Road to Revolution

1763-1775

“Insurrection of thought usually precedes insurrection of deed”

Deep Roots of the Revolution

• Leaving the Old World was in a sense rebellion

• Surviving the traumatic trip across the ocean increased the feelings of separateness from the Old World

Separation breeds contempt• Colonists realized that England

was a weak authority at best with 3,000 miles between the two

• Overtime, a common belief emerged among the colonists: Th New World had changed them fundamentally …NO Britain could understand what they needed and certainly could not tell them what to do… eventually, they stopped being British and became Americans

Mercantile Theory• Idea that wealth was power

and that a country’s economic wealth, military and political power could be determined by the amount of gold or silver in it treasury

• This idea shaped the policies of all the major nations of Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries

Colonial Merchant Ship

Justification

• Theory justified for Britain why they controlled the colonies

• In order to amass more gold and silver, a country needed to export more than it imported

• Colonies provided the perfect means for countries to import less raw materials and provided a ready made market for British exports

Motherland

• Colonies provide the motherland with more wealth and raw materials

• Britain looked upon American colonists as tenants who were to be:– consumers and providers

of raw materials– loyal to the monarchy and

parliament – certainly not thinking about

rebelling against the motherland

Colonial Responsibilities to England

• 1. Americans were expected to keep the British naval supreme by supplying ships, ship stores, sailors, and trade

• 2. They were discouraged from buying anything but British goods

• 3. They were to continue growing money crops like tobacco and sugar so that England would not have to import these products from foreigners

British Naval Officer

British Tea

Tobacco

Britain keeps the colonies in line

• Parliament passes a lot of laws to make sure colonies lived by the mercantilist system

• 1. Navigation Laws-restricted commerce to and from the colonies to English vessels ONLY…this way no foreign countries would get a piece of the money pie

Colonial Port of Charles Town

More laws for the colonies

• Tobacco had to be sold in England even though colonists could find foreign countries willing to pay more

• Colonists were restricted by what they could produce so they would not be in direct competition with England who was already producing that product ( I.e. beaver hats, woolen cloth)

Popular Beaver Fur Hats

More laws…• No banks in the colonies so

hard currency (gold, silver) was rare

• Currency often ran out and colonists were forced to barter for day to day items

• Butter, nails, pitch and feathers were often used as barter (exchanges) when currency was gone

• When colonies printed paper money, British merchants often refused it and so the money became worthless

Paper Money Woes

• Parliament enacted laws that prevented the colonies from printing more money and hindering their ability to declare bankruptcy to protect British merchants

• Colonist again felt they were sacrificed by a Parliament who knew nothing about what they needed

“Royal Veto”

• If the colonies tried to pass something that interfered with the great British money machine, royal advisors in the colonies would declare the same “null and void”

• Colonists resented the intrusions, and felt misrepresented

Benning Wentworth, the first Royal Governor of New Hampshire, and he was Governor for 26 years (1741-1767).

Curbing Slavery• When colonies wanted to

curb (slow) the growth of slavery, Britain forbid their actions because it went against the best (money) interests of England

• Merchants in England did not want to compete with American merchants making the same products so colonists were forbidden from making that product

Reality of Mercantilism• A bunch of laws that colonists

IGNORED• Yeah, you heard me..Ignored!• Called “salutary neglect” or lax

enforcement• Colonists learned early to ignore,

disregard, or evade these British laws and restrictions

• Smuggling was so prevalent that one famous signer of the Declaration, John Hancock, made his fortune from smuggling

Colonists made a lot of money

• Yeah, they did!• Mercantilist policies

protected and promised huge monetary rewards for colonists who would support the British navy with supplies while denying foreign competition any piece of the pie

• A case of, “there is a job waiting for you whether you want it or not”

Tobacco is still a money crop

• Though denied the selling the plant to foreign countries, tobacco planters were guaranteed a monopoly on the British market

• No other tobacco would be sold in England…it was outlawed in England and Ireland

Privileges of being “British Babies”• Colonies did not have to provide or

pay for a standing army from protection…colonial militias were to be a backup for the REAL army, the REDCOATS

• They were allowed a fair amount of self government…within reason

• Though denied certain manufacture of products, there were plenty of others that would ensure a nice colonial profit

• “prosperity trickles down” as long as Britain was making money so were the colonists!

Shoemaker

Paul Revere, silversmith

How Mercantilists Policies Hurt the Colonies

So What Was the Big Deal Then?

OR

Stifling Economic Initiative

• Americans were not at liberty to buy, sell, ship, or manufacture under conditions that were most profitable to them

• After 1763 mercantilist laws were strictly enforced, prompting many colonials who were just annoyed to become downright belligerent towards the motherland!

Virginia

• Price of tobacco plummets in England, forcing many planters to mortgage future crops just to buy necessities..remember they were forbidden from selling to other countries

New England

• Proud, industrious people felt that Britain had out stayed their welcome

• They wanted to end the “economic bondage” to England

We’re just cows

• Mercantilism treated the colonies like a commodity rather than recognizing that people lived there

• Many felt they were being “used, or milked, as cows are milked” by England

• Humiliation was felt by more and more colonists

“Revolution broke out because England failed to recognize an emerging nation when it saw

one”

Theodore Roosevelt

Someone has to pay!

• After the costly Seven Year’s War, Britain had to redefine it’s relationship with the colonies

• Britain asked the colonies to pay for 1/3 of the cost for maintaining British troops of 10,000 redcoats in America

• Significance? …It was a revolution in colonial policy that came before the revolution for independence

Prime Minister George Grenville• Ordered the British navy to

strictly enforce the Navigation Laws that for so long had just been words on paper

• Sugar Act of 1764 –increased the amount of tax colonists had to pay for sugar…it was later reduced b/c of intense colonial protest

• Quartering Act of 1765-required certain colonies to provide food and shelter for British troops

Stamp Tax• Grenville ordered this tax

in 1765• A stamp became necessary

on all documents • This certified that the

possessor of the document had paid the tax

• Examples: bill of sales (receipts), newspapers, pamphlets, marriage licenses, playing cards, etc.

Stamp, 1765

Grenville, the Just

• Grenville felt that it was only the colonists duty to help defray the cost of maintaining the colonies

• These taxes were only doing that and nothing else

• In fact, the average Englishmen was paying three times that amount in taxes so what were the colonists so mad about?

Home Grown Liberties Challenged

• The new taxes placed a heavier economic burden on the colonies than they had ever endured

• More importantly, it challenged the long held liberties that the colonists had “grown” while Britain looked the other way

Defiant Colonists

• Colonists who refused to comply with the Sugar or Stamp Act were tried in a court – without a jury– Responsible for defending

themselves– Guilty then had to prove themselves

innocent This was especially trying to the

colonists b/c it went against every thing held dear by BOTH colonists and Englishmen who held with honor the concept of “innocent until proven guilty”

Colonial Response to Grenville, the Taxer

Open Defiance

• Some colonies defiantly refused to comply with the Quartering Act

• Others would vote for only a portion of the supplies necessary to purposely jeopardize the troops

Why do we need the Redcoats?• Colonists began to question

the necessity of a standing army in America…the war with France was done so why?

• Some colonists began to believe that the Redcoats remained behind b/c England was getting ready to use force on the increasingly belligerent colonies

• This belief fed the already paranoid colonial population

“NO Taxation Without Representation”

• The obvious scapegoat for colonial tensions was the hated Stamp Act

• England was stunned when colonists reminded them that a 100 years earlier England had waged a Puritan revolution on the theories of popular government so why couldn’t they?

Parliamentary Rights

• Colonists agreed that Parliament could legislate matters for the WHOLE British empire but when it came to singling out the Americans then there better be representation in parliament by those same Americans …at the time there was no American representation in Parliament

• Colonists likened the British to pirates

Britain laughed

• Grenville, shook his head at those naïve colonists

• He insisted that the colonists were represented under “virtual representation”… every member of Parliament represented all of Britain’s subjects even if they had never voted for that Parliament

Truth Be Told• Even if Britain had offered the

colonies direct representation in Parliament they would of turned it down

• They would never have enough representation in Parliament to do well by the colonies

• They needed taxation without representation because it helped the colonies deny the authority of Parliament altogether…leading to their own revolution for political independence

Stamp Act Congress• 1765• Members drew up a statement

of their rights and grievances and sent to the King

• England laughed and ignored the document

• Significance: it brought together colonists who otherwise would have remained sectionalized and dispersed…it was “one more step toward intercolonial unity”

Nonimportation Agreements

• Colonists banded together and refused to import British products…in other words a colonial boycott

• Women had spinning bees and made homespun clothing rather than buy British products

• Significance: ordinary men and women participated in protests spreading revolutionary fervor

Sons of Liberty and Daughters of Liberty

• Sometimes violent• Took the law into their

own hands• Rallying cry “Liberty,

Property, and No Stamps”• Tar and feathered other

colonists who weren’t patriotic

• Ransacked homes of unpopular officials , hanged effigies of stamp agents on liberty poles

Repeal of the Stamp Act

• The Stamp Act dies

• Stamp Agents had all been forced to resign and no one would sell the stamps

• Parliament repealed the act 1766 when nonimportation put British laborers out of work

• Parliament does have the last word though

Declaratory Act• Proclaimed that Parliament

had the right to “bind” the colonies in “all cases whatsoever”

• In other words… “don’t forget we are the ones in charge”

• Significance: the repeal of the Stamp Act and the whiney Declaratory Act illustrated that the colonies could manipulate England with protests and mob action!

“Champagne Charley” Townshend

• Promised he could squeeze money from the unruly colonists with minimal fuss

• He persuaded Parliament to pass the Townshend Acts (1767)

• It tried to skirt the issue of taxation by passing a small import duty on British products like glass, white lead, paper, paint, and tea…payable at the port and by the colonial merchants who would then pass on the increase in the price

Tea and more tea

• The impost on tea was the most frustrating

• 1 million colonists drank tea at least twice a day and when alcohol could not be found

• Also irritating was that the Townshend revenues would be used to pay for the salaries of royal governors and judges

Smuggled tea

• Non importation agreements were not as effective as many colonials were still purchasing tea though it was smuggled tea especially in Massachusetts

• British officials humiliated by the lack of law abiding colonists brought in the redcoats to Boston

Boston Massacre• March 5, 1770• 60 townspeople surrounded a British

quad of 10• Words exchanged along with hitting

and shoving• No order given but shots fired into the

crowd by the Redcoats left 11 colonials dead or wounded

• Crispus Attucks , a runaway mulatto was the first to die

• Soldiers later represented by John Adams where two were found guilty of manslaughter and branded on the hand

Samuel Adams

• cousin of John Adams• Not a speaker, but a

skilled writer• “Penman of the

Revolution”• Founder of the

seditious committees of correspondence

Committees of Correspondence

• Chief functions– Spread propaganda– Inform colonists through

letter writing– Keep alive anti-British

feeling among the colonists– Started at a local level, later

became intercolonial as colonies exchanged information with each other

– Significance-inspired united action and evolved directly into the first American congresses!

Boston Tea Party

• British East India Company on the verge of bankruptcy promised a complete monopoly of the colonies by Parliament

• Tea was cheaper than ever before but still taxed

• Principle was far more important than the beloved tea so…

• Marylanders burned the cargo• Bostonians threw it over board• Not a single chest of tea reached

colonial teapots

Result of the Tea Party

• Extremists loved it

• Conservatives protested

• British outraged– punishment and the use of

force were now the only ways left to them

- 1774: “Repressive Acts” or “Intolerable Acts”

- Colonists called them “the massacre of American Liberty”

Intolerable Acts

• Boston Port Act: closed the harbor until damages paid and order restored

• Chartered rights of Massachusetts dissolved

• Restrictions placed on the town meetings

• British officials who killed colonists would be sent to England for trial rather than stay in the colonies…leading to the belief they would be let free

Quebec Act• Determined how England

would rule the 60,000 conquered French in Canada– Retained their Catholic religion– Retain old customs and

traditions– No representative government,

or trial by juries– Boundary extended all the way

to the Ohio RiverFrenchmen were thrilled with the

Act…duh, they got most everything back

Colonial Response to Quebec Act

• Seemed a dangerous precedent in America against jury trials and popular assemblies

• Alarmed land speculators who now had no Ohio Valley to make a profit off of

• Aroused the anti-Catholics in a region that had been earmarked for the last 100 years as Protestant

Continental Congress 1774• Meet for the first time to

consider ways of redressing colonial grievances

• 12 of the 13 colonies participated (Georgia absent)

• 55 men showed up • Debated for 7 weeks• Not a legislative body but a

consulting body • John Adams, eloquent leader• Drew up the Declaration of

Rights

The Association• Invention of the Continental

Congress• Called for the complete boycott

of British goods: no importing, no exporting, and no buying of British goods

• This document called the The Association was the closest thing to a constitution that the colonies had ever in unity produced

• Colonists were still seeking a redress of wrongs rather than a war

British Response

• Petitions of the Continental Congress were rejected by Parliament

• Meanwhile, patriots were tarring and feathering those who didn’t follow the Association and openly gathering arms and drilling in the militias

Lexington and Concord

• British commander in Boston sent to seize the stores of colonial gunpowder and rebel leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock met resistance

• Firing upon Minute Men who would not leave fast enough, they killed 8

• Word reached Concord before the Redcoats showed up, a prepared militia wounded hundreds and killed 70 British

• A war had begun!

British Weakness

• George III and Lord North, inept leaders

• Busy in Ireland• Many Britons had no desire to kill

their American cousins• Generals second rate• Brutal treatment of soldiers• Supplies iffy- on one occasion a

supply of biscuits from 15 years earlier was “softened” by dropping a cannonball

• America is too vast even for the world’s most powerful army

American Strengths• Outstanding leadership:

George Washington, Ben Franklin

• Foreign Aid from France• “Swords for hire”-Marquis de

Lafayette• Agriculturally, colonies self-

sustaining• Frontiersman proved to be

excellent marksmen• Moral advantage: they

believed that what they were doing was just and right!

Marquis de Lafayette

American Weaknesses• Badly organized• Continental Congress was more a

debate team than a governing force• Individual states refused the right of the

Continental Congress to tell them what to do

• Sectional jealousy over who received the military appointments

• Currency is nowhere to be found in large amounts

• “Continental” paper money too much printed so it became worthless, leading to inflation and prices rose dramatically

Weaknesses continued

• Basic military supplies scarce

• Franklin even proposed using bow and arrows

• Even with plenty of food, there were not enough wagons to haul it hence the disaster of Valley Forge where 2,800 patriots nearly starved and froze to death because supplies could not reach them

Weaknesses (more)• Militiamen numerous, but

unreliable…not unusual for men to leave to go back to families or crops

• Poor military training• British promised freedom to black

slaves willing to serve in the British Army and many did

• American profiteers: sold to British for the gold currency– hid their activities well but destroyed

American morale as American troops went without shoes and they made a profit selling shoes to British soldiers