We the People of Massachusetts and the Wondrous Things Opened
Minds Can Do  Too often we remember the American Revolution---
or, more narrowly, the “American founding”--- through a handful
of men. We need not list their names; their justified fame has
brought familiarity and, in recent years, an entire shelf of
readable new biographies. It is easy to forget that American
Independence and the establishment of republican governments’
underwritten constitutions was not the work of a few talented
men. Under the basic principles of the time, both ending an
oppressive regime and establishing a new one required the
support of “the Body of the People.” As the Declaration of
Independence said, “whenever any form of government becomes
destructive” of the rights they were founded to secure, “it is
the right of the people”---the people at large --- “to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new government…in such form as
to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and
happiness.”  But how could “the people” b