5 the Strains of Empire

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CHAPTER 5 The Strains of Empire

A View of the Town of Concord (April 1775), attributed to Ralph Earle. (Attributed to Ralph Earle, View of the town of Concord (April 1775) Concord Museum, Concord, MA) American Stories A Shoemaker Leads a Boston Mob

In 1758, when he was 21 years old, Ebenezer MacIntosh of Boston laid down his shoemaker’s awl and enlisted in the Massachusetts expedition against the French on Lake Champlain—one battle in the war that was raging between England and France in North America, the Caribbean, and Europe.The son of a poor Boston shoemaker who had fought against the French in a previous war, MacIntosh had known poverty all his

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

life. Service against the French offered the hope of plunder or at least an enlistment The Climactic Seven Years’ bounty worth half a year’s wages. One among thousands of colonists who fought against War the “Gallic menace” in the Seven Years’ War, MacIntosh contributed his mite to the cli- War and the Management of mactic struggle that drove the French from North America. Empire But a greater role lay ahead for the Boston shoemaker.Two years after the Peace Outbreak of Hostilities of Paris in 1763, England imposed a stamp tax on the American colonists. In the mas- Tribal Strategies sive protests that followed, MacIntosh emerged as the street leader of Boston’s ordi- Consequences of the Seven Years’ nary people. In two nights of the most violent attacks on private property ever wit- War nessed in North America, a crowd nearly destroyed the houses of two of the colony’s most important officials. On August 14, they tore through the house of Andrew The Crisis with England Oliver, a wealthy merchant and the appointed distributor of stamps for Sugar, Currency, and Stamps Massachusetts.Twelve days later, MacIntosh led the crowd in attacking the mansion of Stamp Act Riots Thomas Hutchinson, a wealthy merchant who served as lieutenant governor and chief Gathering Storm Clouds justice of Massachusetts.“The mob was so general,” wrote the governor,“and so sup- The Growing Rift ported that all civil power ceased in an instant.” The Ideology of Revolutionary For several months, the Boston shoemaker’s power grew. Called “General” Republicanism MacIntosh and “Captain-General of the Liberty Tree,” he soon sported a militia uni- A Plot Against Liberty form of gold and blue and a hat laced with gold.Two thousand townsmen marched be- Revitalizing American Society hind him in orderly ranks through the crooked streets of Boston on November 5 to demonstrate their solidarity in resisting the hated stamps. The Turmoil of a Rebellious Five weeks later, a crowd humiliated stamp distributor Oliver. Demanding that he People announce his resignation before the assembled citizenry, they marched him across Urban People town in a driving December rain.With MacIntosh at his elbow, he finally reached the Patriot Women “Liberty Tree,” which had become a symbol of resistance to England’s new colonial Protesting Farmers policies. There the aristocratic Oliver ate humble pie. He concluded his resignation Conclusion: On the Brink of remarks with bitter words, hissing sardonically that he would “always think myself Revolution very happy when it shall be in my power to serve the people.” “To serve the people” was an ancient idea embedded in English political culture, but it assumed new meaning in the American colonies during the epic third quarter of the eighteenth century. Few colonists in 1750 held even a faint desire to break the connection with England, and fewer still might have predicted the form of government that 13 states in an independent nation might fashion.Yet 2 million colonists moved haltingly toward a showdown with mighty England. Little-known men such as Ebenezer MacIntosh as well as his historically celebrated townsmen Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and John Adams were part of the struggle. Collectively, ordinary people such as MacIntosh influenced—and sometimes even dictated—the revolutionary movement in the colonies. Though we read and speak mostly of a small group of “founding fathers,” the wellsprings of the American Revolution can be fully discovered only among a variety of people from different social groups, occupations, regions, and religions.

This chapter addresses the tensions in late colonial society, the imperial crisis that followed the Seven Years’ War (in the colonies, often called the French and Indian War), and the tumultuous decade that led to the “shot heard round the world” ﬁred at Concord Bridge in April 1775. It portrays the origins of a dual American Revolution. Ebenezer MacIntosh, in leading the Boston mob against Crown ofﬁcers and colonial collaborators who tried to implement a new colonial policy after 1763, helped set in motion a revolutionary movement to restore ancient liberties thought by the Americans to be under deliberate attack in England. This movement eventually escalated into the war for American independence.

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But MacIntosh’s Boston followers were also venting and had lost faith that opportunity and just relations years of resentment at the accumulation of wealth and still prevailed. This sentiment, ﬂowing from resent- power by Boston’s aristocratic elite. Behind every swing ment of what many believed was a corrupt, self-indul- of the ax, every shattered crystal goblet, and every gent, and elite-dominated society, produced a commit- splintered mahogany chair lay the fury of Bostonians ment to reshape American society even while severing who had seen the conservative elite try to dismantle the colonial bond. As distinguished from the war for in- the town meeting, had suffered economic hardship, dependence, this was the American Revolution. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 156

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THE CLIMACTIC SEVEN 1763, England matched its strength against France, YEARS’ WAR its archrival in Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. These wars of empire had tremendous After a brief period of peace following King George’s consequences for the home governments, their colo- War (1744–1748), France and England fought the nial subjects in the Americas, and the native North fourth, largest, and by far most significant of the American tribes drawn into the bloody conflicts. wars for empire that had begun in the late seven- The Peace of Utrecht (see Chapter 4), which teenth century. Known variously as the Seven Years’ ended Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), brought vic- War, the French and Indian War, and the Great War tor’s spoils of great importance to England. The gen- for Empire, this global conflict in part represented a eration of peace that followed was really only a showdown for control of North America’s interior time-out, during which both England and France between the Allegheny Mountains and the strengthened their war-making capacity. Britain’s Mississippi River. In North America, the Anglo- productive and efficiently governed New World American forces ultimately prevailed, and their vic- colonies made important contributions. Though tory dramatically affected the lives of all the diverse known as a period of “salutary neglect,” this was ac- people living in the huge region east of the tually an era when the king and Parliament in- Mississippi—English, German, and Scots–Irish set- creased their control over colonial affairs. tlers in the English colonies; French and Spanish Concerned mainly with economic regulation, colonizers in Canada, Florida, and interior North Parliament added new articles such as fur, copper, America; African slaves in a variety of settlements; hemp, tar, and turpentine to the list of items pro- and, perhaps most of all, the powerful Native duced in the colonies that had to be shipped to American tribes of the interior. England before being exported to another country. Parliament also curtailed colonial production of articles important to England’s economy: woollen War and the Management of Empire cloth (1699), beaver hats (1732), and finished iron England began constructing a more coherent ad- products (1750). Most important, Parliament ministration of its far-flung colonies after the passed the Molasses Act in 1733, an attempt to stop Glorious Revolution of 1688. In 1696, a professional New England from trading with the French West Board of Trade replaced the old Lords of Trade; the Indies for molasses to convert into rum. Parliament Treasury strengthened the customs service; and imposed a prohibitive duty of six pence per gallon Parliament created overseas vice-admiralty courts, on French slave-produced molasses. This turned which functioned without juries to prosecute smug- many of New England’s largest merchants and dis- glers who evaded the trade regulations set forth in tillers into smugglers, for a generation schooling the Navigation Acts. Parliament began playing a them, their ship captains, crews, and allied water- more active role after the reign of Queen Anne front artisans in defying royal authority. (1702–1714) and continued to do so when the weak, The generation of peace ended abruptly in 1739 German-speaking King George I came to the throne. when England declared war on Spain. The immedi- Royal governors received greater powers, got more ate cause was the ear of an English sea captain, detailed instructions, and came under more insis- Robert Jenkins, which had been cut off eight years tent demands from the Board of Trade to enforce earlier when Spanish authorities caught him smug- British policies. England was quietly installing the gling. Encouraged by his government, Jenkins pub- machinery of imperial management tended by a licly displayed his pickled ear in 1738 to whip up corps of colonial bureaucrats. war fever against Spain. The real cause, however, The best test of an effectively organized state is its was England’s determination to continue its drive ability to wage war. Four times between 1689 and toward commercial domination of the Atlantic NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 157

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The War of Jenkins’ Ear in the Southern Colonies and the Caribbean The War of Jenkins’ Ear was especially unsettling in the colonies because slave revolts broke out in New York and South Carolina during the course of the war. In each case, the Spanish enemy was suspected of having played a role in the revolts.

SOUTH CAROLINA

GEORGIA Port Royal Charles Town BERMUDA Savannah Bethesda Orphanage New Inverness ATLANTIC Fort Frederica OCEAN Spanish invasion site, 1742 St. Augustine

FLORIDA

ATLANTIC SOUTH OCEAN

Mose . CAROLINA

R (Free black town)

t s i FLORIDA d Charles Town E Castillo de British invasionInvation Slaves San Marcos site,Site, 17401740 captured St. Augustine Bahamas ATLANTIC OCEAN

British possessions Cuba French possessions Spanish possessions Forts Buildings Santiago de Cuba Slave revolt (1741) Santo Domingo Puerto Rico Jamaica Virgin Islands

Guadeloupe

Dominica Caribbean Sea Martinique St. Lucia

Trinidad & Tobago Cartagena (1741) Porto Bello (1739)

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The Assault on Fort Louisbourg In this dramatic painting, colonial assault groups prepare to go ashore on Cape Breton Island to capture the nearby Fort Louisbourg. The colonial forces were commanded by William Pepperell, a merchant, shipbuilder, and land speculator who—for capturing the French fortress—was the ﬁrst American to be knighted by the English. (Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)

basin. The British Navy captured Porto Bello in the losses were staggering. “One half of our militia Spanish Panama in 1739, but four expeditions [died] like rotten sheep,” reported one Boston against Spanish strongholds in 1740–1742 were dis- leader, who believed that one-fifth of all asters. Admiral Edward Vernon recruited some 3,500 Massachusetts adult males had perished, leaving American colonists for these attacks, enticing them thousands of widows and orphaned children. New with dreams of capturing mountains of Spanish sil- Englanders were bitter when at war’s end in 1748, ver and gold. But the Spanish withstood attacks the British government handed the prized Fort against St. Augustine in Florida; Havana, Cuba, Louisbourg back to France in exchange for French Cartagena, and Colombia; and Panama. Most of the withdrawal from conquests in parts of British-con- American colonists died of yellow fever, dysentery, trolled India and an agreement to spare the British and outright starvation, and those who limped army trapped in Europe. home, including George Washington’s father, Lawrence Washington, who renamed his Virginia plantation after Admiral Vernon, had little booty to Outbreak of Hostilities show for their efforts. The return of peace in 1748 did not relieve the ten- From 1744 to 1748, the Anglo-Spanish war sion between English and French colonists in North merged into a much larger Anglo-French conflict, America. Reaching back to the early seventeenth called King George’s War in North America and the century and fueled by religious hatred, it was inten- War of Austrian Succession in Europe. Its scale far sified by the spectacular population growth of the exceeded that of previous conflicts, highlighting the English colonies: from 250,000 in 1700 to 1.25 mil- need for increased discipline within the empire. lion in 1750, and to 1.75 million in the next decade. Unprecedented military expenditures led Britain to Three-quarters of the increase came in the colonies ask its West Indian and American colonies to share south of New York, propelling thousands of land- in the costs of defending—and extending—the em- hungry settlers westward. pire and to tailor their behavior to home country Fur traders and land speculators promoted this needs. But for American colonists, except for war westward rush. The fur traders were penetrating a contractors such as Boston’s Thomas Hancock, the French-influenced region, where they offered native war was costly. All New Englanders swelled with trappers and hunters better prices and, sometimes, pride in June 1745 after Massachusetts volunteers, higher-quality goods than the French. In the 1740s coordinating their attacks with British naval forces, and 1750s, speculators (including many future revo- captured the massive French fortress of Louisbourg lutionary leaders) formed land companies to capi- on Cape Breton Island, guarding the approach to talize on the seaboard population explosion. The the St. Lawrence River, after a six-week siege. But farther west the settlement line moved, the closer it NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 159

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came to the western trading empire of the French colonial union and rewin the allegiance of the and their Native American allies. Iroquois, whose grievances had grown sharply after Colonial penetration of the Ohio valley in the a group of land speculators had tried to grab nearly 1740s established the first English outposts in the a million acres of Mohawk land. Both failed. The 150 continental heartland and challenged the French Iroquois chiefs left with 30 wagonloads of where their interest was vital. While the English con- gifts but made no firm commitment to trolled most of the eastern coastal plain of North fight the French. Benjamin Franklin de- America, the French had nearly encircled them to signed a plan for an intercolonial govern-

the west by building a chain of trading posts and ment to manage Native American affairs, “Join or Die” forts along the St. Lawrence River, through the Great provide for defense, and have the power Cartoon Lakes, and southward into the Ohio and Mississippi to pass laws and levy taxes. But even the valleys all the way to New Orleans. clever woodcut displayed in the Pennsylvania Confronted by English intrusions, the French re- Gazette that pictured a chopped-up snake with the sisted. They attempted to block further English ex- insignia “Join or Die” failed to overcome the long- pansion west of the Alleghenies by con- standing jealousies that had thwarted previous at- structing new forts in the Ohio valley and tempts at intercolony cooperation, and the colonies by prying some tribes loose from their rejected his plan. new English connections. By 1753, the French were driving The Seven Years’ War the English traders out of the Ohio River valley and establish- ing a line of forts between Lake Erie and the forks of the Ohio River, near present- day Pittsburgh. There, near Fort Duquesne on May 28, 1754, the French smartly re- buffed an ambitious 21-year-old Virginia militia colonel named George Washington, dispatched by his colony’s government to expel them from the region and drive them from the very site where the Ohio Company, a syndicate of wealthy Virginia speculators, had built a Native American trading post. The skirmish produced only a few casualties, but it quickly escalated into a global war that rearranged the balance of power not only in North America but in Europe and the entire Atlantic world. Men in the capitals of Europe, not in the colonies, decided to force a showdown in the interior of North America. England’s powerful merchants, supported by American clients, had been emboldened by English success in overwhelming the mighty French fortress at Louisbourg. Now, they argued, the time was ripe to de- stroy the French overseas trade. Convinced, the English ministry ordered several thousand troops to North America in 1754; in France, 3,000 regulars em- “Old Hendrick” The Americans and British relied heavily on the Iroquois barked to meet the English challenge. in attempting to vanquish the French in the Seven Years’ War. “Old Hendrick,” With war looming, the colonial govern- the Mohawk chief pictured here, is shown in elaborate European apparel given him by King George II in 1740 to help seal a diplomatic alliance. Chief Hendrick died at ments attempted to coordinate efforts. the Battle of Lake George in 1755, ﬁghting alongside the British against the French. Representatives of seven colonies met at Which articles of his clothing are distinctly English? (Courtesy of the John Carter Albany, New York, in June 1754 to plan a Brown Library at Brown University) NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 160

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With his newly arrived British regiments and hun- Braddock perished, and two-thirds of the British and dreds of American recruits, General Edward Braddock Americans were killed or wounded. Washington, his slogged across Virginia in the summer of 1755, each uniform pierced by four bullets, had two horses shot day cutting a few miles of road through forests and from beneath him. Although it had 1,000 men in re- across mountains. A headstrong professional soldier serve down the road, the Anglo-American force beat who regarded his European battlefield experience as a hasty retreat. sufficient for war in the American wilderness, Braddock’s ignominious retreat brought almost Braddock had contempt for the woods-wise French every tribe north of the Ohio River to the French regiments and their stealthy Native American allies. side. Throughout the summer, French-supplied As Braddock neared Fort Duquesne, the entire Native American raiders torched the Virginia and French force and the British suddenly surprised one Pennsylvania backcountry. “The roads are full of another in the forest. The French had 218 soldiers starved, naked, indigent multitudes,” observed one and Canadian militiamen and 637 Native American officer. One French triumph followed another dur- allies, while Braddock commanded 1,400 British reg- ing the next two years. Never was disunity within ulars, supported by 450 Virginians and a few Native the English colonies so glaring. With its Native American scouts commanded by Washington. American allies, French Canada, only 70,000 inhabi- Pouring murderous fire into Braddock’s tidy lines, the tants strong, had badly battered 1.5 million French and their Native American allies won. colonists supported by the British army.

The Seven Years’ War, 1754–1756 In the 1755 campaigns of the Seven Years’ War, the British suffered losses except in Nova Scotia, where they captured Fort Beauséjour, which led to the deportation of the French-speaking Catholic Acadians.

English fortification NEW French fortification FRANCE Gulf of St. Lawrence English and/or Native American allies

French and/or Native American allies Québec English territorial claim Louisbourg French territorial claim Fort Beauséjour

Montréal Lake Grand Pré Huron Lake MAINE 6 Halifax Champlain (part of Mass.) Fort Frontenac Crown Point Annapolis Royal Fort George Fort Ticonderoga Lake Ontario 2 Fort Niagara 4 5 ATLANTIC OCEAN Fort Oswego Fort William Henry N.H. 1 Nicholas Antoine Coulon de Villiers defeats Lake Erie Fort Presqu’Isle NEW YORK MASS. Boston Lt. Colonel George Washington at Fort Necessity, PA in July 1754 2 Colonels Robert Monckton and John Fort Venango CONN. Winslow take Fort Beauséjour, NS in June R.I. 1755 Fort Duquesne 3 Major General Edward Braddock and Washington advance on Fort du Quesne and PENNSYLVANIA New York are met and defeated by Captain Claude Pierre Pecaudy, Sieur de Contrecoeur at the 1 Philadelphia Battle of the Wilderness in July 1755 Fort Necessity 4 Sir William Johnson constructs Fort William MD. N.J. Henry and advances on Crown Point, engages and defeats Baron von Dieskau at 3 Battle of Lake George but fails to take Crown DEL. VIRGINIA Point in September 1755 5 Large scale expulsion of French Acadians begins at Grand Pré, NS in October 1755; Official declaration of war by Great Britain on France in May 1756 Williamsburg 6 Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm takes and destroys Fort George and Fort Oswego in August 1756 NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 161

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Farther north, the Anglo-American forces had the balance between us and the French,” wrote a New more success, overpowering Fort Beauséjour, the York politician, “is the great ruling principle of mod- French fort on the neck of land that connected ern Indian politics.” Nova Scotia, held by the English since the Peace of Anglo-American leaders knew that the support of Utrecht, and the French Canadian mainland. This the Iroquois and their tributary tribes was crucial quickly led to the expulsion of the French Acadians, and could be secured in only two ways: through who had been promised the right to practice purchase or by a demonstration of power that Catholicism and keep their land while promising would convince the tribes that the English would neutrality in any war between the English and prevail with or without their assistance. French. When they refused to swear oaths of un- The first English stratagem failed. In 1754 colo- qualified allegiance to the English king, which nial negotiators heaped gifts on the Iroquois chiefs would revoke their religious freedom and oblige at the Albany Congress but received only tantalizing them to fight against fellow Frenchmen on the half-promises of support against the French. The Canadian mainland, the British rounded up about second alternative fizzled because the English 6,000 Acadians, herded them aboard ships, and dis- proved militarily inferior to the French in the first persed them among the English colonies, giving three years of the war. Hence, the westernmost of their confiscated land to New Englanders. Another the Iroquois Six Nations, the Seneca, fought on the 7,000 to 10,000 Acadians escaped to the Canadian side of the French in the campaigns of 1757 and mainland, and in time, about 3,000 of those de- 1758, while the Delaware, a tributary tribe, harassed ported to the English colonies made their way to the Pennsylvania frontier. French Louisiana. The English justified their ethnic However, in 1758, the huge English military cleansing—the first time they had relocated a civil- buildup began to produce victories. The largest army ian population by force—as a wartime security ever assembled in North America to that point, some measure. 15,000 British and American soldiers, including The French won most of the battles in 1756, in- Bostonian Ebenezer MacIntosh, suffered terrible ca- cluding a victory at Fort William Henry on Lake sualties and withdrew from the field after attempting George, where the Native American allies of the to storm Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in French proved essential. At this point, Britain de- June 1758. Then the tide turned. Troops under Sir clared war on France, and the French and Indian Jeffrey Amherst captured Louisbourg, on Cape War in North America turned into a world war with Breton Island, and Fort Duquesne fell to another France, Austria, and Russia pitting themselves army of 6,000. The resolute Pitt had mobilized the against England and Prussia. The turning point in fighting power of the English nation and put more the war came after the energetic William Pitt be- men in the field than existed in all of New France. The came England’s secretary of state in 1757. “I believe colonists, in turn, had put aside intramural squab- that I can save this nation and that no one else bling long enough to overwhelm the badly outnum- can,” he boasted, abandoning Europe as the main bered French. theater of action against the French and throwing The victories of 1758 finally moved the Iroquois his nation’s military might into the American cam- away from neutrality. Added incentive to join the paign. The forces he dispatched to North America Anglo-American side came when the English navy in 1757 and 1758 dwarfed all preceding commit- bottled up French shipping in the St. Lawrence ments: about 23,000 British troops and a huge fleet River, cutting the Iroquois off from French trade with 14,000 mariners. But even forces of this mag- goods. By early 1759, foreseeing a French defeat in nitude, when asked to engage the enemy in the North America, the Iroquois pledged 800 warriors forests of North America, were not necessarily suf- for an attack on Fort Niagara, the strategic French ficient to the task without Native American sup- trading depot on Lake Ontario. port, or at least neutrality. “A doubt remains not,” Dramatic Anglo-American victories did not al- proclaimed one English official in the colonies, ways guarantee Native American support. “that the prosperity of our colonies on the conti- Backcountry skirmishes with the Cherokee from nent will stand or fall with our interest and favour Virginia to South Carolina turned into a costly war among them.” from 1759 to 1761. In 1760, the Cherokee mauled a British army of 1,300 under Amherst. The following summer, a much larger Anglo-American force in- Tribal Strategies vaded Cherokee country, burning towns and food The Iroquois knew that their interest lay in playing off supplies. English control of the sea interrupted the one European power against the other. “To preserve Native Americans’ supply of French arms. Beset by NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 162

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The Seven Years’ War, 1757–1760 The British–American victory over France and its Native American allies in the Seven Years’ War did not bring peace on the western frontier.After the war, Pontiac led the warriors of several tribes in attacks on settlers and British forts.

Havana (1762) Bahama Cuba Islands ATLANTIC NEWFOUNDLAND OCEAN . WOLFE R Puerto e Hispaniola Rico Virgin c n Islands e r Gulf of Jamaica Guadeloupe (1759) w a Marie Galante (1759) L NEW St. Lawrence WITHDRAWAL t. Dominica (1761) S FRANCE Caribbean Sea Martinique (1762) FROM QUÉBEC St. Lucia (1762) Louisbourg St. Vincent (1762) Québec (June–July 1758) Grenada (1762) (Plains of Abraham) (Sept. 1759) British Conquest of French Colonies NOVA SCOTIA Montréal (Sept. 1760) Ft. Chambly T Ft. St. Jean Ft. St. Jean RS S T MASS. Halifax HE ER Ft. Isle aux Noix M H Lake A Champlain Ft. Frontenac A M Lake (Aug. 1758) Ft. Huron St. Frederick N.H. Lake Ontario Ft. Ticonderoga (July 1758) Ft. William Henry ATLANTIC Ft. Niagara (Siege Aug. 1757) T RS OCEAN Detroit Lake Erie (July 1759) HE Salem AM Ft. Presque Isle NEW YORK Albany . MASS. Ft. Le Boeuf R n Boston

Ft. Venango PENNSYLVANIA u CONN. RI H French claims British victories e war la New York e British claims French victories D NEW JERSEY French troop French forts movement British forts MARYLAND British troop DEL. movement Ohio R. VIRGINIA

food shortages, lack of ammunition, and a smallpox New Orleans, the vast Louisiana territory west of the epidemic, the Cherokee finally sued for peace. Mississippi, and Havana, and in turn surrendered Other Anglo-American victories in 1759, the Spanish Florida to the British. The interior Native “year of miracles,” decided the outcome of the American tribes, which had adeptly forced Britain bloodiest war yet known in the Americas. The cap- and France to compete for their support, suffered a ture of Fort Niagara, the critical link in the system of severe setback when the French disappeared and forts that joined the French inland empire with the the British became their sole source of trade goods. Atlantic, was followed by the conquest of sugar-rich Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, Ojibwa, Shawnee, and Martinique in the West Indies. The culminating scores of other interior tribes were now forced to ad- stroke came at Québec. Led by 32-year-old General just to this reality. James Wolfe, 5,000 troops scaled a rocky cliff and After making peace, the British government overcame the French on the Plains of Abraham. The launched a new policy designed to separate Native capture of Montréal late in 1760 completed the Americans and colonizers by creating a racial shattering of French power in North America. While boundary roughly following the crestline of the fighting continued for three more years in the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia. The Caribbean and in Europe, in the American colonies Proclamation of 1763 reserved all land west of the the old English dream of destroying the Gallic men- line for Native American nations. White settlers who ace had finally come true. were already there were told to withdraw. This well-meaning attempt to legislate interracial accord failed completely. Even before the proclama- Consequences of the Seven Years’ War tion was issued, the Ottawa chief Pontiac, con- The Treaty of Paris, ending the Seven Years’ War in cerned that the elimination of the French threat- 1763, brought astounding changes to European and ened the old treaty and gift-giving system, had Native peoples in North America. Spain acquired gathered together many of the northern tribes that NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 163

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The Taking of Québec The storming of French Québec in 1759 was the decisive blow in England’s cam- paign to end the French domination of Canada and the lands west of the Appalachians. The exploits of General James Wolfe made him a hero throughout England and the colonies. (National Army Museum, London)

had aided the French assaults on the English forts prices for farmers as well. Urban artisans enjoyed during the Seven Years’ War. Although Pontiac’s pan- full employment and high wages, as tailors’ needles Indian movement to drive the British out of the flashed to meet clothing contracts, shoemakers Ohio valley collapsed in 1764, it served notice that stitched for an unprecedented demand for shoes, the interior tribes would fight for their lands. and bakers found armies clamoring for bread. London could not enforce the Proclamation of Privateers—privately outfitted ships licensed by 1763. Staggering under an immense wartime debt, colonial governments to attack enemy shipping— England decided to maintain only small army gar- enriched the fortunate few. On a single voyage in risons in America to regulate the interior. Nor could 1758, John MacPherson snared 18 French ships. The royal governors stop land speculators and settlers prize money was lavish enough to allow this son of a from privately purchasing land from trans- Scottish immigrant to pour £14,000 into creating a Appalachian tribes or simply encroaching on their country estate outside Philadelphia, to which he re- land. Under such circumstances, the western fron- tired in splendor. tier seethed after 1763. The war, however, required heavy taxes and took Not only did the epic Anglo-American victory re- a huge human toll. Privateering carried many for- draw the map of North America, but the war also tune seekers to a watery grave, and the wilderness had important social and economic effects on colo- campaigns from 1755 to 1760 claimed thousands of nial society. It convinced the colonists of their grow- lives. Garrison life brought wracking fevers (which ing strength, yet left them debt-ridden and weak- claimed more victims than did enemy weapons), ened in manpower. The wartime economy spurred and battlefield medical treatment was too primitive economic development and poured British capital to save many of the wounded. Boston’s Thomas into the colonies, yet rendered them more vulnera- Hancock predicted at the beginning of the war that ble to cyclic fluctuations in the British economy. “this province is spirited to [send] every third man Military contracts, for example, brought prosper- to do the work of the Lord.” But the Lord’s work was ity to most colonies during the war years. Huge or- expensive. Thomas Pownall, assuming the gover- ders for ships, arms, uniforms, and provisions en- norship of Massachusetts in August 1757, found not riched northern merchants and provided good the “rich, flourishing, powerful, enterprizing” NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 164

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North America After 1763 badly, especially in the coastal towns. “The tippling soldiery that used to help At the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France surrendered huge claims west of us out at a dead lift,” mused a New York the Mississippi River to Spain and east of the river to England. England merchant, “are gone to drink [rum] in a also acquired Florida from Spain. warmer region [the Caribbean], the place of its production.” Although even some wealthy merchants went bankrupt, the greatest hard- ships after 1760 fell on laboring people. Those with the smallest wages had the Russian thinnest savings to cushion them against America hard times. How quickly their security could evaporate showed in Philadelphia,

Hudson French where early in the contractionary cycle fishing Bay rights many poor people, unable to pay their Hudson’s Bay Company property taxes, were “disposing of their ébec huts and lots to others more wealthy Qu St. Pierre & Missouri R. Great Lakes Miquelon (Fr.) than themselves.” Established artisans Louisbourg St. Lawrence R. and shopkeepers were caught between SPANISH rising prices and reduced demand for LOUISIANA BRITISH COLONIES their goods and services. A New York arti- Ohio R. san expressed a common lament in 1762. Proclamation line of 1763 Thankfully, he still had employment, he ATLANTIC Indian Reserve Mississippi R. wrote in the New-York Gazette. But de- New OCEAN NEW Orleans spite every effort at unceasing labor and SPAIN Gulf of frugal living, he had fallen into poverty PACIFIC Mexico St. Domingue (Fr.) OCEAN Puerto Rico (Sp.) Cuba and found it “beyond my ability to sup- Jamaica port my family . . . [which] can scarcely British claims Guadeloupe (Fr.) Martinique (Fr.) appear with decency or have necessaries Caribbean Sea French claims to subsist.” His situation, he added, “is Spanish claims really the case with many of the inhabi- Russian claims NEW French concessions to England GRENADA tants of this city.” Spanish concession of Florida BRAZIL The Seven Years’ War paved the way (Port.) for a far larger conflict in the next generation. The legislative assemblies, for ex- colony he expected but a province “ruined and un- ample, which had been flexing their muscles at the done.” expense of the governors in earlier decades, acceler- The human cost of the war was high, especially in ated their bid for political power. During wartime, New England, which bore the brunt of the fighting. knowing that their governors must obtain military Probably half of all New England men of military appropriations, they extracted concessions as the age served in the war and perhaps three-quarters of price for raising revenues. The war also trained a those between ages 17 and 24. The magnitude of new group of military and political leaders. In carry- human loss in Boston was probably greater than in ing out military operations on a scale unknown in any war fought by Bostonians up until this time or the colonies and in shouldering heavier political re- in the future. The wartime muster lists show that sponsibilities, men such as George Washington, nearly every working-class Bostonian tasted mili- Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, tary service at some point during the long war. and Christopher Gadsden acquired the experience When peace came, Boston had a deficit of almost that would serve them well in the future. 700 men in a town of about 2,000 families. The high In spite of severe costs, the Seven Years’ War left rate of war widowhood feminized poverty and re- many colonists buoyant. New Englanders rejoiced quired expanded poor relief to maintain husband- at the final victory over the “Papist enemy of the less women and fatherless children. North.” Frontiersmen, fur traders, and land specula- Peace ended the casualties but also brought de- tors also celebrated the French withdrawal, for the pression. When the bulk of the British forces left West now appeared open for exploitation. The North America in 1760, the economy slumped colonists also felt a new sense of identity after the NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 165

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war. Surveying a world free of French and Spanish threats, they began reassessing subordination to England and the advan-

James Otis, The tages of standing alone. As a French Rights of the diplomat predicted at the war’s end, the British Colonies colonists would soon discover “that they Asserted and Proved (1763) stand no longer in need of your protec- tion. You will call on them to contribute towards supporting the burden which they have helped to bring on you; they will answer you by shaking off all dependence.” The British, however, viewed the matter differ- ently at the end of the Seven Years’ War. From their perspective, the colonists were unreliable, had fought poorly, and were “an obstinate and un- governable people, utterly unacquainted with the nature of subordination,” as one British officer put it. Many royal army officers who had fought alongside the Americans had little but contempt for the “martial virtue” of the colonists. “He could take a thousand grenadiers to America,” boasted one officer, “and geld all the males, partly by force and partly by a little coaxing.” NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 165

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nation of wearied taxpayers. Grenville proposed new taxes in America, asking the colonists to bear their share of running the empire. His particular concern was ﬁnancing the 10,000 British regulars left in North America after 1763 to police French- speaking Canada and the Native Americans—and to remind unruly Americans that they were still subjects. In so doing, he opened a rift between England and its colonies that in a dozen years would ripen into revolution.

Sugar, Currency, and Stamps In 1764, Grenville pushed through Parliament several bills that in combination pressed hard on colonial economies. First came the Revenue Act (or Sugar Act) of 1764. While reducing the tax on imported French molasses from six to three pence per gallon, it added various colonial products to the list of commodities that could be sent only to England. It also required American shippers to post bonds guaranteeing observance of the trade regulations before loading their cargoes. Finally, it strengthened the vice-admiralty courts to prosecute violators of the trade acts. THE CRISIS WITH ENGLAND Many colonial legislatures grumbled about the Sugar Act because a strictly enforced duty of three At the end of the Seven Years’ War, George Grenville pence per gallon on molasses pinched more than the became the chief minister of England’s 25-year-old loosely enforced six-pence duty. But only New York king, George III. He inherited a national debt that objected that any tax by Parliament to raise revenue had billowed from £75 million to £145 million and a (rather than to control trade) violated the rights of overseas English subjects who were unrepresented in Parliament. Next came the Currency Act. In 1751, Parliament had forbidden the New England colonies to issue paper money as legal tender, and now it extended that prohibition to all the colonies. In a colonial economy chronically short of hard cash, this measure constricted trade. The move to tighten up the machinery of empire confused the colonists because many of the new regulations came from Parliament. For generations, colonists had viewed Parliament as a bastion of English liberty. Now Parliament began to seem like a violator of colonial rights. Benjamin Franklin in London In 1774, Benjamin Franklin, shown standing Colonial leaders were uncertain about silently in this oil painting, stood before members of the English Parliament in London to where Parliament’s authority began receive a dressing down in the “Cockpit,” named for the cockﬁghts staged there in the and ended. The colonists had always day of Henry VIII. Franklin was accused of releasing copies of letters from Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts to British ofﬁcials that would intensify the friction implicitly accepted parliamentary between Britain and its American colonies. (Christian Schussele, Benjamin Franklin power overseas because it was easier Appearing Before the Privy Council, 1867. © Huntington Library/SuperStock) to evade distasteful trade regulations NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 166

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than to contest this power. But the exact limits of the middle and lower ranks redeﬁned the dynamics that authority were vague. of politics, setting the stage for a 10-year internal After Parliament passed the Sugar Act in 1764, struggle for control among the various social ele- Grenville announced his intention to extend to ments alarmed by the new English policies. America the stamp duties—already imposed in England—on every newspaper, pamphlet, almanac, legal document, Stamp Act Riots liquor license, college diploma, pack of In late 1764, Virginia’s House of Burgesses became

Stamp Act playing cards, and pair of dice. He gave the first legislature to react to the news of the Stamp Stamps the colonies a year to suggest alternative Act. It strenuously objected to the proposed stamp ways of raising revenue. The colonies ob- tax, citing the economic hardship it would cause. jected, but none provided another plan. Knowing Virginians were already worried by a severe decline that colonial property taxes were slight compared in tobacco prices and heavy war-related taxes, with those in England, Grenville dismissed the peti- which mired most planters in debt. Led by 29-year- tions that poured in from the colonies and drove the old Patrick Henry, a fiery lawyer newly elected from bill through Parliament. The Stamp Act became ef- a frontier county, the House of Burgesses in May fective in November 1765. 1765 debated seven strongly worded resolutions. Colonial reaction to the Stamp Act ranged from Old-guard burgesses regarded some of them as trea- disgruntled submission to mass defiance. The sonable. The legislature finally adopted the four breadth of the reaction shocked the British govern- more moderate resolves, including one proclaiming ment—and many Americans as well. Lieutenant that it was their “inherent” right to be taxed only by Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts believed their own consent. that “there is not a family between Canada and Many burgesses had left for home before Henry Pensacola that has not heard the name of the Stamp introduced his resolutions, so less than a quarter of Act and but very few . . . but what have some formi- Virginia’s legislators voted for the four moderate re- dable apprehensions of it.” In many cases, resis- solves. But within a month, newspapers of other tance involved not only discontent over England’s colonies published all seven resolutions, which in- tightening of the screws on the American colonies cluded a defiant assertion that Virginians did not but also internal resentments born out of local have to pay externally imposed taxes and branded events. Especially in the cities, the defiance of au- as an “enemy to this, his Majesty’s colony” anyone thority and destruction of property by people from who denied Virginia’s exclusive right to tax itself.

Hutchinson Family House Thomas Hutchinson inherited the family house in Boston’s North End. Every window shown here was smashed on August 26, 1765. Some in the furious crowd also reached the roof by midnight and worked until daylight in cutting down a large cupola. By dawn, according to one account, the mansion was “a mear Shell.” Why did Boston authorities not stop the rampaging crowd? (Photograph courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities [#10600-A]) NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 167

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Henry and the aggressive young burgesses had Hutchinson, a haughty man, who was as unpopular hurled words of defiance at Parliament for other with the common people as his great-great-grand- colonies to reflect on and match. mother, Anne Hutchinson, had been popular. Military Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts called men “who have seen towns sacked by the enemy,” the Virginia resolves an “alarm bell for the disaf- one observer reported, “declare they never before saw fected.” Events in Boston in August 1765 amply con- an instance of such fury.” firmed his view. On August 14, Bostonians hung a rag- In attacking the property of men associated with dressed effigy of stamp distributor Andrew Oliver the stamp tax, the Boston crowd demonstrated not from an elm tree in the south end of town. When the only its opposition to parliamentary policy but also sheriff tried to remove it at the order of Lieutenant its resentment of a local elite. For decades, ordinary Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Oliver’s brother-in- Bostonians had aligned politically with the Boston law, a hostile crowd intervened. In the evening, work- “caucus,” which led the colony’s “popular party” ingmen cut down Oliver’s effigy, shouting against conservative aristocrats such as Hutchinson boisterously as they carried it through the and Oliver. They had also read in the Boston Gazette streets, leveled his new brick office, and re- that the new parliamentary legislation had been duced his luxurious mansion to a sham- proposed by “mean mercenary hirelings among 1765 Stamp bles. The stamp distributor promptly asked yourselves, who for a little filthy lucre would at any Act Protest to be relieved of his commission. Twelve time betray every right, liberty, and privilege of their days later, MacIntosh led the crowd again fellow subjects.” in an all-night bout of destruction of the hand- But the “rage-intoxicated rabble” had suddenly somely appointed homes of two British officials and broken away from the leaders of the popular party

Steps on the Road to Revolution 1763 Treaty of Paris ends Seven Years’ War between England and France; France cedes Canada to England. Proclamation of 1763 forbids white settlement west of Appalachian Mountains. 1764 Sugar Act sets higher duties on imported sugar and lower duties on molasses and enlarges the power of vice-admiralty courts. Currency Act prohibits issuance of paper money by colonies. 1765 Stamp Act requires revenue-raising stamps purchased from British-appointed stamp distributors on printed documents. Stamp Act Congress meets in New York. Quartering Act requires colonies to furnish British troops with housing and certain provisions. Sons of Liberty formed in New York City and thereafter in many towns. 1766 Declaratory Act asserts Parliament’s sovereignty over the colonies after repealing Stamp Act. Rent riots by New York tenant farmers. 1767 Townshend Revenue Acts impose duties on tea, glass, paper, paints, and other items. South Carolina Regulators organize in backcountry. 1768 British troops sent to Boston. 1770 British troops kill four and wound eight American civilians in Boston Massacre. 1771 Battle of Alamance pits frontier North Carolina Regulators against eastern militia led by royal governor. 1772 British schooner Gaspee burned in Rhode Island. Committee of Correspondence formed in Boston and thereafter in other cities. 1773 Tea Act reduces duty on tea but gives East India Company right to sell directly to Americans. Boston Tea Party dumps £10,000 of East India Company tea into Boston harbor. 1774 Coercive Acts close port of Boston, restrict provincial and town governments in Massachusetts, and send additional troops to Boston. Québec Act attaches trans-Appalachian interior north of Ohio River to government of Quebec. First Continental Congress meets and forms Continental Association to boycott British imports. 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord cause 95 American and 273 British casualties;Americans take Fort Ticonderoga. Second Continental Congress meets and assumes many powers of an independent government. Dunmore’s Proclamation in Virginia promises freedom to slaves and indentured servants ﬂeeing to British ranks. Prohibitory Act embargoes American goods. George III proclaims Americans in open rebellion. 1776 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense. British troops evacuate Boston. Declaration of Independence. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 168

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and gone farther than they had intended. Hutchinson more attentive to their liberties,... and more deter- was one of their main targets. Characterized by young mined to defend them. ...Our presses have lawyer John Adams as “very ambitious and avari- groaned, our pulpits have thundered, our legisla- cious,” Hutchinson was, in the popular view, chief tures have resolved, our towns have voted; the among the “mean mercenary hirelings” of the British. crown officers have everywhere trembled, and all The more cautious political leaders now realized that their little tools and creatures been afraid to speak they would have to struggle to regain control of the and ashamed to be seen.” protest movement. Protest took a more dignified form at the October 1765 Stamp Act Congress in New York. English au- Gathering Storm Clouds thorities branded this first self-initiated intercolonial Ministerial instability in England hampered the convention a “dangerous tendency.” The delegates quest for a coherent, workable American policy. formulated 12 restrained resolutions that accepted Attempting to be a strong king, George III chose Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies but de- ministers who commanded little respect in nied its right to tax them directly. Parliament. This led to strife between Parliament Violent protests against the Stamp Act also and the king’s chief ministers and a generally wracked New York and Newport, Rhode Island. chaotic political situation just as the king was trying Leading the resistance were groups calling them- to overhaul the empire’s administration. selves the Sons of Liberty, composed To manage the colonies more effectively, the Pitt- mostly of artisans, shopkeepers, and or- Grafton ministry appointed by the king in 1767 ob- dinary citizens. By late 1765, effigy-burn- tained new laws to reorganize the customs service, ing crowds all over America persuaded establish a secretary of state for American affairs, and

Benjamin stamp distributors to resign. Colonists install in the port cities three new vice-admiralty Franklin, defied English authority even more di- courts, which did not use juries to try accused smug- Testimony rectly by forcing most customs officers glers. Still hard-pressed for revenue—for at home the Against the Stamp Act and court officials to open the ports and government faced severe unemployment, tax (1766) courts for business after November 1 protests, and riots over the high price of grain—the without using the hated stamps required ministry pushed through Parliament the relatively after that date. This often took months of pressure small Townshend duties on paper, lead, painters’ col- and sometimes mob action, but the Sons of Liberty, ors, and tea. A final law suspended New York’s assem- often led by new faces in local politics, got their way bly until that body ceased defying the Quartering Act by going outside the law. of 1765, which required public funds for support of In March 1766, Parliament debated the furious British troops garrisoned in the colony since the end American reaction to the Stamp Act. Lobbied by of the Seven Years’ War. New York knuckled under in many merchant friends of the Americans, order to save its legislature. Parliament voted to repeal it, bowing to expediency Massachusetts led the colonial protests against but also passing the Declaratory Act, which asserted the Townshend Acts. Its House of Representatives Parliament’s power to enact laws for the colonies in sent a circular letter written by Samuel Adams to “all cases whatsoever.” each colony objecting to the new Townshend duties The crisis had passed, yet nothing was solved. as unconstitutional because they would be used to Americans had begun to recognize a grasping gov- underwrite salaries for royal officials in America. ernment trampling its subjects’ rights. The Stamp Under instructions from England, Governor Act, one New England clergyman foresaw, “diffused Bernard dissolved the legislature after it refused to a disgust through the colonies and laid the basis of rescind the circular letter. “The Americans have an alienation which will never be healed.” Stamp made a discovery,” declared Edmund Burke before Act resisters had politicized their communities as Parliament, “that we mean to oppress them; we never before. The established leaders, generally have made a discovery that they intend to raise a re- cautious in their protests, were often displaced by bellion. We do not know how to advance; they do those lower on the social ladder. Men such as New not know how to retreat.” York ship captains Alexander McDougall and Isaac Showing more restraint than they had in resisting Sears mobilized common citizens and raised politi- the Stamp Act, most colonists only grumbled and cal consciousness, employing mass demonstrations petitioned. But Bostonians protested stridently. In and street violence to humble stamp distributors the summer of 1768, after customs officials seized a and force open the courts and seaports. Scribbled sloop owned by John Hancock for a violation of the John Adams in his diary: “The people have become trade regulations, an angry crowd mobbed them. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 169

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For months the ofﬁcials took refuge on a inﬂuential English merchants to their British warship in Boston harbor. aid, for half of British shipping was en- Newspapers warned of new measures de- gaged in commerce with the colonies,

John Dickinson, signed to “suck the life blood” from the and one-quarter of all English exports The Virginia from Letters people and predicted that troops would were consumed there. When the south- Nonimportation from a Farmer be sent to “dragoon us into passive obedi- ern colonies also adopted nonimporta- Resolutions in Pennsylvania (1769) (1768) ence.” To many, the belief grew that the tion agreements in 1768, a new step to- English were plotting “designs for de- ward intercolonial union had been taken. stroying our constitutional liberties.” Many colonial merchants, however, especially Troops indeed came. The attack on the customs those with official connections, saw nonimportation officials convinced the English that the Bostonians agreements as lacking legal force and refused to be were insubordinate and selfish. The ministry dis- bound by them. They had to be persuaded otherwise patched two regiments from England and two more by street brigades, usually composed of artisans for from Nova Scotia, meant to bring the Bostonians to a whom nonimportation was a boon to home manufac- proper state of subordination and make them an ex- turing. Crowd action welled up again in the seaports, ample. Cries went up against maintaining standing as patriot bands attacked the homes and warehouses armies in peacetime, but radical Bostonians who pro- of offending merchants and “rescued” incoming con- posed force to prevent the troops from landing got lit- traband goods seized by customs officials. tle support from delegates called to a special provin- England’s attempts to discipline its American cial convention. On October 1, 1768, red-coated colonies and oblige them to share the costs of gov- troops marched into Boston without resistance. erning an empire lay in shambles by the end of the Thereafter, the colonists’ main tactic of protest 1760s. Using troops to restore order undermined the against the Townshend Acts became economic boy- very respect needed for colonial acceptance of par- cott. First in Boston and then in New York and liamentary authority. Newspapers denounced new Philadelphia, merchants and consumers adopted extensions of British control. Colonial governors nonimportation and nonconsumption agreements, quarreled with their legislatures. Customs officials pledging neither to import nor to use British goods. met with determined opposition and were widely ac- These measures promised to bring the politically cused of arbitrary actions and excessive zeal in

British Troops Arriving in Boston Rather than quelling the disorder as King George III hoped, the occupation of Boston by British troops in 1768 increased tensions. In this engraving by Paul Revere, the red-coated troops are debarking at the Long Wharf. (Paul Revere, British Troops Land at Long Wharf, Boston. Courtesy Winterthur Museum) NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 170

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The Growing Rift In June 1772, England created a new furor by announcing that it, rather than the provincial legislature, would hence- forth pay the salaries of the royal gover- nor and superior court judges in Massachusetts. Even though the measure saved the colony money, it looked like a scheme to impose a despotic government and thus undermine a right set forth in the colony’s charter. Judges paid from London presumably would obey London. Massachusetts’s Militia Ralph Earle’s battle paintings were turned into engravings by Boston’s town meeting protested Amos Doolittle and widely sold. This engraving shows Massachusetts militiamen con- loudly and created a Committee of fronting the redcoated British soldiers. Is this engraving propagandistic? (John Warner Correspondence to win other colonies’ Barber, engraved by A. Doolittle after Ralph Earle, The Battle of Lexington, April 19th 1775, sympathy. Crown supporters called the from ‘Connecticut Historical Collections,’ 1832, Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library) committee “the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent ever issued enforcing the Navigation Acts. The Townshend duties from the egg of sedition.” By the end of 1772, another had failed miserably, yielding less than £21,000 by 80 towns in Massachusetts had created committees. 1770 while costing British business £700,000 through In the next year, all but three colonies established the colonial nonimportation movement. Committees of Correspondence in their legislatures. On March 5, 1770, Parliament repealed all the Samuel Adams was by now the leader of the Townshend duties except the one on tea (which the Boston radicals, for the influence of laboring men new minister of state, Lord North, explained was re- like Ebenezer MacIntosh had been quietly reduced. tained “as a mark of the supremacy of Adams was an experienced caucus politicker and a Parliament and an efficient declaration of skilled political journalist, and (despite his Harvard their right to govern the colonies”). On degree) he had deep roots among the laboring peo- that same evening in Boston, British ple. He organized the working ranks through the taverns, clubs, and volunteer fire companies and se- Handbill “On the troops fired on an unruly crowd of heck- Death of Five ling citizens. When the smoke cleared, five cured the support of wealthy merchants such as Young Men” bloody bodies, including that of Ebenezer John Hancock, whose ample purse financed patri- MacIntosh’s brother-in-law, stained the otic celebrations and feasts that kept politics on snow-covered street. Bowing to furious popular reac- everyone’s mind and helped build interclass tion, Thomas Hutchinson, recently appointed gover- bridges. In England, Adams became known as one nor, ordered the British troops out of town and ar- of the most dangerous firebrands in America. rested the commanding officer and the soldiers In 1772, Rhode Islanders gave Adams a new issue. involved. They were later acquitted, with two young The commander of the royal ship Gaspee was patriot lawyers, John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., roundly hated for hounding the fishermen and providing a brilliant defense. small traders of Narragansett Bay. When his ship ran In spite of the potential of the “Boston Massacre” aground while pursuing a suspected smuggler, for galvanizing the colonies into further resistance, op- Rhode Islanders burned the stranded vessel to the position to English policies, including boycotts, sub- waterline. A Rhode Island court then convicted the sided in 1770. Popular leaders such as Samuel Adams Gaspee’s captain of illegally seizing what he was in Boston and Alexander McDougall in convinced was smuggled sugar and rum. London New York, who had made names for them- reacted with cries of high treason. Investigators selves as the standard-bearers of American found the lips of Rhode Islanders sealed. The event liberty, had few issues left, especially when was tailor-made for Samuel Adams, who used it to Boston Gazette the economic depression that had helped “awaken the American colonies, which have been Description of sow discontent ended. Yet the fires of revo- too long dozing upon the brink of ruin.” the Boston Massacre lution had not been extinguished but The final plunge into revolution began when (1770) merely dampened. Parliament passed the Tea Act in early 1773, allowing NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 171

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mass meetings that soon forced the resignation of East India Company’s agents, and citizens vowed to stop the obnoxious tea at the water’s edge. Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts brought the tea crisis to a climax, convinced that to yield again to popular pressure would forever cripple English sovereignty in America. The popular party led by Samuel Adams had been urging the citizens to demonstrate that they were not yet prepared for 1774 the “yoke of slavery” by sending the tea Illustration, List back to England. When Hutchinson re- of Crimes by the Massachusetts fused, 5,000 Bostonians packed Old South Governor Meeting House on December 16, 1773, noisily passing resolutions urging the governor to grant the tea ships clearance papers to return to England with their cargoes. But Hutchinson was not swayed. “This meeting,” despaired Samuel Adams, “can do no more to save the country.” At nightfall, a band of Bostonians dressed as Native Americans boarded the tea ships, broke open the chests of tea, and flung £10,000 worth of the East India Company’s property into Boston harbor. George Hewes, a 31-year- A Sedate Portrait of a Colonial Firebrand Royal old shoemaker, recalled how he had Governor Thomas Hutchinson called Sam Adams “[the greatest] in- garbed himself as a Mohawk, blackened John Andrews to cendiary in the King’s dominion” whereas his cousin, John Adams, William Barrell, “face and hands with coal dust in the shop Boston Tea called him “a plain, simple, decent citizen of middling stature, dress, of a blacksmith,” and joined men of all Party (1773) and manners.” Boston’s premier painter, John Singleton Copley, ranks in marching stealthily to the painted Samuel Adams in just this way—in a simple wool suit with no embroidery and a partially unbuttoned waistcoat, suggesting the pa- wharves to do their work. In time, this event would be triot leader’s disdain for proper appearances. What is Adams pointing remembered as the Boston Tea Party. at? (John Singleton Copley, American [1738–1815], Samuel Adams, Now the die was cast. Lord North, the king’s chief 1 1 about 1772; Oil on canvas; 49 /2 x 39 /2 in [125.7 x 100.3 cm], Deposited minister, argued that the dispute was no longer by the city of Boston, 30.76c. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Reproduced with permission. © 1999 The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All about taxes but about whether England had any au- Rights Reserved.) thority over the colonies. George III put it suc- cinctly: “We must master them or totally leave them to themselves and treat them as aliens.” the practically bankrupt East India Company to ship Thoroughly aroused, Parliament passed the its tea directly to North America with the colonists Coercive Acts, stern laws that Bostonians promptly la- paying only a small tax. Americans would get inex- beled the “Intolerable Acts.” The acts closed the port pensive tea, the Crown a modest revenue, and the of Boston to all shipping until the colony paid for the East India Company a new lease on life. But colonists destroyed tea and barred local courts from trying reacted furiously because their smuggled Dutch tea British soldiers and officials for acts committed while would be undersold. American merchants who com- suppressing civil disturbances. To hamstring the peted with the East India Company bitterly de- colony’s belligerent political assemblies, Parliament nounced the monopoly, warning that other monopo- amended the Massachusetts charter to transform the lies would follow and intermediaries of all kinds council from an upper legislative chamber, elected by eliminated. The colonists also objected that the gov- the lower house, to a body appointed by the governor. ernment was shrewdly trying to gain acceptance of This amendment stripped the council of its veto Parliament’s taxing power. As Americans drank the power over the governor’s decisions. taxed tea, they would also be swallowing the English The act also struck at local government by autho- right to tax them. Showing that their principles were rizing the governor to prohibit all town meetings ex- not entirely in their pocketbooks, Americans staged cept for one annual meeting to elect local officers of NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 172

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City Plan of Boston, 1772 Boston’s many churches became important political meeting places in the tumultuous decade leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. Old South Meeting House, holding as many as 5,000 people, became the gathering place of “body of the people.” Faneuil Hall was the usual site of town meetings, but when crowds exceeded its capacity of 1,200, meetings were adjourned and reconvened at Old South Meeting House.

Charleston

ver Ri es rl North a Christ NORTH h Writing C Church BATTERY School North Grammar School Second New North Meeting Baptist Bennet Street Meeting Meeting (Mather's Church) Mill Pond Old North Meeting First Baptist Meeting New Brick Meeting West Church

OLD WHARF Manifesto

Church r

o b Powder House Beacon Writing r Faneuil Hall a

Hill School WHARF H LONG e Prison and courthouse h Almshouse T King's First KING STREET Bridewell Chapel Church Town House Workhouse South STREET Friends Meeting School Street Meeting Grammar OLD WHARF Town Granary Province GH Old South Meeting House ROU BO Common South SOUTH Writing MARL BATTERY School Trinity Church Fort The Mall Irish Hill STREET Meeting

New Baptist Meeting

NEWBURY

Hollis Street Meeting

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delegates from all colonies, received a better response. Called the Continental Congress, it began to transform a 10-year debate conducted by separate colonies into a unified American cause. In September 1774, 55 delegates from all the colonies except Georgia converged on Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. The discussions centered not on how to prepare for a war that many sensed was in- evitable but on how to resolve sectional differences that most delegates feared were irreconcilable. Overcoming prejudices and hostilities was as important as the formal debates. New Englanders were eyed with suspicion especially for their re- puted intolerance and self-interest. “We have numberless prejudices to remove here,” wrote John Adams from Philadelphia. “We have been obliged to keep ourselves out of sight, and to feel pulses, and to sound the depths; to insin- uate our sentiments, designs, and desires by means of other persons, sometimes of one province, and sometimes of another.” The Continental Congress was by no means a unified body. Some delegates, led by cousins Samuel and John Adams from Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry of Virginia, argued for out- The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man Public sentiment against the right resistance to Parliament’s Coercive importation of tea and other British goods often found expression in a coat of tar Acts. Moderate delegates from the middle and feathers applied to the bare skin of the offending importer. Note the symbols colonies, led by Joseph Galloway of in The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man: the Liberty Tree with a hangman’s noose and the overturned copy of the Stamp Act. What is happening in the background? Pennsylvania and James Duane of New (Library of Congress) York, urged restraint and further attempts at reconciliation. After weeks of debate, the delegates agreed to a restrained government. Finally, General Thomas Gage, com- Declaration of Rights and Resolves, which attempted mander in chief of British forces in America, replaced to define American grievances and justify the Thomas Hutchinson as governor. “This is the day, colonists’ defiance of English policies and laws by ap- then,” declared Edmund Burke in the House of pealing to the “immutable laws of nature, the princi- Commons, “that you wish to go to war with all ples of the English constitution, and the several America, in order to conciliate that country to this.” [colonial] charters and compacts.” Congress had a Lord North’s plan to strangle Massachusetts into more concrete plan of resistance. If England did not submission and hope for acquiescence elsewhere in rescind the Intolerable Acts by December 1, 1774, all the colonies proved popular in England. Earlier, the imports and exports between the colonies and Great colonies had gained supporters in Parliament for Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies would be their resistance to what many regarded as attacks banned. To keep reluctant southern colonies in the on their fundamental privileges. Now this support fold, some exceptions were made for the export of evaporated, and the colonists found their maneu- southern staple commodities. vering room severely narrowed. When the By the time the Congress adjourned in late Intolerable Acts arrived in May 1774, Boston’s town October, leaders from different colonies had trans- meeting urged all the colonies to ban trade with formed Boston’s cause into a national movement. England. While this proposal met with faint sup- “Government is dissolved [and] we are in a state of port, a second call, for a meeting in Philadelphia of nature,” Patrick Henry argued dramatically. “The NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 174

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The Québec Act of 1774 Most colonists hated the Québec Act, which attached the trans-Appalachian interior north of the Ohio River to the British government in Québec, because they believed this act passed by Parliament, like others during the prewar years, was aimed at the heart of colonial liberty. It not only sealed off the western lands from colonial speculators but guaran- teed the right of French Catholics to practice their religion freely—an offense, especially, to New England Puritans.

Hudson Bay

HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY (British)

Lake Superior La M n ke a H is g si i u s h r si o pp c i i n L. Ontario

R M .

a L. Erie

L QUÉBEC 1774

Ohio R. Portrait of a Participant in the Boston Tea Party LOUISIANA INDIAN (Spanish) This portrait of George Robert Twelve Hewes was painted in 1835 COUNTRY

when the last survivor of the Boston Tea Party was called “The ORIGINAL BRITISH COLONIES Centenarian,” though he was 93 years old. A biography of the poor ATLANTIC shoemaker, written by Benjamin Bussey Thatcher, came off the press in WEST FLORIDA OCEAN the same year. (Joseph G. Cole, The Centenarian, 1835: Portrait of George (British) Robert Twelve Hewes. Courtesy of The Bostonian Society/Old State House) EAST FLORIDA distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, Gulf of Mexico (British) New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.” Many other delegates were a long way from his conclusion; still the Congress agreed to reconvene in May 1775. By the time the Second Continental Congress met, the fabric of government was badly torn in most colonies. Illegal revolutionary committees, conventions, and congresses were replacing legal governing bodies. Assuming authority in defiance of royal governors, who suspended truculent legislatures in many colonies, they often operated on instructions from mass meetings where everyone, not just those entitled to vote, gave voice. These extralegal bodies created and armed militia units, bullied merchants and shopkeepers refusing to obey popu- larly authorized boycotts, levied taxes, operated the courts, and obstructed English customs officials. By the end of 1774, all but three colonies had defied their own charters by appointing provincial assemblies without royal authority. In the next year, this independently created power became evident when trade with England practically ceased. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 174

174 PART 1 A Colonizing People, 1492–1776

THE IDEOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONARY REPUBLICANISM In the tumultuous years between 1763 and 1774, the colonists had been expressing many reactions to the crisis with Britain. Mostly these took the form of newspaper articles and pamphlets written by educated lawyers, clergymen, merchants, and planters. But the middling and lower ranks of society had also expressed themselves in printed broadsides, appeals in the newspapers, and even ideologically laden popular rituals such as tarring and feathering and burning in efﬁgy. Gradually, the colonists pieced together a political ideology, borrowed partly from English political thought, partly from the theories of the Enlightenment, and partly from their own experiences. Historians call this new ideology “revolutionary republicanism,” but no NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/23/05 2:37 PM Page 175

CHAPTER 5 The Strains of Empire 175

single coherent ideology united all the colonists’ varied interests and experiences.

A Plot Against Liberty Many American colonists agreed with earlier English Whig writers who charged that corrupt and power- hungry men were slowly extinguishing the lamp of liberty in England. The so-called “country” party represented by these Whig pamphleteers proclaimed itself the guardian of the true principles of the English constitution and opposed the “court” party—the king and his appointees. From this perspective, every ministerial policy and parliamentary act in the decade after the Stamp Act appeared as a subversion of English liberties. Most Americans regarded resistance to such blows against liberty as wholly justified. Britannia Dismembered This cartoon, originally published in London and re-engraved in Philadelphia shows Britannia dismem- The belief that England was carrying out “a deep- bered. Can you translate the motto—“Date Obolum Bellisario”—and laid and desperate plan of imperial despotism . . . track its origin? (The Granger Collection, New York) for the extinction of all civil liberty,” as the Boston town meeting expressed it in 1770, spread rapidly in The colonial protest movement got much of its the next few years. By 1774, John Adams was writing high-toned moralism from its fervent supporters, of the “conspiracy against the public liberty [that] the colonial clergy. This was especially true in New was first regularly formed and begun to be executed England, where so secular a man as John Adams in 1763 and 1764.” From London, America’s favorite groaned at the “universal spirit of debauchery, dissi- writer, Benjamin Franklin, described the “extreme pation, luxury, effeminacy and gaming.” As in most corruption prevalent among all orders of men in revolutionary movements, talk of moral regenera- this old rotten state.” Another pamphleteer reached tion, of a society-wide rebirth through battle against the conclusion that England was no longer “in a a corrupt enemy, ennobled the cause, inspiring peo- condition at present to suckle us, being pregnant ple in areas that had been stirred a generation be- with vermin that corrupt her milk and convert her fore by the Great Awakening. blood and juices into poison.” Among many Americans, especially merchants, the attack on constitutional rights blended closely with THE TURMOIL OF A the threats to their economic interests contained in REBELLIOUS PEOPLE the tough new trade policies. Merchants saw a coordi- nated attack on their “lives, liberties, and property.” If The long struggle with England over colonial rights a man was not secure in his property, he could not be between 1763 and 1774 did not occur in a unified so- secure in his citizenship, for it was property that gave a ciety. Social and economic change, which accelerated man the independence to shape his identity. in the late colonial period, brought deep unrest and calls for reform from many quarters. By the 1760s, many colonists had lost faith in the internal social sys- Revitalizing American Society tems of the colonies, just as allegiance to England and The continuing crisis over the imperial relationship to the British mercantile system had worn thin. by itself inspired many colonists to resist impending Many of the colonists who struggled for security in tyranny. But for others, the revolutionary mentality the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War hoped that mi- was also fed by a belief that an opportunity was at gration to frontier land would improve their fortunes. hand to revitalize American society. They believed A flood of new immigrants from Ireland and that the growing commercial connections with a Germany after the Treaty of Paris in 1763 added to the decadent and corrupt England had injected poison pressure to reach the trans-Appalachian river valleys. into the American bloodstream. They worried about However, the western option involved much violence the luxury and vice they saw around them and came with Native American tribes. Therefore, most to believe that resistance to England would return colonists chose to work out their destinies at home or American society to a state of civic virtue, spartan in other communities along the coastal plain to living, and godly purpose. which they migrated in search of opportunity. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 176

RECOVERING THE PAST

Poetry

Poetry is one of the most ancient and universal of the age 14 in 1767. Within six years, she became North arts. Making its effect by the rhythmic sound and imagery America’s first published black poet. Boston’s of its language, poetry often expresses romantic love, “Ethiopian poetess” had been brought from Africa to grief, and responses to nature. But other kinds of poetry Boston at age 7 and purchased by a prospering tailor interest historians: reflections of human experience, of- named John Wheatley. Soon her master and his wife ten expressed with deep emotion, and political verses, discovered that she was a prodigy. After learning often written to serve propagandistic goals. For genera- English so well in 16 months that she could read the tions, American historians have drawn on poetry to re- most difficult passages of the Bible, she soon showed capture feelings, ideas, and group experiences. For exam- an uncanny gift for writing. Much of her writing was in- ple, Native American creation myths have often taken spired by deep religious feelings, but she soon was poetic form; the poems of Anne Bradstreet caught up in the dramatic events in Boston that were and Michael Wigglesworth in seventeenth- bringing revolution closer and closer. In her poem enti- century Massachusetts tell us much about tled “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty,” she saluted Puritan mentality and attitudes on topics King George III for repealing the Stamp Act; in “On the Anne running from marriage to death; the poetry Death of Mr. Snider [Seider], Murder’d by Richardson,” Bradstreet, of the American Transcendentalists tells us she lambasted the British customs officer who mur- Before the Birth of One of Her about nineteenth-century notions of hero- dered a teenage member of a crowd protesting the Children ism and who was admired; and Langston British soldiers who occupied Boston in 1768. Hughes,Arna Bontemps, and other poets of Wheatley was anything but radical. She had so the Harlem Renaissance have expressed through poetry thoroughly imbibed Christianity from her master and the bittersweet nature of the African American experi- mistress that she wrote in one of her first poems that ence.All this material is grist for the historian’s mill. “Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land.” Many The revolutionary generation created poetry of times she used poetry to implore slaves to “fly to great interest to historians.The newspapers of several Christ.” But by 1772, she was inserting a muffled plea port cities published weekly “Poet’s Corner” satires, for an end of slavery in her odes to American rights drinking songs, and versed commentary on the issues and American resistance to British policies. of the day. Verse was widely used to provoke public That Wheatley’s poems were published in London in discussion; in 1767 poets prompted the boycott of 1773 is remarkable. Women were not supposed to British goods to obtain Parliament’s reversal of the write publicly in the eighteenth century, and certainly hated Townshend duties. not black women. Nonetheless, her master, supported A year later,Philadelphia’s John Dickinson composed by Boston friends and proud of his slave prodigy, a “Liberty Song” that became the first set of verses shipped a sheaf of poems to a bookseller in England, learned in all the colonies. Boston’s Sons of Liberty be- who obtained the support of the Countess of gan using this “Liberty Song” in annual cere- Huntingdon for publishing them.They appeared under monies celebrating their resistance to the the title Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Stamp Act. Soon the verses were printed in Even more remarkable was that Wheatley, only 20 newspapers throughout the colonies and years old, took a ship to London to see her book come were used widely in public gatherings. Set to off the press. Her master and mistress financed the The Liberty Song music and easily learned, the verses culti- trip, hoping that sea air would clear her clogged lungs. vated anti-British feeling and a sense of the There she was introduced to important reformers and need for intercolonial cooperation: public dignitaries, received a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost from the lord mayor of London, and met with COME join Hand in Hand, brave AMERICANS all, Benjamin Franklin. She returned to Boston in 1774. And rouse your bold Hearts at fair LIBERTY’S Call; No tyrannous Acts shall suppress your just Claim, REFLECTING ON THE PAST Read the two poems that Or stain with Dishonor America’s Name. follow: Wheatley’s “On the Death of Mr. Snider [Seider], Murder’d by Richardson,” composed in 1770, Of all the poets of the revolutionary era, none has and her poem addressed to the king’s minister in fascinated today’s historians more than Phillis Wheatley, charge of colonial affairs, penned two years later. As a young slave in Boston who wrote her first poem at modern readers, you may find the poetry stilted, but 176 NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 177

Wheatley worshiped at Old South Meeting House, which held some 5,000 people. In the 1770s, people frequently gathered there for political rallies and deliberations. This partly explains Wheatley’s growing interest in the political battles raging in Boston. Wheatley’s patroness in England speciﬁcally requested a drawing of Phillis for the frontispiece of this volume of poetry. Scipio Moorhead, slave of Boston’s Presbyterian minister, did the drawing. Wheatley’s mistress, Susannah Wheatley, called it a ﬁne likeness. (From the copy in the Rare Book Collection, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Wheatley’s style was modeled on poetic conventions HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn, of the eighteenth century. What change can you dis- Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn: cern in Wheatley’s political consciousness between The northern clime beneath her genial ray, 1770 and 1772? Do you consider her poem on Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway: Seider’s murder by a British customs officer propa- Elate with hope her race no longer mourns, gandistic? How does she relate the plight of enslaved Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns, Africans to the American colonists’ struggle? More While in thine hand with pleasure we behold generally, how effective do you think poetry is in The silken reigns, and Freedom’s charms unfold. arousing sentiment and mobilizing political energy? No more, America, in mournful strain Can you think of verse serving as lyrics in popular Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, protest music today? No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand On the Death of Mr.Snider,Murder’d by Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land. Richardson (1770) Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, In heaven’s eternal court it was decreed Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, How the first martyr for the cause should bleed Whence flow these wishes for the common good, To clear the country of the hated brood By feeling hearts alone best understood, We whet his courage for the common good. I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Long hid before, a vile infernal here Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat: Prevents Achilles in his mid career What pangs excruciating must molest, Wherev’r this fury darts his Poisonous breath What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast? All are endanger’d to the shafts of death Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d: To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, Such, such my case. And can I then but pray His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North Others may never feel tyrannic sway? America (1772) 177 NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 178

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Tarring and Feathering a Customs Ofﬁcial In January 1774, after British customs ofﬁcer John Malcolm bullied a small boy and then beat George Robert Twelve Hewes (who had intervened), a Boston crowd tarred and feathered Malcolm. As shown here, Bostonians force Malcolm into a cart, which was dragged through town to the hoots of the crowd. What is the origin of tarring and feathering? (CORBIS)

As agitation against English policy intensified, played a central role in forging and enforcing a previously passive people took a more active inter- nonimportation agreement in 1768. They called est in politics. In this charged atmosphere, the con- public meetings, published newspaper appeals, stitutional struggle with England spread quickly organized secondary boycotts against foot-drag- into uncharted territory. Groups emerged—slaves, ging merchants, and tarred and feathered their op- urban laboring people, backcountry farmers, evan- ponents. Cautious merchants complained that gelicals, women—whose enunciated goals were mere artisans had “no right to give their senti- sometimes only loosely connected to the struggle ments respecting an importation” and called the with England. The stridency and potential power of craftsmen a “rabble.” But artisans, casting off their these groups frightened many in the upper class. customary deference, forged ahead. By 1772, they Losing control of the protests they had initially led, were filling elected municipal positions and insist- many would abandon the resistance movement. ing on their right to participate equally with their social superiors in nominating assemblymen and other important officeholders. They also began Urban People lobbying for reform laws, calling for elected repre- Although the cities contained only about 5 percent sentatives to be more accountable to their con- of the colonial population, they were the core of stituents. Genteel Philadelphians muttered, “It is revolutionary agitation. As centers of communica- time the tradesmen were checked—they ought not tions, government, and commerce, they led the way to intermeddle in state affairs—they will become in protesting English policy, and they soon con- too powerful.” tained the most politicized citizens in America. By 1774, the meddling of the Philadelphia work- Local politics could be rapidly transformed as the ing class in state affairs reached a bold new stage— struggle against England meshed with calls for in- de facto assumption of governmental powers by ternal reform. committees created by the people at large. Artisans Philadelphia offers a good example of popular had first assumed such extralegal authority in polic- empowerment. Before the Seven Years’ War, arti- ing the nonimportation agreement in 1769. Now, re- sans had usually acquiesced to local leadership by sponding to the Intolerable Acts, they proposed a merchant and lawyer politicos. But economic diffi- radical slate of candidates for a committee to en- culties in the 1760s and 1770s led them to band to- force a new economic boycott. Their ticket drubbed gether within their craft and community. Artisans one nominated by conservative merchants. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 179

AMERICAN VOICES A Petition from Massachusetts Blacks to Governor Thomas Gage

More than two years before the Declaration of Independence, miles from us where we seldom or ever see them “a great number of blacks” of Massachusetts petitioned again, there to be made slaves of for life, which Thomas Gage, captain general and governor in chief of the sometimes is very short by reason of being dragged colony, and the legislature to free them from slavery. from their mother’s breast....We therefor beg Your petitioners apprehend we have in common your excellency and honors will give this its due with all other men a natural right to our freedoms, weight and consideration and that you will accord- without being deprived of them by our fellow men, ingly cause an act of the legislative to be passed that as we are a freeborn people and have never for- we may obtain our natural right, our freedoms, and feited this blessing by any compact or agreement our children be set at liberty at the year of twenty whatever.But we were unjustly dragged by the cruel one.... hand of power from our dearest friends and some ■ How did these enslaved petitioners acquire the idea of of us stolen from the bosoms of our tender parents “our natural right” invoked at the beginning and end of and from a populous, pleasant, and plentiful country this petition? and brought hither to be made slaves for life in a Christian land. Thus we are deprived of everything ■ Is it borrowed or found in their own African cultural that has a tendency to make life even tolerable; the heritage? endearing ties of husband and wife we are strangers to, for we are no longer man and wife than our Source: Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 5th Series, III (Boston, 1877), excerpted in Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the masters or mistresses think proper....Our chil- Negro People of the United States, Vol. 1 (New York: Citadel Press, 1968), dren are also taken from us by force and sent many 8–9. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized.

The political support of the new radical leaders Patriot Women centered in the 31 companies of the Philadelphia Colonial women also played a vital role in the move- militia, composed mostly of laboring men, and in the ment toward revolution, and they drew on revolu- extralegal committees now controlling the city’s eco- tionary arguments to define their own goals. They nomic life. Their leadership helped overcome the signed nonimportation agreements, harassed non- conservatism of the regularly elected Pennsylvania complying merchants, and helped organize “fast legislature, which was resisting the movement of the days,” on which communities prayed for deliverance Continental Congress toward independence. The from English oppression. But the women’s most im- new radical leaders also demanded internal reforms: portant role was to facilitate the boycott of English curbing the accumulation of wealth by “our great goods. The success of the nonconsumption pacts merchants . . . at the expense of the people”; abolish- depended on substituting homespun cloth for ing the property requirement for voting; allowing English textiles on which colonists of all classes had militiamen to elect their officers; and imposing stiff always relied. From Georgia to Maine, women and fines, to be used for the support of the families of children began spinning yarn and weaving cloth. poor militiamen, on men who refused militia service. “Was not every fireside, indeed a theatre of politics?” Philadelphia’s radicals never controlled the city. John Adams remembered after the war. Towns vied They always jostled for position with prosperous ar- patriotically in the manufacture of cotton, linen, and tisans and shopkeepers of more moderate views woollen cloth, with the women staging open-air and with cautious lawyers and merchants. But mo- spinning contests to publicize their commitment. bilization among artisans, laborers, and mariners, After the Tea Act in 1773, the interjection of poli- in other cities as well as Philadelphia, became part tics into the household economy in- of the chain of events that led toward indepen- creased as patriotic women boycotted dence. Whereas most of the patriot elite fought only their favorite drink. Newspapers carried to change English colonial policy, the people of the recipes for tea substitutes and recom- cities also struggled for internal reforms and raised mendations for herbal teas. In Women Signing notions of how an independent American society Wilmington, North Carolina, women pa- an Anti-Tea might be reorganized. raded solemnly through the town and Agreement

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An Exhortation to Action Not only Bostonians took action against the Tea Act. This Philadelphia broadside from “The Committee for Tarring and Feathering,” issued several weeks before the Boston Tea Party, exhorts pilots on the Delaware River to watch for an arriving tea ship. (Library of Congress)

then made a ritual display of their patriotism by husbands, who often dealt with them cruelly and ex- burning their imported tea. ercised power over them arbitrarily. Colonial protests and petitions against England’s Most American women, still bound by the social arbitrary uses of power changed women’s perception conventions of the day, were not ready to occupy of their role. The more male leaders talked about such new territory. But the protests against England England’s intentions to “enslave” the Americans and had stirred up new thoughts about what seemed England’s callous treatment of its colonial “subjects,” “arbitrary” or “despotic” in their own society. Hence, the more American women began to rethink their many agendas for change appeared and with them own domestic situations. The language of protest a new feeling that what had been endured in the against England reminded many American women past was no longer acceptable. that they too were badly treated “subjects” of their Protesting Farmers In most of the agricultural areas of the colonies, where the majority of settlers made their liveli- hoods, passions over English policies awakened only slowly. After about 1740, farmers had benefited from a sharp rise in the demand for foodstuffs in England, southern Europe, and the West Indies. Rising prices and brisk markets brought a higher standard of living to thousands of rural colonists, especially south of New England. Living far from harping English customs officers, impressment gangs, and occupying armies, the colonists of the interior had to be drawn gradually into the resistance movement by their urban cousins. Even in Concord, Massachusetts, only a dozen miles from the center of colonial agitation, townspeople found little to protest in English policies until England closed the port of Boston in 1774. Still, other parts of rural America seethed with social tension before the war. The dynamics of conflict, shaped by the social development of particular regions, eventually became part of the momentum Sarah Franklin Bache The daughter of Benjamin and Deborah for revolution. In three western counties of North Franklin, Sarah Franklin Bache went door to door to raise money to buy Carolina and in the Hudson River valley of New linen from which Philadelphia women made 2,200 shirts for the nearly York, for example, widespread civil disorder marked naked soldiers of Washington’s army. (John Hoppner (English, 1758–1810), Mrs. Richard Bache (Sarah Franklin, 1743–1808), 1793. The Metropolitan the prerevolutionary decades. Museum of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1901. For years, the small farmers of western North (01.20) Photograph © 1998 The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Carolina had suffered exploitation by corrupt NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 181

AMERICAN VOICES George Sims, from “An Address to the Inhabitants of Granville County”

George Sims, a farmer and schoolmaster, became a would be enough to make us turn rebels and throw spokesman for poor frontiersmen in North Carolina.This is off all submission to such tyrannical laws. For if these an excerpt from Sims’s “An Address to the People of Granville things were tolerated, it would rob us of the very County,” complaining of oppression of small farmers. means of living, and it would be better for us to die in Does not daily experience show us the gaping defense of our privileges, than to live slaves to a hand- jaws of ruin, open and ready to devour us? Are not ful of scapegallows or perish for want of the means of your lands executed [seized by the sheriff], your subsistence....[We should] combine as one man to Negroes, horses, cattle, hogs, corn, beds, and house- throw off the heavy yoke, which is cast upon our hold furniture? Are not these things...taken and sold necks, and resume our ancient liberties and privileges for one tenth of their value? Not to satisfy the just as free subjects. debts which you have contracted; but to satisfy the cursed exorbitant demands of the clerks, lawyers, and ■ Do you think the claims of George Sims are sheriffs. Here they take your lands, which perhaps are exaggerated–that “clerks, lawyers and sheriffs” put a worth four or ﬁve hundred pounds, and sell them at “heavy yoke” on the necks of small farmers and deprived public vendue [auction] for about forty or ﬁfty them of their “ancient liberties and privileges?” pounds. And who buys? Why the same villains who have taken your Negroes and other personal estate, ■ Is Sims a trouble maker or is he the fearless leader of and have the county’s money in their hands....It truly oppressed small farmers?

county officials appointed by the governor and a the violence. A few wealthy families with enormous legislature dominated by eastern planter interests. landholdings, acquired as virtually free gifts from Sheriffs and justices, allied with land speculators and royal governors, controlled the Hudson River valley. lawyers, seized property when farmers could not pay The Van Rensselaer manor, for example, totaled a their taxes and sold it, often at a fraction of its worth, million acres. Hundreds of tenants with their families to their cronies. The legislature rejected western peti- paid substantial annual rents for the right to farm on tions for lower taxes, paper currency, and lower court these lands. When tenants resisted rent increases or fees. In the mid-1760s, frustrated at getting no satis- purchased land from Native Americans who swore faction from legal forms of protest, the farmers that manor lords had extended the boundaries of formed associations—the so-called Regulators—that forcibly closed the courts, attacked the property of their enemies, and whipped and publicly humiliated judges and lawyers. When their leaders were arrested, the Regulators stormed the jails and released them. In 1768 and again in 1771, Governor William Tryon led troops against the Regulators. Bloodshed was averted on the first occasion, but on the second, at the Battle of Alamance, two armies of more than 1,000 fired on each other. At least nine men died on each side before the Regulators fled the field. Six leaders were executed in the ensuing trials. Though the Regulators lost the battle, their protests became part of the larger revolutionary struggle. They railed against the self-interested behavior of a wealthy elite and asserted the necessity for people of humble rank to throw off deference and assume political responsibilities. Commemoration of the Battle of Alamance A Rural insurgency in New York flared up in the road sign in North Carolina is one of the few reminders that a bloody 1750s, subsided, and then erupted again in 1766. The battle was fought at Alamance between small farmers and a militia com- conditions under which land was held precipitated manded by the colony’s governor in 1771. (© 2002 Steven H. J. Rankin) 181 NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 182

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their manors by fraud, the landlords began evicting they claimed. The militant tenants threatened land- them. lords with death and broke open jails to rescue As the wealthiest men of the region, the landlords friends. British troops from New York were used to had the power of government, including control of break the tenant rebellion. Prendergast was tried the courts, on their side. Organizing themselves and and sentenced to be hanged, beheaded, and quar- going outside the law became the tenants’ main tered. Although he was pardoned, the bitterness of strategy, as with the Carolina Regulators. By 1766, the Hudson River tenants endured through the while New York City was absorbed in the Stamp Act Revolution. Most of them, unlike the Carolina furor, tenants led by William Prendergast began re- Regulators, fought for the British because their sisting sheriffs who tried to evict them from lands landlords were patriots.

T IMELINE

1696 Parliament establishes Board of Trade 1764 Sugar and Currency acts Pontiac’s Rebellion in Ohio valley 1701 Iroquois set policy of neutrality 1765 Colonists resist Stamp Act 1702–1713 Queen Anne’s War Virginia House of Burgesses issues Stamp Act 1713 Peace of Utrecht resolutions 1733 Molasses Act 1766 Declaratory Act Tenant rent war in New York 1739–1742 War of Jenkins’ Ear Slave insurrections in South Carolina 1744–1748 King George’s War 1767 Townshend duties imposed 1754 Albany conference 1768 British troops occupy Boston 1755 Braddock defeated by French and Indian allies 1770 “Boston Massacre” Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia Townshend duties repealed (except on tea) 1756–1763 Seven Years’ War 1771 North Carolina Regulators defeated 1759 Wolfe defeats the French at Québec 1772 Gaspee incident in Rhode Island 1759–1761 Cherokee War against the English 1773 Tea Act provokes Boston Tea Party 1760s Economic slump 1774 “Intolerable Acts” 1763 Treaty of Paris ends Seven Years’ War First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia Proclamation Line limits westward expansion

Conclusion On the Brink of Revolution

The colonial Americans who lived in the third quar- In the prerevolutionary decade, as England and ter of the eighteenth century participated in an era the colonies moved from crisis to crisis, a dual disil- of political tension and conﬂict that changed the lusionment penetrated ever deeper into the colonial lives of nearly everyone. The Seven Years’ War re- consciousness. Pervasive doubt arose concerning moved French and Spanish challengers and nur- both the colonies’ role, as assigned by England, in tured the colonists’ sense of separate identity. Yet it the economic life of the empire and the sensitivity left them with difﬁcult economic adjustments, of the government in London to the colonists’ heavy debts, and growing social divisions. The needs. Meanwhile, the colonists began to perceive colonists heralded the Treaty of Paris in 1763 as the British policies—instituted by Parliament, the king, dawning of a new era, but it led to a reorganization and his advisers—as a systematic attack on the fun- of England’s triumphant yet debt-torn empire that damental liberties and natural rights of British citi- had profound repercussions in America. zens in North America. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 183

CHAPTER 5 The Strains of Empire 183

The ﬂuidity and diversity of colonial society and control of political affairs. Often occupying the most the differing experiences of Americans during and radical ground in opposing England, they simulta- after the Seven Years’ War evoked varying responses neously challenged the growing concentration of to the disruption that accompanied the English re- economic and political power in their own commu- organization of the empire. In the course of resisting nities. What lay ahead was not only war with English policy, many previously inactive colonists, England but protracted arguments about how the such as the humble shoemaker Ebenezer American people, if they prevailed in their war for MacIntosh, entered public life to challenge gentry independence, should refashion their society.

Questions for Review and Reﬂection

1. What roles did Native Americans play in the imperial colonists see these policies in an entirely different conﬂicts of the eighteenth century? light? 2. How did the Seven Years’ War help pave the way for 4. What was the contribution of “republican ideology” the colonies’ break with Britain? to the revolutionary movement? 3. The British government pursued policies toward its 5. What does it mean to say that there were two colonies that it thought reasonable and just in the American revolutions? How were the two related? aftermath of the Treaty of Paris. Why did many

Recommended Reading Recommended Readings are posted on the Web site for this textbook. Visit www.ablongman.com/nash

Fiction and Film

Americans have written novels about the American Loyalist’s view of the Revolution. Mary Silliman’s Revolution almost from the day the ﬁring stopped. War (Heritage Film and Citadel Film, 1993) shows James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy: A Tale of the the Revolution through the eyes of a Connecticut Neutral Ground (1822) is the best of the early ones. family in which husband and wife must reconcile Historian Paul Leicester Ford’s Janice Meredith: A their differing views on the Patriots and Loyalists. Story of the American Revolution (1899) remains ab- The English ﬁlm on George III The Madness of King sorbing a century after its publication. In the mod- George (1994) brings alive the era of the American ern period, Kenneth Roberts’s four novels on the Revolution and turns the king into the deeply psy- Revolution have entertained American readers for chotic ruler that some at the time believed he was. two generations: Arundel (1933), Oliver Wiswell Liberty (Middlemarch Films, 1997) is a docudrama (1940), Rabble in Arms (1953), and The Battle of produced for television that has many high mo- Cowpens: The Great Morale-Builder (1958). Oliver ments but neglects the internal struggles within the Wiswell is especially notable for its recreation of a patriot ranks for reforming American society.

Discovering U.S. History Online

Exploring the West from Monticello: An Exhibition of Maps of the French and Indian War Maps and Navigational Instruments www.masshist.org/maps/MapsHome/Home.htm www.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/lewis_clark/home.html In addition to contemporary maps, this site explains the Maps and charts reveal knowledge and conceptions political signiﬁcance of the maps and gives a background about the known and the unknown. This site includes a of the wars. number of eighteenth-century maps. NASH.7654.CP05.p154-185.vpdf 9/1/05 3:22 PM Page 184

184 PART 1 A Colonizing People, 1492–1776

1755: The French and Indian War Thomas Paine www.web.syr.edu/~laroux/ www.thomaspaine.org This amateur site presents information about French sol- This official site contains a large archive of Paine’s work, diers who came to New France between 1755 and 1760 to including Common Sense, and information about the as- fight in the French and Indian War as well as a list of key sociation. places. The Freedom Trail A Century of Lawmaking www.freedomtrail.org/index.html www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwjc.html This site presents the story of colonial protest via Boston A searchable version of “the daily proceedings of the historical sites. Congress as kept by the office of its secretary, Charles Thomson.” Georgia’s Rare Map Collection www.scarlett.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/ Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) revamer.html www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/ This site contains maps of colonial and revolutionary wheatley.html America. This online essay on Phillis Wheatley includes samples of her poetry and a bibliography.