PART TWO GLOBAL ESSAY - University of Phoenix

Davidson−Gienapp−Heyrman−Lytle−Stoff: Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic, Fourth Edition

II. Global Essay: The Creation of a New Republic

Introduction © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

119

PART TWO

The Creation of aNew Republic

GLOBAL ESSAY

s Benjamin Franklin had observed in 1751, the population of BritishNorth America was doubling approximately every 25 years. This aston-

ishing rate was quite possibly the fastest in the world at the time. Even so, thesurge was merely one part of a more general global rise in population during thesecond half of the eighteenth century. In sheer numbers China led the way. Itspopulation of 150 million in 1700 had doubled to more than 313 million by theend of the century. Europe’s total rose from about 118 million in 1700 to about187 million a century later, the greatest growth coming on its eastern and westernflanks, in Great Britain and Russia. African and Indian populations seem to haveincreased as well.

Climate may have been one reason for the worldwide rise. In Europe, warmerand drier seasons produced generally better harvests. Furthermore, health and nu-trition improved globally with the spread of Native American crops. Irish farmersdiscovered that a single acre planted with the lowly American potato could supportan entire family. The tomato added crucial vitamins to the Mediterranean diet, whilemaize provided more calories per acre than any European or African grain. In Chinathe American sweet potato thrived in hilly regions where rice would not grow.

Not only plants but diseases were carried back and forth by European ships.As we have seen, contact between previously isolated peoples produced extrememortality from epidemics. But after more than two centuries of sustained contact,Indians developed increased biological resistance to European and Africanillnesses. The frequent circulation of diseases worldwide led to a more stableenvironment in which populations began to swell.



Introduction © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

THE CREATION OF A NEW REPUBLIC � 120

During the years in which Europeans explored the Atlantic frontiers of Northand South America, Slavic and Romanian pioneers were moving eastward into theEurasian steppes. There they turned sparsely settled pastoral lands into feudalmanors and farms. In northern forests unsuitable for farming, Russian fur tradersadvanced eastward across Siberia until they reached the Pacific in the 1630s. Bythe 1780s Russian pioneers had pushed into Alaska and down the Pacific Americancoast, bumping up against western Europeans who were harvesting furs fromCanada’s forests and streams.

Both flanks of this European thrust often depended on forced labor, especiallyin agricultural settings. As we have seen, the institution of slavery in NorthAmerica became increasingly restrictive over the course of the seventeenth cen-tury. Similarly, the plight of serfs worsened from 1500 to 1650 as the demand forlabor increased in eastern Europe. In 1574 Polish nobles received the right topunish their serfs entirely as they pleased—including by execution, if they chose.By 1603, Russian peasants were routinely sold along with the land they worked.

The eighteenth-century Enlightenment penetrated eastern Europe, too, as ithad the urban centers of North America. Russia’s Peter the Great attempted toput many Enlightenment ideas to use when he was czar (1689–1725). During theyears Catherine the Great ruled (1762–1796), she imported Western architects,sculptors, and musicians to grace her court. But Catherine’s limits to tolerationwere made brutally clear in 1773. The same year that a group of rowdy Americanswere dumping tea into Boston harbor, a Cossack soldier named Emelian Pugachevlaunched a peasant rebellion, seeking to abolish serfdom and taxes. Catherine ruth-lessly executed Pugachev. In 1775 she granted Russian nobles even more absolutecontrol over their serfs.

The Americans who rebelled more successfully in 1775 did so not out of aserf’s desperation—quite the opposite. With the significant exception of enslavedAfrican Americans, the distance between the poorest and richest colonials wassmaller than anywhere in Europe. And the British tradition of representative gov-ernment ensured a broader involvement of citizens in governing themselves. Thusan American Revolution was hardly inevitable in 1776.

As we shall see, the timing of the colonists’ break with Great Britain was theresult of specific decisions made on both sides of the Atlantic. Given the failureof the Albany Plan of Union in 1754, it is perhaps surprising that the war forindependence ended in the creation of a new and remarkably stable Americanrepublic. But that is exactly what happened. American colonials, who in 1763 likedbeing English and gloried in the British empire, gradually came to think of them-selves as independent Americans, subject neither to a British monarch nor toParliament.



5. Toward The War For American Independence (1754˘1776)

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

CHAPTER 5

121

mericans liked being English. They had liked being English from thebeginning of colonial settlement, but they liked it more than ever for

a few years after 1759. One wonderful day during those years—September 16,1762—Bostonians turned out to celebrate belonging to the British empire. Sol-diers mustered on the Common;bells pealed from the steeples oflocal churches; the charge of gunsfired from the battery resoundedthrough towns; strains of orchestramusic from an outdoor concertfloated through the city’s crowdedstreets and narrow alleys. Whendarkness fell and bonfires illumi-nated the city, Bostonians con-sumed “a vast quantity of liquor,”drinking “loyal healths” to theiryoung king, George III, and incelebration of Britain’s victory inthe Seven Years’ War.

When the great news ofthat triumph reached the NorthAmerican mainland in the fall of1762, similar celebrations brokeout all over the colonies. But theparty in America had begun longbefore, with a string of British vic-tories in French Canada in the glorious year of 1759. It continued through 1760when all of Canada fell to Anglo-American forces and George III became En-gland’s new king. In February of 1763, when the Treaty of Paris formally endedthe war, Britain became the largest and most powerful empire in the Westernworld. Americans were among His Majesty’s proudest subjects.

Thirteen years after the celebration of 1762, Boston was a different place.Pride in belonging to the empire had shriveled to shrill charges that England con-spired to enslave its colonies. Massachusetts led the way, drawing other coloniesdeep into resistance. Bostonians initiated many of the petitions and resolves

Toward the Warfor American

Independence1754–1776

Preview Parliament passed the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, andother measures of the early 1760s in hopes of binding theAmerican colonies more closely to the empire. Instead, once-loyal Americans became convinced that their constitutionalrights were being violated: the right to consent to taxes, theright to a trial by jury, and the freedom from standing armies.With the passage of the harsh Coercive Acts of 1774, a breakwith Britain was not long in coming.





CHAPTER 5 � TOWARD THE WAR FOR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE � 122

against British authority. When words did not work, they ignited riots, harassedBritish officials, baited British troops, and destroyed British property. In 1775,they were laying plans for rebellion against the British empire.

An ironic fate overtook that generation of Americans who loved being English,boasted of their rights as Britons, and celebrated their membership in the all-conquering empire. That very pride drove colonials into rebellion, for the menwho ran the British empire after 1763 would not allow Americans to be English.

Even before the Seven Years’ War, some colonials saw that divergingpaths of social and political development made them different fromthe English. After the Seven Years’ War, events demonstrated to even

more colonials that they were not considered the political equals of the Englishwho lived in England. As their disillusionment with the empire deepened, BritishNorth Americans from Massachusetts to Georgia slowly discovered a new identityas Americans and declared their independence from being English.

THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR

The Seven Years’ War, which actually lasted nine years, pitted Britain and its ally,Prussia, against France, in league with Austria and Spain. The battle raged from1754 until 1763, ranging over the continent of Europe, the coast of West Africa,India, the Philippines, the Caribbean, and North America.

The Years of Defeat

The war started when the contest over the Ohio River valley among the English,the French, and the Indians led to George Washington’s surrender at Fort Ne-cessity in 1754 (page 115). That episode stiffened Britain’s resolve to assert its

own claims to the Ohio country. In the summer of 1755, as two Britishregiments led by Major General Edward Braddock approached the

French outpost at Fort Duquesne on the forks of the Ohio, they were ambushedand cut to pieces by a party of French and Indians. Washington led the mortallywounded Braddock and the remnants of his army in a retreat. During the sum-mer of Braddock’s defeat, New Englanders fared somewhat better against Frenchforces in Nova Scotia and deported 6000 farmers from that region. The Acadians,as they were known, had their land confiscated, and they were dispersed through-out the colonies.

There followed two disastrous years for Britain and its allies. When Englandand France formally declared war in May 1756, John Campbell, the Earl ofLoudoun, took command of the North American theater. American soldiers andcolonial assemblies alike hated Lord Loudoun. They balked at his efforts to takecommand over colonial troops and dragged their heels at his demands for menand supplies. Meanwhile, the French strengthened their position in Canada by

A process ofdisillusionment

Braddock’s defeat





THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR � 123

appointing a new commanding general, Louis Joseph, the marquis de Montcalm.Montcalm drove southward, capturing key British forts and threatening thesecurity of both New York and New England. While he prospered in America,the British were also taking a beating from the French in Europe and in India.

During the years when the French seemed unstoppable, the British looked forhelp from the strongest tribes of the interior—the Iroquois in the North, the Creek,Choctaw, and Cherokee in the South. Instead, Benjamin Franklin’s worst fears wererealized: most tribes adopted neutrality or joined the French. As France seemed cer-tain to carry the continent, Indian attacks on English frontier settlements increased.

The Years of Victory

As British fortunes worsened throughout 1756 and 1757, William Pitt resumedhis political career and took personal control over the war. “I know that I cansave this country and that no one else can,” he announced. Leavingthe fighting in Europe to the Prussians, Pitt focused the full strengthof the British military on beating the French in America. Pitt alsorenewed colonial support for the war effort by replacing Lord Loudoun and giv-ing his successor far more limited authority over colonial troops. And Pitt sent

William Pitt turnsthe tide

M A I N E(MASS.)

N . H .

N E W Y O R K M A S S .

C O N N .R . I .

P E N N S Y L V A N I A

N . J .

M A R Y L A N D

D E L A W A R EV I R G I N I A

A T L A N T I CO C E A N

Lake Erie

Lake Ontario

LakeChamplain

Ohi

o R.

N E W F R A N C E

N O V AS C O T I A

Boston

PortRoyal

AlbanyFt. Niagara

Ft. Oswego

New York

Philadelphia

Fort Frontenaccaptured by the British

August 28, 1758

British troopscapture Fort

Carillon(Ticonderoga)on July 8, 1758

French surrender Montrealon Sept. 8, 1760

French surrenderLouisbourg

on July 26, 1758British forces led by Wolfecapture Quebecon Sept. 18, 1759

British deport 6000 Acadianfarmers and disperse themamong the colonies,summer of 1755

Braddock defeated by Frenchand Indian troops at FortDuquesne on July 9, 1755

Washington surrendersat Fort Necessityon July 4, 1754

British surrenderFort William Henryon August 9, 1757

Colonial troops defeatedat Crown Pointfall of 1755

A L G O N Q U I N

I R O Q U O I S

British victory

French victory

British advance

French advance

THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR IN AMERICA





requests for men and money directly to each colonial assembly—accompanied bypromises of reimbursement in gold and silver.

With Pitt now in control, the tide of battle turned. In July of 1758, the Britishgained control of the St. Lawrence River when the French fortress at Louisbourgfell before the combined force of the Royal Navy and British and colonial troops.In August, a force of New Englanders strangled France’s frontier defenses by cap-turing Fort Frontenac, thereby isolating French forts lining the Great Lakes andthe Ohio valley. The Indians, seeing the French routed from the interior, switchedtheir allegiance to the English.

The British succeeded even more brilliantly in 1759. In Canada, BrigadierGeneral James Wolfe gambled on a daring stratagem and won Quebec from

Montcalm. Under the cover of darkness, naval squadrons landedWolfe’s men beneath the city’s steep bluffs, where they scaled theheights to a plateau known as the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm

matched Wolfe’s recklessness and offered battle. Five days later both Wolfe andMontcalm lay dead, along with 1400 French soldiers and 600 British andAmerican troops. Quebec had fallen to the British. A year later the Frenchsurrender of Montreal ended the fighting in North America.

The Treaty of Paris, signed in February 1763, ended the French presence onthe continent of North America. The terms confirmed British title to all Frenchterritory east of the Mississippi as well as to Spanish Florida. (Spain had made themistake of entering the war, against Britain, in 1762.) France ceded to its ally Spainall of its land lying west of the Mississippi and the port of New Orleans.

Postwar Expectations

Britain’s victory gave rise to great expectations among Americans. The end of thewar, they were sure, meant the end of high taxes. The terms of the peace, they were

confident, meant the opening of the Ohio valley’s fertile land. The pros-perity of the war years alone made for a mood of optimism. Britishmilitary spending and William Pitt’s subsidies had made money for

farmers, merchants, artisans, and anyone else who had anything to do with sup-plying the army or navy. Colonials also took pride in their contributions of troopsand money to the winning of the war. In view of that support, Americans expectedto be accorded more consideration within the British empire. Now, as one anony-mous pamphleteer put it, Americans would “not be thought presumptuous, if theyconsider[ed] themselves upon an equal footing” with English in the parent country.

But if Americans took pride in being English, most imperial officials inAmerica thought that they had done a poor job of showing it. British statesmen

complained that colony assemblies had been tightfisted when it cameto supplying the army. British commanders charged that colonial

troops had been lily-livered when it came to fighting the French. Such chargeswere unjust, but they stuck in the minds of many Britons, who concluded thatthe Americans were selfish and self-interested, unconcerned with the welfare of


Wolfe and Montcalmbattle for Quebec

Colonial pride andoptimism

English resentments





THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR � 125

EUROPEAN CLAIMS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1750 AND 1763 The British victory in the Seven Years’ War secured their title to a large portion of the present-day

United States and Canada.

QU

EB

EC

T H I R T E E NC O L O N I E S

F L O R I D A

W E S T I N D I E S

N O V AS C O T I A

UN

EX

P L O R E D

L O UI S I A

NA

NE

W

S P A I N

Greenland

Newfoundland

Bahamas

CubaHispaniola

Gulf of Mexico


P A C I F I CO C E A N Great Lakes

Caribbean Sea

Montreal

Mis

siss

ipp i

R. Ohio

R.

M issouri R.

1763

1750

British

French

Spanish

Russian

Dutch

Disputed

Proclamation Line of 1763





the empire as a whole. Britain had accumulated a huge national debt that wouldsaddle the nation with high taxes for years to come. To make matters worse, someBritons suspected that, with the French removed from North America, thecolonies would move toward independence.

Americans in 1763 were not, in truth, revolutionaries in the making. They wereloyal British subjects in the flush of postwar patriotism. Americans in 1763, deeplydivided among themselves, were not even “Americans.” But most postwar Englishcolonials did expect to enjoy a more equal status in the empire. And most Britonshad no inclination to accord them that equality. The differing expectations of thecolonies’ place in the empire poised the postwar generation for crisis.

THE IMPERIAL CRISIS

It was common sense. Great Britain had waged a costly war to secure its empire inAmerica; now it needed to consolidate those gains. The empire’s North Americanterritory needed to be protected, its administration tightened, and its colonies madeas profitable as possible to the parent nation. In other words, the empire needed tobe centralized. That conclusion dictated Britain’s decision to leave a standing armyof several thousand troops in America after the Seven Years’ War. The British armywould prevent France from trying to regain its lost territory.

New Troubles on the Frontier

Keeping troops in North America made sense because of the Indians, too. Withthe French gone, English traders, speculators, and settlers would swarm into theWest. Without the French as trading partners, Indian tribes were in a weakerposition to deal with the British. No longer could they count on a steady supplyof arms and ammunition from European rivals competing for their furs. TheIndians were edgy, expecting the worst, and the British were worried.

Events bore out British fears. In the early 1760s a Lenni Lenape prophet,Neolin, began advising the tribes to return to their native ways and resist the

spread of white settlement. Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, embracedNeolin’s message of renaissance and rebellion. Other interior tribes

joined Pontiac’s offensive, and during the summer of 1763 they captured all theBritish outposts west of Pittsburgh. British troops and American militia finallysmothered Pontiac’s Rebellion.

British administrators then discovered another use for troops in America—toenforce the newly issued Proclamation of 1763. That order, issued by England’s

Board of Trade, prohibited white settlement past the crest of theAppalachian Mountains. Restricting westward movement might ease

Indian fears, the British hoped, and so stave off future conflicts. It might also keepthe colonials confined to the seaboard, where they were more easily subject tothe control of the empire.


Pontiac’s Rebellion

Proclamation of 1763





THE IMPERIAL CRISIS � 127

THE APPALACHIAN FRONTIER, 1750–1775 Increasingly, land-hungry colonials spilled into theWest through the Cumberland Gap, a notch in the chain of mountains stretching the length of

the North American interior. A route through the gap was scouted in 1750 by Dr. Thomas Walkerand a party of Virginians on behalf of a company of land speculators. In 1763, Indians led by

Pontiac seized eight British forts before troops under Colonel Henry Bouquet stopped theoffensive. In 1775 Daniel Boone led the first large party of pioneers through the gap to

Boonesborough, in present-day Kentucky.

N E WY O R K

U P P E R C A N A D A


P E N N S Y L V A N I A

M A R Y L A N D

V I R G I N I A

N O R T H C A R O L I N A

S O U T HC A R O L I N A

G E O R G I A

L O U I S I A N ACUMBERLAND

GAP

ALLE

GH

EN

Y M

TS .

BLUE RID

GE

MTS.

NA

TCH

EZTRACE

A P P A L A C HI A

N

MO

UN

TA

IN

S

BOONE’S T R A IL

CUMBERLAND

M T S .

WILD

ERN

ESS

R O ADP

rocl

amat

ion

Line

of1

763

LakeMichigan

Lake Erie

MississippiRiver

Falls ofthe Ohio

Ft. St. Joseph

Ft. Miami

Ft. Ouiatanon

Ft. Sandusky

Ft. Presqu’Isle

Ft. Le Boeuf

KuskuskiUpperSandusky

Wakatomica

Ft. Pitt(Pittsburgh)

Ft. Venango(Ft. Machault)

Ft. Detroit

Paxton

Lancaster

Annapolis

Louisville

Harrod’sTown

Boonesborough

Walker’sCabin

BlockHouse

Big Lick (Roanoke)

Williamsburg

Hillsboro

Black’s Fort(Wolf Hills)French Lick

(Nashville)

Chillicothe

Fort Chiswell

Echota

Nickajack

Keowee

0 100 Miles

100 Kilometers

50

500

) (

Tennessee River

Baltimore

P O T A W A T O M I

K I C K A P O O

O T T A W A

W Y A N D O T

H U R O NS E N E C A

D E L A W A R E

M I A M I

P I A N K E S H A W

I L L I N O I SS H A W N E E

O V E R H I L LC H E R O K E E

C H I C K A S A WC H E R O K E E

L O W E RC H E R O K E E

British settlement

British fort

Destroyed in Pontiac'sRebellion, 1763

Indian village

Thomas Walkerexploration, 1750

Daniel Booneexploration, 1767–1775

Indian trail

Col. Henry Bouquetexpedition, 1763–1764






George Grenville’s New Measures

A final reason for keeping troops in the colonies occurred to the British by 1764:an armed presence could enforce American acceptance of other new and sensiblemeasures for tightening the empire. Those measures were the solutions of GeorgeGrenville, the first lord of the treasury, to the financial problems facing Englandafter the Seven Years’ War.

Britain’s national debt had doubled in the decade after 1754. Adding to thatburden was the drain of supporting troops in the colonies. Grenville recognizedthat English taxpayers alone could not shoulder the costs of winning and main-taining an empire. As matters stood, heavy taxes were already triggering protestsamong hard-pressed Britons. Americans, in contrast, paid comparatively low taxesto their colonial governments and little in trade duties to the empire. Indeed,Grenville discovered that the colonial customs service paid out four times morein salaries to its collectors than it gathered in duties, operating at a net loss.

The income from customs duties was slim because colonial merchants evadedthe Molasses Act of 1733. That tariff imposed a hefty duty of six pence on every

gallon of molasses imported from the French and Dutch sugar islands.Parliament had designed the duty to encourage colonists to consume

more British molasses, which carried a higher price but came duty-free. NewEngland merchants, who distilled molasses into rum and then traded it to thesouthern colonies and to West Africa, claimed that the British sugar islands couldnot satisfy the demands of their distilleries. Regrettably, the merchants wereforced to import more molasses from the French and Dutch. More regrettably,to keep their costs low and the price of their rum competitive, they had to bribeBritish customs officials. With the going rate for bribes ranging from a halfpennyto a penny and a half per gallon, the whole regrettable arrangement made hand-some profits for both merchants and customs inspectors.

George Grenville reasoned that if Americans could pay out a little under thetable to protect an illegal trade, they would willingly pay a little more to go legit-

imate. Parliament agreed. In April 1764 it passed the Revenue Act,commonly called the Sugar Act, which actually lowered the duty on

foreign molasses from six to three pence a gallon. But Grenville intended toenforce the new duty and to crack down on smugglers. Those caught on thewrong side of the law were to be tried in admiralty courts, where verdicts werehanded down by royally appointed judges rather than colonial juries more likelyto sympathize with their fellow citizens.

By tightening customs enforcement, Grenville hoped to raise more revenue fromthe American trade. Unlike the earlier Navigation Acts, which imposed duties mainlyto regulate trade, the Sugar Act’s duties were intended mainly to yield revenue. Evenso, Grenville regarded his demands as modest: he did not expect colonials to helpreduce England’s national debt or even to cover the entire cost of their defense.

Grenville made other modest proposals, all approved by Parliament. Therewas the Currency Act of 1764, which prohibited the colonies from making their

Molasses Act of 1733

Sugar Act






paper money legal tender. That prevented Americans from paying their debts toBritish traders in currency that had fallen to less than its face value. There wasthe Quartering Act of 1765, which obliged any colony in which troopswere stationed to provide them with suitable accommodations. Thatcontributed to the cost of keeping British forces in America. Finally,in March of 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act.

The Stamp Act placed taxes on legal documents, customs papers, newspapers,almanacs, college diplomas, playing cards, and dice. After November 1, 1765, allthese items had to bear a stamp signifying that their possessor hadpaid the tax. Violators of the Stamp Act, like those disobeying theSugar Act, were to be tried without juries in admiralty courts. The English hadbeen paying a similar tax for nearly a century, so it seemed to Grenville andParliament that colonials could have no objections.

Every packet boat from London that brought news of Parliament passinganother one of Grenville’s measures dampened postwar optimism. For all of thedifferences between the colonies and England, Americans still held much in com-mon with the English. Those shared ideas included firm beliefs about why theBritish constitution, British customs, and British history all served to protect lib-erty and the rights of the empire’s free-born citizens. For that reason the newmeasures, which seemed like common sense to Grenville and Parliament, did notmake sense at all to Americans.

The Beginning of Colonial Resistance

Like other Britons, colonials in America accepted a maxim laid down by theEnglish philosopher John Locke: property guaranteed liberty. Property, in thisview, was not merely real estate, or wealth, or material possessions. Itwas the source of strength for every individual, providing the freedomto think and act independently. Protecting the individual’s right orproperty was the main responsibility of government, for if personal property wasnot sacred, then neither was personal liberty.

It followed from this close connection between property, power, and libertythat no people should be taxed without their consent or that of their elected rep-resentatives. The power to tax was the power to destroy by depriving a person ofproperty. Yet both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act were taxes passed by mem-bers of Parliament, none of whom had been elected by colonials.

Like the English, colonials also prized the right of trial by jury as one of theirbasic constitutional liberties. Yet both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act wouldprosecute offenders in the admiralty courts, not through local courts, thus depriv-ing colonials of the freedom claimed by all other English men and women.

The concern for protecting individual liberties was only one of the convic-tions shaping the colonies’ response to Britain’s new policies. Equally importantwas their deep suspicion of power itself, a preoccupation that colonials shared

Currency andQuartering Acts

Locke on propertyand liberty

Stamp Act





with a minority of radical English thinkers. These radicals were known by avariety of names—the “Country Party,” the “Commonwealthmen,” and “the

Opposition.” They drew their inspiration from the ancient traditionof classical republicanism, which held that representative governmentsafeguarded liberty more reliably than either monarchy or oligarchy.

Underlying that judgment was the belief that human beings were driven by pas-sion and insatiable ambition. One person, or even a few people, could not beentrusted with governing, because they would inevitably become corrupted bypower and turn into tyrants. Even in representative governments, the peoplewere obliged to watch those in power at all times: the price of liberty was eternalvigilance.

The Opposition believed that the people of England were not watching theirrulers closely enough. During the first half of the eighteenth century, they argued,the entire executive branch of England’s government—monarchs and theirministers—had been corrupted by their appetite for power. Proof of their ambitionwas the executive bureaucracy of civil officials and standing armies that steadily grewlarger, interfered more with citizens’ lives, and drained increasing amounts ofmoney from taxpayers. Even more alarming, in the Opposition’s view, the executivebranch’s bribery of members of Parliament was corrupting the representative branchof England’s government. They warned that a sinister conspiracy originating in theexecutive branch of government threatened English liberty.

Opposition thinkers commanded little attention in England, where they weredismissed as a discontented radical fringe. But they were revered by political lead-ers in the American colonies. The Opposition’s view of politics confirmed colo-nial anxieties about England, doubts that ran deeper after 1763. Parliament’sattempt to tax the colonies and the quartering of a standing army on the frontierconfirmed all too well the Opposition’s portrayal of how powerful rulers turnedthemselves into tyrants and reduced the people whom they ruled to slaves.

In sum, Grenville’s new measures led some colonials to suspect that ambitiousmen ruling England might be conspiring against American liberties. At the veryleast, the new measures implied that colonials were not the political equals of theEnglish living in England. They were not entitled to taxation by consent or totrial by jury. To be treated like second-class citizens wounded colonials’ pride andmocked their postwar expectations. The heady dreams of the role that thecolonies would play in the British empire evaporated, leaving behind the bitterdregs of disappointment. And after the passage of the Stamp Act, dismaymushroomed into militant protest.

Britain’s determination to centralize its empire after 1763 was a disaster of tim-ing, not just psychologically but also economically. By then, the colonies were in thethroes of a recession. The boom produced in America by government spending dur-

ing the war had collapsed once subsidies were withdrawn. Colonial mer-chants were left with full stocks of imported goods gathering dust ontheir shelves. Farmers lost the brisk and profitable market of the army.


Influence of theEnglish Opposition

Impact of postwarrecession






Colonial response to the Sugar Act reflected the painful postwar readjust-ments. New England merchants led the opposition, objecting to the Sugar Actprincipally on economic grounds. But with the passage of the Stamp Act, theterms of the imperial debate widened, and resistance intensified within all thecolonies. The Stamp Act hit all colonials, not just New England merchants. Ittook money from the pockets of anyone who made a will, filed a deed, traded outof a colonial port, bought a newspaper, consulted an almanac, graduated from col-lege, took a chance at dice, or played cards. More important, the Stamp Act servednotice that Parliament possessed the rightful authority to tax the colonies directlyand for the sole purpose of raising revenue.

Riots and Resolves

That unprecedented assertion provoked an unprecedented development: the firstdisplay of colonial unity. A nearly unanimous chorus of outrage greeted Parlia-ment’s claim that it could tax the colonies. During the spring and summer of 1765,American assemblies passed resolves denying Parliament that authority. The rightto tax Americans belonged to colonial assemblies alone, they argued, by the lawof nature and by the liberties guaranteed in colonial charters and in the Britishconstitution.

Virginia’s assembly, the House of Burgesses, took the lead in protesting theStamp Act, prodded by Patrick Henry, a young lawyer from western Virginia. TheBurgesses passed Henry’s resolutions upholding their exclusive right totax Virginians. They stopped short of adopting those resolves thatcalled for outright resistance to the Stamp Act. When news of Virginia’sstand spread to the rest of the colonies, other assemblies followed suit, affirmingthat the sole right to tax Americans resided in their elected representatives. Butsome colonial newspapers deliberately printed a different story—that the Burgesseshad approved all of Henry’s resolves, including one that sanctioned disobedienceto any parliamentary tax. That prompted a few assemblies to endorse resistance.In October 1765 delegates from nine colonies convened in New York, where theyprepared a joint statement of the American position and petitioned the king andParliament to repeal both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act.

Meanwhile, colonial leaders turned to the press to arouse popular oppositionto the Stamp Act. Disposed by the writings of the English Opposition to thinkof politics in conspiratorial terms, they warned that Grenville and the king’s otherministers schemed to deprive the colonies of their liberties by unlawfully taxingtheir property. The Stamp Act was only the first step in a sinister plan to enslaveAmericans. Whether or not dark fears of a ministerial conspiracy haunted mostcolonials in 1765, many resisted the Stamp Act. The merchants of Boston, NewYork, and Philadelphia agreed to stop importing English goods in order to pres-sure British traders to lobby for repeal. In every colony, organizations emergedto ensure that the Stamp Act, if not repealed, would never be enforced.

Patrick Henry’sresolves





The new resistance groups, which styled themselves the “Sons of Liberty,”consisted of traders, lawyers, and prosperous artisans. With great success, they

organized the lower classes of seaports in opposition to the Stamp Act.The sailors, dockworkers, poor artisans, apprentices, and servants who

poured into the streets resembled mobs that had been organized from time totime earlier in the century. Previous riots against houses of prostitution, mer-chants who hoarded goods, or supporters of smallpox inoculation had not beenspontaneous, uncontrolled outbursts. Crowds chose their targets and their tacticscarefully and then carried out the communal will with little violence.

In every colonial city, the mobs of 1765 burnt the stamp distributors in effigy,insulted them on the streets, demolished their offices, and attacked their homes.By the first of November, the day that the Stamp Act took effect, most of thestamp distributors had resigned.

Repeal of the Stamp Act

Meanwhile, the repeal of the Stamp Act was already in the works back in England.The man who came—unintentionally—to America’s relief was George III. Theyoung king was a good man, industrious, and devoted to the empire, but he was alsoimmature and not overendowed with intellect. Insecurity made the young king anirksome master, and he ran through ministers rapidly. By the end of 1765, Georgehad dismissed Grenville for reasons unrelated to the uproar in America and appointed


The Stamp Act riots had their roots in raucous demonstrations by“people out of doors,” as such crowds were known during the

eighteenth century. One annual celebration, the anti-Catholic “Pope’sDay,” was held every year in Boston. In this engraving, boys dressedas devil’s imps accompany a cart bearing an effigy of the pope. In the

1760s, effigies of tax collectors and royal officials appeared instead.

Sons of Liberty





133

E Y E W I T N E S S T O H I S T O R Y

n the evening whilst I was at supper and my children round me somebody ran in andsaid the mob were coming. I directed my children to fly to a secure Place and shut up

my house as I had done before intending not to quit it but my eldest daughter repented her leavingme and hastened back and protested she would not quit the house unless I did. I could not standagainst this and withdrew with her to a neighbouring house where I had been but a few minutesbefore the hellish crew fell upon my house with the Rage of devils and in a moment with axes splitdown the doors and entered my son being in the great entry heard them cry damn him he is upstairswe’ll have him. Some ran immediately as high as the top of the house others filled the rooms belowand cellars. . . . Messages soon came one after another to the house where I was to inform me themob were coming in Pursuit of me and I was obliged to retire thro yards and gardens to a housemore remote where I remained until 4 o’clock by which time one of the best finished houses inthe Province had nothing remaining but bare walls and floors. Not contented with tearing off allthe wainscot and hangings and splitting the doors to pieces . . . they began to take the slate andboards from the roof and were prevented only by the approaching daylight from a total demolitionof the building. The garden fence was laid flat and all my trees, etc. broke down to the ground.Such ruins were never seen in America. Besides my Plate and family Pictures houshold furniture ofevery kind my own children and servants apparel they carried off about 900 pounds sterling inmoney and emptied the house of every thing . . . not leaving a single book or paper in it and havescattered or destroyed all the manuscripts and other papers I had been collecting for 30 years.

Source: Thomas Hutchinson to Richard Jackson, August 30, 1765, Massachusetts Archives, IIVI, pp. 146–147.

a new first minister, the Marquis of Rockingham. Rockingham had opposed theStamp Act from the outset, and he had no desire to enforce it. He received supportfrom London merchants, who were beginning to feel the pinch of the Americannonimportation campaign, and secured repeal of the Stamp Act in March 1766.

The Stamp Act controversy demonstrated to colonials how similar in politicaloutlook they were to one another and how different they were from the British.Americans had found that they shared the same assumptions about themeaning of representation. To counter colonial objections to the StampAct, Grenville and his supporters had claimed that Americans wererepresented in Parliament, even though they had elected none of its members.Americans were virtually represented, Grenville insisted, for each member ofParliament stood for the interests of the whole empire, not just those of theparticular constituency that had elected him.

Virtual versus actualrepresentation

Thomas Hutchinson Recounts the Destruction of His Boston Home during the Stamp Act Riots






Colonials could see no virtue in the theory of virtual representation. After all,the circumstances and interests of colonials, living an ocean apart, were so dif-ferent from those of Britons. The newly recognized consensus among Americanswas that colonials could be truly represented only by those whom they hadelected. Their view, known as actual representation, emphasized that elected offi-cials were directly accountable to their constituents.

Americans also had discovered that they agreed about the extent of Parlia-ment’s authority over the colonies: it stopped at the right to tax. Colonials con-ceded Parliament’s right to legislate and to regulate trade for the good of thewhole empire. But taxation, in their view, was the free gift of the people throughtheir representatives—who were not sitting in Parliament.

Members of Parliament had brushed aside colonial petitions and resolves, all butignoring their constitutional argument. To make its authority perfectly clear,

Parliament accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act with a DeclaratoryAct, asserting that it had the power to make laws for the colonies “in all

cases whatsoever.” In fact, the Declaratory Act clarified nothing: did Parliamentunderstand the power of legislation to include the power of taxation?

The Townshend Acts

In the summer of 1766 George III—again inadvertently—gave the colonies whatshould have been an advantage by changing ministers again. The king replacedRockingham with William Pitt, who enjoyed great favor among colonials for hisleadership during the Seven Years’ War and for his opposition to the Stamp Act.Almost alone among British politicians, Pitt had grasped and approved thecolonists’ constitutional objections to taxation.

If the man who believed that Americans were “the sons not the bastards ofEngland” had been well enough to govern, matters between Great Britain andthe colonies might have turned out differently. But almost immediately after Pitttook office, his health collapsed, and power passed into the hands of CharlesTownshend, the chancellor of the exchequer. Townshend’s two main concernswere to strengthen the authority of Parliament and royal officials in the coloniesat the expense of American assemblies and to raise more revenue at the expenseof American taxpayers. In 1767 he persuaded Parliament to tax the lead, paint,paper, glass, and tea that Americans imported from Britain.

Townshend used several strategies to limit the power of colonial assemblies.First, he instructed the royal governors to take a firmer hand. To set the exam-ple, he singled out for punishment the New York legislature, which was refusingto comply with provisions of the Quartering Act of 1765. The New York assem-bly held that the cost of quartering the troops constituted a form of indirecttaxation. But Parliament backed Townshend, suspending the New York assemblyin 1767 until it agreed to obey the Quartering Act.

Townshend also dipped into the revenue from his new tariffs in order to sup-port royal officials. That freed them from the influence of colonial assemblies, which

Declaratory Act






had previously funded the salaries of governors,customs collectors, and judges. Townshend’s pol-icies enlarged the number of those bureaucrats.To ensure more effective enforcement of allthe duties on imports, he created an Ameri-can Board of Customs Commissioners, whoappointed a small army of new customs col-lectors. He also established three new vice-admiralty courts in Boston, New York, and Charleston to bring smugglers to justice.

The Resistance Organizes

In Townshend’s efforts to centralize the administration of the British empire,Americans saw new evidence that they were not being treated like the English.In newspapers and pamphlets colonial leaders repeated their earlierarguments against taxation. The most widely read publication, “A Let-ter from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” was the work of John Dickinson,who urged Americans to protest the Townshend duties with a show of superiorvirtue—hard work, thrift, simplicity, and home manufacturing. By consumingfewer imported English luxuries, Dickinson argued, Americans would advance thecause of repeal. The Townshend Acts also shaped the destiny of Samuel Adams,a leader in the Massachusetts assembly and a consummate political organizer andagitator. First his enemies and later his friends claimed that Adams had decidedon independence for America as early as 1768. In that year he persuaded theassembly to send to other colonial legislatures a circular letter condemning theacts and calling for a united American resistance.

As John Dickinson and Samuel Adams whipped up public outrage against theTownshend Acts, the Sons of Liberty again organized the opposition in the streets.Customs officials, like the stamp distributors before them, became targetsof popular hatred. But the customs collectors gave as good as they got,using the flimsiest excuses to seize American vessels for violating royal regulationsand shaking down American merchants for what amounted to protection money.The racketeering in the customs service brought tensions in Boston to a flashpoint inJune 1768 after officials seized and condemned the Liberty, a sloop belonging to oneof the city’s biggest merchants, John Hancock. Several thousand Bostonians ventedtheir anger in a night of rioting, searching out and roughing up customs officials.

This 1766 porcelain of Lord Chatham andAmerica attests to the popularity of WilliamPitt, Earl of Chatham, among Americanswho resisted the Stamp Act. The artist’srepresentation of “America” as a black womankneeling in gratitude echoes the colonists’association of taxation with slavery.

John Dickinson andSamuel Adams

The Liberty seized





The new secretary of state for the colonies, Lord Hillsborough, respondedby sending two regiments of troops to Boston. In the fall of 1768 the redcoats,like a conquering army, paraded into town under the cover of warships lying offthe harbor. In the months that followed, citizens bristled when challenged on thestreets by armed soldiers.

The Liberty riot and the arrival of British troops in Boston pushed colonialassemblies to coordinate their resistance more closely. Most legislatures endorsedthe Massachusetts circular letter and adopted agreements not to import or to con-sume British goods. The reluctance among some merchants to revive nonimpor-tation in 1767 gave way to greater enthusiasm by 1768, and by early 1769, suchagreements were in effect throughout the colonies.

Protests against the Townshend Acts raised the stakes by creating new insti-tutions to carry forward the resistance. Subscribers to the nonimportation agree-

ments established “committees of inspection” to enforce the ban ontrade with Britain. The committees publicly denounced merchants whocontinued to import, vandalized their warehouses, forced them to stand

under the gallows, and sometimes resorted to tar and feathers.After 1768 the resistance also brought a broader range of colonials into the

politics of protest. Artisans, who recognized that nonimportation would spurdomestic manufacturing, began to organize as independent political groups. Inmany towns, women took an active part in opposing the Townshend duties. The“Daughters of Liberty” took to heart John Dickinson’s advice: they wore home-spun clothing instead of English finery, served coffee instead of tea, and boycottedshops selling British goods.

The Boston Massacre

The situation in Boston deteriorated steadily. British troops found themselves reg-ularly cursed by citizens and occasionally pelted with stones, dirt, and humanexcrement. The British regulars were particularly unpopular among Boston’slaboring classes because they competed with them for jobs. Off-duty soldiersmoonlighted as maritime laborers, and they sold their services at cheaper ratesthan the wages paid to locals. By 1769, brawls between British regulars and water-front workers broke out with unsettling frequency.

With some 4000 redcoats enduring daily contact with some 15,000 Bostoniansunder the sway of Samuel Adams, what happened on the night of March 5, 1770,was nearly inevitable. A crowd gathered around the customshouse for the sportof heckling its guard of 10 soldiers. The redcoats panicked and fended off insultsand snowballs with live fire, hitting 11 rioters and killing 5. Labeling the blood-shed “the Boston Massacre,” Adams and other propagandists publicized that“atrocity” throughout the colonies.

While Townshend’s policies spurred the resistance in America, Parliamentrecognized that Townshend’s duties only discouraged sales to colonials and en-


Committees ofinspection






couraged them to manufacture at home. The way to repeal had been cleared bythe unexpected death of Townshend shortly after Parliament adopted his propos-als. In 1770 his successor, Lord North, convinced Parliament to repeal all theTownshend duties except the one on tea, allowing that tax to stand as a source ofrevenue and as a symbol of their authority.

The International Sons of Liberty

The resistance after 1768 grew broader in another sense as well. Many of its sup-porters in the American colonies felt a new sense of kinship with freedom fightersthroughout Europe and increasingly regarded themselves as part of a transatlanticnetwork of the friends of liberty. They eagerly read about the doings of men likeCharles Lucas, an Irish newspaper editor and member of the Irish Parliament,and John Wilkes, a London journalist and a leading politician of the Opposition.Both Lucas and Wilkes charged the king’s ministers with corrupting the politicallife of the British Isles. The triumphs and setbacks of rebels combating tyrannicalregimes even in distant Poland and Turkey engaged colonial sympathies. But per-haps the cause abroad dearest to the hearts of liberty’s friends in America duringthe late 1760s was the fate of Corsica.

For years, the state of Genoa had been trying to impose its rule on this tinyisland off the coast of Italy. Led by Pascal Paoli, the Corsicans had for decadeswaged what one New York newpaper touted as a “glorious struggle”against Genoese rule, an insurgency “interesting to every friend of lib-erty.” In 1768, Genoa sold its title to the island to France, promptingmany in the British empire to hope that England would rally to defend Corsica’sfreedom. But British statesmen had no intention of going to war with France overtiny Corsica, and when French troops routed his rebel army, Paoli fled to Englandin 1769. To add insult to injury, Paoli, once lionized by the colonial resistanceas “the greatest man on earth,” snubbed Opposition leaders like John Wilkes,hobnobbed with the likes of the Duke of Grafton, the minister of the treasury, andeven accepted a pension of 1000 pounds a year from George III.

The moral of this sad story, one closely followed by the readers of colonialnewspapers, was that the British ministry’s corruption pervaded not only theempire but all of Europe. Merely by doing nothing, the king’s ministers hadsnuffed out the Corsican resistance. And by doling out a mere thousand poundsannually, they had bought the loyalty of its leader, the great Paoli himself. In thefate of Corsica and its sons of liberty, many colonials saw the threat that ambi-tious men posed to popular liberty—and a disturbing portent for America’s future.

Resistance Revived

Repeal of the Townshend duties took the wind from the sails of American resis-tance for more than two years. But the controversy between England and thecolonies had not been resolved. Beneath the banked fires of protest smoldered

Colonials followPaoli’s struggle





the live embers of Americans’ political inequality. Any shift in the wind could fanthose embers into flames.

The wind did shift, quite literally, on Narragansett Bay in 1772, runningaground the Gaspee, a British naval schooner in hot pursuit of Rhode Island smug-glers. Providence residents celebrated its misfortune with a bonfire built on theship’s deck. Outraged British officials sent a special commission to look intothe matter, intending once again to bypass the established colonial court system.The arrival of the Gaspee Commission reignited the imperial crisis, and Americanresistance flared again.

It did so through an ingenious mechanism, the committees of correspondence.Established in all the colonies by their assemblies, the committees drew up state-

ments of American rights and grievances, distributed those documentswithin and among the colonies, and solicited responses from townsand counties. The brainchild of Samuel Adams, the committee struc-

ture formed a new communications network, one that fostered an intercolonialagreement on resistance to British measures. The committees also spread thescope of the resistance from colonial seaports into rural areas, engaging farmersand other country folk in the opposition to Britain.

The committees had much to talk about when Parliament passed the Tea Actin 1773. The law was an effort to bail out the bankrupt East India Company bygranting that corporation a monopoly on the tea trade to Americans. Since thecompany could use agents to sell its product directly, cutting out the middlemen,it could offer a lower price than that charged by colonial merchants. Still, manycolonials saw the act as Parliament’s attempt to trick them into accepting itsauthority to tax the colonies.

In early winter of 1773 the tempest over the Tea Act peaked in Boston, withpopular leaders calling for the cargoes to be returned immediately to England.

On the evening of December 16, thousands of Bostonians, as well asfarmers from the surrounding countryside, packed into the Old South

Meetinghouse. Some members of the audience knew what Samuel Adams had onthe evening’s agenda, and they awaited their cue. It came when Adams told themeeting that they could do nothing more to save their country. War whoops rangthrough the meetinghouse, the crowd spilled onto the streets and out to thewaterfront, and the Boston Tea Party commenced. From the throng emerged50 men dressed as Indians to disguise their identities. The party boarded threevessels docked off Griffin’s Wharf, broke open casks containing 90,000 pounds oftea, and brewed a beverage worth 10,000 pounds sterling in Boston harbor.

The Empire Strikes Back

The Boston Tea Party proved to British satisfaction that the colonies aimed at inde-pendence. To reassert its authority, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, dubbed inthe colonies the “Intolerable Acts.” In March 1774, two months after hearing of


Committees ofcorrespondence

Boston Tea Party






the Tea Party, Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill, closing that harbor to alloceangoing traffic until such time as the king saw fit to reopen it. He would notsee fit until colonials paid the East India Company for its losses. Dur-ing the next three months, Parliament approved three other “intolera-ble” laws designed to punish Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Government Acthanded over the colony government to royal officials. Even convening town meet-ings would require royal permission. The Impartial Administration of Justice Actpermitted any royal official accused of a crime in Massachusetts to be tried in En-gland or in another colony. The Quartering Act allowed the housing of British troopsin private homes—not only in Massachusetts but in all the colonies.

Many colonials saw the Coercive Acts as proof of a plot to enslave the colonies.In truth, the taxes and duties, laws and regulations of the last decade were partof a deliberate design—a commonsensical plan to centralize the administration ofthe British empire. But those efforts bythe king’s ministers and Parliament to run thecolonies more efficiently and profitably wereviewed by more and more Americans as a sin-ister conspiracy against their liberties.

Week after week in the spring of 1774,reports of legislative outrages came acrossthe waters. Shortly after approving theCoercive Acts, Parliament passed theQuebec Act, which established a perma-nent government in what had been FrenchCanada. Ominously, it included no repre-sentative assembly; it also officially recog-nized the Roman Catholic church andextended the bounds of the province toinclude all land between the Mississippiand Ohio rivers. Suddenly New York,Pennsylvania, and Virginia found them-selves bordering a British colony whosesubjects had no voice in their own gov-ernment.

As alarm deepened in the wake of theCoercive Acts, one colony after anothercalled for an intercolonial congress—likethe one that had met during the Stamp Actcrisis—to determine the best way to defendtheir freedom. But many also remainedunsettled about where the logic of theiractions seemed to be taking them: toward adenial that they were any longer English.

Coercive Acts

While the new political activism of some Americanwomen often amused male leaders of the resistance,

it inspired the scorn of some partisans of Britishauthority. When the women of Edenton,

North Carolina, renounced imported tea, thisBritish cartoon mocked them.





TOWARD THE REVOLUTION

By the beginning of September 1774, when 55 delegates to the First Continen-tal Congress gathered in Philadelphia, the news from Massachusettswas bad. The colony verged on anarchy, it was reported, as its inhab-itants resisted the enforcement of the Massachusetts Government Act.

In the midst of this atmosphere of crisis, members of the Congress also hadto take one another’s measure. Many of the delegates had not traveled outsidetheir own colonies. (All but Georgia sent representatives.) Although the delegatesencountered a great deal of diversity, they quickly discovered that they esteemedthe same traits of character, attributes that they called “civic virtue.” These traitsincluded simplicity and self-reliance, industry and thrift, and, above all, anunselfish commitment to the public good. Most members of the Congress alsoshared a common mistrust of England, associating the mother country with vice,extravagance, and corruption.

Still, the delegates had some misgivings about those from other colonies.Massachusetts in particular brought with it a reputation—well deserved, consid-ering that Samuel Adams was along—for radical action and a willingness to useforce to accomplish its ends.

The First Continental Congress

As the delegates settled down to business, their aim was to reach agreement on thebasis of American rights, the limits of Parliament’s power, and the proper tactics forresisting the Coercive Acts. The Congress quickly agreed on the first point. Thedelegates affirmed that the law of nature, the colonial charters, and the British con-stitution provided the foundations of American liberties. This position was what mostcolonials had argued since 1765. On the two other issues, the Congress charted amiddle course between the demands of radicals and the reservations of conservatives.

Since the time of the Stamp Act, most colonials had insisted that Parliament hadno authority to tax the colonies. But later events had demonstrated that Parliamentcould undermine colonial liberties by legislation as well as by taxation. The suspen-sion of the New York legislature, the Gaspee Commission, and the Coercive Actsall fell into this category. Given those experiences, the delegates adopted a Declara-tion of Rights and Grievances on October 14, 1774, asserting the right of thecolonies to tax and legislate for themselves. The Declaration of Rights thus limitedParliament’s power over Americans more strictly than colonials had a decade earlier.

By denying Parliament’s power to make laws for the colonies, the Continen-tal Congress blocked efforts of the most conservative delegates to reach an accom-

modation with England. Their leading advocate, Joseph Galloway ofPennsylvania, proposed a plan of union with Britain similar to the oneset forth by the Albany Congress in 1754. Under it, a grand council

of the colonies would handle all common concerns, with any laws it passed subject


First ContinentalCongress called

Joseph Galloway’splan





to review and veto by Parliament. For its part, Parliament would have to submitfor the grand council’s approval any acts it passed affecting America. A majorityof delegates judged that Galloway’s proposal left Parliament too much leeway inlegislating for colonials, and they rejected his plan.

Although the Congress denied Parliament the right to impose taxes or tomake laws, delegates stopped short of declaring that it had no authority at all inthe colonies. They approved Parliament’s regulation of trade, but only because ofthe interdependent economy of the empire. And although some radical pam-phleteers were attacking the king for plotting against American liberties, the Con-gress acknowledged the continuing allegiance of the colonies to George III. Inother words, the delegates called for a return to the situation that had existed inthe empire before 1763, with Parliament regulating trade and the colonies exer-cising all powers of taxation and legislation.

On the question of resistance, the Congress satisfied the desires of its mostradical delegates by drawing up the Continental Association, an agreement tocease all trade with Britain until the Coercive Acts were repealed.They agreed that their fellow citizens would immediately stop drink-ing East India Company tea, and that by December 1, 1774, merchants would nolonger import goods of any sort from Britain. A ban on the export of Americanproduce to Britain and the West Indies would go into effect a year later, duringSeptember 1775—the lag being a concession to southern rice andtobacco planters, who wanted to market their crops.

Although the association provided for the total cessation oftrade, the Congress did not approve another part of the radicals’agenda: making preparations for war. The Congress approveda defensive strategy of civil disobedience but drew the line atauthorizing proposals to strengthen and arm colonial militias.

Thus the First Continental Congress steered a middlecourse. Although determined to bring about repeal of theCoercive Acts, it held firm in resisting any revolutionarycourse of action. If British officials had responded to its rec-ommendations and restored the status quo of 1763, the warfor independence might have been postponed—perhaps indef-initely. On the other hand, even though the Congress did notgo to the extremes urged by the radicals, its decisions drewcolonials further down the road to independence.

The Last Days of the British Empire in America

Most colonials applauded the achievements of the FirstContinental Congress. They expected that the ContinentalAssociation would bring about a speedy repeal of the Coer-cive Acts. But fear that the colonies were moving toward a

TOWARD THE REVOLUTION � 141

The Association

A British grenadier





break with Britain led others to denounce the doings of the Congress. Conserv-atives were convinced that if independence was declared, chaos would ensue.Colonials, they argued, would quarrel over land claims and sectional tensions andreligious differences, as they had so often in the recent past. But without Britainto referee such disputes, the result would be civil war, followed by anarchy.

The man in America with the least liking for the Continental Congress satin the hottest seat in the colonies, that of the governor of Massachusetts.

General Thomas Gage now watched as royal authority crumbled inMassachusetts and the rebellion spread to other colonies. In June 1774a desperate Gage dissolved the Massachusetts legislature, which then

formed itself into the Provincial Congress, assumed the government of thecolony in October, and began arming the militia. Gage then started to fortifyBoston and pleaded for more troops—only to find his fortifications damaged bysaboteurs and his requests for reinforcements ignored by Britain.

Outside Boston, royal authority fared no better. Farmers in western Massa-chusetts forcibly closed the county courts, turning out royally appointed justices

and establishing their own tribunals. Popularly elected committees ofinspection charged with enforcing the Continental Association tookover towns everywhere in Massachusetts, not only restricting trade but

also regulating many aspects of local life. The committees called upon towns-people to display civic virtue by renouncing “effeminate” English luxuries like teaand fine clothing and “corrupt” leisure activities like dancing, gambling, andracing. The committees also assigned spies to report on any citizen unfriendly tothe resistance. “Enemies of American liberty” risked being roundly condemnedin public or beaten and pelted with mud and dung by hooting, raucous mobs.

Throughout the colonies a similar process was under way. During the winterand early spring of 1775, provincial congresses, county conventions, and localcommittees of inspection were emerging as revolutionary governments, replacingroyal authority at every level. As the spectacle unfolded before General Gage, heconcluded that only force could subdue the colonies. It would take more than hehad at his command, but reinforcements might be on the way. In February 1775Parliament had approved an address to the king declaring that the colonies werein rebellion.

The Fighting Begins

As spring came to Boston, the city waited. A band of artisans, organized as spiesand express riders by Paul Revere, watched General Gage and waited for him toact. Gage waited for reinforcements from Lord North and watched the hostiletown. On April 14 word from North finally arrived: Gage was to seize the leadersof the Provincial Congress. That would behead the rebellion, North said. Gageknew better than to believe North—but he also knew that he had to do something.

On the night of April 18 the sexton of Boston’s Christ Church hung two lampsfrom its steeple. It was a signal that British troops had moved out of Boston and


Thomas Gage inBoston

Collapse of royalauthority





TOWARD THE REVOLUTION � 143

were now marching toward the arms and ammunition stored by the ProvincialCongress in Concord. As the lamps flashed the signal, Revere and a comrade,William Dawes, rode out to arouse the countryside.

When the news of a British march reached Lexington, its militia of about70 farmers, chilled and sleepy, mustered on the Green at the center of the smallrural town. Lexington Green lay directly on the road to Concord. Atabout four in the morning 700 British troops massed on the Green,and their commander, Major John Pitcairn, ordered the Lexingtonmilitia to disperse. The townsmen, outnumbered and overawed, began to obey.Then a shot rang out—whether the British or the Americans fired first isunknown—and then two volleys burst from the ranks of the redcoats. With acheer the British set off for Concord, five miles distant, leaving eight Americansdead on Lexington Green.

By dawn, hundreds of militiamen from nearby towns were surging intoConcord. The British entered Concord at about seven in the morning and moved,unopposed, toward their target, a house lying across the bridge that spanned theConcord River. While three companies of British soldiers searched for Americanguns and ammunition, three others, posted on the bridge itself, had the misfor-tune to find those American arms—borne by the rebels and being fired withdeadly accuracy. By noon, the British were retreating to Boston.

The narrow road from Concord to Boston’s outskirts became a corridor ofcarnage. Pursuing Americans fired on the column of fleeing redcoats from thecover of fences and forests. By the end of April 19, the British had sustained273 casualties; the Americans, 95. It was only the beginning. By evening of the nextday, some 20,000 New England militia had converged on Boston for a long siege.

Paine’s Common Sense

The bloodshed at Lexington Green and Concord’s North Bridge committed colo-nials to a course of rebellion—and independence. That was the conclusion drawnby Thomas Paine, who urged other Americans to do the same.

Paine himself was hardly an American at all. He was born in England, appren-ticed first as a corsetmaker, appointed later a tax collector, and fated finally tobecome midwife to the age of republican revolutions. Paine came to Philadelphialate in 1774, set up as a journalist, and made the American cause his own. “Whereliberty is, there is my country,” he declared. In January 1776 he wrote a pamphletto inform colonials of their identity as a distinct people and their destiny as anation. Common Sense enjoyed tremendous popularity and wide circulation, selling120,000 copies within three months of its publication.

After Lexington and Concord, Paine wrote, as the imperial crisis passed“from argument to arms, a new era for politics is struck—a new method of think-ing has arisen.” That new era for Paine was the age of republican-ism. He denounced monarchy as a foolish, dangerous form ofgovernment, one that violated the dictates of reason as well as

Lexington andConcord

Thomas Paine arguesfor independence





the word of the Bible. By ridicule andremorseless argument, he severed theties of colonial allegiance to the king.Common Sense scorned George III as “theRoyal Brute of Britain,” who had en-slaved the chosen people of the newage—the Americans.

Nor did Paine stop there. He re-jected the idea that colonials were orshould want to be English. Britain, hetold his readers, far from being a tenderparent, had bled colonials of their wealthand preyed on their liberties. Why suffersuch enslavement? The colonies occupieda huge continent an ocean away from thetiny British Isles—clear proof that natureitself had fashioned America for inde-pendence. England lay locked in Europe,

doomed to the corruption of an Old World. America had been discovered anewto become an “asylum of liberty.”

Many Americans had liked being English, but being English hadn’t worked.Perhaps that is another way of saying that over the course of nearly two centuries,colonial society and politics had evolved in such a way that a shared identitybetween the Americans and the English no longer fit. By the end of the SevenYears’ War, the colonies had established political institutions that made the rightsof “freeborn Britons” more available to ordinary citizens in America than in thenation that had created those liberties. Perhaps, then, most Americans hadsucceeded too well at becoming English, regarding themselves as political equalsentitled to basic constitutional freedoms. In the space of less than a generation,the logic of events made clear that despite all that the English and Americansshared, in the distribution of political power they were fundamentally at odds.And the call to arms at Lexington and Concord made retreat impossible.

On that point Paine was clear. It was the destiny of Americans to be repub-licans, not monarchists. It was the destiny of Americans to be independent, notsubject to British dominion. It was the destiny of Americans to be American, notEnglish. That, according to Thomas Paine, was common sense.


Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense





INTERACTIVE LEARNING � 145

c h a p t e r s u m m a r y

Resistance to British authority grew slowly butsteadily in the American colonies during theperiod following the Seven Years’ War.● The new measures passed by Parliament in

the early 1760s—the Proclamation of 1763,the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the CurrencyAct, and the Quartering Act—were all de-signed to bind the colonies more closely tothe empire.

● These new measures deflated Americanexpectations of a more equal status in theempire and also violated what Americansunderstood to be their constitutional andpolitical liberties—the right to consent totaxation, the right to trial by jury, and thefreedom from standing armies.

● Although Parliament repealed the StampAct, it reasserted its authority to taxAmericans by passing the Townshend Actin 1767.

● With the passage of the Coercive Acts in1774, many Americans concluded that allBritish actions in the past decade were part ofa deliberate plot to enslave Americans by de-priving them of property and liberty.

● When the First Continental Congress con-vened in September 1774, delegates resistedboth radical demands to mobilize for war andconservative appeals to reach an accommo-dation.

● The First Continental Congress denied Par-liament any authority in the colonies exceptthe right to regulate trade; it also drew up theContinental Association, an agreement tocease all trade with Britain until the CoerciveActs were repealed.

● When General Thomas Gage sent troopsfrom Boston in April 1775 to seize arms be-ing stored at Concord, the first battle of theRevolution took place.

i n t e r a c t i v e l e a r n i n g

The Primary Source Investigator CD-ROMoffers the following materials related to thischapter:● Interactive maps: The Atlantic World,

1400–1850 (M2) and The Settlement ofColonial America, 1700–1763 (M5)

● A collection of primary sources examiningthe age of the American Revolution, includ-ing the imperial acts that outraged Americancolonists, a selection from Thomas Paine’sseminal work Common Sense, and a gazettearticle describing the Boston Massacre.

For quizzes and a variety of interactive resources, visit the book’s OnlineLearning Center at www.mhhe.com/davidsonconcise4.






s i g n i f i c a n t e v e n t s

1759 Decisive English victory at Quebec

1760 George III becomes king of England

1755 Braddock defeated by French and Indians

1756England and France declare war

1763Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years’ War;

Pontiac’s Rebellion; royal proclamationprohibits settlement west of the Appalachians

1764 Sugar Act; Currency Act

1765 Stamp Act; Quartering Act

1766Repeal of the Stamp Act; Declaratory Act

1767 Townshend duties; Parliament suspends New York assembly

1770 Boston Massacre; repeal of most Townshend duties

1772 Gaspee Commission

1773 Boston Tea Party

1774Coercive Acts; First ContinentalCongress meets at Philadelphia 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord

1776 Thomas Paine’s Common Sense published

1755

1760

1765

1770

1775

PART TWO GLOBAL ESSAY - University of Phoenix

Documents