History Notes for pages 68-90. Note you should limit your students to covering
pages 54-60 and 68-70 (French – Indian War) in Chapter 3 with special attention
paid to the maps on pages 56 and 69.
THE COLONISTS FIGHT THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND GAIN INDEPENDENCE
Introduction - The best term to describe the relationship between England and the
colonies was “benign neglect.” England was definitely interested in the colonies but
was distracted by a long-standing conflict with France. However, once that conflict
was resolved at end of the French and Indian War (referred to as the 7 Years War in
Europe) England sought to assert its authority and exercise the necessary to
effectively manage its mercantile economy.
In such an economy, the colonies were to provide cheap source of raw materials for
England’s manufacturing base. The colonies, therefore, were not to engage in
manufacturing themselves, nor engage in extensive trade with England’s economic
rivals.
As could be expected, the colonies did not adhere to these strictures, much to the
chagrin of England. But due to its “benign neglect” of the colonies, England did not
strictly enforce its policies. However, once it concluded its conflict with France,
England turned its full attention on the colonies.
England’s attempt to reassert control of the colonies put them on a collision course
with them, which ultimately resulted in the rebellion of the colonies.
I)
Effects of the French – Indian War (1754-1763)
A) Effect on the Colonies – Favorable
1. They gained self-confidence and military experience
2. Saw the need for colonial unity to meet common problems
3. The danger of attack from the French and certain Indian tribes was
removed from their frontiers and thus became less dependent on
England.
B) Effect on Britain – wanted to crack down on colonies – end salutary neglect
1. They felt that the colonists had not helped sufficiently with soldiers and
supplies in the war against France
2. They also felt that the colonists had gained a lot through the war and
should help ay for at least some of the war.
3. The English also believed that it was time for the colonies to start
obeying their laws regarding trade and economic activity.
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II)
Britain’s New policy For Colonial America
Intro – Starting in 1763, the British government adopted a new colonial policy with
three basic objectives: 1) put the colonies under strict British political and economic
control; 2) compel the colonies to resect and obey English laws and 3) make the
colonies bear their part in maintaining the British Empire.
A) Strict Enforcement of Existing Laws
1. The Navigation Acts – reflecting the mercantilist doctrine, these laws
required the colonists to:
a. Transport their goods only in British (and colonial) ships, (even
though Dutch freighters offered lower rates)
b. b. Export certain enumerated articles such as tobacco, sugar indigo,
and furs only to Britain (although western European markets offered
higher prices)
c. Purchase their imports from Britain or, when colonial ships secured
goods from Europe to stop at a British ort to ay import duties.
***Beginning in 1763, British rime Minister, George Granville sent to the colonies an
increasing number of customs collectors, royal inspectors, and naval patrols to
enforce the laws.
2. Writs of Assistance
a. These general search warrants were court orders authorizing British
officials to search colonial homes, buildings, and ships for smuggled
goods.
b. Unlike a search warrant in the US today, which authorizes an officer to
search only a particular –place for specified goods, a writ of assistance
allowed a British official to search anywhere and seize any smuggled
goods.
B) New Taxes
1. Sugar Act 1764 –
A)This act actually reduced the existing taxes on colonial imports of sugar
and molasses from the Spanish and French West Indies, but called for
strict enforcement.
2. Stamp Act 1765
a. The first internal tax levied on the colonies.
b. .It required the purchase of stamps that were to be put on printed
materials such as will, mortgages, almanacs, pamphlets and
newspapers.
c. It mostly affected influential groups such as lawyers, clergy and
printers
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d. The colonists decided to boycott British goods until the act was
repealed. They also prevented the distribution of the stamps.
e. The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766.
3. Townshend Acts 1767
a. Enacted at the suggestion of Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles
Townshend.
b. Parliament levied new taxes on colonial imports of paper, glass paint
and tea
c. A portion of the fines levied against colonists who violated these tax
laws was to go directly to the royal governors so as to make them
financially independent of colonial assemblies.
d. Also, colonists who were accused of violating the British tax laws were
tried in military courts where they were denied a jury trial.
e. The colonists responded by forming the Sons of Liberty who urged the
boycotting of British goods.
f. In 1770, parliament gave in and repealed the Townshend Acts with
the exception to the tax on tea.
C) Western Land policy – The proclamation of 1763
1. This royal decree forbade colonists from settling west of the Appalachian
Mountains which was aimed to:
a. Protect fur trade
b. Remove a cause of Indian uprisings
c. Prevent colonial settlements beyond the reach of British authorities.
D) The Stationing of Soldiers – The Quartering Act of 1765
1. This act required them to provide food and living quarters to British
soldiers. It was considered a tax.
2. The British claimed that the soldiers were there to protect them from
Indians, but they were not stationed on the frontier but in populous
coastal cities such as New York and Boston.
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III)
Colonial Opposition
A) Violation of British Laws
1.Merchants and ship owners continued to smuggled goods into the
colonies to avoid import duties.
2. Frontier settlers and southern planters continued to occupy the fertile
lands beyond the Appalachian Mts
B) Protests Against the Writs of Assistance
1 Lawyers and writers criticized the writs of assistance as illegal
invasions of colonial property.
2 Colonists said that the writs violated their rights as Englishmen and
English common law specifically as “a man’s home is his castle.”
C) Cooperation Among the Colonies
1. Stamp Act Congress 1765
a. Delegates from nine colonies met in New York to come u with a
unified plan of resistance against the Stamp Act.
b. The delegates asserted that the colonists could be taxed only by
colonial legislatures, not by parliament.
c. They also began a boycott of British goods.
2. Committees of Correspondence
a. Samuel Adams of Massachusetts in 1772 launched these
committees to create an inter-colonial information network.
***The Boston Massacre 1770 – Colonial demonstrators often clashed
with British soldiers. In 1770, soldiers fired on a hostile but unarmed
crowd and killed five persons. Interestingly, the soldiers were
defended in court by attorney John Adams. Six were acquitted of their
crimes while two were convicted of manslaughter – a lesser charge.
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IV)
Boston Tea Party 1773
Intro –Parliament passed the Tea Act (1773) exempting the East India
Company from taxes on tea shipped from Britain to the colonies. By this
act, the British offered the colonists the cheapest tea ever. Nevertheless,
the colonists were upset.
A) Why the colonists did not approve of the Tea Act
1. Colonial merchants where were smuggling tea from Holland to
avoid the import duty were going to be undersold by the
inexpensive tea of the East India Company.
2. The colonists would still be paying the hated Townshend import
duty.
B) The Colonists Respond with violence
1. In New York and Philadelphia, colonists turned back the tea ships
with their full cargoes.
2. In Boston, colonists disguised as Indians boarded the British ships
and dumped the tea into the harbor.
V)
The Intolerable Acts 1774
A) Parliament passes a series of acts aimed to punish the colonies
1. Boston Harbor was closed until the colonists paid for the tea.
2. Troops could be quartered in any colonial town,
3. British officials accused of a crime in Boston could be tried in
England.
4. Self-government in Boston curtailed.
VI)
The First Continental Congress – Philadelphia
A) Delegates from 12 Colonies meet to address Intolerable Acts
1. Wrote a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” to King George III
asking for a correction of the “wrongs” they suffered especially a
repeal of the Intolerable Acts.
2. Colonial patriots began training militia and storing military
supplies.
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VII)
Outbreak of the American Revolution – April 1775
A. The British seek to prevent a military uprising by the colonists.
1. Massachusetts British General Thomas Gage ordered a detachment
of troops to seize colonial military supplies at Concord and to
arrest the colonial leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams whom
they thought were at Lexington.
2. The Minutemen – members of the Massachusetts militia – were
forewarned by Paul Revere and William Dawes.
3. They went out to resist the British troops and fighting broke out –
the so-called “shot heard round the world.” Dozens were killed
and/or wounded on both sides.
4. Thus started the Revolution.
VIII)Basic Causes of the American Revolution
A) Economic Causes – Colonists wanted to be free from restrictions and
exploitation.
1. Colonial manufacturers and merchants were angry over British
mercantilist laws which hampered their industry and trade.
a. They rejected the doctrine that colonies exist only to enrich the
country that founded them.
2. Plantation owners and frontier settlers, eager for new land,
disliked the prohibition against westward expansion.
3. Professional people opposed the stamp tax on printed matter, such
as newspapers, pamphlets and legal documents.
4. Consumers resented import taxes, which raised living costs.
**British counterarguments:
--British mercantilist laws assigned to the colonies their proper role in
the economy of the British Empire as producers of raw materials.
-- Further mercantilist laws encouraged colonial shipbuilding, provided
bounties for colonial production of essential products such as naval stores,
permitted colonial merchants to trade freely with Britain and the British West
Indies and helped colonial planters by requiring British merchants to buy tobacco
only from the British colonies.
-- Finally Britain claimed that its armed might protect colonial shipping
and frontier settlements.
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B) Political Causes – Colonists felt their rights as Englishmen were being
violated.
1. The colonists maintained that they were entitled to selfgovernment and cold be taxed only by their own elected colonial
legislatures – “No taxation without representation.”
2. They were angry over the writs of assistance and denial of trial by
jury.
British Counterarguments:
---They pointed out that even in Britain itself, high property requirements allowed
less than 5% of the adult male population to vote for Parliamentary representatives.
---Parliament at London had the right to legislate for all parts of the empire, not just
members who had elected them.
--- The taxes levied in the colonies were used for colonial defense and government .
---Regarding laws were not unduly harsh considering that colonial defiance of
authority made such laws necessary.
C) Misunderstandings – keep in mind the two adversaries were
separated by 3,000 miles and slow-moving ships.
1. Although most colonists were of British origin, their environment
had transformed them in Americans.
2. They proved unwilling or unable to understand the British
viewpoint.
3. Further, many non-British colonists had come from countries
traditionally hostile to Britain.
4. Finally, an active minority resented the British monarchy and
desired independence.
British position:
Likewise the British authorities failed to comprehend the colonial
position. King George III, seeking to revive royal executive power
in England , considered the colonists ungrateful and disloyal and
rejected efforts at compromise and pursued, instead, a policy of
suppressing the colonies by force. The bottom line is that the
colonists had, in fact, become different people. They had British
roots, to be sure, but they were so fundamentally different in
outlook and philosophy that efforts to try to force them into the
mercantilist system was bound to fail.
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IX) The Basic Ideas of the Declaration of Independence
Into - On July 4,1776, the Second Continental Congress, speaking for the American
colonies, formally adopted the Declaration of Independence. Although Benjamin
Franklin and John Adams made some contributions, the Declaration was written
chiefly by Thomas Jefferson. Claiming no originality, Jefferson asserted that he
merely place on paper the political beliefs widespread among the American people.
In doing so, Jefferson drew heavily upon the ideas of John Locke. He was an English
political philosopher who justified England’s Glorious Revolution of 1689 in his
work entitled Two Treatises of Government.
A) Introduction
1. It states that it is necessary to break with England, to “dissolve the political
bands which have connected them.”
2. And a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind”, requires the colonists
to “declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
B) Democratic Philosophy of Government
1. All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
2. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted (started) among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
3. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new
government.
4. However governments long established should not be changed for light
and transient (temporary) causes.
C) List of Grievances
1. To prove that the colonists have sufficient causes, the Declaration lists the
many “injuries and usurpations” committed against hem by Britain’s King
George III
X) A Brief Survey of the Revolutionary War
A) British Successes in the Middle States (1776-77)
1. Sir William Howe led a sizable British army that defeated George
Washington’s poorly trained forces and occupied New York City.
2. Washington retreated into New Jersey her he gained morale-boosting
triumphs at Trenton and Princeton.
3. Thereafter, the British army defeated the colonial forces in several
engagements near Philadelphia and occupied that city.
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B) American Victory at Saratoga 1777
1. at Saratoga in upstate New York the Americans win an improbable battle
against the British under General John Burgoyne that had come south from
Canada.
2. The Battle of Saratoga was the turning point of the war as it convinced the
French government that the Americans had a chance to win.
3. France had been secretly provided arms and money but decided to publicly
recognize their independence.
4. In 1778, France signed a treaty of alliance with the Americans.
C) American Suffering at Valley Forge (1777-78)
1. Having lost at Philadelphia, Washington and his troops retreated some 20
miles away to Valley Forge.
2. Inadequately fed and clothed, they suffered through an especially harsh
winter.
3. Washington barely held his army together.
D) American Victory in the Northwest Territory (1778-79)
1. George Rogers Clark led a force of fewer that 200 frontier fighters down the
Ohio River and into the Northwest Territory.
2.Clark won a series of victories against British forces climaxed by the
recapture of Vincennes.
3. Clark’s victories ended British control of the NW Territory and established
American claims to the area.
E) War in the South (1778-1781)
1. The British left Philadelphia in 1778 and returned to New York City.
2. British forces next moved southward, won several battles, and occupied
the major seaports of Savannah and Charleston.
3. But the British could not crush the Americans and by early 1781, the
British lost a series of losses in South Carolina.
4. British General Charles Cornwallis eventually withdrew his forces
northward to Yorktown, Virginia.
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F) Yorktown: The Final American Victory 1781
1. French forces began to aid the Americans.
2. With Cornwallis at Yorktown, Washington moved the American and French
forces southward to overwhelm the British on land while the French navy
cut off any escape by sea.
3. Cornwallis had to surrendered as the British military band played a song
entitled “The World Turned Upside Down.”
XI) The Treaty of Paris 1783 – negotiated by John Adams, John Jay and
Benjamin Franklin
A) Britain recognized the 13 United States as independent
1. The boundaries consisted of Canada and the Great Lakes on the
north; Spanish-owned Florida which extended to the Mississippi
River to the south; the Mississippi River to the west and the Atlantic
on the east.
B) The Americans regained their right to fish on the banks off
Newfoundland.
C) All debts owed by citizens of either nation to creditors o the other were
declared valid.
D) The United States agreed to recommend to the states the restoration of
confiscated Loyalist properties and the payment of debts owed to
British merchants. (few states actually did this.)
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