APUSH Ch. 4 The Empire in Transition

Salutary Neglect

Period of time following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the English government made no serious or sustained effort to tighten it’s control over the colonies. Parliment had growing power over the King and they had little iterest in enforcing the navigation acts. Day to day administration of colonial affairs was decentralized and inefficient.

Albany Plan of Union

This was a plan drafted by Benjamin Franklin at conference of delegates from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and New England. They were at the conference to negotiate a treaty with the Iroquois. The delegates stayed behind to discuss putting in place a colonial federation for defense against the Indians. Franklin proposed setting up one general government for all the colonies except Georgia and Nova Scotia. Each colony would retain it’s constitution but the new general government would have the power to govern relations with the Indians. The plan failed when presented to colonial assemblies.

Benjamin Franklin

Drafted the Albany Plan

French and Indian War

Tensions erupted in the Ohio valley between the Iroquois, the French and the English. The Iroquois began trading with the French which they took as threatening. They feared the English would expand into French Lands. The French built a fortress, Fort Duquesne… The English saw this as threatening. The English began making fortresses of their own. The balance of power the Iroquois had striven to maintain disintegrated. The 5 Indian nations of the Iroquois allied themsevles with the British and assumed a passive role in the conflict that followed. In 1754 the fovernor of Virginia sent a militia force under George Washington to the Ohio Valley to challenge French expansion. Washington build Fort Necessity. After the Virginians staged an unsuccessful attack on the French, the French countered by assaulting Fort Necessity, trapping Washington and his men. After a third of them died in the fighting, Washington surrendered. The war expanded into Europe 2 years later. The seven years war was not only one of the first great colonial wars; it was also one of the last great wars of religion. It extended the dominance of Protestantism in Europe. Canada became British and therefore Protestant. The war strengthened Britain and Germany and weakened France.

Treaty of Paris, 1763

This treaty was signed after George III became King/Pitt Resigned and ended the F&I or 7 Yrs War. Under its terms, the French ceded to GB some of their West Indian Islands and most of their colonies in India. They also transferred Canada and all other French territory east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans. They ceded New Orleans and all claims west of the Mississippi to Spain. Thus, the French surrendered all title to the mainland of North America.

William Pitt

British secretary of state (1757) and future prime minister. Brought war effort fully under British control - issuing orders to military, used impressment, seized supplies and forced colonists to shelter soldiers. Colonists who were used to running things on their own resented these measures. The colonists resisted and at times rioted (1757 NY). In 1758, Pitt relaxed many of these policies and began to reimburse colonists for supplies and returned military recruitment to the colonial assemblies. He also dispatched additional troops to America.

King George III

Became king in 1760 on the death of his grandfather. He removed the Whigs from power (who had governed for much of the century). He created a new coalition of his own through patronage and bribes giving him uneasy control of parliament. He suffered from a rare disease that produced intermittent bouts of insanity. In his early reign, he was immature (gained throne at 22) and insecure constantly striving to prove his fitness. He appoints George Grenville as Prime Minister.

Pontiac’s Rebellion

Following the end of the F&I war, when the French left the Ohio Valley, English colonists moved into the area. The Indians objected to this intrusion. An alliance of tribes, under the Ottawa chieftain Pontiac, struck back.

Proclamation of 1763

Following Pontiac’s Rebellion, to prevent further escalation, issued a ruling, forbidding settlers to advance beyond a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. The ruling appealed to the British because it would allow London to control westward expansion. The Indians were forced to cede more land, but this was the best option for them at the time. Relations between the western tribes and the British improved in some areas partly as a result of the work of the Indian superintendents, John Stuart and William Johnson. They were sympathetic to the Native American needs and lived among the tribes. One was even married to a Mohawk woman.

Sugar Act 1764

Designed in part to eliminate the illegal sugar trade between the continental colonies and the French and Spanish West Indies, strengthened enforcement of the duty on sugar (while lowering the duty on molasses, further damaging the market for sugar grown in the colonies). It also established a vice-admiralty court in America to try accused smugglers - thus depriving them of trial by a local jury.

Stamp Act 1765

Imposed a tax on most printed documents in the colonies; newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, deeds, wills and licenses. This was an effort to reapply the old principles of mercantilism. Colonists saw this as a direct attempt by England to raise revenue in the colonies without the consent of colonial assemblies. They feared the president that was being set.

Patrick Henry

Fiery orator who spoke in defiance of authority. In May 1765, he made a dramatic speech to the House of Burgesses, concluding with a vague prediction that is present policies were not revised, George III, like earlier tyrants, might lose his head. He introduced a set of resolutions declaring that Americans possessed the same rights as the English, especially the right to be taxed only by their own representatives; that Virginians should pay no taxes except those voted by the Virginia assembly; and that anyone advocating the right of Parliament to tax Virginians should be deemed an enemy of the colony.

Virginia Resolves

Resolutions introduced by Patrick Henry regarding Parliament taxing the colonies. Although the most extreme resolutions did not pass, they were printed and circulated creating an impression in other colonies that the people of Virginia were more militant than they actually were.

Stamp Act Congress

Organized by James Otis in Massachusetts, he persuaded his fellow members of the colonial assembly to call an intercolonial congress for action against the new tax. They met in October 1765 in New York with delegates from 9 colonies and decided to petition the king and the two houses of Parliament. Their petition conceded that Americans owed to Parliament “all du subordination,” but it denied that the colonies could rightfully be taxed except through their own provincial assemblies.

Sons of Liberty

During the summer of 1765, riots broke out up and down the coast, the largest of which was in Boston. These men terrorized stamp agents and burned the stamps. The agents, themselves Americans, hastily resigned; and the sale of stamps in the continental colonies ceased. In Boston, a crowd also attached such pro-British aristocrats as the lieutenant governor. Thomas Hutchinson who privately opposed the passage of the Stamp Act but who as an officer of the crown, felt obliged to support it once it became law. Protesters pillaged his house and virtually destroyed it.

Declaratory Act

In response to colonial riots, Prime Minister Rockingham convinced George III to kill the stamp act. On March 18, 1766, Parliament repealed it. Rockingham’s opponents insisted that unless England compelled the colonists to obey the Stamp Act, they would soon cease to obey any laws of Parliament. So on the same day, Parliament passed this Act asserting Parliament’s authority over the colonies “in all cases whatsoever".”

Townshend Duties

Boston Massacre

Samual Adams

Virtual Representation/Actual Representation

Parliament

Gaspee Incident

Tea Act

Daughters of Liberty

Boston Tea Party

Coercive Acts/Intolerable Acts

First Continental Congress

Lexington and Concord