First Shots of War, 1775
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
After the Boston Massacre and the repeal of most of the Townshend Duties (the duty on
tea remained in force), a period of relative quiet descended on the British North American
colonies. Even so, the crises of the past decade had created incompatible mindsets on opposite
sides of the Atlantic. King George III and Parliament still faced money problems and were
determined to assert their powers to tax the colonies and regulate trade for the benefit of the
entire British empire. On the other hand, the colonists' ideas about taxation without
representation, about actual versus virtual representation, about tyranny and corruption in the
British government, and indeed about the nature of government, sovereignty, and constitutions
had crystalized during this period. In addition, the colonists now had potentially powerful tools--
local newspapers and committees of correspondence (established in 1772)--for airing colonial
grievances. Because they were writing about colonial grievances with the British government (or
reacting to others' grievances), many writers used pseudonyms in an attempt to mask their real
identities.
Underneath the apparent calm of the early 1770s, many Americans continued to resent
Britain's heavy-handed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and the continued presence of a
standing army. Colonists continued to talk among themselves, through newspapers, pamphlets,
and broadsides, in colonial assemblies, and in such public places as coffee houses and taverns. In
1773, a new act of Parliament, the Tea Act, ended any semblance of calm.
Parliament enacted the Tea Act to shore up the financially troubled East India Company.
The Act actually placed no new tax on tea (this was still on the books from the Townshend
Duties). Instead, it gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly on selling tea in the
colonies. The British assumed that colonists would welcome the lower price of tea achieved by
eliminating the merchant middleman. The Tea Act, however, angered influential merchants who
feared the monopoly would affect them directly. For many more colonists, the Tea Act revived
passions about taxation without representation. Soon the colonists again responded with a
boycott of tea. Earlier protests had involved relatively few colonists, but the tea boycott
mobilized a large segment of colonial society.
In late 1773, leaders in many colonies planned to prevent the East India Company from
landing tea shipments. In Boston, however, the tea ships arrived in port but would not leave. On
December 16, groups of 50 men each boarded three ships, broke open the tea chests, and threw
them into the harbor. As news of the "tea party" spread, similar acts of resistance occurred in
other ports.
Parliament soon responded to this outrage with four acts designed to punish Boston and to
isolate it from the other colonies. It closed Boston port, reduced Massachusetts' powers of self-
government, provided for quartering troops in the colonies, and permitted royal officers accused
of crimes to be tried in England. The British called these acts the coercive acts; the colonists
called them the Intolerable Acts. Far from isolating Boston, the new laws cast the city in the role
of martyr and sparked new resistance throughout the colonies.
For some months, people in the colonies had been gathering arms and powder and had
been training to fight the British, if necessary, at a moment's notice. The Continental Congress
had approved of preparations for defensive fighting, in case the British made an aggressive
move. But General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in Boston, had been cautious. He
thought his army too small to act without reinforcements. On the other hand, his officers
disdained the colonists as fighters, thinking they would flee with any show of British force.
Gage received orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, rumored to be near
Lexington. When Gage heard that the colonists had stockpiled guns and powder in Concord, he
decided to act. On the night of April 18, 1775, he dispatched nearly 1,000 troops from Boston.
He hoped to catch the colonists by surprise and thus to avoid bloodshed. But all British activities
were carefully watched by the patriots, and William Dawes and Paul Revere rode out to warn
people in the countryside that the British were coming.
When British regulars (known as redcoats because of their uniform jackets) arrived at
Lexington the next morning, they found several dozen minutemen waiting for them on the town's
common. Someone fired--no one knows who fired first--and eight minutemen were killed and
another dozen or so were wounded. Then the British marched on Concord and destroyed what
was left of the store of guns and powder, most of which had been hastily removed by the patriots.
During the redcoats' entire march back to Boston, minutemen harrassed them, firing from behind
fences, houses, trees, and rocks. By the end of the day, the redcoats suffered three times more
casualties than had the colonists.
Whatever the truth of who fired the first shot, the patriots were first to get their version of
the events out to the American public. The effect was to rally hundreds, if not thousands, of
colonists to the rebellion. When the Second Continental Congress met three weeks later--the
meeting had been scheduled since October--it agreed to support Massachusetts in the conflict.
Even so, many representatives disagreed among themselves about the purpose of the fighting.
At one end of the continuum of opinion were such men as Sam and John Adams of
Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia who already favored independence. At the
other end of that continuum were such men as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania who hoped for a
quick settlement and reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates, like most colonists, were
moderates with opinions somewhere in the middle of that continuum. Over the next year of
conflict, bungling British policy-makers tried to recruit Indians, slaves, and foreign mercenaries,
they blockaded colonial ports, and they rejected allefforts at conciliation. These actions pushed
more and more colonists to favor independence.
Creating a Continental Army
According to Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton, the military strategy the General
would pursue throughout the Revolutionary War was as follows: "our hopes are not placed in
any particular city, or spot of ground, but in preserving a good army . . . to take advantage of
favorable opportunities, and waste and defeat the enemy by piecemeal."
In order to "preserve a good army," one had to be created in the first place. It was a long
and difficult road from the Continental Congress's edict designating the militia around Boston as
a Continental Army and creating such an army in fact. Although many colonials had had some
military experience in the French and Indian War, most had served in militia units, a far cry from
service in a regular European-style army. The latter, Washington believed, was what the
Continental Army needed to become if the colonies were to stand up to the British army.
As Washington put the matter shortly after he arrived in Boston to take command of the
army: "The course of human affairs forbids an expectation that troops formed under such
circumstances [militia] should at once possess the order, regularity, and discipline of veterans."
Washington rather optimistically added, "Whatever deficiencies there may be, will, I doubt not,
soon be made up by the activity and zeal of the officers, and the docility and obedience of the
men. These qualities, united with their native bravery and spirit, will afford a happy presage of
success. . . ." How this opinion would soon change!
When Washington assumed his duties in Boston, he saw no end to problems. "The abuses
[problems] in this army, I fear, are considerable, and the new modelling of it [reorganization], in
the face of an enemy, from whom we every hour expect an attack, is exceedingly difficult and
dangerous." Although often dismayed by his charge, Washington set out to create an army that
could stand up in the field to the best army in the world at that time. The documents included
here will give you a sense of some of the problems and issues. These and other problems
continued to plague Washington and his army throughout the conflict. Over time, Washington
would come to believe that only the creation of a permanent standing army could save the
revolution.
