Civic Innovation

The Revolution and the Federal System

In the period leading up to the American Revolution of 1776, civic and public ferment took many forms. American colonists built on the English civic and political reforms growing from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which had firmly established parliamentary rule and constitutional monarchy. In the early eighteenth century, the religious revival known as the Great Awakening created congregations throughout the colonies and led to the disestablishment of religion (that is, the separation of church and state). It also laid a critical foundation for much of the associational life that would follow in the nineteenth century. Americans formed civic associations to build schools, libraries, and hospitals; they also established volunteer fire and insurance companies and societies of artisans and tradespeople. Although dominated by local elites, Americans engaged in discussion of important public issues in local town meetings in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. Local taverns, coffeehouses, and town squares, linked by an increasing number of newspapers, comprised a vibrant, if nascent, public sphere.

These innovations in civic infrastructure created networks of horizontal association that evolved into revolutionary societies, local political associations linked from town to town. Paul Revere's ride, framed in myth as the work of a small group, was in fact an early-warning system for the colonial revolutionaries.

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