cal questions. Thus, they are trained and prepared to be effective critics of the old order.
Moreover, lawyers are in a sense the "operating engineers" of any political system. The "levers of power," at least in civil life, primarily take the form of legal or administrative orders and judgements of one kind or another. Thus, when the old order is first done away with, and a Provisional Government set up, it depends largely on lawyers if it is to function at all.
However, lawyers tend to be shouldered aside in the course of a revolution, usually by members of two other groups: ideologues and soldiers. By ideologues I mean those (such as Lenin) who are systematic purists of revolution, un given to compromise, who can therefore define their positions with greater clarity especially in appealing to "the general public," and most of all to "the mob in the street" than can lawyers, to whom compromise and complexity are second nature. We do not need to define who soldiers are, and how they come to dominate revolutions is obvious.
In the American Revolution, however, the lawyers never did become swept aside. Patrick Henry, possibly the closest figure the American Revolution had to a Robespierre or a Lenin, never succeeded in becoming more than a fringe figure, though a dramatic one. In the course of the actual fighting, of course, the Continental Congress necessarily gave way in large measure to the military command under General George Washington. It is not unfair to say that what happened afterwards was in part a consequence of Washington's personal character. Like Cincinnatus he returned to private life, and when he again came to national leadership it was as duly elected Chief Executive under the Constitution. Had he sought, in 1781, to become King George IV of America, it is far from impossible that he could have done so.
But the fact remains that when Washington chose not to seek abs...