US: A Narrative History Volume 1 –
Chapter 6 Review
Imperial Triumph, Imperial Crisis
(1754-1776)
The
Seven Years' War
Britain and France had come to blows in the backcountry before. And
Indian peoples had long sought to profit from their inter-imperial rivalry and
turn it to their own ends. But now, for the first time, bloodshed in the
forests of North America would lead Europe into war, rather than the other way
around. And Washington's misadventure set the pattern for the early years of
the conflict more broadly, years marked by British missteps and British
defeats.
Years
of Defeat
The surrender at Fort Necessity only stiffened
Britain's resolve to assert its claims to the Ohio country: hence its decision
to send two divisions under General Braddock to wrest the region
from France. France responded by sending the equivalent of eight divisions to
Canada. There was therefore great anticipation surrounding Braddock's campaign.
His monumental defeat sent shock waves throughout the empire, emboldened the French,
and convinced many wavering Indian peoples that the French were the ones to
back. Raiding parties began striking backcountry settlements from New York to
Virginia, and terrified refugees fled east.
Britain's war went from bad to worse in North America. British colonists
generally saw the French and their Indian allies as a common threat but found
cooperation among colonies elusive. At the start of the war representatives
from throughout the colonies came to the so-called Albany Congress, designed in
part to deter the Iroquois from aligning with New France. Benjamin Franklin
attended, and had larger aims than negotiations with the Iroquois. He presented
the other colonial delegates with a plan for colonial cooperation, in which a
federal council made up of representatives from each colony would assume
responsibility for a united colonial defense. The Albany delegates were alarmed
enough by the wavering Iroquois and the threatening French to accept the idea.
But when they brought the proposal home to their respective legislatures, not a
single one approved the Albany Plan of Union. “Everyone cries, a union is
necessary,” Franklin complained, “but when they come to the manner and form of
the union, their weak noodles are perfectly distracted.” London did little to
encourage collective self-sacrifice. When England and France formally declared
war in May 1756, John Campbell, the Earl of Loudoun, took command of the North
American theater. American soldiers and colonial assemblies alike despised Lord
Loudoun. They balked at his efforts to take command over colonial troops and
dragged their heels at his high-handed demands for men and supplies. Meanwhile,
the French appointed an effective new commanding general of their forces in
Canada, Louis Joseph, the marquis de Montcalm. Montcalm drove southward,
capturing key British forts and threatening the security of both New York and
New England. France decided to press its advantage in Europe as well. In
addition to threatening England itself, French ships began attacking British
holdings throughout the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, the complex system of
alliances that was supposed to keep continental Europe at peace began to fail.
In August of 1756 Prussia, an English ally, invaded Austria, a French ally.
France went to Austria's aid and Prussia suddenly found itself on the
defensive, begging London for salvation. The war seemed to be spreading in all
directions, and none of the changes seemed to bode well for the British Empire.
After Washington's surrender and Braddock's defeat in the Pennsylvania
backcountry, the British and French waged their final contest for supremacy in
North America in northern New York and Canada. But the rivalry for empire
between France and Britain was worldwide, with naval superiority providing the
needed edge to Britain. The British navy isolated French forces in India,
winning a victory at Pondicherry, while English offensives captured the French
sugar islands in the Caribbean and French trading posts along the West African
coast. When Spain entered the war on the side of France, British fleets
captured both Havana and the strategic port of Manila in the Philippines.
A
Shift in Policy
British fortunes rebounded only when the veteran English politician William
Pitt came out of retirement to direct the war. Pitt was an odd
character. Subject to bouts of depression and loathed for his opportunism and
egotism, he was nonetheless buoyed by a strong sense of destiny—his own and
that of England. He believed Great Britain must seize the world's trade, because
trade meant wealth and wealth meant power. France seemed to him the greatest
obstacle to this British destiny—and Pitt returned to the political fray
charged with energy. “I know that I can save this country,” he declared with
typical confidence, “and that no one else can.” Pitt's strategy was bold. He
would leave the fighting in Europe to the Prussians but support them with
massive infusions of cash with which they could buy supplies and recruit men.
France was strongest in Europe, he reasoned, so Britain ought to focus its
military energies elsewhere. Better to attack France around the world—in the
Caribbean, in West Africa, and in the Indian Ocean. Most especially, Pitt would
attack them in North America. He audaciously pledged to drive France out of the
continent altogether. To do so he would have to convince the colonists who had
been alienated by Braddock's arrogance and Loudoun's harsh policies that they
would be treated as equals. Pitt recalled Loudoun, put limits on the powers
enjoyed by Loudoun's successor, pledged to respect the officers in colonial
militias, and, crucially, promised that London—not the colonies—would bear the
financial burden of the war.
Last but certainly not least, the new government acknowledged the
centrality of Indians to the war effort. The officers Pitt sent to execute the
new approach listened to colonial Indian agents and go-betweens, authorized
new, high-level conferences, and approved the distribution of presents to key
leaders. These conciliatory gestures and more accommodating policies were well
timed, because by then, the Indian peoples of the Ohio Country and the pays
d'en haut had increasingly come to question the French alliance. Though French
authorities often took Indians more seriously than their English counterparts,
they, too, struggled to reconcile cultural difference. In the aftermath of
joint victories, for example, French officers sometimes felt obliged by
European military protocol to deny their Indian allies customary war
spoils—captives, plunder, and scalps. Disgruntled native warriors generally
took them anyway and often refused to fight for France again. More critical
than even such cultural differences, the economic toll of the war damaged
French-Indian alliances. By 1757 Britain's unsurpassed navy had instituted a
formidable blockade on the St. Lawrence that cut off supplies to Canada.
Without arms, ammunition, and metal goods, French authorities found it more and
more difficult to maintain their Indian alliances. More and more withdrew from the
conflict or sided with Britain.
Years
of Victory
The reforms galvanized the colonies. Most British North Americans were
proud to be part of the empire and welcomed the chance to help fight for it so
long as they would be treated as equals. With Pitt's reforms in place, the tide
of the war finally began to turn. In July of 1758 the British gained control of
the St. Lawrence River when the French fortress at Louisbourg fell 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 capturing Fort
Frontenac, thereby isolating French forts lining the Great Lakes and the Ohio
valley. More and more Indians, seeing the French routed from the interior,
switched their allegiance to the English. The British succeeded even more
brilliantly in 1759. In Canada, Brigadier General James Wolfe gambled on a
daring stratagem and won Quebec from Montcalm. Under the cover
of darkness, naval squadrons landed Wolfe's men beneath the city's steep
bluffs, where they scaled the heights to a plateau known as the Plains of
Abraham. Montcalm might have won by holding out behind the walls of his
fortress and awaiting reinforcements. Instead, he matched Wolfe's recklessness
and offered battle. Five days later both Wolfe and Montcalm lay dead, along
with 1,400 French soldiers and 600 British and American troops. Quebec had
fallen to the British. A year later the French surrender of Montreal ended the
imperial war in North America, although it continued elsewhere around the world
for another two years.
The Treaty of Paris, signed in February 1763, ended the French
presence on the continent of North America. The terms confirmed British title
to all French territory east of the Mississippi. Spain had foolishly entered
the war on France's side in 1762 and quickly lost Havana to British warships.
The treaty restored Cuba to Spain, but at a high price: the Spanish
relinquished Florida to Britain. With France driven from the continent,
something had to be done with the vast and ill-defined territory of Louisiana,
west of the Mississippi. Spain did not want the trouble and expense of
administering this sprawling region, but it did not want Britain to have it.
Somewhat reluctantly, then, Spain accepted nominal dominion over all land west
of the great river, as well as the port of New Orleans, in the separate Treaty
of San Ildefonso. In addition to its North America spoils, Britain won several
Caribbean islands in the war, as well as Senegal in West Africa. After
generations of inconclusive imperial wars, British North Americans found the
victory almost impossibly grand. Towns up and down the Atlantic coast glowed
bright with celebratory bonfires and rang with the sounds of clanking tankards
and jolly song. How good it was to be British!
Postwar
Expectations
Grand expectations came hot on the heels of joyful celebration. The end
of the war, Americans felt sure, meant the end of high taxes. The terms of the
peace, they were confident, meant that the fertile lands of the Ohio valley
would be thrown open to English settlement. The prosperity of the war years
alone made for a mood of optimism. British military spending and William Pitt's
subsidies had made money for farmers, merchants, artisans, and anyone else who
had anything to do with supplying the army or navy. Colonials also took pride
in their contributions of troops and money to the winning of the war. In view
of that support, Americans expected to be given more consideration within the
British Empire. Now, as one anonymous pamphleteer put it, Americans would “not
be thought presumptuous, if they considered themselves upon an equal footing”
with English in the parent country.
But most imperial officials in America thought that if Americans took
pride in being English, they had done a poor job of showing it. British
statesmen grumbled that colonial assemblies had been tightfisted when it came
to supplying the army. British commanders charged that colonial troops had been
lily-livered when it came to fighting the French. Such accusations were unjust,
but they stuck in the minds of many Britons at home. The nation had accumulated
a huge debt that would saddle it with high taxes for years to come. To make
matters worse, some Britons suspected that, with the French removed from North
America, the colonies would move toward independence. As early as 1755 Josiah
Tucker, a respected English economist, had warned that “to drive the French out
of all North America would be the most fatal step we could take.” Americans in
1763 were not, in truth, revolutionaries in the making. They were loyal British
subjects in the flush of postwar patriotism. Americans in 1763, deeply divided,
were not even “Americans.” But most postwar English colonials did expect to
enjoy a more equal status in the empire. And most Britons had no inclination to
accord them that equality. The differing expectations of the colonies' 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 in America; now it needed
to consolidate those gains. The empire's North American territory needed to be
protected, its administration tightened, and its colonies made as profitable as
possible to the parent nation. In other words, the empire needed to be
centralized. That conclusion dictated Britain's decision to leave a standing
army of several thousand troops in America after the Seven Years' War. And, of
course, armies needed to be paid for; that would mean taxes. That the
colonists, who benefited most from the great victory, ought to pull out their
purses for king and country—well, London thought that, too, was common sense.
Pontiac's Rebellion
British authorities
justified the army's continued presence in part by pointing to the various
foreign peoples that the crown now had to administer. The army must be prepared
to police French colonists in Canada, Spaniards in Florida, and, most
especially, dozens of native peoples west of the Appalachians. General Jeffery
Amherst, the top British officer in North America, believed Indian troubles
could be avoided if military and civil authorities simply projected strength.
Now that French power had been expelled, Amherst thought, Britain need not
purchase Indian friendship with presents, and subsidize trade, and sponsor
tiresome diplomatic ceremonies. All this was to cease. Knowledgeable colonists
saw too much of Edward Braddock in all of this. When they insisted that
presents, favorable trade, and diplomacy were the indispensable elements of
Indian relations, Amherst would have none of it. “When men of what race so ever
behave ill,” the general insisted, “they must be punished but not bribed.”
Indians had to learn that the English now were masters of the land. Colonists
and natives alike were increasingly willing to simplify difference and see all
“Indians” or all “whites” as despicable enemies. Britain's new attitude of
triumph provoked great anxiety within Indian communities that had troubles
enough to contend with. Many had lost men in the war, crops had been destroyed
or had failed, and whole villages and towns had been put to the torch. British
traders, now untroubled by French competition, bartered eagerly but charged far
more for their goods than previously. Finally, the end of the war brought a
surge of speculators and colonists eager to claim land beyond the mountains.
These interlocked crises prompted calls for a return to tradition; for a
revival that would empower resistance movements across tribal lines. Such was
the message of a Delaware holy man named Neolin, who told followers he spoke
for God, or the Master of Life. The Master of Life commanded his Indian
children to “drive the British out, make war on them. I do not love them at
all; they know me not, and are my enemies. Send them back to the lands I have
created for them and let them stay there.” Pontiac, a charismatic and
tactically gifted Ottawa chief, embraced Neolin's message of renaissance and
rebellion. In the summer of 1763 he organized attacks against British forts.
Shawnees, Mingos, Potawatomis, Wyandots, and other Indian peoples in the Ohio
Country, or the pays d'en haut, working with Pontiac or independently, captured
every British fort west of Detroit by early July. Colonial settlements in the
backcountry came under attack from Pennsylvania to Virginia, leaving hundreds
of colonists dead and hundreds more fleeing east. Enraged and determined to
assert British rule, Amherst organized troops to march west and attack Indian
forces and native villages. He also authorized the commander at Fort Pitt to
give Indians blankets from the forts' infirmary, where several men had been
stricken with smallpox. Hatreds mounted on all sides. In western Pennsylvania,
where Indian raids had taken an especially grim toll, a number of
Scots-Irishmen calling themselves the “Paxton Boys” set out to purge the
colony of Indians altogether. In December of 1763 they burst into a small
village of Christian Indians, killed the six people they found there, and
burned it to the ground. Fourteen others who had been absent fled to the town
of Lancaster. Learning that Lancaster's officials had put the survivors into
protective custody, the Paxton Boys organized a mob, forced their way into the
safe house, and massacred all 14 men, women, and children with broadswords.
Colonists and natives alike were increasingly willing to simplify difference
and see all “Indians” or all “whites” as despicable enemies. When officials in
London learned of Pontiac's Rebellion and all the violence it occasioned, they
attributed it to bad leadership and immediately replaced Amherst. More
important, the crown issued the Proclamation of 1763, which
transformed colonial policy in critical ways. Presents and respectful diplomacy
were to resume, and the crown put two Indian superintendents in place (one in
South Carolina and one in New York) to help oversee good relations. Most
critical, colonial settlement west of the Appalachians was to cease
immediately. The so-called proclamation line designated all western territories
as Indian Territory, and strictly off limits to colonization. (Quebec and
Florida were the exceptions, divided into eastern and western halves, for
colonials and Indians.) Restricting westward movement might ease Indian fears,
the British hoped, and so stave off future conflicts. However sensible and just
the Proclamation Line might have seemed from the perspective of the Ohio
Country or London, few British colonists would see it as anything but betrayal
by their own government. Many wondered why they had fought and sacrificed in
the war against France, if all the territory they helped win was to be set
aside for Indians.
George Grenville's New
Measures
If Pontiac's
Rebellion and the Proclamation of 1763 had been the only postwar
disappointments colonists faced, that would have been trouble enough. But George
Grenville, the first lord of the treasury, had yet to confront the
dismal financial consequences of the Seven Years' War. Britain's national debt
had doubled in the decade after 1754. Adding to that burden was the drain of
supporting troops in the colonies. As matters stood, heavy taxes were already
triggering protests among hard-pressed Britons. Americans, in contrast, paid
comparatively low taxes to their colonial governments and little in trade
duties to the empire. Indeed, Grenville discovered that the colonial customs
service paid out four times more in salaries to its collectors than it gathered
in duties and was thereby operating at a net loss. Rampant bribery and tax
evasion allowed merchants to avoid existing duties on foreign molasses, for
example, which New England merchants imported in order to make rum. George
Grenville reasoned that if Americans could pay out a little under the table to
protect an illegal trade, they would willingly pay a little more to go
legitimate. Parliament agreed. In April 1764 it passed the Revenue Act,
commonly called the Sugar Act. This tariff actually lowered the duty on foreign
molasses from six to three pence a gallon. This time, however, the tax would be
scrupulously collected, ships would be tightly monitored for compliance, and
violators would be tried in admiralty courts, far harsher than typical colonial
courts. Grenville made other, similar proposals, all approved by Parliament.
There was the Currency Act of 1764, which prohibited the colonies from making
their paper money legal tender. That prevented Americans from paying their
debts to British traders in currency that had fallen to less than its face
value. There was the Quartering Act of 1765, which obliged any colony in which
troops were stationed to provide them with suitable accommodations. That
contributed 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, all these items had
to bear a stamp signifying that their possessor had paid the tax. Violators of
the Stamp Act, like those disobeying the Sugar Act, were to be tried without
juries in admiralty courts. The English had been paying a similar tax for
nearly a century, so it seemed to Grenville and Parliament that colonials could
have no objections.
Every packet boat from
London that brought news of Parliament's passing another of Grenville's
measures dampened postwar optimism. For all the differences between the
colonies and England, Americans still held much in common with the English. Those
shared ideas included firm beliefs about why the British constitution, British
customs, and British history all served to protect liberty and the rights of
the empire's freeborn citizens. For that reason the new measures, which seemed
like common sense to Grenville and Parliament, did not make sense at all to
Americans.
The Beginning of Colonial
Resistance
Like other Britons,
colonials in America accepted a maxim laid down by the English philosopher John
Locke: property guaranteed liberty. Property, in this view, was not merely real
estate, or wealth, or material possessions. It was the source of strength for
every individual, providing the freedom to think and act independently.
Protecting the individual's right to own property was the main responsibility
of government, because if personal property was not sacred, then neither was
personal liberty. It followed from this close connection between property,
power, and liberty that no people should be taxed without consenting—either
personally or through elected representatives. The power to tax was the power
to destroy by depriving a person of property. Yet both the Sugar Act and the
Stamp Act were taxes passed by members 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 their basic constitutional liberties. Yet both the
Sugar Act and the Stamp Act would prosecute offenders in the admiralty courts,
not in local courts, thus depriving colonials of the freedom claimed by all
other English men and women. The concern for protecting individual liberties
was only one of the convictions shaping the colonies' response to Britain's new
policies. Equally important was their deep suspicion of power itself, a
preoccupation that colonials shared with a minority of radical English
thinkers. These radicals were known by a variety of names: the Country Party,
the Commonwealth men, and the Opposition. They drew their
inspiration from the ancient tradition of classical republicanism, which held
that representative government safeguarded liberty more reliably than either
monarchy or oligarchy did. Underlying that judgment was the belief that human
beings were driven by passion and insatiable ambition. One person (a monarch),
or even a few people (an oligarchy), could not be entrusted with governing,
because they would inevitably become corrupted by power and turn into despots.
Even in representative governments, the people were obliged to watch those in
power at all times. The price of liberty was eternal vigilance.
The Opposition
believed that the people of England were not watching their rulers closely
enough. During the first half of the eighteenth century, they argued, the
entire executive branch of England's government—monarchs and their
ministers—had been corrupted by their appetite for power. Proof of their
ambition was the executive bureaucracy of civil officials and standing armies
that steadily grew larger, interfered more with citizens' lives, and drained
increasing amounts of money from taxpayers. Even more alarming, in the
Opposition's view, the executive branch's bribery of members of Parliament was
corrupting the representative branch of England's government. They warned that
a sinister conspiracy originating in the executive branch of government threatened
English liberty. Opposition thinkers commanded little attention in England,
where they were dismissed as a discontented radical fringe. But they were
revered by political leaders in the American colonies. The Opposition's view of
politics confirmed colonial anxieties about England, doubts that ran deeper
after 1763. Parliament's attempt to tax the colonies and the quartering of a
standing army on the frontier confirmed all too well the Opposition's
description of how powerful rulers turned themselves into tyrants and reduced
the people whom they ruled to slaves. In sum, Grenville's new measures led some
colonials to suspect that ambitious men ruling England might be conspiring
against American liberties. Britain's attempt to raise revenue after 1763 was a
disaster of timing, not just psychologically but also economically. By then,
the colonies were in the throes of a recession. The boom produced in America by
government spending during the war had collapsed once subsidies were withdrawn.
Colonial merchants were left with stocks full of imported goods gathering dust
on their shelves. Farmers lost the brisk and profitable market of the army. Colonial
response to the Sugar Act reflected the painful postwar readjustments. New
England merchants led the opposition, objecting to the Sugar Act principally on
economic grounds. But with the passage of the Stamp Act, the terms of the
imperial debate widened. The Stamp Act hit all colonials, not just New England
merchants. It took money from the pockets of anyone who made a will, filed a
deed, traded out of a colonial port, bought a newspaper, consulted an almanac,
graduated from college, took a chance at dice, or played cards. More important,
the Stamp Act served notice that Parliament claimed the authority to tax the
colonies directly and for the sole purpose of raising revenue.
Riots and Resolves
That unprecedented
assertion provoked an unprecedented development: the first display of colonial
unity. During the spring and summer of 1765 American assemblies passed resolves
denying that Parliament could tax the colonies. The right to tax Americans
belonged to colonial assemblies alone, they argued, by the law of nature and by
the liberties guaranteed in colonial charters and in the British constitution. Virginia's
assembly, the House of Burgesses, took the lead in protesting the Stamp Act,
prodded by Patrick Henry. Just 29 years old in 1765, Henry had tried his
hand at planting in western Virginia before recognizing his real
talent—demagoguery. Blessed with the eloquence
of an evangelical preacher, the dashing charm of a southern gentleman, and a
mind uncluttered by much learning, Henry parlayed his popularity as a
smooth-talking lawyer into a place among the Burgesses. He took his seat just
10 days before introducing the Virginia Resolves against the Stamp Act. The
Burgesses passed Henry's resolutions upholding their exclusive right to tax
Virginians. They stopped short of adopting those resolves that called for
outright resistance. When news of Virginia's stand spread to the rest of the
colonies, other assemblies followed suit, affirming that the sole right to tax
Americans resided in their elected representatives. But some colonial
newspapers deliberately printed a different story—that the Burgesses had
approved all of Henry's resolves, including one that sanctioned disobedience to
any parliamentary tax. That prompted a few assemblies to endorse resistance. In
October 1765 delegates from nine colonies convened in New York, where they
prepared a joint statement of the American position and petitioned the king and
Parliament to repeal both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act. Meanwhile, colonial
leaders turned to the press to arouse popular opposition to the Stamp Act.
Disposed by the writings of the English Opposition to think of politics in
conspiratorial terms, they warned that Grenville and the king's other ministers
schemed to deprive the colonies of their liberties by unlawfully taxing their
property. The Stamp Act was only the first step in a sinister plan to enslave
Americans. Whether or not fears of a dark conspiracy haunted most colonials in
1765, many resisted the Stamp Act. The merchants of Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia agreed to stop importing English goods in order to pressure
British traders to lobby for repeal. In every colony, organizations emerged to
ensure that the Stamp Act, if not repealed, would never be enforced. 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 to time
earlier in the century. Previous riots against houses of prostitution,
merchants who hoarded goods or supporters of smallpox inoculation had not been
spontaneous, uncontrolled outbursts. Crowds chose their targets and their
tactics carefully 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. One hot night in August 1765 a mob went further than the Sons of Liberty
had planned. They all but leveled the stately mansion of Thomas Hutchinson, the
unpopular lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and the brother-in-law of the
colony's stamp distributor. The destruction stunned Bostonians, especially the
Sons of Liberty, who resisted Britain in the name of protecting private
property. Thereafter they took care to keep crowds under tighter control. By
the first of November, the day that the Stamp Act took effect, most of the
stamp 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. The young
king was a good man, industrious and devoted to the empire, but he was also immature
and not particularly bright. Insecurity made him an irksome master, and he ran
through ministers rapidly. By the end of 1765 George had replaced Grenville
with a new first minister, the Marquis of Rockingham. Rockingham had opposed
the Stamp Act from the outset, and he had no desire to enforce it. He received
support from London merchants, who were beginning to feel the pinch of the
American nonimportation campaign, and secured repeal of the Stamp Act in March
1766. The Stamp Act controversy demonstrated to colonials how similar in
political outlook they were to one another and how different they were from the
British. Americans found that they shared the same assumptions about the
meaning of representation. To counter colonial objections to the Stamp Act,
Grenville and his supporters had claimed that Americans were represented in
Parliament, even though they had elected none of its members. Americans were virtually
represented, Grenville insisted, for each member of Parliament stood
for the interests of the whole empire, not just those of the particular
constituency that had elected him. Colonials could see no virtue in the theory
of virtual
representation. After all, the circumstances and interests of
colonials, living an ocean away, were significantly different from those of
Britons. The newly recognized consensus among Americans was that colonials
could be truly represented only by those whom they had elected. Their view,
known as actual representation, emphasized that elected officials were directly
accountable to their constituents. Americans also had discovered that they
agreed about the extent of Parliament's authority over the colonies: it did not
include the right to tax. Colonials conceded Parliament's right to legislate
and to regulate trade for the good of the whole empire. But taxation, in their
view, was the free gift of the people through their representatives—who were
not sitting in Parliament. Members of Parliament brushed aside colonial
petitions and resolves, all but ignoring these constitutional arguments. To
make its own authority clear, Parliament accompanied the repeal of the Stamp
Act with a Declaratory Act, asserting that it had the power to make laws
for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” In fact, the Declaratory Act clarified
nothing. Did Parliament understand 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 what should have been an
advantage by changing ministers again. The king replaced Rockingham with William
Pitt, who enjoyed great favor among colonials for his leadership during
the Seven Years' War and for his opposition to the Stamp Act. Almost alone
among British politicians, Pitt had grasped and approved the colonists'
constitutional objections to taxation. During Parliament's debate over repeal
of the Stamp Act, Grenville asked sarcastically: “Tell me when the colonies
were emancipated?” Pitt immediately shot back, “I desire to know when they were
made slaves!” If the man who believed that Americans were “the sons not the
bastards of England” had been well enough to govern, matters between Great
Britain and the colonies might have turned out differently. But almost
immediately after Pitt took office, his health collapsed, and power passed into
the hands of Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer, who wished
only to raise more revenue. In 1767 he persuaded Parliament to tax the lead,
paint, paper, glass, and tea that Americans imported from Britain. In addition,
Townshend was determined to curb the power of the upstart American assemblies.
To set a bold example, he singled out for punishment the New York legislature,
which was refusing to comply with provisions of the Quartering Act of 1765.
The troops that were left on the western frontier after the Seven Years' War
had been pulled back into colonial seaports in 1766. In part their movement was
meant to economize on costs, but royal officials also hoped the troops'
presence would help quiet agitation over the Stamp Act. When the largest
contingent came to New York, that colony's assembly protested, claiming that
the cost of quartering the troops constituted a form of indirect taxation. But
Townshend held firm, and Parliament backed him, suspending the New York
assembly in 1767 until it agreed to obey the Quartering Act. Townshend also
dipped into the revenue from his new tariffs in order to make royal officials
less dependent on the assemblies. Governors and other officers such as customs
collectors and judges had previously received their salaries from colonial
legislatures. The assemblies lost that crucial leverage when Townshend used the
revenues to pay those bureaucrats directly. Finally, in order to ensure more
effective enforcement of all the duties on imports, Townshend created an American
Board of Customs Commissioners, who appointed a small army of new
customs collectors. 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 empire, Americans saw new
evidence that they were not being treated like the English. A host of
newspapers and pamphlets took up the cry against taxation. The most widely read
publication, “A Letter from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” was the work of John
Dickinson—who was, in fact, a Philadelphia lawyer. He urged Americans
to protest the Townshend duties by consuming fewer imported English luxuries.
The virtues of hard work, thrift, and home manufacturing, Dickinson argued,
would bring about repeal. As Dickinson's star rose over Philadelphia, the
Townshend Acts also shaped the destiny of another man, farther north. By the
1760s Samuel Adams was a leader in the Massachusetts assembly. In
some ways his rise had been unlikely. Adams's earlier ventures as a merchant
ended in bankruptcy; his stint as a tax collector left all of Boston in the
red. But he proved a consummate political organizer and agitator. First his
enemies and later his friends claimed that Adams had decided on independence
for America as early as 1768. In that year he persuaded the assembly to send to
other colonial legislatures a circular letter condemning the Townshend Acts and
calling for a united American resistance. As John Dickinson and Samuel Adams
whipped up public outrage, the Sons of Liberty again organized the opposition
in the streets. Customs officials, like the stamp distributors before them,
became targets of popular hatred. But the customs collectors gave as good as
they got. Using the flimsiest excuses, they seized American vessels for
violating royal regulations. With cold insolence they shook down American
merchants for what amounted to protection money. The racketeering in the
customs service brought tensions in Boston to a flash point in June 1768 after
officials seized and condemned the Liberty, a sloop belonging to one of the
city's biggest merchants, John Hancock. Several thousand Bostonians vented
their anger in a night of rioting, searching out and roughing up customs
officials.
The new secretary of
state for the colonies, Lord Hillsborough, responded to the
Liberty riot by 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 off the harbor. In the months that followed, citizens bristled
when challenged on the streets by armed soldiers. Even more disturbing to
Bostonians was the execution of British military justice on the Common. British
soldiers were whipped savagely for breaking military discipline, and desertion
was punished by execution. The Liberty riot and the arrival of
British troops in Boston pushed colonial assemblies to coordinate their
resistance more closely. Most legislatures endorsed the Massachusetts circular
letter sent to them by Samuel Adams. They promptly adopted agreements not to
import or to consume British goods. The reluctance among some merchants to
revive non-importation in 1767 gave way to greater enthusiasm by 1768, and by early
1769, such agreements were in effect throughout the colonies. The Stamp Act
crisis had also called forth intercolonial cooperation and tactics such as
non-importation. But the protests against the Townshend Acts raised the stakes
by creating new institutions to carry forward the resistance. Subscribers to
the non-importation agreements established “committees of inspection” to
enforce the ban on trade with Britain. The committees publicly denounced
merchants who continued 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 non-importation would spur domestic
manufacturing, began to organize as independent political groups. In many
towns, women took an active part in opposing the Townshend duties. The
“Daughters of Liberty” took to heart John Dickinson's advice: they wore
homespun clothing instead of English finery, served coffee instead of tea, and
boycotted shops selling British goods.
The International Sons of
Liberty
The resistance after
1768 grew broader in another sense as well. Many of its supporters in the
colonies felt a new sense of kinship with freedom fighters throughout Europe.
Eagerly they read about the doings of men such as Charles 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 men charged the
king's ministers with corrupting the political life of the British Isles. The
doings of political rebels even in distant Poland and Turkey engaged colonial
sympathies, too. But perhaps the international cause that proved dearest to
American lovers of liberty was the fate of Corsica. For years, this tiny island
off the coast of Italy had fought for its independence, first from the Italian
state of Genoa and then from France, which bought the island in 1768. The
leader of the Corsican rebellion, Pascal Paoli, led what one New York newspaper
touted as a “glorious struggle.” Many in the British empire hoped that England
would rally to defend Corsica's freedom, if only to keep France from seizing
this strategic point in the Mediterranean. But British statesmen had no
intention of going to war with France over mere Corsica, and when French troops
routed his rebel army, Paoli fled to exile in England in 1769. Adding insult to
injury, this “greatest man of earth,” as he was lionized, began to hobnob with
British nobles. He even accepted a pension of 1,000 pounds a year from George
III. The moral of the sad story, according to more than one colonial newspaper,
was that British corruption pervaded not only the empire but all of Europe.
Paoli had been “bought”—and if the Corsican sons of liberty could not survive,
would their American counterparts manage to remain virtuous for very long?
The Boston Massacre
Meanwhile, the
situation in Boston deteriorated steadily. British troops found themselves
regularly cursed by citizens and occasionally pelted with stones, dirt, and
human excrement. The British regulars were particularly unpopular among
Boston's laboring classes because they competed with them for jobs. Off-duty
soldiers moonlighted as maritime laborers, and they sold their services at
rates cheaper than the wages paid to locals. By 1769 brawls between British
regulars and waterfront workers broke out frequently. With some 4,000 redcoats
enduring daily contact with some 15,000 Bostonians under the sway of Samuel
Adams, what happened on the night of March 5, 1770, was nearly inevitable. A
crowd gathered around the customs house for the sport of heckling the 10
soldiers who guarded it. The redcoats panicked and fended off insults and
snowballs with live fire, hitting 11 rioters and killing 5. Adams and other
propagandists seized on the incident. Labeling the bloodshed “the
Boston Massacre,” they publicized that “atrocity” throughout the
colonies. The radical Boston Gazette framed its account in an eye-catching black-bordered
edition headed with a drawing of five coffins. While Townshend's policies
spurred the resistance in America, the obvious finally dawned on Parliament.
They recognized that Townshend's duties on imported
English goods only discouraged sales to colonials and encouraged them to
manufacture at home. The argument for repeal was overwhelming, and the way had
been cleared by the unexpected death of Townshend. In 1770 his successor, Lord
North, convinced Parliament to repeal all the Townshend duties except
the one on tea, allowing that tax to stand as a source of revenue and as a
symbol of Parliament's authority.
Resistance Revived
Repeal of the Townshend duties took the wind from
the sails of American resistance for more than two years. But the controversy
between England and the colonies had not been resolved. Colonials still paid
taxes on molasses and tea, taxes to which they had not consented. They were
still subject to trial in admiralty courts, which operated without juries. They
still lived with a standing army in their midst. Beneath the banked fires of
protest smoldered the live embers of Americans' political inequality. Any shift
in the wind could fan those embers into flames. The wind did shift, quite
literally, on Narragansett Bay in 1772, running aground the Gaspee, a British
naval schooner in hot pursuit of Rhode Island smugglers. Residents of nearby
Providence quickly celebrated the Gaspee's misfortune by burning it down to the
water line. Outraged British officials sent a special commission to look into
the matter, intending once again to bypass the established colonial court
system. The arrival of the Gaspee Commission reignited the
imperial crisis, and in America, once again, resistance flared. It did so through
an ingenious mechanism, the committees of correspondence. Established in all
the colonies by their assemblies, the committees drew up statements of American
rights and grievances, distributed those documents within and among the
colonies, and solicited responses from towns and counties. The brainchild of
Samuel Adams, the committee structure formed a new communications network, one
that fostered an intercolonial agreement on resistance to British measures. The
strategy succeeded, and not only among colonies. The committees spread the
scope of the resistance from colonial seaports into rural areas, engaging
farmers and other country folk in the opposition to Britain. The committees had
much to talk about when Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773. The law
was an effort to bail out the bankrupt East India Company by granting that
corporation a monopoly on the tea trade to Americans. Because the company could
use agents to sell its product directly, cutting out the middlemen, it could
offer a lower price than that charged by colonial merchants. Thus, although the
Tea Act would hurt American merchants, it promised to make tea cheaper for
ordinary Americans. Still, many colonials saw the act as Parliament's attempt
to trick them into accepting its authority to tax the colonies. They set out to
deny that power once and for all. In the early winter of 1773 popular leaders
in Boston called for the tea cargoes to be returned immediately to England. On
the evening of December 16, thousands of Bostonians, as well as farmers from
the surrounding countryside, packed into the Old South Meetinghouse. Some
members of the audience knew what Samuel Adams had on the evening's agenda, and
they awaited their cue. It came when Adams told the meeting that they could do
nothing more to save their country. War whoops rang through the meetinghouse,
the crowd spilled onto the streets and out to the waterfront, and the Boston
Tea Party commenced. From the throng emerged 50 men dressed as Indians
to disguise their identities. The party boarded three vessels docked off
Griffin's Wharf, broke open casks containing 90,000 pounds of tea, 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 independence. Lord
North's assessment was grim: “We are now to dispute whether we have, or have
not, any authority in that country.” To reassert its authority, Parliament
passed the Coercive Acts, dubbed in the colonies the “Intolerable Acts.” The
first of these came in March 1774, two months after hearing of the Tea Party,
when Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill, closing that
harbor to all oceangoing traffic until such time as the king saw fit to reopen
it. And George, Parliament announced, would not see fit until colonials paid
the East India Company for their losses. During the next three months,
Parliament approved three other “intolerable” laws designed to punish
Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Government Act handed over the colony's
government to royal officials. Even convening town meetings would require royal
permission. The Impartial Administration of Justice Act permitted any royal
official accused of a crime in Massachusetts to be tried in England or in
another colony. The Quartering Act allowed the housing of British troops in
uninhabited private homes, outlying buildings, and barns—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 past decade were part of a deliberate design—a plan to
centralize the administration of the British empire that seemed only common
sense to British officials. But those efforts by the king's ministers and
Parliament to run the colonies more efficiently and profitably were viewed by
more and more Americans as a sinister conspiracy against their liberties. For
colonials, the study of history confirmed that interpretation, especially their
reading of the histories written by the English Opposition. The Opposition's
favorite historical subject was the downfall of republics, whether those of
ancient Greece and Rome or more recent republican governments in Venice and
Denmark. The lesson of their histories was always the same: power overwhelmed
liberty, unless the people remained vigilant. The pattern, argued radicals, had
been repeated in America over the previous dozen years: costly wars waged;
oppressive taxes levied to pay for them; standing armies sent to overawe
citizens; corrupt governors, customs collectors, and judges appointed to enrich
themselves by enforcing the measures. Everything seemed to fit.
Week after week in
the spring of 1774, reports of legislative outrages came across the waters.
Shortly after approving the Coercive Acts, Parliament passed the Québec Act, which established a
permanent government in what had been French Canada. Ominously, it included no
representative assembly. Equally ominous to Protestant colonials, the Québec
Act officially recognized the Roman Catholic Church and extended the bounds of
the province to include all land between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.
Suddenly New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia found themselves bordering a
British colony whose subjects had no voice in their own government. With the
passage of the Coercive Acts, many more colonials came to believe not only that
ambitious men plotted to enslave the colonies but also that those conspirators
included almost all British political leaders. At the time of the Stamp Act and
again during the agitation against the Townshend Acts, most colonials had
confined their suspicions to the king's ministers. By 1774 members of
Parliament were also implicated in that conspiracy—and a few radicals were
wondering aloud about George III. As alarm deepened in the wake of the Coercive
Acts, one colony after another called for an intercolonial congress—like the
one that had met during the Stamp Act crisis—to determine the best way to
defend their freedom. But many also remained unsettled about where the logic of
their actions seemed to be taking them: toward a denial that they were any
longer English.
Toward
the Revolution
By the beginning of
September 1774, when 55 delegates to the First Continental Congress gathered
in Philadelphia, the news from Massachusetts was grim. The colony verged on
anarchy, it was reported, as its inhabitants resisted the enforcement of the
Massachusetts Government Act. In the midst of this atmosphere of crisis, the
members of Congress also had to take one another's measure. Many of the
delegates had not traveled outside their own colonies. (All but Georgia sent
representatives.) Although the delegates encountered a great deal of diversity,
they quickly discovered that they esteemed the same traits of character,
attributes that they called “civic virtue.” These traits included simplicity
and self-reliance, industry and thrift, and above all, an unselfish commitment
to the public good. Most members of the Congress also shared 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, considering that Samuel Adams was
along—for radical action and a willingness to use force to accomplish its ends.
The First Continental
Congress
As the delegates
settled down to business, their aim was to reach agreement on three key points.
How were they to justify the rights they claimed as American colonials? What
were the limits of Parliament's power? And what were the proper tactics for
resisting the Coercive Acts? Congress quickly agreed on the first point. The
delegates affirmed that the law of nature, the colonial charters, and the
British constitution provided the foundations of American liberties. This
position was what most colonials had argued since 1765. On the two other
issues, Congress charted a middle course between the demands of radicals and
the reservations of conservatives. Since the time of the Stamp Act, most
colonials had insisted that Parliament had no authority to tax the colonies.
But later events had demonstrated that Parliament could undermine colonial
liberties by legislation as well as by taxation. The suspension of the New York
legislature, the Gaspee Commission, and the Coercive Acts all fell into this
category. Given those experiences, the delegates adopted a Declaration of
Rights and Grievances on October 14, 1774, asserting the right of the colonies
to tax and legislate for themselves. The Declaration of Rights thus limited
Parliament's power over Americans more strictly than colonials had a decade
earlier. By denying Parliament's power to make laws for the colonies, the
Continental Congress blocked efforts of the most conservative delegates to
reach an accommodation with England. Their leading advocate, Joseph
Galloway of Pennsylvania, proposed a plan of union with Britain similar
to the one set 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 to review and veto by Parliament. For its part, Parliament would have
to submit for the grand council's approval any acts it passed affecting
America. A majority of delegates judged that Galloway's proposal left
Parliament too much leeway in legislating for colonials, and they rejected his
plan.
Although the Congress
denied Parliament the right to impose taxes or to make laws, delegates stopped
short of declaring that it had no authority at all in the colonies. They
approved Parliament's regulation of trade, but only because of the
interdependent economy of the empire. And although some radical pamphleteers
were attacking the king for plotting against American liberties, Congress
acknowledged the continuing allegiance of the colonies to George III. In other
words, the delegates called for a return to the situation that had existed in
the empire before 1763, with Parliament regulating trade and the colonies
exercising all powers of taxation and legislation. On the question of
resistance, the Congress satisfied the desires of its most radical delegates by
drawing up the Continental Association, an agreement to cease all trade with
Britain until the Coercive Acts were repealed. They agreed that their fellow
citizens would immediately stop drinking East India Company tea and that by
December 1, 1774, merchants would no longer import goods of any sort from
Britain. A ban on the export of American produce to Britain and the West Indies
would go into effect a year later, during September 1775—the lag being a
concession to southern rice and tobacco planters, who wanted to market crops
already planted. The Association provided for the total cessation of trade, but
Samuel Adams and other radicals wanted bolder action. They received help from
Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith who had long provided newspapers with many
lurid engravings showing British abuses. On September 16, Revere galloped into
Philadelphia bearing a copy of resolves drawn up by Bostonians and other
residents of Suffolk County. The Suffolk Resolves, as they were called, branded
the Coercive Acts as unconstitutional and called for civil disobedience to
protest them. Congress endorsed the resolves, as Adams had hoped. But it would
not approve another part of the radicals' agenda—preparing for war by
authorizing proposals to strengthen and arm colonial militias. Thus the First
Continental Congress steered a middle course. Although determined to bring
about repeal of the Coercive Acts, it held firm in resisting any revolutionary
course of action. If British officials had responded to its recommendations and
restored the status quo of 1763, the war for independence might have been
postponed—perhaps indefinitely. However, even though the Congress did not go to
the extremes urged by the radicals, its decisions drew colonials farther down
the road to independence.
The Last Days of the
British Empire in America
Most colonials
applauded the achievements of the First Continental Congress. They expected
that the Association would bring about a speedy repeal of the Coercive Acts.
But fear that the colonies were moving toward a break with Britain led others
to denounce the doings of the Congress. Conservatives were convinced that if
independence were declared, chaos would ensue. Colonials, they argued, would
quarrel over land claims and sectional tensions and religious differences, as
they had so often in the recent past. Without Britain to referee such disputes,
they feared, the result would be civil war, followed by anarchy. The man in
America with the least liking for the Continental Congress sat in the
hottest seat in the colonies, that of the governor of Massachusetts. General
Thomas Gage now watched as royal authority crumbled in Massachusetts
and the rebellion spread to other colonies. In June 1774 a desperate Gage
dissolved the Massachusetts legislature, only to see it re-form, on its own,
into a Provincial Congress. That new body assumed the government of the colony
in October and began arming the militia. Gage then started to fortify Boston
and pleaded for more troops—only to find his fortifications damaged by
saboteurs and his requests for reinforcements ignored by Britain. Outside
Boston, royal authority fared no better. Farmers in western Massachusetts
forcibly closed the county courts, turning out royally appointed justices and
establishing their own tribunals. Popularly elected committees of inspection
charged with enforcing the Association took over towns everywhere in
Massachusetts, not only restricting trade but also regulating every aspect of
local life. The committees called on townspeople to display civic virtue by
renouncing “effeminate” English luxuries such as tea and fine clothing and
“corrupt” leisure activities such as dancing, gambling, and racing. The committees also assigned spies to report
on any citizen unfriendly to the resistance. “Enemies of American liberty”
risked being roundly condemned in public or beaten and pelted with mud and dung
by hooting, raucous mobs.
Throughout the other
colonies a similar process was under way. During the winter and early spring of
1775 provincial congresses, county conventions, and local committees of
inspection were emerging as revolutionary governments, replacing royal
authority at every level. As the spectacle unfolded before General Gage, he
concluded that only force could subdue the colonies. It would take more than he
had at his command, but reinforcements might be on the way. In February of 1775
Parliament had approved an address to the king declaring that the colonies were
in rebellion.
As spring came to
Boston, the city waited. A band of artisans, organized as spies and express
riders by Paul Revere, watched General Gage and waited for him to act. On
April 14 word from Lord North finally arrived: Gage was to seize the leaders of
the Provincial
Congress, an action that would behead the rebellion, North said. Gage
knew 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 lamps
from its steeple. It was a signal that British troops had moved out of Boston
and were marching toward the arms and ammunition stored by the Provincial
Congress 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 Minuteman militia of about 70
farmers, chilled and sleepy; mustered on the Green at the center of the small
rural town. Lexington Green lay directly on the road to Concord. About four in
the morning 700 British troops massed on the Green, and their commander, Major
John Pitcairn, ordered the Lexington militia to disperse. The townsmen,
outnumbered and overawed, began to obey. Then a shot rang out—whether the
British or the Americans fired first is unknown—and then two volleys burst from
the ranks of the redcoats. With a cheer the British set off for Concord, 5
miles distant, leaving eight Americans dead on Lexington Green. By dawn,
hundreds of Minutemen from nearby towns were surging into Concord. The
British entered at about seven in the morning and moved, unopposed, toward
their target, a house lying across the bridge that spanned the Concord River.
While three companies of British soldiers searched for American guns and
ammunition, three others, posted on the bridge itself, had the misfortune to
find those American arms—borne by the rebels and being fired with deadly
accuracy. By noon, the British were retreating to Boston. The narrow road from
Concord to Boston's outskirts became a corridor of carnage. Pursuing Americans
fired on the column of fleeing redcoats from the cover of fences and forests.
By the end of April 19, the British had sustained 273 casualties; the Americans,
95. It was only the beginning. By evening of the next day, some 20,000 New
England militia had converged on Boston for a long siege.
Common Sense
The bloodshed at
Lexington Green and Concord's North Bridge committed colonials to a course of
rebellion—and independence. That was the conclusion drawn by Thomas
Paine, who urged other Americans to join the rebels. Paine himself was
hardly an American at all. He was born in England, first apprenticed as a
corsetmaker, appointed later a tax collector, and fated finally to become
midwife to the age of republican revolutions. Paine came to Philadelphia late
in 1774, set up as a journalist, and made the American cause his own. “Where
liberty is, there is my country,” he declared. In January 1776 he wrote a
pamphlet to inform colonials of their identity as a distinct people and their
destiny as a nation. Common Sense enjoyed tremendous
popularity and wide circulation, selling 120,000 copies. 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 thinking has arisen.” That new
era of politics for Paine was the age of republicanism. He denounced monarchy
as a foolish and dangerous form of government, one that violated the dictates
of reason as well as the word of the Bible. By ridicule and remorseless
argument, he severed the ties of colonial allegiance to the king. Common Sense
scorned George III as “the Royal Brute of Britain,” who had enslaved the chosen
people of the new age—the Americans. Nor did Paine stop there. He rejected the
idea that colonials were or should want to be English. The colonies occupied a
huge continent an ocean away from the tiny British Isles—clear proof that
nature itself had fashioned America for independence. England lay locked in
Europe, doomed to the corruption of an Old World. America had been discovered
anew to 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 for Americans an English identity no longer fit. The
radicals in America viewed this change in identity in terms of age-old
conspiracies that repeated themselves throughout history. First, the people of
a republic were impoverished by costly wars—as the colonists could well
appreciate after the Seven Years' War. Then the government burdened the people
with taxes to pay for those wars—as in the case of the Sugar Act or the Stamp
Act or the Townshend duties. Next those in power stationed a standing army in
the country, pretending to protect the people but actually lending military
force to their rulers. The rhetoric of the Opposition about ministerial conspiracies
gave such talk a fervid quality that, to some modern ears, may seem an
exaggeration. Take away the rhetoric, however, and the argument makes
uncomfortable sense. The British administration began its “backwoods” war with
France, intending to limit it to the interior of North America. But the war
aims of William Pitt—the leader Americans counted as their friend—grew with
every victory, and he urged war with Spain even as France was looking for
peace. Britain had already taken its war in Europe farther afield, driving
France out of India. When it declared war against Spain, British naval forces
in India sailed farther east, in a surprise attack on Spain's colony in the
Philippines. At the same time another fleet raced toward Spanish Cuba. Peace came
only once Britain and the major powers had bankrupted their treasuries.
Conspiracy may not have been at the heart of the plan. But wars must be paid
for. And the prevailing assumptions in a monarchy about who should pay led to
the effort to regulate and bring order to Britain's “ungrateful” colonies. In
America, colonists were ungrateful precisely because they had established
political institutions that made the rights of “freeborn Britons” more
available to ordinary citizens than they were in the nation that had created
those liberties. Perhaps, in other words, most Americans had succeeded too well
at becoming English, regarding themselves as political equals entitled 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 Americans shared, 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 republicans, not
monarchists. It was the destiny of Americans to be independent, not subject to
British dominion. It was the destiny of Americans to be American, not English.
That, according to Thomas Paine, was common sense.
Chapter Summary
The chapter opens with an event
that marked both a beginning and an ending. The Seven Years' War resolved the
contest for supremacy in North America between the English, the French, and the
Indians. Yet it also set the stage for the coming of American independence.
The Seven Years' War
The conflict,
triggered when the French drove George Washington from Fort Necessity in 1754,
quickly became global. Until 1758, the French and their Indian allies in North
America seemed likely to sweep to victory. Then William Pitt took control of
the British war effort and the tide of battle turned. By 1759 British and
colonial forces had claimed most of Canada. The Treaty of Paris in 1763
officially ended the French presence on the continent of North America. The
Seven Years' War was pivotal because once the British removed the threat of the
French from the colonial frontiers, George III and his ministers could renew
their efforts to centralize and consolidate their American empire. Of course,
the Stuart monarchs had attempted to centralize colonial government in the
1680s, with the Dominion of New England (Chapter 3). In 1763, though,
Parliament accepted a crucial role in this process and displayed an
unprecedented determination to assert its authority directly in America. The
British victory in the Seven Years' War left Americans overflowing with
millennial optimism about the future of the empire. They had great expectations
of the role that they would play in it. But many leading Britons came away from
the conflict disaffected with colonies, charging that Americans had withheld
support and even traded with the enemy. Some anticipated that Americans would
exploit their new military security by making a bid for independence. British
policymakers had no intention of granting the colonies greater influence within
the empire.
The Imperial Crisis
Britain did intend
to impose tighter controls on American trade and territory and pay for the
expense by raising revenue in the colonies. Through a series of new measures
during the early 1760s, including the Proclamation of 1763, the Sugar Act, the
Stamp Act, the Currency Act, the Quartering Act, and the stationing of British
troops in the colonies, Parliament revealed its design for advancing the cause
of centralization. However, the timing of these new measures was disastrous.
They deflated
American expectations of a more equal status in the empire and coincided with a
postwar downturn in the colonial economy. Perhaps more importantly, the new
measures abridged what Americans perceived as their constitutional and
political liberties, the right to consent to taxation, the right to trial by
jury, the freedom from standing armies. As a result, Americans displayed an
unprecedented unity in opposing the innovations in imperial policy, turning to
petitions, crowd actions, and boycotts as resistance tactics. Although
Parliament bowed to pressure from British merchants and repealed the Stamp Act,
it reasserted its authority to tax Americans by passing the Townshend Acts in
1767. Americans renewed and institutionalized their resistance by enforcing
boycotts through committees of inspection, and affirmed their unity in
responses to the Massachusetts Circular Letter. The stationing of British
troops in Boston only increased hostility to imperial authority, which erupted
into violence in 1770 with the Boston Massacre. With the repeal of all of the
Townshend duties except for the tax on tea in 1770, American resistance
subsided until the Gaspee incident in 1772. The formation of the committees of
correspondence, inspired by Samuel Adams, fostered intercolonial consensus and
spread the scope of the resistance inland. When Britain responded to the Boston
Tea Party with the Coercive Acts in 1774, many Americans, primed by resistance
propaganda, concluded that all British actions in the last decade were part of
a deliberate plot to enslave Americans by depriving them of property and
liberty. The political theories of the English Opposition, which taught that
power inevitably conspires to encroach on liberty, informed the historical
perspectives that colonials now applied to the crisis within the empire. With
the stage set for concerted intercolonial action, the First Continental
Congress convened at Philadelphia in September 1774. Delegates maintained a
middle course, resisting radical demands for immediate mobilization for war and
conservative appeals for accommodation. Congress
denied Parliament any authority in the colonies beyond the power to regulate
trade, but acknowledged the colonies' allegiance to George III. Delegates also
drew up the Continental Association, an agreement to cease all trade with
Britain until Parliament repealed the Coercive Acts.
Toward the Revolution
The collapse of
royal authority in Massachusetts moved the colonies toward a showdown with
Britain. To make a show of force, General Thomas Gage dispatched troops from
Boston in April of 1775 to seize arms stored at Concord, a move that led to the
first battle between British soldiers and the Massachusetts militia. In January
of 1776, Thomas Paine's Common Sense pronounced that the imperial crisis had
passed from "argument to arms." Paine's pamphlet undermined the
emotional tie to England by attacking George III, and persuaded many Americans
of the necessity of independence.
KEY
TERMS, PEOPLE, PLACES, CONCEPTS
Tariff: a
duty on trade, the purpose of which is primarily to regulate the flow of
commerce rather than raise revenue. Page 108
Taxes: A
duty of trade (known as external taxation) or duty on items circulating within
a nation or a colony (known as internal taxation), intended primarily to raise
revenue rather than to regulate the flow of commerce. Page 108
The Opposition: A
diverse group of political thinkers and writers in Great Britain who elaborated
the tradition of classical republicanism from the late seventeenth century
through the eighteenth century. Page 109
Classical republicanism: the
view emphasizing that all rulers need to be watched due to a tendency for power
to corrupt human nature. Page 109
Virtual representation: the
view that representation is not linked to election but rather to common
interest. Page 111
Actual representation: the
view that the people can be represented only by a person whom they have
actually elected to office. Page
111
Committees of correspondence: the
strategy devised by Samuel Adams in 1772 to rally popular support among
American colonials against British imperial policies. Page 114
George Washington: George
Washington was the first President of the United States of America, serving
from 1789 to 1797, and the dominant military and political leader of the United
States from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the
American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from
1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of the Constitution in 1787.
Washington became the first president,
by
unanimous choice, and oversaw the creation of a strong, well-financed national government
that maintained neutrality in the wars raging in Europe, suppressed rebellion, and
won acceptance among Americans of all types. His leadership style established
many forms and rituals of government that have been used since, such as using a
cabinet system and delivering an inaugural address. Washington is universally
regarded as the 'Father of his country.' Page
General Edward Braddock: An
unsuccessful British commander in North America in the early stages of the
French and Indian War. He was appointed major general in 1754 and arrived in
Virginia the following February to command all British forces in North America
against the French. Although hampered by administrative confusion and lack of
resources, he undertook, after several months of preparation, to attack the
French-held Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh, Pa.) in an extremely arduous
wilderness expedition. His force cut a road westward from Cumberland, Md., the
first road across the Allegheny Mountains. George Washington, then lieutenant
colonel of the Virginia militia, was among the 700 provincials and 1,400
British regulars under his command. Braddock’s force safely crossed the
Monongahela River and reached a point only 8 miles (13 km) from Fort Duquesne.
The forward column of 1,459 officers and men, being short of Indian scouts, was
ambushed in a ravine by 254 French and 600 Indians on July 9. Wounded during
the ensuing slaughter and riot, Braddock was carried off the field and died
four days later at a rallying point known as Great Meadows, Pa., where he was
buried. Page
William Pitt: Veteran politician who
directed the British war effort in the latter part of the Seven Years War; a
later advocate for colonial rights. Page
Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm: A general
who served as commander in chief of French forces in Canada (1756–59) during
the Seven Years’ War, a worldwide struggle between Great Britain and France for
colonial possessions. In 1756 he was placed in command of the French regular
troops in North America, with the rank of major general; but his commission did
not include authority over the greater part of military resources in Canada. He
clashed with the governor general of the colony, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, and
their animosity handicapped efficient military operations. Montcalm had early
success as tactical commander against the British. In 1756 he forced the
surrender of the British post at Oswego, thus restoring to France undisputed
control of Lake Ontario. In 1757 he turned southward and captured Ft. William
Henry, with its 2,500-man garrison; the victory was marred, however, by the slaughter
of many English prisoners by the Native American allies of the French. Montcalm’s
greatest feat was at Ticonderoga (July 8, 1758), when, with about 3,800 men, he
repulsed an attack by 15,000 British forces under Gen. James Abercrombie.
British casualties amounted to nearly 2,000, compared with 377 for the French.
The victory was largely a result of Abercrombie’s incompetence; nevertheless,
Montcalm was promoted to lieutenant general and given authority over Vaudreuil
in all military affairs. Page
General James Wolfe: commander
of the British army at the capture of Quebec from the French in 1759, a victory
that led to British supremacy in Canada. he was commissioned in the Royal
Marines in 1741 but transferred almost immediately to the 12th Foot. Wolfe was
on active service continuously until the end of the War of the Austrian
Succession, fighting against the French at Dettingen (1743) and later at
Falkirk and Culloden (1746) during the Jacobite rebellion. He was promoted to
lieutenant colonel in 1750 and served as brigadier general under Major General
Jeffery Amherst in an expedition against the French at Cape Breton Island
(1758). The capture of Louisbourg, a fortress on the island, was largely
attributed to Wolfe’s daring and determination. he received from William Pitt
the rank of major general and command of the expedition to capture the city of
Quebec. By late June 1759, Wolfe’s entire convoy had passed up the St. Lawrence
River and had reached the island of Orleans, which lay opposite Quebec along
the river. The army of the French defender of Quebec, the marquis de Montcalm,
was strongly entrenched on the high cliffs along the river frontage. Unable to
lure Montcalm out from the safety of his defenses, Wolfe on July 31 ordered an
assault on the Beauport shore east of the city, which proved to be a costly
failure. Ill with dysentery and suffering from rheumatism, Wolfe endured great
pain and anxiety while the siege dragged on throughout August 1759. At the end
of that month, he and his brigadiers agreed on a plan to land troops across the
river a short distance upstream and to the west of Quebec. The resulting
attack, which involved scaling the cliffs only one mile from the city, was
carried out on September 12 and surprised the French on the level fields of the
Plains of Abraham. On September 13, after a battle lasting less than an hour,
the French fled. Wolfe, wounded twice early in the battle, died of a third
wound, but not before he knew Quebec had fallen to his troops. Montcalm
survived him by only a few hours. Quebec surrendered on September 18, and a
year later in 1760 Amherst received the surrender of Montreal and the rest of
Canada. Page
Pontiac/Pontiacs Rebellion: Pontiac
was a Ottawa chief who organized an Indian rebellion, leading attacks against
British forts and settlements. Pontiac's
Rebellion begins when a confederacy of Native American warriors under
Ottawa chief Pontiac attacks the British force at Detroit. After failing to
take the fort in their initial assault, Pontiac's forces, made up of Ottawa’s
and reinforced by Wyandots, Ojibwas, and Potawatamis, initiated a siege that
would stretch into months. Page
George Grenville/Grenville Measures/Duties: English
politician whose policy of taxing the American colonies, initiated by his Revenue
Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765, started the train of events leading to
the American Revolution. e entered Parliament in 1741, one of the “cousinhood”
of men interrelated by blood or marriage and further united in their opposition
to Sir Robert Walpole, who held power from 1721 to 1742. After holding a number
of ministerial appointments, Grenville was recommended to George III by Lord
Bute to be his successor as first lord of the Treasury (prime minister).
Grenville’s ministry (1763–65) was unhappy and disastrous, largely because of
his lack of finesse, eloquence, and imagination and his determination to
control all crown patronage. His relationship with the king suffered from
George III’s habit of continual consultation with Bute. Apart from American
taxation, other notable incidents during the Grenville administration included
the prosecution of John Wilkes for seditious libel and the clumsy handling of
the Regency Act of 1765 that had been introduced as a result of a severe
illness the king had suffered. This bumbling finally alienated the king and led
to the fall of the ministry. In opposition after 1765, Grenville castigated
politicians opposed to American taxation and helped to bring about the passage
of Townshend’s Revenue Act of 1767, which renewed tension between Britain and
the colonies. Page
John Dickinson/a Letter from a Farmer in Pennsylvania: American
statesman often referred to as the “penman of the Revolution.” He represented
Pennsylvania in the Stamp Act Congress (1765) and drafted its declaration of
rights and grievances. He won fame in 1767–68 as the author of Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,
to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, which appeared in many colonial
newspapers. The letters helped turn opinion against the Townshend Acts (1767),
under which new duties were collected to pay the salaries of royal officials in
the colonies. He also denounced the establishing of the American Board of
Customs Commissioners at Boston to enforce the acts. Page
Samuel Adams: A politician of the
American Revolution, leader of the Massachusetts “radicals,” who was a delegate
to the Continental Congress (1774–81) and a signer of the Declaration of
Independence. He was later lieutenant governor (1789–93) and governor (1794–97)
of Massachusetts. Page
Charles Townshend/Townshend Acts: British
Chancellor of the Exchequer whose measures for the taxation of the
British-American colonies intensified the hostilities that eventually led to
the American Revolution. As a member of the Board of Trade from 1749 to 1754,
he showed an interest in increasing British powers of taxation and control over
the colonies. In 1754 and 1755 he served on the Board of Admiralty. He was
secretary at war in 1761–62 and paymaster general from May 1765 to July 1766, when
he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in the ministry of William Pitt, the
Elder. Soon Pitt became severely ill, and Townshend assumed effective control
of the administration. The Townshend
Acts were a series of four acts
passed by the British Parliament in an attempt to assert what it considered to
be its historic right to exert authority over the colonies through suspension
of a recalcitrant representative assembly and through strict provisions for the
collection of revenue duties. The British American colonists named the acts
after Charles Townshend, who sponsored them. Page
Lord North: prime minister from 1770 to
1782, whose vacillating leadership contributed to the loss of Great Britain’s
American colonies in the American Revolution (1775–83). Elected as a Member of
Parliament for Banbury at the age of 22, he represented the town (of which his
father was high steward) for nearly 40 years. The Duke of Newcastle, when prime
minister, made him a lord of the treasury in 1759, and North held this office under
the succeeding prime ministers, the Earl of Bute and George Grenville, until
1765. On the fall of the Marquees of Rockingham’s first ministry in 1766, North
was sworn a member of the Privy Council and made paymaster general by the next
prime minister, the Duke of Grafton. On the death of Charles Townshend in
September 1767 North became chancellor of the exchequer. North succeeded
Grafton as prime minister in February 1770 and continued in office for 12 of
the most eventful years in English history. George III had at last clinched the
defeat of the Whiggish Newcastle-Rockingham connection; and found in North a
congenial Tory and chief minister. The path of the minister in Parliament was a
hard one; he was popular and an able debater, but at times he had to defend
measures which he had not designed and of which he had not approved, and this
too in the House of Commons in which the oratorical ability of Edmund Burke and
Charles James Fox was ranged against him. During peacetime North’s financial
administration was sound, but he lacked the initiative to introduce radical
fiscal reforms. The most important events of his ministry were those concerned
with the American Revolution. He cannot be accused of causing it, but one of
the first acts of his ministry was the retention of the tea duty, and his
ministry responded to the Boston Tea Party with the Coercive Acts of 1774.
Underestimating the colonists’ powers of resistance, he attempted to combine
severity and conciliation. He faced war halfheartedly and was easily depressed
by reverses; after 1777 it was only George III’s repeated entreaties not to
abandon his sovereign to the mercy of the Rockingham Whigs that induced North
to defend a war that at times he felt to be hopeless and impolitic.
In
March 1782 he insisted on resigning, after the news of Cornwallis’ surrender at
Yorktown made defeat in the House of Commons imminent. North had been rewarded
for his assistance to the king by honors for himself and sinecures for his
relatives, but in April 1783 he formed a famous coalition with the prominent
Whig Fox (much to George III’s disgust) and became secretary of state with Fox
under the nominal premiership of the Duke of Portland. The coalition went out
of office on Fox’s India bill in December 1783. For about three years North
continued to act with Fox in opposition, but failing eyesight then caused his
retirement from politics. He succeeded to the earldom of Guilford on his
father’s death in 1790. Page
Marquees of Rockingham: Charles
Watson-Wentworth, 2nd marquees of Rockingham,
(born May 13, 1730—died July 1, 1782, London), prime minister of Great
Britain from July 1765 to July 1766 and from March to July 1782. He led the
parliamentary group known as Rockingham Whigs, which opposed Britain’s war
(1775–83) against its colonists in North America. In July 1765 George III
dismissed George Grenville as head of the ministry and appointed Rockingham in
his place. The new prime minister obtained repeal of the Stamp Act, which had
imposed an unpopular tax on the American colonists, but he agreed to the
passage of a Declaratory Act reaffirming Parliament’s power to tax the colonies
and to make statutes binding on them in all areas. He tried to lighten the tax
burden on Americans by reducing the duty on non-British imported molasses.
Despite solid legislative achievements in other areas, Rockingham’s ministry
collapsed through internal dissension, and in July 1766 George replaced
Rockingham with William Pitt (later earl of Chatham). For the next 16 years
Rockingham led a strong parliamentary opposition to the ministries in power.
Because he was totally lacking in oratorical skills, his brilliant colleague
Edmund Burke presented the group’s case against Britain’s efforts to suppress
the American rebellion. During his brief second ministry Rockingham initiated
peace negotiations with the American colonists and pushed through Parliament
Burke’s program for limiting the king’s patronage power. In addition, his
ministry obtained legislative independence for the Irish Parliament. Ross
Hoffman’s biography of Rockingham, The Marquis, was published in 1973. Page
Thomas Paine/Common Sense: English-American
writer and political pamphleteer whose Common
Sense and “Crisis” papers were important influences on the American
Revolution. Other works that contributed to his reputation as one of the
greatest political propagandists in history were Rights of Man, a defense of
the French Revolution and of republican principles; and The Age of Reason, an
exposition of the place of religion in society. Page
Paul Revere/William Dawes: Paul was
an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and a patriot in the
American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting the Colonial militia to the
approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as
dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's
Ride." Revere was a prosperous and
prominent Boston silversmith, who helped organize an intelligence and alarm
system to keep watch on the British military. Revere later served as a
Massachusetts militia officer, though his service culminated after the
Penobscot Expedition, one of the most disastrous campaigns of the American
Revolutionary War, for which he was absolved of blame. Following the war,
Revere returned to his silversmith trade and used the profits from his
expanding business to finance his work in iron casting, bronze bell and cannon
casting, and the forging of copper bolts and spikes. Finally in 1800 he became
the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing
on naval vessels.
William
Dawes was one of several men and a woman who alerted colonial minutemen of the
approach of British army troops prior to the Battles of Lexington and Concord
at the outset of the American Revolution. Dawes was assigned by Doctor Joseph
Warren to ride from Boston, Massachusetts to Lexington on the night of April
18, 1775, when it became clear that a British column was going to march into
the countryside. Dawes's mission was to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that
they were in danger of arrest. Dawes took the land route out of Boston through
the Boston Neck, leaving just before the military sealed off the town.
Also
acting under Dr. Warren, Paul Revere arranged for another rider waiting across
the Charles River in Charlestown to be told of the army's route with lanterns
hung in Old North Church. To be certain the message would get through, Revere
rowed across the river and started riding westwards himself. Later, Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow's historically inaccurate poem "Paul Revere's
Ride" would focus entirely on Revere, making him a composite of many alarm
riders that night. Dawes and Revere arrived at the Hancock-Clarke House in
Lexington about the same time, shortly after midnight. In fact, Revere arrived
slightly earlier, despite having stopped to speak to militia officers in towns
along the way, as his route was shorter and his horse faster. After warning
Adams and Hancock to leave, Revere and Dawes chose to proceed to Concord in
case that was the British column's goal. Revere no doubt knew that the
Provincial Congress had stored munitions there, including the cannon Dawes had
helped to secure. Along the way, the two men met Samuel Prescott, a local young
physician, who joined them.
A
squad of mounted British officers awaited on the road between Lexington and
Concord. They had already arrested some riders heading west with news of the
troops, and they called for Dawes, Revere, and Prescott to halt. The three men
rode in different directions, hoping one would escape. Dawes, according to the
story he told his children, rode into the yard of a house shouting that he had
lured two officers there. Fearing an ambush, the officers stopped chasing him.
Dawes's horse bucked him off, however, and he had to walk back to Lexington. He
later said that in the morning he returned to the same yard and found the watch
that had fallen from his pocket. Otherwise, Dawes's activity during the Battle
of Lexington and Concord remains unknown. Dawes and his companions' warnings
allowed the town militias to muster a sufficient force for the first open
battle of the American Revolutionary War and the first colonial victory. The
British troops did not find most of the weapons they had marched to destroy,
and sustained serious losses during their retreat to Boston while under attack
by the colonists. Page
Joseph Galloway: an American politician.
Galloway became a Loyalist during the American War of Independence, after
serving as delegate to the First Continental Congress from Pennsylvania. For
much of his career in Pennsylvanian politics he was a close ally of Benjamin
Franklin, and he became a leading figure in the colony. As a delegate to the
Continental Congress Galloway was a moderate, and he proposed a Plan of Union
which would have averted a full break from Britain. When this was rejected,
Galloway moved increasingly towards Loyalism. In 1775, when the Assembly
declined Galloway's recommendation that it abandon its defiance of Britain,
Galloway left the Assembly and the Congress while Franklin sided with the
movement towards colonial independence. After 1778 he lived in Britain, where
he acted as a leader of the Loyalist movement and an advisor to the government.
Once Britain's Parliament granted American independence as part of the Peace
of Paris (1783) many Loyalists went into forced exile and Galloway
permanently settled in Britain. Page
General Thomas Gage: was
a British general, best known for his many years of service in North America,
including his role as military commander in the early days of the American
Revolution. Born to an aristocratic family in England, he entered military
service, seeing action in the French and Indian War, where he served alongside
his future opponent George Washington in the 1755 Battle of the Monongahela.
After the fall of Montreal in 1760, he was named its military governor.
During
this time he did not distinguish himself militarily, but proved himself to be a
competent administrator. From 1763 to 1775 he served as commander-in-chief of the
British forces in North America, overseeing the British response to the 1763
Pontiac's Rebellion. In 1774 he was also appointed the military governor of the
Province of Massachusetts Bay, with instructions to implement the Intolerable
Acts, punishing Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. His attempts to seize
military stores of Patriot militias in April 1775 sparked the Battles of
Lexington and Concord, beginning the American War of Independence. After the
Pyrrhic victory in the June Battle of Bunker Hill he was replaced by General
William Howe in October 1775, and returned to Britain. Page
Paxton Boys: The Paxton Boys were
frontiersmen of Scots-Irish origin from along the Susquehanna River in central
Pennsylvania who formed a vigilante group to retaliate in 1763 against local
American Indians in the aftermath of the French and Indian War and Pontiac's
Rebellion. They are widely known for murdering 20 Susquehannock in events
collectively called the Conestoga Massacre. Following attacks on the Conestoga,
in January 1764 about 250 Paxton Boys marched to Philadelphia to present their
grievances to the legislature. Met by leaders in Germantown, they finally
agreed to disperse on the promise by Benjamin Franklin that their issues would
be considered. Page
Sons of Liberty: The Sons of Liberty was an
organization of dissidents that originated in the North American British
colonies. The secret society was formed to protect the rights of the colonists
and to take to the streets against the abuses of the British government.
They
are best known for undertaking the Boston Tea Party in 1773 in reaction to the
Tea Act, which led to the Intolerable Acts (an intense crackdown by the British
government), and a counter-mobilization by the Patriots. In the popular
imagination, the Sons of Liberty was a formal underground organization with
recognized members and leaders. More likely, the name was an underground term
for any men resisting new Crown taxes and laws. The well-known label allowed
organizers to issue anonymous summons to a Liberty Tree, "Liberty
Pole", or other public meeting-place. Furthermore, a unifying name helped
to promote inter-Colonial efforts against Parliament and the Crown's actions.
Their motto became, "No taxation without representation." Page
Daughters of Liberty: The
Daughters of Liberty were a successful Colonial American group, established in
the year 1765, that consisted of women who displayed their loyalty by
participating in boycotts of British goods following the passage of the
Townshend Acts. The Daughters of Liberty was a group of 92 women who looked to
rebel against British taxes by making home goods instead of buying them from
the British. Using their feminine skills of the time, they made homespun
cloth[2] and other goods. To call attention to this effort, they would hold
spinning contests in the village squares. These contests were called
"spinning bees" and were widely attended by females and often males
as well. Their name was inspired by the Sons of Liberty, who were established
shortly before the Daughters of Liberty. The Daughters of Liberty were very
important to the colonists. They helped them make their clothes as well as
homemade products when they boycotted British products. The Daughters of
Liberty used their traditional skills to weave and spin yarn and wool into
fabric, known as "homespun". They were recognized as patriotic
heroines for their success, making America less dependent on British textiles.
Proving their commitment to "the cause of liberty and industry" they
openly opposed the Tea Act. They experimented to find substitutes for taxed
goods such as tea and sugar. Discoveries like boiled basil leaves to make a tea
like drink, referred to as Liberty Tea, helped lift spirits as well as allowed
for kept traditions without the use of British taxed tea. They also had a large
influence during the war, although not as large an influence as the Sons of
Liberty.
For
example, in the countryside, while Patriots supported the non-importation
movements of 1765, and 1769, the Daughters of Liberty continued to support
American resistance. They helped end the Stamp Act in 1766. In 1774, the
patriot women helped influence a decision made by the Continental Congress to
boycott all British goods. In order to support the men on the battlefield, the
women made bullets and sewed uniforms. They raised funds for the army and made
and circulated protest petitions. The Daughters of Liberty also used the
influence of the Revolutionary War to their advantage. Prior to the
Revolutionary War, women were submissive and were almost considered to be
slaves to their husbands. Following the war, women in America felt a newfound
sense of freedom, not only from British control of the United States but from
males within the country. Women began to take part in political discussions
within households, and even began to entertain the ideas of separating from
their husbands. The war helped to inspire the Daughters of Liberty to also
become Revolutionary Women. Samuel Adams is often quoted as referring to the
Daughters of Liberty by saying "With ladies on our side, we can make every
Tory tremble." Page
American Board Customs Commissioners: Following
the Townshend Acts, to better collect the new taxes, the Commissioners of
Customs Act of 1767 established the American Board of Customs Commissioners,
which was modeled on the British Board of Customs. The American Customs Board
was created because of the difficulties the British Board faced in enforcing
trade regulations in the distant colonies. Five commissioners were appointed to
the board, which was headquartered in Boston. The American Customs Board would
generate considerable hostility in the colonies towards the British government.
According to historian Oliver M. Dickerson, "The actual separation of the
continental colonies from the rest of the Empire dates from the creation of
this independent administrative board. Page
Red coats: A historical term used to
refer to soldiers of the British Army because of the red uniforms formerly worn
by the majority of regiments. From the late 17th century to the early 20th
century, the uniform of most British soldiers, (apart from artillery, rifles
and light cavalry), included a madder red coat or coatee. From 1870 onwards,
the more vivid shade of scarlet was adopted for all ranks, having previously
been worn only by officers, sergeants and all ranks of some cavalry regiments. Page
Minutemen: Minutemen were members of
well-prepared militia companies of select men from the American colonial
partisan militia during the American Revolutionary War. They provided a highly
mobile, rapidly deployed force that allowed the colonies to respond immediately
to war threats, hence the name. The minutemen were among the first people to
fight in the American Revolution. Their teams constituted about a quarter of
the entire militia. Generally younger and more mobile, they served as part of a
network for early response. Minuteman and Sons of Liberty member Paul Revere
was among those who spread the news that the British Regulars (soldiers) were
coming out from Boston. Revere was captured before completing his mission when
the British marched toward the arsenal in Concord to confiscate the weapons and
ammunition that were stored there. Page
Boston Massacre: The Boston Massacre, known
as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5,
1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five male civilians and injured six
others. British troops had been stationed in Boston, capital of the Province of
Massachusetts Bay, since 1768 in order to protect and support crown-appointed
colonial officials attempting to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation.
Amid ongoing tense relations between the population and the soldiers, a mob
formed around a British sentry, who was subjected to verbal abuse and
harassment. He was eventually supported by eight additional soldiers, who were
subjected to verbal threats and thrown objects.
They
fired into the crowd, without orders, instantly killing three people and
wounding others. Two more people died later of wounds sustained in the
incident. The crowd eventually dispersed after Acting Governor Thomas
Hutchinson promised an inquiry, but reformed the next day, prompting the
withdrawal of the troops to Castle Island. Eight soldiers, one officer, and
four civilians were arrested and charged with murder. Defended by the lawyer
and future American President, John Adams, six of the soldiers were acquitted,
while the other two were convicted of manslaughter and given reduced sentences.
The men found guilty of manslaughter were sentenced to branding on their hand.
Depictions, reports, and propaganda about the event, notably the colored
engraving produced by Paul Revere further heightened tensions throughout the
Thirteen Colonies. Page
Boston Tea Party/Tea Act 1773: The
Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as "the Destruction
of the Tea in Boston" was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in
Boston, on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as American
Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in
defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773. They boarded the ships and threw the
chests of tea into Boston Harbor, ruining the tea. The British government
responded harshly and the episode escalated into the American Revolution. The
Tea Party became an iconic event of American history, and other political
protests such as the Tea Party movement after 2010 explicitly refer to it. The
Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America
against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773.
Colonists objected to the Tea Act because they believed that it violated their
rights as Englishmen to "No taxation without representation," that
is, be taxed only by their own elected representatives and not by a British
parliament in which they were not represented. Protesters had successfully
prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston,
embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be
returned to Britain. The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the
American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, or Intolerable
Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts
and closed Boston's commerce. Colonists up and down the Thirteen Colonies in
turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by
convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British
monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The
crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.
The
Tea
Act 1773 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. Its principal
over objective was to reduce the massive surplus of tea held by the financially
troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the
struggling company survive. A related objective was to undercut the price of
tea smuggled into Britain's North American colonies. This was supposed to
convince the colonists to purchase Company tea on which the Townshend duties
were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to accept Parliament's right of taxation.
The Act granted the Company the right to directly ship its tea to North America
and the right to the duty-free export of tea from Britain, although the tax
imposed by the Townshend Acts and collected in the colonies remained in force.
It received the royal assent on May 10, 1773. Page
Fort Duquense: Fort Duquesne (originally
called Fort Du Quesne) was a fort established by the French in 1754, at the
junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers in what is now downtown
Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It was destroyed and replaced by
Fort Pitt in 1758. The site of both forts is now occupied by Point State Park. Fort
Duquesne, built at a point where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers come
together to form the Ohio River, was long seen as important for controlling the
Ohio Country, both for settlement and for trade. Englishman William Trent had
established a highly successful trading post at the forks as early as the
1740s, to do business with a number of nearby Native American villages.
Both
the French and the British were keen to gain advantage in the area. As the area
was within the drainage basin of the Mississippi River, the French claimed it
as theirs. In the early 1750s, the French commenced construction of a line of
forts, starting with Fort Presque Isle on Lake Erie near present-day Erie,
Pennsylvania, followed by Fort Le Boeuf, about 15 miles inland near present-day
Waterford, and Fort Machault, on the Allegheny River in Venango County in
present-day Franklin. Lieutenant Governor of the Virginia Colony, Robert
Dinwiddie, saw this as threatening to the extensive claims to land in the area
by Virginians (including himself). In late autumn 1753, Dinwiddie dispatched a
young envoy named George Washington to the area to deliver a letter to the
French commander, asking them to leave, and to assess French strength and intentions.
Washington reached Fort Le Boeuf in December and was politely rebuffed by the
French. Page
Fort Necessity: Fort Necessity National
Battlefield is a National Battlefield Site in Fayette County, Pennsylvania,
United States, which preserves the site of the Battle of Fort Necessity. The
battle, which took place on July 3, 1754, was an early battle of the French and
Indian War, and resulted in the surrender of British colonial forces under
Colonel George Washington, to the French and Indians, under Louis Coulon de
Villiers. The site also includes the Mount Washington Tavern, once one of the
inns along the National Road, and in two separate units the grave of the
British General Edward Braddock, killed in 1755, and the site of the Battle of
Jumonville Glen. Page
Louisbourg: an unincorporated community
and former town located in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Regional Municipality. The
town's name was given by French military forces who founded the Fortress of
Louisbourg in 1713 and its fortified seaport on the southwest part of the
harbour, in honour of Louis XIV. The harbour had previously been known and used
by European mariners since at least the 1590s, when it was known as English
Port and Havre à l'Anglois. The French settlement that dated from 1713 was much
altered after its final capture in 1758. Its fortifications were demolished in
1760 and the town-site abandoned by British forces in 1768. A small civilian
population continued to live there after the military left. Subsequent English
settlers built a small fishing village across the harbour from the abandoned
site of the fortress. The village grew slowly with additional Loyalists
settlers in the 1780s. Page
Plains of Abraham: A
historic area within The Battlefields Park in Quebec City, Quebec, that was
originally grazing land, but became famous as the site of the Battle of the
Plains of Abraham, which took place on September 13, 1759. Though the site was
of historic significance, housing and minor industrial structures were still
erected atop hundreds of acres of the fields. Only in 1908 was the land ceded
to Quebec City, though administered by the specifically created and federally
run National Battlefields Commission. Page
Quartering Act: a name given to a minimum
of two Acts of British Parliament in the 18th century. Parliament enacted them
to order local governments of the American colonies to provide the British
soldiers with any needed accommodations or housing. It also required colonists
to provide food for any British soldiers in the area. Each of the Quartering
Acts was an amendment to the Mutiny Act and required annual renewal by
Parliament. They were originally intended as a response to issues that arose
during the French and Indian War and soon became a source of tension between
the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies and the government in London, England.
These tensions would later fuel the fire that led to the Revolutionary War.
REVIEW QUIZ
1. The chapter introduction tells the story of two different public
actions in Boston, a dozen years apart, to make the point that:
A) While the colonials liked
being British, imperial leaders forced them to develop a new and independent
identity as Americans.
B) There was a
small cadre of revolutionary leaders in Boston who, for a decade, systematically
worked to undermine British authority; their efforts won support throughout the
colonies by 1775.
C) Boston, the
hotbed of revolt, was not representative of other areas in America, which would
join in the rebellion against England only with great reluctance.
D) The Seven Years'
War in the 1760s laid the economic and ideological basis for the Revolutionary
War in the 1770s, even though Americans didn't realize it at the time.
2. The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Britain title to:
A) All French claims west of the
Mississippi, and Spanish Florida.
B) All French claims east of the Mississippi, and Spanish
Florida.
C) All French
claims east of the Mississippi, New Orleans, and the French sugar islands of
the West Indies.
D) All French claims in North
America.
3. Among the consequences of the Seven Years' War that led to the rift
between the colonies and England, all are correctly stated EXCEPT:
A) The French and Indian threats were removed,
so the British government felt they had no need to keep troops in the colonies.
B) The British government was
deeply in debt.
C) British imperial
officials were determined to centralize and extend British rule over the
colonies in their greatly expanded empire.
D) Both the
Americans and the British came out of the war with very different expectations
about the future of their relationship.
4. After the Seven Years' War, Britain kept several thousand troops in
the colonies for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
A) To enforce the Proclamation
of 1763 by providing protection to colonials settling west of the Appalachians.
B) To prevent France from trying
to regain its lost territory.
C) To manage the
new and uneasy relations with the Indians, as in the case of Pontiac's
Rebellion.
D) To encourage American
acceptance of Grenville's new measures
5. Grenville believed his taxation demands were reasonable for all of
the following reasons EXCEPT:
A) Britain's national debt had doubled between
1754 and 1764.
B) The colonial
customs service was paying out four times the amount in salaries that they were
receiving in revenue.
C) The English had
been paying a tax similar to the one created by the Stamp Act for nearly a
century.
D) An earlier tax on molasses
had succeeded in forcing the colonists to stop buying molasses from the French
and the Dutch.
6. Americans insisted that they be taxed by their own assemblies,
because they held to the dictum of John Locke:
A) That government governs best which governs
least.
B) All men are created equal.
C) Property guarantees liberty.
D) No taxation without
representation.
7. The Sons of Liberty:
A) Consisted mostly of poor
artisans, apprentices and dockworkers.
B) Supported the
destruction of the home of Thomas Hutchinson, the unpopular lieutenant governor
of Massachusetts.
C) Successfully convinced most of the stamp distributors
to resign.
D) all of the above.
8. In resisting the Stamp Act, Americans affirmed all of the following
EXCEPT:
A) Their general mistrust of
power.
B) Their particular right to
trial by jury.
C) Their belief in virtual representation.
D) Their belief in taxation only
by their elected representatives.
9. Which of the following British leaders actually supported the
colonists' objections to taxation by Parliament?
A) William Pitt
B) Lord North
C) John Dickinson
D) Thomas Gordon
10. Parliament repealed all of the Townshend Duties EXCEPT the tax on
tea:
A) Because British businesses suffered from reduced
American consumption of British imports.
B) Because American
producers of raw materials suffered from lower prices on the world market.
C) Because of rioting in
America, which prevented collection of the duties.
D) Because Parliament decided
temporarily to yield to American views.
11. Pope's Day in colonial Boston was:
A) A celebration of the birthday
of the English poet Alexander Pope.
B) A popular celebration of the
birthday of the Roman Catholic pope.
C) A popular celebration of the
birthday of Guy Fawkes.
D) A popular celebration of anti-Catholic sentiment.
12. The Tea Act:
A) Significantly raised the
price of tea in the colonies.
B) Was passed in response to the
Boston Tea Party.
C) Led to the advancing of a
suspicion that the conspiracy to enslave the colonies had spread beyond the
King's ministers to Parliament, and perhaps to king George himself.
D) Led to the
passage of a bill requiring any colonist accused of a crime against the British
Crown to be tried in England rather than in the colonies.
13. The First Continental Congress in late 1774:
A) Renounced American allegiance
to George III, and established a Continental Army.
B) Denied Parliament's right to
tax and legislate for the colonies (while acknowledging its authority to
regulate their trade), and set up a trade boycott.
C) Denied that
Parliament had any authority at all in America, but took a collective oath of
allegiance reaffirming loyalty to George III.
D) Denied that
Parliament or George III had any authority in America, and urged colonial
legislatures to seize power from crown officials.
14. Opponents of the colonial resistance movement feared that the
removal of the British government would cause:
A) An attempt by the French to
regain the land it had lost in the Seven Years' War.
B) An uprising by the slave
population.
C) Disputes over land claims, sectional tensions, and
religious differences.
D) An attack on the colonies by
a united Indian population.
15. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine argues all EXCEPT:
A) Parliament had deliberately
and wickedly brought about all of America's misfortunes.
B) Britain
displayed no parental affection toward the colonies, and instead preyed upon
their wealth and liberties.
C) Monarchy was a foolish and
dangerous form of government.
D) Nature had destined America
for independence.
16. All of the following account for the global population explosion of
the later 1700s EXCEPT:
A) especially large increases in
China and the Middle East.
B) healthier diets,
thanks to new foods from the Americas.
C) a more favorable
climate for agriculture, at least in Europe.
D) increased
resistance worldwide to European and African diseases.
17. By the later 1700s, it was
evident that expansionary Greater Europe was extending its control over both
the Americas and eastern Asia. Both wings of this outward surge—in North
America as well as on the Eurasian steppes and Siberian watersheds—depended on:
A) the ideology of
liberty.
B) the Christian
religion.
C) forced labor.
D) technological
superiority.
18. Whose defeat near the forks of the Ohio River started the Seven
Years’ War?
A) George Washington
B) George Grenville
C) James Wolfe
D) the Iroquois
19. William Pitt:
A) was the
organizer of British victory in the Seven Years’ War.
B) was relatively
sympathetic to the American protests during the years after the Seven Years’
War.
C) all of the above.
D) none of the
above.
20. At the end of the Seven Years’ War, the Americans _______________ ,
while the British _______________ .
A) were suffering
from war-induced economic hard times; were saddled with a great war debt
B) were proud to be
British; were comparably proud of their fellow Englishmen in America
C) sought to keep
British troops to protect them from the Indians; thought the Americans should
settle and defend the Ohio country on their own
D) celebrated their
contributions to victory; voiced contempt for American soldiering and
suspicions of American self-interest
21. Who organized a combined uprising of the Western tribes in the
aftermath of the French defeat?
A) French fur
traders who remained in the area
B) the Iroquois
C) Pontiac
D) Cadillac
22. What was the basic British policy after 1763?
A) to defeat the
French
B) to centralize their empire
C) to deprive
Americans of their liberties
D) to conspire to
seize political power and influence
23. British “new measures” after the end of the Seven Years’ War
included all EXCEPT:
A) a new, lowered
tax—more effectively enforced—on imports of foreign molasses.
B) a new, higher tax—more
effectively enforced—on imports of British goods like glass and tea.
C) a tax—never
effectively enforced—on official documents and legal transactions.
D) a ban on
American settlement west of the Appalachians.
24. The writers of the English “Opposition” or “Country Party” believed
all EXCEPT:
A) that humans were
driven by passion rather than principle.
B) that politicians
would become corrupt, conspiring against liberty to enhance their own power.
C) that Parliament needed to be
controlled by the monarchs and their ministers, because politicians could not
be trusteD)
D) that history
shows that power overwhelms liberty.
25. After 1768, the presence of freedom fighters in many European
countries had which of the following effects upon resistance groups in America?
A) they felt
increasingly isolated
B) they increasingly thought of
themselves as part of a transatlantic network of the friends of liberty
C) they
increasingly backed down to British pressure
D) none of the
above
26. The Sons of Liberty, emerging in the Stamp Act protest, drew their
members from the ranks of:
A) the elite
members of the assemblies.
B) traders, lawyers, prosperous
artisans, and others of the middling sort.
C) the poorer sort
in the seaport towns.
D) any male
descendant of a veteran of the Seven Years’ War, regardless of social class.
27. In the Declaratory Act, Parliament:
A) asserted its
authority to levy direct taxes on the colonies.
B) relinquished its
authority to levy direct taxes on the colonies. C) limited its authority in
America to the regulation of trade.
D) left unclear the extent of
its authority in America.
28. What was new in American resistance to the Townshend duties?
A) nonimportation
of British goods
B) institutionalized mechanisms
for enforcing nonimportation
C) an intercolonial
congress
D) a formal
statement of American constitutional arguments
29. The Tea Act of 1774:
A) raised the price
of tea that Americans imported from Britain.
B) gave the East India company a
monopoly on the American tea trade.
C) prohibited the
consumption of tea in Massachusetts.
D) cracked down on
illegal smuggling of tea in the colonies.
30. After a lull following the repeal of the Townshend duties, what
British initiative revived resistance?
A) a tax on tea
B) an act giving the East India
Company a monopoly on supplying tea to the colonies
C) a cluster of
acts designed to punish Massachusetts and intimidate the other colonies
D) sending soldiers
out into the Massachusetts countryside to crush the resistance
31. Colonial street protests
adapted older symbols of public protest against ____________ to the new
protests against
A) Catholics; British officials
B) the Church of
England; the government of England
C) the French; the
British
D) the British
Parliament; the British King
32. When they learned of the Coercive Acts of 1774, many Americans
concluded that a plot to enslave the colonies was being implemented by:
A) the King’s
ministers, but not Parliament or George III.
B) Parliament, but
not the King’s ministers or George III.
C) George III, but
not the King’s ministers or Parliament.
D) the King’s ministers and
Parliament, but not George III.
33. History, colonials believed, proved liberty could be lost to the
designs of corrupt politicians through a succession of “usurpations” including
all EXCEPT:
A) fighting wars
that would require new taxes.
B) maintaining a
standing army in peacetime.
C) buying, through
patronage, the support of worthless men with no moral fiber.
D) denying the opportunity for
ordinary folk to strive for the luxuries and comforts enjoyed by the better
sort.
34. A year before the Declaration of Independence, during early 1775,
the colonies were beginning to seize authority. Examples included all EXCEPT:
A) The Association
functioned effectively.
B) Some citizens
took the court system into their own hands.
C) Provincial
congresses were emerging as virtual revolutionary governments.
D) Many colonial leaders
increasingly issued explicit calls for full independence.
35. The Seven Years' War began in North America with the:
A) Battle of the Plains of
Abraham.
This is the correct answer.
B) surrender of George Washington at Fort Necessity.
C) capture of Fort Frontenac by
New Englanders.
D) assault on Philadelphia.
36. The Seven Years' War resulted in the:
A) end of French control over any of North America.
B) severe limiting of French
control in North America.
C) limiting of
French control in North America to New Orleans and the territory west of the
Mississippi River.
D) expansion of French control
in North America.
37. The Proclamation of 1763:
A) officially ended the Seven
Years' War.
B) banned colonial trade with any
nation other than England.
This is the correct answer.
C) limited colonial settlement to east of the Appalachian
mountains.
D) declared acts of colonial
legislatures null and void.
38. Those known as the English "Opposition":
A) migrated to the colonies to
show their unhappiness with King George III.
B) wanted tougher
measures against the colonists in order keep them from even considering
independence.
This is the correct answer.
C) were primarily concerned with the potential abuse of
power.
D) opposed the accession of
George III because of his Catholic faith.
39. The primary aim of Parliament's passage of the Stamp Act was to:
A) regulate trade
between England and her North American colonies by tightening customs
inspection.
B) remind the colonists
that they could be subject to laws to which those back in England were not.
C) raise revenue for England by
placing taxes on legal documents, newspapers, playing cards, etc.
D) require that all
acts of colonial legislatures and local town councils be subject to royal
approval.
40. Committees of Inspection were established to enforce:
A) anti-smuggling laws.
B) the Stamp Act.
C) the Coercive Acts.
This is the correct answer.
D) the ban on trade with England.
41. Which of the following is TRUE about the outcome of the Stamp Act
crisis?
A) American colonists came to
support the idea of virtual representation.
B) Colonists issued the
Declaratory Act announcing their refusal to accept the Stamp Act.
C) The Stamp Act became more
accepted over time, as colonists grew weary of fighting over it.
D) The Stamp Act was repealed by the British Parliament.
42. The Boston Massacre was due principally to the tensions
surrounding:
A) the stationing of British regular troops in the city.
B) the riots in opposition to
the Stamp Act.
C) British punishment of the
city following the Tea Party.
D) the publication
of Common Sense.
43. The Quebec Act angered American colonists for all of the following
reasons EXCEPT:
A) it seemed tied to the
Coercive Acts as another insult.
B) it provided for a powerful
representative assembly in Quebec, which would be left alone by Britain.
C) it extended the
boundaries of Quebec to include all the land between the Ohio and Mississippi
Rivers.
D) it officially recognized the
Catholic church in Quebec.
44. While representing diverse interests, delegates to the First
Continental Congress found a certain similarity they referred to as:
A) civic virtue.
B) common sense.
C) the democratic faith.
D) Federalism.
45. The British marched on Lexington and Concord in 1775 to:
A) put down an anti-British
rebellion in these villages.
B) arrest French spies believed
to be hiding out in the area.
C) alleviate tensions between
British soldiers and American colonists in Boston itself.
D) seize the arms and ammunition stored by the Provincial
Congress.
46. In his pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine:
A) appealed directly to King
George III to change British policies toward the American colonies.
B) criticized those
who dared talk of independence, but listed numerous reasons why British
policies were unjust.
C) denounced monarchy as a dangerous form of government.
D)argued that the
colonists establish their own independent monarchy in America as their
birthright.
47. Whose defeat at Quebec effectively ended the Seven Years’ War on
the continent of North America?
A) the Spanish Navy
B) the marquis of Montcalm
C) James Wolfe
D) the Iroquois
Practice Test
1. American complaints concerning lack of representation made little
sense to the English, who pointed out that:
A.
over eighty percent of the population of Great
Britain was entitled to vote for members of Parliament.
B.
each colony was represented by an agent and a
designated member of Parliament.
C.
each member of Parliament represented the interests of the whole empire
rather than a particular individual or geographical area.
D.
American participation in parliamentary
discussions would bind them to unpopular decisions.
E.
American colonists were eligible to vote for
members of Parliament.
2. The Coercive or Intolerable Acts:
A.
isolated Massachusetts from the other colonies.
B.
made Massachusetts a martyr in the eyes of other colonies.
C.
created no concern among any group other than
merchants.
D.
increased the power of colonial assemblies.
E.
led to the impressments of American merchant
seamen into the British navy.
3. The Boston Massacre:
A.
drove the American resistance underground.
B.
reversed the calming trend that had occurred
after the repeal of the Townshend Acts.
C.
made John Adams a leader of the resistance.
D.
killed over thirty members of the resistance.
E.
was probably the result of panic and confusion.
4. The proposed Albany Plan of 1754:
A.
was intended to give the colonies greater
independence from royal authority.
B.
recognized the land rights of Indian tribes
living within the colonies.
C.
was approved by the colonial assemblies but was
vetoed by Parliament.
D.
revealed the difficulties colonies had in cooperating with each other.
E.
attempted to create a united front with New
France against Indian attacks.
5. The English decision to reorganize the British Empire after 1763 was
the result of:
A.
colonial demands for more efficient government.
B.
problems in the merchant community and their
desire for regulation.
C.
colonial unrest, which the British government
planned to put down before it became serious.
D.
enormous war debts and large increases in territory.
E.
the accession of George III to the English
throne.
6. in an effort to keep peace between frontiersmen and Indians and
provide for a more orderly settlement of the West, the British government:
A.
granted the Indian confederations sovereign
recognition.
B.
gave Indian tribes and confederations colonial
status.
C.
allowed interior settlement only if settlers
bought land from the tribes.
D.
put forts in the Ohio Valley to protect settlers
there.
E.
forbade settlers from crossing the mountains that divided the Atlantic
coast from the interior.
7. During the first half of the eighteenth century, England's
administration of the colonies:
A.
was primarily concerned with checking the growth
of New France.
B.
began to assert greater authority over
newspapers and public expression.
C.
sought new means to tax American merchants.
D.
was notable for its strict enforcement of trade
policies.
E.
was loose, decentralized, and inefficient.
8. A conference of colonial leaders gathered in Albany, New York in
1754 to discuss a proposal by Benjamin Franklin to:
A.
declare war on the French and Indians.
B.
negotiate a treaty with the French.
C.
expand a system of intercolonial roads.
D.
extend the operation of the colonial postal service.
E.
establish "one general government" for all the colonies.
9. Colonists argued that the Stamp Act was not proper because:
A.
it affected only a few people, so the burden was
not shared.
B.
the money raised would not be spent in the
colonies.
C.
colonies could be taxed only by their provincial assemblies.
D.
the tax was too high.
E.
it violated freedom of the press.
10. Both the French and the English were well aware that the battle for
control of North America would be determined in part by:
A.
who had the Dutch on their side.
B.
whose king was the best military commander.
C.
which group could win the allegiance of native tribes.
D.
whose armies could best fight "Indian"
fashion.
E.
whose army had the best infantry.
11. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, and in the Declaratory Act it
declared that it would not tax the colonies in this way again.
A.
True
B.
False
12. The fighting at Lexington and Concord caused many who previously
had little enthusiasm for the rebel cause to rally to it.
A.
True
B.
False
13. Colonists responded to the Townshend duties with agreements not to
import the taxed goods.
A.
True
B.
False
14. After the Peace of Paris of 1763, the English were inclined to let
the colonies go their own way, with few restrictions.
A.
True
B.
False
15. The formation of groups
known as the "Paxton Boys" and the "Regulators" revealed
that colonists in the West believed they were not being treated fairly by
colonists in the East.
A.
True
B.
False
16. The architect of the British military move on Lexington and Concord
was General ________.
Thomas Gage
17. Many colonials saw the Coercive Acts as proof of a plot to ________
the colonies.
enslave
18. The Sugar Act of 1764 created courts called ________ courts, which
were designed to deal with accused smugglers.
Vice-admiralty
19. The ________ Act granted political rights to Roman Catholics.
Quebec
20. The dramatic fall of ________ marked the beginning of the end of
the American phase of the Seven Years' War.
Quebec
21. In 1770 Prime Minister Lord North repealed all of the ________
except the tax on tea.
Townshend Duties
22. The newly organized Sons of ________ did their best to block
enforcement of the Stamp Act.
Liberty
23. The ________ widened the terms of the imperial debate, intensified
resistance within the colonies, and, most importantly, provoked the first real
display of intercolonial unity.
Stamp Act
24. The parliamentary attempt to restrict westward movement following
the Seven Years' War was called the ________.
Proclamation of 1763
25. Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by passing a series of
laws called the ________.
Coercive Acts
26. The legislation confirming parliamentary authority over the
colonies was called the ________.
Declaratory Act
27. The Ottawa chieftain ________ struck back at English colonists who sought
to move west of the Appalachians following the Seven Years' War.
Pontiac
28. The Virginian who took the lead in protesting the Stamp Act was
________.
Patrick Henry
29. The ________ was the inflammatory name given by Samuel Adams and
friends when a panicky squad of British soldiers fired on a crowd of hecklers
hurling snowballs.
Boston Massacre
30. In 1772, colonists on Rhode Island set afire and sank the British
schooner ________.
Gaspee
31. Parliamentary legislation
requiring colonists to provision and maintain the British army was called the
________.
Quartering Act
32. According to the terms of
the Treaty of Paris of 1763, French holdings in North America west of the
Mississippi were to be part of the empire of ________.
Spain
33. The treaty that drove the French out of North America in 1763 was
called the ________.
Peace of Paris
34. The dissolved Massachusetts legislature re-formed, on its own, into
a ________ Congress.
Provincial
35. The 1754 effort to deal with
Indian issues by establishing colonial cooperation was called the ________.
Albany Plan
36. The British Parliament operated on a theory of representation
called ________ representation.
virtual
37. The colonial theory of
________ representation emphasized that elected officials were directly
accountable to their constituents.
actual
38. The first blood of an
American soldier was shed by British troops at ________ in April 1775.
Lexington
CHAPTER
TEST
1. The proposed Albany
Plan of 1754:
A.
was
intended to give the colonies greater independence from royal authority.
B.
recognized
the land rights of Indian tribes living within the colonies.
C.
was
approved by the colonial assemblies but was vetoed by Parliament.
D.
revealed the difficulties colonies had
in cooperating with each other.
E.
attempted
to create a united front with New France against Indian attacks.
2. The leading colonial
figure in the Boston Massacre was:
A.
Samuel Adams.
B.
Thomas
Jefferson.
C.
Patrick
Henry.
D.
James
Otis.
E.
George
Mason.
3. What future American
revolutionary figure surrendered to French forces in 1754 at Fort Necessity in
the Ohio Valley?
A.
George Washington
B.
Patrick
Henry
C.
James
Madison
D.
Benedict
Arnold
E.
John
Adams
4. England was fortunate
that King George III was young, bright, and surprisingly mature for his age.
A.
True
B.
False
5. The events of
Lexington and Concord:
A.
saw
the colonists try to surprise the British by seizing a British arsenal.
B.
saw
the Americans lose many more men than the British.
C.
occurred before there was a formal
American declaration of independence.
D.
was
the first victory for George Washington in the conflict with England.
E.
further
alienated Massachusetts from the more moderate colonies in the Chesapeake.
6. Because they needed
protection, colonists in both the East and the West were glad to have regular
British troops stationed permanently in America.
A.
True
B.
False
7. What was the
significance of Thomas Paine's Common Sense?
A.
It informed the colonists of their
identity as a distinct people and their destiny as a nation
B.
It
acknowledged the sovereignty of the monarch.
C.
It
persuaded colonial elites to sever their ties with Great Britain.
D.
It
had little immediate popularity among the colonists.
E.
It
did not criticize all monarchs, just George III.
8. In 1763, Ottawa Chief
Pontiac ________.
A.
made
peace with the colonists
B.
signed
a treaty with the British
C.
initiated
a strategic withdrawal from colonial lands
D.
expressed
support for the colonists' cause
E.
organized a general uprising
9. The Proclamation of
1763:
A.
disrupted
England's western trade in the colonies.
B.
was
generally effective.
C.
was supported by many Indian tribes.
D.
encouraged
settlement of the western edge of the colonies.
E.
led
to renewed conflict with the remaining French colonists in the west.
10. Which of the following
stated Parliament's belief in its own sovereignty?
A.
Townshend
Acts
B.
Declaratory Act
C.
Coercive
Acts
D.
Stamp
Act
E.
Sovereignty
Act
11. Parliament responded
to the Boston Tea Party by:
A.
withdrawing
its military protection of Massachusetts.
B.
reducing the powers of self-government
in Massachusetts.
C.
reducing
the geographic size of the colony.
D.
threatening
to launch a war against the Massachusetts militia.
E.
repealing
the Tea Act.
12. The author of Common
Sense:
A.
sought
to concentrate colonial anger on unpopular parliamentary measures.
B.
was
an American who had never been to England.
C.
sold
very few copies of his pamphlet until after the war was won.
D.
was
arrested by British officials and charged with treason.
E.
considered the English constitution to
be the greatest problem facing the colonists.
13. According to the
terms of the Peace of Paris of 1763:
A.
France
surrendered New Orleans and Canada to the British.
B.
England
acquired all French naval vessels docked in North American ports.
C.
France ceded Canada and all of its
claims to land east of the Mississippi River, except New Orleans, to Great
Britain.
D.
France
agreed to pay England for the cost of the war.
E.
France
ceded all of its Caribbean colonies to England.
14. Colonists were
concerned over the immediate impact of the Stamp Act, not its long-range
implications.
A.
True
B.
False
15. By the 1750s
colonial legislatures had come to see themselves as:
A.
little parliaments.
B.
agents
of the royal governor.
C.
powerless.
D.
agents
for democratic reform.
E.
agents
for the king.
