The American Promise – Lecture Notes
Chapter 6 – The British Empire and the Colonial Crisis, 1754-1775
I. The Seven Years’ War, 1754–1763 (Slide 2) Page 142
A. French-British Rivalry in the Ohio Country
1. French Traders Ally with Indians—French traders had cultivated Indian
alliances for decades; the French exchanged manufactured goods for beaver
furs on the frontier; in the 1740s, Pennsylvania began to infringe on that territory.
2. British Colonists Form Ohio Company—Virginians formed the Ohio Company
and advanced into French-claimed territory; they wanted to secure tracts of land
to sell later for profit.
3. French Military Forts Trespass on Virginia Land—French soldiers began
building forts to protect their trade routes and to create a western barrier to
American expansion; Robert Dinwiddie, royal governor of Virginia, warned the
French they were trespassing on Virginia land; he sent George Washington to
deliver the message, and Washington returned home with crucial intelligence;
Dinwiddie appointed Washington to head a small military expedition to assert and
possibly defend Virginia’s claim; Washington was authorized to respond with
force only if attacked first.
4. French and Indian War Begins—Washington and 160 Virginians and a small
contingent of Mingo Indians set out in the spring of 1754; in May, a detachment
of Washington’s soldiers led by Mingo chief Tanaghrisson discovered a small
French encampment in the woods; it is unclear who fired first, but fourteen
Frenchmen and no Virginians were wounded in the panicked skirmish;
Washington did not speak French and therefore could not communicate with the
injured French commander; Tanaghrisson and his men killed and scalped the
wounded soldiers; first battle of the French and Indian War.
5. Fort Necessity—Fearing retaliation, Washington ordered his men to fortify their
position, resulting in the makeshift “Fort Necessity”; in response, French soldiers
and one hundred Shawnee and Delaware Indians attacked Fort Necessity in July
1754; they killed one third of Washington’s men, making it clear that the French
would not leave the disputed territory.
B. The Albany Congress (Slide 5) Page 144
1. Repair Trade Relations and Secure Indians’ Help against the French—British
imperial leaders hoped to prevent a larger war, and they wanted to strengthen
alliances with once-friendly Indian tribes; the purpose of the Albany Congress
was to repair trade relations and to secure the Indians’ help—or at least
1 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
neutrality—against the French; the congress occurred in June and July 1754;
delegates from seven colonies met with all six tribes of the Iroquois nation.
2. Albany Plan of Union—Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Thomas
Hutchinson of Massachusetts coauthored the Albany Plan of Union, which
proposed a unified but limited government over all the colonies to formulate
Indian policy and coordinate colonial military forces; the plan called for a
president-general appointed by the crown and a grand council who would meet
annually to consider questions of war, peace, and trade with the Indians; the plan
still affirmed Parliamentary authority; delegates approved the plan, but no
colonies approved it; colonies argued it was too strong or that it would be
impossible for all colonies to agree; the British and the Indians rejected it as well.
C. The War and Its Consequences (Slide 8) Page 146
1. Braddock’s March—General Edward Braddock marched his army toward Fort
Duquesne in western Pennsylvania; accompanied by Washington and his
Virginia soldiers, Braddock led 2,000 troops into the backcountry in July 1755.
2. Braddock’s Defeat—One day before reaching the fort, the British were
ambushed by 250 French soldiers and 640 Indian warriors; the Battle of
Monongahela ended with nearly a thousand British soldiers killed or wounded,
including General Braddock; the defeat stunned British leaders; they stumbled for
the next two years, deploying inadequate numbers of troops.
3. William Pitt—Prime minister of Britain, rose to power in 1757; Pitt turned the
tide in the war by paying colonial assemblies to raise and equip provincial
soldiers; additional manpower led to a series of victories in the American colonies
and in Canada; culminated with the fall of Quebec in 1760.
4. Treaty of Paris (1763)—The British continued fighting with Spain abroad;
France and Spain capitulated in 1762 and signed the Treaty of Paris in 1763; the
complex peace negotiations rearranged the map of North America; Britain gained
Canada and confirmation of the claim to the eastern half of North America;
French territory west of the Mississippi went to Spain; France retained Martinique
and Guadalupe; Cuba restored to Spain.
5. Aftermath—Britain and the colonies began to eye each other warily; Pitt and
others believed American traders were actually traitors for participating in colonial
smuggling; colonists were angry that arrogant British commanders had relegated
them to grunt work and subjected them to harsh discipline; the war was also very
expensive, and costs continued to mount once British leaders decided to
maintain a force of ten thousand soldiers in North America; British national debt
had doubled since Pitt took office.
2 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
D. Pontiac’s Rebellion and the Proclamation of 1763 (Slide 10) Page 147
1. Indians Excluded from Treaty of Paris Negotiations—The major powers failed
to include Indians in negotiations; Indians noted that the British never sent gifts,
which symbolized honor and obligation; unlike the French, the British did not
understand significance of gifts in Indian culture.
2. Antagonism toward the British Grows among Indians—The British enlarged
Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt; Indians grew alarmed as American
settlers clustered there; an Indian religious revival further magnified feelings of
antagonism toward the British; the Delaware prophet Neolin urged a return to
traditional ways, without the influence of whites.
3. Pontiac’s Rebellion—A renewal of commitment to Indian ways and the
formation of tribal alliances led to what the British called Pontiac’s Rebellion,
named for the chief of the Ottawa tribe; Indians waged attacks on British forts
across the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region; killed more than four hundred
British soldiers; another two thousand colonists were killed or taken captive; the
uprising faded in early 1764; new military leader Thomas Gage began distributing
gifts among the Indians.
4. Proclamation of 1763—British issued the proclamation to minimize violence; it
forbade colonists to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains, limited trade with
Indians to licensed traders, and forbade the private sale of Indians lands; it did
not, however, identify western lands as belonging to the Indians; it proved
impossible to enforce; settlers had already moved west of the line, and land
speculators would not give up opportunities to resell the land.
II. The Sugar and Stamp Acts, 1763–1765 (Slide 12) Page150
A. Grenville’s Sugar Act
1. Grenville Enforces Customs Duties—Prime Minister George Grenville sought
revenue to pay for Britain’s war debt; he scrutinized the customs service to cut
down on bribery, insisting on attention to paperwork and strict accounting of
collected duties; the hardest duty to enforce was the one imposed by the
Molasses Act; it was designed to discourage trade with French Caribbean
islands, but French molasses was cheap, abundant, and easily smuggled.
2. Revenue Act of 1764—Dubbed the Sugar Act; lowered the duty on French
molasses in hopes of making it more attractive for shippers to obey the law; at
the same time, the act increased the penalties for smuggling; appeared to be
within the tradition of navigation acts meant to regulate trade, but Grenville’s
3 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
actual intent was to raise revenue; naval crews could act as customs officials;
smugglers would be prosecuted by a vice-admiralty court in Nova Scotia.
3. Tension between British Officials and American Shippers—The act did not
offset the attractions of smuggling; Americans engaged in the shipping trades
raised objections to the act; saw it as a disturbing intrusion into colonial practices
of self-taxation by elected colonial assemblies.
B. The Stamp Act Page 151
1. Another Attempt to Alleviate National Debt—To alleviate national debt, the
Stamp Act imposed a tax on all paper used for official documents—newspapers,
licenses, and more—and required a stamp to prove the tax had been paid; the
act was clearly designed to raise money.
2. Taxation with Consent?—English tradition held that taxes were a gift from the
people to their monarch, granted by the people’s representatives; citizens could
use and enjoy property without fear of confiscation; the king could not demand
money; only House of Commons could grant it.
3. Virtual Representation—Grenville argued that colonists were taxed by consent
because they were “virtually” represented in Parliament; the House of Commons,
he argued, represented all British subjects, wherever they were; colonial leaders
argued virtual representation could not withstand the stretch across the Atlantic.
C. Resistance Strategies and Crowd Politics (Slide 13) Page 152
1. Patrick Henry and the Virginia Resolves—Virginia’s assembly, the House of
Burgesses, was the first to oppose the Stamp Act; it passed the Virginia
Resolves, a series of resolutions written by Patrick Henry; inched the assembly
toward radical opposition to the Stamp Act; logical conclusion was that the
Virginia Assembly alone had the right to tax Virginians; even though assembly
rescinded their vote on the most radical measures, newspapers across the
colonies had already printed the resolves in their entirety.
2. Samuel Adams and Others Organize the “Sons of Liberty”—Political debate
went beyond the assemblies; in Boston, Samuel Adams mobilized artisans,
tradesmen, printers, and other members of the middling and lower orders into the
“Sons of Liberty”; Sons of Liberty staged a large street demonstration on August
14, 1765; highlighted by a mock execution designed to convince stamp
distributor Andrew Oliver to resign; two thousand to three thousand
demonstrators participated; Oliver resigned the next day; two weeks later,
crowds attacked the homes of customs officials and lieutenant governor Thomas
Hutchinson; the excessive violence of that demonstration brought a halt to the
protests.
4 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
D. Liberty and Property Page 154
1. Crowd Violence Proliferates throughout the Colonies—Boston’s crowd actions
sparked similar eruptions by groups calling themselves the Sons of Liberty in
nearly fifty towns throughout the colonies.
2. Stamp Act Congress—Some colonial leaders sought a more moderate
challenge to parliamentary authority; in October 1765, twenty-seven delegates
representing nine colonial assemblies met in New York City as the Stamp Act
Congress; delegates affirmed their subordination to Parliament and the monarch,
dismissed virtual representation, and advanced a radical potential—the notion of
intercolonial political action; white Americans adopted the rallying cry of “Liberty
and Property”; some Americans began to speak and write about a plot by British
leaders to enslave them.
3. Britain’s Response to American Demonstrations—British politicians and
merchants were distressed by American demonstrations; merchants pressured
Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act, which it did in March 1766, but parliament
passed the Declaratory Act, which asserted Parliament’s right to legislate for the
colonies “in all cases whatsoever
III. The Townshend Acts and Economic Retaliation, 1767–1770 (Slide 16)
Page 156
A. The Townshend Duties
1. Revenue Act of 1767—Called Townshend duties; passed by Britain’s chief
financial minster Charles Townshend; established new duties on tea, glass, lead,
paper, and painters’ colors imported into the colonies; the duty was paid by
importers but passed down to consumers in retail prices; not particularly
burdensome, but taxation extracted through trade duties looked different to the
colonists in the wake of the Stamp Act crisis.
2. Controversial Provisions—Townshend duties directed that some of the
revenue generated would pay the salaries of royal governors; Townshend
believed the measure would strengthen the governors’ position and curb the
growing independence of colonial assemblies, which to that point had set the
salaries of their own officials, giving them significant influence.
3. Colonial Assemblies Protest—Massachusetts took the lead in protesting the
duties; its assembly circulated a letter of grievances written by Samuel Adams;
argued any form of parliamentary taxation was unjust because Americans were
not represented in Parliament; royal officials ordered Massachusetts governor
Francis Bernard to dissolve the assembly once it refused to repudiate the letter.
5 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
B. Nonconsumption and the Daughters of Liberty Page 157
1. Boycott of All British-Made Goods—Nonconsumption agreements called for a
boycott of all British-made goods; agreements passed in dozens of towns in 1767
and 1768; they were aimed at hurting trade so that London merchants would
pressure Parliament to repeal the duties.
2. Nonconsumption and Nonimportation Agreements Difficult to Enforce—
Boycotting all British goods required serious personal sacrifice; merchants
continued to import goods in readiness for the end of nonconsumption or to sell
to people who ignored the boycotts; in Boston, these merchants were blacklisted;
merchants also feared that merchants in other colonies would continue to import
goods and make handsome profits at their expense.
3. Daughters of Liberty—Doing without British products provided an opportunity
for women; many of the products specified in nonconsumption agreements were
household goods traditionally under the control of the “ladies”; the concept of
Daughters of Liberty gave shape to the new idea that women might play a role in
public affairs; women could express patriotism through conspicuous boycotts of
British goods; homespun cloth became a prominent symbol of patriotism;
spinning bees occurred in sixty New England towns; women, although patriotic,
were not the equivalent of the marching and protesting Sons of Liberty; on the
whole, boycotts were a success, as imports fell by more than 40 percent.
C. Military Occupation and “Massacre” in Boston (Slide 18) Page 159
1. British Troops Occupy Boston in 1768—Britain sent three thousand uniformed
troops to occupy Boston; soldiers drilled conspicuously on the town Common and
in general grated on the nerves of Bostonians; tensioned reached heightened
levels in 1770.
2. The Boston Massacre—On March 5, 1770, a crowd taunted British soldiers
guarding the customs house; soldiers fired on the small crowd, killing five
colonists; became known as the Boston Massacre; Sons of Liberty staged
elaborate martyrs’ funerals for the five victims, including the one nonwhite victim,
Crispus Attucks; eight jailed British soldiers and their Captain Thomas Preston
were defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, who were committed to the
idea that even unpopular defendants deserved a fair trial; Preston and six
soldiers were acquitted; the other two were convicted of manslaughter, branded
on the thumbs, and released.
IV. The Destruction of the Tea and the Coercive Acts, 1770–1774 (Slide 20)
A. The Calm before the Storm
6 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
1. Repeal of the Townshend Duties—The repeal brought an end to
nonimportation; trade boomed in 1770 and 1771; leaders of the popular
movement appeared to be losing power, exemplified by Samuel Adams losing a
race for a minor local office.
2. Gaspée Incident—Events in 1772 brought conflict with England into sharper
focus; one incident was the burning of the Gaspée, a Royal Navy ship pursuing
suspected smugglers near Rhode Island; British investigating commission did not
arrest anyone but announced that any suspects would be sent to England for trial
on high treason; seemed to fly in the face of the traditional English right to trial by
a jury of one’s peers.
3. Committees of Correspondence—In response, Patrick Henry, Thomas
Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee in the Virginia House of Burgesses proposed a
network of standing committees called committees of correspondence; linked the
colonies and passed on alarming news.
4. Tea Act of 1773—Shattered the relative calm of the early 1770s; Americans
were buying British tea again, but they were also still smuggling Dutch Tea,
cutting into sales of Britain’s East India Company; Tea Act gave favored status to
the East India Company, allowing it to sell tea directly to a few selected
merchants in four colonial cities; these government agents would resell the tea
and collect the tax; this would reduce the final price of East India tea.
B. Tea in Boston Harbor
1. Initial Resistance to the Tea Act—Colonists thought the Tea Act was a trick to
get them to buy dutied tea; Sons of Liberty pressured tea agents to resign, and
tea cargoes either landed duty free or were sent home.
2. Tea Arrives in Boston in 1773—Three ships arrived and cleared customs; they
unloaded cargoes, but not the tea; Hutchinson demanded that tea duty be paid
before ship returned to England; the ship sat for 20 days as pressure built in
Boston; Hutchinson again refused clearance for the ships on December 16; in
response, 100 to 150 men disguised as Indians boarded the ships and dumped
thousands of pounds of tea into Boston harbor while a crowd of 2,000 watched;
dubbed the Destruction of the Tea, or the Boston Tea Party.
C. The Coercive Acts (Slide 22)
1. Punishment for Massachusetts Destroying the Tea—The Coercive Acts,
known by colonists as the Intolerable Acts, consisted of five parts; first, the
Boston Port Act closed Boston harbor to shipping traffic until the tea was paid for;
second, the Massachusetts Government Act increased the power of the royal
governor to underscore Parliament’s supremacy over Massachusetts; third, the
7 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
Impartial Administration of Justice Act said any royal official accused of a capital
crime (such as Captain Preston was) would be tried in Britain; fourth, the
Quartering Act was amended to permit military commanders to lodge soldiers in
private households if necessary; fifth, the Quebec Act, which had nothing to do
with the other four, fed American fears; confirmed the continuation of French civil
law, French government form, and Catholicism of Quebec; gave Quebec control
of disputed lands in the Ohio Valley, lands which had been claimed by
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Indian tribes.
2. Alarm in the Colonies—Colonists worried about the security of their liberties
after Britain inflicted its punishment upon Massachusetts; through committees of
correspondence, colonial leaders arranged to convene in Philadelphia in
September 1774 to respond to the crisis.
D. Beyond Boston: Rural New England
1. On the Brink of Open Insurrection—Troops occupying Boston shifted
revolutionary momentum from urban radicals to rural farmers; in all
Massachusetts counties except one, crowds of thousands of armed men
converged to prevent the opening of county courts run by crown-appointed
judges; judges were forced to resign.
2. Preparation for Confrontation—Ordinary citizens throughout New England
began planning for the showdown; town militias stockpiled gunpowder “in case of
invasion”; militia officers stepped up drills of their units; towns withheld tax money
and diverted it to military supplies.
3. Powder Alarm Incident—British General Thomas Gage sent troops to capture
a supply of gunpowder outside Boston on September 1, 1774; false news spread
that the troops had killed six colonists; within 24 hours, several thousand armed
men marched to Boston to avenge the violence; the crisis was defused once the
error was detected, but the incident made clear Massachusetts’s willingness to
fight.
IV. The Destruction of the Tea and the Coercive Acts, 1770-1774 (Slide 23)
E. The First Continental Congress
1. Gathering of Colonial Representatives in Philadelphia in 1774—Every colony
except Georgia sent representatives; delegates sought to articulate their
authorities as British subjects.
2. Debated Possible Responses to Coercive Acts—Some wanted a total ban with
trade on Britain; southerners dependent on tobacco and rice exports opposed
halting trade.
8 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
3. Produced Declaration of Rights—The declaration was couched in traditional
language: “We ask only for peace, liberty, and security. Wish no diminution of
royal prerogatives, we demand no new rights”; from England’s perspective, the
existing rights were too radical; delegates agreed to a staggered and limited
boycott of trade; to enforce the boycott, they called for a Continental Association
to monitor all commerce and punish suspected violators of the boycott.
4. Non-Recognition of Colonial Political Bodies—The British did not recognize as
legitimate the committees of public safety, the committees of correspondence,
the regrouped colonial assemblies, or the Continental Congress; colonists now
believed that the problems of British rule went beyond taxation and involved
infringement of liberty and denial of self-government.
V. Domestic Insurrections, 1774–1775 (Slide 24)
A. Lexington and Concord
1. Minutemen Prepare to Respond to Threats in Boston—In Massachusetts,
militia units known as minutemen prepared to respond at a minute’s notice to any
threat from British troops.
2. Gage Plans Attack on Ammunition Storage Site at Concord—General Thomas
Gage requested twenty thousand reinforcements; planned a surprise attack on a
suspected ammunition site at Concord, Massachusetts, on April 18, 1775.
3. British and Minutemen Clash at Lexington and Concord—Paul Revere and
William Dawes alerted minutemen of the attack; when the British arrived at
Lexington, they were met by seventy armed colonists; it is unclear who fired the
first shot, but the firing left eight Americans dead and ten wounded; the British
troops continued their march to Concord, where they exchanged shots with three
hundred to four hundred militiamen at Old North Bridge; two Americans and three
British soldiers were killed; militia units ambushed the British on their way back to
Boston, wounding or killing 273 British soldiers; it was April 19, and the war had
begun.
B. Rebelling against Slavery
9 of 10
The American Promise – Lecture Notes
1. Freedom Promised to Slaves Loyal to the British—The royal governor of
Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation in November 1775 promising
freedom to defecting able-bodied slaves who would fight for the British; he did
not intend to liberate all slaves or start a slave rebellion, as female, young, and
elderly slaves were not welcome; by December, some 1,500 slaves had fled to
Dunmore, who armed them and called them his Ethiopian Regiment; diseases
wrecked their camps; when Dunmore left the following year, he took only 300
black survivors with him, but the association of freedom with the British
authorities had been established.
2. Phillis Wheatley’s Calls for Freedom—Slaves in the North recognized the
opportunity to bid for freedom as well; domestic slave poet Phillis Wheatley
called attention to colonists who called for freedom yet still owned slaves; some
Boston slaves petitioned Thomas Gage, promising to fight for the British if he
freed them; an uprising was uncovered in North Carolina, and scores of slaves
were arrested; punished by revolutionary committee of public safety; by the time
the war ended in 1783, as many as twenty thousand blacks had voted against
slavery with their feet by joining the British Army; most failed to achieve
liberation; about eight thousand to ten thousand left American under the
protection of the British army to start new lives of freedom in Nova Scotia or
Sierra Leone.
10 of 10