23.i.08 HIS 310 Field Trip

This evening we experimented with an out-of-school experience, meeting at the Prince Street Cafe. I borrowed a laptop from the college so we could refer to the documents in the Avalon Project at Yale. I had begun work on a chronology of significant dates leading up to the War of Independence and was ready to give a talk on that, but we spent most of the class session considering topics for the first writing project, which is to center on some idea or event which influenced the constitution (or the Constitution) of the United States. In the syllabus, I had listed several possible topics.

Students selected the following as tentative topics:

John Locke's theory of government
Native American governmental forms
Cultural unity and diversity in the British colonies in North America.

On Locke, I pointed to "The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, March 1 1669". This is interesting on several points. It is one of two frames of government in North America (the other is Pennsylvania's) that reflect a connection with Locke; this one is directly attributed to him, although it was amended (and this is another very interesting point) by Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper), who is notable as advocating "moral sense" theory of ethics. Another point of interest is that the "Constitutions" of 1669 present what amounts to a feudal structure for the province, which seems somehow antithetical to Locke's basic position on government. Also, articles 95 through 110 deal with religion in a quite liberal fashion for the period, and these are well worth examining. Article 110 is particularly interesting on another point as well, which may be clear on reading it.

On Native government, I point to William Fenton's The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (Norman: U Oklahoma P, 1998). Another good source for local Native documents is Barry Kent's Susquehanna's Indians (Harrisburg: PHMC, 1984).

On the cultural diversity of the British North American colonies, an excellent starting place is David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (2nd ed, NY: Oxford UP, 1998).