12.2: American Revolution (United States)

Independence Hall Association, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1942. Retrieved from ushistory.org

Between 1760 and 1800, the American colonists cast off British rule to create a new nation and a radically new form of government based on the idea that people have the right to govern themselves.

For well over a century, the English colonists who had settled in North America had been mostly left alone to govern their own affairs, which included their own locally controlled colonial assemblies. This British policy of salutary neglect would all change beginning with the Seven Years War. Also known as the French and Indian War, it was a conflict fought between Britain and France from 1754 to 1763 for colonial dominance of North America. The war ended after the British captured most of France’s major cities and forts in Canada and the Ohio Valley.

In 1763, in the interest of maintaining a more peaceful coexistence between the colonists and Indians along the western frontier, Parliament issued the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding American colonists to settle on Native American territory unless native rights to the land had first been obtained by purchase or treaty. This policy essentially prohibited settlement in the West and irritated the colonists. Britain also needed money to pay for the last war and to support the empire's growth. As a result, Britain’s past policy of salutary neglect was coming to an end.

British Prime Minister George Grenville began enforcing the ancient Navigation Acts in 1764. In addition, the parliament had

• passed the Sugar Act to tax sugar
• passed the Currency Act to remove paper currencies from circulation
• passed the Stamp Act, which placed a tax on printed materials
• passed the Quartering Act, which required colonists to house and feed British troops

The Sugar Act was the first fully enforced tax levied solely for the purpose of raising revenue. Colonists throughout the thirteen colonies cried out against “taxation without representation”. Several colonial leaders convened the Stamp Act Congress in New York to petition Parliament and King George III to repeal the tax. In 1766, Parliament bowed to public pressure and repealed the Stamp Act. But it also quietly passed the Declaratory Act, which stipulated that Parliament reserved the right to tax the colonies anytime it chose.

In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which levied another series of taxes on lead, paints, and tea. In the same series of acts, the Suspension Act suspended the New York assembly for not enforcing the Quartering Act. To prevent violent protests, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson requested assistance from the British army. In 1768, four thousand redcoats (British troops) landed in the city to help maintain order.

Two years later, on March 5, 1770, an angry mob clashed with several British troops. Five colonists died, and news of the Boston Massacre quickly spread throughout the colonies.

Paul Revere’s historic engraving, The Bloody Massacre in King-Street, was probably the most effective piece of war propaganda in American history, though a very inaccurate depiction of the actual event. Retrieved from www.landofthebrave.info

In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which granted the financially troubled British East India Company monopoly on the tea exported to the American colonies. In many American cities, tea agents resigned or canceled orders, and merchants refused consignments in response to the unpopular act.

Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, determined to uphold the law, ordered that three ships arriving in Boston harbor should be allowed to deposit their cargoes and that appropriate payments should be made for the goods. On the night of December 16, 1773, sixty men boarded the ships, disguised as Native Americans, and dumped the entire shipment of tea into the harbor. That event is now famously known as the Boston Tea Party.

In January 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, which shut down Boston Harbor until the British East India Company had been fully reimbursed for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party.

To protest the Intolerable Acts, prominent colonials gathered in Philadelphia at the First Continental Congress in autumn of 1774. They once again petitioned Parliament, King George III, and the British people to repeal the acts and restore friendly relations. For additional motivation, they also decided to institute a boycott, or ban, of all British goods in the colonies.

“The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor”

On April 19, 1775, part of the British occupation force in Boston marched to the nearby town of Concord, Massachusetts, to seize a colonial militia arsenal. Militiamen of Lexington and Concord intercepted and attacked them. The first shot—the so-called “shot heard round the world”—was one of many that forced the British to retreat to Boston. Thousands of militiamen from nearby colonies flocked to Boston to assist.

In the meantime, leaders convened the Second Continental Congress to discuss options. In one final attempt for peaceful reconciliation, they professed their love and loyalty to King George III and begged him to address their grievances in the Olive Branch Petition. The king rejected the petition and formally declared that the colonies were in a state of rebellion.

In January of 1776, Thomas Paine published a pamphlet, Common Sense that urged the colonists to declare and fight for independence in clear, simple language. It was published anonymously and became an immediate sensation, being sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places.

The Second Continental Congress chose George Washington to command the militiamen besieging Boston in the north. They also appropriated money for a small navy and for transforming the undisciplined militias into the professional Continental Army. Encouraged by a strong colonial campaign in which the British scored only narrow victories (such as at Bunker Hill), many colonists began to advocate total independence as opposed to having full rights within the British Empire.

The congressmen voted on July 2, 1776, to declare their independence. A committee of men, including a young lawyer named Thomas Jefferson, drafted the Declaration of Independence. This document was firmly based on the ideas of the English philosopher, John Locke, and the Enlightenment. An example is found in the argument for natural rights:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that at all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that to guarantee these Rights governments are Instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”

Since Locke had asserted that people have the right to rebel against an unjust ruler, the Declaration of Independence included a long list of George III’s abuses. The document ended by breaking the ties between the colonies and Britain. The colonies, the Declaration said, “are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown."

John Trumbull - "Declaration of Independence” 1819

When the war was first declared, the odds seemed heavily weighted against the Americans. Washington’s ragtag, poorly trained army faced the well-trained forces of the most powerful country in the world. And yet, the colonists had advantages.

• motivation for fighting was much stronger than that of the British, since their army was defending their homeland
• overconfident British generals made several mistakes
• fighting an overseas war, 3,000 miles from London, was terribly expensive

After a few years, tax-weary British citizens clamored for peace. Finally, the colonists did not fight alone. Louis XVI of France had little sympathy for the ideals of the American Revolution, but he was eager to weaken France’s rival, Britain. French entry into the war in 1778 was decisive. In 1781, combined forces of about 9,500 colonists and 7,800 French trapped a British army commanded by Lord Cornwallis near Yorktown, Virginia. Unable to escape, Cornwallis surrendered. In the end, the colonists won their war for independence.

Americans Create a Republic

The new U.S. Constitution created a system in which power was shared between the national government and state governments. It further divided the three different types of government powers – legislative, executive, and judicial – among three separate branches of government, as advocated by the Enlightenment thinker Baron de Montesquieu.

In addition, the new Constitution gave each of these government branches several ways to “check” the other branches (known as the system of “checks and balances”) in order to ensure that no one branch became too powerful or tyrannical. Later, a Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to include protections of individual liberties such as freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion, as well as the rights of the accused.

Although the Constitution created a strong central government, it did not eliminate local governments. Instead, the Constitution established the practice of federalism, in which power would be divided between national and state governments.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights marked a turning point in people’s ideas about government. Both documents put Enlightenment ideas into practice. They expressed an optimistic view that reason and reform could prevail and that progress was inevitable. Such optimism would soon sweep across the Atlantic

Attribution: Material taken and modified from CK-12 7.1 The American War for Independence