History Review Ch 4
Suffolk Resolves
(Sept. 9, 1774), most famous of many meetings vigorously protesting the Intolerable Acts enacted by the British Parliament the same year. Because representative provincial government had been dissolved in Massachusetts, delegates from Boston and neighbouring towns in Suffolk county met at Dedham and later at Milton to declare their refusal to obey either the acts or the officials responsible for them. They urged fellow citizens to cease paying taxes or trading with Britain and to undertake militia drill each week. Passed unanimously, the resolves were carried by Paul Revere to Philadelphia, where they were endorsed by the First Continental Congress.
Crispus Attucks
Attucks's life prior to the day of his death is still shrouded in mystery. Although nothing is known definitively about his ancestry, his father is thought to be Prince Yonger, a slave who was brought to America, while his mother is thought to be Nancy Attucks, a Natick Indian. In the Boston Gazette on Oct. 2, 1750, William Brown, a resident of Framingham, Mass., advertised for the recovery of a runaway slave named "Crispas"—usually thought to be the Crispus in question. That advertisement proclaimed that "Crispas" had run away and described him as 27 years old and 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 metres) tall. In the 20-year interval between his escape from slavery and his death at the hands of British soldiers, Attucks probably spent a good deal of time aboard whaling ships. All that is definitely known about him concerns the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Toward evening that day, a crowd of colonists gathered and began taunting a small group of British soldiers. Tension mounted rapidly, and, when one of the soldiers was struck, the others fired their muskets, killing three of the Americans instantly and mortally wounding two others. Attucks was the first to fall, thus becoming one of the first men to lose his life in the cause of American independence. His body was carried to Faneuil Hall, where it lay in state until March 8, when all five victims were buried in a common grave. Attucks was the only victim of the Boston Massacre whose name was widely remembered. In 1888 the Crispus Attucks monument was unveiled in the Boston Common.
Charles Townsend
British chancellor of the Exchequer whose measures for the taxation of the British American colonies intensified the hostilities that eventually led to the American Revolution.The second son of the 3rd Viscount Townshend, he was educated at Cambridge and Leyden. In 1747 he was elected to Parliament. As a member of the Board of Trade from 1749 to 1754, he showed an interest in increasing British powers of taxation and control over the colonies. In 1754 and 1755 he served on the Board of Admiralty. He was secretary at war in 1761-62 and paymaster general from May 1765 to July 1766, when he became chancellor of the Exchequer in the ministry of William Pitt the Elder. Soon Pitt became severely ill, and Townshend assumed effective control of the administration. Townshend proved to be financially brilliant and determined but devoid of sound political judgment. He was renowned as an orator whose speeches to the House of Commons were remembered for their wit and recklessness, most notably the "Champagne Speech" of May 8, 1767. In his last official act before his death, he obtained passage (June-July 1767) of the four resolutions that became known as the Townshend Acts, which threatened American colonial traditions of self-government and imposed revenue duties on a number of items necessary to the colonies. The provision that customs revenue would be used to pay officials caused concern among the colonists because it reduced the dependence of such officials on the colonial assemblies. Townshend estimated that the acts would produce the insignificant sum of £40,000 for the British Treasury. Shrewder observers correctly prophesied that they would lead to the loss of the colonies.
John Locke
English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of modern philosophical empiricism and political liberalism. He was an inspirer of both the European Enlightenment and the Constitution of the United States. His philosophical thinking was close to that of the founders of modern science, especially Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, and other members of the Royal Society. His political thought was grounded in the notion of a social contract between citizens and in the importance of toleration, especially in matters of religion. Much of what he advocated in the realm of politics was accepted in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 and in the United States after the country's declaration of independence in 1776.
Thomas Paine
English-American writer and political pamphleteer whose Common Sense and "Crisis" papers were important influences on the American Revolution. Other works that contributed to his reputation as one of the greatest political propagandists in history were Rights of Man, a defense of the French Revolution and of republican principles; and The Age of Reason, an exposition of the place of religion in society. Paine had arrived in America when the conflict between the colonists and England was reaching its height. After blood was spilled at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, Paine argued that the cause of America should not be just a revolt against taxation but a demand for independence. He put this idea into Common Sense, which came off the press on Jan. 10, 1776. The 50-page pamphlet sold more than 500,000 copies within a few months. More than any other single publication, Common Sense paved the way for the Declaration of Independence, unanimously ratified on July 4, 1776. During the war that followed, Paine served as volunteer aide-de-camp to Gen. Nathanael Greene. His great contribution to the patriot cause was the 16 "Crisis" papers issued between 1776 and 1783, each one signed Common Sense. "The American Crisis. Number I," published on Dec. 19, 1776, when George Washington's army was on the verge of disintegration, opened with the flaming words: "These are the times that try men's souls." Washington ordered the pamphlet read to all the troops at Valley Forge.
French and Indian War (7 years war)
French and Indian War, American phase of a worldwide nine years' war (1754-63) fought between France and Great Britain. (The more-complex European phase was the Seven Years' War [1756-63].) It determined control of the vast colonial territory of North America. Three earlier phases of this extended contest for overseas mastery included King William's War (1689-97), Queen Anne's War (1702-13), and King George's War (1744-48). The French and Indian War began over the specific issue of whether the upper Ohio River valley was a part of the British Empire, and therefore open for trade and settlement by Virginians and Pennsylvanians, or part of the French Empire. Behind this issue loomed an infinitely larger one, however: which national culture was to dominate the heart of North America. Settlers of English extraction were in a preponderance in the coveted area, but French exploration, trade, and alliances with Native Americans predominated.
Currency Act of 1764
Parliament next affected colonial economic prospects by passing a Currency Act (1764) to withdraw paper currencies, many of them surviving from the war period, from circulation. This was not done to restrict economic growth so much as to take out currency that was thought to be unsound, but it did severely reduce the circulating medium during the difficult postwar period and further indicated that such matters were subject to British control.
Common Sense
Published in 1776, Common Sense challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain.
American Revenue Act of 1764
Sugar Act, also called Plantation Act or Revenue Act, (1764), in U.S. colonial history, British legislation aimed at ending the smuggling trade in sugar and molasses from the French and Dutch West Indies and at providing increased revenues to fund enlarged British Empire responsibilities following the French and Indian War. Actually a reinvigoration of the largely ineffective Molasses Act of 1733, the Sugar Act provided for strong customs enforcement of the duties on refined sugar and molasses imported into the colonies from non-British Caribbean sources. Protests had been received from America against the enforcement of the Molasses Act, together with a plea that the duty be set at one penny per gallon. Although warnings were issued that the traffic could bear no more than that, the government of Prime Minister George Grenville refused to listen and placed a three-penny duty upon foreign molasses in the act (the preamble of which bluntly declared that its purpose was to raise money for military expenses). The act thus granted a virtual monopoly of the American market to British West Indies sugarcane planters. Early colonial protests at these duties were ended when the tax was lowered two years later. The protected price of British sugar actually benefited New England distillers, though they did not appreciate it. More objectionable to the colonists were the stricter bonding regulations for shipmasters, whose cargoes were subject to seizure and confiscation by British customs commissioners and who were placed under the authority of the Vice-Admiralty Court in distant Nova Scotia if they violated the trade rules or failed to pay duties. As a result of the Sugar Act, the earlier clandestine trade in foreign sugar and, thus, much colonial maritime commerce were severely hampered.
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies that met on September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. It was called in response to "The passage of the Coercive Acts" (also known as Intolerable Acts by the Colonial Americans) by the British Parliament. The Intolerable Acts had punished Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party. The Congress was attended by 56 delegates. The Pennsylvania delegation was appointed by the colonial assembly. Georgia declined to send delegates because they were hoping for British assistance with Native American problems on their frontier and did not want to upset the British. The Congress met briefly to consider options, including an economic boycott of British trade; rights and grievances; and petitioned King George III for redress of those grievances. The Congress also called for another Continental Congress in the event that their petition was unsuccessful in halting enforcement of the Intolerable Acts. Their appeal to the Crown had no effect, and so the Second Continental Congress was convened the following year to organize the defense of the colonies at the onset of the American Revolutionary War. The delegates also urged each colony to set up and train its own militia.
Stamp Act Congress
The Quartering Act was passed primarily in response to greatly increased empire defense costs in America following the French and Indian War and Pontiac's War. Like the Stamp Act of the same year, it also was an assertion of British authority over the colonies, in disregard of the fact that troop financing had been exercised for 150 years by representative provincial assemblies rather than by the Parliament in London. The act was particularly resented in New York, where the largest number of reserves were quartered, and outward defiance led directly to the Suspending Act as part of the Townshend Acts of 1767. After considerable tumult, the Quartering Act was allowed to expire in 1770.
Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the summer of 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met between September 5, 1774 and October 26, 1774, also in Philadelphia.
Townsend Acts of 1767
Townshend Acts, (June 15-July 2, 1767), in U.S. colonial history, series of four acts passed by the British Parliament in an attempt to assert what it considered to be its historic right to exert authority over the colonies through suspension of a recalcitrant representative assembly and through strict provisions for the collection of revenue duties. The British American colonists named the acts after Charles Townshend, who sponsored them. The Suspending Act prohibited the New York Assembly from conducting any further business until it complied with the financial requirements of the Quartering Act (1765) for the expenses of British troops stationed there. The second act, often called the Townshend duties, imposed direct revenue duties—that is, duties aimed not merely at regulating trade but at putting money into the British treasury. These were payable at colonial ports and fell on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea. It was the second time in the history of the colonies that a tax had been levied solely for the purpose of raising revenue. The third act established strict and often arbitrary machinery of customs collection in the American colonies, including additional officers, searchers, spies, coast guard vessels, search warrants, writs of assistance, and a Board of Customs Commissioners at Boston, all to be financed out of customs revenues. The fourth Townshend Act lifted commercial duties on tea, allowing it to be exported to the colonies free of all British taxes. The acts posed an immediate threat to established traditions of colonial self-government, especially the practice of taxation through representative provincial assemblies. They were resisted everywhere with verbal agitation and physical violence, deliberate evasion of duties, renewed nonimportation agreements among merchants, and overt acts of hostility toward British enforcement agents, especially in Boston. Such colonial tumult, coupled with the instability of frequently changing British ministries, resulted in repeal—on March 5, 1770, the same day as the Boston Massacre—of all revenue duties except that on tea, lifting of the Quartering Act requirements, and removal of troops from Boston, which thus temporarily averted hostilities.
Patrick Henry
brilliant orator and a major figure of the American Revolution, perhaps best known for his words "Give me liberty or give me death!" which he delivered in 1775. He was independent Virginia's first governor (serving 1776-79, 1784-86). During the next decade Henry was an influential leader in the radical opposition to the British government. He was a member of the first Virginia Committee of Correspondence, which aided intercolonial cooperation, and a delegate to the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775. At the second Virginia Convention, on March 23, 1775, in St. John's Church, Richmond, he delivered the speech that assured his fame as one of the great advocates of liberty. Convinced that war with Great Britain was inevitable, he presented strong resolutions for equipping the Virginia militia to fight against the British and defended them in a fiery speech with the famed peroration, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
The Stamp Act
first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation of all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets, cards, almanacs, and dice. The devastating effect of Pontiac's War (1763-64) on colonial frontier settlements added to the enormous new defense burdens resulting from Great Britain's victory (1763) in the French and Indian War. The British chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Grenville, hoped to meet at least half of these costs by the combined revenues of the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act, a common revenue device in England. Completely unexpected was the avalanche of protest from the colonists, who effectively nullified the Stamp Act by outright refusal to use the stamps as well as by riots, stamp burning, and intimidation of colonial stamp distributors. Colonists passionately upheld their rights as Englishmen to be taxed only by their own consent through their own representative assemblies, as had been the practice for a century and a half. In addition to nonimportation agreements among colonial merchants, the Stamp Act Congress was convened in New York (October 1765) by moderate representatives of nine colonies to frame resolutions of "rights and grievances" and to petition the king and Parliament for repeal of the objectionable measures. Bowing chiefly to pressure (in the form of a flood of petitions to repeal) from British merchants and manufacturers whose colonial exports had been curtailed, Parliament, largely against the wishes of the House of Lords, repealed the act in early 1766. Simultaneously, however, Parliament issued the Declaratory Act, which reasserted its right of direct taxation anywhere within the empire, "in all cases whatsoever." The protest throughout the colonies against the Stamp Act contributed much to the spirit and organization of unity that was a necessary prelude to the struggle for independence a decade later.
The Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts)
four punitive measures enacted by the British Parliament in retaliation for acts of colonial defiance, together with the Quebec Act establishing a new administration for the territory ceded to Britain after the French and Indian War (1754-63). The Intolerable Acts represented an attempt to reimpose strict British control over the American colonies, but, after 10 years of vacillation, the decision to be firm had come too late. Rather than cowing Massachusetts and separating it from the other colonies, the oppressive measures became the justification for convening the First Continental Congress later in 1774. The Intolerable Acts Quartering Act (March 24, 1765): This bill required that Colonial Authorities to furnish barracks and supplies to British troops. In 1766, it was expanded to public houses and unoccupied buildings. Boston Port Bill (June 1, 1774): This bill closed the port of Boston to all colonists until the damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid for. Administration of Justice Act (May 20, 1774): This bill stated that British Officials could not be tried in provincial courts for capital crimes. They would be extradited back to Britain and tried there. Massachusetts Government Act (May 20, 1774): This bill annulled the Charter of the Colonies, giving the British Governor complete control of the town meetings. Quebec Act (May 20, 1774): This bill extended the Canadian borders to cut off the western colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia.
Boston Tea Party
incident in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians. The Americans were protesting both a tax on tea (taxation without representation) and the perceived monopoly of the East India Company. The Townshend Acts passed by Parliament in 1767 and imposing duties on various products imported into the British colonies had raised such a storm of colonial protest and noncompliance that they were repealed in 1770, saving the duty on tea, which was retained by Parliament to demonstrate its presumed right to raise such colonial revenue without colonial approval. The merchants of Boston circumvented the act by continuing to receive tea smuggled in by Dutch traders. In 1773 Parliament passed a Tea Act designed to aid the financially troubled East India Company by granting it (1) a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies, (2) an exemption on the export tax, and (3) a "drawback" (refund) on duties owed on certain surplus quantities of tea in its possession. The tea sent to the colonies was to be carried only in East India Company ships and sold only through its own agents, bypassing the independent colonial shippers and merchants. The company thus could sell the tea at a less-than-usual price in either America or Britain; it could undersell anyone else. The perception of monopoly drove the normally conservative colonial merchants into an alliance with radicals led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty.
Lexington and Concord
initial skirmishes between British regulars and American provincials, marking the beginning of the American Revolution. Acting on orders from London to suppress the rebellious colonists, General Thomas Gage, recently appointed royal governor of Massachusetts, ordered his troops to seize the colonists' military stores at Concord. En route from Boston, the British force of 700 men was met on Lexington Green by 77 local minutemen and others who had been forewarned of the raid by the colonists' efficient lines of communication, including the ride of Paul Revere. It is unclear who fired the first shot. Resistance melted away at Lexington, and the British moved on to Concord. Most of the American military supplies had been hidden or destroyed before the British troops arrived. A British covering party at Concord's North Bridge was finally confronted by 320 to 400 American patriots and forced to withdraw. The march back to Boston was a genuine ordeal for the British, with Americans continually firing on them from behind roadside houses, barns, trees, and stone walls. This experience established guerrilla warfare as the colonists' best defense strategy against the British. Total losses were British 273, American 95. The Battles of Lexington and Concord confirmed the alienation between the majority of colonists and the mother country, and it roused 16,000 New Englanders to join forces and begin the Siege of Boston, resulting in its evacuation by the British the following March.
The Second Treatise of Government (1690)
places sovereignty into the hands of the people. Locke's fundamental argument is that people are equal and invested with natural rights in a state of nature in which they live free from outside rule. In the state of nature, natural law governs behavior, and each person has license to execute that law against someone who wrongs them by infringing on their rights. People take what they need from the earth, but hoard just enough to cover their needs. Eventually, people begin to trade their excess goods with each other, until they develop a common currency for barter, or money. Money eliminates limits on the amount of property they can obtain (unlike food, money does not spoil), and they begin to gather estates around themselves and their families.
Proclamation of 1763
proclamation declared by the British crown at the end of the French and Indian War in North America, mainly intended to conciliate the Native Americans by checking the encroachment of settlers on their lands. In the centuries since the proclamation, it has become one of the cornerstones of Native American law in the United States and Canada. After Indian grievances had resulted in the start of Pontiac's War (1763-64), British authorities determined to subdue intercolonial rivalries and abuses by dealing with Native American problems as a whole. To that end, the proclamation organized new British territories in America—the provinces of Quebec, East and West Florida, and Grenada (in the Windward Islands)—and a vast British-administered Indian reservation west of the Appalachians, from south of Hudson Bay to north of the Floridas. It forbade settlement on Indian territory, ordered those settlers already there to withdraw, and strictly limited future settlement. For the first time in the history of European colonization in the New World, the proclamation formalized the concept of Native American land titles, prohibiting issuance of patents to any lands claimed by a tribe unless the Indian title had first been extinguished by purchase or treaty:
The Quartering Act
the British parliamentary provision (actually an amendment to the annual Mutiny Act) requiring colonial authorities to provide food, drink, quarters, fuel, and transportation to British forces stationed in their towns or villages. Resentment over this practice is reflected in the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids it in peacetime.
Olive Branch Petition
was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, in a final attempt to avoid a full-on war between the Thirteen Colonies, that the Congress represented, and Great Britain. The petition affirmed American loyalty to Great Britain and entreated the king to prevent further conflict.
The Navigation Act 1663
was passed on the 27th of July, 1663 (the earlier Navigation Act of 1660 replaced the Navigation Act of 1651 which was abrogated on the grounds of having been illegally enacted by Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth). The acts were designed to protect England's interests in the West Indies and North America (from, primarily the Dutch, who were supreme marine traders): Commodities like cotton, sugar and tobacco could only be shipped to England or its colonies and ships' crews were required to be at least three-quarters English. Further, as guarantee of compliance, ships' captains were obliged to pay a bond for each shipment. The Navigation Act 1663 further stipulated that European merchandise en route to the colonies first had to be shipped to England where the cargo was unloaded and assessed for tariffs before being reloaded in English bottoms (ships built in England or its colonies) to complete its voyage. Many acts were imposed to protect the supply of timber necessary for the maintenance and renewal of England's voracious Navy and merchant fleets. However, the Naval Stores Act 1721 abolished all import duties on timber from the West Indies and North America which, though of little effect on Naval stores, was of immense significance to Britain's furniture-makers as it allowed the unimpeded importation of mahogany from the West Indies along with pine and walnut from North America.
The Navigation Acts (1651, 1660)
were acts of Parliament intended to promote the self-sufficiency of the British Empire by restricting colonial trade to England and decreasing dependence on foreign imported goods. The Navigation Act of 1651, aimed primarily at the Dutch, required all trade between England and the colonies to be carried in English or colonial vessels, resulting in the Anglo-Dutch War in 1652. The Navigation Act of 1660 continued the policies set forth in the 1651 act and enumerated certain articles-sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, and ginger-that were to be shipped only to England or an English province. In effect, these acts created serious reductions in the trade of many North Carolina planters and merchants. To continue intercolonial trade, the colonies resorted to smuggling, particularly Albemarle County in North Carolina, the chief producer and exporter of tobacco, which carried on a profitable trade with the Massachusetts and Rhode Island colonies. The violations of the Navigation Acts led to passage of the Plantation Duty Act of 1673, one of the factors that led to Culpeper's Rebellion.
Pontiac's Rebellion and resulting treaties
As the French and Indian Wars came to an end in the early 1760s, Native Americans living in former French territory found the new British authorities to be far less conciliatory than their predecessors. In 1762, Pontiac enlisted support from practically every Indian tribe from Lake Superior to the lower Mississippi for a joint campaign to expel the British from the formerly French lands. According to Pontiac's plan, each tribe would seize the nearest fort and then join forces to wipe out the undefended settlements.
George Grenville
English politician whose policy of taxing the American colonies, initiated by his Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765, started the train of events leading to the American Revolution.
Declaration of Independence
document that was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It explained why the Congress on July 2 "unanimously" by the votes of 12 colonies (with New York abstaining) had resolved that "these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States." Accordingly, the day on which final separation was officially voted was July 2, although the 4th, the day on which the Declaration of Independence was adopted, has always been celebrated in the United States as the great national holiday—the Fourth of July, or Independence Day.
Continental Congress
in the period of the American Revolution, the body of delegates who spoke and acted collectively for the people of the colony-states that later became the United States of America. The term most specifically refers to the bodies that met in 1774 and 1775-81 and respectively designated as the First Continental Congress and the Second Continental Congress.
Boston Massacre
skirmish between British troops and a crowd in Boston, Massachusetts. Widely publicized, it contributed to the unpopularity of the British regime in much of North America in the years before the American Revolution.
