Chapter 5: The American Revolution

Crisis Begins

• 1760– George III assumes the throne of Britain

  • Massive debts —> taxing colonies

  • Colonists began to realize British empire was threat to freedom -> road to independence

Consolidating the Empire

• New regulations were needed to help regulate and continue Britain’s strengths and prosperity

• Before 1763, Parliament forbade paper money in the American colonies and to restrict colonial economic activity that competed w/ business at home

  • Wool Act (1699), Hat Act (1732), and Iron Act (1750) forbade colonial manufacture of these items

• Molasses Act (1733)— sought to curtail trade between New England and the French Caribbean by imposing a prohibited tax on French-produced molasses used to make rum in American distilleries

• Late 1740s: Board of Trade demanded colonial laws conform to royal instructions and encouraged colonial assemblies to grant permanent salaries to royal governors

• Britain thought of colonists as subordinates and that their duty was to help pay off national debt

• Britains were upset because they had no representation in Parliament, so they believed they shouldn’t be taxes

• Virtual representation: each member represented the entire empire, not just district

  • Reasons to tax MA, Boston

• Writs of Assistance: general search warrants that allowed customs officials to search anywhere they chose for smuggled goods

  • Alarmed many colonists

  • Against “liberty”

Taxing the Colonies

• Sugar Act of 1764

  • Effort to strengthen the long-established Navigation Act

    • Prime minister George Greenville

    • Reduced imported molasses tax from North America from French West Indies from 6 pence/gal —> 3 pence/gal

    • Strengthened admiralty courts, where accused smugglers could be judged without benefit of jury trial

      • Colonists saw this as a way to pay a levy they would otherwise have evaded

• Revenue Act

  • Placed goods (wool and hide) on the enumerated shipping list through England

    • Threatened refits of colonial merchants and aggravated economic recession from 7 years war

    • Accompanied by the currency act— which reaffirmed earlier ban on colonial assemblies issuing paper as money “that individuals are required to accept in payments of debt (“legal tender”)

Stamp Act Crisis

• Represented new departure in imperial policy

• Raise taxes through all sorts of printed materials produced carrying a stamp purchase through authority

  • Purpose: to help finance empire, like stationing troops in America, without seeking revenue from colonial assemblies

• Without colonial consent for imposing taxes, parliament directly challenged the authority of local elites who, through the assemblies they had controlled, had established their power over implanting taxes/raising money

• First major split between Britain and the colonies

  • Political leaders invoked rights of freedom Englishmen, believing the act was against their liberty

• Whereas Sugar Act had mainly affected residents of colonial ports, the Stamp Act managed to offend virtually every free colonists

  • Esp members of the sphere who wrote, published, and read books and newspaper and followed political affairs

Taxation and Representation

• American colonies viewed themselves equal to Britain empire

• British empire thought this system was unequal in which different principles governed different areas and all were subject to Parliament government

• Surrendering tax would set dangerous precedent for British Empire as a whole

• Americans were unrepresented in House of Commons

  • “No taxation without representation

• House of Burgesses had four resolutions in which Patrick Henry offered

  • Liberties, privileges, franchises, and immunities

  • Taxing was a cornerstone to British freedom

• October 1765: Stamp Act Congress met in New York and endorsed VA’s position

  • Affirming allegiance to the crown and subordination to Parliament

  • Merchants began to boycott British goods until Parliament replaced Stamp Act

  • First major cooperative action among Britain’s mainland colonies

  • By seeking to impose uniformity on the colonies rather than dealing with them individually, as in the past, Parliament had inadvertently united America

Liberty and Resistance

• Tax stage mock funerals

• Liberty tree

  • Large elm tree in Boston on which protestors had hanged an effigy of stamp distributor Alexander Oliver to persuade him to resign his post

  • Came to be liberty hall due to space of open-meetings

• 1776: liberty pole became meeting for opponents of Stamp Act

• Committee of Correspondence— Boston communicated with colonial leaders and colony to encourage opposition to sugar and currency act

  • exchanged ideas and information about resistance

• John Adam’s inspired the people to be more attentive to their liberties

Politics in the Street

• Sons of liberty were a group of colonists who took the lead in enforcing the boycott of British imports

• riots/assaults were high in Nov 1765 NY —> British govt retreated because merchants/manufacturers did not want to lose American markets

• 1766: Parliament repealed the Stamp Act but Declaratory Act took place

  • Rejected American claims that only their elective representative could levy taxes

  • Parliament possessed power to pass laws of America

Regulators

• Group of wealthy residents in SC protested the under representation of Western settlement in the colonies assemblies and legislator’s failure to establish local govt that could regularize land titles and suppress bands of outlaw

• Lack of court = breakdown of law and order

  • “Infernal gang” commit “shocking outrage” on persons and property

• NC riot was due to corrupt country authorities

  • NC’s regulators claimed local officials threatened inexpensive access to land and prosperity of ordinary settlers through high taxes and court fees

• NC’s regulator’s condemned “rich and powerful” who used their political authority to prosper at the expense of “poor industrial” farmers

Tenant Uprising (mid 1760s)

• tenants on the Livingston, Philipse, and Cortland manors (NY Hudson River) stopped paying rent an began seizing land

  • originals sons opposed uprising

    • Suppressed by British and colonial troops

• 1750s: governor of New Hampshire issued land grant to New England families, pocketing fortune in fees

  • Ethan Allen thought lan should belong to people who worked it

• Mid 170s: Allen and Great Mountain Boys gained control of region —> state of Vermont

• Colonial elites didn’t challenge British authorities when next imperial crisis occurred because of fear that turmoil in Britain might happen

A Road to Revolution

Townshend Crisis (1767)

• Persuaded Parliament to impose new taxes on goods imported into the colonies and to create a new board of customs commissioners to collect them and suppress smuggling

• New revenues would pay salaries of American governors/judges, which would free them from dependence on colonial assemblies

• Letter from a Farmer in PA

  • John Dickinson

  • Reconciliation w/ Britain

  • Traditional rights of Englishmen

  • Learned presentation demonstrated Enlightenment ideals were familiar in colonies

Homespun Virtue

• Symbol of American resistance

• Daughters of Liberty

• Chesapeake appealed to idea since they owed money to Britain

• Urban artists supported boycotts because it meant an end to Britain’s manufacturers/imported manufacturers

• Philly and NY merchants were reluctant at first because nonimportation threatened their livelihoods and raised the prospect of unleashing further lower-class turmoil

Boston Massacre

• 1768: royal soldiers in Boston response to riots

• March 5, 1770: Bostonians vs British troop fight —> 5 Bostonians died

• Crispus Attucks: mixed Indian-African-white ancestry; first martyr of American Revolution

• Paul Revere: produced widely circulated print of Boston Massacre depicting a line of British soldiers firing into an unarmed crowd

• 1770: merchants backed out of non-import movement

  • Pressed for repeal of townshend duties which ministry agreed

Wilkes and Liberty

• Expelled from Parliament seat

• Rumors circulated

  • Anglican Church planned to send bishops to America

  • Sparked fear that bishops would establish religious courts like those that had persecuted dissenters

Tea Act

• East India Company = rising/collapse of stocks

  • Chinese tea to North America

• Import tax tea

• December 16, 1773: Boston Tea Party

  • -10k loss to East-India company

Intolerable Acts

• Threat to political freedom

  • Close ports of Boston to all trade until tea was paid for

  • Military commanders to lodge soldiers in private homes

• Quebec Act: (1) extended South boundary of Canada —> Ohio River & (2) granted legal toleration to Canada’s Roman Catholic Church

  • Sought to secure allegiances w/ Catholics by offering rights that were denied in England

    • Theories that London was conspiring to bring back Catholicism

Coming of Independence

Continental Congress

• Sept 1774: 4,600 MA militiamen from 37 towns lined both sides of Main Street at the British-appointed official walked the gauntlet between them

  • Conventions of delegates from MA towns approved a series of resolutions (Suffolk resolvers) that urged Americans to refuse obedience to the new land, withhold taxes, and prepare for war

• Congenital Congress was convened in Philly

  • Resistance to Intolerable Acts

  • Brought together the most prominent political leaders of 12 mainland colonies (minus GA)

  • United people as Americans, not as colonies

• VA’s delegate Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”

Continental Association

• Congress endorsed Suffolk Resolves and adopted Continental Association

• Complete halt to trade with Great Britain and the West Indies

• Encouraged domestic manufacturing

• Congress authorized local Committees of Safety to oversee its mandates and to take action against “enemies of liberty”

  • Businessmen who tried to profit from the sudden scarcity of goods

• Committee of Safety began the process of transferring effective political power from established govt, whose powers derived from Great Britain, to extralegal grassroots bodies, those who reflected the will of the people

  • Became training grounds where small farmers, city artisans, property less laborers, and others with little role in govt discussed political issues and exercised political power

    • Philly’s 1760s lawyers vs Nov 1744 young merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans; the young enforced the dealing with boycotts better

• NY assembly refused to endorse association but local committees enforced it anyway

Sweets of Liberty

• 1775: Colonists were “liberty mad”

• Composed of all colonists of all background

  • Northampton County, PA was the first mass meeting in PA of 1774

    • Overwhelming German ancestry

  • Germans who were once considered “the famous English liberty” as a byword for selfish individualism now claimed all the “rights & privileges of natural born subjects of his majesty”

• Natural rights and universal freedom (liberalism) were the basis of American colonies

  • John Locke

• Thomas Jefferson demanded the empire be seen as a collection of equal parts held together by loyalty to a constitutional monarchy, not a system in which one part ruled over the other

Outbreak of War

• May 1775: second Continental Congress convened and war broke out between British soldiers and armed MA citizens

• April 19: Battles of Lexington and Concord

  • Lexington: British won

  • Concord: British retreated/America won

  • British forces marched from Boston to Concord, seeking to seize arms being stockpiled

  • Riders from Boston, like Paul Revere, warned local leaders of British troops’ approach

    • Militiamen took up arms and tried to resist British advance

• “The shot heard ‘round the world” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • Concord

  • First shots fired in Revolution —> 100 casualties & 280 British dead

  • began the American War of Independence, as it reverberated throughout the colonies and inspired them

• June 17, 1775: Battle of Bunker Hill

  • First major battle of Revolutionary war

  • Breed’s hill, MA

  • British suffering heavy cost in casualties but won and held onto Boston

• March 1776: American canon made British’s position in Boston untenable; Sir William Howe and men cut down liberty trees before abandoning

• Siege of Boston after 8 years of British rule

  • Continental Army authorized by Continental Army authorized by Continental Congress in 1755 to fight the British; commanded by General George Washington

    • Britain dispatched thousands of troops an closed all colonial ports

Independence

• Political leaders feared that complete break away from Britain would lead to further conflict

• Coming from an opposition, many advocates for independence would find it “very agreeable” to divide the property of rich among the poor

• South (+MA)

  • Elites in VA & MA felt supremely confident in their ability to retain authority at home and broke from Britain

  • Southern leaders were highly protective of their political liberty

  • Southern leaders were outraged by Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation in Nov 1775

    • Offered freedom to any slave who escaped to his lines and bore arms for the king

• North

  • NY & PAs diversity made it difficult to resist British

    • Previous oppositions to British law had unleashed demands by small farmers and urban artisans for a greater voice in political affairs

    • Many established leaders drew back to resistance in result

  • PA Joseph Galloway warned that Independence would be accompanied by constant disputes within America (N & S); Americans could only enjoy “true-liberty” by remaining within the Empire

    • True liberty: Self-govt and security for their persons and property

Common Sense

• A pamphlet, anonymously, written by Thomas Paine in January 1776, that attacked the English principles of hereditary rule and monarchical rule

• Pain tied the economic hopes of the new nation to the idea of commercial freedom

• Outlined breathtaking vision of the American Revolution

  • New nation would become the home of freedom; “an asylum for mankind”

Paine’s Impact

• Paine pioneered a new style of political writing, one that designed to expand dramatically the unlicensed sphere where political discussion took place

• Wrote clearly and directly

• Feb 1776: MA political leader Joseph Hawley read Common Sense, and like many others, agreed with what he said (touched Hawley’s heart after everything Britain has done to the colonists)

• Winter 1773-1776: Americans unsuccessfully invaded Canada while British burned and bombarded Falmouth, Maine —> gave added weight to move towards Independence

• Spring of 1776: scores of American communities adopted resolutions calling for a separation from Britain

Declaration of Independence

• July 4, 1776: Congress formally declared US as an independent nation

• Thomas Jefferson wrote Declaration of Independence

  • Grievance against George III

  • One clause condemned inhumanity of slave trade and criticized King for overturning colonial laws that sought to restrict the importation of slaves was deleted by Congress from SC & GA

  • “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal… Life, liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”

  • When a govt threatens its subjects’ natural rights, the people have the authority to alter or abolish it”

Declaration and American Freedom

• Rights of Englishmen —> rights of mankind

• Liberty = universal entitlement

• John Locke’s “property”/pursuit of happiness tied nation to a democratic process whereby individual self-fulfillment, unimpeded by govt, would become central element of American Freedom

Asylum for Mankind

• American nationality came to be represented through

  • No oppression

  • Freedom from tyranny

    • American exceptionalism

Global Declaration of Independence

• Sparked revolutions/ideas for Independence

  • Flanders: rebels in 1790 echoing Jefferson’s ideas

• No life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness tied nation

  • Assertion of the right of various groups to form independent states instead of focusing on the rights of citizens that govt could not abridge

• Political authority rests on will of the people

  • Dutch, Spanish, French emphasis on Europe govt

  • Slaves in the Caribbean, colonial subjects in India, and indigenous in Latin America to people exercised power over them

Other Battles

• Battle of Brooklyn

  • August 26, 1776

  • British wanted NY because many loyalists lived there, so if British took control of the Hudson River, they could cut off New England from the rest of the colonies

  • British victory

• Battle of Fort Ticonderoga

  • Colonist did not have large artillery

  • May 10th, 1775

  • Sent cannons to Boston

  • Place for colonist to arm against British

• Battle of Cowper

  • British Cowper retreated against patriots from South

  • Colonists won

• Battle of Yorktown

  • Washington planned to go to NY to attack

  • Washington left New Jersey as a deploy to attack NY, Yorktown

  • Plan worked

  • Colonists won

• Battle of Trenton

  • Dec. 25, 1776

  • Surprise attack led by Washington

  • Delaware River —> New Jersey

  • Colonists win

Securing Independence

Balance of Power

• British military was stronger, more experienced

• Some Americans (patriots) had experience due to 7 years war

• As war progressed, enlistment waned among propertied Americans and the Continental Army drew on young men w/ limited economic prospect

  • Farmers, indentured servants, laborers, slaves, African Americans

• French sided w/ the colonies

Blacks in Revolution

• Some served as substitutes

• Originally denied from the Revolution until Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation

• 1778: Rhodes Island formed black regiment and promised freedom to slaves who enlisted, while compensating the owners for loss of property

• Blacks who fought under Washington and other militias were in racially integrated companies

• SC and GA did not do this, but other southern colonies also enrolled free blacks and slaves to fight

  • No guarantee of freedom but many did receive it at the end of the war

  • 1783: VA legislature emancipated slaves who served in army; contributed to American Independence

• Fighting for British also offered opportunities for freedom

  • Dunmore’s regiment: “liberty to slaves”

First Years of War

• Howe attacked NY in summer of 1776

  • Washington managed to escape to Manhattan and then north to Peeks hill, where he crossed Hudson River to NK

    • 3k left men captured by Howe

• Battle of Trenton

  • Dec. 25, 1776

  • Successful surprised attack on Hessian soldiers in Trenton, NJ

    • Led by Washington

  • Delaware River —> New Jersey

  • Colonists win

Battle of Saratoga

• British led by John Burgoyne & Howe

  • Howe was supposed to go to Canada but went from NY to attack Philly

• Howe abandoned Burgoyne’s plans, which ended up as colonists blocking Burgoyne’s way

• France allied w/ America

• (1st Battle of Saratoga) Battle of Freeman farm: British won

• (2nd Battle of Saratoga) Battle of Bemis Heights

  • October 7, 1777: British surrender at Battle of Saratoga —> colonists win

• British officers took part in elegant social life (balls and parties)

  • Meschianza: extravaganza that included regatta, medieval knights, and jousting tournaments

• Valley Forge

  • Cold winters, heavy losses

  • Needed Germans —> got Germans

    • Prussian military leader Frederick Von Steuben (Feb 1778) —> help of Saratoga

  • Winter 1777-1778

  • France supplied military assistance

  • At outset, French cared more about attacking British outposts in West Indies than aiding Americans

War in the South

• Dec 1778: British occupied Savannah, GA

• May 1780: Clinton captured Charleston, SC

• 1780: lowest point in struggle for independence that made it easier to recruit loyalists

  • Congress bankrupt

  • Army unpaid for months

• August: Lord Charles Cornwallis routed an American army at Camden, SC

• Benedict Arnold: defected and almost succeeded in turning over to the British the important Fort at West Point on the Hudson River

• Jan 1, 1781: 1500 PA soldiers stationed near Morristown, NJ, killed three officers and marched towards Philly, where congress was meeting

• British commanders were unable to consolidate their hold on South

  • American militias harassed them

  • French “swamp fox”

  • Civil war; N/S Carolina and GA

• Colonel Banastre Tarleton persuaded many Americans to join patriot cause because of his brutal treatments towards civilians

Victory at Last

• Jan 1781: Tarleton at Sc; colonist defeat

  • Under Daniel Morgan

• March 1781: Guiliford, Courthouse, NC, inflicted heavy losses on Cornwallis (British)

  • Under General Nathaniel Greene

  • Cornwallis moved to VA and encamped at Yorktown

    • Perfect opportunity attack and surround him

    • French fleets controlled the mouth of Chesapeake; prevented supplies and reinforcements from entering Cornwallis’ army

Treaty of Paris

• surrender of British

• Sept 3, 1783: American Revolution ended

• John Adam’s, Ben. Franklin’s, and John Jay

• Gained control of region between Canada & FL east of MS River —> right of Americans to fish in Atlantic waters off Canada

• First independent nation reflected circumstances of its birth

• Positives for America

  • Free country

  • British gave up all land and govt

  • Expansion of land

• British pos

  • Repaid debts

  • Troops allowed to leave

  • Loyalist not persecuted