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CHAPTERS 5 – 6 PT 1

Religion, Enlightenment, and Revival

Eighteenth-century colonists could choose from almost as many religions as they could consumer goods.

Many varieties of Protestant faith and practice

Many educated colonists became deists, looking to nature for God’s plan rather than to the Bible.

Deists shared the ideas of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers, who tended to agree that science and reason could disclose God’s laws in the natural order.

The spread of religious indifference, of deism, of denominational rivalry, and of comfortable backsliding compelled some ministers to a new style of preaching that appealed more to the heart than to the head; historians have called this wave of revivals the “Great Awakening.”

The most famous revivalist in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world was George Whitefield.

The Seven Years’ War, 1754–1763

French–British Rivalry in the Ohio Country

French fur traders had a long-term arrangement with Native Americans in the Ohio country; in the 1740s Pennsylvanian and Virginian land speculators asserted claims to the same Ohio territory, obtained a land grant from the British king, and planned to sell land to Anglo-American colonists seeking fresh land.. French soldiers advanced into Native American territory in the Ohio Country and built a series of forts, hoping to create a western barrier to British-American expansion.

In 1753, Robert Dinwiddie, Virginia’s royal governor, sent George Washington as a messenger to warn the French that they were trespassing on Virginia land; he returned with crucial information about French military plans.

Dinwiddie, impressed with Washington’s performance on the mission, appointed him to lead a small military expedition West to assert and defend Virginia’s claim, but to respond with force only if the French attacked first.

Washington returned to the Ohio Country with 160 armed Virginians aided by Native American allies of the Mingo tribe.

In May 1754, a detachment of some of Washington’s men, led by Mingo chief Tanaghrisson, surprised French soldiers in the woods; the resulting skirmish caused to 14 French deaths at the hands of the Americans and Native Americans and marked the start of the Seven Years’ War.

In response, French soldiers attacked the American Fort Necessity in July 1754, killing or wounding a 1/3 of Washington’s men.

The Albany Congress and Inter-colonial Defense

Even as Virginians, Frenchmen, and Native Americans fought and died in the Ohio Country, British leaders tried to prevent all out war.

In June and July 1754, 24 delegates from 7 colonies met with Iroquois in Albany, New York to strengthen British alliances with the powerful Native Americans so they would not ally with the French.

But Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Hutchinson took the opportunity to coauthor the Albany Plan of Union, which proposed to provide for colonial defense by instituting a unified government over all the colonies.

Having learned of Washington’s defeat at Fort Necessity during their congress, the Albany Delegates approved the Albany Plan, which called for a president general appointed by the crown, together with a grand council, who would meet annually to consider questions of war, peace, and trade with the Native Americans .

Not a single colony approved the plan, and it likewise failed to garner British or Native American support.

The War and Its Consequences

By 1755, it had turned into major clash between British and American troops against the French.

Unfortunately for the British, the French were not only prepared to fight but also had already had alliances with many Native American tribes from Canada down through the Great Lakes region and into Ohio.

French and Native American forces ambushed British troops near Fort Duquesne, killing nearly 1,000 British soldiers and for the next two years, the British fared badly on the American front.

The rise to power in 1757 of William Pitt, England’s prime minister, finally turned the war around by paying colonial assemblies to raise and equip provincial soldiers to mount military assaults.

Battles continued in the American colonies and Canada from 1758 to 1760, ending with the fall of Quebec and Montreal.

The complex peace negotiations reorganized the map of North America: the British retained control of the eastern half of North America, and gained control of Canada; French territory west of the Mississippi was transferred to Spain.

However, the Treaty of Paris ignored the main threat to the safety of the colonies: the Native Americans .

England’s version of the victory of 1763 awarded all credit to the British army, and blamed colonists for prolonging the war by engaging in illegal trade with the French.

Colonists disagreed, claiming that they had turned out in great force but had been relegated to grunt work by British military leaders.

The costs of the war were numerous for the colonists; many had either served or lost loved ones in the war.

British Leadership, Pontiac’s Uprising, and the Proclamation of 1763

In 1760, in the middle of the Seven Years’ War, twenty-two-year-old George III came to the British throne; his tutor, the Earl of Bute, served briefly in the king’s cabinet of ministers and made one significant decision—to keep an army in the mainland colonies even though the battles were over.

The apparent reason for keeping an army in the colonies was to maintain the peace between the colonists and the Native Americans .

Three months after the Treaty of Paris was signed, Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa tribe, attacked British forts across the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region, ultimately killing 400 soldiers and 2,000 colonists.

To minimize violence, the British government issued the Proclamation of 1763, which forbade colonists to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains, limited trade with Native Americans to licensed traders, and made private sales of Native American land illegal.

The 1763 proclamation proved impossible to enforce because settlers had already moved west of the line, and land speculators had no desire to lose opportunities for a profitable resale of the lands they had been granted more than a decade earlier.

i. Britain emerged from the Seven Years’ War holding one of the biggest empires in the world

ii. They also held the biggest debt, about 140 million pounds (1/2 of which had been incurred defending the American colonies)

iii. British officials now moved to redefine their relationship with their North American colonies

The Sugar and Stamp Acts, 1763–1765

A. Grenville’s Sugar Act

To find revenue to fund debt from the war, British Prime Minister George Grenville

i. Had parliament pass the Proclamation of 1763

ii. Began to strictly enforce the Navigation Laws

iii. Had parliament pass the Sugar Act of 1764

1. First law ever passed for raising tax revenue in the colonies for the crown

2. It increased the duty on foreign sugar and molasses imported from the West Indies

3. After bitter protests from the colonists, the duties were lowered substantially, and the agitation died down

The Sugar Act toughened enforcement policies, but was not sufficient to offset the attractions of smuggling; objections to the act came from Americans in the shipping trades who found the law inconvenient.

From the British point of view, the 1763 proclamation and the Sugar Act seemed to be reasonable efforts to administer the colonies, but to Americans the British supervision appeared to be a disturbing intrusion into colonial practices.

The Stamp Act

In 1765, Grenville escalated his revenue program with the Stamp Act, which imposed a tax on all paper used for official documents and required a special stamp to be affixed to the paper proving that the tax had been paid.

i. Purpose was to raise revenues to support the new military force

ii. It mandated the use of stamped paper or the affixing of stamps, certifying payment of the tax

iii. Stamps were required on bills of sale for about 50 trade items, as well as on certain types of commercial and legal documents, including:

1. Playing cards

2. Pamphlets

3. Newspapers

4. Diplomas

5. Bills of lading (putting goods on board a ship)

6. Marriage licenses

Grenville argued that the colonists were “virtually” represented in Parliament—the House of Commons represented all British subjects, wherever they were. Regarded all these measures as reasonable and just. He was simply asking the Americans to pay a fair share of the costs for their own defense through taxes that were already familiar in Britain.

Colonial leaders emphatically rejected this British view, arguing that virtual representation could not be levied from across the ocean.

Admiralty Courts

1. Any offenders of the Sugar and Stamp Acts had to be tried in these courts

2. The burden of proof was on the defendants, who were assumed to be guilty unless they could prove themselves innocent

Resistance

Virginia’s assembly was the first to object to the Stamp Act, passing the Virginia Resolves, a series of resolutions proposed by Patrick Henry.

Henry’s successive resolutions pushed the assembly towards one conclusion: that the Virginia assembly alone had the right to tax Virginians.

Newspapers in the other colonies printed all seven Virginia Resolves, creating the impression that a daring first challenge to the Stamp Act had taken place.

Reaction to the Stamp Act ran far deeper than political debate in the assemblies; the first organized resistance to the Stamp Act began in Boston in 1765 under the leadership of Samuel Adams.

Adams mobilized shopkeepers, craftsmen, dockworkers, and laborers into a group of protesters called the Sons of Liberty.

The Boston Sons of Liberty organized a large street demonstration highlighting a ritualized mock execution designed to convince Andrew Oliver, the stamp distributor, to resign.

It worked : Oliver resigned the following day.

Twelve days later, another crowd attacked the houses of three detested customs and court officials, and then Thomas Hutchinson’s house, which they destroyed.

Liberty and Property

Boston’s protests to the Stamp Act sparked similar eruptions by groups calling themselves Sons of Liberty in nearly fifty towns throughout the colonies.

Some colonial leaders, disturbed by the riots, hastened to mount a more moderate challenge to parliamentary authority.

Twenty-seven delegates representing nine colonial assemblies met in New York City in October 1765 as the Stamp Act Congress.

i. This meeting brought together in New York City 27 distinguished delegates from 9 colonies

ii. After debate, the members drew up a statement of their rights and grievances and asked the king and Parliament to repeal the legislation. This was the first time the colonies mounted formal opposition to the Crown

iii. The Congress was largely ignored in England and had little effect on the colonists as a whole in America

iv. However, the significance of the Congress was that it was a step toward inter-colonial unity

Politicians and merchants in England reacted with alarm to the American demonstrations and petitions and in March 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act but passed the Declaratory Act, which asserted Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

The Townshend Acts and Economic Retaliation, 1767–1770

The Townshend Duties

Charles Townshend, Britain’s chief financial minister, proposed new taxes under the Revenue Act of 1767, establishing new duties on tea, glass, lead, paper, and painters’ colors imported into the colonies, to be paid by the importer but passed on to consumers in the retail price.

The Townshend duties were not especially burdensome, but the principle they embodied—taxation extracted through trade duties—looked different to the colonists in the wake of the Stamp Act crisis.

One problem for colonists was that Townshend’s revenues were used to pay the salaries of the royal governors.

Townshend hoped the measure would strengthen the governors’ position as well as curb the growing independence of the colonial assemblies.

The Massachusetts assembly took the lead in protesting the Townshend duties by circulating a letter of grievances, penned by Samuel Adams, urging other colonial assemblies to endorse the idea that parliamentary taxation was unjust because Americans were not represented in Parliament.

Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard received orders from England to dissolve the assembly if it refused to take back the letter of grievances.

The assembly refused

Military Occupation and “Massacre” in Boston

In the fall of 1768, three thousand uniformed British troops arrived to occupy Boston and by the early months of 1770, tensions had reached heightened levels. The soldiers were young and brash and colonists found them distasteful. Colonists taunted the soldiers because they did not want them there.

On March 5, 1770, a crowd of some 60 townspeople began taunting and throwing snowballs at a squad of 10 redcoats. The Bostonians were still angry over the death of an 11-year old boy, shot 10 days earlier during a protest against a merchant who had defied the colonial boycott of British goods. On March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired on a small but hostile crowd, wounding six men and killing five.

The Boston Massacre, as the event soon became known, was over in minutes; Hutchinson tried to respond in a way that would prevent further violence.

The Sons of Liberty made sure that the five colonial victims had funerals befitting heroic martyrs.

Eight jailed British soldiers and their captain Thomas Preston, brought before a court of law in the fall of 1770, were defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, patriots who believed strongly that even unpopular defendants deserved a fair trial.

The five-day trial resulted in acquittal for Preston and all but two of the soldiers, who were convicted of man-slaughter, branded on the thumbs, and released.

Engraving by Paul Revere widely circulated and fed outrage.

The Tea Party and the Coercive Acts, 1770 –1774

Results of the Townshend Acts

i. Net proceeds from the tax in one year were a paltry 295 pounds. During that time, the annual military costs to Britain in the colonies had mounted to 170,000 pounds

ii. Non importation agreements, though feebly enforced, were pinching British manufacturers

iii. Parliament bowed to various pressures and repealed the Townshend Act. However, the 3 pence toll on tea, the tax the colonists found most offensive, was retained to keep alive the principle of parliamentary taxation

The repeal of the Townshend duties brought an end to non importation and caused a trade boom in 1770 and 1771.

In 1772, however, several incidents once again brought the conflict with England into sharp focus.

One incident was the burning of the Gaspée, a British navy ship chasing down suspected smugglers off the coast of Rhode Island.

A British investigating commission failed to arrest anyone but announced that suspects, if found, would be sent to England for trial on charges of high treason, a decision that seemed to fly in the face of the traditional English right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers.

Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson proposed that a network of standing committees, called “committees of correspondence,” be established to link the colonies and pass along alarming news; by mid-1773, each colonial assembly had such a committee.

In 1772, the British decided to pay the salaries of superior court justices out of the tea revenue, only further alienating the colonists.

The third and final incident that irrevocably shattered the relative calm of the early 1770s was the Tea Act of 1773. This act favored the East India Company, allowing it to sell tea directly to special government agents rather than through public auction to independent merchants, thus lowering the price and cutting back on smuggling.

Tea in Boston Harbor

In the fall of 1773, news of the Tea Act reached the colonies.

Three ships bearing tea arrived in Boston in November 1773; they cleared customs and unloaded their other cargoes, but not the tea.

Pressure continued to build in Boston as Hutchinson demanded that the tea duty be paid before the ships returned to England; the tea sat for 20 days while pressure built in Boston.

On December 16, 1773, roughly 100 Bostonians who were a part of the Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Native Americans. They boarded the docked ships, smashed open 342 chests of tea, and dumped their contents into the Atlantic

Tea was the perfect symbol to rally around as almost every colonist, rich or poor, consumed this imported beverage

The Coercive Acts

Lord North’s response was swift and stern; within three months, Parliament passed the first of the Coercive Acts—four laws meant to punish Massachusetts for the destruction of the tea. known as the Intolerable Acts by the colonists.

The first, the Boston Port Act, closed Boston Harbor to all shipping traffic for as long as the destroyed tea was not paid for.

The second, the Massachusetts Government Act, altered the colony’s charter, underscoring Parliament’s claim to supremacy over Massachusetts.

The third, the Impartial Administration of Justice Act, stipulated that any royal official accused of a capital crime would now be tried in a court in England.

The fourth, an amendment to the 1765 Quartering Act, permitted military commanders to lodge soldiers wherever necessary, even in private households.

An ill-timed fifth act, the Quebec Act

Although it was passed at the same time the other acts were passed to punish Boston, this act was not intended to do so. However, it was erroneously regarded as part of the British reaction to the issues in Boston

Under the act:

1. The French in Canada were guaranteed their Catholic religion

2. They were also permitted to retain many of their old customs and institutions, which did not include a representative assembly or trial by jury

3. The old boundaries of the province of Quebec were now extended southward all the way to the Ohio River

Via the committees of correspondence, colonial leaders arranged to meet in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774 to respond to the crisis.

The First Continental Congress

Colonial Response to the Intolerable Acts

i. American dissenters responded sympathetically to the plight of Massachusetts. They believed that the punishment was far too brutal for the crime

ii. Flags were flown at half-mast throughout the colonies on the day the Boston Port Act went into effect

iii. Nearby colonies sent food to the stricken city

iv. The most memorable of the responses to the Intolerable Acts was the summoning of a Continental Congress

1st Continental Congress (1774)

i. The purpose was to consider ways of redressing colonial grievances

ii. 12 of the 13 colonies, all but GA, sent at least one delegate to the meeting in Philadelphia

iii. All inter-colonial rivalries melted away

iv. Many well-respected men met there, including Samuel Adams, John Adams, George Washington, and Patrick Henry

v. It deliberated for 7 weeks, from September to October 1774

vi. John Adams helped narrowly defeat a proposal by the moderates that would have given America partial home rule

Significance of the 1st Continental Congress

i. The Declaration of Rights was drawn up and sent to the king. It protested Britain’s colonial policies

ii. The most significant action of the Congress was the creation of The (Continental) Association. Unlike previous non importation agreements, The Association called for a complete boycott of British goods:

1. Non importation

2. Non exportation

3. Non consumption

The delegates did not call for independence, just to repeal the offensive legislation

The congress met for seven weeks and produced a declaration of rights couched in traditional language: “We ask only for peace, liberty and security. We wish no diminution of royal prerogatives, we demand no new rights.”

Parliament rejected the Congress’s petitions

1. Violators of The Association were tarred and feathered

2. Men began to drill openly

The members of the Congress agreed to convene a 2nd Continental Congress in May 1775

To enforce the boycott, they called for the creation of a Continental Association, with chapters in each town to monitor all commerce and punish suspected violators of the boycott.

Many towns and localities heeded the call and established committees of public safety and committees of inspection.

Britain’s severe reaction to Boston’s destruction of the tea made many colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia finally realize that the problems of British rule went far beyond questions of taxation by infringing on liberty and denying self government; the threat of general war was on the doorstep.

Domestic Insurrections, 1774–1775

Lexington and Concord

Over the winter of 1774–1775, Americans pressed on with the boycotts.

General Gage requested twenty thousand reinforcements and planned a surprise attack on a suspected ammunition storage site at Concord, Massachusetts.

Paul Revere and William Dawes raced ahead to alert the minutemen of the impending raid, and when the British reached Lexington they were greeted by seventy armed minutemen.

No one knew who fired the first shot but the skirmish left eight Americans dead and ten wounded.

As the British returned to Boston after the skirmishes in Lexington and Concord, militiamen attacked from the roadsides, wounding or killing 273 British soldiers. It was April 19, 1775, and the Revolutionary War had begun.

The Second Continental Congress

i. In Philadelphia, on May 10, 1775, all 13 colonies met at the 2^nd Continental Congress. It served as our first government and met for 5 years until the Articles of Confederation took place

ii. There was still no well-defined sentiment for independence – merely a desire to continue fighting in the hope that the king and Parliament would consent to a redress of grievances

iii. At the 2^nd Continental Congress, they

1. Raised an army and navy

2. Bought supplies

3. Made treaties

4. Drafted the Olive Branch Petition (July 1775)

5. Drafted the Articles of Confederation

6. Drafted the Declaration of Independence

7. Selected George Washington to head the army

b. George Washington

i. This choice was made with considerable misgivings:

1. He had never risen above the rank of a colonel in the militia

2. His largest command had numbered only 1,200 men

3. Lost more battles than he won

ii. However, the Virginian was gifted:

1. Outstanding powers of leadership and immense strength of character

2. Radiated patience, courage, self-discipline, and a sense of justice

3. He was a great moral force rather than a military mind – a symbol and rallying point

4. People trusted him and he insisted on serving without pay

iii. His selection was political:

1. Americans in other sections of the country, already jealous, were beginning to distrust the large New England army being collected around Boston

2. It was natural to pick a commander from VA, the largest and most populous of the colonies

3. As a man of wealth, Wa

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