American Revolution

The American Revolution was a revolution that ended two centuries of rule of the Thirteen Colonies by the British Empire and created the modern United States of America. The Revolutionary era was both exhilarating and disturbing–a time of progress for some, dislocation for others. The American Revolution is the series of ideas, and changes that resulted in the revolution and ensuing political separation of thirteen colonies in North America from the British Empire and the creation of the United States of America with a new political system. The American War of Independence which lasted from 1775 to 1783, was one part of the revolution, but the revolution by the Americans began before the first shot was fired at Lexington and Concord and continued after the British surrender at Yorktown. Years later, in 1818, John Adams wrote: "The Revolution was effected before the War commenced," and "The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people."

Historians usually agree that the revolutionary era began in 1763 as Britain defeated France in the French and Indian War, and the military threat to the colonies from France ended. The end of the period is usually marked by as Treaty of Paris in 1783. However, references to the "revolutionary era" sometimes stretched to 1789, when a new government under George Washington began operating.

Interpretations about the effect of the revolution vary. At one end of the spectrum is the older view that the American Revolution was not "revolutionary" at all, that it did not radically transform colonial society, but simply replaced a distant government with a local one. The more recent view pioneered by historians such as Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood and Edmund Morgan is that the American Revolution was a unique and radical event, based on a new ideology of "republicanism" which produced deep changes that had a profound impact on world history.

Origins

In the early 18th century, Great Britain possessed a vast empire on the North American continent. In addition to the thirteen British colonies, victory in the Seven Years' War had given Great Britain claim over New France (Canada), Spanish Florida, and the Native American lands east of the Mississippi River. A war against France's former Indian allies—Pontiac's Rebellion—had, if not conquered, at least "pacified" the western frontier. At this time, most white colonists in America considered themselves loyal subjects of the British Crown, with the same rights and obligations as Englishmen in Britain.

Republican ideology

The Americans were heavily influenced by the "country" party in English politics, which roundly denounced the corruption surrounding the "court" party in London. This approach produced a political ideology called "republicanism" that was widespread in America by 1775--and was even held by most Loyalists. The emphasis was on the duty of the citizen to be virtuous, and to fight for his country as needed. Corruption was associated with aristocracy, which Americans increasingly condemned. For women, "Republican Motherhood" became an ideal, as exemplified by Abigail Adams; the first duty of the republican woman was to instill republican values in the children, and to avoid luxury and ostentation. All the "Founding Fathers" were strong advocates of republicanism, especially Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Another stream of thought, distinct from republicanism, was the liberalism of John Locke. It also had a major impact, emphasizing the rights of citizens. Much of the rhetoric was an insistence on Lockean rights to life, liberty and property (or in Jefferson's version, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.) Finally Montesquieu, a French theorist who analyzed the balanced British Constitution, had an influence as the Americans designed their new constitutions. Historians have determined that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas played little or no role. First and last it was a republican revolution, as historians such as Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood and many others have demonstrated.

Road to rebellion

After the French and Indian War and Pontiac's Rebellion, the British government sought to overhaul its expansive North American possessions. In order to make the Empire more stable and profitable, new economic and land distribution policies were implemented. Specifically, the new British policies included the understandable desire of the crown that the colonists would shoulder a greater share of the burdens of war and the cost of their own defense, as well as the curtailment of smuggling with the colonies of the West Indies, the payment of royal tariffs and the exclusive with the British homeland.

Economic disputes, 1760-70

King George wanted the colonists to fund the British army that defended them from Pontiac's rebellion, and that had traditionally defended them from the French. The British government debt had risen to alarming levels during the war years and so in 1760 Parliament began imposing new taxes, on the principle that the colonists were enjoying the benefits of the peace that had been won at great expense, and there was no need for Parliament to consult their wishes.

In theory, Great Britain already regulated the economies of the colonies through the Navigation Acts according to the doctrines of mercantilism, which said that anything that benefited the Empire (and hurt other empires) was good policy. Widespread evasion of these laws had long been tolerated. Now, through the use of open-ended search warrants (Writs of Assistance), strict enforcement became the practice. In 1761, Massachusetts lawyer James Otis argued that the writs violated the constitutional rights of the colonists. He lost the case, but John Adams later wrote, "American independence was then and there born."

In 1763, Patrick Henry argued the Parson's Cause case. Clerical pay had been tied to the price of tobacco by Virginia legislation. When the price of tobacco skyrocketed after a bad crop in 1758, the Virginia legislature passed the Two-Penny Act to stop clerical salaries from inflating as well. In 1763, King George III vetoed the Two-Penny Act. Patrick Henry defended the law in court and argued "that a King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant and forfeits all right to his subjects' obedience."

In 1764, British Prime Minister George Grenville's Sugar Act and Currency Act created economic hardship in the colonies. Protests led to the boycott of British goods, and to the emergence of the popular slogan "no taxation without representation," in which colonists argued that only their colonial assemblies, and not Parliament, could levy taxes on them. Committees of correspondence were formed in the colonies to coordinate resistance to paying the taxes. In previous years, the colonies had shown little inclination towards collective action. Grenville's policies were bringing them together.

A milestone in the Revolution occurred in 1765, when Grenville passed the Stamp Act, as a way to finance the quartering of troops in North America. The Stamp Act required all legal documents, permits, commercial contracts, newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards in the colonies to carry a tax stamp.

Colonial protest was widespread. Secret societies known as the Sons of Liberty were formed in every colony, and used propaganda, intimidation, and mob violence to prevent the enforcement of the Stamp Act. The furor culminated with the "Stamp Act Congress", which sent a formal protest to Parliament in October of 1765. Parliament responded by repealing the Stamp Act, but pointedly declared its legal authority over the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

The sequel to the Stamp Act was not long in coming. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, placing taxes on a number of common goods imported into the colonies, including glass, paint, lead, paper, and tea. In response, colonial leaders organized boycotts of these British imports. On June 10, 1768, the Liberty, a ship belonging to colonial merchant John Hancock and suspected of smuggling, was seized by customs officials in Boston. Angry protests on the street led customs officials, fearing for their safety, to report to London that Boston was in a state of insurrection.

British troops began to arrive in Boston in October of 1768. Tensions continued to mount; culminating in the "Boston Massacre" on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers of the 29th Regiment of Foot fired into an angry mob, killing five. Revolutionary agitators, like Samuel Adams, used the event to stir up popular resistance, but, after the trial of the soldiers, who were defended by John Adams, tensions diminished.

The Townshend Acts were repealed in 1770, after much colonial protest, and it was still theoretically possible that further bloodshed in the colonies might be avoided. However, the British government had left one tax from the Townshend Acts in place as a symbolic gesture of their right to tax the colonies—the tax on tea. For the revolutionaries, who stood firm on the principle that only their colonial representatives could levy taxes on them, it was still "one tax too many". This resulted in the Boston Tea Party.

Western land dispute

The Proclamation of 1763 sought to limit the conflicts between Native Americans and the English settlers by restricting settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. However, groups of settlers, led for example by Daniel Boone, continued to move into the region beyond the Proclamation Line and fought with the Shawnees and other peoples inhabiting the area. Furthermore, the Quebec Act of 1774, extended Quebec's boundaries to the Ohio River, reestablished French civil law, and instituted toleration for Roman Catholics in that territory. Proposals to post British regulars to man forts in the west further disquieted Americans eager to occupy Indian land.

Crises, 1772-75

While there were many causes of the American Revolution, it was a series of specific events, or crises, that finally triggered the outbreak of war.

The first of these was the Gaspée Affair. The HMS Gaspée, a British ship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations (the Navigation Acts), ran aground on June 9, 1772, off of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, while chasing the packet boat Hannah. In an act of defiance that gained considerable notoriety, the ship was attacked, boarded, stripped of valuables and torched by American patriots, who later denied knowing about the entire affair.

The next crisis was a result of the so-called "Tea Act", passed by the British Parliament in 1773. This act allowed the British East India Company to sell tea to the British colonies without the usual colonial tax, thereby allowing it to undercut the prices of the colonial merchants. To help pay for its colony in India, the British government intended to give the East India Company a monopoly on tea imports to the colonies; this, however, backfired. Because many American merchants earned their living from smuggling, this act would take away their livelihood. The result was widespread boycotts of tea throughout the colonies, and, eventually, to the Boston Tea Party where American colonists, believed to be the Sons of Liberty, dressed up like Indians and threw crates of tea from the East India Company ships into the Boston Harbor.

The Intolerable Acts, called by the British the "Coercive Acts" or "Punitive Acts", were a series of laws, passed by the British Parliament in 1774, in response to the growing unrest in the thirteen American colonies, particularly in Boston, Massachusetts with its Boston Tea Party. Enforcement of the Acts played a major role in the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War and the establishment of the First Continental Congress.

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An American cartoon denounces the "rape" of Boston in 1774 by the Intolerable Acts.

The Intolerable Acts included:

The Massachusetts Government Act, which altered the Massachusetts charter and restricted town meetings;
The Administration of Justice Act, which ordered that all redcoats to be tried be arraigned in Britain, not the colonies;
The Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the British had been compensated for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party (the price was never paid); and
The Quartering Act of 1774, which impaired Boston to house hundreds upon thousands of British regulars sent in to control the vicinity.
The Quebec Act, while technically not one of the Coercive Acts, further upset the colonists by nullifying land claims and sending in Roman Catholics to the country outside of the Protestant colonies.

The First Continental Congress was convened in 1774 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, which declared the Intolerable Acts to be unconstitutional, called for the people to form militias, and for Massachusetts to form a Patriot government.

In response, primarily to the Massachusetts Government Act, the people of Worcester set up an armed picket line in front of the local courthouse and refused to allow the British magistrates to enter. Similar events occurred, soon after, all across the colony. British troops were sent from England, but, by the time they arrived, the entire colony of Massachusetts, with the exception of the heavily garrisoned city of Boston, had thrown off British control of local affairs.

The Battle of Lexington and Concord took place April 19, 1775, when the British sent a regiment to confiscate arms and arrests revolutionaries in Concord. It was the first fighting of the American Revolutionary War, and immediately news aroused the 13 colonies to call out their militias and send troops to besiege Boston. By late spring 1776 the Americans forced the British to evacuate Boston. The patriots controlled over 95% of the territory and 99% of the population, and were ready to declare independence.

The Second Continental Congress convened in 1775, after the war had started. While creating the Continental Army, it also extended the Olive Branch Petition to the crown as an attempt at reconciliation. King George III refused to receive it. There would be no negotiations whatsoever until 1783.

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This 1765 cartoon by Benjamin Franklin was recycled to encourage the American colonies to unite against British rule.

Patriots

The revolutionaries, known as Patriots, Whigs, Congress Men or Americans included a full range of social and economic classes, but a unanimity regarding the need to defend the rights of Americans. After the War, Patriots such as George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, for example, were deeply devoted to republicanism while also eager to build a rich and powerful nation, while Patriots such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine represented democratic impulses and the agrarian plantation element that wanted a localistic society with greater political equality.

Loyalists and Neutrals

From 20 to 30% of the colonists remained loyal to the British Crown; these became known as Loyalists (or 'Tories', or 'King's men'). Loyalists were older, less willing to break with old loyalties, often connected to the Anglican church, and included many established merchants with business connections across the Empire. Thomas Hutchinson of Boston, for example. Recent immigrants who had not been fully Americanized were also inclined to support the King, including recent Scottish settlers in the backcountry. Native Americans mostly rejected American demands they stay neutral. The most prominent leader was Mohawk Joseph Brant, who led frontier raids on isolated settlements in Pennsylvania and New York, until an American Army under John Sullivan cleared New York in 1779, forcing the enemy Indians permanently into Canada. In Virginia there were a few thousand black Loyalists.

After the war, the great majority of Loyalists remained in America and resumed normal lives. A few such as Samuel Seabury became prominent. A minority of about 50-75,000 Loyalists relocated in Canada, Britain or the West Indies. When the Loyalists left the South in 1783 they took about 75,000 of their slaves to slavery in the West Indies.

In addition, a large but unknown number of colonists in the thirteen colonies tried to stay neutral in the highly political scene. They tried to be inconspicuous--there was no neutral faction or party.

Class differences among the Patriots

Historians in the early 20th century examined the class composition of the Patriot cause, looking for evidence that there was a class war inside the revolution. In the last 50 years historians have largely abandoned that interpretation, emphasizing instead the high level of ideological unity. Just as there were rich and poor Loyalists, the Patriots were a 'mixed lot', with the richer and better educated more likely to become officers in the Army. Ideological demands always came first, as the Patriots viewed independence as a means of freeing themselves from British oppression and taxation, and above all reasserting what they considered to be their rights. Most yeomen farmers, craftsmen and small merchants joined the patriot cause as well, demanding more political equality. They were especially successful in Pennsylvania and less so in New England where John Adams attacked Thomas Paine's Common Sense for the "absurd democratical notions" it proposed.

Women

The boycott of British goods would have been entirely unworkable without the willing participation of American women: women made the bulk of household purchases, and the boycotted items were largely household items such as tea and cloth. And as cloth was still a basic necessity, for the boycott to work, women would have to return to spinning and weaving, skills that had fallen into disuse. In 1769, the women of Boston produced 40,000 skeins of yarn, and 180 women in Middletown, Massachusetts wove 20,522 yards of cloth.

As the Revolution progressed and economic disruption deepened, women participated directly in the food riots and tar and feathering that was the people's response to price gouging by merchants, Loyalist and Patriot alike. in August 1777, Thomas Boyleston, a Patriot merchant who was withholding coffee and sugar from the market waiting for prices to rise, was confronted by a crowd of 100 or more women, who seized the keys to his warehouse and distributed the coffee themselves while a large crowd of men stood by and watched, dumbfounded.

Writing the state constitutions

By summer 1776 the patriots had control of over 95% of the territory and population. All 13 states had overthrown their existing governments, closing courts and driving British agents and governors from their homes, and they had elected conventions and "legislatures" that existed outside of any legal framework whatsoever— new constitutions were desperately needed in each state to replace the superseded royal charters. They were states now--not colonies.

On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire ratified the first state constitution, six months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Then, in May 1776, Congress voted to suppress all forms of crown authority, to be replaced by locally created authority. Virginia, South Carolina, and New Jersey created their constitutions before July 4. Rhode Island and Connecticut simply took their existing royal charters and deleted all references to the crown.

The new states had to decide not only what form of government to create, they first had to decide how to select those who would craft the constitutions and how the resulting document would be ratified. This would be just the start of a process that would pit conservatives against radicals in each state. In states where the wealthy exerted firm control over the process, such as Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New York and Massachusetts, the result was constitutions that featured:

substantial property qualifications for voting and even more substantial requirements for elected positions (though New York and Maryland lowered property qualifications);
bicameral legislatures, with the upper house as a check on the lower;
strong governors, with veto power over the legislature and substantial appointment authority;
few or no restraints on individuals holding multiple positions in government;
the continuation of state-established religion.

In states where the less affluent had organized sufficiently to have significant power, especially Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Vermont, the resulting constitutions embodied:

universal white manhood suffrage, or minimal property requirements for voting or holding office (New Jersey went so far as to enfranchise women, a radical step that they retracted 25 years later);

strong, unicameral legislatures;
relatively weak governors, without veto powers, and little appointing authority;
prohibition against individuals holding multiple government posts;
disestablishment of religion.

Naturally, the fact that conservatives or radicals held sway in a state did not mean that the side with less power accepted the result quietly. In Pennsylvania, the propertied class was horrified by their new constitution (Benjamin Rush called it "our state dung cart"), while in Massachusetts, voters twice rejected the constitution that was presented for ratification; it was ultimately ratified only as a result of the legislature tinkering with the third vote. The radical provisions of Pennsylvania's constitution were to last only fourteen years— in 1790, conservatives gained power in the state legislature, called a new constitutional convention, and wrote a new constitution that substantially reduced universal white-male suffrage, gave the governor veto power and patronage appointment authority, and added an upper house with substantial wealth qualifications to the unicameral legislature. Thomas Paine called it a constitution unworthy of America.

War for independence, 1775-83

The siege of Yorktown ended with the surrender of a British army, paving the way for the end of the American Revolutionary War.

Main article: American Revolutionary War

On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published a pamphlet entitled Common Sense arguing that the only solution to the problems with Britain was Republicanism and independence from Great Britain.

On July 4, 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was ratified by the Second Continental Congress.

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, commonly known as the Articles of Confederation, formed the first governing document of the United States of America. They combined the colonies of the American Revolutionary War into a loose confederation of sovereign states. The second Continental Congress adopted the Articles on November 15, 1777.

America after the war

The American Revolution saw several noteworthy political innovations that reflected the new republican ideology: the separation of church and state, which ended the special privileges of the Church of England in the South and—many years later—the Congregationalist Church in New England; an assertion of liberty, individual rights and equality which would prove highly appealing in Europe; the idea that government should be by consent of the governed (including the right of rebellion against tyranny); the delegation of power to the government through written constitutions; and the notion that colonial peoples of the Americas could become self-governing nations in their own rights.

The peace treaty with Britain, known as the Treaty of Paris (1783) gave the U.S. government control, on paper, of all land east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, but the Native American nations actually living in this region were not a party to this treaty and had not been militarily defeated by the Patriots. Further, the British remained in possession of the Great Lakes forts through which they continued to supply their Native American allies with trade items (including weapons) and to otherwise stir up trouble for Americans.

The impact on British North America

For tens of thousands of inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies, the victory of the revolutionaries was followed by exile. Approximately fifty thousand United Empire Loyalists fled to the remaining British colonies in North America, such as the Province of Quebec, (concentrating in the Eastern Townships), Upper Canada (now known as Ontario), and Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia (where their presence would result in the creation of New Brunswick). This exodus sowed the seeds for the French-English duality in British North America, arguably the most prominent political and cultural feature of what would one day become Canada.

Revolution beyond America

The American Revolution was the first wave of the Atlantic Revolutions that would also take hold in the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American wars of liberation. Aftershocks would also be felt in Ireland in the 1798 rising, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and in the Netherlands.

The Revolution had a strong immediate impact in Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France. Many British and Irish Whigs had been openly indulgent to the Patriots in America, and the Revolution was the first lesson in politics for many European radicals who would later take on active roles during the era of the French Revolution. Jefferson's Declaration had an immediate impact on the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789.

The American Revolution affected the rest of the world. The thinkers of the Enlightenment only wrote that common people had the right to overthrow unjust governments. The American Revolution was a case of practical success, which provided the rest of the world with a 'working model'.

The American Revolution set an example to the people in Europe and other parts of this world. It encouraged the people to realize they had rights independent of the sovereign; it promoted republicanism to overthrow monarchs. It incited people to fight for their rights, and it showed them that it was possible to win even against the world's foremost power, Great Britain.

Nowhere was the influence of the American Revolution more profound than in Latin America, where American writings and the model of colonies, which actually broke free and thrived decisively, shaped their struggle for independence. Historians of Latin America have identified many links to the U.S. model. See John Lynch, "The Origins of Spanish American Independence," in Cambridge History of Latin America Vol. 3 (1985), pp 45-46

Legacy and interpretations

The American Revolution is often cited as a milestone in the history of American Exceptionalism. The intellectuals of the Revolution (Thomas Paine's Common Sense is most likely the best example) for the first time expressed the belief that America was not just an extension of Europe but a new land, a country of nearly unlimited potential and opportunity that was being abused by the British mother country they had outgrown. These sentiments laid the intellectual foundations for the Revolutionary concept of American exceptionalism and was closely tied to Republicanism, the belief that sovereignty belonged to the people, not to a hereditary ruling class.

External links

The American Revolution at americanrevolution.com - historical information, documents, pictures, and more
PBS Television Series
We the People, a game on the American Revolution