In 1754 the colonists still considered themselves English subjects. Very few could have imagined circumstances under which they would leave the British Empire. The events that led from almost universal loyalty to rebellion are frequently tested on the AP U.S. History Exam. Here is what you need to know:
In 1754 representatives from seven colonies met in Albany, New York, to consider the Albany Plan of Union, developed by Benjamin Franklin. The plan provided for an intercolonial government and a system for collecting taxes for the colonies’ defense. At that meeting, Franklin also tried to negotiate a treaty with the Iroquois. Franklin’s efforts to unite the colonies failed to gain the approval of a single colonial legislature. The plan was rejected because the colonists did not want to relinquish control of their right to tax themselves, nor were they prepared to unite under a single colonial legislature. Franklin’s frustration was well publicized in one of the first American political cartoons—his drawing of a snake broken into pieces, under which lie the words “Join or Die.”
Yes, the Seven Years’ War lasted for nine years. It is also called the French and Indian War, which is almost equally confusing because the French and Indians fought on the same side, not against each other. The Seven Years’ War was the British name for the war. The colonists called it the “French and Indian War” because that’s who they were fighting. It was actually one of several “wars for empire” fought between the British and the French, and the Americans got stuck in the middle. This was arguably the first world war.
The war was the inevitable result of colonial expansion. (It was also caused by a number of inter-European power struggles, which is how Spain, Austria, Sweden, Prussia, and others got involved, but that is on the European history test, so you can worry about it some other time.) As English settlers moved into the Ohio Valley, the French tried to stop them by building fortified outposts at strategic entry spots. The French were trying to protect their profitable fur trade and their control of the region. A colonial contingent led by George Washington attacked a French outpost and lost badly. Washington surrendered and was allowed to return to Virginia, where he was welcomed as a hero. Other skirmishes and battles ensued, and in 1756, England officially declared war on France. Most Native Americans in the region, choosing the lesser of two evils, allied themselves with the French who had traditionally had the best relations with Native Americans of any of the European powers and whom, based on Washington’s performance, they expected to win the war. The war dragged on for years before the English finally gained the upper hand. When the war was over, England was the undisputed colonial power of the continent. The treaty gave England control of Canada and almost everything east of the Mississippi Valley. The French kept only two sugar islands, underscoring the impact of mercantilism since the French prioritized two small but highly profitable islands over the large landmass of Canada.
William Pitt, the English Prime Minister during the war, was supportive of the colonists and encouraged them to join the war effort, promising them pay and some autonomy (this helped to create one of the first real senses of inter-colonial unity). When the leadership in Britain changed after the war, that led to resentment by the colonists against the British rule.
The English victory spelled trouble for Native Americans, who had previously been able to use French and English disputes to their own advantage. They negotiated their allegiances in return for land, goods, and the right to be left alone. The Native Americans particularly disliked the English, however, because English expansionism was more disruptive to their way of life. The French had sent few colonists, and many of those colonists were fur trappers who did not settle anywhere permanently. In the aftermath of the war, the English raised the price of goods sold to the Native Americans (they now had a monopoly, after all) and ceased paying rent on their western forts. In response, Ottawa war chief Pontiac rallied a group of tribes in the Ohio Valley and attacked colonial outposts. The attacks and resultant wars are known as Pontiac’s Rebellion (or Pontiac’s Uprising). In response to Pontiac’s Rebellion, the Paxton Boys, a group of Scots-Irish frontiersmen in Pennsylvania murdered several in the Susquehanook tribe.
In response to the initial attacks, the British government issued the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding settlement west of the rivers running through the Appalachians. The proclamation came too late. Settlers had already moved west of the line. The proclamation did have one effect, however. It agitated colonial settlers, who regarded it as unwarranted British interference in colonial affairs.
Pontiac’s Rebellion was, in part, a response to the colonists expanding into the Ohio River Valley and encroaching on the Native Americans’ lands. (Recall similar events such as the Pequot War and Bacon’s Rebellion.) The British were forced to quell this rebellion at great cost in addition to the costs of fighting the French. They used germ warfare, in the form of smallpox-infected blankets, to help defeat the Ottawa. The resulting Proclamation of 1763 is significant for a number of reasons. 1763 is often viewed as a turning point in British-colonial relations in that it marks the end of salutary neglect. The Proclamation of 1763 may be viewed as the first in a new series of restrictions imposed on the colonists by the British Parliament, and in that way, it marks the first step on the “road to revolution.” Furthermore, it established a pattern of demarcating “Indian Territory,” a pattern that would be adopted and pursued by the United States government long after the colonists gained their independence. (See for example the Indian Removal Act, 1830.)
One result of the Seven Years’ War was that in financing the war the British government had run up a huge debt. The new king, George III, and his prime minister, George Grenville, felt that the colonists should help pay that debt. After all, they reasoned, the colonies had been beneficiaries of the war; furthermore, their tax burden was relatively light compared to that of taxpayers in England, even on the same goods. Meanwhile, the colonists felt that they had provided so many soldiers that they had fulfilled their obligation.
Accordingly, Parliament imposed new regulations and taxes on the colonists. The first was the Sugar Act of 1764, which established a number of new duties and which also contained provisions aimed at deterring molasses smugglers. Although Parliament had previously passed other acts aimed at controlling colonial trade and manufacturing, there was little colonial resistance prior to the decade leading up to the Revolutionary War. There were benefits to being part of the vast British Empire and most Americans accepted regulations of trade such as the Navigation Acts as part of mercantilism. Furthermore, although laws such as the Molasses Act of 1733 were on the books, smuggling was common practice and little revenue from taxes was actually collected. Some historians have gone so far as to suggest that Parliament never intended the Molasses Act to raise revenue but merely to function as a protective tariff aimed against French imports. Parliament was quite shrewd in passing the Sugar Act of 1764 in that this new act actually lowered the duty on molasses coming into the colonies from the West Indies. What angered the colonists the most was that this new regulation was to be more strictly enforced: duties were to be collected. It became more difficult for colonial shippers to avoid committing even minor violations of the Sugar Act. Furthermore, violators were to be arrested and tried in vice-admiralty courts, courts in which a single judge issued a verdict without the deliberation of a jury. It was this last provision of the Sugar Act that suggested to some colonists that Parliament was overstepping its authority and violating their rights as Englishmen.
Another Parliamentary act, the Currency Act, forbade the colonies to issue paper money. Collectively, the Sugar Act, Currency Act, and Proclamation of 1763 caused a great deal of discontent in the colonies, whose residents bristled at what they correctly viewed as British attempts to exert greater control. These acts signaled a clear end to Britain’s long-standing policy of salutary neglect. That these acts came during a postwar economic depression further aggravated the situation. Colonial protest to these acts, however, was uncoordinated and ineffective.
That all changed when Parliament passed the Stamp Act the following year, 1765. The Stamp Act included a number of provocative elements. First, it was a tax specifically aimed at raising revenue, thus awakening the colonists to the likelihood that even more taxes could follow. The Stamp Act demonstrated that the colonies’ tradition of self-taxation was surely being unjustly taken by Parliament, much to the dismay of many colonists. Second, it was a broad-based tax, covering all legal documents and licenses. Not only did it affect almost everyone, but it particularly affected a group that was literate, persuasive, and argumentative—namely, lawyers. Third, it was a tax on goods produced within the colonies.
Reaction to the Stamp Act built on previous grievances and, consequently, was more forceful than any protest preceding it. A pamphlet by James Otis, called The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, laid out the colonists’ argument against the taxes and became a bestseller of its day. Otis put forward the “No taxation without representation” argument that later became a rallying cry of the Revolution. Because the colonists did not elect members to Parliament, he argued, they were not obliged to pay taxes (following the accepted precept that no Englishman could be compelled to pay taxes without his consent). Otis did not advocate secession; rather, he argued for either representation in Parliament or a greater degree of self-government for the colonies. Neither the British nor the colonists had much interest in creating a colonial delegation to Parliament. The British scoffed at the notion, arguing that the colonists were already represented in Parliament. Their argument was rooted in the theory of virtual representation, which stated that members of Parliament represented all British subjects regardless of who elected them. The colonists, for their part, knew that their representation would be too small to protect their interests and so never pushed the issue. What they wanted, and what the British were refusing to give them, was the right to determine their own taxes.
Opponents of the Stamp Act united in the various colonies. In Virginia, Patrick Henry drafted the Virginia Stamp Act Resolves, protesting the tax and asserting the colonists’ right to a large measure of self-government. (The Virginia legislature removed Henry’s most radical propositions before passing the resolves.) In Boston, mobs burned the customs officers in effigy, tore down a customs house, and nearly destroyed the governor’s mansion. Protest groups formed throughout the colonies, calling themselves “Sons of Liberty.” The opposition was so effective that, by the time the law was supposed to take effect, not one of the Crown’s appointed duty collectors was willing to perform his job. In 1766 Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. Just as important, George III replaced Prime Minister Grenville, whom the colonists now loathed, with Lord Rockingham, who had opposed the Stamp Act. Rockingham oversaw the repeal but also linked it to the passage of the Declaratory Act, which asserted the British government’s right to tax and legislate in all cases anywhere in the colonies. Thus, although the colonists had won the battle over the stamp tax, they had not yet gained any ground in the war of principles over Parliament’s powers in the colonies.
Rockingham remained prime minister for only two years. His replacement was William Pitt. Pitt, however, was ill, and the dominant figure in colonial affairs came to be the minister of the exchequer, Charles Townshend. Townshend drafted the eponymous Townshend Acts. The Townshend Acts, like the Stamp Act, contained several antagonistic measures. First, they taxed goods imported directly from Britain—the first such tax in the colonies. Mercantilism approved of duties on imports from other European nations but not on British imports. Second, some of the tax collected was set aside for the payment of tax collectors, meaning that colonial assemblies could no longer withhold government officials’ wages in order to get their way. Third, the Townshend Acts created even more vice-admiralty courts and several new government offices to enforce the Crown’s will in the colonies. Fourth, they suspended the New York legislature because it had refused to comply with a law requiring the colonists to supply British troops. Last, these acts instituted writs of assistance, licenses that gave the British the power to search any place they suspected of hiding smuggled goods.
The colonists got better at protesting with each new tax, and their reaction to the Townshend Acts was their strongest yet. The Massachusetts Assembly sent a letter (called the Massachusetts Circular Letter, written by Samuel Adams in 1768) to all other assemblies asking that they protest the new measures in unison. The British fanned the flames of protest by ordering the assemblies not to discuss the Massachusetts letter, virtually guaranteeing it to be all anyone would talk about. Governors of colonies where legislatures discussed the letter dissolved those legislatures, which, of course, further infuriated colonists. The colonists held numerous rallies and organized boycotts, and for the first time they sought the support of “commoners” (previously such protests were confined largely to the aristocratic classes), making their rallies larger and much more intimidating. The boycotts were most successful because they affected British merchants, who then joined the protest. Colonial women were essential in the effort to replace British imports with “American” (New England) products. After two years, Parliament repealed the Townshend duties, although not the other statutes of the Townshend Acts, and not the duty on tea.
The Quartering Act of 1765 stationed large numbers of troops in America and made the colonists responsible for the cost of feeding and housing them. Even after the Townsend duties were repealed, the soldiers remained—particularly in Boston. Officially sent to keep the peace, these soldiers in fact heightened tensions. For one thing, the detachment was huge—4,000 men in a city of only 16,000. To make matters worse, the soldiers sought off-hour employment and so competed with colonists for jobs. Numerous confrontations resulted, with the most famous on March 5, 1770, when a mob pelted a group of soldiers with rock-filled snowballs. The soldiers fired on the crowd, killing five; hence, the Boston Massacre. The propaganda campaign that followed suggested that the soldiers had shot into a crowd of innocent bystanders. Interestingly, John Adams defended the soldiers in court, helping to establish a tradition of giving a fair trial to all who are accused.
Non-consumption and Non-importation
There were no police departments in colonial America. Communities were self-policing. If a man was beating his wife, groups of neighbors would gather and threaten him with dire consequences if he didn’t stop. Patriot leaders leveraged this practice in organizing resistance to the Townshend and other duties. The colonists’ only recourses were non-consumption and non-importation—in other words, to boycott British goods—but such a policy could be effective only if everyone participated. So it was that New England newspapers printed pleas to women in particular, who generally managed the family budget, not to buy British linen and tea, and exposed importers, such as one William Jackson who ran a shop called the Brazen Head. If these methods proved ineffective, then, yes, Patriot leaders would deploy thugs to get the point across. A few painful and humiliating tar-and-featherings went a long way, and imports from Britain dropped 40 percent by 1770.
Oddly enough, for the next two years, nothing major happened. The Boston Massacre shocked both sides into de-escalating their rhetoric, and an uneasy status quo fell into place during this period. Colonial newspapers discussed ways in which the relationship between the mother country and the colonies might be altered so as to satisfy both sides, but still, nobody except a very few radicals suggested independence.
Things picked up in 1772 when the British implemented the part of the Townshend Acts that provided for colonial administrators to be paid from customs revenues (and not by the colonial legislatures). The colonists responded cautiously, setting up groups called Committees of Correspondence throughout the colonies to trade ideas and inform one another of the political mood. The committees also worked to convince more citizens to take an active interest in the conflict. Writers such as Mercy Otis Warren, a friend of Abigail Adams and Martha Washington, published pamphlets calling for Revolution. Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania were a series of essays written by John Dickinson, uniting the colonists against the Townsend Acts.
Not long after, the British granted the foundering East India Tea Company a monopoly on the tea trade in the colonies as well as a portion of new duties to be collected on tea sales. The result was cheaper tea for the colonists, but the colonists saw a more important issue: Parliament was once again imposing new taxes on them. In Boston, the colonists refused to allow the ships to unload their cargo, and the governor refused to allow them to leave the harbor. On December 16, 1773, a group of Sons of Liberty, poorly disguised as Mohawks, boarded a ship and dumped its cargo into Boston Harbor. It took them three hours to jettison the approximately £10,000 worth of tea. The incident is known as the Boston Tea Party.
The English responded with a number of punitive measures, known collectively as the Coercive Acts (also called the “Intolerable Acts”). One measure closed Boston Harbor to all but essential trade (food and firewood) and declared that it would remain closed until the tea was paid for. Several measures tightened English control over the Massachusetts government and its courts, and a new, stricter Quartering Act put British soldiers in civilian homes. The Coercive Acts convinced many colonists that their days of semi-autonomy were over and that the future held even further encroachments on their liberties by the Crown. To make matters worse, at the same time Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, it also passed the Quebec Act, which, to the colonists’ chagrin, (1) granted greater liberties to Catholics, whom the Protestant colonial majority distrusted, and (2) extended the boundaries of the Quebec Territory, thus further impeding westward expansion.
The colonists met to discuss their grievances. All colonies except Georgia sent delegates to the First Continental Congress, which convened in late 1774. All perspectives were represented—Pennsylvania’s delegation included conservatives such as Joseph Galloway, while Virginia sent two radicals, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry. The goals of the meeting were to enumerate American grievances, to develop a strategy for addressing those grievances, and to formulate a colonial position on the proper relationship between the royal government and the colonial governments. The Congress came up with a list of those laws the colonists wanted repealed and agreed to impose a boycott on British goods until their grievances were redressed. The delegates also agreed to form a Continental Association, with towns setting up committees of observation to enforce the boycott; in time, these committees became their towns’ de facto governments. Perhaps most important, the Congress formulated a limited set of parameters within which it considered Parliamentary interference in colonial affairs justified; all other spheres, the delegates agreed, should be left to the colonists themselves. This position represented a major break with British tradition and, accordingly, a major step toward independence.
Throughout the winter of 1774 and the spring of 1775, the committees of observation expanded their powers. In many colonies they supplanted the British-sanctioned assemblies. They led acts of insubordination by collecting taxes, disrupting court sessions, and, most ominously, organizing militias and stockpiling weapons. As John Adams would later comment about the period, “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people….This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”
The British underestimated the strength of the growing pro-revolutionary movement. Government officials mistakenly believed that if they arrested the ringleaders and confiscated their arsenals, violence could be averted. To that end, the English dispatched troops to confiscate weapons in Concord, Massachusetts, in April 1775. The troops had to first pass through Lexington, where they confronted a small colonial militia, called “minutemen” because they reputedly could be ready to fight on a minute’s notice. Someone, probably one of the minutemen, fired a shot, which drew British return fire. When the Battle of Lexington was over, the minutemen had suffered eighteen casualties, including eight dead. The British proceeded to Concord, where a much larger contingent of minutemen awaited them. The Massachusetts militia inflicted numerous casualties on the British “redcoats” and forced them to retreat. That a contingent of colonial farmers could repel the army of the world’s largest empire was monumental, which is why the Battle of Concord is sometimes referred to as “the shot heard ’round the world.” The two opponents dug in around Boston, but during the next year only one major battle was fought. The two sides regrouped and planned their next moves.
For the colonists, the period provided time to rally citizens to the cause of independence. Not all were convinced. Among those remaining loyal to the Crown—such people were called “Loyalists”—were government officials, devout Anglicans (members of the Church of England), merchants dependent on trade with England, and many religious and ethnic minorities who feared persecution at the hands of the rebels. Many slaves believed their chances for liberty were better with the British than with the colonists, a belief strengthened when the royal governor of Virginia offered to free those slaves who escaped and joined the British army. The pre-Revolutionary War era saw an increase in the number of slave insurrections, dampening some Southerners’ enthusiasm for revolution. The patriots were mostly white Protestant property holders and gentry, as well as urban artisans, especially in New England, where Puritans had long shown antagonism toward Anglicans. Much of the rest of the population just hoped the whole thing would blow over. The Quakers of Pennsylvania, for example, were pacifists and so wanted to avoid war.
The Second Continental Congress convened during this period, just weeks after the battles of Lexington and Concord. Throughout the summer, the Congress prepared for war by establishing a Continental Army, printing money, and creating government offices to supervise policy. The Congress chose George Washington to lead the army because he was both well-liked and a Southerner (thus bolstering support in an area with many loyalists). There is a lot of interesting military history about Washington’s command, but because the AP Exam ignores military history, so too does this review.
Not all delegates thought that war was inevitable, and many followed John Dickinson, who was pushing for reconciliation with Britain using the Olive Branch Petition. Adopted by the Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, following the skirmish at Breed’s Hill, often known as Bunker Hill, the Olive Branch petition was a last-ditch attempt to avoid armed conflict. King George III, however, was hardly interested in the proposal since he considered the colonists to be in open rebellion given their boycotts, attacks on royal officials, and resistance at Lexington and Concord. Still, it is worth noting that just one year before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the colonial leaders were trying to reconcile with the mother country.
The rebels were still looking for the masterpiece of propaganda that would rally colonists to their cause. They got it in Common Sense, a pamphlet published in January of 1776 by an English printer named Thomas Paine. Paine not only advocated colonial independence, he also argued for the merits of republicanism over monarchy. The pamphlet was an even bigger success than James Otis’s The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. Though literacy rates in New England were somewhat higher, thanks to the Puritan legacy of teaching children to read the Bible, most of the nation’s two million inhabitants could not read. Nevertheless, Paine’s pamphlet sold more than 100,000 copies in its first three months alone, the proportional equivalent of selling 13 million downloads today. The secret to Paine’s success was that Common Sense stated the argument for independence in plainspoken language accessible to colonists who couldn’t always keep up with the lofty Enlightenment-speak of the Founding Fathers. It helped swing considerable support to the patriot cause among people who had worried about the wisdom of attacking the powerful mother country.
The preamble of the Declaration of Independence begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This opening statement reflects the Enlightenment ideals that Thomas Jefferson strongly believed in, and outlines the philosophy of government that the American colonies believe in. The bulk of the Declaration is a list of grievances about George III and the British government, including taxation without representation, dissolving local representative government, keeping standing armies in the colonies during peacetime, cutting off trade with the rest of the world, and depriving American colonists of the right to trial by jury.
In June, the Congress was looking for a rousing statement of its ideals, and it commissioned Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. He did not let them down. The Declaration not only enumerated the colonies’ grievances against the Crown, but it also articulated the principle of individual liberty and the government’s fundamental responsibility to serve the people. Despite its obvious flaws—most especially that it pertained only to white, propertied men—it remains a work of enormous power. With the document’s signing on July 4, 1776, the Revolutionary War became a war for independence.
| Chronology of Events Leading to Revolutionary War | |
|---|---|
| 1763 |
–French and Indian War ends –Pontiac’s Rebellion –Proclamation of 1763 |
| 1764 |
–Sugar Act –Currency Act |
| 1765 |
–Stamp Act –Stamp Act crisis –Sons of Liberty formed |
| 1766 |
–Grenville replaced by Rockingham as prime minister –Stamp Act repealed –Declaratory Act |
| 1767 |
–Townshend Acts |
| 1770 |
–Townshend duties repealed (except tea tax) –Boston Massacre |
| 1772 |
–parts of Townshend Acts implemented –Committees of Correspondence formed |
| 1773 |
–British give the Dutch East India Tea Company monopoly on tea in colonies –Boston Tea Party |
| 1774 |
–Coercive (“Intolerable”) Acts –Quebec Act –First Continental Congress meets –Continental Association forms |
| 1775 |
–Battles of Lexington and Concord –Second Continental Congress meets |
| 1776 |
–Declaration of Independence |
The Battle of Saratoga (Oct. 17, 1777) in upstate New York was a turning point in the American Revolution, as it was a decisive victory of American troops against British troops, ending the British prominence in upstate New York and serving as a recruitment tool for the Americans. With this victory, the French government agreed to a formal alliance with the Continental Congress, and began sending military advisers, weapons, and financial assistance.
The Battle of Yorktown (Oct. 1781) was the symbolic end to the American Revolution, even though the British remained in New York City until 1783 and other British troops remained active in the South until 1782. The major British general, Cornwallis, was surrounded by the French navy on the York River and George Washington’s troops via land, and surrendered after a lengthy siege. Cornwallis’ surrender began a long period of negotiations between the American colonies and Great Britain, which would finally end the war in October of 1783.
After several years of fighting, the British surrendered at Yorktown in October of 1781. You should remember a few other facts about the war. The Continental Army (as opposed to local militias) had trouble recruiting good soldiers. Eventually, the Congress recruited blacks, and up to 5,000 fought on the side of the rebels (in return, most of those who had been slaves were granted their freedom). The Franco-American Alliance, negotiated by Ben Franklin in 1778, brought the French into the war on the side of the colonists, after the battle of Saratoga. This was hardly surprising given the lingering resentment of the French toward the English after the French and Indian War. It would be three years before French troops landed in America, but the alliance buoyed American morale, and with the help of militia units, especially in the South, the colonists kept up a war of attrition until support could arrive from France. By then, much like the United States in Vietnam almost two centuries later, the British found themselves outlasted and forced to abandon an unpopular war on foreign soil. The Treaty of Paris, signed at the end of 1783, granted the United States independence and generous territorial rights. (This Treaty of Paris is not to be confused with the Treaty of Paris that ended the French and Indian War or the Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War in 1898. Paris was all the rage as a treaty name, apparently.)
Neither the Declaration of Independence, with its bold statement that “all men are created equal,” nor the revolution with its republican ideology, abolished slavery. These events also did not bring about a more egalitarian society. Like blacks, many women played a significant role in the Revolutionary War, either as “camp followers” or by maintaining households and businesses while the men were off fighting the Revolution. Many women also served as spies, while the British offered their slaves freedom if they fought for the British. It would take another war to end slavery (the Civil War) and centuries of hard work toward progress to help bring about greater political and economic equality for women.
George Washington Versus Volunteer Militias
George Washington was one of the wealthiest men in America, and to a great extent his involvement with the independence movement grew out of his dissatisfaction with the mercantile system, which he felt was keeping him from expanding his fortune as much as he might have liked. The tobacco he sent to Britain never fetched the price he wanted, and the goods he received in return were too expensive and of shoddy quality. He wanted relief from British taxes and the freedom to sell to and buy from whomever he liked. The American Revolution was fueled in large part by libertarian sentiments such as these.
But after becoming commander of the Continental Army, Washington found that libertarian ideals sound terrific when you’re a rich planter trying to fill your coffers, but don’t work so well when you’re trying to build a country or win a war. Washington pressed for a professional standing army, and demanded that the states raise money to pay the troops, but the libertarian-dominated Continental Congress replied that those ideas were precisely what they were fighting against and that Washington would have to make do with volunteers who paid their own way.
The colonies did not wait to win their independence from England before setting up their own governments. As soon as the Declaration of Independence was signed, states began writing their own constitutions. In 1777 the Continental Congress sent the Articles of Confederation, the first national constitution, to the colonies for ratification. The colonists intentionally created little to no central government since they were afraid of ridding themselves of Britain’s imperial rule only to create their own tyrannical government. The articles contained several major limitations, as the country would soon learn. For one, the Articles gave the federal government no power to raise an army (which hurt the colonies during Shays’s Rebellion). Some of the other major problems with the Articles of Confederation were
• cannot enforce state or individual taxation
• cannot enforce a military draft
• cannot regulate international trade
• cannot regulate trade among the states
• has no executive branch
• has no judicial branch
• legislative branch gives each state one vote, regardless of state’s population
• in order to pass a law, 9/13 of states must agree
• in order to amend or change the Articles, unanimous approval needed
With the end of the war, the colonies had other issues to confront as well. The decrease in England’s power in the region opened a new era of relations with Native Americans. This new era was even more contentious than the previous one because a number of tribes had allied themselves with the Crown. Second-class citizens and noncitizens—namely, women and blacks—had made sacrifices in the fight for liberation, and some expected at least a degree of compensation. Abigail Adams wrote a famous letter to her husband pleading the case for women’s rights in the new government; she reminded John to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” The number of free blacks in the colonies grew during and after the war, but their increased presence among free whites was also accompanied by a growth of racist publications and legislation. Such conditions led to the early “ghettoization” of blacks and, for similar reasons, other minorities.
The problems with the Articles of Confederation became apparent early on. The wartime government, unable to levy taxes, tried to finance the war by printing more money, which led, naturally, to wild inflation. After the war, the British pursued punitive trade policies against the colonies, denying them access to West Indian markets and dumping goods on American markets. The government, unable to impose tariffs, was helpless. A protective tariff would impose duties on imported goods; the additional cost would be added to the selling price, thereby raising the cost of foreign products. By making domestic products cheaper than imports, most tariffs protected American manufacturers. Having just fought a war in part caused by taxes imposed by a central authority, the newly independent Americans were reluctant to give this power to their new federal government. In fact, the first protective tariff in United States history wasn’t passed until 1816. The issue of the tariff exposed another source of tension within the new country—economic sectionalism—a major conflict that eventually led the new nation to civil war and continues to play a role in partisan politics to this very day.
Furthermore, when state governments dragged their heels in compensating loyalists for lost property, the British refused to abandon military posts in the States, claiming that they were remaining to protect the loyalists’ rights. The government, again, was powerless to expel them. Perhaps the rudest awakening came in the form of Shays’s Rebellion. Daniel Shays was a Revolutionary War veteran who was not receiving his pay from the war. As the Massachusetts government was enforcing the ability of banks to repossess farms and foreclose on homes of people who could not pay, Shays was facing foreclosure. His plan was to take over the courthouses that were making these rulings. He and his men seized a weapons armory in Springfield and used those weapons to attack courthouses. The Massachusetts government couldn’t mobilize any forces to stop Shays and his men, so private citizens organized to put the rebellion down. This was one of the leading reasons for the Constitutional Convention. As with the earlier Bacon’s Rebellion and later Whiskey Rebellion, this rebellion revealed lingering resentment on the part of the backcountry farmers toward the coastal elite. One thing that especially worried the wealthy, though, was that the Articles of Confederation had created a national government that was essentially powerless to stop such rebellions.
The government under the Articles was not totally without its successes, though. Its greatest achievements were the adoption of ordinances governing the sale of government land to settlers. Best known is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which also contained a bill of rights guaranteeing trial by jury, freedom of religion, and freedom from excessive punishment. It abolished slavery in the Northwest territories (northwest of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River, up to the Canadian border), and it also set specific regulations concerning the conditions under which territories could apply for statehood. Thus, the ordinance is seen as a forerunner to the Bill of Rights and other progressive government policies. It was not so enlightened about Native Americans, however; in fact, it essentially claimed their land without their consent. War ensued, and peace did not come until 1795 when the United States gained a military advantage over the Miami Confederacy, its chief Native-American opponent in the area. The Northwest Ordinance remained important long after the Northwest territories were settled because of its pertinence to the statehood process and to the issue of slavery.
By 1787 it was clear that the federal government lacked sufficient authority under the Articles of Confederation. Alexander Hamilton was especially concerned that there was no uniform commercial policy and feared for the survival of the new republic. Hamilton convened what came to be known as the Annapolis Convention, but only five delegates showed up! Subsequently, Congress consented to a “meeting in Philadelphia” the following May for the sole purpose of “revising the Articles of Confederation.” This meeting would eventually become the now-famous Constitutional Convention, comprising delegates from all states except Rhode Island, which met throughout the long, hot summer of 1787.
Much has been written about the framers of the Constitution. There were fifty-five delegates: all men, all white, many of whom were wealthy lawyers or landowners, many of whom owned slaves. They came from many different ideological backgrounds, from those who felt the Articles needed only slight adjustments to those who wanted to tear them down and start from scratch. The New Jersey Plan called for modifications, and it also called for equal representation from each state. The Virginia Plan, largely the brainchild of James Madison, called for an entirely new government based on the principle of checks and balances and for the number of representatives for each state to be based upon the population of the state, giving some states an advantage.
The Virginia Plan called to create a three-tiered federal government with an executive branch led by a president, a legislative branch composed of a bicameral (two house) Congress, and a judicial branch composed of a Supreme Court. The legislature received the most attention from Madison. The new legislature would have expanded powers to enforce federal taxation, regulate trade between the states, regulation international trade, to coin and borrow money, to create a postal service, to authorize a military draft and to declare war.
The president would be indirectly chosen by the Electoral College, a body of prominent political leaders that represented the popular vote of each state. In order to win a state’s electoral votes, a presidential candidate must win a majority of the popular vote within that state. Each state’s electoral count is the sum of their senators (two) and their representatives (determined by state population). The Electoral College gave states with larger populations more power in presidential elections.
The convention lasted for four months, over the course of which the delegates hammered out a bundle of compromises, including the Great Compromise (also known as the Connecticut Compromise), which blended the Virginia Plan and the New Jersey plan to have a bicameral legislature, and the Constitution. This bicameral legislature included a lower house (the House of Representatives) elected by the people and the upper house (the Senate) elected by the state legislatures. (Direct election of senators, believe it or not, is a twentieth-century innovation.) The president and vice president were to be elected by the electoral college, not the citizens themselves.
The Constitution also laid out a method for counting slaves among the populations of Southern states for “proportional” representation in Congress, even though those slaves would not be citizens. This became known as the Three-Fifths Compromise, because each slave counted as three-fifths of a person. It also established three branches of government—the executive, legislative, and judicial—with the power of checks and balances on each other. Only 3 of the 42 delegates who remained in Philadelphia to the end refused to sign the finished document (two because it did not include a bill of rights).
The delegates at the Constitutional Convention agreed that the international slave trade could not be ended until at least 1808. There was a debate about allowing Congress to place tariffs on exported goods, but because the Southern states opposed this because they depended so much on foreign trade. A tax on imports was allowed to be passed (later will cause much controversy in the argument over states’ rights).
Ratification of the Constitution was by no means guaranteed. Opposition forces portrayed the federal government under the Constitution as an all-powerful beast. These opponents, known as Anti-Federalists, tended to come from the backcountry and were particularly appalled by the absence of a bill of rights. Their position rang true in many of the state legislatures where the Constitution’s fate lay, and some held out for the promise of the immediate addition of the Bill of Rights upon ratification. The Federalist position was forcefully and persuasively argued in the Federalist Papers, anonymously authored by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers were published in a New York newspaper and were later widely circulated. They were critical in swaying opinion in New York, a large and therefore politically important state. (Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts were the other powerhouses of the era.) The Constitution went into effect in 1789; the Bill of Rights was added in 1791.
The Bill of Rights in a Nutshell
1. Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition
2. Right to bear arms in order to maintain a well-regulated militia
3. No quartering of soldiers in private homes
4. Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure
5. Right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination, double jeopardy (being tried twice for the same crime)
6. Rights of accused persons; for example, the right to a speedy and public trial
7. Right of trial by jury in civil cases
8. Freedom from excessive bail and from cruel and unusual punishment
9. Rights not listed are kept by the people
10. Powers not listed are kept by the states or the people
The electoral college unanimously chose George Washington to be the first president. Washington had not sought the presidency, but as the most popular figure in the colonies, he was the clear choice, and he accepted the role out of a sense of obligation.
Knowing that his actions would set precedents for those who followed him in office, Washington exercised his authority with care and restraint. He determined early on to use his veto only if he was convinced that a bill was unconstitutional. He was comfortable delegating responsibility and so created a government made up of the best minds of his time. Although the Constitution does not specifically grant the president the duty or even the power to create a cabinet, every president since George Washington has had one. The cabinet is made up of the heads of the various executive departments, which have grown in number over the years, and it functions as the president’s chief group of advisors.
Prominent among his cabinet selections were Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state and Alexander Hamilton as secretary of the treasury. These two men strongly disagreed about the proper relationship between the federal government and state governments. Hamilton favored a strong central government and weaker state governments. Jefferson, fearing the country would backslide into monarchy, or tyranny, favored a weaker federal government empowered mainly to defend the country and regulate international commerce. All other powers, he thought, should be reserved to the states.
Their argument was not a mere intellectual exercise. The new government was still defining itself, and each man had a vision of what this nation was to become. The debate came to the forefront when Hamilton proposed a National Bank to help regulate and strengthen the economy. Both houses of Congress approved Hamilton’s plan, but Washington, uncertain of the bank’s constitutionality, considered a veto. In the debate that followed, the two main schools of thought on constitutional law were established. On one side were the strict constructionists, led by Jefferson and James Madison. They argued that the Constitution allowed Congress only those powers specifically granted to it or those “necessary and proper” to the execution of its enumerated powers. While a bank might be “desirable” and perhaps beneficial, they argued, it was not “necessary,” and thus its creation was beyond the powers of the national government. Hamilton took the opposing viewpoint, framing the broad (loose) constructionist position. He argued that the creation of a bank was an implied power of the government because the government already had explicit power to coin money, borrow money, and collect taxes. Hamilton put forward that the government could do anything in the execution of those enumerated powers—including create a bank—that was not explicitly forbidden it by the Constitution. Washington agreed with Hamilton and signed the bill.
Hamilton’s tenure at treasury was a busy and successful one. Among his achievements was his successful handling of the national debt accrued during the war. Hamilton’s financial plan called for the federal government to assume the states’ debts (further increasing the federal government’s power over them) and to repay those debts by giving the debt holders land on the western frontier. The plan clearly favored Northern banks, many of which had bought up debt certificates at a small portion of their worth. Northern states also had more remaining debt than Southern states, another reason why the plan drew accusations that Hamilton was helping the monied elite at the expense of the working classes. (Some issues are perennials of American politics; this is one of them. Opposition to tax increases is another.) Hamilton was able to strike a political deal to get most of his plan implemented. His concession was a Southern location for the nation’s capital. In 1800 the capital was moved to Washington, D.C., a city created to become the seat of government.
The French Revolution took place during the Washington administration, and it too caused considerable debate. Jefferson wanted to support the revolution and its republican ideals. Hamilton had aristocratic leanings and so disliked the revolutionaries, who had overthrown the French aristocracy. The issue came to the forefront when France and England resumed hostilities. The British continued to be America’s primary trading partner after the war, a situation that nudged the United States toward neutrality in the French–English conflict. Even Jefferson agreed that neutrality was the correct course to follow. When French government representative Citizen Edmond Genêt visited America to seek its assistance, Washington declared the U.S. intention to remain “friendly and impartial toward belligerent powers.” This was called the Neutrality Proclamation. Genêt’s visit sparked large, enthusiastic rallies held by American supporters of the revolution.
Historians cite the differences between Hamilton and Jefferson as the origins of our two-party system. Those favoring a strong federal government came to be known as Federalists (not to be confused with the Federalists who supported ratification of the Constitution, even though they were often the same people), while the followers of Jefferson called themselves the Republicans, later known as Democratic-Republicans to avoid confusion with members of the Republican Party created in the 1850s, a very different group which still survives today. The development of political parties troubled the framers of the Constitution, most of whom regarded parties as factions and dangerous to the survival of the Republic.
| Our First Party System | ||
|---|---|---|
| Federalists | Democratic-Republicans | |
| Leaders | Hamilton, Washington, Adams, Jay, Marshall | Jefferson, Madison |
| Vision | Economy based on commerce | Economy based on agriculture |
| Governmental Power | Strong federal government | Stronger state governments |
| Supporters | Wealthy, Northeast | Yeoman farmers, Southerners |
| Constitution | Loose construction | Strict construction |
| National Bank | Believed it was “necessary” | Believed it was merely “desirable” |
| Foreign Affairs | More sympathetic toward Great Britain | More sympathetic toward France |
Note: The Federalist party would die out after the Hartford Convention, following the War of 1812. Hamilton’s vision and programs would be carried out by the nationalist program and Henry Clay’s American System during the Era of Good Feelings. The Second Party System would emerge during the presidency of Andrew Jackson and would consist of the Whigs, who embraced many Federalist principles and policies, and the Jacksonian Democrats, who saw themselves as the heirs of the Jeffersonian Republicans.
Hamilton’s financial program not only stirred controversy in Congress and helped to create our two-party system but also instigated the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791, which began in western Pennsylvania when farmers resisted an excise tax on whiskey. As part of his financial program, Hamilton imposed the tax in an attempt to raise revenue to defray the debt incurred by the Revolution. Washington, determined not to let his new government tolerate armed disobedience, dispatched the militia to disperse the rebels. After the opposition was dispelled, the rebels went home, and although there were some arrests and two convictions, Washington eventually pardoned both men. The Whiskey Rebellion is significant because, like Bacon’s Rebellion and Shays’s Rebellion before it, the uprising demonstrated the lasting class tensions between inland farmers and the coastal elites who ran the new government. But while Shays’s Rebellion demonstrated that the national government of the time had lacked the power to respond, Americans noted that the new government had power it wasn’t afraid to use. Some saw fairness in Washington’s actions; others saw the makings of tyranny. James Madison, among others, would retreat from his support of the Federalists to back Jefferson’s camp of Democratic-Republicans.
After the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, Washington sent John Jay to England to negotiate a treaty concerning the evacuation of the British from the Northwest Territory, as stipulated in the Treaty of Paris that concluded the Revolutionary War, as well as to discuss British violations of free trade. Although Jay’s Treaty prevented war with Great Britain, opponents of the treaty believed Jay made too many concessions toward the British, who in essence were not respecting our rights as a sovereign nation (the treaty also involved paying some war debts). In 1796, Congress attempted to withhold funding to enforce the treaty. The House of Representatives asked Washington to submit all documents pertinent to the treaty for consideration. Washington refused, establishing the precedent of executive privilege, which is the right of the president to withhold information when doing so would protect national security (e.g., in the case of diplomatic files and military secrets). Jay’s Treaty is often considered to be the low point of Washington’s administration, and Jay himself was burned in effigy in the streets of New York.
At the same time, Washington sent Thomas Pinckney to Spain to negotiate use of the Mississippi River, duty-free access to world markets, and the removal of any remaining Spanish forts on American soil. During this mission, Pinckney was able to extract a promise from Spain to try to prevent attacks on Western settlers from Native Americans. The Treaty of San Lorenzo, also known as Pinckney’s Treaty, was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1796 and is often considered to be the high point of Washington’s administration.
The end of Washington’s presidency was as monumental as its beginning. Wishing to set a final precedent, Washington declined to run for a third term. In his famous farewell address, composed in part by Alexander Hamilton, he warned future presidents to “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Washington’s Farewell Address was published in newspapers around the United States in the fall of 1796. It warned Americans against sectional divisions, as well as political party conflict. The most prominent portion of the address focuses on international relations, or “foreign entanglements.” Washington promotes the notion of having friendly relationships with all nations, but to avoid any permanent alliances. This warning remained a prominent part of American foreign policy through the mid-20th century, when the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949.
During the 1790s, women’s roles in courtship, marriage, and motherhood were all re-evaluated in light of the new republic and its ideals. Although women were largely excluded from political activity, they had an important civil role and responsibility. They were to be the teachers and producers of virtuous male citizens.
While public virtue had been a strictly masculine quality in the past, private virtue emerged as a very important quality for women, who were given the task of inspiring and teaching men to be good citizens through romance and motherhood. The idea here is that a woman should entertain only suitors with good morals, providing more incentive for men to be more ethical. Women also held a tremendous influence on their sons, leading advocates for female education to speak out, arguing that educated women would be better mothers, who would produce better citizens. Even though the obligations of women had grown to include this new political meaning, traditional gender roles were largely unchanged as the education of women was meant only in service to husbands and family.
The idea of Republican Motherhood emerged in the early 1800s, as the importance of education emerged in American society. The role of the mother became more prominent in child-rearing, as mothers were now expected to raise educated children who would contribute positively to the United States.
The electoral college selected John Adams, a Federalist, as Washington’s successor. Under the then-current rules, the second-place candidate became vice president, and so Adams’s vice president was the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson.
Following the Washington era, Adams’s presidency was bound to be an anti-climax. Adams, argumentative and elitist, was a difficult man to like. He was also a hands-off administrator, often allowing Jefferson’s political rival Alexander Hamilton to take charge. The animosity between Jefferson and Hamilton and the growing belligerence between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans set the ugly, divisive tone for Adams’s term.
Perhaps Adams’s greatest achievement was avoiding all-out war with France. After the United States signed the Jay Treaty with Britain, France began seizing American ships on the open seas. Adams sent three diplomats to Paris, where French officials demanded a huge bribe before they would allow negotiations even to begin. The diplomats returned home, and Adams published their written report in the newspapers. Because he deleted the French officials’ names and replaced them with the letters X, Y, and Z, the incident became known as the XYZ Affair. As a result, popular sentiment did a complete turnaround; formerly pro-French, the public became vehemently anti-French to the point that a declaration of war seemed possible. Aware of how small the American military was, Adams avoided the war (a war Hamilton wanted) and negotiated a settlement with a contrite France although he was not able to avoid the Naval skirmishes called the Quasi-War.
The low point of Adams’s tenure was the passage and enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which allowed the government to forcibly expel foreigners and to jail newspaper editors for “scandalous and malicious writing.” The acts were purely political, aimed at destroying new immigrants’—especially French immigrants’—support for the Democratic-Republicans. Worst of all, the Sedition Act, which strictly regulated anti-government speech, was a clear violation of the First Amendment. In a scenario almost unimaginable today, Vice President Jefferson led the opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Together with Madison, he drafted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (which were technically anonymous), which argued that the states had the right to judge the constitutionality of federal laws. The resolutions went on to exercise this authority they claimed, later referred to as nullification, by declaring the Alien and Sedition Acts void. Virginia and Kentucky, however, never prevented enforcement of the laws. Rather, Jefferson used the laws and the resolutions as key issues in his 1800 campaign for the presidency. Even today, states often pass resolutions similar to these to express their displeasure with the federal government.
Here are the most important concepts to remember from the American Independence period.
○ Britain’s increased attempts to control the colonies and impose burdensome taxation led to the colonists’ desire for revolution.
○ France, Britain, Spain, and the new United States vied for control of land; the borders of the new United States were constantly expanding.
○ The common people had changed their view of government. The belief in egalitarianism and democracy replaced trust in monarchy and aristocracy.
See Chapter 14 for answers and explanations.
1. The Albany Plan of Union failed because
(A) the plan required the Northeastern colonies to contribute a disproportionate share of the necessary troops and money
(B) no political leader with national stature was willing to support the plan
(C) there was no legitimate executive power to enforce it
(D) none of the colonies was willing to share tax-collecting powers with a national entity
2. The American colonists objected to the policies imposed by Parliament after the French and Indian War for all of the following reasons EXCEPT
(A) the new restrictions would hinder New England trade
(B) their rights as Englishmen were being violated
(C) they resented quartering British troops now that the French threat was removed
(D) they believed they should be represented in Parliament if they were subjected to mercantilist restrictions
3. According to the theory of virtual representation,
(A) colonists were represented in Parliament by virtue of their British citizenship
(B) slaves were represented in Congress by virtue of the fact that their owners were voters
(C) paper money has value by virtue of the fact that it is backed by the full faith and credit of the government
(D) the best interests of criminal defendants are represented by their attorneys
4. The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 was historically significant in that it
(A) represented a first step in colonial unity against Britain
(B) demonstrated Parliament’s determination to tax its American colonies
(C) represented New England’s determination to go to war against England
(D) demonstrated the colonists’ political and philosophical disagreement among themselves
5. Thomas Jefferson relied on the ideas of John Locke in writing the American Declaration of Independence in all of the following ways EXCEPT Locke’s belief that
(A) man is born free and equal
(B) man must submit to the General Will to protect his natural rights
(C) governments get their authority from the people, not God
(D) the purpose of government is to protect man’s natural rights
6. Historians often cite Shays’s Rebellion (1786–1787) as a significant event in U.S. history because it
(A) demonstrated the strength, yet fairness, of the newly created federal government
(B) made many Americans realize that slavery could not last
(C) made Americans realize that excessive taxation often leads to violence
(D) demonstrated the weakness of the federal government under the Articles of Confederation
7. Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government had which of the following powers?
I. The power to collect taxes
II. The power to negotiate treaties
III. The power to supercede state law
(A) I only
(B) II only
(C) I and III only
(D) I, II, and III
8. George Washington established the principle of executive privilege in a dispute with Congress over the
(A) Alien and Sedition Acts
(B) legality of political parties
(C) Jay Treaty
(D) Whiskey Rebellion
9. The Age of Salutary Neglect drew to a close with
(A) the Boston Tea Party
(B) the formation of the Republic of Texas
(C) the Salem Witch Trials
(D) the end of the French and Indian War
10. Which of the following best summarizes the strict constructionist position on the establishment of the National Bank?
(A) All matters not clearly reconciled by the Constitution, such as the establishment of a national bank, must be arbitrated by the federal judiciary.
(B) The establishment of the National Bank is necessary to strengthen the United States economy and therefore must be allowed even if it is technically unconstitutional.
(C) The decision on whether to establish a National Bank, like all important governmental decisions, should be left in the hands of a powerful executive branch.
(D) The Constitution forbids the establishment of the bank because creating a bank is not among Congress’s enumerated powers.
Respond to the following questions:
• For which content topics discussed in this chapter do you feel you have achieved sufficient mastery to answer multiple-choice questions correctly?
• For which content topics discussed in this chapter do you feel you have achieved sufficient mastery to discuss effectively in a short-answer question or an essay?
• On which content topics discussed in this chapter do you feel you need more work before you can answer multiple-choice questions correctly?
• On which content topics discussed in this chapter do you feel you need more work before you can discuss them effectively in a short-answer question or an essay?
• What parts of this chapter are you going to re-review?
• Will you seek further help, outside of this book (such as a teacher, tutor, or AP Students), on any of the content in this chapter—and, if so, on what content?