IMPERIAL WARS AND COLONIAL PROTEST, 1754–1774
What caused American colonists in the 1760s to become, as John Adams expressed it, “more attentive to their liberties”? The chief reason for their discontent in these years was a dramatic change in Britain’s colonial policy. Britain began to assert its power in the colonies and to collect taxes and enforce trade laws much more boldly and aggressively than in the past. To explain why Britain took this fateful step, we must study the effects of its various wars for empire.
Empires at War
Late in the 17th century, a war broke out involving Great Britain, France, and Spain. This was the first of a series of four wars that were worldwide in scope, being fought not only in Europe but also in India and North America. These wars occurred intermittently over a 74-year period from 1689 to 1763. The stakes were high, since the winner of the struggle stood to gain supremacy in the West Indies and Canada and to dominate the lucrative colonial trade.
The First Three Wars
The first three wars were named after the king or queen under whose reign they occurred. In both King William’s War (1689–1697) and Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), the English launched expeditions to capture Quebec, but their efforts failed. Native Americans supported by the French burned English frontier settlements. Ultimately, the English forces prevailed in Queen Anne’s War and gained both Nova Scotia from France and trading rights in Spanish America.
A third war was fought during the reign of George II: King George’s War (1744–1748). Once again, the British colonies were under attack from their perennial rivals, the French and the Spanish. In Georgia, James Oglethorpe led a colonial army that managed to repulse Spanish attacks. To the north, a force of New Englanders captured Louisbourg, a major French fortress, on Cape Breton Island, controlling access to the St. Lawrence River. In the peace treaty ending the war, however, Britain agreed to give Louisbourg back to the French in exchange for political and economic gains in India. New Englanders were furious about the loss of a fort that they had fought so hard to win.
The French and Indian War
The first three wars between England and France focused primarily on battles in Europe and only secondarily on conflict in the colonies. The European powers saw little value in committing regular troops to America. In the fourth and final war in the series, however, the fighting actually began in the colonies and then spread to Europe. Moreover, England and France now recognized the full importance of their colonies and shipped large numbers of troops overseas to North America rather than rely on “amateur” colonial forces. This fourth and most decisive war was known in the colonies as the French and Indian War (in Europe, it was called the Seven Years’ War).
Beginning of the war. From the British point of view, the French pro- voked the war by building a chain of forts in the Ohio River Valley. One of the reasons the French did so was to halt the westward growth of the British colonies. Hoping to stop the French from completing work on Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) and thereby win control of the Ohio River Valley, the governor of Virginia sent a small militia (armed force) under the command of a young colonel named George Washington. After gaining a small initial victory, Washington’s troops surrendered to a superior force of Frenchmen and their Native American allies on July 3, 1754. With this military encounter in the wilderness, the final war for empire began.
At first the war went badly for the British. In 1755, another expedition from Virginia, led by General Edward Braddock, ended in a disastrous defeat, as more than 2,000 British regulars and colonial troops were routed by a smaller force of French and Native Americans near Ft. Duquesne. The Algonquin allies of the French ravaged the frontier from western Pennsylvania to North Carolina. A British invasion of French Canada in 1756 and 1757 was repulsed.
The Albany Plan of Union. Recognizing the need for coordinating colonial defense, the British government called for representatives from several colonies to meet in a congress at Albany, New York, in 1754. The delegates from seven colonies adopted a plan—the Albany Plan of Union—developed by Benjamin Franklin that provided for an intercolonial government and a system for recruiting troops and collecting taxes from the various colonies for their common defense. (For an excerpt from the Albany Plan of Union, see pages 40–41.) Each colony was too jealous of its own taxation powers to accept the plan, however, and it never took effect. The Albany congress was significant, however, because it set a precedent for later, more revolutionary congresses in the 1770s.
British victory. In London, William Pitt, the new British prime minister, concentrated the government’s military strategy on conquering Canada. This objective was accomplished with the retaking of Louisbourg in 1758, the surrender of Quebec to General James Wolfe in 1759, and the taking of Montreal in 1760. With these victories and the signing of a peace treaty in 1763, the British extended their control of North America, and French power on the continent virtually ended.
Through the peace treaty (the Peace of Paris), Great Britain acquired both French Canada and Spanish Florida. France ceded (gave up) to Spain its huge western territory, Louisiana, and claims west of the Mississippi River in compensation for Spain’s loss of Florida.
Immediate effects of the war. Its victory in the French and Indian War gave Great Britain unchallenged supremacy in North America and also estab- lished that country as the dominant naval power in the world. No longer did the American colonies face the threat of concerted attacks from the French, the Spanish, and their Native American allies. From the American point of view, no consequence of the war was more momentous than a fundamental change in the relationship between the colonies and the British government. Foremost was the change in how the British viewed the colonies and how the colonists viewed the home government.
The British view. The British came away from the war with a generally low opinion of the colonial military effort. They held the American militia in contempt as a poorly trained, disorderly rabble. Furthermore, they noted that some of the colonies had refused to contribute either troops or money to the war effort. The British who took this view were convinced that the colonists were both unable and unwilling to defend the new frontiers of the vastly expanded British empire.
The colonial view. The colonists took an opposite view of their military performance. They were proud of their record in all four wars and developed confidence that they could successfully provide for their own defense. They were not impressed with British troops or their leadership, whose methods of warfare seemed badly suited to America’s densely wooded terrain.
Reorganization of the British Empire
Even more serious than the resentful feelings stirred by the war experience was the British government’s decision to change its colonial policies. Previously, Britain had exercised little direct control over the colonies and had generally allowed its navigation laws regulating colonial trade to go unenforced. This earlier policy of salutary neglect was now abandoned as the British saw a need to adopt more forceful policies for taking control of their expanded North American dominions.
All four wars—and the last one in particular—had been extremely costly. In addition, Britain now felt the need to maintain a large British military force to guard its American frontiers. Among British landowners, pressure was building to reduce the heavy taxes that the colonial wars had laid upon them.
King George III and the dominant political party in Parliament (the Whigs) pursued a colonial policy aimed at solving Britain’s domestic financial problems. Making the American colonies bear more of the cost of maintaining the British empire was a popular policy with the various factions of Whigs that vied for the king’s favor.
Pontiac’s rebellion. The first major test of the new British imperial policy came in 1763 when Chief Pontiac led a major attack against colonial settlements on the western frontier. The Native Americans were angered by the growing westward movement of European settlers and by the British refusal to offer gifts as the French had done. Pontiac’s alliance of Native Americans in the Ohio Valley destroyed forts and settlements from New York to Virginia. Rather than relying on colonial forces to retaliate, the British sent regular troops to deal with the “rebellion.”
Proclamation of 1763. As a further measure for stabilizing the western frontier, the British government issued a proclamation that prohibited colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. Such a measure, it was hoped, would help to prevent future hostilities between colonists and Native Americans. But the colonists reacted to the proclamation with anger and defiance. After their victory in the French and Indian War, Americans hoped to reap benefits in the form of access to western lands. For the British to deny such benefits was infuriating. Defying the prohibition, thousands streamed westward beyond the imaginary boundary line drawn by the British.
British Actions and Colonial Reactions
The Proclamation of 1763 was the first of a series of acts by the British government that were met with anger and resistance in the colonies. From the British point of view, each act was justified as a proper method for protecting its colonial empire and making the colonies pay their share of costs for such protection. From the colonists’ point of view, each act represented an alarming threat to their cherished liberties and long-established practice of representative government.
New Revenues and Regulations
In the first two years of peace, Parliament adopted three measures that aroused colonial suspicions of a British plot to subvert their liberties. These were the Sugar Act of 1764, the Quartering Act of 1765, and the Stamp Act of 1765. Each measure expressed the imperial policies of King George III’s chancellor of the exchequer (treasury) and prime minister, Lord George Grenville.
Sugar Act. This act (also known as the Revenue Act of 1764) placed duties on foreign sugar and certain luxuries. Its chief purpose was to raise money for the crown, and a companion law also provided for stricter enforcement of the Navigation Acts to stop smuggling. Those accused of smuggling were to be tried in admiralty courts by crown-appointed judges without juries.
Quartering Act. This act required the colonists to provide food and living quarters for British soldiers stationed in the colonies.
Stamp Act. In an effort to raise funds to support British military forces in the colonies, Lord Grenville turned to a tax long in use in England. The Stamp Act, enacted by Parliament in 1765, required that revenue stamps be placed on most printed paper in the colonies, including all legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, and advertisements. This was the first direct tax— collected from those who used the goods—paid by the people in the colonies, as opposed to the taxes on goods that were imported into the colonies, which were paid by merchants.
Protesting the Stamp Act. People in every colony reacted with fury and indignation to news of the Stamp Act. A young Virginia lawyer named Patrick Henry expressed the sentiments of many when he stood up in the House of Burgesses to demand that the king’s government recognize the rights of all citizens—including no taxation without representation. In Massachusetts, James Otis initiated a call for cooperative action among the colonies to protest the Stamp Act. Representatives from nine colonies met in New York in 1765 to form the so-called Stamp Act Congress. They resolved that only their own elected representatives had the legal authority to approve taxes.
The protest against the stamp tax took a violent turn with the formation of the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, a secret society organized for the purpose of intimidating tax agents. Members of this society sometimes tarred and feathered revenue officials and destroyed revenue stamps.
Boycotts against British imports were the most effective form of protest. It became fashionable in the colonies in 1765 and 1766 for people not to purchase any article of British origin. Faced with a sharp drop in trade, London merchants put pressure on Parliament to repeal the controversial Stamp Act.
Declaratory Act. In 1766, Grenville was replaced by another prime minister, and Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act. When news of the repeal reached the colonies, there was widespread rejoicing. Few colonists at the time were aware that Parliament had also enacted a face-saving measure known as the Declaratory Act (1766). This act asserted that Parliament had the right to tax and make laws for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” This declaration of policy would soon lead to renewed misunderstanding and conflict between the American colonists and the British government.
Second Phase of the Crisis, 1767–1773
Because the British government still needed new revenues, the newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, proposed another tax measure.
The Townshend Acts. Adopting Townshend’s program in 1767, Parliament enacted new duties to be collected on colonial imports of tea, glass, and paper. The law required that the revenues raised be used to pay crown officials in the colonies, thus making them independent of the colonial assemblies that had previously paid their salaries. The Townshend Acts also provided for the search of private homes for smuggled goods. All that an official needed to conduct such a search would be a writ of assistance (a general license to search anywhere) rather than a judge’s warrant permitting a search only of a specifically named property. Another of the Townshend Acts suspended New York’s assembly for that colony’s defiance of the Quartering Act.
Colonial reaction. At first, the colonists did not strongly protest the taxes under the Townshend Acts because they were indirect taxes paid by merchants at the ports (not direct taxes on consumer goods). Eventually, however, a few colonial leaders such as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Samuel Adams and James Otis of Massachusetts argued forcefully against the new duties. In his Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania, Dickinson agreed that Parliament could regulate commerce but argued that because duties were a form of taxation, they could not be levied on the colonies without the consent of their representative assemblies. Dickinson argued that the principle of no taxation without representation was an essential principle of English law.
In 1768, James Otis and Samuel Adams jointly wrote the Massachusetts Circular Letter and sent copies to every colonial legislature. It urged the various colonies to petition Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts. British officials in Boston ordered the letter retracted, threatened to dissolve the legislature, and increased the number of British troops in Boston.
Responding to the circular letter, the colonists again conducted boycotts of British goods. Merchants increased their smuggling activities to avoid the offensive Townshend duties.
Repeal of the Townshend Acts. Meanwhile, in London, there was an- other change in the king’s ministers. Lord Frederick North as the new prime minister urged Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts because their effect was to damage trade and to generate only a disappointing amount of revenue.
A small tax on tea was retained as a symbol of Parliament’s right to tax the colonies. The repeal of the Townshend Acts in 1770 ended the colonial boycott and, except for an incident in Boston (the “massacre” described below), there was a three-year respite from political troubles as the colonies entered into a period of economic prosperity.
Boston Massacre. The people of Boston generally resented the British troops who had been quartered in their city to protect customs officials from being attacked by the Sons of Liberty. On a snowy day in March 1770, a crowd of colonists harassed the guards near the customs house. The guards fired into the crowd, killing five people including an African American, Crispus Attucks. At their trial for murder, the soldiers were defended by colonial lawyer John Adams and acquitted. Adams’ more radical cousin, Samuel Adams, angrily denounced the shooting incident as a “massacre.” Later, the episode was often used by colonial leaders to inflame anti-British feeling.
Renewal of the Conflict
Even during the years of comparative peace, 1770–1772, Samuel Adams and a few other Americans kept alive the view that British officials were deliberately conspiring against colonial liberties. A principal device for spread- ing this idea was by means of the Committees of Correspondence initiated by Samuel Adams in 1772. In Boston and other Massachusetts towns, Adams began the practice of organizing committees that would regularly exchange letters about suspicious or potentially threatening British activities. The Virginia House of Burgesses took the concept a step further when it organized intercolonial committees in 1773.
The Gaspee. One incident frequently discussed in the committees’ letters was that of the Gaspee. This British customs ship had been successful in catching a number of smugglers. In 1772, the ship ran aground off the shore of Rhode Island. Seizing their opportunity to destroy the hated vessel, a group of colonists disguised as Native Americans ordered the British crew ashore and then set fire to the ship. The British ordered a commission to investigate and bring guilty individuals to Britain for trial.
Boston Tea Party. The colonists continued their refusal to buy British tea because the British insisted on their right to collect the tax. Hoping to help the British East India Company out of its financial problems, Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, which made the price of the company’s tea—even with the tax included—cheaper than that of smuggled Dutch tea.
Many Americans refused to buy the cheaper tea because to do so would, in effect, recognize Parliament’s right to tax the colonies. A shipment of the East India Company’s tea arrived in Boston harbor, but there were no buyers. Before the royal governor could arrange to bring the tea ashore, a group of Bostonians disguised themselves as Native Americans, boarded the British ships, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. Colonial reaction to this incident (December 1773) was mixed. While many applauded the Boston Tea Party as a justifiable defense of liberty, others thought the destruction of private property was far too radical.
Intolerable Acts
In England, news of the Boston Tea Party angered the king, Lord North, and members of Parliament. In retaliation, the British government enacted a series of punitive acts (the Coercive Acts), together with a separate act dealing with French Canada (the Quebec Act). The colonists were outraged by these various laws, which were given the epithet “Intolerable Acts.”
The Coercive Acts (1774). There were four Coercive Acts, directed mainly at punishing the people of Boston and Massachusetts and bringing the dissidents under control.
1) The Port Act closed the port of Boston, prohibiting trade in and out of the harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for.
2) The Massachusetts Government Act reduced the power of the Massachusetts legislature while increasing the power of the royal governor.
3) The Administration of Justice Act allowed royal officials accused of crimes to be tried in England instead of in the colonies.
4) A fourth law expanded the Quartering Act to enable British troops to be quartered in private homes. It applied to all colonies.
Quebec Act (1774). When it passed the Coercive Acts, the British government also passed a law organizing the Canadian lands gained from France. This plan was accepted by most French Canadians, but it was resented by many in the 13 colonies.
Provisions. The Quebec Act established Roman Catholicism as the official religion of Quebec, set up a government without a representative assembly, and extended Quebec’s boundary to the Ohio River.
American Anger. The colonists viewed the Quebec Act as a direct attack on the American colonies because it took away lands that they claimed along the Ohio River. They also feared that the British would attempt to enact similar laws in America to take away their representative government. The predominantly Protestant Americans also resented the recognition given to Catholicism.
Philosophical Foundations of the American Revolution
For Americans, especially those who were in positions of leadership, there was a long tradition of loyalty to the king and England. As the differences between them grew, many Americans searched for an explanation and justification for this changing relationship.
The Enlightenment
In the 18th century, some educated Americans were attracted to a European movement in literature and philosophy that is known as the Enlightenment. The leaders of this movement believed that the “darkness” of past ages could be corrected by the use of human reason in solving most of humanity’s problems.
A major influence on the Enlightenment and on American thinking was the work of John Locke, a 17th-century English philosopher and political theorist. Locke, in his Two Treatises of Government, reasoned that while the state (the government) is supreme, it is bound to follow “natural laws” based on the rights that people have simply because they are human. He argued that sovereignty ultimately resides with the people rather than with the state. Furthermore, said Locke, citizens had a right and an obligation to revolt against whatever government failed to protect their rights.
Other Enlightenment philosophers adopted and expounded on Locke’s ideas. His stress on natural rights would provide a rationale for the American Revolution and later for the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution.
Other ideas of the Enlightenment. The era of the Enlightenment was at its peak in the mid-18th century—the very years that future leaders of the American Revolution (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams) were coming to maturity. Many of these Enlightenment thinkers in Europe and America were Deists, who believed that God had established natural laws in creating the universe, but that the role of divine intervention in human affairs was minimal. They believed in rationalism and trusted human reason to solve the many problems of life and society, and emphasized reason, science, and respect for humanity. Their political philosophy, derived from Locke and developed further by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had a profound influence on educated Americans in the 1760s and 1770s—the decades of revolutionary thought and action that finally culminated in the American Revolution.
Empires at War
Late in the 17th century, a war broke out involving Great Britain, France, and Spain. This was the first of a series of four wars that were worldwide in scope, being fought not only in Europe but also in India and North America. These wars occurred intermittently over a 74-year period from 1689 to 1763. The stakes were high, since the winner of the struggle stood to gain supremacy in the West Indies and Canada and to dominate the lucrative colonial trade.
The First Three Wars
The first three wars were named after the king or queen under whose reign they occurred. In both King William’s War (1689–1697) and Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), the English launched expeditions to capture Quebec, but their efforts failed. Native Americans supported by the French burned English frontier settlements. Ultimately, the English forces prevailed in Queen Anne’s War and gained both Nova Scotia from France and trading rights in Spanish America.
A third war was fought during the reign of George II: King George’s War (1744–1748). Once again, the British colonies were under attack from their perennial rivals, the French and the Spanish. In Georgia, James Oglethorpe led a colonial army that managed to repulse Spanish attacks. To the north, a force of New Englanders captured Louisbourg, a major French fortress, on Cape Breton Island, controlling access to the St. Lawrence River. In the peace treaty ending the war, however, Britain agreed to give Louisbourg back to the French in exchange for political and economic gains in India. New Englanders were furious about the loss of a fort that they had fought so hard to win.
The French and Indian War
The first three wars between England and France focused primarily on battles in Europe and only secondarily on conflict in the colonies. The European powers saw little value in committing regular troops to America. In the fourth and final war in the series, however, the fighting actually began in the colonies and then spread to Europe. Moreover, England and France now recognized the full importance of their colonies and shipped large numbers of troops overseas to North America rather than rely on “amateur” colonial forces. This fourth and most decisive war was known in the colonies as the French and Indian War (in Europe, it was called the Seven Years’ War).
Beginning of the war. From the British point of view, the French pro- voked the war by building a chain of forts in the Ohio River Valley. One of the reasons the French did so was to halt the westward growth of the British colonies. Hoping to stop the French from completing work on Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) and thereby win control of the Ohio River Valley, the governor of Virginia sent a small militia (armed force) under the command of a young colonel named George Washington. After gaining a small initial victory, Washington’s troops surrendered to a superior force of Frenchmen and their Native American allies on July 3, 1754. With this military encounter in the wilderness, the final war for empire began.
At first the war went badly for the British. In 1755, another expedition from Virginia, led by General Edward Braddock, ended in a disastrous defeat, as more than 2,000 British regulars and colonial troops were routed by a smaller force of French and Native Americans near Ft. Duquesne. The Algonquin allies of the French ravaged the frontier from western Pennsylvania to North Carolina. A British invasion of French Canada in 1756 and 1757 was repulsed.
The Albany Plan of Union. Recognizing the need for coordinating colonial defense, the British government called for representatives from several colonies to meet in a congress at Albany, New York, in 1754. The delegates from seven colonies adopted a plan—the Albany Plan of Union—developed by Benjamin Franklin that provided for an intercolonial government and a system for recruiting troops and collecting taxes from the various colonies for their common defense. (For an excerpt from the Albany Plan of Union, see pages 40–41.) Each colony was too jealous of its own taxation powers to accept the plan, however, and it never took effect. The Albany congress was significant, however, because it set a precedent for later, more revolutionary congresses in the 1770s.
British victory. In London, William Pitt, the new British prime minister, concentrated the government’s military strategy on conquering Canada. This objective was accomplished with the retaking of Louisbourg in 1758, the surrender of Quebec to General James Wolfe in 1759, and the taking of Montreal in 1760. With these victories and the signing of a peace treaty in 1763, the British extended their control of North America, and French power on the continent virtually ended.
Through the peace treaty (the Peace of Paris), Great Britain acquired both French Canada and Spanish Florida. France ceded (gave up) to Spain its huge western territory, Louisiana, and claims west of the Mississippi River in compensation for Spain’s loss of Florida.
Immediate effects of the war. Its victory in the French and Indian War gave Great Britain unchallenged supremacy in North America and also estab- lished that country as the dominant naval power in the world. No longer did the American colonies face the threat of concerted attacks from the French, the Spanish, and their Native American allies. From the American point of view, no consequence of the war was more momentous than a fundamental change in the relationship between the colonies and the British government. Foremost was the change in how the British viewed the colonies and how the colonists viewed the home government.
The British view. The British came away from the war with a generally low opinion of the colonial military effort. They held the American militia in contempt as a poorly trained, disorderly rabble. Furthermore, they noted that some of the colonies had refused to contribute either troops or money to the war effort. The British who took this view were convinced that the colonists were both unable and unwilling to defend the new frontiers of the vastly expanded British empire.
The colonial view. The colonists took an opposite view of their military performance. They were proud of their record in all four wars and developed confidence that they could successfully provide for their own defense. They were not impressed with British troops or their leadership, whose methods of warfare seemed badly suited to America’s densely wooded terrain.
Reorganization of the British Empire
Even more serious than the resentful feelings stirred by the war experience was the British government’s decision to change its colonial policies. Previously, Britain had exercised little direct control over the colonies and had generally allowed its navigation laws regulating colonial trade to go unenforced. This earlier policy of salutary neglect was now abandoned as the British saw a need to adopt more forceful policies for taking control of their expanded North American dominions.
All four wars—and the last one in particular—had been extremely costly. In addition, Britain now felt the need to maintain a large British military force to guard its American frontiers. Among British landowners, pressure was building to reduce the heavy taxes that the colonial wars had laid upon them.
King George III and the dominant political party in Parliament (the Whigs) pursued a colonial policy aimed at solving Britain’s domestic financial problems. Making the American colonies bear more of the cost of maintaining the British empire was a popular policy with the various factions of Whigs that vied for the king’s favor.
Pontiac’s rebellion. The first major test of the new British imperial policy came in 1763 when Chief Pontiac led a major attack against colonial settlements on the western frontier. The Native Americans were angered by the growing westward movement of European settlers and by the British refusal to offer gifts as the French had done. Pontiac’s alliance of Native Americans in the Ohio Valley destroyed forts and settlements from New York to Virginia. Rather than relying on colonial forces to retaliate, the British sent regular troops to deal with the “rebellion.”
Proclamation of 1763. As a further measure for stabilizing the western frontier, the British government issued a proclamation that prohibited colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. Such a measure, it was hoped, would help to prevent future hostilities between colonists and Native Americans. But the colonists reacted to the proclamation with anger and defiance. After their victory in the French and Indian War, Americans hoped to reap benefits in the form of access to western lands. For the British to deny such benefits was infuriating. Defying the prohibition, thousands streamed westward beyond the imaginary boundary line drawn by the British.
British Actions and Colonial Reactions
The Proclamation of 1763 was the first of a series of acts by the British government that were met with anger and resistance in the colonies. From the British point of view, each act was justified as a proper method for protecting its colonial empire and making the colonies pay their share of costs for such protection. From the colonists’ point of view, each act represented an alarming threat to their cherished liberties and long-established practice of representative government.
New Revenues and Regulations
In the first two years of peace, Parliament adopted three measures that aroused colonial suspicions of a British plot to subvert their liberties. These were the Sugar Act of 1764, the Quartering Act of 1765, and the Stamp Act of 1765. Each measure expressed the imperial policies of King George III’s chancellor of the exchequer (treasury) and prime minister, Lord George Grenville.
Sugar Act. This act (also known as the Revenue Act of 1764) placed duties on foreign sugar and certain luxuries. Its chief purpose was to raise money for the crown, and a companion law also provided for stricter enforcement of the Navigation Acts to stop smuggling. Those accused of smuggling were to be tried in admiralty courts by crown-appointed judges without juries.
Quartering Act. This act required the colonists to provide food and living quarters for British soldiers stationed in the colonies.
Stamp Act. In an effort to raise funds to support British military forces in the colonies, Lord Grenville turned to a tax long in use in England. The Stamp Act, enacted by Parliament in 1765, required that revenue stamps be placed on most printed paper in the colonies, including all legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, and advertisements. This was the first direct tax— collected from those who used the goods—paid by the people in the colonies, as opposed to the taxes on goods that were imported into the colonies, which were paid by merchants.
Protesting the Stamp Act. People in every colony reacted with fury and indignation to news of the Stamp Act. A young Virginia lawyer named Patrick Henry expressed the sentiments of many when he stood up in the House of Burgesses to demand that the king’s government recognize the rights of all citizens—including no taxation without representation. In Massachusetts, James Otis initiated a call for cooperative action among the colonies to protest the Stamp Act. Representatives from nine colonies met in New York in 1765 to form the so-called Stamp Act Congress. They resolved that only their own elected representatives had the legal authority to approve taxes.
The protest against the stamp tax took a violent turn with the formation of the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, a secret society organized for the purpose of intimidating tax agents. Members of this society sometimes tarred and feathered revenue officials and destroyed revenue stamps.
Boycotts against British imports were the most effective form of protest. It became fashionable in the colonies in 1765 and 1766 for people not to purchase any article of British origin. Faced with a sharp drop in trade, London merchants put pressure on Parliament to repeal the controversial Stamp Act.
Declaratory Act. In 1766, Grenville was replaced by another prime minister, and Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act. When news of the repeal reached the colonies, there was widespread rejoicing. Few colonists at the time were aware that Parliament had also enacted a face-saving measure known as the Declaratory Act (1766). This act asserted that Parliament had the right to tax and make laws for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” This declaration of policy would soon lead to renewed misunderstanding and conflict between the American colonists and the British government.
Second Phase of the Crisis, 1767–1773
Because the British government still needed new revenues, the newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, proposed another tax measure.
The Townshend Acts. Adopting Townshend’s program in 1767, Parliament enacted new duties to be collected on colonial imports of tea, glass, and paper. The law required that the revenues raised be used to pay crown officials in the colonies, thus making them independent of the colonial assemblies that had previously paid their salaries. The Townshend Acts also provided for the search of private homes for smuggled goods. All that an official needed to conduct such a search would be a writ of assistance (a general license to search anywhere) rather than a judge’s warrant permitting a search only of a specifically named property. Another of the Townshend Acts suspended New York’s assembly for that colony’s defiance of the Quartering Act.
Colonial reaction. At first, the colonists did not strongly protest the taxes under the Townshend Acts because they were indirect taxes paid by merchants at the ports (not direct taxes on consumer goods). Eventually, however, a few colonial leaders such as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and Samuel Adams and James Otis of Massachusetts argued forcefully against the new duties. In his Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania, Dickinson agreed that Parliament could regulate commerce but argued that because duties were a form of taxation, they could not be levied on the colonies without the consent of their representative assemblies. Dickinson argued that the principle of no taxation without representation was an essential principle of English law.
In 1768, James Otis and Samuel Adams jointly wrote the Massachusetts Circular Letter and sent copies to every colonial legislature. It urged the various colonies to petition Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts. British officials in Boston ordered the letter retracted, threatened to dissolve the legislature, and increased the number of British troops in Boston.
Responding to the circular letter, the colonists again conducted boycotts of British goods. Merchants increased their smuggling activities to avoid the offensive Townshend duties.
Repeal of the Townshend Acts. Meanwhile, in London, there was an- other change in the king’s ministers. Lord Frederick North as the new prime minister urged Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts because their effect was to damage trade and to generate only a disappointing amount of revenue.
A small tax on tea was retained as a symbol of Parliament’s right to tax the colonies. The repeal of the Townshend Acts in 1770 ended the colonial boycott and, except for an incident in Boston (the “massacre” described below), there was a three-year respite from political troubles as the colonies entered into a period of economic prosperity.
Boston Massacre. The people of Boston generally resented the British troops who had been quartered in their city to protect customs officials from being attacked by the Sons of Liberty. On a snowy day in March 1770, a crowd of colonists harassed the guards near the customs house. The guards fired into the crowd, killing five people including an African American, Crispus Attucks. At their trial for murder, the soldiers were defended by colonial lawyer John Adams and acquitted. Adams’ more radical cousin, Samuel Adams, angrily denounced the shooting incident as a “massacre.” Later, the episode was often used by colonial leaders to inflame anti-British feeling.
Renewal of the Conflict
Even during the years of comparative peace, 1770–1772, Samuel Adams and a few other Americans kept alive the view that British officials were deliberately conspiring against colonial liberties. A principal device for spread- ing this idea was by means of the Committees of Correspondence initiated by Samuel Adams in 1772. In Boston and other Massachusetts towns, Adams began the practice of organizing committees that would regularly exchange letters about suspicious or potentially threatening British activities. The Virginia House of Burgesses took the concept a step further when it organized intercolonial committees in 1773.
The Gaspee. One incident frequently discussed in the committees’ letters was that of the Gaspee. This British customs ship had been successful in catching a number of smugglers. In 1772, the ship ran aground off the shore of Rhode Island. Seizing their opportunity to destroy the hated vessel, a group of colonists disguised as Native Americans ordered the British crew ashore and then set fire to the ship. The British ordered a commission to investigate and bring guilty individuals to Britain for trial.
Boston Tea Party. The colonists continued their refusal to buy British tea because the British insisted on their right to collect the tax. Hoping to help the British East India Company out of its financial problems, Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, which made the price of the company’s tea—even with the tax included—cheaper than that of smuggled Dutch tea.
Many Americans refused to buy the cheaper tea because to do so would, in effect, recognize Parliament’s right to tax the colonies. A shipment of the East India Company’s tea arrived in Boston harbor, but there were no buyers. Before the royal governor could arrange to bring the tea ashore, a group of Bostonians disguised themselves as Native Americans, boarded the British ships, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. Colonial reaction to this incident (December 1773) was mixed. While many applauded the Boston Tea Party as a justifiable defense of liberty, others thought the destruction of private property was far too radical.
Intolerable Acts
In England, news of the Boston Tea Party angered the king, Lord North, and members of Parliament. In retaliation, the British government enacted a series of punitive acts (the Coercive Acts), together with a separate act dealing with French Canada (the Quebec Act). The colonists were outraged by these various laws, which were given the epithet “Intolerable Acts.”
The Coercive Acts (1774). There were four Coercive Acts, directed mainly at punishing the people of Boston and Massachusetts and bringing the dissidents under control.
1) The Port Act closed the port of Boston, prohibiting trade in and out of the harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for.
2) The Massachusetts Government Act reduced the power of the Massachusetts legislature while increasing the power of the royal governor.
3) The Administration of Justice Act allowed royal officials accused of crimes to be tried in England instead of in the colonies.
4) A fourth law expanded the Quartering Act to enable British troops to be quartered in private homes. It applied to all colonies.
Quebec Act (1774). When it passed the Coercive Acts, the British government also passed a law organizing the Canadian lands gained from France. This plan was accepted by most French Canadians, but it was resented by many in the 13 colonies.
Provisions. The Quebec Act established Roman Catholicism as the official religion of Quebec, set up a government without a representative assembly, and extended Quebec’s boundary to the Ohio River.
American Anger. The colonists viewed the Quebec Act as a direct attack on the American colonies because it took away lands that they claimed along the Ohio River. They also feared that the British would attempt to enact similar laws in America to take away their representative government. The predominantly Protestant Americans also resented the recognition given to Catholicism.
Philosophical Foundations of the American Revolution
For Americans, especially those who were in positions of leadership, there was a long tradition of loyalty to the king and England. As the differences between them grew, many Americans searched for an explanation and justification for this changing relationship.
The Enlightenment
In the 18th century, some educated Americans were attracted to a European movement in literature and philosophy that is known as the Enlightenment. The leaders of this movement believed that the “darkness” of past ages could be corrected by the use of human reason in solving most of humanity’s problems.
A major influence on the Enlightenment and on American thinking was the work of John Locke, a 17th-century English philosopher and political theorist. Locke, in his Two Treatises of Government, reasoned that while the state (the government) is supreme, it is bound to follow “natural laws” based on the rights that people have simply because they are human. He argued that sovereignty ultimately resides with the people rather than with the state. Furthermore, said Locke, citizens had a right and an obligation to revolt against whatever government failed to protect their rights.
Other Enlightenment philosophers adopted and expounded on Locke’s ideas. His stress on natural rights would provide a rationale for the American Revolution and later for the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution.
Other ideas of the Enlightenment. The era of the Enlightenment was at its peak in the mid-18th century—the very years that future leaders of the American Revolution (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams) were coming to maturity. Many of these Enlightenment thinkers in Europe and America were Deists, who believed that God had established natural laws in creating the universe, but that the role of divine intervention in human affairs was minimal. They believed in rationalism and trusted human reason to solve the many problems of life and society, and emphasized reason, science, and respect for humanity. Their political philosophy, derived from Locke and developed further by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had a profound influence on educated Americans in the 1760s and 1770s—the decades of revolutionary thought and action that finally culminated in the American Revolution.