Energize Book Blog

In honor of the just-passed American July 4th holiday, here are excerpts from the first chapter of the book, By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers, by Susan J. Ellis and Katherine H. Campbell. It’s easy to forget the critical role volunteers played in the fight for independence, so what better time to remember? (For our friends to the north – you can read about the history of volunteering in Canada in this free PDF.)

There were a number of ways that the average citizen could play an active part in the growing rebellion. Economic pressure on England was an important weapon. The Boston Tea Party was but one of many citizen efforts. Though the colonists had grown dependent upon the goods of the mother country, boycotts of British products were attempted, usually successfully, all over the colonies…

After the Stamp Act, colonists resolved to abstain from buying and using such diverse items as loaf sugar, coaches and carriages of all types, imported hats, gold and silver lace or buttons, diamonds, clocks and watches, muffs, starch, women’s stays, velvet, gauze, silks, and many other luxury and basic articles imported from England. Colonial women were the natural participants in such boycotts and eagerly exercised their might in this arena of political activity…

The military strength of the colonies was directly dependent upon voluntary action in the most basic sense. In the 1600s, there was no army to protect citizens from the dangers of the wilderness. This meant that all settlers protected their own families and property and assisted their neighbors when called upon. As the colonists began to develop a greater sense of community, they felt the need to create more unified defense measures. Laws were enacted in several colonies as early as the 1630s requiring all citizens to hold arms, to be called up as needed to carry out the governor’s orders. As time went on, more permanent companies of those willing to volunteer for active duty were formed…

As the preceding pages demonstrate, the “average citizen” was critical not only to the success of the War of Independence but, more basically, to the formation of a new society. The simple cooperation among neighbors that made life in the early wilderness tolerable was succeeded by more structured forms of joint community effort. The scope of government responsibility increased as population grew, but on the frontier “pioneer conditions put a high premium upon personal work, skill, ingenuity, initiative and adaptability, and upon neighborly sociability.”¹ In the cities, voluntary associations supplemented governmental action by making needs known and by organizing volunteers to implement solutions.

What is most important in this era is the pervasive attitude of cooperative volunteering. Individuals actively sought a role in their growing communities, beyond the basic demands of survival. Involvement on the local level expanded with a developing sense of common purpose with neighboring settlements. This, in turn, broadened into an emerging loyalty to the colonies as a whole. In this way, person-to-person volunteering was linked to actions supporting the cause of patriotism. As Nathan Hale said:

I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward; I wish to be useful, and every kind of service, necessary to the public good, becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claims to perform that service are imperious.²

Endnotes:
1. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1927), cited in Frank Freidel and Norman Pollack, eds., American Issues in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), 148.
2. Ford, Peculiar Service, flyleaf.

We’ll be posting short, useful book excerpts regularly on the blog. If you’d like to suggest an excerpt you found particularly helpful, leave a comment.