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chap_6_pages_126-153.pdf
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My dear Jack, All the Provinces [are]
arming and Training in the same Manner,
for they are all determined to die or be Free y
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—Eliza Farmer, June 28, 1775 4,
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Chaplain Jacob Duche' leading the first prayer in the First Continental Congress at
Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, September 1774.
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6 FROM EMPIRE
TO INDEPENDENCE 1 750-1 776
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WHAT WERE the most important weaknesses of the British Empire in North America
at the outset of the Seven Years' War?
t—
affix the STAMP. WHAT FACTORS
led to the growth of American
nationalism in the 1760s?
HOW DID political and economic problems in Britain contribute to unrest in the colonies?
WHAT STEPS did Britain take to punish Massachusetts for the
colonists' acts of resistance?
WHO MADE up the second Continental Congress and why was it formed?
128
CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
AMERICAN COMMUN_T ES The First Continental Congress Begins to Shape
a National Political Community THE OPENING MINUTES OF THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, HELD
in Philadelphia in September 1774, did not bode well. One of the delegates moved that the session open with prayer, but oth- ers objected. "We were so divided in religious sentiments," wrote John Adams, a representative from Massachusetts, "that we could not join in the same act of worship." Was the Congress to be stymied, here at the very beginning, by the things separating them? Putting aside their religious differences, the delegates agreed to a prayer by a local clergyman, who took as his text the Thirty-fifth Psalm: "Plead my cause, 0 Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me."
This incident highlighted the most important task con- fronting the First Continental Congress strengthening their common cause without compromising their local identities. The delegates, noted Adams, were like "ambassadors from a dozen belligerent powers of Europe." They represented distinct colonies with traditions and histories as different as those of separate countries. Moreover, these lawyers, merchants, and planters, lead- ers in their respective colonies, were strangers to one another.
Britain's North American colonies enjoyed considerable prosperity during the first half of the eighteenth century. But in 1765—in the aftermath of the great war for empire during which Great Britain soundly defeated France and forced the cession of the French North American colonies—the British government began to apply new trade restrictions and levy new taxes, inspir- ing resistance among the colonists. By the opening session of the First Continental Con- gress peaceful protest had escalated into violent riot, and in an attempt to force the colonists to acknowledge the power of Parliament to make laws binding them "in all cases whatsoever," the British had proclaimed a series of repressive measures. In this atmosphere of crisis, the colonial assemblies (with the exception of Georgia's) elected del- egates for a "Continental Congress" to map out a coordinated response.
Despite their differences, during seven weeks of deliberations, the delegates succeeded in forging an agreement on the principles and policies they would follow in this, the most serious crisis in the history of the British North American colonies. These were the first tentative steps toward the creation
of an American national political community. Communities are not simply local but can also be regional, national, even interna- tional. In a town or village, feelings of association come from daily, face-to-face contacts, but for larger groups those connec- tions must be deliberately constructed. In their final declaration the delegates pledged to "firmly agree and associate, under the sacred ties of virtue, honor and love of our country." They asked their countrymen to remember "the poorer sort" among them during the time of trouble they knew was coming. They demanded that patriotic Americans "break off all dealings" with those refusing to act, thus drawing a distinction between "insiders" and "outsiders," one of the essential first steps in the construction of community identity.
Patrick Henry, a Virginia delegate strongly committed to American independence, was exuberant by the time the Congress adjourned in late October. "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more," he declared. "I am not a Virginian, but an American." He was exaggerating the unity. It remained a work in progress. Local, provincial, and regional differences
would continue to clash. But Henry voiced an impor- tant truth.
In its attempt to force the colonists to pay a share of the costs of empire through taxa- tion, Great Britain had sparked a revolt of both elite and ordinary colonists. The road to a shared community of interest among
British colonists that distinguished them from the mother country had been marked by
milestones with legendary names: the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, the Intolerable
Acts. The violent events that would follow the First Continental Congress—the first clash at Lexington and Concord, the siege of Boston, the Battle of Bunker Hill—would lead to a second session of the Congress. Reluctantly at first, then enthusiastically, the delegates would move toward independence. The difficult months and years of warfare would sorely test the imagined com- munity of the united colonies, and the differences among them would frequently threaten to abort the nation being born. But the sessions of the First Continental Congress marked the moment when Americans first began the struggle to overcome local differences in pursuit of national goals.
WHAT WERE the most
important weaknesses of the British
Empire in North America at the
outset of the Seven Years' War?
myhistchlab Review Summary
IMAGE KEY for pages 126-127
a. Green tea and dried tea leaves. b. Flank and breast feathers. c. Chaplain Jacob Duche' leading the first
prayer in the First Continental Congress at
Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, September
1774.
d. A "No Stamp Act" teapot. e. Three lmrie/Risley by Wilson 1750s
77mm diorama figures, Roger Ranger with two soldiers, French and Indian
War, on a diorama base.
f. Propaganda of 1765 against the Stamp
Act that was emblazoned on teapots. g. American colonists force feed hot tea to
an English tax collector after tar and feathering the agent under a Liberty Tree in colonial Boston.
h. Colored engraving, published by Paul
Revere, shows British troops
disembarking from a ship in Boston in
1768. i. The Declaration of Independence.
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6 40, 129
THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR IN AMERICA
L eaders of the British colonies made an early attempt at cooperation in 1754, when representatives from New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland met to consider a joint approach to military challenges from the French and their Indian allies. Even as the delegates met, fighting between French Canadians and Virginians began near the headwaters of the Ohio River in the Appalachian Mountains, the first shots in a great global war for empire pitting Great Britain (and Prussia) against the combined might of France, Spain, and Austria.
THE ALBANY CONFERENCE OF 1754
The British Board of Trade convened the 1754 meeting in the New York town of Albany on the Hudson River. They wanted the colonies to consider a collective response to the continuing conflict with New France and the Indians of the inte- rior. High on the agenda was the negotiation of a settlement with the leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy, who had grown impatient with colonial land grabbing. But as the negotiations began, behind the scenes real estate developers were bribing minor Iroquois chiefs, affixing their signatures on a "deed" for an enormous tract of land in Pennsylvania, and turning the meeting into a vehicle for the very abuses the British sought to correct. Angered by these manipulations, the official Iroquois delegation walked out of the conference, refusing all offers to join a British alliance.
The Albany Conference did adopt a "Plan of Union" put forward by Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania. Franklin, whom the British had appointed Postmaster General of the North American colonies, was especially sensitive to the need for cooperation. His proposal would have placed Indian affairs, western set- tlement, and other items of mutual interest under the authority of a grand council composed of representatives elected by the colonial assemblies and led by a British- appointed president. All the colonies rejected the Albany Plan of Union, fearful of losing their autonomy. The absence of cooperation among the colonies would prove one of the greatest weaknesses during the subsequent war with the French.
FRANCE VS. BRITAIN IN AMERICA
There were three violent flash points in the conflict between Great Britain and France for control of North America. First was the northern Atlantic coast, the ragged bound- ary between New France and New England. To protect the ocean approach to their colonial heartland, the French constructed the port and fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. In 1749 the British established a large naval facility at Halifax in Nova Scotia, but worried about the loyalty of the 18,000 French-speaking Acadians of the province.
The second flash point was the border region between New France and New York, extending from Niagara Falls to Lake Champlain, where Canadians and New Yorkers were rivals for the lucrative Indian trade. The French, who found it difficult to compete against superior English goods, resorted instead to military might, gar- risoning fortifications on Lake George and at Niagara. In this zone the strategic advantage was held by the Iroquois Confederacy.
Third was the Ohio country, the trans-Appalachian region bisected by the Ohio River. This rich country was a prime target of British land speculators and backcountry settlers, whom the French feared would overrun their isolated out- posts and threaten their entire Mississippi trading empire. To reinforce their claim, in 1749 the French sent a heavily armed force down the Ohio River to ward off the British, and in 1752 they attempted to expel all British traders from the region.
Albany Conference A 1754 meeting, held in Albany, NY, between the British and leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Plan of Union Plan put forward by Benjamin Franklin in 1754 calling for an intercolonial union to manage defense and Indian affairs. The plan was rejected by participants at the Albany Congress.
130
CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750 - 1776
French Canadian troops then began in 1753 the construction of a line of forts running south from Lake Erie to the headwaters of the Ohio River. In a direct challenge to the French claims in the West, the British government issued a royal charter for more than 200,000 acres to the Ohio Company, organized by London and Virginia investors.
The Indian peoples of the Ohio country had interests of their own. In addi- tion to native inhabitants, the region had become a refuge for Indian peoples who had fled the Northeast. Most of the Indians of the Ohio country opposed British expansion and were anxious to make the Appalachians into a wall of protection. Meanwhile the Iroquois Confederacy continued the game of playing the British against the French. In the South the Creeks (and to a lesser extent the Cherokees and Choctaws) attempted to carve out a similar balancing role for themselves among the British in the Lower South, the French in Louisiana, and the Spanish in Florida. These Indian confederacies saw it as in their interest to perpetuate the existing colo- nial stalemate. Their position would be greatly undermined by an overwhelming vic- tory for either side.
ti 3-9 The Storm Arising in the West,
George Washington Delivers a
Warning to the French (1753)
French and Indian War The last of the Anglo-French colonial wars (1754-1763) and the first in which fighting began in North America. The war ended with France's defeat. Also known as the Seven Years' War.
FRONTIER WARFARE
As the delegates to the Albany Conference conducted their business they received news of the first clash with the French. Colonel George Washington, a young mili- tia officer sent by the governor of Virginia to expel the French from the upper Ohio, had been forced to surrender his troops to a French Canadian force. The French now commanded the interior country from Fort Duquesne, at the "Forks of the Ohio," the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.
Taking up the challenge, in 1755 the British launched an effort to strike the French in all three zones. An army of New England militiamen succeeded in cap- turing two important French forts on the border of Nova Scotia. Elsewhere the British campaigns failed. In northern New York a large colonial force was repulsed by the French. And on July 9, 1755, 1,500 British troops were ambushed and destroyed by a much smaller force of 600 confederated Indian fighters supported by a mere 30 French Canadians. It was the worst military defeat of a British army dur- ing the eighteenth century.
Full-scale warfare between Great Britain (supported by Prussia) and France (supported by Spain) began the next year in 1756. It was truly a global war, fought in Europe, Asia, and America, and known to history as the Seven Years' War (or the French and Indian War in America) (see Map 6.1) .The first two years were a near catastrophe for Great Britain. Indians pounded backcountry settlements, killed thousands of settlers, and raided deep into the coastal colonies, throwing British colonists into panic. French Canadians captured British forts in northern New York. The lack of colonial cooperation greatly hampered the British attempt to mount a counterattack. When British commanders tried to exert direct control over provincial troops, they succeeded only in angering local authorities.
THE CONQUEST OF CANADA
In 1757 William Pitt, an enthusiastic advocate of British expansion, became prime minister of Great Britain. Believing that the global war could be won in North Amer- ica, he subsidized Prussian allies to fight the war in Europe, reserving his own forces for naval and colonial operations. Pitt committed himself to the conquest of Canada and the final elimination of French competition in North America. Promising that the war would be fought "at His Majesty's expense," Pitt secured colonial cooperation with a massive infusion of British currency and credit.
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6
MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to httpd/www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map6.1
Gulf of St. Lawrence
NEW FRANCE
Louisburg •
*IA ■ -HA. NOVA
Quebec .i... it SCOTIA •
q,C" '0\ .L* PP ' Halifax „ilk St. Francois
Montreal = . •..* MASSACHUSETTS
Fort Ticonderoga Lake George -JPI NEW
• Ilit HAMPSHIRE
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
io Fort Oswego ••Boston
V Albany ez MASSACHUSETTS
Fort Niagara NEW YORK
131
RHODE ISLAND
PENNSYLVANIA t • New York CONNECTICUT
NEW JERSEY
°Philadelphia
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
British territory
ED French territory
F-1 Disputed territory (Britain and France)
■ British fort
■ French fort
*. British victory -II A. French victory
Fort ilk Duquesne ■
-04 •
VIRGINIA
MAP 6.1 The War for Empire in North America, 1754-1763 The Seven Years' War in America was fought in three prin- cipal areas: Nova Scotia and what was then Acadia, the frontier between New France and New York, and the upper Ohio River.
HOW DID the Indian trade affect the war? Which military defeats dealt the worst blows to the French?
The British were also effective at attracting Indian support. In 1758 officials promised the Iroquois and the Ohio Indians that the crown would "agree upon clear and fixed boundaries between our settlements and their hunting grounds, so that each party may know their own and be a mutual protection to each other of their respective possessions."
Thus did Pitt succeed in reversing the course of the war. Regular and provin- cial forces captured the fortress of Louisbourg in July 1758, setting the stage for the invasion of New France. A month later a force of New Englanders captured the strategic French fort of Oswego on Lake Ontario, thereby preventing the Cana- dians from resupplying their western posts. Encouraged by British promises,
132 CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
The death of General James Wolfe, at the conclusion of the battle in which the British captured Quebec in 1759, became the
subject of American artist Benjamin West's most famous painting, which was exhibited to tremendous acclaim in London in
1770.
Benjamin West (1738-1820), The Death of General Wolfe," 1770. Oil on canvas, 152.6 x 214.5 cm. Transfer from the Canadian War Memorials, 1921 (Gift of the 2nd
Duke of Westminster, Eaton Hall, Cheshire, 1918). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
Treaty of Paris The formal end to British hostilities against France and Spain in February 1763.
numerous Indian tribes deserted the French, forcing them to abandon Fort
Duquesne, which the British occupied and renamed Fort Pitt (today's Pittsburgh)
in honor of the prime minister. The last of the French forts in northern New York
fell in 1759. In the South, regular and provincial British troops crushed the Chero-
kees and opened negotiations with the Creeks and Choctaws.
British forces now converged on French Canada. In 1759 colonial and British
troops, acting on General James Wolfe's order to "burn and lay waste the country,"
plundered farms along the St. Lawrence and shelled the city of Quebec. The
British army prevailed and Quebec fell. The next year another British force moved
up the Hudson and conquered Montreal. Its fall marked the end of the French
empire in America. In the final two years of the war the British swept French ships from the seas,
conquered the Spanish colony of Cuba, captured the Spanish Philippines, and
achieved dominance in India. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France lost all its posses-
sions on the North American mainland, ceding to Great Britain all its claims east of
the Mississippi, with the exception of New Orleans, which was passed to Spain, along
with other French claims to the trans-Mississippi region. In exchange for the return
of its Caribbean and Pacific colonies, Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Three centuries
of European imperial rivalry in eastern North America ended with complete victory
for the British Empire (see Map 6.2).
QUICK REVIEW
European Territories, 1763
• Britain: territories in North
America from Hudson's Bay to
the Caribbean, from the Atlantic
to the Mississippi.
• France: territory on the mainland
reduced to two small islands.
• Spain: Cuba, the Philippines, Louisiana, and California.
Hudson Bay
HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY
British
EN French Spanish
— Proclamation line
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6
1763
Labrador
Sea
LOUISIANA LOUISIANA
OCEAN ATLANTIC_
OCEAN
NEW SPAIN
NEW Gulf of SPAIN Mexico
WE EAST FLORIDA FLORIDA
Gulf of Mexico
1 33
THIRTEEN COLONIES
French claims
IM Under French control British
Spanish
I= Disputed (Britain and France)
Hudson Bay
Grant to Hudson's Bay Company NEW
(Rupert's Land) FRANCE
Labrador
Sea
THIRTEEN COLONIES
1750
Cuba Cuba
Jamaica Hispaniola
Caribbean Sea
- or- , Jamaica Hispaniola
Caribbean Sea
MAP 6.2 European Claims in North America, 1750 and 1763 As a result of the British victory in the Seven Years' War, the map of colonial claims in North America was fundamentally transformed.
HOW DID the balance of power in North America change between 1750 and 1763?
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE WEST
The Ohio Indians were shocked when told of the French cession. 'The French had no right to give away [our] country," they responded. They were "never conquered by any nation." A new set of British policies soon shocked them even more. The French and the British had long used gift-giving as a way of gaining favor with Indians. Spanish officials who replaced the French in Louisiana continued that old policy. But in one of his first official acts, General Jeffery Amherst, British military governor of the western region, banned presents to Indian chiefs and tribes, demanding that they learn to live without "charity." Not only were Indians angered by Amherst's reversal of custom, but they were also frustrated by his refusal to sup- ply them with the ammunition they needed for hunting. Many were left destitute.
In this climate, hundreds of Ohio Indians became disciples of an Indian vision-
ary named Neolin ( -The Enlightened One"), known to the English as the Delaware
Prophet. The core of Neolin's teaching was that Indians had been corrupted by European ways and needed to purify themselves by returning to their traditions and
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CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
Royal Proclamation of 1763 Royal proclamation declaring the trans- Appalachian region to be "Indian Country."
3-10 The Closing of the Frontier (1763)
A treaty between the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo (western Iroquois) Indians and Great Britain,
July 13, 1765, at the conclusion
of the Indian uprising. The Indian
chiefs signed with pictographs
symbolizing their clans, each nota-
rized with an official wax seal.
preparing for a holy war. In the spring of 1763 a confederacy of tribes inspired by Neolin's ideas laid plans for a coordinated attack on British frontier posts. The prin- cipal leader of this resistance was the Ottawa chief Pontiac, renowned as an orator and political leader. In May 1763 Pontiac's confederacy simultaneously attacked all British forts in the West, destroying eight but failing to take the key posts of Niagara, Detroit, and Pitt. Pontiac and his followers fought on for another year, but most
Indians sued for peace. They were encouraged by the announcement of the British Royal Proclama-
tion of 1763, which declared the trans-Appalachian region to be "Indian Country." Specific authorization from the crown would be required for any purchase of these protected Indian lands. British colonists had expected that the removal of the French threat would allow them to move into the West. They were outraged that the British would award territory to mortal enemies who during the war had slaughtered more than 4,000 settlers.
In fact, the British proved unable and ultimately unwilling to prevent the westward migration that was to be a dynamic part of the colonization of British North America. Within a few years of the war, New Englanders by the thousands were moving into the northern Green Mountain district, known as Vermont. In the middle colonies, New York settlers pushed ever closer to the homeland of the Iroquois, while others settled within the protective radius of Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania. Hunters, stock herders, and farmers crossed over the first range of the Appalachians in Virginia and North Carolina, planting pioneer communities in what are now the states of West Virginia and Tennessee. In response to demands by settlers and speculators, British authorities were soon pressing the Iroquois and Cherokees for cessions of land in Indian Country. No longer able to play off rival colonial powers, Indians were reduced to a choice between compliance and resistance. Weakened by the recent war, they chose to sign away lands.
The individual colonies were even more aggressive. Locked in a dispute with Pennsylvania about jurisdiction in the Ohio country, in 1773 Virginia governor John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, sent a force to occupy Fort Pitt. In 1774, in an attempt to gain legitimacy for his dispute with Pennsylvania, Dunmore provoked
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6 135
a frontier war with the Shawnees. After dealing them a humiliating defeat, Dunmore forced them to cede the upper Ohio River Valley to Virginia. The continuing strug- gle for the West would be an important issue in the coming Revolutionary struggle.
THE EMERGENCE OF AMERICAN NATIONALISM
N o colonial power of the mid-eighteenth century could match Britain in projecting imperial power over the face of the globe. During the years following its victory in the Seven Years' War, Britain turned confidently to the reorganization of its North American empire. The new colonial policy plunged British authorities into a new and ultimately more threatening conflict with the colonists, who had begun to develop a sense of a separate identity.
AN AMERICAN IDENTITY
Despite the anger of frontier settlers over the Proclamation of 1763, the conclu- sion of the Seven Years' War left most colonists proud of their place in the British Empire. But many people had begun to note important contrasts between them- selves and the mother country. The arrival of thousands of British troops raised the problem of where to house them. British commanders demanded they be quartered in private homes. British subjects at home were protected against such demands by an act of Parliament, but that protection had expressly not been extended to the colonies.
Americans who were thrown into contact with regular British troops were shocked by their profanity, lewdness, and violence. They were equally shocked by the swift and terrible punishment inflicted by aristocratic officers to keep those men in line. A Massachusetts militiaman wrote of witnessing the punishment of two soldiers sentenced to eight hundred lashes apiece. Men who had witnessed such scenes found it easy to believe in the threat of British "slavery."
Colonial forces, by contrast, were composed of volunteer companies. Mili- tia officers were moderate in the administration of punishment, knowing they had to maintain the enthusiasm of their troops. Discipline thus fell considerably below the standards to which British officers were accustomed. Many Americans believed the British ignored the important role they had played in the Seven Years' War. The mutual scorn and suspicion were sometimes expressed in name-calling. Regular soldiers derisively called New Englanders "Yankees," while colonists heck- led the red-coated British as "lobsters." During the war many colonists began to view themselves as distinct from the British.
The Seven Years' War also strengthened a sense of intercolonial identity among the colonists. Farm boys who never before had ventured outside the com- munities of their birth fought in distant regions with men like themselves from other colonies. Such experiences reinforced a developing nationalist perspective and sense of national community. From 1735 to 1775, while trade with Great Britain doubled, commerce among the colonies quadrupled. People and ideas moved along with goods. The first stagecoach lines linking seaboard cities began operation in the 1750s. Spurred by Postmaster Benjamin Franklin, many colonies built or improved post roads for transporting the mails.
THE PRESS, POLITICS, AND REPUBLICANISM
One of the most important means of intercolonial communication was the weekly newspaper. Newspapers became a lively means of public discourse, and by 1760 more than twenty weekly papers were being published in the British colonies.
WHAT FACTORS led to the
growth of American nationalism in
the 1760s?
mybistdi Review Summary
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orpola appears, which I hope will be WILLIAM BRADFORD.
A protest against the Stamp Act from newspaper editor William
Bradford, publisher of The Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser. Bradford decorated his masthead with skull and crossbones, reproduced a satiric version of the fatal Stamp," also
with skull and crossbones, and included the note, "The TIMES are Dreadful, Dismal, Doleful, Dolorous, and Dollar-less." The text
below is an open letter from Bradford to his readers.
136 Co) CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
Republicanism A complex, changing body of ideas, values, and assumptions that influenced American political behavior during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Sugar Act Law passed in 1764 to raise revenue in the American colonies. It lowered the duty from 6 pence to 3 pence per gallon on foreign molasses imported into the colonies and increased the restrictions on colonial commerce.
The papers carried an increasing amount of colonial news. From the 1730s to the 1770s intercolonial coverage in the colo- nial press increased sixfold. Editors began to look at events from what they called a "continental" perspective. The trend acceler- ated during the Seven Years' War, when communities demanded news of the distant places where their men were fighting. The war promoted a new spirit of nationalism and a wider notion
of community. Editors began using the term "American" to denote the common identity of British colonists. It was an early sign of the political community the delegates began to construct at the First Continental Congress.
Colonial editors frequently reprinted writings by British authors, poems by Alexander Pope, satiric essays by Jonathan Swift, and political philosophy by John Locke. They frequently reprinted essays by British republicans, who warned of the growing threat to liberty posed by the unchecked exercise of
government power. Some essayists suggested that a conspiracy existed among European monarchs, aristocrats, and Catholics to quash liberty and reinstitute tyranny. These ideas came to define a political consensus in the British colonies, a point of view called "republicanism."
Republicanism asserted that state power, by its very nature, was antithetical to liberty and, consequently, must be limited. The authority of rulers should be conditional rather than absolute, and the people had the inherent right to draw up their own form of government and to withdraw their support if it did not fulfill their expectations. The best guarantee of good gov- ernment was the broad distribution of power to the people, who could not only select their own leaders but also vote them out of office. Republican government depended on the virtue of the people, on their willingness to make the stability and jus- tice of the political community their first priority. But that kind of virtue was possible only for an "independent" population that controlled its own affairs.
This was a political theory that fit well with the circum- stances of American life, with its wide base of property ownership, its tradition of representative assemblies, and its history of strug-
gle with royal authority. Contrast the assumptions of republicans with those of British monarchists, who argued that the good society was one in which a strong state, controlled by a hereditary elite, kept a vicious and unruly people in line.
THE SUGAR AND STAMP ACTS
The emerging sense of American political identity was soon tested by British mea- sures designed to raise revenues in the colonies. To quell Indian uprisings and stifle discontent among the French and Spanish populations of Quebec and Florida, the British kept 10,000 regular troops stationed in North America at the conclusion of the war. The cost of maintaining this force added to the enormous debt run up during the fighting. In 1764 Prime Minister George Grenville decided to obtain the needed revenue from America, and Parliament passed a measure known as the Sugar Act, which placed a tariff on sugar imported into the colonies.
Anticipating that American importers would attempt to avoid the duty by smuggling, Parliament broadened the jurisdiction of the vice-admiralty court at
QUICK REVIEW
British Taxation
• Taxation the fundamental issue between Britain and the colonies.
• Americans assumed that Parliament could not tax them.
• American views on taxation reflected country ideology.
5-2
James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1763)
myhistdiylab Exploring America: The Stamp Act
4-3
Benjamin Franklin, Testimony Against the Stamp Act (1766)
• 4-4 John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767) Whigs The name used by advocates of colonial resistance to British measures during the 1760s and 1770s.
Stamp Act Law passed by Parliament in 1765 to raise revenue in America by requiring taxed, stamped paper for legal documents, publications, and playing cards.
Virtual representation The notion that parliamentary members represented the interests of the nation as a whole, not those of the particular district that elected them.
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6 C) 1 37
Halifax, which had jurisdiction over customs cases. Courts of vice-admiralty were hated and feared because they neither provided for trial by jury nor acted on the presumption of innocence. Both merchants and artisans viewed the Sugar Act as a threat to their livelihoods, and there were public protests in many port towns. Boston was especially vocal. The town meeting proposed a boycott of certain English imports, and the tactic of nonimportation soon spread to other port towns.
James Otis, a brilliant Massachusetts lawyer, became one of the first Ameri- cans to give voice to these protests, striking a number of themes that were repeated many times over the next fifteen years. Every man, Otis declared in rhetoric lifted directly from the Great Awakening, "was an independent sovereign, subject to no law but the law written on his heart and revealed to him by his Maker." No govern- ment, he argued in the tradition of the radical Whigs, could rightfully deprive a man of the right "to his life, his liberty, and his property." His most memorable phrase would echo for the next decade: "Taxation without representation is tyranny."
THE STAMP ACT CRISIS
Wasn't it only fair, Prime Minister Grenville responded, that the colonists help pay the costs of the empire? And what better way to do so than by taxation? Although colonial assemblies had raised taxes during the war, colonial tax rates remained significantly lower than rates in the mother country. Ignoring American protests, in early 1765 Grenville pushed through a considerably more sweeping revenue measure known as the Stamp Act. This legislation required the purchase of specially embossed paper for all newspapers, legal documents, licenses, insur- ance policies, ship's papers, even dice and playing cards. It affected nearly every colonial resident in one way or another.
The American reaction to the Stamp Act during the summer and autumn of 1765 created a crisis of unprecedented proportions. The stamped paper had to be purchased with hard money, and it came during a period of economic stagnation. Many colonists complained of being "miserably burdened and oppressed with taxes." But constitutional objections had more importance over the long term. Although colonial male property owners elected their own assemblies, they could not vote in British elections and had no representatives in Parliament. The British government argued that colonists were still subject to the acts of Parliament because of what they termed "virtual representation." As one British conservative put it, the colonists were "represented in Parliament in the same manner as those inhabitants of Britain are who have not voices in elections," such as women, children, and servants.
Americans did not take well to the comparison. Just such constitutional issues were emphasized in the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions, written by Patrick Henry, a passionate young backcountry lawyer and member of the House of Burgesses. Although his colleagues rejected the most radical of Henry's resolutions, all of them were reprinted in the colonial press. By the end of 1765 the assemblies of eight other colonies had approved similar measures denouncing the Stamp Act and proclaiming their support of "no taxation without representation."
The most violent protests took place in Boston. The city's elite had pros- pered over the previous decade, but conditions for workers and the poor had worsened. Unemployment, inflation, and high taxes greatly increased the level of poverty during the depression following the Seven Years' War. Ordinary Bostonians were resentful. Their discontent was channeled by Samuel Adams,
the son of a brewer, who became a powerful local politician. Adams was a leader of the anti-British alliance spanning Boston's social classes. In the late summer of 1765 he and his associates organized a protest of Boston workingmen.
138 CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
Samuel Adams, a second cousin of John Adams, was a leader of the Boston radicals and an organizer of the Sons of Liberty. The artist of this portrait, John Singleton Copley, was known for setting his
subjects in the midst of everyday objects; here he portrays Adams
in a middle-class suit with the charter guaranteeing the liberties of
Boston's freemen.
John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), "Samuel Adams," ca. 1772. Oil on canvas,
49 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. (125.7 cm x 100.3 cm). Deposited by the City of Boston, 30.76c.
Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reproduced with permission. © 2000 Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston. All Rights Reserved.
On August 14 a large crowd assembled near Boston Com- mon, and in an old elm, known as the "Liberty Tree," strung up effigies of several British officials, including Boston's stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver. The restless crowd then invaded and vandalized Oliver's office as well as his home. Soon there- after, Oliver resigned his commission. Several days later another mob broke into the mansion of Thomas Hutchin- son, lieutenant governor of the colony. During the fall and winter, urban crowds protested in port towns from Halifax in the north to Savannah in the south (see Map 6.3). Grow- ing alarmed at the rising potential for violence, merchants, lawyers, and respectable craftsmen seized control of the resis- tance movement. Calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, these leaders encouraged more moderate forms of protest, such as circulating petitions and publishing pamphlets. Always they emphasized limited political goals. There were few rep- etitions of mob attacks, but by the end of 1765 almost all the stamp distributors had resigned or fled, making it impossible for Britain to enforce the Stamp Act. Pressured by British merchants, worried over the effects of the growing nonim- portation movement among the colonists, in March 1766 Par- liament repealed the Stamp Act and reduced the duties under the Sugar Act. This news was greeted with celebrations throughout the American colonies.
Overlooked in the mood of optimism, however, was the fact that repeal was coupled with what was termed a "Declara- toryAct," in which Parliament affirmed its full authority to make laws binding the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." The Declara- tory Act signaled that the conflict between the mother country and the colonies had not been resolved but merely postponed.
=111111==111111111111== HOW DID political and economic
problems in Britiain contribute to
unrest in the colonies?
myhistdylab Review Summary
Sons of Liberty Secret organizations in the colonies formed to oppose the Stamp Act.
Nonimportation movement A tactical means of putting economic pressure on Britain by refusing to buy its exports to the colonies.
Declaratory Act Law passed in 1776 to accompany repeal of the Stamp Act that stated that Parliament had the authority to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever."
C
"SAVE YOUR MONEY AND SAVE YOUR COUNTRY"
olonial resistance to the Stamp Act was stronger in urban than in rural communities, stronger among merchants, craftsmen, and planters than among farmers and frontiersmen. When Parliament next moved to
impose its will, as it had promised to do in the Declaratory Act, the American
opposition again adopted the tactic of nonimportation. But this time resistance spread from the cities and towns into the countryside. As the editor of the Boston Gazette phrased the issue, "Save your money and you save your country." It became the slogan of the movement.
THE TOWNSHEND REVENUE ACTS
The foremost problem facing the new British government in the mid-1760s was the national debt. Britain suffered massive unemployment, riots over high prices, and tax protests. Fearing opposition at home more than the protest in the colonies, in June 1767 Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed a new
series of Revenue Acts placing tariffs on the importation of commodities such as lead, glass, paint, paper, and tea into the colonies.
The most influential colonial response came in a series of articles by wealthy Philadelphia lawyer John Dickinson, which were reprinted in nearly every colonial
Windham Lebanon
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ethersfield •
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l e m
Portsmouth Salem Marblehead Boston Plymouth
Pomfret • Newport
• Norwich • L me —"New London
New Haven West Haven
Milford New York
Woodbridge Brunswick
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6
139
newspaper. Posing as a humble farmer, Dickinson argued that Parliament had no constitutional authority to tax goods in order to raise revenue in America. Other Americans warned that the Revenue Acts were part of a British conspir-
acy to suppress American liberties. Their fears were rein- forced by stringent enforcement.
In response some colonists argued for violent resis- tance. But it was Dickinson's essays that had the greatest effect on the public debate, not only because of their con- vincing arguments but also because of their mild and rea- sonable tone. "Let us behave like dutiful children," Dickinson urged, "who have received unmerited blows from a beloved parent." No sentiment for independence yet existed in the British colonies.
AN EARLY POLITICAL BOYCOTT
In October 1767 the Boston town meeting revived the tac- tic of nonimportation, drawing up a long list of British products to boycott. Over the next few months other port cities, including Providence, Newport, and New York, set up nonimportation campaigns of their own. Artisans took to the streets in towns and cities throughout the colonies to force merchants to stop importing British goods. Coer- cion was very much a part of the movement, and occasion- ally there was violence.
Protestors formed "nonimportation associations," pledging to curtail luxuries and stimulate local industry. These aims had great appeal in small towns and rural districts, which previously had been uninvolved in the anti- British struggle. In 1768 and 1769 colonial newspapers paid a great deal of attention to women's support for the boycott. "The industry and frugality of American ladies," wrote the editor of the Boston Evening Post, "are contributing to bring about the political salvation of a whole continent."
Nonimportation was greatly strengthened in May 1769 when the Virginia House of Burgesses enacted the first provincial legislation banning the importation of goods enumerated in the Townshend Acts. Over the next few months all the colonies but New Hampshire enacted sim- ilar legislation. Because of these efforts, the value of colo- nial imports from Britain declined by 41 percent.
Annapolis. • • o
L t ewes
Dumfries. Talbot
Leeds. Rappahannock.
Williamsburg•
'Norfolk
ATLANTIC
Duplin New Bern
OCEAN Cross Creek ••
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* Savannah
MAP 6.3 Demonstrations Against the Stamp Act, 1765 Popular demonstrations against the Stamp Act forced the resignation of British tax officials.
WHAT GROUPS in British North America were most oppossed to the Stamp Act?
Townshend Revenue Acts Act of Parliament, passed in 1767, imposing duties on colonial tea, lead, paint, paper, and glass.
QUICK REVIEW
Resistance
• Response to the Sugar Act divided.
• 1764: New York and Boston mer- chants launch nonimportation movement.
• Response to Stamp Act over- whelming and intense.
THE MASSACHUSETTS CIRCULAR LETTER
Boston and Massachusetts were at the center of the agitation over the Townshend Revenue Acts. In February 1768 the Massachusetts House of Representatives approved a letter addressed to the speakers of the other colonial assemblies. The letter denounced the Revenue Acts, attacked the British plan to make royal officials independent of colonial assemblies, and urged the colonies to find a way to "har- monize with each other." Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard condemned the document for stirring up rebellion and dissolved the legislature. In Britain, Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, ordered each royal governor in America to dissolve his colony's assembly if it should endorse the letter. Before this
OVERVIEW
1 40 - 40 - CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
Legislation
Sugar Act
Stamp Act
Eleven British Measures that Led to Revolution
Placed prohibitive duty on imported sugar; provided for greater regulation of American shipping to suppress smuggling
Required the purchase of specially embossed paper for newspapers, legal documents, licenses, insurance policies, ships' papers, and playing cards; struck at printers, lawyers, tavern owners, and other influential colonists. Repealed in 1766
Declaratory Act
Townshend Revenue Acts
Tea Act
Coercive or Intolerable Acts
Boston Port Bill
Massachusetts Government Act
Administration of Justice Act
Quartering Act
Quebec Act
Asserted the authority of Parliament to make laws binding the colonies "in all cases whatsoever"
Placed import duties, collectible before goods entered colonial markets, on many commodities including lead, glass, paper, and tea. Repealed in 1770
Gave the British East India Company a monopoly on all tea imports to America, hitting at American merchants
Closed Boston Harbor
Annulled the Massachusetts colonial charter
Protected British officials from colonial courts by sending them home for trial if arrested
Legalized the housing of British troops in private homes
Created a highly centralized government for Canada
Year
1764
1765
1766
1767
1773
1774
myhisteilab Y - Overview: Eleven British Measures that Led to Revolution
4-6 The Boston "Massacre" or Victims of Circumstance (1770)
demand reached America, the assemblies of New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Con-
necticut had commended Massachusetts. Virginia, moreover, had issued a circular
letter encouraging a "hearty union" among the colonies and urging common action
against the British measures that "have an immediate tendency to enslave us."
Throughout this crisis there were rumors and threats of mob rule in Boston.
Fearful of insurrection, on October 1, 1768, the British occupied Boston with
infantry and artillery regiments. This action added greatly to the growing tensions.
THE BOSTON MASSACRE
British troops stationed in the colonies were the object of scorn and hostility over
the next two years. There were regular conflicts between soldiers and radicals
in New York City, often focusing on protests organized by the Sons of Liberty. In
Boston Sam Adams played up each and every rumor of soldiers harassing women,
picking fights with men, or simply taunting residents with versions of "Yankee
Doodle." There were a number of violent confrontations.
A persistent source of conflict was the competition between troops and
townsmen over jobs. Soldiers were permitted to work when they were off-duty, thus
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In Paul Revere's version of the Boston Massacre, issued three weeks after the inci- dent, the British fire an organized volley into a defenseless crowd. Revere's print—
which he plagiarized from another Boston engraver—may have been inaccurate, but it was enormously effective propaganda. It hung in so many Patriot homes that the judge hearing the murder trial of these British soldiers warned the jury not to
be swayed by "the prints exhibited in our houses."
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6 in 141
competing with poor day laborers. In early March 1770 a British soldier walked into a Boston rope- walk in search of a job. "You can clean my shit- house," the owner told him. The soldier returned later with his friends and a small riot resulted. Over the next few days sporadic fighting between soldiers and townsmen continued. Finally, on the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd at the Cus- toms House began taunting a guard, calling him a "damned rascally scoundrel lobster" and worse. A captain and a company of seven soldiers went to his rescue, only to be pelted with snowballs and stones. Suddenly someone shouted "Fire!" and the frightened soldiers shot indiscriminately into the crowd. Five men fell dead and six more were wounded, two dying later. The soldiers escaped to their barracks, but a mob numbering in the hundreds rampaged through the streets demanding vengeance.
What became known as "the Boston Mas- sacre" was soon infamous throughout the colonies. For many colonists the incident was a disturbing reminder of the extent to which rela- tions with the mother country had deteriorated. During the next two years many people found themselves pulling back from the brink.
The growth of American resistance was slowed as well by the news that Parliament had repealed most of the Revenue Acts on March 5— the same day as the Boston Massacre. In the cli- mate of apprehension and confusion, there were few celebrations of the repeal, and the non- importation associations almost immediately collapsed. The parliamentary retreat on the question of duties, like the earlier repeal of the Stamp Act, was accompa- nied by a face-saving measure—retention of the tax on tea.
FROM RESISTANCE TO REBELLION
T here was a lull in the American controversy during the early 1770s, but the situation turned violent once more in 1773, when Parliament again infuriated the Americans. This time it was an ill-advised tax on tea, and
it propelled the colonists onto a swift track from resistance to outright rebellion.
COMMITTEES OF CORRESPONDENCE In June 1772, Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts inaugurated another con- troversy by announcing that henceforth his salary and those of other royally appointed officials would be paid by the crown. In effect this made the executive and judiciary branches of the colony's government independent of control by elected representatives. In October, the Boston town meeting appointed a com- mittee of correspondence to communicate with other communities regarding this challenge.
=211111M111.1= WHAT STEPS did Britain take to
punish Massachusetts for the
colonists' acts of resistance?
myhi staylab Review Summary
Boston Massacre After months of increasing friction between townspeople and the British troops stationed in the city, on March 5, 1770, British troops fired on American civilians in Boston.
• 4-7 John Andrews, Letter Regarding the Boston Tea Party (1773)
4-12 Jonathan Boucher, An Anglican Preacher Denounces the American Rebels (1775)
1 42
CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, i/go-1116
In March 1773 the Virginia House of Burgesses appointed a standing commit- tee of correspondence. The Virginia committee served as a model for the other colonies, and within a year all but Pennsylvania (where conservatives were in control of the legislature) had created committees of their own. The committees of corre- spondence became the principal channel for sharing information, shaping public opinion, and building cooperation among the colonies before the opening meeting of the First Continental Congress in 1774.
The information most damaging to British influence came from the radicals in Boston. In June 1773 the Boston committee circulated a set of confidential let- ters from Governor Hutchinson to the ministry in Britain. The letters revealed Hutchinson's call for "an abridgement of what are called English liberties" in the colonies. "I wish to see some further restraint of liberty," he had written, "rather than the connection with the parent state should be broken." This statement seemed to be the "smoking gun" of the conspiracy theory, and it created a torrent of anger against the British and their officials in the colonies.
THE BOSTON TEA PARTY
It was in this context that the colonists received the news that Parliament had passed the Tea Act. Colonists were major consumers of tea, typically drinking from five to ten cups a day. But because of the Townshend duties the market for tea had collapsed. The British East India Company, the sole agent of British power in India, was on the brink of bankruptcy. Parliament would not allow it to fail and devised a scheme to offer tea to Americans at prices that would tempt even the most patriotic drinker. The radicals argued that this was merely a device to make palat- able the payment of unconstitutional taxes and further evidence of the British effort to seduce and corrupt the colonists.
In October 1773 a mass meeting in Philadelphia denounced anyone import- ing the tea as "an enemy of his country." A group calling itself "the Committee for Tarring and Feathering" published a poster, plastered all over the city, asking if the captains of ships carrying the tea might like "ten gallons of liquid tar decanted on your pate—with the feathers of a dozen wild geese laid over that to enliven your appearance." The Philadelphia consignees resigned in terror. Similar protests in New York City forced resignations there as well. The town meeting in Boston soon passed resolutions patterned on those of Philadelphia.
The first of three tea ships arrived in Boston Harbor late in November. Mass meetings in Old South Church, including many country people drawn to the scene of the crisis, resolved to keep the tea from being unloaded. On the evening of December 16, 1773, a disciplined group of fifty or sixty men, including farm- ers, artisans, merchants, professionals, and apprentices, marched to the wharf. Dressed as Indians and cheered on by Boston's citizens, they boarded the ships and dumped into the harbor some forty-five tons of tea, valued at £18,000. Boston's was the first tea party, and other incidents of property destruction soon followed. But it was the initial action in Boston that infuriated the British. The government became convinced that something had to be done about the rebellious colony of Massachu- setts. Strong measures were required, King George III (reigned 1760-1820) wrote to Lord North, for "we are now to dispute whether we have, or have not, any authority in that country."
THE INTOLERABLE ACTS
During the spring of 1774 an angry Parliament passed a series of acts—offi- cially called the Coercive Acts but known by Americans as the Intolerable Acts— calculated to punish the colony of Massachusetts and strengthen the British
Tea Act Act of Parliament that permitted the East India Company to sell through agents in America without paying the duty customarily collected in Britain, thus reducing the retail price.
Boston Tea Party Incident that occurred on December 16, 1773, in which Bostonians, disguised as Indians, destroyed £18,000 worth of tea belonging to the British East India Company in order to prevent payment of the duty on it.
Coercive Acts Legislation passed by Parliament in 1774; included the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act of 1774.
Intolerable Acts American term for the Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act.
The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring and Feathering
olitical cartoons played an important role in the public controversy leading to the Amer-
ican Revolution. This print, published in London in 1774 and sold on the streets for a
few pennies, depicts the violent attack of a Boston mob on customs commissioner John
Malcolm several weeks after the "Tea Party." Malcolm, an ardent Loyalist, had been the fre-
quent target of protests. That night a mob dragged Malcolm from his house and covered
him with tar and feathers, a ritual of public humil-
iation. Hot tar produced painful blistering of the
skin, and the effort to remove it made the condi-
tion worse. The feathers made the victim into an
object of ridicule. Hauled to the Liberty Tree in
Boston Common, Malcolm was threatened with
hanging if he did not apologize and renounce
his commission. When he did he was allowed
to return home. The pro-Loyalist print
includes a number of telling details. Malcolm
is attacked by a group that includes a leather-
aproned artisan. A broadside announcing the
Stamp Act is posted upside down on the Lib-
erty Tree. A hangman's noose dangles from
a branch. The Boston Tea Party takes place
in the background. In the foreground is a tar
bucket and a pole topped by a "liberty cap,"
a symbol of freedom adopted by American
protesters (and later an icon of the French
Revolution). These details were intended to
mock the Americans. But when the print
found its way to North America it was
embraced by Patriots and became an endur-
ing American favorite. In the nineteenth cen-
tury it was reprinted as a celebration of the
righteous violence of the Revolution. ■
Philip Dawe, "The BOSTONIANS Paying the EXCISE-MAN, or TARRING & FEATHERING" (1774).
HOW COULD this image, intended to ridicule and shame the American patriots, have
been embraced and celebrated by them?
143
QUICK REVIEW
The Intolerable Acts
Boston Port Bill.
♦ Massachusetts Government Act. ♦ Administration of Justice Act. ♦ Quartering Act.
♦ Quebec Act.
Quartering Act Acts of Parliament requiring colonial legislatures to provide supplies and quarters for the troops stationed in America.
Quebec Act Law passed by Parliament in 1774 that provided an appointed government for Canada, enlarged the boundaries of Quebec, and confirmed the privileges of the Catholic Church.
Labrador Sea
Hudson
Bay
HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY (British)
R
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MAP EXPLORATION
LOUISIANA (Spanish)
0
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INDIAN COUNTRY (3-
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FLORIDA (British) EAST
FLORIDA (British)
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QUEBEC 1774
144 `4103 CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
JA Gulf of
Sr. Lawrence
ATLANTIC OCEAN
MAP 6.4 The Quebec Act of 1774 With the Quebec Act, Britain created a central- ized colonial government for Canada.
hand. The Boston Port Bill prohibited the loading or unloading of ships in any part of Boston Harbor until the town fully compensated the East India Company and the customs service for the destroyed tea. The Massachu- setts Government Act annulled the colonial charter. Town meetings, an important institution of the resistance move- ment, were prohibited from convening more than once a year except with the approval of the governor, who was placed in control of their agendas. With these acts, the British terminated the long history of self-rule by commu-
nities in the colony of Massachusetts.
Additional measures affected the other colonies and encouraged them to see themselves in league with suffer- ing Massachusetts. The Administration of Justice Act pro- tected British officials from colonial courts, thereby encouraging them to pursue the work of suppression. Those accused of committing capital crimes while putting down riots or collecting revenue were now to be sent to England for trial. The Quartering Act legalized the hous- ing of troops at public expense not only in taverns and abandoned buildings but also in occupied dwellings and private homes.
Finally, in the Quebec Act, the British authorized a permanent government for the territory taken from France during the Seven Years' War: a strictly antirepublican gov- ernment with an appointed council (see Map 6.4). To the American colonists it seemed a frightening preview of what imperial authorities had in store for them, and it confirmed the contention of the committees of correspondence that there was a British plot to destroy American liberty.
HOW DID the boundaries set by the Quebec Act of 1774 contribute to rising tensions between the colonists and
imperial authorities?
THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
It was amid this crisis that town meetings and colonial assemblies alike chose representatives for the First Continental Congress. The delegates who arrived in Philadelphia in September 1774 included the most
important leaders of the American cause. Cousins Samuel and John Adams from Massachusetts were joined by Patrick Henry and George Washington of Virginia and Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina. Many of the delegates were conservatives, including John Dickinson and Joseph Galloway of Philadel- phia, and John Jay and James Duane from New York. With the exception of Gadsden, a hothead who proposed an attack on British forces in Boston, the delegates wished to avoid war and favored a policy of economic coercion.
After one of their first debates, the delegates passed a Declaration and Resolves, in which they asserted that all the colonists sprang from a common tradition and enjoyed rights guaranteed "by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts" of their provinces. Thirteen acts of Parliament, passed since 1763, were declared in violation of these rights. Until these acts were repealed, the delegates pledged, they would impose a set of sanctions against the British. These would include not only the nonimportation and nonconsumption of British goods but also a pro- hibition on the export of colonial commodities to Britain or its other colonies.
First Continental Congress Meeting
of delegates from most of the colonies held in 1774 in response to the Coercive Acts.
QUICK REVIEW
Congressional Response to the Intolerable Acts
• All agreed that Acts were unconstitutional.
• A minority prepared to go to war with Britain.
• Most delegates thought of the interests of their own colony first.
5-7 Joseph Warren, Account of the Battle of Lexington (1775)
5-3 William Legge, The Crisis Comes to a Head (1775)
K
BY THE
I N G,
PROCLAMATION, For Suppreffing Rebellion and Sedition.
GEORGE. R. H ERE A S many of Our Sublet/s in diven Parts of Our Colo-
nies and Plantations in litterh Algeria, milled by dangerous and ill-defigning Men, and forgetting the Allegiance which they owe to the Power that has protetted Ind fultainal them, after various diforderly Ads commuted in Difturbance of the Public
Peace, to the Obftration of lawful Commerce. and to the Op- pretlion of Our loyal Solicits carrying on the fame, have at length proceeded to an open and avowed Rebellion, by array-
ing themfelves in hal& Manner to withlkand the Execution of the Law, and
trattoroufly preparing, ordering, and levying War apintl Us.
AND whereas there is Beaton to apprehend that fitch Rebellion bath been much
promoted and encouraged by the traitorous Correlpondence. Conned.. and Comfort
of discs wicked and del-ciente Perfons within this Realm To the End therefore,
that none of Our SubjeOs may need or violate their Doty thruagh Ignorance
thereof, Of through any Doubt of the Protettion which the Law will afliard to
their Loyalty and Zeal; We have thought fit, by end wish the Advice of Our
Privy Conned, to iliac this One Royal Proclamation, hereby declaring that not only
all Our Officers, Civil and Military, are obliged to event their smolt Bode,. routs
Ignoring the Olive Branch Petition from the Continental Congress, on
August 23, 1775, King George III issued this Proclamation, declar-
ing that the colonies stood in open rebellion to his authority and
were subject to severe penalty, as was any British subject who
failed to report the knowledge of rebellion or conspiracy. This docu- ment literally transformed loyal subjects into traitorous rebels.
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6 la 145 To enforce these sanctions, the Continental Congress urged that "a com-
mittee be chosen in every county, city, and town, by those who are qualified to
vote for representatives in the legislature, whose business it shall be attentively
to observe the conduct of all persons." Known as the committees of observation
and safety, these groups took over the functions of local government through-
out the colonies. By dissolving the colonial legislatures, royal governors had
unwittingly aided the work of these committees. Throughout most of the
colonies the committees formed a bridge between the old colonial administra-
tions and the revolutionary governments organized over the next few years.
Committees began to link localities together in the cause of a wider American
community.
LEXINGTON AND CONCORD
On September 1, 1774, General Thomas Gage sent troops to seize stores of
gunpowder and arms from several storehouses on the outskirts of Boston. In
response, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, calling itself the Provin-
cial Congress, created a committee of safety empowered to call up the militia.
On October 15 the committee authorized the creation of special units, to be
known as "minutemen," who stood ready to be called at a moment's notice.
The armed militia of the towns and communities surrounding Boston faced
the British army, quartered in the city. The stalemate contin-
ued throughout the fall and winter.
British monarch George III believed the time for war had
come. "The New England Governments are in a State of Rebel-
lion," he wrote privately, "blows must decide whether they are to
be subject to this Country or independent." In Virginia, at almost
the same moment, Patrick Henry predicted that hostilities soon
would begin. Three weeks later, on April 14,1775, General Gage
received instructions to immediately strike against the Massachu-
setts militia. On the evening of April 18, Gage ordered 700 troops to
Concord, some miles outside Boston, to take possession of
the armory there. Learning of the operation, the Boston
committee dispatched two men, Paul Revere and William
Dawes, to alert the militia of the countryside. By the time the
British forces had reached Lexington, midway to their desti-
nation, some seventy armed minutemen had assembled on
the green in the center of town, but they were disorganized
and confused. In the fact of what appeared overwhelming
force, the Americans began to withdraw with their arms. No
order to fire was given, but suddenly shots rang out. Eight
Americans were killed, ten wounded.
The British marched on to Concord where they burned
a small quantity of supplies and cut down a liberty pole. Mean-
while, news of the skirmish at Lexington had spread through-
out the country, and the militia companies from communities
from miles around converged on the town. At Concord bridge
they encountered the enemy and opened fire. Three soldiers
were killed, the first British casualties. Seeing that their men
were greatly outnumbered by Massachusetts militia, British
officers immediately ordered a return to Boston, but at many
points along the way they were subjected to withering fire
British Retr
Concord fl Lexington-r-
British Advance '
Cambridge
MASSACHUSETTS
Battle of Bunker Hill Charlestown
-3••• • Massachusetts
Boston Bay
-4— American troop movement
-4— British troop movement
10 mi
0 10 km
MAP 6.5 The First Engagements of the Revolution The first military engagements
of the American Revolution took place in the spring of 1775 in the
countryside surrounding Boston.
1 46
CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750- 1776
-=1111111 WHO MADE up the second
Continental Congress and why was
it formed?
myhistiiylab Review Summary
(see Map 6.5). The engagement forecast what would be a central problem for the British: they would be forced to fight an armed population defending their
own communities against outsiders.
DECIDING FOR INDEPENDENCE
6 6 e send you momentous intelligence," read the letter reporting the violence received by the committee of correspondence in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 8, 1775. Throughout the
colonies community militia companies mobilized for war. At Boston, thousands of mili-
tiamen besieged the city, leaving the British no escape but by sea. The siege would last for nearly a year. Meanwhile, delegates from twelve colonies converged again on
Philadelphia.
THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
The Second Continental Congress, which opened on May 10, 1775, included rep- resentatives from twelve of the British colonies on the mainland of North Amer- ica. Few conservatives or Loyalists were among them. Georgia, unrepresented at the First Continental Congress, remained absent at the opening of the Second. But in 1775 the political balance in Georgia shifted in favor of the radicals, and by the end of the summer the colony had delegates in Philadelphia.
On May 15 the representatives resolved to put the colonies in a state of defense but were divided on how best to do it. They lacked the power and the funds to raise and supply an army. John Adams made the winning proposal that they sim- ply designate as a Continental Army the militia forces besieging Boston. In order to emphasize their national aspirations, they decided to select a man from the South to command these New England forces. On June 15 Jefferson and Adams nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief, and he was elected by acclaim. Washington served without salary. On June 22, in a highly significant move, the Congress voted to finance the army with an issue of $2 million in bills of credit, backed by the good faith of the "Confederated Colonies." Thus began the long and complicated process of financing the Revolution.
During the early summer of 1775 the Congress began to move cautiously toward independence. Few would admit, even to themselves, that this was their goal.
Before the Second Continental Congress adjourned at the beginning of August, the delegates appointed commission- ers to negotiate with the Indian nations in an attempt to keep them out of the conflict.
CANADA AND THE SPANISH BORDERLANDS
How did the rest of North America react to the coming con- flict? The Continental Congress made contact with leaders of all the British colonies. In one of their first acts, delegates called on "the oppressed inhabitants of Canada" to join in the struggle for "common liberty." When the Canadians failed to respond positively and immediately, the Congress reversed itself and voted to authorize a military expedition against Quebec to eliminate any possibility of a British invasion from that quarter, thus killing any chance of the Canadians join- ing the anti-British cause. This set a course toward the devel- opment of the separate nations of the United States and Canada.
QUICK REVIEW
The Second Continental Congress
• Opened on May 10, 1775.
• May 15: Congress resolved to put the colonies in a state of defense.
• June 15: George Washington nominated to be commander- in-chief.
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6
1 47
British soldiers fire upon Massachusetts militia at Lexington, the first of four hand-colored engravings included in Amos Doolittle's View of the Battle of Lexington and Concord (1775). It is the only contemporary pictorial record of the
events of April 19, 1775, from an America point of view. Doolittle, a Connecticut silversmith, traveled to the site of the conflict in the weeks after-
ward, and his engravings are based on
first-hand observation. Important build-
ings, individuals, or groups of people are keyed to a legend that explains what is happening. Doolittle intended his prints to be informative in the same sense as a
photograph in a modern newspaper.
In the British island colonies, there was at first considerable sympathy for the American struggle. The island colonies, however, would remain aloof from the imperial crisis, largely because the colonists there were dependent on a British military presence to guard against slave revolts. Things at first seemed more promis- ing in Nova Scotia (not then a part of Canada), where many New Englanders had relocated after the expulsion of the Acadians. The British naval stronghold at Hal- ifax, however, secured the province for the empire. Large contingents of British troops also kept Florida (which Britain had divided into two colonies, East and West Florida) solidly in the empire.
In Cuba, some 3,000 exiled Spanish Floridians, who had fled there in 1763 rather than live under British rule, now clamored for Spain to take advantage of the situation and retake their homeland. Many of them were active supporters of American independence.
In 1775 Spain publicly declared itself neutral but secretly searched for an opportunity to support the Americans. One presented itself in the late spring of 1776 when a contingent of Americans arrived in Spanish New Orleans via the Mis- sissippi River bearing a proposal from patriot forces in Virginia. Would the Span- ish be willing to quietly sell guns, ammunition, and other provisions to the Americans in New Orleans and allow them to be shipped by way of the Missis- sippi and Ohio Rivers? If the Spanish could be cooperative, the Americans might agree to a Spanish "protectorate" of the Floridas. The Spanish government even- tually approved the plan, turning Havana and New Orleans into important sup- ply centers for the Americans.
FIGHTING IN THE NORTH AND SOUTH
Violent conflict took place between British forces and American rebels in both the northern and southern colonies in 1775 and early 1776. On the evening of May 10, 1775, a small force of armed New Englanders jointly commanded by Ethan Allen of Vermont and Benedict Arnold of Connecticut surprised the
148
CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
British garrison at Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. With great effort, the Americans hauled the fort's cannon overland to be used in the siege of Boston.
At Boston, the British reinforced Gage's forces, and by the middle of June had approximately 6,500 soldiers in the city. They were beseiged by more than 10,000 New England militia. Fearing a move by Gage to occupy the heights south of town, the Americans made a countermove, occupying the Charlestown peninsula on the north. Gage decided on a frontal assault to dislodge them. In bloody fighting at Breed's and Bunker Hill, the British overran the Americans, killing 140 men, but not before suffering over a thousand casualties of their own, including 226 dead. The fierce patriotic reaction in England to this enor- mous loss ended any possibility of a last-minute reconciliation. In August 1775 King George issued a royal proclamation declaring the colonists in "open and avowed rebellion."
In June Congress assembled an expeditionary force against Canada. One thou- sand Americans moved north up the Hudson River corridor, and in November Gen- eral Richard Montgomery forced the capitulation of Montreal. In the meantime Colonel Benedict Arnold set out from Massachusetts with another American army and, after a torturous march through the forests and mountains of Maine, joined Montgomery outside the walls of Quebec. But the American assault failed to take the city. Although Arnold held his position, the American siege was broken the following spring by British reinforcements. By the summer of 1776 the Americans had been forced back from Canada.
Elsewhere there were successes. In the South local militia rose against the Loy- alist forces of Virginia's Governor Dunmore, who alienated the planter class by promising freedom to any slave who would fight with the British. After Dunmore was decisively defeated, he retreated to British naval vessels and shelled the city of Nor- folk, nearly obliterating it. The next month the North Carolina rebel militia crushed a Loyalist force at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge near Wilmington, ending British plans for an invasion there. The British elected to attack Charleston, but an American force turned back the assault. It would be more than two years before the British would try to invade the South again. At Boston, Washington installed the captured British artillery on the heights south of town, placing the city and har- bor within cannon range. The British had little choice but to evacuate. In March 1776 they sailed out of Boston Harbor heading northeast to Halifax, accompanied by at least a thousand American Loyalists.
No TURNING BACK Hopes of reconciliation died with the mounting casualties. The Second Conti- nental Congress, which was rapidly assuming the role of a general government for all the colonies (increasingly called states), reconvened in Philadelphia in September 1775, where the delegates received the royal proclamation that they were in open rebellion. Although the Congress continued to disclaim any inten- tion of denying the sovereignty of the king, it now moved to organize an Amer- ican navy. It declared British vessels open to capture and authorized privateering. The Congress took further steps toward independence when it authorized con- tacts with foreign powers through its agents in Europe. In the spring of 1776 France joined Spain in approving the shipping of supplies to the rebellious provinces. The Continental Congress then declared colonial ports open to the
trade of all nations but Britain. But the emotional ties to Great Britain proved difficult to break. Help
arrived in January 1776 in the form of Common Sense written by Thomas Paine,
5-6 Petition of "A Grate Number of Blackes of the Province" to Governor Thomas Gage and the Members of the Massachusetts General Court (1774)
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6 149
The Connecticut artist John Trumbull painted The Battle of Bunker Hill in 1785, the first of a series that earned him the informal title of "the Painter of the Revolution." Trumbull was careful to research the details of his paintings but com-
posed them in the grand style of historical romance. In the early nineteenth century, he repainted this work and three other Revolutionary scenes for the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, DC.
a radical Englishman recently arrived in Philadelphia. For years Americans had defended their actions by wrapping themselves in the mantle of British tradi- tion. But Paine argued that the British system rested on "the base remains of two ancient tyrannies," aristocracy and monarchy, neither of which was appro- priate for America. Common Sense was the single most important piece of writ- ing during the Revolutionary era. It reshaped popular thinking and put independence squarely on the agenda.
In April, the North Carolina convention, operating as the revolutionary substitute for the old colonial assembly, became the first to empower its dele- gates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence. News that the British were recruiting a force of German mercenaries to use against the Amer- icans provided an additional push toward what now began to seem inevitable. In May the Congress voted to recommend that the individual states move as quickly as possible toward the adoption of state constitutions. In the preamble to this statement John Adams wrote that "the exercise of every kind of author-
ity under the said crown should be totally suppressed." This sent a strong sig- nal that the delegates were on the verge of approving a momentous declaration.
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia offered the first motion for inde-
pendence. After some debate, a vote was postponed until July, but a committee composed of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sher- man of Connecticut, and Robert Livingston of New York was asked to prepare
fa 5-8 Thomas Jefferson, "Original Rough Draught" of the Declaration of Independence
(1776)
ei 5-11 The Declaration of Independence (1776)
The Manner in Which the American Colonies
INDEPENDENT of the King of ENGLAND, a
Declared Themselves
1783 English print.
Understanding that the coming struggle would require the steady
support of ordinary people, in the Declaration of Independence, the
upper-class men of the Continental Congress asserted the right of
popular revolution and the great principle of human equality.
5-9 Abigail Adams and John Adams, Letters on the Rights of Women in an Independent Republic (1776)
There was very little debate in the Continental Congress about this extraordinary statement. The unanimity was the result of
the widespread influence of Enlightenment and republican thought. Notably, there was no recourse to biblical authority. The delegates, mostly men of wealth and position, realized that the coming struggle for independence would re- quire the steady support of ordinary people, and thus they asserted this great principle of equality and the right of revolution. The idea of equality would in- spire the poor as well as the wealthy, women as well as men, blacks as well as whites.
By voting for independence, the delegates were not only proclaiming a belief in their newly conceived national community, but they were also com- mitting treason against their king and empire. They would be condemned as traitors, hunted as criminals, and might stand on the scaffold in payment for their sentiments. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted without dissent.
a draft declaration of American independence. The commit- tee assigned the writing to Jefferson.
The intervening time allowed the delegates to debate and receive instructions from their state conventions. By the
end of the month all the states but New York had authorized a vote for independence. When the question came up for debate again on July 1, a large majority supported indepen- dence. The final vote, taken on July 2, was twelve in favor of independence, none against, with New York abstaining. The delegates then turned to the declaration itself and made a number of changes in Jefferson's draft, striking out, for exam- ple, a long passage condemning slavery. In this and a number of other ways the final version was more cautious than the draft, but it was still a stirring document.
The central section of the Declaration reiterated the "long train of abuses and usurpations" on the part of George III that had led the Americans to their drastic course. But it
was the first section that expressed the highest ideals of the delegates:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
150 CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750 - 1776
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6 151
CHRONOLOGY
1713 France cedes Acadia to Britain
1745
1749
New Englanders capture Louisbourg
French send an expeditionary force down the Ohio River
1753 French begin building forts from Lake Erie to the Ohio
1754 Albany Conference
1755 British General Edward Braddock defeated by a combined force of French and Indians
Britain expels Acadians from Nova Scotia
1756 Seven Years' War begins in Europe
1757 William Pitt becomes prime minister
1758 Louisbourg captured by the British for the second time
1759 British capture Quebec
1763 Treaty of Paris
Pontiac's uprising
Proclamation of 1763 creates "Indian Country"
Paxton Boys massacre
1764 Sugar Act
1765 Stamp Act and Stamp Act Congress
1766 Declaratory Act
1767 Townshend Revenue Acts
1768 Treaties of Hard Labor and Fort Stanwix
1770 Boston Massacre
1772 First Committee of Correspondence organized in Boston
1773 Tea Act
Boston Tea Party
1774 Intolerable Acts
First Continental Congress
Dunmore's War
1775 Fighting begins at Lexington and Concord
Second Continental Congress
1776 Americans invade Canada
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Declaration of Independence
CONCLUSION
G reat Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War as the dominant power in North America. Yet despite its attempts at strict regulation and determination of the course of events in its colonies, it faced con- sistent resistance. The British underestimated the political consensus that ex-
isted among the colonists about the importance of republican government.
They also underestimated the ability of the colonists to inform one another,
to work together, to build the bonds of national community cutting across
boundaries of ethnicity, region, and economic condition. Through newspa-
pers, pamphlets, committees of correspondence, community organizations,
and group protest, the colonists discovered the concerns they shared, and in
so doing fostered a new American identity. Without that identity it would have
been difficult for them to consent to the treasonous act of declaring indepen-
dence, especially when the independence they sought was from an interna-
tional power that dominated much of the globe.
152 CHAPTER 6 FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776
REVIEW QUESTIONS
1. How did overwhelming British success in the Seven Years' War lead to an
imperial crisis in British North America?
2. Outline the changes in British policy toward the colonies from 1750 to
1776.
3. Trace the developing sense of an American national community over this
same period.
4. What were the principal events leading to the beginning of armed conflict
at Lexington and Concord?
5. How were the ideals of American republicanism expressed in the
Declaration of Independence?
myhistd ylab Flashcard Review
KEY TERMS Albany Conference (p. 129)
Boston Massacre (p. 141)
Boston Tea Party (p. 142)
Coercive Acts (p. 142)
Declaratory Act (p. 138)
First Continental Congress (p. 145)
French and Indian War (p. 130)
Intolerable Acts (p. 142)
Nonimportation movement (p. 138)
Plan of Union (p. 129)
Quartering Act (p. 144)
Quebec Act (p. 144)
Republicanism (p. 136)
Royal Proclamation of 1763 (p. 134)
Sons of Liberty (p. 138)
Stamp Act (p. 137)
Sugar Act (p. 136)
Tea Act (p. 142)
Townshend Revenue Acts (p. 139)
Treaty of Paris (p. 132)
Virtual representation (p. 137)
Whigs (p. 137)
RECOMMENDED READING Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, rev. ed. (1991). An argument that the essential first act of na-
tional consciousness is the effort to create a community that encompasses
more than just local individuals and groups.
Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in
British North America, 1754-1766 (2000). A new and powerful history of the
war, arguing that it created a "hollow British empire."
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967). This clas-
sic argument emphasizes the role of ideas in the advent of the Revolution.
Includes an analysis of American views of the imperial crisis.
Gregory Evans Dowd, War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the
British Empire (2002). Artfully crafted and gracefully written, this book re-
stores Pontiac as a preeminent figure in the uprisings that bore his name.
Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976). Combines a biography
of Paine with a community study of the Revolution in Philadelphia and
Pennsylvania.
m hist lab yWhere its a good time to connect rto the past!
FROM EMPIRE TO INDEPENDENCE, 1750-1776 CHAPTER 6
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997). The deep background of this foundation of American democracy.
Richard L. Merritt, Symbols of American Community, 1735-1775 (1966). A study of colonial newspapers that provides evidence for a rising sense of national community. The French and Indian War emerges as the key period for the growth of nationalist sentiment.
Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (2005). A noted social historian focuses on the revolution's lesser-known freedom fighters.
Ray Raphael, First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord (2002). A vivid account of the turbulent days in Massachusetts from the time the province received word of the Massachusetts Government Act in August 1774 until the fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord the following April.
153
For study resources for this chapter, go to www.myhistorylab.com and choose Out of Many, Teaching and Learning Classroom Edition. You will find a wealth of study and review material for this chapter, including pretests and posttests, customized study plan, key-term review
flash cards, interactive map and document activities, and documents for analysis.
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