But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the
American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced.
The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their
religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations...This radical change in
the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the
real American Revolution.
John Adams, letter to H. Niles, February 13, 1818
Wars for Empire and their Effects on the Colonies
The Protestant regime of William and Mary, installed after the Glorious Revolution of
1688, precipitated a series of conflicts with Catholic France over control of global empires.
European War
Major
Participants
Colonial War
Dates
Treaty
War of the League
of Augsburg
England &
Holland vs. France
King William’s
War
1689-1697
War of the Spanish
Succession
England, Austria &
Holland
vs. France & Spain
Queen Anne’s War
1701-1713
Treaty of Utrecht
(1713)
War of the Austrian
Succession
England & Austria
vs. France &
Prussia
King George’s War
1744-1748
Treaty of Aix-laChapelle
(1748)
Seven Years’ War
England & Prussia
vs. France, Spain,
Austria, & Russia
French and Indian
War
1754-1763
Treaty of Paris
(1763)
Treaty of
Ryswick
(1697)
King William’s War: A tie, the French take English territories of Newfoundland and Hudson
Bay, and England gets Gibraltar at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea.
Queen Anne’s War: Colonists from Charleston destroy St. Augustine. New Englanders
attack Quebec, but fail to take it. England regains Hudson Bay, Acadia, and Newfoundland.
King George’s War: As a world war, it is a tie. In North America, Britain took a major French
fort, Louisbourg, showing naval dominance and paving the way for an assault on Quebec.
The wars with France left Britain deep in debt.
The debt caused Prime Minister Robert Walpole to look for ways to
cut spending. In 1723, he created a policy called Salutary Neglect. It
relaxed enforcement of the Navigation Acts and let the colonial
economy run essentially unregulated.
The loosening of English oversight had broader effects on the colonies. The colonies grew
closer together and developed a sense of identity different from Britain.
During the brief time of unsupervised growth, the colonies witnessed the Great Awakening
and the Enlightenment. When it was abruptly ended, it caused a groundswell of opposition
that grew into an independence movement.
The Great Awakening
Religious tensions had occurred before, but now it
seemed the masses were rejecting the “city upon the
hill.” These tensions mingled with social unrest,
natural disasters, and an apparent increase in immoral
behavior to create a religious revival in the mid-1700s.
In 1734-1735, Jonathan Edwards, a Congregationalist minister from western Massachusetts,
began rekindling the American spirit of piety.
It is no mystery why it occurred on the extremities of the colony first. A Baptist clergyman
had once called frontiersmen, “A Gang of frantic lunatics broke out of Bedlam.” Edwards
stirred his audience with explicit descriptions of the torment of hell-fire and damnation. In
1737, Edwards published his account of the event, Faithful Narrative of the Surprising
Work of God. His most lasting sermon is “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”
Jonathan Edwards
The real catalyst of the Great Awakening, however, was George Whitefield, a 27 year old
Anglican minister from England.
In 1739, he arrived in Philadelphia to stir up piety.
By December, he had won renown preaching to
crowds of as many as 6000. He continued his tour of
the colonies in Georgia and then New England.
Whitefield was a showman. He performed in the
pulpit--acting out the horrors of damnation and the
joy of the regenerate.
Whitefield’s meetings were so popular they often
were moved outside to accommodate the audience.
The core of Whitefield’s message was the idea of
“new birth”--the need for a sudden and emotional
moment of conversion and salvation where a sinner
would testify his (or more often her) finding Christ.
The Great Awakening affected colonial society in several ways.
First, the sects established colleges. The original three schools --Harvard (Puritan, 1636),
William and Mary (Anglican, 1693), and Yale (Puritan, 1701)--did not serve colonists’ needs.
Thus were founded:
Presbyterian College of New Jersey (Princeton, 1746)
Anglican King’s College of New York (Columbia, 1754)
Baptist College of Rhode Island (Brown, 1764)
Dutch Reformed Queen’s College in New Jersey (Rutgers, 1766)
Congregationalist Dartmouth in New Hampshire (1769).
A secular school was created in Philadelphia in 1754, it became the University of Pennsylvania.
Territorial boundaries between churches broke down. Itinerant preachers spread sects
across borders, helping to create a national, as opposed to regional, religious culture.
Thirdly, religion became increasingly an individual choice.
Finally, the rise of individual conscience fostered the breakdown of the “state church.”
Religious libertarians began to push for the freedom of conscience that would become a
rallying cry after the revolution.
The Great Awakening was essential in creating what became Iredell County.
Headstones in the Fourth Creek Burying Ground on West End Avenue, and the First
Presbyterian Church history inform us that in about 1749, a group of Scots-Irish Presbyterians
made their way along the Great Wagon Road south to the Piedmont of North Carolina. John
Thompson, the first minister, held outdoor services at which he preached sermons that could
last for two or more hours. Development of the Fourth Creek congregation was hindered by
the French and Indian War (1756-63). The town of Statesville began to form around the
church's location.
Source: Henry Middleton Raynal, Old Fourth Creek Congregation: The Story of the First Presbyterian Church, Statesville, 1964-1989 (1995).
The Enlightenment
In the late 1600s, was experiencing a change in world-view. Known as the “Enlightenment,”
it reflected the advance of the scientific revolution that had been ongoing for more than a
century.
The most important scientist of the revolution was Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton
excelled in physics, theoretical mathematics, and optics.
Newton developed theoretical proofs for his “laws
of physics.” In 1687, he published Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy, known as the
Principia. The most important laws included a law
of gravity and his three laws of motion.
The scientific revolution bred new approaches to other
elements of life, including politics. The most important
political thinker of the English Enlightenment is John
Locke (1632-1704). Two works by Locke stand out: Two
Treatises of Government, and An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding.
The Enlightenment, symbolized by Newton and Locke, was largely limited to the upper and
the educated middle classes. It had less effect on the poor or peasantry of America than the
Great Awakening. But because the upper class were politically powerful, the Enlightenment
is significant.
The Enlightenment did not really reach its peak in America until the 1740s when several
scientists and natural philosophers formed the American Philosophical Society. The
society's most prominent member and principal founder was Benjamin Franklin.
Perhaps the smartest man in the colonies and certainly the most famous, Ben Franklin
embodied the Enlightenment in America as a man of science and letters, and as a deist.
Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the son of a candle and soap maker. He was apprenticed to his older
brother as a printer, but at the age of seventeen he decided he'd had enough of that and ran away, finally
ending up in Philadelphia.
By 1730, Franklin established a print shop and published the Pennsylvania
Gazette. Colonial newspapers were the main means of getting information about
local activities. But they were also a reservoir of axioms. In 1733, Franklin
gathered some of them, added more and created the first almanac in the
colonies.
Poor Richard's Almanac included maxims, home remedies,
astrological information, an index of English monarchs, weather forecasts,
and other tidbits. It was revised many times. It was hugely popular.
The proverbs Franklin collected (i.e. stole or dreamed up) include:
It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
The rotten apple spoils his companion.
God heals and the doctor takes the fee.
Marry your sons when you will, but your daughters when you can.
Women age from the top down.
Franklin was particularly interested in economy and thrift. In 1758, he
created Father Abraham to deliver a sermon on frugality and the evils
of idleness. Father Abraham’s popularity was astronomical and not just in the
colonies. Father Abraham raised the celebrity of Franklin in Europe, as well.
Franklin retired from the printing business in 1748 to pursue his
interest in science and public service.
Franklin devised many practical inventions, including: the bifocal lens (to save having to switch
spectacles to read and see at a distance); the Franklin stove (a small fireplace that generated great heat
with less fuel); swim fins that fit onto one's hands like gloves; and the odometer (to measure distance
to speed up the mail); among other things.
His greatest scientific achievement, however, related to the
studies of electricity and weather. His most famous experiment
involved the discovery that lightning was really electrified air. He
also created the lightning rod, a vitally important invention
which reduced the danger of fires started by lightning hitting homes,
barns, and other buildings. His Experiments and Observations
on Electricity was published in 1751.
Franklin was also a statesman and public servant. He
founded the University of Pennsylvania. He helped
organize the first volunteer fire department in America.
He organized the financing of a sewer system and paved
roads in Philadelphia. He created the first lending
library in the colonies.
He would lead the colonies in the French and Indian
War, the American Revolution, the Confederation Era,
and in creating the U.S. Constitution. He died in 1790.
The French and Indian War
In 1747, several wealthy Virginians established the Ohio Company. Hoping to make money
in the fur trade and in land speculation, in 1748, the company received a 200,000 acres grant
in Pennsylvania at the forks of the Ohio River, near present-day Pittsburgh. The land was
also claimed by France and in 1749, French troops went to the region to shore up France’s
claim by building a series of forts, and befriending the Indians.
In October 1753, George Washington led an expedition to
demand a French withdrawal. The French refused. On the
trip back to Virginia, in January 1754, Washington’s troops
fought French and Indian forces near Fort Duquesne.
Returning in May, Washington and his troops engaged the
French and Indians in the Battle of Jumonville Glen.
Winning, Washington set out to build Fort Necessity. The
French attacked, forcing Washington's withdrawal (July
4th, 1754).
The skirmishes developed into the last French-English
global war for empire, the Seven Years’ War.
The war, in America, was inconsistent. In 1755, Gen. Edward Braddock led British troops to
the area and was ambushed by Indians and Frenchmen in Indian costumes. The English were
defeated and Braddock was killed. George Washington again led the retreat.
Little of significance occurred in the North American war
between Braddock’s death (1755) and the fall of Louisbourg
in 1758. What was important was William Pitt became Prime
Minister. Pitt reorganized the British government and put in
the resources (military and financial) needed to win the war
and establish Britain’s imperial dominance once and for all.
Pitt’s policies turned the tide of war. British troops made significant gains, including building Fort Pitt at the
forks of the Ohio.
In September 1759 came the death blow for the French in North America. Gen. James Wolfe
led a British force against the Marquis de Montcalm at the Citadel of Quebec. Both
commanders were killed in the British victory in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
The Death of General James
Wolfe, by Benjamin West
(1769).
Parliament: What was the temper of America towards Great Britain before the year 1763?
Franklin: The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the
Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to acts of Parliament . . .
The Treaty of Paris (1763) ended the French and Indian War. In it, France gave up all claims
to North America, ceding land east of the Mississippi River to Britain and west of it to Spain.
The land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River posed an opportunity and a
problem for Britain. Colonials wanted the land and the Transylvania Company (whose
investors included George Washington and Ben Franklin) was created in Virginia to
speculate in lands in Kentucky. But each new incursion by colonials resulted in war with the
Indians. So King George III banned colonists from entering the region. The Proclamation of
1763 banned all settlement west of the continental divide in the Appalachians. Colonists
were outraged. Many, including North Carolinian trailblazer Daniel Boone, simply ignored
it and went anyway.
The Proclamation brought a formal end to the era of Salutary Neglect.
The French and Indian War in Western North Carolina
1756: Fort Dobbs, built near Statesville to house settlers during times of war, is completed. The
Moravians build a fort around the village of Bethabara.
1758: North Carolina militia and Cherokee assist the British military in campaigns against the French
and Shawnee Indians. The Cherokee decide to change sides after receiving ill treatment by the English,
and they return home, where they eventually attack North Carolina colonists.
1759: The French and Indian War intensifies as the Cherokee raid the western Piedmont. Refugees
crowd into the fort at Bethabara. Typhus kills many refugees and Moravians there.
A second smallpox epidemic devastates the Catawba tribe, reducing the population by half.
1760: An act of assembly permits North Carolinians serving against Indian allies of the French to
enslave captives.
February: Cherokee attack Fort Dobbs and white settlements near Bethabara and along the
Yadkin and Dan Rivers.
June: An army of British regulars and American militia under Colonel Montgomerie destroys
Cherokee villages and saves the Fort Prince George garrison in South Carolina but is defeated by the
Cherokee at Echoe.
August: Cherokee capture Fort Loudoun in Tennessee and massacre the garrison.
1761: June: An army of British regulars, American militia, and Catawba and Chickasaw Indians under
Colonel James Grant defeats the Cherokee and destroys 15 villages, ending Cherokee resistance.
December: The Cherokee sign a treaty ending their war with the American colonists.