Writing to his friend and fellow founder Thomas Jefferson in 1815, John Adams bitterly complained that public memory of the American Revolution was “corrupting” the actual history. For Adams, increasing public focus on the “great minds” of the Revolution, the martial prowess of General Washington, or popular images of Congress signing the Declaration of Independence obscured the true nature of the Revolution by making it seem inevitable, exclusively rational, and secular. “The Revolution was in the minds, but also the hearts, of the people,” effected as much from the pulpits as from politicians.[1] Over the coming decades, Adams’ fears were at least partially realized. Popular memory and iconography of the American Revolution has indeed centered on the reflective and secular nature of our preferred memory of the event; yet popular religious iconography and art in the decades preceding the Revolution offer a fuller narrative arc of the development of the revolutionary ideas within American society itself. Combining popular beliefs and biases with their practical effects, religious iconography and art from the revolutionary era displays a clearer and truer evolution of the events and beliefs that defined it.
The iconography and rhetoric traditionally associated with the beginning of opposition to British imperial reform policy centers on tax policy. Think “No Taxation without Representation.” Yet, British Americans contributed a fraction of the tax burden born by imperial subjects elsewhere, especially in Britain itself, and indeed had representatives like Benjamin Franklin arguing American interests in Parliament.[2] This slogan suggests tax policy was at the forefront of American resistance despite substantial evidence suggesting otherwise. In fact, American popular suspicion and antipathy toward the principles behind imperial reform are far better captured by more theological interpretations of events. Consider the religious fears depicted within cartoons regarding American opposition to the establishment of an Anglican Episcopacy within the American Colonies (images 2 and 3).