded Because Of The Innate Anglo-Saxon Love Of Liberty?

[Freomæg]

I'm by no means knowledgable about American Independence (though I intend to learn more), but all United States patriots would probably agree that the American Revolutionary War was essentially the war for liberty.

So, in considering this, I wonder whether the founding of North America was directly related to the Norman conquest of England. Again, I'm not an expert on how the governing of England changed under the Normans (probably because I spend too much time researching alternative histories). But it would seem to me that from 1066 onwards, the Anglo-Saxons may have sought to one-day reclaim the way-of-life they had led before losing England. The Normans adopted governance of England but did not replace the English bloodline, so in the founding of America it was the Anglo-Saxon bloodline (among others) that migrated not the governance.

Here I refer to a collective ethno-cultural search for liberty - a need for living a certain way which transcends individuals or generations and remains intact among one group for centuries. I believe this same mindset can still be seen today among Old Stock Americans - who are most prone to the phenomenon of 'Survivalism'. Though the United States may currently be on its knees, I still consider it one of the most free nations on Earth (it certainly was until 1913 and the Federal Reserve Act). Is this because the spirit of the Anglo-Saxons relocated there?

[Allenson]

I've read such things before, Cythraul. That being that the independent-minded, yeoman-farmers and their settling of North America, particularly those from England, were some sort of reemergence of Anglo-Saxon liberties, sloughing off the 'Norman yoke'.

I have a couple quotes that I'll dig up & post in a little bit on just this topic.

Also, I recently ran across a genetic study that suggests that there may even be a certain inherent urge for personal independence, reaching a peak in England/USA/Australia. I haven't read it thoroughly, but it's surely food for thought.

Results and article attached.

[Electronic God-Man]

I know that Ralph Waldo Emerson believed this and wrote about it somewhere.

It must be in here somewhere: http://www.rwe.org

[Freomæg]

It must be in here somewhere: http://www.rwe.org

Thanks. I had a quick scan and couldn't see it - I don't have time right now. But if it happens to occur to you where he might have commented on this, please let me know. Otherwise I'll try and find time to read through it over the coming weeks.

[Allenson]

OK, as promised, here are a few quotes. They are all taken from a book that I recently read entitled: Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic. It is a good, albeit, dense read, tracing customary law and the intertwining of landscape and nation from ancient Schleswig-Holstein & Angeln, through Britain's renaissance and finally to the new world of America.

The author is Kenneth Olwig who is a professor of geography at the University of Trondheim in Norway.

As will be seen, the idea of the Anglo-Saxon origins of the ancient English constitution attained, as a result, a particular political potency. This idea, in turn, was eventually to play a role in constituting the American identification with Anglo-Saxon values.

The American revolutionaries were quite taken by the notion of the ancient Saxon origins of representative government and law that were promoted by parliamentarians. Thomas Jefferson even sought to learn the language of the Anglo-Saxons in order to get a better grasp of their judicial and political principles.

The federal system (of the United States) reflects the countryman ideology which flourished in the seventeenth century, when many refugees from Stuart Britain fled to a new England in America and re-created the English township or village centered on a common green.

.........At one end of the spectrum we have the country parks, village greens and commons of the East Coast, particularly in New England, which are jealously guarded as symbols of local community.

A key symbol of the identity of the United States as a "country" is the New England village. Donald Meinig, a prominent geographer of American place identity has described its importance:

"As the author of a recent guidebook confidently stated: "To the entire world, a steepled church, set in its frame of white wooden houses around a manicured common, remains a scene which says 'New England.' " Our interest is not simply in the fact that such a scene "says" New England but more especially in what New England "says" to us through the medium of its villages..... Drawing simply upon one's own experience as an American (which is, after all, an appropriate way to judge a national symbol) it seems clear that such scenes carry connotations of continuity (of not just something important in our past, but a visible bond between past & present), of stability, quiet prosperity, cohesion and intimacy. Taken as a whole, the image of the New England village is widely assumed to symbolize for many people the best we have known of an intimate, family-centered, morally conscious, industrious, thrifty democratic community."

[Allenson]

I also wanted to add that Hastings and 1066 is one of history's great "what ifs...".

Truly, what if Harold had won at Hastings and had driven William back to the channel? Had England remained in English hands, America might not be what it is today.

[Electronic God-Man]

Thanks. I had a quick scan and couldn't see it - I don't have time right now. But if it happens to occur to you where he might have commented on this, please let me know. Otherwise I'll try and find time to read through it over the coming weeks.

I am fairly certain that it is in his essay "English Traits". The bulk of the essay deals with England proper but, if I remember correctly, he frequently refers to Anglo-Americans.

I'm pretty sure he says something about how the English who came to America were escaping Norman rule, which was crushing their freedom loving spirit, etcetera, etcetera.

[Electronic God-Man]

The Normans came out of France into England worse men than they went into it, one hundred and sixty years before. They had lost their own language, and learned the Romance or barbarous Latin of the Gauls; and had acquired, with the language, all the vices it had names for. The conquest has obtained in the chronicles the name of the “memory of sorrow.” Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they took everything they could carry, they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and killed, until everything English was wrought to the verge of ruin. Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled.

It is a race, is it not? that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus “on the Manners of the Germans,” not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.

- RWE, English Traits

The English derive their pedigree from such a range of nationalities, that there needs sea-room and land-room to unfold the varieties of talent and character. Perhaps the ocean serves as a galvanic battery to distribute acids at one pole, and alkalies at the other. So England tends to accumulate her liberals in America, and her conservatives at London. The Scandinavians in her race still hear in every age the murmurs of their mother, the ocean; the Briton in the blood hugs the homestead still.

I found plenty of well-marked English types, the ruddy complexion, fair and plump, robust men, with faces cut like a die, and a strong island speech and accent; a Norman type, with a complacency that belongs to that constitution. Others, who might be Americans, for anything that appeared in their complexion or form: and their speech was much less marked, and their thought much less bound. We will call them Saxons. Then the Roman has implanted his dark complexion in the trinity or quaternity of bloods.

THE TEUTONIC tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts with the Latin races. The German name has a proverbial significance of sincerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are charged with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, the punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates, and you have the English truth and credit. The government strictly performs its engagements. The subjects do not understand trifling on its part. When any breach of promise occurred, in the old days of prerogative, it was resented by the people as an intolerable grievance.

It is not usually a point of honor, nor a religious sentiment, and never any whim that they will shed their blood for; but usually property, and right measured by property, that breeds revolution. They have no Indian taste for a tomahawk-dance, no French taste for a badge or a proclamation. The Englishman is peaceably minding his business, and earning his day’s wages. But if you offer to lay hand on his day’s wages, on his cow, or his right in common, or his shop, he will fight to the Judgment. Magna-charta, jury-trial, habeas-corpus, star-chamber, ship-money, Popery, Plymouth-colony, American Revolution, are all questions involving a yeoman’s right to his dinner, and, except as touching that, would not have lashed the British nation to rage and revolt.

Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of order, and of calculation, it must be owned they are capable of larger views; but the indulgence is expensive to them, cost great crises, or accumulations of mental power. In common the horse works best with blinders. Nothing is more in the line of English thought, than our unvarnished Connecticut question, “Pray, sir, how do you get your living when you are at home?”—The questions of freedom, of taxation, of privilege, are money questions. Heavy fellows, steeped in beer and fleshpots, they are hard of hearing and dim of sight. Their drowsy minds need to be flagellated by war and trade and politics and persecution. They cannot well read a principle, except by the light of fagots and of burning towns.

- RWE, English Traits

It's best just to read it, but there are some snippets.

[Freomæg]

I also wanted to add that Hastings and 1066 is one of history's great "what ifs...".

I agree, and so would most who identify with their Anglo-Saxon roots. I'm a little reluctant to ascribe notions of fairness and liberty solely to the Anglo-Saxons and not the other British and nearby tribes, but the excellent quotes in this thread and the founding of America itself would suggest that the Anglo-Saxons are, and have long been, engaged in a constant striving for freedom and proper representation above all others. Had the Normans not taken this land then the entire world, as you say Allenson, would probably be quite a different place.

I am fairly certain that it is in his essay "English Traits".

Thanks for that. That's one of the essays I did quickly scan, but I managed to miss all the nuggets you pulled out of it.

[Ænglishman]

No, the founders of the US were in stark disagreement with each other on many issues. Some were leftoid crackmongers that wanted to have the same kind of crazy that hit France later, some were regionalist monarchists that wanted the US to have a king, some just wanted the US to have a seat in British parliament but were scared they would be prosecuted if the colonies rejoined the British empire. Not only this but Secessionists were actually a minority in the thirteen colonies that likely made up no more than 45~% of the population, it's simply the case that the military elite and aristocratic classes were disproportionately supportive of the movement.https://books.google.com/books?id=xK...page&q&f=false. The core of the movement among the general population was people opposed to paying taxes not ideologues, because the administration was so decentralized that previous to the seven years' war Americans were paying almost nothing and those living on the frontier literally nothing. This actually led to another series of rebellions following independence such as Shayes rebellion and the Whiskey rebellion where the same people who supported independence to begin with rebelled against the new government because it also needed to levy heavy taxes to pay off debt.