Chapter 7: The Road to Revolution * The Deep Roots of Revolution * Two ideas taken root in the minds of murican colonists (18th century) * REPUBLICANISM : defined a just society as one in which all citizens willingly subordinated their private, selfish interests to the common good * Both stability of society and authority of government depended on virtue of citizenry (its capacity for selflessness, self-sufficiency, and courage, especially its appetite for civic involvement * Opposed to hierarchical and authoritarian institutions such as aristocracy and monarchy * “RADICAL WHIGS”: British political commentators * Feared threat to liberty posed by the arbitrary power of the monarch and his ministers relative to elected representatives in parliament * Mounted attacks on use of patronage and bribes by king’s ministers * Symptoms of wider moral failure in society - “corruption” * Dukes and princes = unknown in colonies * Property ownership and political participations were relatively widespread * Murices unmolested by remote officials in London * Distance weakens authority * Mercantilism and Colonial Grievances * British authority embraced theory - MERCANTILISM * Justified their control over colonies * Mercantilists believed that wealth = power and country’s economic wealth could be measured by amount of gold or silver, a country needed to export more than it imported * London gov. looked on murican colonists as tenants * Expected to furnish products needed in mother country (tobacco, sugar, ships’ masts) to refrain from making for export certain products (woolen cloth or beaver hats) to buy imported manufactured goods from Britain * Parliament passed laws to regulate mercantilism system * NAVIGATION LAW OF 1650 - aimed at Dutch shippers trying to get their way into murican carrying trade * All commerce flowing to and from colonies could be transported only in British vessels * SUBSEQUENT LAWS - required European goods destined for murica first had to be landed in Britain, where tariff duties could be collected and British middlemen could take a slice of the profits * British policy also inflicted currency shortage on colonies * Colonists regularly bought more from Britain than they sold there had to be made up in ca$h * Gold and silver coins earned in illicit trade w/ Spanish and French West Indies created acute money shortage * Colonists resorted to butter, nails, pitch, and feathers of purposes of exchange * Forced many colonies to issue paper $$ depreciated * British merchants and creditors complained so much Parliament prohibited colonial legislatures form printer paper currency and from passing indulgent bankruptcy laws * British crown received right to nullify any legislation passed by colonial assemblies if such laws worked mischief with mercantilist system * The Merits and Menace of Mercantilism * 1763, Navigation Laws imposed no intolerable burden * Muricans reaped direct benefits from mercantile system * London paid liberal bounties to colonial producers of ship parts * Virginia tobacco planters enjoyed monopoly in British market * Mercantilism stifled economic initiative and imposed ranking dependency on British agents and creditors * Muricans hated mercantilist system - felt used, kept in state of perpetual economic adolescence, and never allowed to come of age * Revolution broke out because Britain failed to recognize and emerging nation when it saw one * The Stamp Tax Uproar * Prime minister GEORGE GRENVIILLE aroused resentment of colonists in 1763 by ordering British navy to being strictly enforcing Navigation Laws * He also secured from Parliament the SUGAR ACT OF 1764 - raised tax revenues in the colonies for crowns * Increased duty on foreign sugar imported from West Indies * QUARTERING ACT OF 1765 - required certain colonies to provide food and quarters for British troops * STAMP TAX OF 1765 - raised revenues to support new military force * Mandated use of stamped paper or affixing the stamps, certifying payment of tax * Required on bills of sale for 50 trade items as well as on certain types of commercial and legal docs (playing cards, pamphlets, newspapers, diplomas, bills of lading, marriage licenses) * Grenville ask muricans to pay fair share of costs for their own defense through taxes that were already familiar in Britain * Angrily aroused at what they regarded as Grenville’s fiscal aggression * Grenville’s legislation jeopardized basic rights of colonists as English men * Both Sugar Act and Stamp Act provided for trying offenders in hated admiralty courts where juries not allowed * Burden of proof relied on defendants - assumed to be guilty until proven innocence by themselves * “No taxation without representation” * Muricans conceded right of parliament to legislate about matters that affected entire empire including regulation of trade * But they denied right of parliament, in which no muricans were seated, to impose taxes on muricans * Only their own elected colonial legislatures could legally tax them * Grenville stated that power of parliament was supreme and undivided and that muricans were represented in parliament * “virtual representation” - Grenville claimed that every member of parliament represented British subjects * Muricans did not really want direct representation in parliament * British replied that sovereign power of gov. could not be divided between “legislative” authority in London and “taxing” authority in colonies forced muricans to deny authority of parliament altogether and to being to consider their own political independence * Parliament Forced to Repeal the Stamp Act * STAMP ACT CONGRESS halted step toward intercolonial unity * Widespread adoption of nonimportation agreements against British goods (another halted step) * United murican people for the first time * Gave ordinary murican men and women new opportunities to participate in colonial protests * signed petitions to boycott * women assembled in public to hold spinning bees and make homespun cloth as replacement for shunned British textiles * helped spread revolutionary fervor throughout murican colonial society * groups of ardent spirits: SONS OF LIBERTY AND DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY * “Liberty, Property, and No stamps” – they enforced the nonimportation agreements against violators, often w/ coat of tar and feathers * Machinery for collecting tax broke down (1765) * Stamp agents forced to resign no one to sell stamps * Law was openly and flagrantly defied (nullified) * Murica bought 1/4 of all British exports, 1/2 of British shipping devoted to murican trade * Merchants, manufacturers, and shippers suffered from colonial nonimportation agreements laborers thrown out of work * Many members could not understand why Britons had to pay heavy taxes to protect colonies, some colonists refused to pay for only 1/3 of cost of their own defense * Parliament in 1766 repealed Stamp Act * Created leaden statue of King George 111 * Passed DECLARATORY ACT – reaffirmed parliament’s right “to bind” colonies “in all cases whatsoever” * British gov. defined constitutional principle with would not yield: absolute and unqualified sovereignty of their own and would undertake drastic action to secure it * Set for continuing confrontation * Statue of King George 111 melted in thousands of bullets * The Townshend Tea Tax and the Boston “Massacre” * “Champagne Charlie” - a man who delivered brilliant speeches in parliament even while drunk * Persuaded Parliament (1767) to pass TOWNSHEND ACTS * New regulations - light import duty on glass, white lead, paper, paint, and tea * Seized on dubious distinction between internal and external taxes an indirect customs duty payable at murican ports * New Townshend revenues were to be earmarked to pay salaries of royal governors and judges in murica * London gov. (after passing Townshend taxes) suspended legislature of New York (1767) for failure to comply w/ Quartering Act * Nonimportation agreements revived against Townshend act * Colonists took the new tax less seriously because it was light and indirect * Found out that they could secure smuggled tea at cheap price, and consequently smugglers increased their activities, especially in Massachusetts * On evening of March 5, 1770, crowd of sixty townspeople went up against redcoats * Redcoats acted without orders and killed/wounded townspeople * The Seditious Committees of Correspondence * 1770, Kind George 111 attempted to assert power of British monarchy * Proved to be bad ruler * Earnest, industrious, stubborn, & lustful for power * Lord North = his prime minister * Gov. of Lord North (??) finally persuaded Parliament to repeal Townshend revenue duties * Three-pence toll on tea was retained to keep alive the principle of parliamentary taxation * SAMUEL ADAMS - cousin of John Adams * Sensitive to infractions of colonial rights * Signal contribution was to organize in Massachusetts the local committees of correspondence * Formed the 1st one in Boston, 1772 * Chief function was to spread the spirit of resistance by interchanging letters and thus keep alive opposition to British policy * Virginia crated a body as a standing committee of House of Burgesses (1773) * Every colony had established a central committee through which it could exchange ideas and information w/ other countries * Evolved directly into 1st American congresses * Tea Parties at Boston and Elsewhere * Nonimportation was weakening * Increasing numbers of colonists were reluctantly paying tea tax legal tea now cheaper * 1773, British East India Company facing bankruptcy - if collapsed, London gov. would lose heavily in tax revenue * Ministry decided to assist the company by awarding it a complete monopoly of murican tea business * Now able to sell coveted leaves more cheap * Muricans saw this move as an attempt to trick them into swallowing principle of detested tax * Not a single one of the several thousand chests of tea shipped by East India Company ever reached hands of consignees * THOMAS HUTCHINSON - agreed that tea tax was unjust, but believed that colonists had no right to flout law * Infuriated Boston’s radicals when he ordered tea ships not to clear Boston Harbor until they unloaded their cargos * His enemies published private letter in which he declared that “an abridgement of what are called English liberties” was necessary for preservation of law & order in colonies * Band of Boston people disguised as Indians and boarded docked tea ships (December 16, 1773) * Conservatives complained that destruction of private property violated fundamental norms of civil society * Parliament Passes the “Intolerable Acts” * “INTOLERABLE ACTS”: restricted colonists rights * Made restrictions on town meetings & stated that enforcing officials who killed colonists in line of duty to be sent to Britain for trial * BOSTON PORT ACT - closed tea-stained harbor until damages were paid and order could be ensured * French guaranteed catholic religion & permitted to retain many of their old customs and institutions (did not include representative assembly or trial by jury in civil cases) * Quebec Act passed as well (1774): gave Catholic French Canadians religious freedom and restored French from civil war * Nullified many of the Western claims of coast colonies by extending boundaries of the province of Quebec to Ohio River to Mississippi River * The Continental Congress and Bloodshed * 1774, 1ST Continental Congress met in Philly in order to redress colonial grievances over the intolerable acts * Drew up several papers including Declaration of Rights & solemn repeals to other British-Murican colonies, king, and Brit people * Creation of The Association called for boycott of British goods, Nonimportation, nonexporation, and nonconsumption * April 1775, British commander sent detachment of troops to Lexington * They were to seize provisions of colonial gun powder and to capture “rebel” ringleaders: Samuel Adams & John Hancock * At Lexington, 8 muricans shot and killed LEXINGTON MASSACRE * When British went to Concord, they were met with murican resistance - 300 casualties 70 deaths * British had war instead of rebellion on their hands * Imperial Strength and Weaknesses * Population of Britain 3 times bigger than murica * Also had greater economic wealth and naval power * Rebellion brewing in Ireland & France * Britain forced to divert much of its military power and concentration away from muricas (soldiers treated brutally) * American Pluses and Minuses * MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE: French who was made major general in colonial army (19 y.o.) * Nicknamed “French Gamecock” (uh...) * Services invaluable in securing further aid from France * ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION (1775): 1st written constitution adopted by colonists * Due to lack of metallic $$ in murica, Continental Congress forced to print “continental” paper $$ * Depreciated significantly and individual states forced to print their own money * A Thin Line of Heroes * At Valley Forge (Pennsylvania), murican men went w/o food for 3 days in winter (1777-1778) * BARON CON STEUBEN: German who helped to whip murican fighters into shape for fighting British * LORD DUNMORE: royal (British) governor of Virginia * 1775, issued proclamation promising freedom for any enslaved black in Virginia who joined British Army LORD DUNMORES ETHIOPIAN REGIMENT