Second American Revolution
The first American Revolution spanned from 1775 to 1783, after which the United States received recognition of independence by and from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Rhetorical or hyperbolic references to a Second American Revolution have been made on a number of occasions throughout the history of the United States.
Historical statements
- A second (or third, or fourth) American revolution was conceived early on as attainable via the Article V Convention, as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. Occasional conventions were envisioned by many of the country's founding generation of leaders to be a sort of institutionalized avenue toward the ideal of revolution every twenty years, often attributed to Thomas Jefferson. According to Samuel Williams of Vermont (1743-1817), it was to be the means to accomplish periodic constitutional adaptation to changing times. Born the same year as Jefferson, Williams saw the federal constitutional convention as the vehicle for what loose constructionists today term the “living, breathing constitution.”[1]
- The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain is sometimes referred to as the second American Revolution, stemming from the second British recognition of 1781 American borders.[2] John C. Calhoun was perhaps the first to make this claim.[3]
- The Confederates believed that they were fighting a second American Revolution by attempting to secede from the United States during the American Civil War.
Fictional usage
- American armed resistance to a fictional Soviet invasion in Amerika was described by its supporters as a second American Revolution.
- The Second Civil War, a 1997 made for TV movie.
- In "The Guns of the South", a Harry Turtledove alternative history novel, the Confederates refer to the American Civil War as the Second American Revolution after their victory.
- Shattered Union, a 2005 PC game developed by 2K Games. It depicts a civil war between six factions of the former United States and the European Union, following the destruction of Washington DC in a nuclear attack.
- Empire, a 2006 novel by Orson Scott Card.
- Season 2 of Jericho; a Second American Civil War begins between the United States and the separatist Allied States of America.[4]
References
- ^ Samuel Williams, The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 2 vols. (Burlington VT, Samuel Mills, 1809) 2:395-96. Congregational minister, Harvard professor, author of the first history of Vermont, and founder of Vermont's oldest continuously published newspaper; Rev. Williams considered a rigid, unchanging constitution to be high folly, in that "no policy would appear more puerile or contemptible to the people of America, than an attempt to bind posterity to our forms, or to confine them to our degrees of knowledge, and improvement: The aim is altogether the reverse, to make provision for the perpetual improvement and progression of the government itself….”
- ^ War of 1812 - The Second War for Independence
- ^ The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, pg. 498
- ^ As stated at the end of the final episode, "Patriots and Tyrants".