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Home , Currency Act, Declaratory Act, French and Indian War, Quebec Act, Stamp Act Congress, Sugar Act

Resource 1

The The North American theater of the primarily European Seven Years’ War was known as the French and Indian War. It was fought between Britain and France from 1754 to 1763 for colonial dominance in . British officials tried to rally public opinion for the war at the Albany in 1754 but mustered only halfhearted support throughout the . Nevertheless, American colonists dutifully fought alongside British soldiers, while the French allied themselves with several Native American tribes (hence the name “French and Indian War”). This war ended after the British captured most of France’s major cities and forts in and the Valley.

Pontiac’s Rebellion The powerful Ottawa chief , who had no intention of allowing land-hungry whites to steal more tribal lands, united many of the tribes in the volatile Ohio Valley and led a series of raids on British forts and American settlements. British forces eventually squashed Pontiac’s Rebellion. As a conciliatory gesture toward the Native , Parliament issued the Proclamation of 1763: The proclamation created a boundary line (often called the proclamation line) between the British colonies on the Atlantic coast and American Indian lands west of the .

1.Rally: A. poco entusiasta a. /ˈælaɪd/

2.Muster B.manifestare b. [skwɒʃ]

3.Halfhearted C.esplosivo c. /ˈdjuːtɪfəlɪ/

4.dutifully D.schiacciare d. /ˈmʌstəʳ/

5.allied E.confine e. [ˌhɑːfˈhɑːtɪd]

6.volatile adj (fig: F.radunare f. /ˈbaʊndərɪ/ situation)

7.squash G.Con il dovuto rispetto g. [ˈrælɪ]

1 8.boundary H. alleato h. [ˈvɒlətaɪl]

2. The proclamation line was not intended to be a permanent boundary between white and Aboriginal lands, but rather a temporary boundary which could be extended further west in an orderly, lawful manner. Its contour was defined by the headwaters that formed the watershed along the —all land with rivers that flowed into the Atlantic was designated for the colonial entities while all the land with rivers that flowed into the was reserved for the native Indian population. The proclamation outlawed private purchase of Native American land, which had often created problems in the past; instead, all future land purchases were to be made by Crown officials "at some public Meeting or Assembly of the Indians". Furthermore, British colonists were forbidden to move beyond the line and settle on native lands, and colonial officials were forbidden to grant grounds or lands without royal approval. The proclamation gave the Crown a monopoly on all future land purchases from American Indians. Almost immediately, many British colonists and land speculators objected to the proclamation boundary. Colonists were disappointed that they were not allowed to cross the boundary. There were also already many settlements beyond the line, some of which had been temporarily evacuated during Pontiac's War. Prominent American colonists joined with land speculators in Britain to lobby the government to move the line further west. As a result, the boundary line was adjusted in a series of treaties with Native Americans. 1.Boundary A. To obtain in exchange for money or its equivalent; buy /ˈbaʊn·dər·i/

2.headwaters B.To try to influence the thinking of legislators or other public official s for or against a specific cause

3.watershed C. A critical point that marks a division or a change of course; a turning point 4.Purchase D. a line that divides two areas or forms an edge around an area /ˈp3ːtʃɪs/

5.To lobby E. The water from which a river rises; a source. /ˈlɒbɪ/

1. How was defined the contour of the Declaration boundary? 2. What was defined by the Proclamation line? 3.Who worked against the Proclamation line?

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3. The End of The French and Indian War also motivated Parliament to end the age of salutary neglect. Prime Minister began enforcing the ancient in 1764, passed the Act to tax sugar, and passed the to remove paper currencies (many from the French and Indian War period) from circulation. A year later, he passed the , which placed a tax on printed materials, and the Quartering Act, which required Americans to house and feed British troops.

Taxation Without Representation The was the first fully enforced tax levied in America solely for the purpose of raising revenue. Americans throughout the cried out against “taxation without representation” and made informal non-importation agreements of certain British goods in protest. Several colonial leaders convened the in to petition Parliament and King George III to repeal the tax. In 1766, Parliament bowed to public pressure and repealed the Stamp Act. But it also quietly passed the , which stipulated that Parliament reserved the right to tax the colonies anytime it chose.

Currency: convocare, indire

Quartering: denaro, valuta Levy /ˈlevɪ/ /’səʊlli/

Solely n imposta, tribute. vtr imporre

Convene alloggiamento Repeal entrate

Revenue Revocare, abrogare

1. Make a list of the Acts dictated by the crown 2. What was the purpose of the Stamp Act Congress? 3. What is the Declaratory act?

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4. The and Massacre In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which levied another series of taxes on lead, paints, and known as the Townshend Duties. In the same series of acts, Britain passed the Suspension Act, which suspended the New York assembly for not enforcing the Quartering Act. To prevent violent protests, Thomas Hutchinson requested assistance from the , and in 1768, four thousand redcoats landed in the city to help maintain order. Nevertheless, on March 5, 1770, an angry mob clashed with several British troops. Five colonists died, and news of the quickly spread throughout the colonies.

The In 1773, Parliament passed the , granting the financially troubled British a trade monopoly on the tea exported to the American colonies. In many American cities, tea agents resigned or canceled orders, and merchants refused consignments in response to the unpopular act. Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, determined to uphold the , ordered that three ships arriving in Boston harbor should be allowed to deposit their cargoes and that appropriate payments should be made for the goods. On the night of , 1773, while the ships lingered in the harbor, sixty men boarded the ships, disguised as Native Americans, and dumped the entire shipment of tea into the harbor. That event is now famously known as the Boston Tea Party.

The Intolerable and Acts In January 1774, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, also known as the , which shut down Boston Harbor until the British East India Company had been fully reimbursed for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party. Americans throughout the colonies sent food and supplies to Boston via land to prevent death from hunger and cold in the bitter winter. Parliament also passed the at the same time, which granted more rights to French Canadian Catholics and extended French Canadian territory

The First and Boycott To protest the Intolerable Acts, prominent colonials gathered in at the First Continental Congress in autumn of 1774. They once again petitioned Parliament, King George III, and the to repeal the acts and restore friendly relations. For additional motivation, they also decided to institute a boycott, or ban, of all British goods in the colonies.

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Lexington, Concord, and the Second Continental Congress On April 19, 1775, part of the British occupation force in Boston marched to the nearby town of Concord, Massachusetts, to seize a colonial arsenal. Militiamen of Lexington and Concord intercepted them and attacked. The first shot— the so-called “shot heard round the world” made famous by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (Concord Hymn)—was one of many that hounded the British and forced them to retreat to Boston. Thousands of militiamen from nearby colonies flocked to Boston to assist. In the meantime, leaders convened the Second Continental Congress to discuss options. In one final attempt for peaceful reconciliation, the , they professed their love and loyalty to King George III and begged him to address their grievances. The king rejected the petition and formally declared that the colonies were in a of rebellion.

The Declaration of Independence The Second Continental Congress chose , a southerner, to command the militiamen besieging Boston in the north. They also appropriated money for a small navy and for transforming the undisciplined militias into the professional . Encouraged by a strong colonial campaign in which the British scored only narrow victories (such as at Bunker Hill), many colonists began to advocate total independence as opposed to having full rights within the British . The next year, the congressmen voted on July 2, 1776, to declare their independence. , a young lawyer from , drafted the Declaration of Independence. The was born.

Find definitions using a monolingual dictionary

Repeal:

Seize:

Hound:

Linger:

Prominent:

5 Upheaval:

Fulfill the grid:

1767

1768 on March 5, 1770

1773

December 16, 1773

January 1774

1774

Autumn 1774

On April 19, 1775

July 2, 1776

6 Resource 2

American Colonies

1607: English clonists settled a town along the river James called Jamestown. The whole portion of North American land between the French territory in Canada and the Spanish one in the south, was called Virginia. In 1616 Virginia learned how to grow . In 1619 the first African slaves arrived in Virginia.

1632: The Crown gave Cecilius Calvert (Lord Blatimore) 12 million acres of land North Chespeake Bay. This was named and was similar to Virginia (large of tobacco, depending on the labour of indentured servants and., later, slaves). Lord Baltimore was Catholic and wanted to create a safer place for other Catholic refugees; Maryland was in fact known for being a very tolerant land.

New England Colonies:

Massachussets 1620 – Massachussets settlement expanded: who wanted to create a more rigid and pious society founded the colony of (1637), later independent in 1662. Puritans who found Massachussets too rigid and restrictive, created (1647) where there was total freedom in religious matters. Others went further north and cretaed (Royal Province in 1679).

The :

In 1664 the Duke of York received by his brother King James II the land between Virginia and New England known as Dutch and renamed it New York. There were also French, Scandinavian and German people, among others. This fact made New York one of the most prosperous colonies.

In 1680 the Quaker received the land of and created .

Delaware: firstly annexed to New York, then to Pennsylvania, later independent in 1704.

New : occupied by Swedish, then by , it became an English colony in 1664 and a Royal Province in 1702.

The Souther Colonies:

The Souther Colonies were much less cosmopolitan: planters produced corn, rice, beef and pork products. The territory from Virgina to was the whole land of Caroline, later divided in North and . In 1732 in order to create a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements, England established a new colony, .

7 Resource 3 Chronology

1754-1763: French-Indian War

1763: Proclamation Line

1764: Sugar Act and Currency Act

1765: Stamp Act

1765: The Stamp Act Congress was held on October 19, in . It was attended by twenty-seven representatives from what has been known throughout American history as the thirteen colonies. When the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, colonists were more than eager to show their displeasure towards it. The meeting paved the way to the Declaration of Rights. The Stamp Act Congress repealed the Stamp act. They removed a law that had been nothing but a burden to many Colonists, and did create a sense of unity amongst the thirteen colonies. It was with the Stamp Act Congress that the thirteen colonies realized that much could be done if they worked together.

1766 Declaratory Act: “[. . .] and that the king's Majesty [. . .] had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” The Declaratory Act was a gesture of British Parliament reasserting its authority to pass taxes and laws on the colonies, even though they lacked any representation.

1767: Townshend Acts: Series of laws named for , British Chancellor. These laws placed new taxes on glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea. Colonial reaction to these taxes was the same as to the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, and Britain eventually repealed all the taxes except the one on tea. In response to the sometimes violent protests by the American colonists, Great Britain sent more troops to the colonies. Suspension Act

1768: 4000 redcoat arrived in Boston to maintain order

1770: Boston Massacre

1773 Tea Act that gave a monopoly on tea sales to the East India Company. In other words, American colonists could buy no tea unless it came from that company. Why? Well, the East Indian Company wasn't doing so well, and the British wanted to give it some more business. The Tea Act lowered the price on this East India tea so much that it was way below tea from other suppliers. But the American colonists saw this law as yet another means of "taxation without representation" because it meant that they couldn't buy tea from anyone else (including other colonial merchants) without spending a lot more money. Their response was to refuse to unload the tea from the ships. This was the situation in Boston that led to the Boston Tea Party

1773 (December) Boston Tea Party

1774 (January) Intolerable Acts

1774 (autumn) First Continental Congress

8 1775: Lexington, Concord and the Second Continental Congress (1775-1781)

4 July 1776: Declaration of Independence.

War and Civil war: Patriots, loyalists and moderate

1777: Colonies were a Confederation, the Congress had little powers

1781-1788 Confederation congress  Articles of Confederation and power to the single states. (The colonies had to afford too many problems with a separate organization)

3 September 1883: Treaty of Versailles and full independence to the thirteen American colonies

1785: Land ordinance; the Congress sets up protocols for the admission of new states (population, division of land.

1787: calling themselves "Federalists", the nationalists convinced the Congress to call the Philadelphia Convention with the task of writing a new (Constitutional Convention).

1788  Constitutional Convention replaces the articles with the Constitution of the United States

1788: ratification of The Constitution1

1779: The new government, under president G. Washington, took office in New York.

1790's: , and became states.

1 How can different sized states have equal representation in this new government? • Large states like Virginia wanted a legislative (law-making) branch where bigger populations gave them more representatives • Small states like wanted a legislative branch where all states got the exact same number of representatives, no matter their size The Three-Fifths Compromise: What do we want to say about in this Constitution? Do the slaves count as population? • Southern states insisted that their slaves should count toward legislative representation – and that the slave trade should be allowed to continue • Northern states claimed that if slaves were merely property they shouldn’t count – and that the slave trade should stop soon • Solution: Count only 3/5 of the slave population toward representation and allow the slave trade to continue for 20 more years

The result is a new kind of federal state with: 1. Federal Government (with power to tax states (executive power) 2. Two-house Congress: house of representatives and Senate: a compromise between small states that wanted the old system "One state one vote", and large states that wanted to count for their large population. 3. Supreme court

A Federal government in a check and balance sistem 9

1777: Colonies were a confederation and the Congress was the only federal institution with little powers

1783 : Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States (with western boundaries to the ) and ceded Florida to Spain. So many problems for the new states: debts with , with banks and rich americans who borrowed money and supplies during the war

1785: Land ordinance; the Congress sets up protocols for the admission of new states (population, division of land

1787: calling themselves "Federalists", the nationalists convinced the Congress to call the Philadelphia Convention with the task of writing a new constitution (Constitutional Convention).

How can different sized states have equal representation in this new government? • Large states like Virginia wanted a legislative (law-making) branch where bigger populations gave them more representatives • Small states like New Jersey wanted a legislative branch where all states got the exact same number of representatives, no matter their size Solution: a bicameral (two-house) representative legislature – One based on population – One based on equality of all states

The Three-Fifths Compromise: What do we want to say about slavery in this Constitution? Do the slaves count as population? • Southern states insisted that their slaves should count toward legislative representation – and that the slave trade should be allowed to continue • Northern states claimed that if slaves were merely property they shouldn’t count – and that the slave trade should stop soon Solution: Count only 3/5 of the slave population toward representation and allow the slave trade to continue for 20 more years

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The result is a new kind of federal state with: 1. Federal Government (with power to tax states (executive power) 2. Two-house Congress: house of representatives and Senate: a compromise between small states that wanted the old system "One stae one vote", and large states that wanted to count for their large population. 3. Supreme court

A Federal government in a check and balance sistem

The Constitution was ratified in 1788

The new government, under president G. Washington took office in New York in March 1779.

1790's: Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee became states.

11 Resource 4

Dawn of the American .

Victory brought questions about the nature of the American state, including the relationship between individual colonies and national government. These and other issues, particularly slavery, remained fissures2 within the new body politic. The Wars left the colonies in a wretched3 state. For many Americans, the war brought hardship and suffering even if they were not fighting; more died of disease than from enemy fire. 60,000 Loyalists left the United States. Many settled in Canada(1)……………………… Popular protest within the States, such as Shay’s Rebellion (1786) against high taxes in Massachusetts, also challenged the old colonial power structures, demanding wider property ownership and more political representation. These conflicts also took place at the federal level, as the second Continental Congress (1775-1781) and Confederation Congress (1781-1788), wrestled with the question of how the new nation should be governed and what powers the individual states should retain. Fearful of replicating the ‘tyranny’ of centralized authority represented by British colonial rule, the initial Articles of Confederation (ratified 1781) enshrined4 the sovereignty of individual states. Lacking the means to enforce its decisions, national government soon broke down, and the Constitutional Convention, which met in 1788 at Philadelphia, chose to replace the Articles with the Constitution of the United States. The Constitutional Convention favored a strong, national government over a loose federation of states. (2)……………………. , with the presidency, congress and supreme court provided with their own areas of responsibility, but able to restrain the other branches of government. Fearful of the concentration of power and influence of the larger states, Antifederalists successfully campaigned for ten amendments to the constitution, known as the Bill of Rights and which guaranteed basic (3)………………………. and the right to a ‘speedy and public trial’ (the 'Sixth Amendment'). Finally, slavery played an important role (4)…………………………………, southern ones. Enslaved black population were counted proportional as three fifths of state population to determine number of representatives and also counted as property for tax purposes. Abolition of the importation of slaves was barred until 1808.

America is often called an idea as much as a place, a clarion call (appello) for freedom, independence and resistance to tyranny. Yet in contrast to the idealism of the Revolution, (5) . Women could not vote, nor could half a million slaves or over a hundred thousand Native Americans. Slavery and racial segregation remained a political and cultural fault line. Constitutional amendments have alleviated some of these injustices, and the Constitution of the United States of America (6)…. , with ideals that still speak to us. The language of democracy and freedom has informed since the Second and remains an enduring legacy of the Enlightenment thought first put into practice in the North American colonies. Others documents of that era, such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789), have had equal influence, but were informed and in part inspired by the , (7)….. . Other experiments in federal government, such as the may now provide an alternative model, but it is one that is in many ways indebted to the ambitions of men of the .

a) the freedom granted by the Constitution remained limited for many years following the Revolution b) The constitution was guided by the Enlightenment principle of a separation of powers c) while other revolutions, such as that in Tsarist Russia in 1917, have not matched the peace and prosperity granted to the citizens of the United States

2 a narrow opening produced by cleavage or separation of parts. 3 very unfortunate in condition or circumstances; miserable; pitiable /rech-id/ 4 to keep, hold, and protect as sacred 12 d) in the on the balance of power between the smaller states and the larger e) remains the oldest written constitution still in use today f) while others had their property confiscated g) freedoms such as of speech and worship (the 'First Amendment')

13 Resource 5 – Final Test

Timeline: 1. 1763 a. Enforcement the ancient Navigation Acts 2. 1764 b. Boston Tea Party 3. 1767 c. Declaration of Independence 4. 1770 d. Constitutional Convention 5. 1773 e. First Continental Congress 6. 1774 f. Parliament issued the Proclamation 7. 1774 g. Abolition of slavery 8. 1776 h. Washington is the President of the United States 9. 1783 i. Intolerable Acts 10. 1787 l. Parliament passed the Townshend Acts 11. 1789 m. Treaty of Paris 12. 1808 n. Boston Massacre

What is the Quartering Act?

What is “The shot heard round the world”?

With the new Constitution the problem of representation is resolved with______The problem of slavery is resolved with ______The new federal state is composed by: 1. … 2. … 3. …

The Bill of Rights is ______wanted by the ______in order to guarantee ______

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