Colonial Foundations: The Journey from British Charters to American Constitutions

Dr. Beinberg explores how colonial charters formed the foundation for American democracy and evolved into state constitutions after independence. Colonial experiences with local self-governance created the blueprint for America's revolutionary approach to divided sovereignty that continues to shape our federal system today.

• Colonial charters were agreements between the British monarch and colonists, while constitutions were created by the people themselves
• Colonies were established for different purposes – religious freedom in New England, commercial interests in Jamestown, refuges for specific religious groups elsewhere
• Colonial differences created varied political cultures while sharing a desire for "British liberties"
• When preparing for independence, colonies transformed their charters into state constitutions
• Massachusetts created an innovative constitution-writing process under John Adams with town-by-town approval
• The concept of divided sovereignty between state and federal governments emerged from colonial experience
• British observers found American federalism confusing, believing sovereignty needed a single ultimate authority
• State governments continue to handle most governance in America, a direct legacy of colonial charters

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Speaker 1 0:47

Hey listeners . So in this episode Dr Beinberg is going to be answering the question how did the English Bill of Rights shape the US Bill of Rights ? Dr Beinberg , over to you .

Speaker 2 0:59

Yep . So the question of how the colonial charters lay the groundwork for American democracy is , I think , something that continues to that . I think continues to be relevant insofar as the colonial charters serve as , in some sense , for many of the states of first crack , what becomes the state constitutions ?

Speaker 2 1:16

Can I ask really quick what is the difference between a group of colonists or , in some sense sort of often

Dr. Beinberg Explores English Rights Influence

Speaker 2 1:34

sort of businessmen or you know emigrants or you know folks on a ship and the British monarch . So these are originally effectively made between a charter granted by the British monarch to a group of people , Whereas a constitution and this is something that James Madison and John Adams will discuss and I'll come back to this in a second but a constitution is effectively a group of people , a group of people creating something themselves and signing it themselves .

Speaker 2 2:05

So , like some of them are a little hazy , like the Mayflower Compact is sort of the group of the folks on the boat . They sort of write it all up but they sort of say that they're serving . So the Mayflower Compact is not a charter in the same sense . They already have effectively a charter from the king to deploy over there . But the compact sort of is internally amongst themselves . So the Mayflower Compact

Colonial Charters vs Constitutions Explained

Speaker 2 2:26

and I know we'll talk more about that in another session is closer to in some sense a constitution , where it's made by the people themselves as opposed to a group of people with the claimant of the sovereign . So that's a great question .

Speaker 1 2:41

So is it fair to say then , like the colonies had charters , but once they became states , we created constitutions .

Speaker 2 2:47

Exactly exactly .

Speaker 2 2:50

So the charters exist and the charters have variation . They're about a hundred year period when they're , and sometimes some of the colonies will get sort of carved up or moved or folded into . There's two New Jerseys . At one point colonies are held by one person who holds two colonies . So there's a little bit of variation in terms of what the number is and what's in the specific guarantees , right . And this is again sort of previewing .

Speaker 2 3:20

Why the Americans are so invested in sort of local government and what we would later call federalism is because these colonies , colonial charters , often have quite a bit of variation . The colonies themselves are established for different purposes , right . So the ones in New England are largely groups of people who are upset by the direction of the Anglican church , who want to build sort of different versions . And there's disagreement you know , the pilgrims and the Puritans is effectively a disagreement over whether you want to reform from within the Anglican Church or sort of leave it in order to better practice sort of a more proper understanding of Christian faith . But it's a technical distinction in terms of what they want to do with

Diversity Among Colonial Origins

Speaker 2 4:01

the Anglican Church , but sort of what they think proper Christian faith ought to look like . So the New England and this is why , you know , then Rhode Island sort of spins off because it's folks who think that in fact they still got it wrong again in Massachusetts . So the New England ones often have this sort of more particular religious bent . The Jamestown colony is primarily , but not exclusively , commercial . It does have a sort of missionary element to it as well . Right , georgia is initially founded as a colony of sort of debtors and prisoners and sort of in that sense . Right , you know , pennsylvania is going to be for protecting Quakers , maryland for Catholics , right Now , in some sense they converge later on . But they still do have this sort of variation in political culture and they have a little variation in terms of their structures and sort of the rights that are discussed in the charters .

Speaker 2 4:55

But these are understood by the Americans as a guarantee and an establishment , again , particularly of a local government . We are fellow Brits , we want British liberties . Please basically continue to follow the old rules . And they're realizing that in fact it's not . It's that the British government have a fundamental disagreement on sort of constitutional principles , right , is that increasingly looks like an impassable or an impassable divide between the colonies and the home country .

Speaker 2 5:38

The Second Continental Congress tells the American colonies . We're getting ready to declare independence , we will govern ourselves now . And this is in some sense an easy thing to do , insofar as they say we've already been doing it . That's what we've been trying to convince the British government all this time , that we've been governing ourselves for the most part . And so they say , hey , let's get ready for this . We need to start writing constitutions , because they have in mind this is how you do things in the colonies .

Speaker 2 6:07

You write constitutions of structures , you write constitutions with rights and some of the colonies , at least early in the American Revolution I'm going to oversimplify it and be a little glib here but they basically take where it says the governor is appointed by the king and they scratch that out and say and the governor is , like , appointed by the

Birth of State Constitutions

Speaker 2 6:24

legislature or something . But otherwise they sort of leave the charters because again they're concentrating on winning the war and they don't really have the time to sit there and have a sustained constitutional convention for months and months , and months . That's not true in all cases . Pennsylvania rights are really fascinating and eventually they will later conclude kind of crazy state constitution . But these charters do serve as the foundation for many of them and a couple of cases they do the opposite , where there are a couple of states that are still using their colonial charters , again with the sort of King Shallow Point governor scratched out until the mid 1800s , there are a couple of them that are still using the old document , just with a couple of annotations effectively attached to it .

Speaker 2 7:08

So in 1780 , you see , probably the first major , major , major example of what we would think of as how to make a constitution , which is John Adams , when he's briefly allowed to basically come back from running around playing diplomat in England or in not England , excuse me , in Europe most of the time helps write the Massachusetts Constitution and they really take seriously the idea that the people need to hear earlier question of the difference between a charter and a constitution .

Speaker 2 7:39

They take seriously the idea that people need to buy into this and so they actually have it as an almost iterative process .

Speaker 2 7:44

Iterative meaning it's going back and forth where Adams and Cruz sort of write it .

Speaker 2 7:49

They send it back out to the towns and they say what do you think ?

Speaker 2 7:51

And they sort of say approve , disapprove of these parts , and then eventually they send it back and say do we , the people of Massachusetts and all these towns , agree to this document that we think is going to be our fundamental guarantee , and it includes , from their perspective , many of the rights and understandings that had continued on from the charters or , in other cases , had been sort of part of their implicit understanding of British liberty . So the charters in a practical sense lay the groundwork for American democracy by creating the structures by which the colonies the individual colonies , it should be emphasized govern themselves . So they get practice , in that they get understanding of this . This is what our system is fundamentally about . But then they also in many ways create the starting points for what become the state constitutions , which arguably to this day are still I mean , the state governments do most things in the American political system , even to this day , and so they lay the groundwork for what becomes the state constitutions , which are what structure our primary governing , our primary governments today .

Speaker 1 8:56

So the colonies , I mean we're kind of almost 13 separate , not separate countries . But it's not like when we think of the United States today , right , we're kind of all under one umbrella . They all had their own identity .

Speaker 2 9:09

I might actually push back a little bit on the umbrella thing , insofar as I think one of the things that the US Constitution

Divided Sovereignty: A Revolutionary Concept

Speaker 2 9:15

does and we'll talk more about this with the Federalist Papers but the idea is that for some purposes there's the umbrella , but for other purposes the states are effectively still quasi-nations in a sense , where they still have primary governing authority , except where and this is sort of a technical distinction about how you draw the line but the US Constitution does say that the Constitution is fundamentally supreme , but it doesn't necessarily say that the federal government is supreme in and of itself . It's supreme where the Constitution makes it . But where the Constitution doesn't make the Fed supreme under the original Constitution , then put in the Tenth Amendment Again , these are things we'll talk about more later the states do retain primary governing authority .

Speaker 2 10:00

But certainly at the time of , at the time of the revolution , they understand themselves to be quasi independent . This is why there's actually a lot of interesting discussion about United States . To what extent does that ? To what extent are they united ? The Articles of Confederation describes them as basically united as a league .

Speaker 2 10:21

The US Constitution does create a single nation , but one that sort of continues to divide power , and this is one of the things where the British , looking on this later , think this is crazy . This sort of anticipates the theme we'll talk about later . But the Americans in Madison will say , yeah , we can sort of divide sovereignty like this we can have the state constitution supreme in some spheres and the federal government supreme in other spheres and restricting the states in some spheres . We can do this . Sovereignty is with the people and they can sort of allocate the power how they want to do it , and the Brits think this is crazy . You ultimately need to have one institution that's sovereign . But this foundational sense , this idea of divided local power , is something that is a legacy of these colonial charters .