This is published with the permission of the author. Thank you Dr. Sandoz.
Ellis Sandoz, Louisiana State University
Copyright ©Ellis Sandoz 2006. All Rights Reserved
In a particularly frenzied debate over Equality in the Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution, the old story goes, one citizen-deputy enthusiastically affirmed that “There is very little difference between men and women!” At which assertion the entire body rose to its feet shouting “Vive la différence!”
So it was with Britain and America during the period of the Founding, although the little difference might not have been quite so entertaining. Still, everything important seemed to be quite the same: language, religion, ethnicity, political institutions and practices, legal heritage, patrimony, allegiances. Paradoxically, everything was the same and yet totally different, depending on perspective and interpretation.
Viewed from the end of the process, the little difference is magnified. The United States emerged from it a republic (if we can keep it) and Great Britain remained a monarchy and empire, even without most of its North American colonies. From the Stamp Act (1765) through the Battle of New Orleans (1815) what began as discussion became debate and debate became war not once but twice. To their chagrin and astonishment, the Brits lost both times–convincingly at Yorktown with French help, decisively in the Chalmette swamp where the crack Black Watch (93rd Highlanders) and several elite units fresh from sacking and burning Baltimore and Washington were decimated by Barataria pirates and Tennessee frontiersmen commanded by Jean Lafitte and Andrew Jackson with 2,600 British killed compared to eight American dead and thirteen wounded. The common man took his rise. In the passionate course of these events America defined itself, by a process that continued – and may even be said still to continue into the present.
