Conceived in Liberty, Volume 1, A New Land, A New People, The American Colonies in the
Seventeenth Century, by Murray N. Rothbard.
Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people
or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of
War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to
the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.
John Locke, Preface What?
Another American history book?
The reader may be pardoned for wondering about the point of another addition to the seemingly
and the inexhaustible flow of books and text on American history.
One problem, as pointed out in the bibliographical essay at the end of this volume, is that
the survey studies of American history have squeezed out the actual stuff of history,
the narrative facts of the important events of the past.
With the true data of history squeezed out, what we have left are compressed summaries
and the Historian's Interpretations and Judgments of the Data.
There is nothing wrong with the Historian's having such judgments.
Indeed, without them, history would be a meaningless and giant almanac listing dates and events
with no causal links.
But without the narrative facts, the reader is deprived of the data from which he can
Man himself judged the historian's interpretations and evolved interpretations of his own.
A major point of this and succeeding volumes is to put back the historical narrative into
American history.
Facts of course must be selected and ordered in accordance with judgments of importance,
and such judgments are necessarily tied into the historian's basic world outlook.
My own basic perspective on the history of man and of fortiori, on the history of the
United States, is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged
between liberty and power.
A conflict, by the way, which was seen with crystal clarity by the American revolutionaries
I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself, or with Lord Acton as the highest political good, but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes, moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity.
Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life, but liberty has always been threatened by the encroachments of power,
power which seeks to suppress, control, cripple, tax and exploit the fruits of liberty in production.
Power, then, the enemy of liberty, is consequently the enemy of all the other goods and fruits of civilization that mankind holds dear.
And power is almost always centered in and focused on that central repository of power and violence, the state.
With Albert J. Nock, the 20th century American political philosopher, I see history as centrally a race and conflict between social power, the productive consequence of voluntary interactions among men, and state power.
In those eras of history when liberty, social power, has managed to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished.
In those eras when state power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers and declines.
For decades, American historians have quarreled about conflict or consensus as the guiding
leitmotif of the American past.
Clearly, I belong in the conflict rather than the consensus camp, with the proviso that
I see the central conflict as not between classes, social or economic, or between ideologies,
What Between Power and Liberty, State and Society?
The social or ideological conflicts have been ancillary to the central one which concerns
who will control the state and what power will the state exercise over the citizenry.
To take a common example from American history, there are, in my view, no inherent conflicts
The Interest of Merchants and Farmers in the Free Market
On the contrary, in the market, the sphere of liberty, the interest of merchants and farmers are harmonious with each buying and selling the products of the other.
Conflicts arise only through the attempts of various groups of merchants or farmers to seize control over the machinery of government
and to use it to privilege themselves at the expense of the others.
It is only through and by state action that class conflicts can ever arise.
This volume is the story of the seventeenth century, the first century of the English colonies in North America.
It was the century when all but one, Georgia, of the original thirteen colonies were founded, in all their disparity and diversity. Remarkably enough, this critical period is only brusquely treated in the current history textbooks, while the motives of the early colonists varied greatly and their fortunes changed in a shifting and fluctuating kaleidoscope of liberty and power.
Power. All the colonists soon began to take on an air of freedom unknown in the mother
country. Remote from central control, pioneering in land of relatively few people spread over
a space far vaster than any other they had ever known, the contentious colonists proved
Attempts at imposing feudalism on, or rather transferring it to, the American colonies had all failed.
By the end of the century, the British forging of royal colonies, all with similar political structures,
could occur only with the fearsome knowledge that the colonists could and would rebel against
unwanted power at the drop of a tax or quick rent.
If the late 17th century Virginia rebel Nathaniel Bacon was not exactly the torch bearer of
the revolution, then this term might apply to the other feisty and rambunctious Americans
throughout the colonies.
My intellectual debts for this volume were simply too numerous to mention, especially
since an historian must bring to bear not only his own discipline but also his knowledge
of economics, of political philosophy, and of mankind in general. Here I would just like
to mention, for his methodology of history, Ludwig von Mises, especially his much neglected
Volume, Theory and History, and Lord Acton for his emphasis on the grievously overlooked
moral dimension, for his political philosophy and general outlook on American history, Albert
J. Nock, particularly his Our Enemy the State.
As for my personal debts, I am happy to be more specific.
This volume would never have been attempted, much less seen the light of day, without the
Inspiration, Encouragement and Support provided by Kenneth S. Templeton Jr., now of the Institute
for Humane Studies, Menlo Park, California. I hope that he won't be overly disappointed
with this in later volumes. I am grateful to the Foundation for Foreign Affairs, Chicago,
for enabling me to work full-time on the volumes, and to Dr. David S. Collier, of the Foundation
for His Help and Efficient Administration. Others who have helped with ideas and aid
in various stages of the manuscript are Charles G. Koch and George Pearson of Wichita, Kansas
and Robert D. Kemphart of Human Events, Washington, D.C. Historians Robert E. Brown of Michigan
State University and Forrest MacDonald of Wayne State University were kind enough to
to read the entire manuscript and offer helpful suggestions even though it soon became clear
to them and to myself that our fundamental disagreements tended to outweigh our agreements.
To my first mentor in the field of American history, Joseph Dorfman, now professor emeritus
at Columbia University, I owe in particular the rigorous training that is typical of that
But my greatest debt is to Leonard P. Legio of City College, CUNY, whose truly phenomenal
breadth of knowledge and insight into numerous fields and areas of history are an inspiration
to all who know him.
Legio's help was indispensable in the writing of this volume, in particular his knowledge
of the European background.
Over the years in which this manuscript took shape, I was fortunate in having several congenial
typists, in particular, Willette Murphy-Closner of Los Angeles, and the now distinguished
intellectual historian and social philosopher, Dr. Ronald Hamoway of the University of Alberta.
I would particularly like to thank Mrs. Phyllis Wampler of Wichita, Kansas, for her heroic
Book Service of Typing the Entire Manuscript in its Final Form.
The Responsibility for the Final Product is, of course, wholly my own.
Murray N. Rothbard, December 1973.