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Overview

What is 'Liberty Madness'? How did the American Revolution begin? What was the American Revolution like in New Jersey? The following guide has been created to help teachers and students navigate the characters, themes, and key events of our stage play, Liberty Madness.

What is 'Liberty Madness' ?

Liberty
Let's start with 'liberty.' It usually means 1) the state or condition of being free.  

Liberty was associated with theology (the study of religion) because many Judeo-Christians believed that God gave human beings the 'liberty' to choose good or evil. Liberty was also associated with ancient abstractions, such as the Roman goddess 'Libertas'; she was often depicted wearing the 'frigian cap' given to Roman slaves after they won their freedom. In the 18th century, people began to believe they were living in an advanced age of 'Enlightenment' and learning, and they began to look for more precise and even scientific definitions of liberty. They still evoked the older concepts of liberty, but they also sought explanations rooted in real world experience, rather than the supernatural. 

In the midst of the American Revolution, the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith defined liberty as allowing every individual to pursue their own interest in their own way, bringing their industry and capital into competition with others, provided they do not violate the laws of justice. In Adam Smith's conception, having liberty meant being free from coercion, where individuals could freely choose their actions. In essence, Smith's liberty is a "presumption of liberty," suggesting that the burden of proof should be on those who wish to restrict freedom, as individuals (and not governments) generally possess the best knowledge of their own interests. 

During the American Revolution, the notion of liberty became so powerful that it became what social scientist call an ideology -- a system of connected ideas that people believed to be irrefutable. Thomas Jefferson described the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as 'God-given', and Benjamin Franklin believed these rights were 'self-evident.'

In the 18th century, in an age when most wealth and power was concentrated in the hands of a few elites, the idea that everyday people should demand liberty had radical implications. While the Revolution did not result in equal rights for women, or free the enslaved, or protect Native Americans, it did upset the political order enough to firmly establish an ideology of liberty at the heart of American society. Before the American Revolution, the ideology of most nations revolved around religion, ancestry (blood ties), and land. 

Madness
In colonial times, the term 'madness' meant a disease that caused insanity: the inability to regulate or control one's thoughts, words, and actions. If you've ever seen someone explode with anger at being told what to do, then you've seen someone the British or early Americans might have thought 'mad.' And if you've ever seen someone insist that education is brainwashing, or that airplane contrails cause autism, you have seen someone suffering from 'liberty madness.' In a state of madness, a person might lash out and ignore any sense of justice, and act solely out of a corrupted, ignorant self interest. 

Justice, unfortunately, often seems very subjective to people. As a result, what some people consider to be necessary, others view as madness.

In this French postcard, British soldiers respond helplessly to the great fire of New York in 1776. Many people believe Patriot soldiers set fire to the city rather than let it fall into British hands. Note the British soldiers beating passing Americans, and two enslaved Black men moving a trunk.

What Happened in the American Revolution? 

The American Revolution began as a series of localized riots and protests, and turned into an eight or nine year war with repercussions that stretched across the globe. Students (and even experts) find it a challenging subject to get a handle on, especially in the early stages when the American colonies began protesting the power of the British parliament to tax, control, or reform the various American assemblies, provinces, and royal colonies. The Americans believed the British parliament was unjust, and violating the religious and political liberties of the colonists; the British parliament believed the colonies were being unjust, and suffered from liberty madness. The resulting distrust and anger led to a slide into a civil war.

Not every American fought on the side of the 'Continental Congress' and Independence. In fact, most people avoided fighting in the war. Some groups, like the Society of Friends (or 'Quakers') avoided the war because they believed in a strict adherence to non-violence. But others viewed the war as  violent, bizarre and selfish, and simply tried to tough out the war on their farmsteads. In New Jersey, some farmers signed oaths of loyalty to both the Continental Congress and to the King, depending on who was riding through town.

Many people, like Governor William Franklin of New Jersey, viewed the revolution as an unlawful and even insane attempt to overthrow the King's peace. These individuals were called 'Loyalists' or 'Tories.'  By the end of the war, 70,000 loyalists would be banished from the lands that would become the United States, and tens of thousands of runaway slaves and Indigenous Americans would go with them. 

To get a handle on the basic events of the Revolution, Thinkery & Verse recommend 'The American Revolution: Oversimplified.'
​The 'Oversimplified History' videos are an irreverent, satirical series of short films that help explain complex themes in international history to a general audience. The videos tend to be accurate, absurd, and fast. Occasionally, Webster takes liberties with the truth, such as when he exaggerates King George III's vanity or Benjamin Franklin's lasciviousness, but on the whole, it is an excellent primer on the complicated events of the American Revolution. 

Content warning: the videos include 2nd and 3rd party ads, mild vulgarity, and rude noises. 

 Central Characters of Liberty Madness

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was a child prodigy born into a puritan family in Boston. He began learning to read at the age of two. While still a teenager, he composed ballads about piracy, and became a notorious comic essayist under the pseudonym "Silence Dogood." He later adopted the pseudonym "Poor Richard." Apprenticed to his older brother, he fled Boston and made his way to Philadelphia. He studied printing in London, and then established his own print shop in Philadelphia. He became wealthy with an incredible work ethic and a panache for securing government contracts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

​He retired from running his print shop in his forties, and then embarked on a series of scientific experiments on the nature of electricity that made him famous throughout Europe. At the same time, he entered politics, and established the Pennsylvania militia, the Philadelphia fire department, the Post Office, and the American Philosophical Society. During the French and Indian War, he set in motion the concept of a 'Continental Congress' to better fight against the enemies of the British Empire. A fervent member of the British Empire, he received the post of Deputy Post Master for the American colonies. 

He accepted a commission from Pennsylvania legislature to petition parliament and the King to make Pennsylvania a royal colony, rather than one controlled by wealthy English proprietors. He failed in this task. He lived in London for more than ten years, and enjoyed the society and social circles in which he found himself. 

During the build up to the war, he became involved in a public scandal when he admitted to having forwarded a royal officer's private letters to a colonial legislature. As a part of the scandal, we was mocked by the attorney general. Furious, Franklin left the country and joined the movement for American independence. 

Benjamin Franklin in England, with a lightning storm in the window alluding to his fame as a scientist.

As a diplomat in France, Franklin began wearing a fur cap to fit the French court's perception of what a rustic American ought to look like. He also invented the bifocals during his time in France.

At the beginning of 'Liberty Madness,' he has already committed himself to the patriot cause, and he is travelling to Perth Amboy to demand that his son, William Franklin, do the same. During the war, he became the American diplomat responsible for bringing France -- his former enemy --into the war against the British.

William Franklin

William Franklin was born out of wedlock (possibly in the colony of New Jersey) when Benjamin Franklin was in his early twenties. To this day, no one knows the identity of his mother. His father raised him in Philadelphia. This fact reveals nothing about William's character or personality, but it does shed light on the unorthodox tendencies of his famous father. 

At a young age, William served as an officer in the militia, and served as his father's aid-de-camp in war. When his father travelled to London to renegotiate Pennsylvania's status as a colony, William went with him, and studied law. A friend commented on the time that William and Benjamin appeared not only to be father and son, but best friends, rivals in wit, and each other's trusted confidants in business and politics. In 1763, just at the end of the French and Indian War, William was appointed as the Royal Governor of New Jersey. He sailed back to America, and made his home in Burlington -- the capital of West Jersey. He later moved to the Perth Amboy proprietary house, the capital of East Jersey. He was regarded as a fair and just governor, and helped the legislature pass many liberal and progressive laws. 

He lobbied on behalf of the colonies to parliament, but steadfastly rejected what he viewed as mob violence against his fellow colonial officials. 

Had he been a patriot, he could have rivalled George Washington as the America's preeminent soldier and leader. But he was a steadfast loyalist, and believed that separation from the British Empire to be an unlawful mistake. It destroyed his relationship with his father. 

William Franklin in a portrait made in London after the war.

Elizabeth Downes Franklin

Elizabeth Downes was born in Barbados. Both her parents came from planter families, and owned slaves. She met William Franklin in London, and married him in 1762. They never had any children, but she helped raise Temple -- William's son who was born out of wedlock. 

She loved her husband, and stood in awe of her famous father-in-law. William's imprisonment during the American Revolution destroyed her health, and she died as a refugee in New York City in 1778. 

Temple Franklin 

Temple Franklin was, like his father, born out of wedlock and raised in his father's household. His grandfather insisted that he remain with him during the course of the American Revolution. 

He travelled to France with his grandfather, and served as his secretary. He never felt comfortable or welcome in America after the war, and eventually made his home in France. 

Liberty Madness

In 1776, during a volley of cannon fire between patriot rebels in Perth Amboy and Loyalists in Staten Island, a shot killed a horse. We have turned this horse into a character whom we call 'Liberty Madness.' 

Themes of Liberty Madness

Contested Truth in Politics

In "Liberty Madness", Benjamin Franklin and William Franklin cannot agree on what is true. Because they are unable to agree on basic claims, they have no way to persuade one another to each other's cause. They accuse each other (and their countrymen) of being ruled by passion, not reason. When William Franklin faces a court martial led by the Continental Congress, he rejects their legitimacy, just as they reject his status as a lawful governor. Later on in the play, Benjamin Franklin -- one of the most famous 'rational' proponent of the Age of Enlightenment -- drums up France's support for the Revolution with passion and sentiment. 

A Civil War

After society loses a stable set of shared values, violence often follows. In New Jersey, people on all sides of the conflict referred to the American Revolution as a civil war, or even "intestine" -- in the guts of the body politic. Long-held resentments against neighbors turned into violent blood feuds. Households were torn apart as different members chose sides. Both rebels and loyalists accused each other of treason, and executed their rivals in rushed court martials or "Committees of Public Safety." Hundreds of people were executed in sham trials, and often left to rot. 

Loyalist forces, including British regulars and their Hessian (German) allies, occupied rebel houses and turned churches into stables and latrines. 

Both British and Colonial forces engaged in a 'foraging war' in which they ransacked farms and villages throughout New Jersey for supplies. Those who resisted faced further violence, including murder or sexual assault. 

The Royal Governor of Virginia encouraged enslaved Blacks to join the Loyalist cause -- a move that panicked white plantation owners like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Black Americans eventually joined both sides, often with hopes of gaining freedom. 

Similarly, both the Americans and the British tried to recruit Native Americans to their side. Since the British had promised to keep white colonists to the east of the Appalachian mountains, most Native Americans sided with the British -- a choice that would have devastating and lasting consequences during and after the war. 

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Equality and Inequality

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." With these words, the Continental Congress began to articulate a political basis for separation from the British Empire. 

The radicalism of the words ''all men are created equal" would be matched with an increase in voting rights, a vast increase in the use of democracy in determining leadership, an expanded franchise of citizenship,  the enumeration of guaranteed rights, and new methods of political organization. During the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin spoke against the formation of a senate because he believed that it would pass laws prejudiced to wealthy landowners and against the interests of the majority of citizens. 

The words were also contradicted by the absence of power for women, the enslaved, and Native Americans. Forms of inequality in the 18th century were obvious. In the British Empire, women's property became their husbands' after marriage. Huge portions of the population labored under indentured servitude contracts. Debtors could be thrown into prison if they missed a payment. Much of the population was illiterate, and unable to fend for itself in courts of law. Slavery immiserated hundreds of thousands of people, not just in the 13 colonies, but throughout the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese Empires.  But with the promise of 'equality,' a hiccup was introduced into the political world that forced people out of old habits. People began to doubt that anyone was really better than anyone else, and that perhaps inherited wealth masked vice and weaknesses among the elite. 

In 'Liberty Madness', we'll see dozens of characters challenge their place in society, attack people who were supposedly there betters, and set in motion a political reckoning that continues into the 21st century. 

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Further Reading

The American Revolution, the British Empire, and the 18th century remain one of the most active areas of research in the fields of history, anthropology, philosophy, and political science. 

During the American Revolution, the British captured every major American city; but in a country where most people lived on small farms outside major urban centers, it simply did not matter. They had, as historian Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy puts it, 'an army of conquest, not occupation.' The British had the most powerful navy in the world, and the most modern army, and yet lost the war. O'Shaughnessy's The Men Who Lost America goes a long way into explaining the British military's failure to protect loyalist and prevent a civil war. 

How important was slavery or Indian genocide to the American Revolution? Several television series, books, and podcasts have tackled this subject head on. The most well-known is probably the essay collection entitled 1619; the book is named for the first year that enslaved Africans were transported to the American colonies. The American Historical Review, the preeminent peer-reviewed journal in the field, published a series of essays critiquing the book. 

The book series Scarlet & Black, from Rutgers University Press, examines how the histories of Rutgers University and Middlesex County are tied to slavery and stolen lands. 

Essential Books

• Lundin, Leonard. The Cockpit of the Revolution: The War for Independence in New Jersey. (Princeton University Press, 1940). (Classic, comprehensive military and social history).
• Fischer, David Hackett. Washington's Crossing. (OUP, 2004). 
  
• Lurie, Maxine N. Caught in the Crossfire: Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey (Rutgers University Press, 2022). 
• Dunkerly, Robert M. Unhappy Catastrophes: The American Revolution in Central Jersey, 1776-1782 (Savas Beate 2022). 
• Gerlach, Larry R. (Ed.). New Jersey in the American Revolution, 1763-1783: A Documentary History. (New Jersey Historical Commission, 1975).
• McCormick, Richard P. New Jersey from Colony to State, 1609-1789. (Rutgers University Press, 1964)..
• Bill, Alfred Hoyt. New Jersey and the Revolutionary War. (Rutgers University Press, 1964)..
• Dwyer, William M. The Day is Ours: An Inside View of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. (Rutgers University Press, 1998).
• Kidder, Larry. A People Harassed and Exhausted: The Story of a New Jersey Militia Regiment in the American Revolution.
• Leiby, Adrian. The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley – The Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground 1775-1783.. 

Primary Sources and Specialized Studies

• New Jersey Historical Commission. New Jersey's Revolutionary Experience (28-part pamphlet series, 1975).
• Ryan, Dennis P. New Jersey in the American Revolution, 1763-1783: A Chronology. (New Jersey Historical Commission, 1974).
• Sinclair, Donald A. & Schut, Grace W. The American Revolution and New Jersey: A Bibliography.
• NJ State Library Digital Resources (Includes various 18th-century letters and records, such as petitions of the New Jersey Assembly). 

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