Politics in The American Revolution

The French, the Indians, and the Americans

In 1763, a worldwide imperial conflict called the Seven Years' War ended in resounding victory for the British Empire, which smashed its European rivals to emerge from the conflict as one of the largest and most powerful empires in world history. North America had been just one of many fronts in the global Seven Years' War, which American colonists usually called the French and Indian War in honor of their enemies in the conflict. In the end, the French and their Indian allies fell to British and colonial forces, leaving England officially in control of the whole part of North America east of the Mississippi River and north of Florida. Of course, the several hundred thousand Native Americans who inhabited the continent would not have seen it that way. But for Englishmen everywhere, the war's end was a time of triumph and liberty. Englishmen enjoyed more rights and freedoms than the subjects of any other world empire at the time. The colonists reveled in the victory they had helped the mother country to achieve. Colonists in 1763 would have thought the very idea of independence unthinkable, and probably downright mad.

Who could have foreseen that within just two years, angry mobs of Americans would attack the private residences of colonial officials; within five years, colonial leaders would call for a boycott of British goods; within seven years, five colonists would lie dead on Boston Common, shot down by British troops?

While Britain may have been especially powerful after the French and Indian War, it was also quite broke financially. Imperial wars waged on multiple continents over a period of several years were very expensive endeavors. At war's end the British sought to recoup some of their costs from the Americans, who had certainly benefited from the protection of British soldiers and the expansion of the realm westward. So England issued the Proclamation of 1763, prohibiting colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, in order to avoid potentially costly and protracted frontier wars between settlers and Indians. This, of course, angered white settlers who had already pushed into the backcountry of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the elite eastern planters who had already speculated in the purchase of extensive land claims beyond the Appalachians. American ire only increased when England went on to pass a series of taxes, designed to enlist the colonies in helping to pay off their share of the war costs.

For 100 years, England had passed laws to regulate colonial trade in the interest of a mercantilist policy designed to ensure that imperial commerce benefited the mother country. These laws supposedly bound American colonists to trade only with English merchants and ship their products only in English vessels, even if the Americans could find better prices through foreign traders. Yet until 1763, the imperial government in London had allowed those laws to go largely unenforced, and the colonists had since become accustomed to a sense of self-determination during this period of so-called "salutary neglect." In short, the British failed to appreciate just what a century of salutary neglect had done. While lawmakers in London believed they were simply enforcing their old laws and applying new ones for the good of the entire empire—including its American subjects—the colonists interpreted the new Parliamentary acts after 1763 very differently. Colonists felt that these acts were violations of their liberty, unacceptable infringements of their rights as free Englishmen. When British officials tried to take such freedoms away, Americans not only protested, but they began to think and speak of those freedoms as their essential rights.

The Sugar Act

British taxes and regulations on colonial commerce were not entirely unknown before 1763, but most had gone unenforced due to a combination of Britain's salutary neglect and Americans' ingenuity in bribing, smuggling, or otherwise skirting the rules. Therefore, when Parliament passed the Sugar Act, it hardly considered such a tax as new or unorthodox. The Molasses Act of 1733 had sought to regulate the same items. It levied high duties of six pence per gallon on molasses, in an effort to shut down the trade between the French Caribbean (where sugar plantations produced the molasses) and New England (where molasses was a principal ingredient for distilleries manufacturing rum). The 1764 act actually cut those taxes in half, to three pence per gallon—but in contrast to the 1733 act it also included new safeguards to ensure that it would actually be enforced. For merchants, this effectively meant a change from no tax to a three pence tax. The act also provided for stronger admiralty courts, where merchants accused of smuggling could be tried without a jury; colonial juries were notoriously sympathetic to their fellow Americans. The ultimate effect was to create anxiety among colonists whose economic livelihoods were substantially threatened by the new (or newly enforced) taxes and regulations: these were primarily the inhabitants of port towns along the coast.

The Stamp Act

In 1765, Parliament followed up the Sugar Act with the Stamp Act, a direct British tax on a wide variety of printed materials (everything from playing cards to court documents, land deeds, books, newspapers, and even dice). Because each of those documents had to contain the official government stamp, colonists had to pay the tax whenever they wanted to purchase any of the printed items. In one sense, the Stamp Act was merely Parliament's attempt to strengthen and enforce the long-ignored Navigation Acts, which had been passed a century earlier to ensure that valuable American exports—such as tobacco—would have to travel through English ports. But in another sense, the Stamp Act marked a departure from all imperial regulations that preceded it, as it was the first time the British sought to gain revenues by taxing colonial commerce directly (an "internal tax") instead of regulating trade (an "external tax"). Some of these revenues were supposed to go towards the cost of stationing British troops in North America, to ensure security and stability.

American colonists responded to the Stamp Act with outrage. They quickly became alarmed at the prospect of a permanent standing army in their midst. Local elites were offended by Parliament's challenge to their own authority. And a large cross-section of Americans who read books or newspapers, played cards or dice, or purchased any of the printed items specified in the Stamp Act, were angered not only by the financial burden incurred but by the principle of the matter: Parliament had directly taxed the colonists without their consent or the consent of their representatives. Colonists thought of themselves as equals in the British Empire, not subordinates, and they couched their protests in language that invoked the rights of all Englishmen. If they allowed this precedent to stand, the reasoning went, then Parliament could forever run roughshod over them and their rights. British officials, on the other hand, thought of the colonists as a population subject to Parliamentary authority, and believed that the London government could not capitulate without surrendering that authority.

Colonial resistance became violent over the summer of 1765, when a shoemaker named Ebenezer Mackintosh led an angry mob on a building owned by Andrew Oliver, a merchant appointed to enforce the Stamp Act who was also a relative of Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Hutchinson privately opposed the act, but publicly fulfilled his role as a symbol of British authority by helping to disperse the crowd. A few days later, Mackintosh led his fellow Bostonians over to Hutchinson's own house, where they broke down the front door and looted everything in sight, leaving little intact but the bare walls. Hutchinson and his family, who were eating dinner when the mob approached, just barely got away in time. Mackintosh was subsequently arrested, but then released, thanks to the intervention of prominent craftsmen and merchants—a group known as "the Loyal Nine"—who led the Stamp Act opposition but had not anticipated that it would escalate so rapidly.

Yet not all resistance was violent or threatening. In Virginia, the talented orator Patrick Henry persuaded his colleagues in the House of Burgesses to pass five resolutions that asserted the colonists' rights as Englishmen, including their right to consent to taxation. The more conservative members of the House rescinded the fifth resolve the next day, feeling it went too far by declaring that any entity attempting to assume the power of taxation—other than the General Assembly of Virginia—"has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom."⁸⁵ Two additional proposed resolves were not passed, as they remained too radical for the time: they called for outright resistance to unlawful taxation and declared anyone who denied the colonial assembly's sole right to tax "an enemy to this his majesty's colony."⁸⁶ Although these last two resolves were never enacted, they (along with the other five) were all reprinted in papers throughout the colonies. Virginia's resolutions received further support in October 1765, when prominent delegates from nine colonies convened in New York as the Stamp Act Congress. The Congress endorsed the Virginia resolves, and in so doing, became the first united coalition of the North American colonies.

As colonists persisted in their objections to the Stamp Act, whether by formal convention or by vigilante action, the distinction between internal and external parliamentary taxes began to fade. Soon any form of English taxation without representation was deemed insupportable. Liberty became the catchword of the day: in New York City, the pine mast where anti-Stamp Act activists gathered was known as the Liberty Pole. In Boston, the elm tree where protestors hung an effigy of stamp distributor Andrew Oliver was dubbed the Liberty Tree, and it became an iconic symbol in colonial pamphlets and prints. By the end of 1765, hundreds of New Yorkers chanted "Liberty!" as they moved through the city streets in nightly processions. Amidst these moving symbols and stirring concepts, previously ambivalent people of all social ranks mobilized into a grass roots movement that unified colonists across towns and regions. Beginning in Boston, Committees of Correspondence soon emerged throughout British North America to relay information on recent British actions and to coordinate colonial protests. England had inadvertently prompted colonial unity in resistance to its own authority.

Parliament was stunned by the Americans' aggressive resistance, and English merchants and manufacturers, anxious to safeguard their American markets and business ties, pressed the government to repeal the measures that had so inflamed the colonists. Parliament thus repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. But Parliament also felt it needed to avoid the appearance of succumbing to the colonials, and thus issued the Declaratory Act, which explicitly rejected the assertions that only colonial representatives could levy taxes. Parliament instead asserted its right to rule by virtual representation—that is, the government in London would determine what was good for the empire as a whole, representing the interests of subjects in all British territories, whether or not they elected their own representatives.

The Townshend Duties

During the Stamp Act opposition, colonial leader Ben Franklin—who was living in London at the time—told the English Parliament and press that Americans would not object to⁸⁷"external" taxes. But Franklin was an ocean apart from his comrades, and he was wrong. The Americans' anti-tax fervor had spread beyond opposition to the "internal" taxation of the Stamp Act. Franklin's miscalculation was soon revealed when Parliament acted on the belief that the colonists would submit to taxation on imported merchandise—the "external" form of taxation. Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend successfully ushered through Parliament a new series of colonial taxes on British imports to the colonies; they would be known ever after—notoriously—as the Townshend Duties. The new duties also included safeguards to empower customs commissioners and suppress smuggling.

Merchants opposed this new legislation, and gradually a larger colonial resistance once again emerged. Boston, the epicenter of colonial trade—and colonial protest—began a boycott (or "non-importation") movement that soon spread throughout the colonies. Urban artisans were only too happy to support the boycott movement, since it directly benefited their own businesses by literally eliminating the competition. But the propertied classes worried once again about the potential upheaval and chaos that might be unleashed by the lower classes in the process of opposing the legislation. Just as during the Stamp Act crisis, large protests overtook the streets, and Bostonians rioted in 1768 when royal troops seized John Hancock's ship Liberty for violating trade laws. When five Bostonians were shot in a brawl with British troops in 1770, colonists memorialized and propagandized the incident as "the Boston Massacre."

There were still ample sources of division to keep the colonists from uniting as one. The wealthy not only worried about the tactics and rebelliousness of the lower-class masses, but some of them openly objected to such behavior. John Adams, who later became one of the foremost Patriots of the Revolution, defended the nine British soldiers put on trial for the Boston Massacre. Adams believed that the entire incident exemplified the dangerous potential of unorganized mob protest actions. Other elites found that they were more reliant on British imports than they first realized; when merchants also found themselves unable to maintain a profit, the non-importation movement imploded. Though the boycott had reduced the value of British goods shipped to the colonies by a third in 1769, those imports soon rebounded.⁸⁸

Finding Common Cause with a Common Foe

Many of the most galvanizing and unifying incidents of the pre-revolutionary period entailed seemingly isolated acts with the potential to affect all colonists. When the citizens of the Providence, Rhode Island area boarded the grounded British vessel Gaspee in the summer of 1772, removed the crew, and set the ship afire, they committed a simple act of vigilantism. But they also manifested widespread colonial frustrations with customs patrollers, who were aboard the Gaspee in search of smugglers before it hit a sand bar. British officials such as the customs patrollers were simply doing their job, but they also embodied the new post-1763 Parliamentary policies that suddenly enforced taxes that had gone ignored for a century. The community clearly sided with the arsonists, as not one single person would come forward as a witness. When the British authorities then formed an independent commission of inquiry, bypassing the colonial courts, Americans interpreted their action as further evidence of English tyranny.

Only four days after the Gaspee incident, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson announced that his salary would thereafter be paid from customs revenues, not the colony's elected assembly. Not long after, he announced that Superior Court judges would be paid the same way. Colonial officials were thus freed from reliance on the assembly, which saw its power reduced because of these changes. The shift to customs revenues as the source of pay for royal officials also increased pressure on colonial smugglers, since crown agents now found it in their own self-interest to raise revenues by stamping out the black market. Hutchinson's actions threatened colonial interests beyond Massachusetts's borders; prominent Americans from several colonies soon accepted Boston merchant Sam Adams's invitation to join Committees of Correspondence in order to coordinate colonial strategy in the struggle with the mother country. These Committees played a critical role in keeping the colonies interconnected, organizing colonial responses to British policies, and ensuring that Americans remained committed to the cause of liberty.

Tea and Sympathy

In May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act, which would spark a legendary rebellion in Boston. The Act did not actually impose any new taxes, but sought to save the East India Company—a large British trading monopoly—by shipping its surplus tea to the colonies. The English government would subsidize the tea so that East India could afford to sell it at discounted prices. East India was the largest mercantile firm in the entire British empire, and Prime Minister Lord North backed the Tea Act as a means of bailing out the monopoly and thereby avoiding the risk of a general economic collapse. But the colonists interpreted the scheme as a strategy to bolster support for the detested Townshend Duties. They felt that Parliament was trying to trick them into giving East India their support by offering bargain prices for the sake of bailing out an officially sanctioned English monopoly. Colonists also recognized that direct sale of tea by British agents would only hurt local merchants' businesses. They sought a dramatic gesture to prove that their principles could not be bought with cheap tea.

On 16 December 1773, Patriot leaders in Boston dressed up as Mohawk Indians and boarded three ships carrying the East India tea. They threw 342 chests of the stuff overboard, where it sank to the depths of Boston Harbor. Like Rhode Islanders at the time of the earlier Gaspee incident, Bostonians supported the illegal action of the Tea Party, closing ranks to prevent the identities of the participants from getting out to British authorities. (Samuel Adams and John Hancock were definitely among them). The Boston Tea Party may have been the most dramatic act of colonial resistance to the Tea Act, but it was not the only one. In Charleston, the Sons of Liberty had so intimidated local consignees that they had all resigned by the time the ship arrived with its controversial cargo. There was simply no one to sell the tea, so instead the Governor ordered it stored in warehouses until he received further instructions from London. Once the war broke out two years later, colonists sold the warehoused tea to help finance the Revolution. In New York and Philadelphia, tea ships were turned back at the port and forced to return to England without unloading their cargo. Nonetheless, many colonists—including Ben Franklin—condemned the flagrant destruction of property in the Tea Party and called for Bostonians to refund the substantial (£10-15,000) value of the drowned tea. Such restitution might have helped to resolve the colonial crisis, but Parliament responded to the provocation of the Tea Party by seeking retribution, not restitution. That response only inflamed colonial opinion by seeming to confirm many Americans' fears of a growing English tyranny.

Intolerable

In March 1774, Parliament adopted the Boston Port Act, which shut down Boston Harbor, threatening to strangle the commerce of America's most important port. This provided the impetus for leaders in Maryland and Virginia to initiate a boycott on exports and imports from Britain. (The patriotic gesture was also one of self-interest for Chesapeake tobacco farmers, since the tobacco industry had been in a serious recession since late 1772.) The Boston Port Act was followed by three other measures to restore Parliament's control over the colonies; together, the colonists regarded these "Coercive Acts" (in Parliament's terminology) as the "Intolerable Acts." No matter which appellation they received, this combination of 1774 Parliamentary measures were designed to single out Boston as an example to the other colonies. Boston's punishment was meant to reassert English authority and to dissuade any other regions from rebellion by showing them the consequences of such an act. The ultimate effect was actually the complete reverse of what English authorities had intended. The Intolerable Acts soon prompted the colonists to protest British policies regardless of self interest, or perhaps because of it—because they had reason to believe that they could well be next.

There was the Massachusetts Government Act, which radically altered the structure of that colony's government by requiring towns to gain the governor's approval before they could hold meetings. The Act also empowered sheriffs to select jurors and made law-enforcement officers and the colony council appointed rather than elected positions. Then came the Administration of Justice Act, which empowered the Massachusetts governor to transfer all trials of officials to England if their alleged offense had occurred in the line of duty.

Finally, the Quartering Act enabled colonial governors to commandeer housing for British officers and soldiers. Contrary to popular legend—even among many historians—the Quartering Act never actually stipulated private homes but instead specified "uninhabited houses, out-houses, barns, or other buildings."⁸⁹ The 1774 Quartering Act was actually a clarification of previous legislation that Parliament had passed in 1765 and renewed and amended annually. Only the original 1765 act included taverns, alehouses, and inns among the locations that officials could commandeer for the regulars. Even then, provinces were to pay innkeepers and tavern owners for the use of their property.⁹⁰ Colonists regarded the Quartering Act as another violation of their rights, but they made no mention of troops intruding in private homes. It was the final and least controversial of the Coercive Acts, but the overall effect of the "Intolerable" legislation was no less explosive.

Rather than accepting Parliament's singling out of Boston as a warning to others, Americans throughout the thirteen colonies became determined to resist these measures because they seemed to confirm fears of a growing tyranny that could oppress all of British North America. Their concerns were only renewed with Parliament's passage of the Quebec Act in October 1774, which established an appointed governor and council for the newly acquired province of Quebec, rather than a representative assembly.

The Final Appeal

In July 1775 the Continental Congress sent King George III the last-ditch "Olive Branch Petition," as it came to be called. Written by John Dickinson, the petition to the King reasserted American loyalty to the crown and appealed directly to King George III "with all humility submitting to your Majesty's wise consideration," hoping for "a happy and permanent reconciliation." But it also asked "that, in the mean time...such statutes as more immediately distress any of your Majesty's Colonies may be repealed."⁹¹ Representatives of the Continental Congress presented the Olive Branch Petition to a representative of the king, but King George III refused to receive it.

This was the breaking point. Up until that moment, many colonial Patriots believed that their grievances were solely with ministerial policy, not with the king himself. But King George rejected their appeal outright and instead angrily condemned them as a people in "open and avowed rebellion" in August 1775. King George declared that all his officers in America, civil and military, were "obliged to exert their utmost endeavours [sic] to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice."⁹²

The king's proclamation meant war. In October, the House of Lords voted more than two-to-one and the House of Commons by an even greater majority to support war against the rebellious Americans.⁹³ Even after this total rebuff, many colonists still held out hope for reconciliation. But these actions set the stage for the radical alternative of independence, and revolutionary Tom Paine seized that moment to persuasively argue for the creation of a new society instead of attempting once again to resurrect the old.

The next time Congress addressed the king (and the rest of the "candid world"), it was via the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers charged George III with 27 enumerated transgressions that they felt justified their move toward independence. When they finally, reluctantly rejected their king as a tyrant, the American Patriots rejected monarchy altogether, setting a course towards a radically new form of republican government.

"Revolution in the Minds and Hearts of the People"

Looking back on the Revolution at the end of his life, John Adams wrote, "The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people."⁹⁴ Though most colonists did not have the time or luxury to read sophisticated Enlightenment treatises on political philosophy or theories on the rights of man, they understood, viscerally, the actions of Parliament—and subsequently of the king—as a threat to their liberty. That was enough. In the century of salutary neglect that led up to the end of the French and Indian War, Americans had developed an understanding of their rights and their place in the British empire, and they were not willing to submit to a different interpretation of who had the ability to tax them. Through a series of precipitous actions and reactions on both sides of the Atlantic, that initial difference of opinion spiraled into a challenge to monarchical rule itself by 1776. When Parliament offered the colonies a return to the status quo ante bellum on 16 March 1778—that is, they offered to grant all American demands short of independence—it was too late. By that time, the American Congress, and most of the American people, were dead set on gaining self-determination.

 The First Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept North America in the early and middle years of the eighteenth century, marked a pivotal moment in the history of the American colonies. In ways that could scarcely be understood at the time, the Great Awakening prepared the British subjects of North America for a radically different ideology and society. Throughout the colonial period, and even in the early years of the independent United States, most colonies or states had established churches—churches legally recognized as the official state church. Different colonies privileged different Christian sects, for example, Congregationalism (the descendent of Puritanism) was the official state church for Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; and Anglicanism was the established faith in most colonies, including Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. Along with official recognition came special privileges, like financial support from public taxation. Before the Great Awakening, colonial Americans harbored no expectation that there should be any separation between church and state.

The Great Awakening changed that, as fervent Christian revivalists attacked state-supported religion as an obstacle to true faith. Up and down the continent, stirring evangelical sermons roused the masses to a more impassioned expression of their faith, and in the process these converts deserted from the established churches in droves. The religious revival of America's common folk combined theological revolt with social uprising, as lower-class evangelicals abandoned the wealthy established churches of the elite. As historian Gordon S. Wood writes, "Hundreds of thousands of Virginians... found the established Anglican church unable to satisfy their emotional and moral needs and began forming new ordered evangelical communities that rejected outright the high style, luxurious living, and the preoccupations with rank and precedence of the dominant Anglican gentry."⁹⁵

The Church of England lost members—most of them ordinary people who owned little to no property—to the Separate Baptists, New Light Presbyterians, and Methodists. Many of these new splinter sects fostered an even more individualistic philosophy than that which was first embraced during the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. That initial Reformation had already persuaded people to question authority and think for themselves; when such behavior was reinforced and further radicalized in the Great Awakening, it did not bode well for a monarchy that relied upon submissive, deferential subjects to obey its laws and do its bidding. Of course, the social tensions heated by the Great Awakening did not immediately boil over but rather simmered for decades; more than 40 years passed between the Awakening and the coming of the Revolution.

And even the Revolution did not end the tradition of established churches in America; while state legislatures challenged the existence of these churches during the period of Revolutionary ferment, in many states these entrenched religious institutions persisted well into the early nineteenth century. Still, the new sects recognized the radical potential of the Revolution, and pressed for more reforms against the established churches to reduce public taxation for their support and to ensure more freedom of worship for all colonists. Freedom of worship for individuals—and freedom from government influence for churches—led to a flowering of Christian spirituality in America. The radical anti-establishment sects of the Great Awakening eventually grew to become America's largest churches. By the 1840s, the Methodist Episcopal Church was the largest denomination in the country, with over one million members, and the Baptists weren't far behind.

A People Divided

Though widespread resistance to the Stamp Act galvanized public awareness and sentiment throughout the North American colonies, "America" as we now know it was not even a concept in the minds of early-eighteenth-century colonists. The rudimentary communication and transportation systems of the period, combined with North America's vast territory, its diverse regions, labor systems, social hierarchies, and a long history of localized affiliations and histories, made for a dispersed and even disparate population. American identity did not yet exist; colonists thought of themselves first as Englishmen abroad, second as Bostonians or New Yorkers or Virginians, and not at all as "Americans."

Preexisting local feuds often intertwined with broader political issues and prompted different groups to take one side or the other as tensions escalated with the British in the 1760s and 70s. For many people, the Revolution offered an opportunity to settle old scores. Along the Hudson River to the north of New York City, tenants calling themselves the Sons of Liberty—the same name but a different association from the Sons who opposed the Stamp Act—refused in the mid-1760s to pay their rent and claimed their rented lands as their own. Both British and colonial troops soon suppressed their uprising. When the Revolution began, a disproportionate number of the wealthy Hudson Valley landowners—the enemies of the Sons, who had relied upon British protection—fled the colonies as Loyalists. But this was a specific example in a particular region of North America; in other counties, such as Westchester, New York, tenants sided with their landlords if they took any side at all.⁹⁷ Nor were all Loyalists rich. That fact alone is very telling, for if it were true that all Loyalists were rich, then it would indicate that the American Revolution truly was radical, and based on class divisions. But these generalizations do not square with the evidence, and the matter of who took which side was more complicated than the question of personal wealth, as we will see in the case of Virginia.

In the Green Mountains of the New York colony, settler Ethan Allen led a revolt of settlers against absentee New York landlords who tried to claim title to the region. Allen argued that settlers who worked the land held title over it, and in the mid-1770s he led his "Green Mountain Boys" on a successful revolt that ended with the Green Mountain territory breaking away to form independent Vermont. Allen and his "Boys" simultaneously became successful fighters for the Americans in the Revolution, as their opposition to New York's elites easily morphed into opposition to the British government that supported them. In South Carolina, backcountry residents protested their underrepresentation in the colonial assembly and a lack of local government capable of providing security and stability for landowners. These so-called "Regulators" also organized in North Carolina, where they tended to be small farmers. The Regulators of North Carolina kidnapped local officials and refused to pay taxes as a show of protest against the corruption of county officials, who saddled the farmers with exorbitant taxes and court fees. Under Governor William Tryon, the colonial militia suppressed some 2,000 of these armed but unorganized Regulators in 1771, at the battle of Alamance. Twelve Regulators were convicted of treason and six were hanged. Then the governor had his men trek through the backcountry, forcing 6,500 Piedmont settlers to sign oaths of allegiance. Preexisting local conflicts did not disappear once the Revolution swept across North America; those very conflicts may not have predetermined every colonist's allegiance, but they still manifested themselves in the sides that people took after the war had begun.

The Enlightenment Spirit of Inquiry Spills Over into the Eighteenth Century

Given the number of regional conflicts that consumed colonists both wealthy and poor, few people in North America had the time or luxury of seriously pondering their relationship to the mother country before 1763. Yet in the pre-revolutionary period, long before tensions with British authorities had strained to the breaking point, many colonial luminaries sought to apply the Enlightenment spirit of rational inquiry and its suspicions of authority to the political matters of their day. Several of America's foremost intellectuals began employing their knowledge of political philosophy to ask some difficult questions.

Ben Franklin suggested that government was something akin to a business, where the rulers were tantamount to Directors who were beholden to the company owners (the people of the country). The leaders derived their power from the people, and were the servants of the people. This was a pretty radical concept in the eighteenth century, because it ran against the prevailing notion that kings were divinely ordained and that monarchical government and hierarchical society were the natural order of things. Once people conceived of a government as an artificial, man-made institution, then it became much less sacred and much more susceptible to criticism and even overthrow. If kings really were "the servants and not the proprietors of the people," as Thomas Jefferson asserted, then it followed that the people had the power to determine a king's course of action, and he defied them at his peril.⁹⁸

Meritocracy

Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense, published in January 1776, helped to articulate revolutionary ideology in an easily understandable, accessible fashion that appealed to the masses who avidly read it (see The Political and Ideological Origins of the American Revolution for more on Common Sense). As the Revolution progressed, the masses quickly came to understand the radical potential of the new society they were helping to create. As historian Woody Holton has written, "The central thesis of Common Sense, hinted at in its title, was that the common people possessed enough sense to govern themselves."⁹⁹ Though many colonial elites did not exactly understand the Revolution this way, many colonists did. They fought for a new society where people would not be born into a fixed social rank, where they were expected to remain for the rest of their lives. Many elites—most of the "Founding Fathers" among them—supported some version of this theory, but assumed that the "better part" of American society—that is, the wealthy men who had the time and ability to obtain an education and who possessed the independence that came with property ownership—would naturally continue to shape the laws and fill the elite offices that governed everyone else.

The colonists had long thought themselves loyal subjects of the British monarchy, and significantly, there was no entrenched aristocracy in place on American soil. There were certainly social gradations of rank in the colonies—though the modern concepts of upper, middle, and lower class did not really exist before the Industrial Revolution—but as John Adams wrote in 1761, "all Persons under the Degree of Gentleman are styled Yeoman," including laborers and people who did not own any property. Because of this unique social infrastructure, Adams commented that "an idea of equality...seems generally to prevail, and the inferior order of people pay but little external respect to those who occupy superior stations."¹⁰⁰ In short, the colonies developed a more egalitarian society than Europe. As historian Gordon Wood has written, "Although eighteenth century society was much tighter and less permeable than American mythology would have it, the topmost ranks of the social hierarchy certainly remained more permeable and open to entry from below than in the mother country. Claiming the rank of gentleman in America was easier."¹⁰¹ If this sense of equal opportunity could be enshrined in the government itself, then people from the lower rungs of society would have some chance of climbing the ladder upwards, which was—on the whole—more than had ever existed in European society up to that point.

The principle of meritocracy later grew into what came to be known as the Horatio Alger myth (named for the author of several popular nineteenth-century novels): that if a person exhibited aspects of Christian morality, thrift, virtue, and hard work, he could expect to move up in the world. Hard work had not historically been associated with success; it was, instead, understood up until this point as the "inevitable consequence of necessity and poverty that most people still associated...with slavery and servitude," as Wood has explained.¹⁰² Suddenly, in the American conceptualization, hard work could be seen not merely as the punishment for poverty, but as the vehicle by which one could elevate his social position, or elevate the rank of his children. The prospects of self-rule and social uplift motivated many American farmers and mechanics to mobilize against the British. The colonists had initially reacted against the perceived tyranny of Parliament, but once they embraced the concept of independence, their struggle against oppression also became a fight to establish a new society. They envisioned an independent, democratic government that would provide safeguards against corruption, but they also viewed that government as the instrument through which a more egalitarian system could prevail.

Prosperity and Protest

In the century after 1650, the colonies enjoyed extraordinary economic growth. The gross national product (GNP) of British North America multiplied some 25 times between 1650 and 1770, and scholars estimate that American colonists may have enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world by the time of the Revolution.¹⁰³ Overseas markets for colonial exports expanded as colonists increased their production levels and supplied valuable timber, tobacco, and rice to the Caribbean and the countries across the Atlantic. Imports also grew throughout the eighteenth century, as increasingly prosperous—and numerous—colonists expanded their demand for food and manufactured goods. After 1750, inland trade among the colonies also expanded by leaps and bounds, fostering both economic interactions and increased intercommunication among colonists.¹⁰⁴ This sort of prosperity is not usually an indication of a gathering revolution. But when colonists felt both financially and ideologically threatened by Parliamentary taxation policies, they proved willing to risk some economic well-being in the short term for the sake of ensuring their liberty—both economic and political—in the long term.

To empower their resistance to Parliamentary taxation, colonists sought to harness their economic clout as a unified body. The boycott was one of the first and most important methods they employed, starting in 1765 with merchants who pledged to refuse all British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed. That initial effort seemed to win success when Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. When the boycott was revived in reaction to the Townshend Duties of 1767, it soon spread from the merchants of Boston to the planters of the Chesapeake.

Tidewater Politics, Economy, and American Independence

The Virginia elite may have opposed Parliamentary taxation on principle, but they also stood to benefit personally from boycotting payments. For years prior to the boycotts of the 1760s, the elite rank of Virginia society had become enmeshed in an immense web of debt to British creditors; the per capita debt in Virginia almost doubled between 1664 and 1776.¹⁰⁵ Virginia planters bought expensive goods, like Thomas Jefferson's extensive wine collection and library, and George Washington's made-to-order Moroccan leather slippers and fine household linens, all designed to maintain the appearance and lifestyle to which they were accustomed and which they were expected to uphold. This may sound trivial today, but a man's reputation was everything in eighteenth-century society; one Virginian, William Byrd III, became so overcome with debt that he had to mortgage his silver plate and 159 slaves, then committed suicide on New Year's Day in 1777.¹⁰⁶ In only three years, Robert Bladen managed to squander his inherited plantation of 1,200 acres and 40 slaves.¹⁰⁷ Wealthy landholders therefore became frustrated and alarmed by their own dependence on credit, as eighteenth-century society increasingly came to look upon luxury and frivolity as signs of weakness, corruption, and a lack of liberty.

Landholders certainly recognized that a boycott would not only send an effective message to British authorities, it would also reduce their debts to the British merchants. When independence became a real possibility in early 1776, the gentry also had the incentive of free trade with all the world's nations if they split from England and its trade monopoly, as enforced by the Navigation Acts. Virginia's leaders also temporarily banned slave imports in 1769 and 1774, since those imports also benefited England.

Like the boycotts on manufactured imports, the temporary slave trade moratorium was not much of a sacrifice for the tidewater elites (the tidewater was the coastal area with the most fertile land). These very wealthy landholders along the Atlantic shoreline already had plenty of slaves, and by the 1730s those slaves were increasing through natural reproduction rather than importation. Elite slaveowners were also becoming concerned that newly enslaved Africans were the ones most likely to foment rebellion. Meanwhile the smaller planters to the west, who still needed slaves, simply ignored the ban. Nonetheless, while the 1769 ban was considered a failure, the 1774 slave boycott was a success, in no small part because British traders wouldn't even approach the colonies, due to their unstable political situation. Thus Virginia's colonial gentry spearheaded early colonial protest movements that were part patriotic and part self-serving, or at least convenient for most wealthy landowners in their colony. This dual motivation enjoyed some successes but overall the results of the initial 1760s and early 1770s activism were mixed.

As historian Woody Holton has explained, there were other "incentives" for Virginia's tidewater gentry to turn from protest to advocating outright independence between 1774 and 1776. During that period, the boycott adopted by the First Continental Congress made life extremely hard for the small farmers of Virginia and elsewhere, and it gave Virginia's slaves—who composed 40% of the colony's population in 1775—an opportunity to challenge their owners' power.¹⁰⁸ Almost half of all white Virginians owned one or two slaves by the 1760s, but the gentry were on another level—the wealthiest 10% of Virginians owned half of all property in the colony. They owned the largest concentrations of field slaves, almost all of the domestic slaves, the best lands, the finest imported goods, and the sturdiest brick houses. Perhaps another 10% of Virginians were traders, artisans, and slave overseers. That left the remaining 80% of white Virginians—more than 200,000 people—in the small farmer category known as the "yeomanry." With the Continental Congress boycott of late 1774 and 1775, these small farmers could not obtain income from exports and they suffered shortages because they could not import goods either. This situation threatened to divide Virginia's white population, a possibility that the gentry could ill afford if they wanted to maintain control over the slave population and avoid the specter of a class war among white colonists.

In December 1775, Virginia farmers began a series of salt riots, brought on by the non-importation agreement that the colony initiated a year earlier. Non-importation was designed to put pressure on Parliament by causing unemployment and riots in Britain, but when the salt ran out in Virginia, the situation turned dire: salt was a necessary component of preserving meat, preparing food, and feeding livestock. Salt shortages would persist until either the boycott was broken or Virginia revived its foreign trade; the only way to revive trade was to declare independence, for no foreign power would risk dealing with a part of the British Empire. If the gentry did not push for independence soon, the specter of a mass uprising loomed before them. Independence had the potential to unite Virginians of all social ranks, but if it came too late, the social order might collapse. In some places, such as Loudoun County, Virginia in late 1775 and 1776, tenants rose up against overly demanding landlords and refused to pay their rent; gentry across the colony and beyond recognized the potential for widespread class warfare.

Beside disgruntled farmers, soldiers were agitated over pay disparities—top officers received eleven times what enlisted men made. And the masses were equally enraged by the gentry's slow prosecution of the war, which delayed the time when soldiers could return home to cultivate grain and tobacco in order to make rent and help their families get by. When Parliament declared rebel colonies beyond the king's protection in late 1775, elites like Richard Henry Lee recognized that the Virginia gentry must form a new government immediately in order to prevent a social collapse into anarchy (or a possible upending of the social order).¹⁰⁹ By early 1776, patriot leaders who sought independence tried to sway the Virginia gentry by intimating that only independence and a new form of government could thwart the mounting agrarian insurgency in Virginia. They pointed to New Hampshire and Massachusetts as examples of colonies steeped in disorder, but which were rescued by the establishment of independent government.

Nowhere was social disorder more feared by the gentry than among the enslaved population. The poor white majority might be persuaded by the prospect of new liberties and freedoms in an independent republic, but blacks had little to gain from either independence or a return to British rule. In late 1774, the slaves of Virginia seized the moment and drew the colonial governor into an alliance that permanently estranged white Virginians from British rule. Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, first threatened to free the slaves of his colony in April 1775, then carried out that threat in November 1775. The slaves themselves did not need to await an official proclamation, and many fled their masters before it was even issued. Blacks mounted a resistance in the pivotal years of 1774 and 1775.

On 21 April 1775, after the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, Dunmore seized the Virginia gunpowder supply in Williamsburg (as Governor Gates had recently done in Massachusetts). Many white Virginians believed that the governor had left them defenseless against their slaves, and in the midst of swirling insurrection rumors as slaves took advantage of the increasing chaos of the period. The following day, the Governor threatened to emancipate the slaves and burn Williamsburg down if any one of the senior British officials was harmed. He also reminded white Virginians of their vulnerability not only to slave insurrection but to Indian attacks, especially if they were without his support.

Virginians naturally interpreted such statements as a powerful threat, and the white reaction was, in historian Woody Holton's words, "intensely hostile."¹¹⁰ The reports of Dunmore's scheme to liberate the slaves in exchange for their military support and his threat to leave colonists exposed to Indian raids soon spread across the South, inflaming white colonial opinion. Rumors abounded that Parliament was considering an emancipation bill, or that a new British official would soon arrive to free the slaves and encourage an insurrection.

Dunmore actually followed through on his threat in November 1775, but he did not make general emancipation a goal of the war, only offering freedom to those slaves who signed up with the British army. Dunmore's decision resulted in the financial devastation of many slaveowners in Virginia, and the specter of armed slaves fighting their old masters was terrifying—but the institution of slavery survived intact. And Dunmore's gambit failed to secure Virginia for the crown. By the summer of 1776, Dunmore's forces were outnumbered and he had to retreat to New York City, while his actions had turned Loyalists ambivalent and even many loyalist colonists into Patriots by endangering all of them. Native Virginian Thomas Jefferson saw to it that Dunmore's proclamation became what historian Woody Holton characterized as "the largest and angriest complaint in the Declaration of Independence," the last of the 27 enumerated complaints against the tyranny of the British monarchy that were offered to justify American independence.¹¹¹

Indians also factored into the gentry's decision to lead the way for independence in more than one respect. After mid-century, it seemed that every planter's favorite investment scheme was real estate: specifically, the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Land speculators began staking claims in the Ohio River Valley and Kentucky. These claims brought the gentry into direct conflict with a number of parties: the western settlers who were already living out there and working the land as their own; tribes such as the Mingos, Shawnees, Delawares, and Cherokees, who lived and hunted throughout those regions; and the British government, which often disputed such claims and then shut them down entirely with the Proclamation of 1763 that forbade any settlement west of the Appalachians. While they may have resented the gentry for laying claim to the lands they were already working, western settlers had one major commonality with the colonial elites: both groups wanted free reign to expand westward beyond the Proclamation Line of 1763. Independence offered a means of obtaining the coveted land. In this respect, as in the others previously discussed, elites sometimes opted for independence out of personal interest, as did the poorer farmers and settlers.

Treason and Risk

Yet elites, whether slaveowners from Virginia or wealthy merchants from New England, also had plenty to lose once they sided with the cause for independence. If the Americans lost the war, these elites could expect to lose their property, their livelihoods, their slaves and other assets, and even their lives. In hindsight, however, they made out much better than most would have expected. The names of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were publicly announced with the publication of the formal and complete draft in January 1777. In the Declaration, the 56 delegates to the Constitutional Congress "mutually pledge[d] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."¹¹² From a British perspective, the signers would have been America's most visible and well-documented traitors. If captured, they potentially risked death.

According to legend, on 2 August 1776—the day that 54 of the signers inscribed their names on the Declaration—John Hancock employed some gallows humor by declaring, "Gentlemen, we must be unanimous; there must be no pulling different ways; we must all hang together." True to form (but again, according to legend), Ben Franklin is said to have responded: "Yes, we must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."¹¹³ These signers were overwhelmingly young—their average age was 43—and privileged. Although a handful, such as Bostonian radical Sam Adams, were of modest means, most were well off: nine were large landowners, eleven were prosperous merchants—and John Hancock was easily the richest man in New England, if not the richest merchant in all of America—and 24 were lawyers or jurists who would never be able to practice again if the British prevailed. They had quite a bit to lose.¹¹⁴

Although five signers were ultimately caught by the British, none of them, in fact, died in custody. Four of the five were captured in the course of military operations, not for their status as Declaration signers. Nine of the signers died from wounds or other causes during the war, but there is no evidence that the signers were tortured or treated any worse than other prisoners. Richard Stockton of New Jersey, the lone Patriot taken prisoner by Tories solely because he signed the Declaration, violated the mutual pledge of the signers—he was the only Patriot to do so—by recanting his participation in the revolutionary cause. He may have done so under duress, in order to gain his freedom, and his health never fully recovered from the detrimental effects of his imprisonment. Many of the other signers went on to hold important offices after the Revolution, and a few negotiated the postwar treaties between the United States and the Cherokee and Iroquois peoples.

In recent years, a series of widely circulated emails (oftentimes entitled "The Price They Paid") have recounted the extraordinary hardships faced by the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, this revisionist history-by-email-forward is misleading at best, and outright wrong at worst.¹¹⁵ Most signers of the Declaration were not targeted for special harassment or retribution by the British, but suffered the travails of the Revolutionary War on about an equal plane with the rest of their countrymen. A small minority were captured or killed during the conflict, and most enjoyed long lives, especially given the shorter life expectancies of the colonial period. One historical study found that when Thomas Jefferson was elected in president in 1800, over half of the original Founding Fathers were still alive, and that their mean age at death was 66.5 years.¹¹⁶ These men certainly risked all for their country, and many made sacrifices or fought bravely in the war; but so did the thousands of nameless Patriots on the front lines of the battlefields.

On A Wing and a Prayer

Despite their vocal and defiant protests against Parliamentary law in the 1760s and 70s, colonists went to war against the mother country very reluctantly in 1775. Historians like David Hackett Fischer have carefully noted the reticence with which most colonists approached the war. In New England, where bloody conflicts with the French and Indians had plagued every generation for 140 years, the overwhelming mood on the eve of the first battle with England was somber and fearful.¹¹⁷

Americans had every reason to be tentative and melancholy about the prospect of war with their former countrymen; after all, the odds seemed stacked against them. The British military mustered the greatest military force on earth. General William Howe had 32,000 men under his command, including a powerful naval fleet led by his older brother, Admiral Richard Howe. When the British ships sailed into New York Harbor early in the summer of 1776, they composed the greatest fleet ever seen in American waters.¹¹⁸ British forces were the best trained, most well equipped military in the world.

George Washington, on the other hand, led a combined force of approximately 19,000 Continentals and ragtag militiamen, almost all of whom had little formal military training or experience and who were unaccustomed to being told what to do. The Continental Army was fairly well trained, but it was augmented by the much less organized colonial militia. Militiamen were adult white males from small towns throughout North America; since the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, all adult males between fifteen and 60 had to enroll in their local militia company. The militias would go on the occasional drill, but they were by and large farmers, artisans, and merchants...not professional soldiers. Whatever their limitations in formal military discipline, most American militiamen thrived in the guerilla warfare of the backcountry: they ambushed their opponents, wore hunting shirts instead of uniforms, and were fairly undisciplined. After all, the sum total of their experience had been fighting Indians and perhaps some French soldiers, then going home to tend to the farm or other chores. This made for a highly unpredictable and irregular fighting force—much to George Washington's chagrin—when the militiamen came to camp alongside the regular Continental Army. Even the Continental soldiers were mostly poor native-born Americans and immigrants who had been convicts or indentured servants. Unlike Britain's professional soldiers, these citizen-soldiers were often shocked and debilitated by camp life and the horrors of combat, both areas in which they had little or no experience.

In private, Washington confided to friends that the New England troops would, "I daresay...fight very well (if properly officered), although they are an exceedingly dirty and nasty people."¹¹⁹ The officers hardly did much more to impress their commander in chief; only one of them, Major General Charles Lee—an eccentric dog lover—was a professional soldier. The rest held civilian occupations; not atypical was General Artemus Ward, who had been a Massachusetts farmer, storekeeper, and justice of the peace before the war, and who led the American troops into Boston.¹²⁰ Desertions among enlisted men increased as the war dragged on, and the size of the army fluctuated accordingly. It peaked at 20,000 in the early months of the war, was reduced to half that number, then went as low as 5,000 during the harsh winter of 1776-7 at Valley Forge. Sometimes only 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers were ready for battle.¹²¹

Part of the reason for the army's difficulty in sustaining itself was a consistent lack of supplies or other support from the Continental Congress, which overnight had to become the de facto government and was ill prepared for such an awesome responsibility. Continental paper money was printed in such massive amounts that it soon became almost worthless due to skyrocketing inflation (hence the saying, "not worth a Continental"). Disease also plagued the troops, though historian Joseph Ellis has credited George Washington's decision to inoculate the army against smallpox (which was epidemic during the Revolutionary War era) as perhaps the most important of his career.¹²² In August 1775, Washington received a report that colonial gunpowder stores amounted to less than 10,000 pounds, which provided only enough powder for about nine rounds per man. By one account, Washington "was so stunned by the report he did not utter a word for half an hour."¹²³ All of this begs the question: how did the Americans win?

The Advantages of the Underdog

First, one should never underestimate the power of a people fighting for the right to self-determination (as the United States itself would learn 200 years later, in Vietnam). Second, as Vietnam also demonstrated, the home field advantage is a considerable one, regardless of the seemingly insurmountable firepower and resources commanded by invading armies. Ironically, Americans during the Revolutionary War adopted many of the guerilla warfare tactics of the Indians whom they had battled on and off for so many years. Europeans and Americans had long maligned the Native Americans for practicing "uncivilized" methods of warfare; traditional protocol among Old World nations had dictated a formal set of rules for battle. (Both sides were to assume tight formations and wage open battles that were clearly planned out beforehand.) But now, knowledge of the terrain and the element of surprise became key tools that colonists and their Indian allies employed to their best advantage.

Lexington and Concord

Anglo-American tensions were so high by the spring of 1775 that both sides knew a single spark might ignite a war. That spark came when British troops (known as the Regulars) received their marching orders and set out from Boston, a move that the Patriots—who had spies all over Boston—had been anticipating. With secret orders to suppress the colonial rebellion, General Gage sent about 300 British Regulars to capture and arrest the leaders of the Provincial Congress and seize the militia supply depot at Concord, Massachusetts. Stable boys and other sympathetic Bostonians caught wind of the plan when they overheard the whispering of British soldiers, and when they notified Paul Revere and Boston's Committee of Safety, Revere and his long-forgotten comrade William Dawes set out on their famed nighttime rides (on separate routes) to warn the surrounding towns that the Regulars were coming. Revere reached Lexington around midnight, warning Sam Adams and John Hancock—who were hiding there—of imminent British attack. He then continued on to Concord. While Revere was captured by the British en route, one of his associates—Dr. Samuel Prescott—got through to rouse the militia.

At dawn the next day, 19 April, the Regulars marched into town and found themselves facing (at a distance of some 60 or 70 yards) about 70 minutemen—a special sub-set of the militia trained to be ready to march at the shortest notice—lined up on the Lexington Green. (Many men were just getting word of the alarm that morning, and were still mustering to Lexington from surrounding towns). Pitcairn, who was convinced that "burning two or three of their towns, will set everything to rights," rode onto the Green and ordered the Americans to disperse, calling them "rebels" and "villains."¹²⁴ The colonists had begun backing away, but then someone—to this day, no one knows who—fired a single shot. Witnesses on both sides later confessed that they simply did not know who fired, and it didn't help matters that the British Regulars were shouting "huzza! huzza! huzza!" the battle cry of the British infantry.¹²⁵ But that shot—the "shot heard round the world"—began the first battle of the Revolutionary War. British troops then charged the minutemen with bayonets, spilling the first blood of the Revolution on Lexington Green. Eight colonials died and ten more were wounded. As historians George Tindall and David Shi later recounted, "One wounded American patriot, whose wife and son were watching the spectacle, crawled 100 yards to die on his front doorstep."¹²⁶

British officers got their men under control and marched on to Concord, where they destroyed what was left of the Americans' munitions. In a second skirmish at Concord's North Bridge, the Americans killed fourteen Regulars. By noon, the British were on the march back to Boston, subjected to constant ambushes from farmers from just about every village and town in Middlesex County, who shot their muskets at the Redcoats from the cover of barns, houses, trees, and stone walls. More than 250 British soldiers died along the road.

Bunker Hill

On 17 June 1775, the same day that George Washington was commissioned general and commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, British and American forces engaged in the first major pitched battle of the Revolutionary War at Bunker Hill, Massachusetts. (The battle was misnamed; the actual location was not Bunker Hill but neighboring Breed's Hill, which was closer to Boston.) The battle was declared a British victory, but it proved a Pyrrhic one: General Howe's forces suffered over 1,000 casualties before gaining the high ground. The colonials lost about 400 men. People in both London and Boston noted that "a few more such victories would surely spell ruin for the victors."¹²⁷ The battle proved to the British that the Americans were not to be taken lightly. It also prompted the Continental Congress—which had assembled for only the second time on 10 May 1775 in Philadelphia—to call for the enlistment of all able-bodied men into the militia. Lines had been drawn and colonists now had to declare their allegiance to either the patriot or loyalist cause.

Saratoga

General John Burgoyne embodied many of the traits that proved fatal to the British during the war. As commander of England's northern forces, Burgoyne—or "Gentleman Johnny," as he was known—set out to divide the colonies by advancing southward from Canada to the Hudson River; if was successful, then he could isolate New England from the other colonies. A second British force was to move east through the Mohawk River Valley, and General William Howe would guide a third force up the Hudson from his stronghold at New York City. This three-prong attack was designed to debilitate the colonials by dividing and conquering their forces. Yet Indecision was the first British flaw to emerge, when Howe changed his mind and captured Philadelphia instead of moving north as planned. This separated him even further from Burgoyne's men.

Meanwhile, Burgoyne—as planned—marched toward Lake Champlain from Canada in 1777. His procession included about 30 carts of his own luggage, in addition to his mistress, plenty of champagne, and about 7,000 soldiers. Arrogance and overconfidence were clearly additional afflictions that factored against the British cause. Yet, at first, Burgoyne seemed to succeed: on 5 July 1777 his forces captured Fort Ticonderoga with little effort, the American army having dwindled considerably in size during the harsh winter. But then Burgoyne hung around Ticonderoga instead of advancing again, allowing time for colonial reinforcements to arrive from New England and other points to the south. Those American forces inflicted serious damage on the British at Oriskany, New York on 6 August 1777 and again at Bennington, Vermont on 16 August. It helped that Britain's Indian allies deserted at this time, believing themselves outnumbered by the American militia.

By October, General Burgoyne found himself completely surrounded, and he surrendered to American General Horatio Gates's forces at Saratoga, New York. Most of Burgoyne's 5,700 soldiers were imprisoned in Virginia. Burgoyne himself was allowed to return home to England, where he found a cold reception. Saratoga was a turning point in the war; news of the American victory was jubilantly celebrated in France, which then signed two treaties with the Patriots in early 1778. The Treaty of Alliance provided George Washington's forces with the military support they so desperately needed, and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce granted French recognition of the United States along with important trade concessions. The two countries agreed that if France was to enter the war, both would fight until the Americans won their independence, and that neither party would sign a truce or peace treaty without the consent of the other. They also agreed to guarantee one another's North American possessions against all other powers, forever. France pledged not to try and regain British holdings in North America or to obtain Canada.

France was fully engaged in the war by the summer of 1778. The next year, Spain also entered the war as a French ally (but not, officially, as an American ally), and only after the French had promised to help it regain land holdings previously seized by the British. Because the Dutch persisted in their lucrative trade with both France and the United States, Britain declared war on Holland in 1780. The American Revolution was already beginning to spread worldwide. Within the decade, the French Revolution got under way and changed Europe forever; the revolutionary ideas that the Americans unleashed actually boomeranged back on the royal French government itself.

Valley Forge

After Saratoga, Prime Minister Lord North feared that the British were doomed to lose the war, but King George III would not allow a truce and would not permit North to resign.

Meanwhile, immersed in the unceasing conflict, George Washington's army made its winter encampment near Philadelphia at Valley Forge. The brutal winter of 1777-8 brought deprivations far worse than those experienced a year earlier at Morristown. Disease, cold, and hunger plagued the Americans for months. Desertion rates skyrocketed and Washington warned Congress that if it did not send supplies immediately, the army would be forced to "starve, dissolve, or disperse."¹²⁸ But the army found its own salvation when Washington ordered generals Nathaniel Greene and Henry Lee to lead foraging expeditions into New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. The men took livestock, cattle, and horses and in exchange they issued "receipts" that were supposed to be honored by the Continental Congress. News of the French alliance, Congress's new promises of extra pay and bonuses after the war, the newfound food rations, and the warmer change of weather with the onset of spring all helped to revive the troops sufficiently for Washington to initiate a rigorous training program for them. To make up for their lack of formal military training, the Americans sought out Prussian soldier Frederick William Augustus Henry Ferdinand, Baron von Steuben, whose frequent use of expletives would have rivaled the "potty mouth" of World War II General George Patton. Speaking through an interpreter, von Steuben drilled the troops, taught them how to properly handle their weapons, and how to march in formation.

The Brits Head South

By the end of 1778, British military action abruptly shifted southward in an effort to realize King George's hope that there lay a dormant Tory population simply awaiting the arrival of the Regulars to revolt against the Patriots. As it turned out, there weren't many Loyalists, and many of those colonists who had Loyalist sympathies or were still on the fence were turned against the British by the behavior of their troops and officers.

Southern whites had been wary of the British ever since word had spread of Lord Dunmore's 1775 decree, which granted freedom to any slaves who enlisted with British forces. Now plantation houses were destroyed as British General Augustin Prevost's forces marched on Charleston from Savannah. British land forces paired with naval reinforcements to inflict the worst American defeat of the war, the surrender of Charleston on 12 May 1780. In the wake of the fall of Charleston, a panicky Continental Congress ignored George Washington's advice by turning to General Horatio Gates, the victor of Saratoga, to take command in the South and hopefully save the day. Before Gates's troops could reach Charleston, British General Charles Cornwallis hit them with a surprise attack at Camden, South Carolina, routing the American army. Gates had to retreat 160 miles north to Hillsborough, North Carolina. Just when it seemed that Cornwallis had solidified British control over South Carolina, his own subordinates undercut the British cause by savagely hanging all conquered forces from the mountains. The "over-mountain men" allied with other backcountry locals in South Carolina and together they defeated British forces on 7 October 1780 at King's Mountain. The Patriots' cause was still alive in the South, it just needed some leadership.

The Fighting Quaker

In the wake of Gates's discouraging defeat, Congress appointed the patient and exceptionally intelligent Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island to command the southern theater at the end of 1780. Greene waged a successful war of attrition against the British in which his soldiers inflicted heavy losses on the regulars in skirmishes throughout the first half of 1781. By the fall of that year, Greene had reduced British control in the South to Charleston and Savannah, while savage fighting continued between Whigs and Tories in the backcountry.

Yorktown: It's the End of the World As We Know It

While Greene and his Whig allies continued to wage their protracted battles in Carolina country, British General Cornwallis marched his army to Virginia to ensure that it could not serve as a source of reinforcements for the American insurgency to the south. In Virginia, British forces under the traitorous General Benedict Arnold—who had begun the war an American patriot—had been fighting American troops under the command of French Marquis de Lafayette and Baron von Steuben. Cornwallis combined his forces with Arnold's, forming a British army of about 7,200 men. Cornwallis ordered his troops to dig in at Yorktown, a port in Virginia's tobacco country, believing that he was invulnerable to a siege since the British navy controlled the seas and George Washington's army seemed to be preoccupied with attacking New York.

But in late September 1781, a French fleet of some 3,000 sailors under Admiral de Grasse sailed up from the West Indies to bolster army forces under the command of Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau. The siege that Cornwallis had thought an impossibility was now at hand. Total American and French forces of some 16,000 dwarfed Cornwallis's 7,200-man army. The French and Americans cut off all avenues of British relief for Cornwallis, whose fate became hopeless. Unable to break the siege, Cornwallis sued for peace on 17 October, exactly four years to the day after the American victory at Saratoga.

Two days later, on 19 October 1781, Cornwallis formally surrendered to the combined French and American force at Yorktown. British forces marched out with their colors cased (i.e. no flags flying), their band playing understandably somber songs and one distinctly apropos English nursery rhyme, "The World Turned Upside Down." The war was over and the Americans had achieved the impossible.

Revolution from Within

Slaves were not directly affected by stamp duties or tea taxes, but—in the words of historian Gary Nash—"nonetheless they were politicized by the language and modes of white protest and were quick to seize the opportunities for securing their own freedom that emerged from the disruptions of a society in rebellion."¹²⁹ As social upheaval reached their cities and towns, many blacks seized the opportunity to flee. Thomas Jefferson estimated that some 30,000 slaves had run away during the British invasion of Virginia in 1781. Some of them joined up with Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore's black regiment, where Dunmore promised enlistees their freedom in exchange for taking up arms against their old masters. A 21-year-old named Titus recruited both free blacks and slaves to join guerilla bands that fought against the Patriots. But for all of their hope and ambition in search of any possible route to freedom, many of these runaways still met a miserable fate in British camps, where thousands succumbed to disease, battle wounds, and malnutrition.

Free Negroes

Most black Loyalists were evacuated to Jamaica, Nova Scotia, or Florida at war's end. The primary basis of the free black community in the United States came from former slaves who were either emancipated by state law, manumitted by their former masters, rebelled, or who ran away but managed to remain in the country. Through these diverse means, America's free African-American population skyrocketed from just a few thousand in the 1760s to almost 200,000 by the first decade of the nineteenth century. While the free black population had been almost entirely of mixed racial origin before the war, now a more substantial number of blacks could embody the role of free men and women and remind American whites that skin color need not dictate a person's freedom or abilities.

Taking Advantage of the Social Rupture

Slave rebellions during the revolutionary period supported Virginia Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie's theory that "any Emergency" that divided the white population could provide slaves with the opportunity to rebel.¹³⁰ In New York, a white man overheard two slaves conspiring over how they could obtain more gunpowder for an insurrection plot; in a Virginia county, James Madison described another slave plot led by a man "who was to conduct them when the English Troops should arrive"; and in St. Andrew Parish, Georgia, slaves rebelled in December 1774 and managed to kill four whites before being captured and burned alive.¹³¹

Attempting Legal Channels to Freedom during the Revolution

A few educated slaves managed to make a written challenge to the hypocrisy of bondage amidst a war for freedom. In Boston, Massachusetts, four black men petitioned the governor and state assembly in April 1773, expressing gratitude for recent attempts to abolish slavery but asserting that, "as the people of this province seem to be actuated by the principles of equity and justice, we cannot but expect your house will again take our deplorable cause into serious consideration, and give us that ample relief which, as men, we have a natural right to."¹³² African-Americans of the counties of Bristol and Worcester in Massachusetts also petitioned the Committees of Correspondence in March 1775 for assistance in obtaining their freedom, and the Worcester County Convention responded by passing a resolution that "we abhor the enslaving of any of the human race, and particularly of the Negroes in this country. And that whenever there shall be a door opened, or opportunity present, for anything to be done toward emancipating the Negroes: we will use our influence and endeavor that such a thing may be effected."¹³³

Some black and white abolitionists penned broader appeals that addressed not just their state assemblies but the general public. Though she was a devout Christian owned by exceptionally doting masters in Boston, the African-American child prodigy and poetess Phyllis Wheatley nonetheless began inserting subtle pleas for emancipation into her work by 1772. This young slave, the first published black poet in North America, recognized the powerful symbolic ties between America's cause and the cause of freedom for her people. She wrote verse directed at King George III to request a repeal of the Stamp Act, decried a British customs officer who murdered a Boston teenager, and wrote a poem praising George Washington, to which Washington responded with a hand-written letter humbly thanking her.¹³⁴ Wheatley followed the classical poetic conventions of her time, but incorporated an unmistakable message in her lines, as when she celebrated:

The silken reigns, and Freedom's charms unfold.
No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain,
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain.¹³⁵

Wheatley also reminded her readers that—as a slave—"can I then but pray / Others may never feel tyrannic sway?"¹³⁶ Such eloquent appeals were not exclusively the product of well-known child prodigies. An anonymous New England mulatto (then a term for a person who was half white and half black) penned an attack on slavery in 1776 that quoted the Declaration of Independence ("that all men are created Equal") and the Bible ("make of one Blood all nations of men, for to dwell upon the face of the Earth") to make a very persuasive case against human bondage.¹³⁷

Taking Up Arms

For both illiterate slaves denied an education and literate bondsmen frustrated by the frequent ineffectiveness of the written petition for freedom, actions could speak louder than words. In Virginia, black men, women, and children all "enlisted" with the British army to gain their freedom. Over 5,000 blacks served in colonial militias and were involved in some of the first battles of the Revolution.¹³⁸ A black man, Crispus Attucks, was one of the five colonists shot in the Boston Massacre. Black soldiers also fought at the first major Revolutionary skirmish at Bunker Hill. One of them was Salem Poor, a man in his thirties from Andover, Massachusetts who had been born a slave and bought his freedom at a heavy price in 1769. Fourteen officers from Poor's regiment petitioned the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to commend Poor as "a brave and gallant soldier" who "behaved like [an] experienced officer." Though as many as 4,000 colonists fought at Bunker (and Breed's) Hill that day, Poor is the only one that extant records indicate was singled out for his exceptional service. After the war was long over, a white sixteen-year-old fifer named John Greenwood wrote a memoir in which he remembered his terror upon the commencement of hostilities at Bunker Hill, when soldiers' bodies were being laid out on the Boston Common. He was encouraged by the sight of "a Negro man, wounded in the back of his neck," with "blood running down his back," who did not seem to mind his wounds and said that he was only going "to get a plaster put on it and meant to return."¹³⁹ Continental Generals also reported to Congress in 1775 that there were "Negroes" in "several" of the Massachusetts regiments, "a number" among the Rhode Island soldiers and "less" from New Hampshire.¹⁴⁰

Yet old racial fears prevailed among southern slaveowning commanders like George Washington, and at the insistence of representatives from heavily slave-dependent South Carolina, blacks were initially barred entirely from the Continental Army. But when times got tough for the colonists after the first year of fighting, the Continental Congress reconsidered and Washington acquiesced in allowing at least northern states to solicit black recruits. Washington re-authorized enlistment for blacks with "prior military experience" in January 1776. By January 1777, as the Continental Army's situation became desperate due to desertions from the horrid winter encampments, enlistment was extended to all free blacks.

States in the upper South reluctantly accepted black volunteers when the British shifted military operations into their territory by late 1778. Free African Americans served in the army and navy of Virginia, and slaves could serve as substitutes for their masters (whether they wanted to or not) in Delaware and North Carolina. Maryland authorized slave enlistments and even drafted free blacks. Yet whites from the Lower South remained firmly opposed to the mobilization of the region's black majority, many of whom were newly-arrived Africans who worked the lowland rice swamps in much larger concentrations than their wealthy white owners.¹⁴¹ Even when a desperate Congress offered to pay a whopping $1,000 to masters for each slave they enlisted in 1779—more than twice the $400 compensation they offered to Rhode Island slaveowners—Georgia and South Carolina still refused.¹⁴²

Many African-American soldiers capitalized on their newfound freedom and their army pay. In 1783, Maryland shoemaker James McHenry bought his own freedom and then rented a farm. Sea Captain Paul Cuffee and sail manufacturer James Forten became very successful businessmen. A Virginia native named Henry Carter was emancipated in 1811 and managed to save up enough money to purchase the freedom of his wife Priscilla.¹⁴³ Even if most free blacks remained confined to poverty, these success stories became powerful symbols to the entire black community...and to whites who questioned black abilities and racial equality.

Legacies

During the Revolution, Georgia and South Carolina only solidified their reliance on slave labor and their firm resistance to any sort of slave mobilization, even in the cause of independence. Free blacks did not inhabit the Lower South in significant numbers until the 1790s, when hundreds of mulattoes (or gens de couleur) fled the Haitian Revolution for the United States. The war also prompted many sympathetic whites in colonial New England (which was the region least reliant on slave labor) to enact schemes for total or gradual emancipation across the region by 1804.

Even in these seemingly freedom-loving areas, tens of thousands of slaves remained in bondage well into the nineteenth century. While the Revolution prompted many inroads towards the cause of emancipation, it also marked a lost opportunity for creating a truly free nation. If anything, this period further solidified the preexisting differences between the North and South; New England and parts of the Middle Atlantic began their steps toward a slave-free society, while the Deep South persisted and redoubled its emphasis on a slave-dependent society and economy. Many planters in the Upper South expressed their abhorrence of bondage, yet insisted on procrastinating until future generations could grant slaves the freedom that they were too scared or incapable of granting themselves. So long as slavery and patriarchy persisted, American society could not be truly democratic.

Meanwhile, the First (and eventually, the Second) Great Awakenings helped to form multiple communities of burgeoning abolitionists (black and white), who internalized the movements' evangelical messages of equality and love for one's fellow man. Blacks both slave and free were affected by these exciting periods of revivalism, and Protestant sects from the Quakers to the Methodists to the Baptists would forever change black ideology, organization, and even spirituality. This passionate spiritual life, which was oftentimes the sole source of hope and uplift to black people in America, also became one of their strongest connections to the new country. Belonging to American sects of Christianity—like the Baptists and (by 1796) the African Methodist Episcopals—undergirded many black peoples' sense of being American.

Most of the African-Americans who remained in the new United States prayed to a Christian God for salvation and for freedom. Thousands of them had served their country in the military. Others took up the principles of the Revolution and petitioned state governments and their fellow citizens to plead the case of their people. And still others acted out the true meaning of freedom and independence by claiming their own liberty and running away from their masters. Though the rest of white America failed to fully support these dreams of freedom and equality, some whites did recognize the mistake of retaining slavery in a newly independent land. And those whites who thought they could do away with both slavery and black people at once had failed to recognize one of the most salient facts of the revolutionary era: Africans were becoming African-Americans, and they weren't going anywhere.

Activism and Femininity in Times of War

When Parliament passed duties on tea, among other items, in the Townshend Act of 1767, female Patriots banded together to support and uphold the colonial boycott. American newspapers praised the ladies who sipped coffee or local herbal teas in place of the British imports. Poetesses sent their verses to the local gazettes in order to express their heartfelt devotion to the cause and their determination not to submit to the fastening of "Chains upon my country."¹⁴⁴ In North Carolina, 51 women signed an agreement in October 1774 declaring their "sincere adherence" to Congress's resolves and pledging to do "every thing as lies in our power" to support the "publick [sic] good."¹⁴⁵ These women proclaimed their patriotism while simultaneously declaring their intention—and even their right—to participate in the traditionally male realm of public policy. Some men may simply have laughed off such endeavors as amusing trivialities, but whether they recognized it or not, the Revolution changed the thoughts and mindsets of their mothers, wives, and daughters in many important if subtle ways. Even those women who accepted that politics was not the province of the female sex still remarked that "nothing else is talked of," and that the gathering storm against the British was "the most animating Subject" of the day, one that "Concerns us all."¹⁴⁶

Pragmatic Necessity Creates Opportunities

In addition to patriotic gestures and increased involvement in traditionally male-dominated topics—like politics and military strategy—the sheer necessities of warfare also created new opportunities for women. These opportunities were not always advantageous for the women themselves, particularly in the case of enslaved women; but they did carry the potential to teach such women new skills. Enslaved black women in the South became the backbone of the domestic textile industry during the colonial boycotts of the Revolutionary War, when Virginia merchants and other slaveowners put them to work spinning and weaving to manufacture cloth that satisfied public demand in absence of British imports. They would continue to manufacture cloth until the War of 1812. Farther north, white women who could not rely on slave labor had to assume the duties of creating homespun fabric in addition to their other considerable chores in the household and on the farm. The demand for homespun clothing was clearly a priority, and in turn, it elevated the importance of women's unpaid but crucial domestic labor. One Connecticut farm girl who spent an entire autumn day carding and spinning wool in 1775 sat down that evening to write in her diary that she "felt Nationly [sic] into the bargain."¹⁴⁷ Another young woman in New York City used the same terminology—"felt Nationly"—to express her pride in having knitted stockings from homespun yarn.¹⁴⁸

Taking Sides

Women not only provided critical economic support during colonial boycotts, but they utilized their position in society to play the roles of politician, spy, informer, and activist. During the British invasion of South Carolina in 1780, women like Eliza Wilkinson recalled that the Whig ladies were "perfect statesmen," for they could easily gather amongst themselves and pretend to talk of fashion, all the while exchanging information about the enemy. British officers would have disregarded the sight of such ladies gathering to discuss what they assumed were "feminine" matters. The same was perhaps even more true of young women (who would be known as teenagers today, although the term did not exist back then) like Emily Gieger and Deborah Champion, who served as messengers for the militia.¹⁴⁹

Women who married patriot leaders or even rank-and-file soldiers had unparalleled access to the latest information about everything from political controversies to battle preparations, courtesy of their husbands (or fathers or sons). Many became so fiercely committed to their cause that the divergence between allegiances could destroy long-cherished friendships and even marriages. In a few exceptional but legendary cases, women like Deborah Sampson disguised themselves as men so that they could literally fight in the revolutionary army, and Nancy Hart of Georgia captured a group of Tories all by herself.¹⁵⁰ During the British attack on Fort Washington on 16 November 1776, Margaret Corbin commanded her dead husband's cannon until she herself was seriously wounded. Enemy fire wounded Corbin in the chest and the jaw, and tore her left shoulder, disabling her arm. Although Gen. Nathanael Greene's forces lost the fort to the British that day, Margaret Corbin's efforts did not go unnoticed—she became the first woman to be pensioned as a war veteran by the government, in 1779, though she only received half-pay. In 1926 the Daughters of the American Revolution arranged to have her remains moved from Highland Falls, New York, to the grounds of the West Point Military Academy at West Point, New York, where a monument was erected in her honor.¹⁵¹

The legend of Revolutionary War heroine Molly Pitcher arose from the story of Mary Ludwig Hays (or Heis), the wife of Continental soldier John Hays (or Heis). While her husband and his comrades fought at the battle of Monmouth (now Freehold, New Jersey) on 28 June 1778, Molly carried water for her husband and other soldiers, who gave her the "Pitcher" nickname. A legend grew up around Molly, who was said to have manned her husband's gun, though there is no evidence for that claim. Pennsylvania saw fit to grant her a pension in 1822.

Of course, women also took active roles regardless of their allegiance. Historian Paul Smith has estimated that perhaps 15% of adult white colonists fought for the British, but only 5.5% of white female Loyalists directly assisted their cause. Yet among these women Tories there numbered eight spies, six letter carriers who traversed enemy lines, and nine who assisted British soldiers, including those held as prisoners of war.¹⁵²

An Equivocal End

Leaders of the new United States were no more willing to give up on patriarchal traditions than they were to change similar traditions championing white supremacy. In fact, the republican ideology of the Revolution wound up circumscribing women's role in society as the years went by, dividing society by gender into "separate spheres"—citizenship and public affairs became more exclusively the realm of men, domesticity and motherhood the realm of women. Still, for a moment the Revolution nonetheless provided unprecedented opportunities for many women to make a difference, beginning a very gradual shift in women's self-perceptions. Revolutionary women expressed pride and patriotism through their very meaningful contributions to the cause of liberty. The legacy of "Liberty's Daughters" manifested itself later in the activism that characterized female reformers who lobbied for temperance, women's rights, and abolition during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The American Revolution Timeline

How It All Went Down

 

1751

Paper Money Prohibited

Parliament prohibits New England from issuing paper currency as legal tender. This imposes a hardship on the colonists of the region, many of whom are engaged in the trading economy and who find hard currency increasingly scarce (because they keep sending it to England in order to pay debts).

1754

Albany Plan on Union

Benjamin Franklin drafts the Albany Plan of Union at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War (a.k.a. the French and Indian War). The Plan seeks to create a Grand Council of delegates from each colony to levy taxes and provide for the common defense. The colonial assemblies reject Franklin's idea, since the Grand Council would clearly curtail their own powers.

Jan 1763

French and Indian War Ends

England signs a peace treaty—the Peace of Paris—with France, ending the Seven Years' War (known in North America as the French and Indian War). France cedes Canada to England. In exchange, England gives France the sugar-producing Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Spain cedes Florida to Britain, in return for Cuba. Spain also acquires the Louisiana territory from France. All of North America, except Mexico, Louisiana, and two small islands off the coast of Newfoundland, now belongs to Britain.

1763

Pontiac’s Rebellion

Ottawa war leader Pontiac and Delaware religious prophet Neolin foment Pontiac's Rebellion, an alliance of tribes (the Ottawa, Huron, and others) in rebellion against European culture, influence, and technology. In the Ohio country, these united tribes attack Detroit (a British military outpost), then seize nine more forts. In the process, hundreds of white settlers are killed. A powerful British counterattack ultimately forces each tribe to make a separate peace over the next several years. Pontiac's Rebellion prompts the Proclamation of 1763, a British policy to limit conflict with Indians by restricting westward migration of colonists into Indian territory beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

Nov 1763

The Paxton Boys

During Pontiac's Rebellion, some fifty white men (mostly Scotch-Irish farmers) from the area around Paxton, Pennsylvania, destroy the Indian village of Conestoga and massacre its population. They kill approximately twenty men, women, and children. The white raiders, who become known as "the Paxton Boys," blame the Pennsylvania government for being too lenient towards Indians. Control of Pennsylvania's government is in the process of passing from the traditional Quaker elite to leadership that is more aggressive towards all Indians.

Apr 13, 1763

George Grenville as Lord of the Treasury

George Grenville takes office in London as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Apr 5, 1764

Sugar Act

Upon George Grenville's recommendation, Parliament passes the Sugar Act. It quickly becomes notorious among colonists for its three-penny tax on molasses (a sugar byproduct and a commonly smuggled item in the colonial marketplace). The purpose of this Act is to defray English expenses incurred fighting the French and Indian War and to ensure that colonial commerce benefits England. The act is a revision of the Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733, which actually levied a duty twice as high on molasses—but that previous act has gone largely unenforced.

1764

Currency Act

Almost immediately after passing the Sugar Act, Parliament extends its prohibition on paper currency to all American colonies with the Currency Act. Up until now, the heavily commercial New England has been the only colony banned from issuing paper currency (Parliament issued New England's ban in 1751). Since gold and silver are in short supply in America, the ban on paper money will create another hardship for the colonists. Parliament extends the ban because British creditors do not want to be paid in depreciated paper currency.

Apr 1764

Merchants Disobey Molasses Act

The colonies get word of the new three-penny tax on molasses, as proposed by George Grenville. Colonial Americans have been expecting some duty, but are taken aback by the amount; they thought it would be one or two pence. At three pence per gallon, the tax is prohibitive; New England merchants have to disobey it in order to stay in business.⁵ The new duties are to take effect in September 1764.

Sep 1764

Massachusetts Petitions King

The Massachusetts House of Representatives draws up and approves a petition to King George III, protesting the Sugar Act duties "as a tax, and which we humbly apprehend ought not to be laid without the Representatives of the People affected by them."⁶

Oct 18, 1764

Rhode Island and New York Petition

The Assembly of New York echoes Rhode Island and Massachusetts's objections to the Sugar Act and submits petitions to the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, arguing that the Act violates colonial rights. New York, the Assembly argues, should be exempt from taxes not levied by its own representatives.

Oct 31, 1764

North Carolina Debates Tax Rights

North Carolina joins the chorus of colonial objectors to the Sugar Act, sending a message to its Governor defending "what we esteem our Inherent right, and Exclusive privilege of Imposing our own Taxes."⁷

Mar 22, 1765

Stamp Act

Parliament passes the Stamp Act, a 25-page document that levies new taxes on court and customs documents, financial papers, playing cards, dice, pamphlets, newspapers, newspaper advertisements, almanacs, and more. It is the first internal tax that Parliament has levied on the colonies; that is, it does not involve trade but activities within the colonies.

Mar 24, 1765

First Quartering Act

Parliament passes the first Quartering Act, which empowers local officials in the colonies to house British troops "in inns, livery stables, ale-houses, victualling-houses," and other locations where alcohol are sold, in the event that the barracks for soldiers and officers do not provide sufficient space. The provinces are to pay innkeepers and tavern owners for the use of their property.⁸ "Uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings" are also specified for housing soldiers and officers, but the reference to "other buildings" is associated with the "uninhabited" adjective.⁹ The Act is set to expire on 24 March 1767, and is annually renewed and amended afterward.

May 30, 1765

Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions

The Virginia House of Burgesses passes five Stamp Act Resolutions. Orchestrated by representatives Patrick Henry and George Johnston, these "resolves" (as formal resolutions are called during this period) represent a radical challenge to Parliamentary authority. They assert the colonists' rights as Englishmen, including their right to consent to taxation. The fifth resolve is rescinded the next day by the more conservative members of the House, because it declares any attempt to assume the power of taxation—other than by the General Assembly of Virginia—"has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom."¹⁰ Two additional resolves are not passed, as they remain too radical for the time: they call for outright resistance to unlawful taxation and declare anyone who denies the colonial assembly's sole right to tax as "an enemy to this his majesty's colony."¹¹ All of the resolves are reprinted in papers across the country.

Aug 26, 1765

Boston Mob Attacks Stamp Act

In the evening, a violent mob of Bostonians protesting the Stamp Act attacks the home of Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson. The Hutchinsons are eating dinner when the crowd descends upon them, and they barely manage to escape before the front door is broken down and the mob loots most of their possessions.

Sep 1765

Stamp Act Congress

Prominent delegates from nine colonies convene in New York as the Stamp Act Congress. The Congress endorses the Virginia resolves, and in so doing, becomes the first united coalition of the North American colonies. The Congress also reaffirms its "warmest sentiments of affection and duty to His Majesty's Person and Government," but asserts that as subjects of the King, the colonists are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of Englishmen, and that they must not be taxed without their consent or the consent of their representatives.¹²

Nov 1765

Colonies Protest Taxation

By now, every colony objects to all Parliamentary taxes issued without their consent, external duties (like the Sugar Act) as well as internal taxes (like the Stamp Act).

1766

Stamp Act Repealed and Declaratory Act Passed

Under pressure from English merchants and manufacturers concerned about their American markets and business ties, and shocked by the aggressive and widespread colonial resistance, Parliament repeals the Stamp Act. But to avoid the appearance of succumbing to the colonials, it also passes the Declaratory Act, which rejects colonial assertions that only colonial representatives can levy taxes. Parliament instead asserts its right to rule by virtual representation; that is, English government determines what is good for the empire as a whole, and it represents the subjects in all British territories.

1767

Townshend Duties

Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend successfully ushers a new series of colonial taxes through Parliament; they will soon be known (notoriously) as the Townshend Duties. Parliament is under the impression that these new duties—on British imports to the colonies, with safeguards to empower customs commissioners and suppress smuggling—will be much more acceptable to the colonists, since they regulate trade in order to raise revenue. Colonial leaders such as Ben Franklin—who is living in London at the time—have told the English press that Americans will not object to "external" taxes on imported merchandise. But Franklin is an ocean apart from his comrades, and he is wrong.¹³

Aug 1, 1768

Non-Importation Agreement

The merchants and traders of Boston issue a Non-Importation Agreement that pledges not to import any merchandise from Great Britain, in a united show of protest against Parliamentary taxes (specifically the latest Townshend Duties) and the scarcity of hard currency. The southern colonies soon join up with the boycott.

1768

Boston Riots

Bostonians riot after royal troops seize John Hancock's ship Liberty for violating trade laws. From this point, British troops will be continuously stationed in the city, aggravating city residents by competing for jobs on the waterfront.

Mar 5, 1770

Boston Massacre

A group of Bostonians—armed with snowballs—harass some British troops in the city. The altercation escalates until the troops shoot five of the men dead, including Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave of mixed African, Indian, and white ancestry who had been working as a sailor. The attack generates outrage among the colonists, who come to call it the Boston Massacre.

Feb 1770

Paul Revere Engraves Boston Massacre

Within a month of the shooting known as the Boston Massacre, silversmith Paul Revere engraves and prints one of the first and most effective (and most inaccurate) propaganda pieces of what will become the American Revolution. Revere's engraving depicts a solid line of royal troops firing point-blank into a crowd of colonists, though the actual incident was more like a chaotic brawl. But a picture is worth a thousand words, and Revere's image stirs up considerable anti-British sentiment across North America.

Mar 1770

Boston Massacre Trial

The commanding officer and eight royal soldiers are put on trial in Massachusetts for their involvement in the so-called Boston Massacre. John Adams, the future Founding Father and president, defends the men in court. Adams disapproves of the lower-class crowd mentality that started the incident in the first place, since he thinks it is a foolhardy and perilous means of opposing England or English policies. He argues that the British soldiers are just victims of circumstance, provoked by what was "most probably a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues [immigrants] and outlandish Jack tars [sailors]."¹⁴ Seven of the soldiers go free, while two are convicted of manslaughter and branded on their thumbs.

1772

Chesapeake Recession

A serious recession hits the Chesapeake region in Virginia, and suddenly the notion of boycotting British goods takes hold beyond the gentry class of the region.¹⁵

Jun 9, 1772

Anti-smuggling Gaspee is Burned

The British vessel Gaspee runs aground near Providence, Rhode Island. The Gaspee is patrolling for smugglers, making it very unpopular among colonists. A crowd of locals boards the ship, removes the crew, and sets it on fire. No witnesses are willing to testify against the perpetrators.

Jun 13, 1772

Hutchinson Salary Dispute

Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson announces that his salary will hereafter come from customs revenues, not the colonial assembly. Not much later, it is announced that Superior Court judges will be paid the same way. Colonial officials are no longer reliant on the assembly, whose power is reduced because of these changes; and this will place all the more pressure on colonial smugglers, since it is in the self-interest of colonial officials to raise revenues and stamp out the black market. Other colonies are threatened by this prospect, together with the independent commission of inquiry established to investigate the Gaspee incident. This combination of developments prompts the formation of colonial Committees of Correspondence, initially spearheaded by Sam Adams in Boston.

1773

Benjamin Rush Attacks Slavery

Dr. Benjamin Rush authors one of the strongest attacks on slavery ever written in the colonies to date. In 1776, Rush himself will purchase a slave named William Grubber and keep him for over a decade, even as he continues to rail against the institution and joins the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.¹⁶

1773

First Slave Petition

"Felix of Boston" becomes the first slave in America to petition a legislature for the abolition of slavery, writing that "Let slave behaviour [sic] be what it will, neither they [slaves], nor their Children to all Generations, shall ever be able to do, or possess and enjoy any Thing, no, not even Life itself, but in a Manner as the Beasts that perish."¹⁷

Apr 1773

Tea Act

Parliament passes the Tea Act, which will later spark a rebellion in Boston. This Act does not actually impose any new taxes, but seeks to save the East India Company by shipping its tea surplus to the colonies, where it will be sold at discounted prices. But the colonists think that it is a strategy to bolster support for the detested Townshend Duties, and they recognize that direct sale of tea by British agents will only hurt local merchants' business.

Dec 16, 1773

Boston Tea Party

In a dramatic demonstration that the colonists will not submit to Parliament or British monopolies for the sake of cheap tea, a group of Patriots dressed as Mohawk Indians stage the Boston Tea Party after dark. To protest the Tea Act, which enables the East India monopoly to bypass colonial merchants entirely, the Patriots raid a British ship in Boston Harbor and throw 342 chests of tea overboard (to the encouraging cheers of delighted crowds). The Boston Tea Party is the most dramatic act of colonial resistance to the Tea Act, but it is not the only one. In Charleston, the tea is unloaded but consigned to warehouses for three years; colonists later sell it to finance the Revolution. In New York and Philadelphia, the tea ships are turned back at the port and forced to return to England. Nonetheless, many colonists—including Ben Franklin—condemn the Tea Party as a frivolous destruction of property and call for Bostonians to refund the £15,000 value of the tea.

Mar 31, 1774

Boston Port Act

In response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament adopts the Boston Port Act, which closes Boston Harbor (this is the first of the four measures known as the Coercive Acts, and which the colonists call the "Intolerable" Acts). The Coercive Acts provide the impetus for leaders in Maryland and Virginia to initiate a boycott on exports and imports from Britain. The patriotic gesture is also one of self-interest for Chesapeake tobacco farmers, since tobacco prices have been in serious decline since late 1772. By withholding their crops, farmers can wait for prices to rise, which will then revive their sagging economy.

Apr 22, 1774

British Governor Threatens Emancipation

In the wake of the first shots fired in Massachusetts, Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, threatens to free the slaves of his colony if white Virginians harm one senior British official. He will go through with the threat a little more than a year later, in November 1775.

May 20, 1774

Act for the Impartial Administration of Justice

Parliament passes an Act for the Impartial Administration of Justice, which empowers the governor to transfer all trials of officials to England if their alleged offense has occurred in the line of duty. It is another of the so-called Intolerable Acts.

May 20, 1774

Massachusetts Government Act

Parliament passes the Massachusetts Government Act, one of the so-called Intolerable Acts. It radically alters the structure of colonial government there by requiring towns to gain the governor's approval before they can hold meetings, makes the law-enforcement officers and the colony council appointed rather than elected positions, and empowers sheriffs to select jurors. The colonists call these, together with the Quebec Act, the "Intolerable Acts." Rather than being intimidated by Parliament's attempt to single out Boston for punishment, other colonies become determined to resist these measures because they seem to confirm fears of a growing tyranny and many recognize how easily these measures could be extended to the other colonies.

May 1774

Gunpowder Consolidated

Over the summer of 1774, residents of Massachusetts towns around Boston begin to remove their gunpowder stores from the Provincial Powder House, atop a hill in northwest Boston. They leave only the Massachusetts provincial reserve (an emergency supply for the whole colony), which most colonists believe is rightly theirs.

May 1774 - Aug 31, 1774

Quartering Act

The Quartering Act—the fourth and final of the so-called Intolerable Acts—enables colonial governors to commandeer housing for British officers and soldiers if there is insufficient room in the barracks. The Quartering Act never actually stipulates private homes but instead specifies "uninhabited houses, out-houses, barns, or other buildings."¹⁸ This 1774 Quartering Act is actually a clarification of previous legislation that Parliament passed in 1765 and has renewed and amended annually. Colonists regard it as a violation of their rights, but they make no mention of troops intruding in private homes.

Provincial Powder House

Early in the morning, General Thomas Gage orders a secret mission to seize the remaining gunpowder stored at the Provincial Powder House, atop a hill in northwest Boston, before it is taken into the countryside by colonials. At 250 half-barrels, the Powder House holds the largest stash of gunpowder in New England. As Governor of Massachusetts, Gage is authorized to remove the gunpowder. His men have the stash safely transferred to Castle William by noon.

New England Powder Alarm

After General Thomas Gage's successful operation to relocate the remaining gunpowder stores at the Provincial Powder House, word spreads across Boston and the surrounding countryside that the Province has been "robbed of its powder." The rumor runs rampant among a surprised and already agitated populace, who exaggerate the story until people think that the Regulars are marching, six people are already dead, and the war has begun. None of that is true, but this period of panic comes to be known as the New England Powder Alarm. Word carries as far as Connecticut, thanks in part to the fire beacon warning system—once used to spread the news of the French and Indian war —which is utilized to convey the (false) announcement of war rapidly from town to town across the countryside, after dusk.¹⁹

Sep 2, 1774

Cambridge Common Assembly

Some 4,000 men assemble on Cambridge Common, most of them farmers from the Massachusetts countryside. This is just one day after they first heard about General Thomas Gage's removal of the provincial gunpowder supply (and many, more exaggerated, rumors of conflict). The New England Powder Alarm remains in full effect: the mob is armed only with wooden cudgels but it uses them to great effect as it surrounds several prominent Tory houses and forces two prominent Loyalists to flee and one to resign.

Sep 5, 1774

First Continental Congress

Fifty-five members representing every colony but Georgia assemble in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress. Peyton Randolph, a Virginian, is elected president. The Congress agrees to vote by colony, although Patrick Henry objects because he argues that members should vote not as New Yorkers or Virginians but as Americans. The Congress is not formed in order to revolt or to govern, but to act as a convention of ambassadors who will adopt resolutions and protests.

Oct 7, 1774

Quebec Act

Parliament passes the Quebec Act, which seems to confirm colonial fears of a growing tyrannical oppression by establishing a royally appointed governor and council there, rather than a representative assembly.

Oct 20, 1774

Congress Bans British Goods

The Continental Congress declares a nearly universal ban on the import or consumption of British goods and on exports to Britain, in protest against the Coercive Acts. This unified colonial action comes to be known as "the Association." But the non-exportation plan does not include rice, because South Carolina delegates oppose any ban on their most profitable crop. Meanwhile, tobacco exporters farther north in Virginia have economic and political incentive to ban their own exports, since tobacco prices are slumping. The Congress still avows its "allegiance to his majesty" but also expresses its "deepest anxiety" with British policies since 1763.²⁰ This non-importation agreement will lead to Parliament's total suspension of overseas trade.

Apr 8, 1775

Paul Revere’s Early Ride

On 8 April 1775, a Saturday, silversmith and American revolutionary Paul Revere mounts his horse in Boston and rides all day to reach Concord, Massachusetts in the evening. Revere delivers the message to town leaders in Concord that the British Regulars (regular troops, that is) are coming, and there will probably be a battle the next day. In fact, Revere has issued a false alarm, as General Gage is not yet ready to march. But the people of Concord believe attack is imminent; the Provincial Congress (which has been meeting in Concord) decides to adjourn for three weeks and get out of town, while Concord residents disperse the town's military supplies to surrounding communities.

Apr 18, 1775

Paul Revere’s Ride

Ten days after his first (premature) ride to warn Concord of a possible British move, Paul Revere is once again summoned to warn the countryside, and this time it goes down as historical legend. In the late afternoon, a stable boy runs through Boston to the North End neighborhood where Revere lives, informing him that the British Regulars are ready to march. The stable boys have overheard a few British officers whispering about how there will be "hell to pay tomorrow!"²¹ The stable boy is the third person to report this news to Revere, one of the last patriot leaders remaining in Boston (since most of the rest have fled to surrounding towns in the Massachusetts countryside).

The British Are Coming

Boston's Committee of Safety sends two of its members, William Dawes and Paul Revere, to deliver the news that "The Regulars are coming out!"—not "The British are coming!" as legend would have it.²² Dr. Samuel Prescott joins both men after running into them on the road to Concord at 1am. The men follow separate routes in case one is captured (British troops are patrolling the roads west of Boston). Both men carry written messages that read: "A large body of the King's troops (supposed to be a brigade of about 12, or 1500) were embarked in boats from Boston, and gone to land at Lechmere's point."²³ The note is accurate, except that it exaggerates the size of the British force.

Revere Beats Dawes

RANGEEND_RIDE In less than two hours, Paul Revere covers nearly thirteen miles to reach Lexington around midnight. On the way, he follows an arc northwest of Boston that enables him to stop in every town to Lexington and meet with Whig leaders to warn them. Revere's comrade William Dawes has to travel a longer distance on a slower horse; he covers almost seventeen miles in approximately three hours.

Lexington Militia Gathers

Immediately after Paul Revere's arrival in Lexington, Massachusetts, sometime after midnight, the town militia gathers. The militiamen's wives have packed a few days of provisions for them; everyone has been preparing for this moment, though few if any of the New Englanders are jubilant about the prospect of war. By 2am, most of the men have mustered on the Lexington Common.

May 10, 1775

Second Continental Congress

The Second Continental Congress convenes at Philadelphia. The British now control Boston and the Massachusetts militia are laying siege to the town. The Congress has no choice but to assume the role of a revolutionary government, though it has no resources.

May 10, 1775

Fort Ticonderoga Falls

Fort Ticonderoga falls to the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont, led by Ethan Allen, and the Massachusetts volunteers who are under the leadership of Benedict Arnold.

May 12, 1775

Green Mountain Boys

Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys of Vermont and the Massachusetts volunteers under Benedict Arnold (who is from Connecticut) take Crown Point, north of Fort Ticonderoga.

Jun 15, 1775

Washington Takes Command

John Adams nominates George Washington for general and commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and the Second Continental Congress unanimously agrees. Washington—one of the most experienced American officers after his service in the French and Indian War—accepts on the condition that he receive no salary.

Jun 17, 1775

Bunker Hill

On the same day that George Washington is commissioned, British and American forces engage in the first major conflict of the Revolutionary War at Bunker Hill, Massachusetts. (The battle is misnamed—the actual location is not Bunker Hill but neighboring Breed's Hill, which is lower and closer to the water.) The battle is declared a British victory, but it is a Pyrrhic one: General Howe's forces suffer over 1,000 casualties before gaining the high ground. The colonials lose about 400 men. People in both London and Boston note that a few more such victories would ruin the victors.

Jun 1, 1775

Slave Uprising Rumors

Rumors of slave uprisings run rampant up and down the coastal south.

Jul 1, 1775

British Incite Slaves

The British commander of Fort Johnston, near Wilmington, North Carolina, encourages blacks to "elope from their masters." In response, the revolutionary government imposes martial law.²⁴

Jul 1, 1775

Quakers Form Anti-Slavery Society

The Society of Friends (the religious group better known as Quakers), outspoken advocates of emancipation but not leaders in the revolutionary movement, form the first anti-slavery society in the Western world, in Pennsylvania.

Jul 8, 1775

Olive Branch Petition

The Continental Congress sends King George III a last-ditch "Olive Branch Petition," written by John Dickinson. The petition reasserts American loyalty to the crown and appeals directly to King George III, "with all humility submitting to your Majesty's wise consideration," expressing hope for "a happy and permanent reconciliation." But it also asks "that, in the mean time...such statutes as more immediately distress any of your Majesty's Colonies may be repealed."²⁵ Representatives of the Continental Congress present the "Olive Branch Petition" to the Earl of Dartmouth, but King George III refuses to receive it.

Aug 23, 1775

Proclamation for Suppression Rebellion and Sedition

King George III issues a "Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition" which condemns the "open and avowed rebellion" in the North American colonies and declares that all officers, civil and military, "are obliged to exert their utmost endeavours [sic] to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice."²⁶

Aug 1775

Revolutionary Economy Suffers

The colonial boycott and Parliament's retaliatory blockade close all export markets in North America, and many tenant farmers are deprived of the necessary income to pay their rents. Many landlords—like Richard Henry Lee—begin demanding their rent in hard currency (gold and silver). But this is increasingly difficult if not impossible for smallholders, or small-scale farmers, to come by.

Oct 26, 1775

House of Lords Support King

The House of Lords votes by a margin of more than two-to-one to support the King's war against America, defeating opposition to the war 69 to 29.²⁷

Oct 26, 1775

House of Commons Support King

The House of Commons votes by an even greater majority than the House of Lords to support the King's war against America, defeating opposition to the war 278 to 108.²⁸

Nov 12, 1775

African-Americans Enlist

George Washington issues a General Order that neither "Negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men" are to be enlisted in the Continental Army. When the Army becomes desperate for recruits by year's end, Washington changes course and re-authorizes enlistment for blacks with "prior military experience." By January 1777, enlistment is extended to all free blacks.

Nov 7, 1775

Dunmore Frees Slaves

John Murray, known as Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, issues a proclamation guaranteeing freedom to any slaves or servants in the colony who will leave their masters and bear arms against the white colonists of the rebellion. Some 300 slaves respond, and half of them are women and children.

Nov 1775

Salt Riots

Virginia farmers begin a series of salt riots, brought on by the non-importation agreement that the colony initiated in 1774. Non-importation is designed to put pressure on Parliament by causing unemployment and riots in Britain, but when the salt runs out in Virginia, the situation turns dire: salt is a necessary component of preserving meat, preparing food, and feeding livestock.

Dec 25, 1775

Tenants Strike in Virginia

On Christmas Day, the traditional date for rent payments, tenants in Loudoun County, Virginia and in neighboring counties go on strike and refuse to pay their rents. They tell their landlords that they cannot sell their produce and therefore have no hard money to give. Those that have enlisted with the army are only paid in rapidly depreciating paper money. This rent strike is exceptional because the tenants mount a united front and do not beg their landlords' pardon, but instead declare that rent collection has become unjust.²⁹

Jan 1, 1776

Thomas Paine Publishes Common Sense

Thirty-nine-year-old Thomas Paine publishes his radical pamphlet, Common Sense, advocating independence for America and an immediate end to all ties with Britain. The pamphlet sells thousands of copies in its first days of publication, emerging just as colonists learn of King George III's speech declaring the American Colonies to be in rebellion against the Crown.

1776

Women of New Jersey Vote

The recently drafted New Jersey state constitution opens the franchise to "all free inhabitants" who can meet residence and property requirements; in the following years, several women take advantage of this language to gain the vote. The New Jersey assembly disenfranchises them again in 1807, reflecting the prevailing male belief that women are not suited to voting by nature or by habit.

Jan 1, 1776

Quakers Abolish Slavery

The Society of Friends (Quakers) abolishes slavery among its members.

Americans Attack British in Boston

At midnight, American soldiers begin their bombardment of the British in Boston. Cannons roar on both sides throughout the night and shake the surrounding houses.

Americans Surprise British

Overnight, the Continental Army builds fortifications along the Heights, in an advance toward Dorchester, overlooking Boston. The following morning, General William Howe and the rest of the British are simply shocked by the rapidity of the colonial advance; American General William Heath writes that "Perhaps there never was so much work done in so short a space of time."³⁰

Mar 5, 1776

Drive to Dorchester

On the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, as the Americans drive towards Dorchester, the British cancel plans for an attack because of very stormy weather.

Mar 17, 1776

British Retreat from Boston

After more inclement weather, British troops and Loyalists leave Boston, rather than try to mount an attack after having to wait so many days in which the colonials could strengthen their defenses along the Heights. Some 9,000 Regulars and 1,100 Loyalists depart for Halifax, leaving spiked cannons behind them and other weapons dumped into the harbor. George Washington orders "St. Patrick" as the password of the day, and "Boston" as the countersign.

May 15, 1776

Congress Recommends State Governments

The Continental Congress recommends the formation of state governments.

May 1776

Betsy Ross Begins Flag

Philadelphia upholsterer Betsy Ross helps George Washington and the members of a secret committee to create the new United States flag. Ross persuades the men to use the five-pointed star, instead of the six-pointed one that is commonly employed in English heraldry.

Jun 11, 1776

Jefferson Begins Declaration

Thomas Jefferson, age 33, begins drafting the Declaration of Independence alone in a room on the second floor of a house on Philadelphia's Market Street.

Jun 11, 1776

Articles of Confederation Draft Committee

A committee of Congress, led by John Dickinson, is appointed to draft the Articles of Confederation.

Jun 12, 1776

Virginia Declaration of Rights

The Virginia General Assembly issues a Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason, one of the wealthiest planters in Virginia. It employs language that Thomas Jefferson will adapt into the Declaration of Independence: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." The Declaration also asserts that all power is vested in the people and that the purpose of government is, "or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community."³¹

Jun 29, 1776

Virginia Drafts New Constitution

A provincial convention in Virginia adopts a new constitution without popular referendum. It lists a number of grievances against King George III and dissolves the colonial government, declaring instead a new state government composed of executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Jun 28, 1776

Jefferson Completes Declaration

RANGEEND_DECLARATION_OF_INDEPENDENCE Thomas Jefferson finishes drafting the Declaration of Independence.

Jun 29, 1776

Virginia Adopts State Constitution

Virginia passes its state constitution. Influenced by native sons George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, as well as John Adams (among others), it establishes a bicameral legislature with a house and senate. This General Assembly will be responsible for selecting the Governor and the Council of State, which together form the executive branch; it will also select the judges of the state. This constitution, like several others of the period, takes effect through the approval of the convention but without receiving popular ratification.

Jul 2, 1776

Congress Votes for Independence

The Continental Congress votes unanimously for independence. Pennsylvania is initially reluctant to agree to the vote but Benjamin Franklin and a few others manage to bring it on board. The second of July is the day that John Adams believes will live on in history as "Independence Day."

Jul 4, 1776

Congress Adopts Declaration of Independence

The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence (that is, it officially approves the statement). The Declaration is not actually signed by all Congress members until over a month later, after a new clean copy—without the editorial marks of the draft version—can be made on a more durable parchment paper. Within days, Continental Congress President John Hancock begins notifying colonial governors of the Declaration and advising them to make copies publicly available. Hancock and Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson are the only publicly known signers until January 1777, as the other signers' identities are initially kept secret in order to protect them from British reprisals.

Aug 2, 1776

Delegates Sign Declaration of Independence

Delegates begin signing the Declaration of Independence in what is now Independence Hall in Philadelphia. John Hancock, representing Massachusetts, signs first (and, famously, with the largest signature) as president of the Continental Congress.

Aug 27, 1776

Americans Defeated, Retreat

The Continental Army suffers a major defeat at Brooklyn, New York, after British General Henry Clinton wages a successful flanking maneuver at night. George Washington nevertheless manages to escape overnight, evacuating some 9,000 troops along with their equipment and horses across the East River. The British don't know about the escape and the colonists do not lose a single life in the process.

Sep 28, 1776

Pennsylvania Adopts Constitution

A state convention, with Benjamin Franklin serving as president, adopts the Constitution of Pennsylvania. It is not sent to the public for ratification. The constitution is one of the most progressive of the age; it goes so far as to eliminate the governor and the upper house of the legislature. Until it holds a new convention in 1790, Pennsylvania will be run by a unicameral legislature and a Council of Censors who meet every five years to review the legislature's work and ensure that the constitution has been "preserved inviolate."

Oct 1776

Morristown Winter

George Washington's army almost collapses during the harsh winter at Morristown, New Jersey. By the end, only about 1,000 Continentals and a few militiamen remain. More recruits are signed up in the spring, attracted by Congress's offer of $20 and 100 acres of land for anyone who enlists for three years or the duration of the war, if less.

Nov 16, 1776

Margaret Corbin

During the British attack on Fort Washington, Margaret Corbin commands her dead husband's cannon until she herself is seriously wounded. Although Gen. Nathanael Greene's forces lose the fort to the British, Margaret Corbin becomes the first woman to be pensioned by the government, in 1779. In 1916 her remains are moved from Highland Falls, New York, to the cemetery on the grounds of the West Point Military Academy at West Point, New York, where a monument is erected in her honor.

Dec 23, 1776

The American Crisis

Thomas Paine publishes the first issue of his series, The American Crisis. Paine famously writes: "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." George Washington has this piece read aloud to his cold and starving soldiers who have retreated to Pennsylvania from lower Manhattan.

Dec 25, 1776

Washington Crosses the Delaware

On Christmas night, George Washington quietly crosses the Delaware River with a force of 2,400. This is the inspiration for the famous (and huge) painting—"George Washington Crossing the Delaware"—that Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze executes much later in 1851. The actual crossing is nothing like the painting; it is done in the middle of the night, in a driving snowstorm, Washington himself never would have stood up during the journey, and the flag behind Washington in the painting (the stars and stripes) will not exist until half a year after this event. Washington's forces arrive at Trenton, New Jersey at dawn and surprise the garrison of 1,500 Hessians—German mercenaries hired by the British—who are still recovering from a night of holiday celebrations, including plenty of rum. The Americans completely rout the enemy, leaving only about 500 of them alive and un-captured. Only six of Washington's men are wounded, among them Lieutenant James Monroe, the future president.

Jan 13, 1777

Paine Deplores Tar and Feathering

Tom Paine speaks out against the practice of tarring and feathering Loyalists and colonial officials. He says that "I never did and never would encourage what may properly be called a mob, when any legal mode of redress can be had."³²

Jan 3, 1777

Americans Repel British

The Americans repel three regiments of British redcoats and settle down to winter quarters in Morristown, New Jersey.

Oct 1776 - Jan 1777

Signers Names No Longer Secret

Congress requires that an "authentic copy" of the Declaration of Independence, with all the names of the signers, be printed for the first time. The names have previously been kept a secret to protect the signers from British reprisals, but the Congress now feels more confident in the wake of American military successes at Princeton and Trenton.

Jul 8, 1777

Vermont Abolishes Slavery

The Vermont Constitution prohibits slavery.

Aug 6, 1777

Victory at Oriskany

American militiamen inflict a serious reversal on the British at Oriskany, New York, when they repulse an ambush of Tories and their Native American allies. They stall the enemy long enough for General Benedict Arnold to arrive with 1,000 Continentals and relieve Fort Stanwix.

Sep 26, 1777

British Occupy Philadelphia

British troops occupy Philadelphia.

Oct 17, 1777

Battle of Saratoga

Americans are victorious at the battle of Saratoga in New York state; British General John Burgoyne surrenders to American General Horatio Gates. This is a serious reversal for the British forces. Their Native American allies had deserted them before the capitulation because they were under the false impression that the American forces were much more numerous than they actually were. Although Burgoyne himself is allowed to return home (where he receives a very cold reception), his 5,700 soldiers are imprisoned in Virginia. Word of this victory leads to the alliance with the French, which proves critical towards winning the Revolution.

1778

George White Eyes Murdered

George White Eyes, a Delaware Indian chief who has warned the Americans about previous British and Indian attacks on the frontier in the Great Lakes region, seeks protection from the Americans since his betrayal of the raids has endangered him with enemy tribes like the Detroit and Sandusky Indians. Instead, American militiamen at Fort Pitt murder him.³³

Dec 1, 1777

Valley Forge

General George Washington's army encamps at Valley Forge on the Schuylkill River in southeastern Pennsylvania, where it will endure a brutal winter. Many soldiers desert the encampment, which is afflicted with freezing cold temperatures and no food, not to mention an outbreak of disease. Washington warns Congress that if it doesn't send supplies soon, the army will either "starve, dissolve, or disperse."³⁴ Congress is locked in stalemate and doesn't do much of anything; Washington sends two of his generals on foraging expeditions to confiscate horses, cattle, and livestock from farmers in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. In return the farmers receive receipts that are to be honored by the Continental Congress. The troops begin to regain strength by March.

Nov 15, 1777

Congress Approves Articles

Congress approves the Articles of Confederation; the states won't ratify them for another four years. The Articles create the first independent government to attempt jurisdiction over all thirteen states.

Dec 1, 1777 - Mar 30, 1778

French Aid

After the Americans' pivotal victory at Saratoga lends them some confidence in the Continental forces, the French sign the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the Americans. France has been sending military aid to the Americans since 1776 (remember the saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"?); now they recognize the United States as an independent country and grant valuable trade concessions and special shipping privileges. The two countries also sign a Treaty of Alliance, negotiated by American diplomats Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee, in which neither can seek a separate peace with Great Britain. American independence is made the precondition of any future peace agreement.

May 1778

Iroquois Raids

Tories and their Iroquois allies terrorize frontier settlements throughout the summer, killing hundreds of militiamen in Pennsylvania frontier country.

Jun 28, 1778

Molly Pitcher

The legend of Revolutionary War heroine Molly Pitcher is born amidst a battle near the village of Monmouth Courthouse (A.K.A. Freehold, New Jersey). Mary Ludwig Hays (or Heis), the wife of Continental soldier John Hays (or Heis), carries water for her husband and other soldiers, who give her the "Pitcher" nickname. Molly quickly becomes a heroine of the war. Pennsylvania will grant her a pension in 1822. The British forces, under Sir Henry Clinton, manage to escape from Monmouth Courthouse overnight and continue their retreat from Philadelphia to New York.

May 1778 - Aug 28, 1778

George Rogers Clark

George Rogers Clark leads 175 frontiersmen down the Ohio River and through the woods to Kaskaskia, where they surprise the French inhabitants with news of the Franco-American alliance.

Sep 29, 1778

John Sullivan Attack Iroquois Federation

General John Sullivan and his expedition force of 4,000 soldiers set out towards western New York, on orders from General George Washington to see that the (British-allied) Iroquois country be "not merely overrun but destroyed." Sullivan and his men burn some forty Seneca and Cayuga villages, along with their orchards and food supplies, leaving the surviving Indians to starve. The Sullivan expedition permanently ruptures the Iroquois federation.³⁵

Dec 1, 1778

War in the South

The Revolutionary War shifts to the South; suddenly the British focus upon the region extending down from Virginia, to test King George's notion that there is an untapped reserve of Tory sympathizers there. As it turns out, there are not as many Loyalists as the English had hoped, and British forces actually tend to write their own death warrant by behaving so harshly that they turn many Tories or potential Tories against them.

Jan 1, 1779

Massachusetts Constitutional Convention

Massachusetts holds its state constitutional convention. Its assembly has already tried to submit a constitution to the towns for approval, but it was rejected. So instead, the assembly creates the special convention as a body separate from and superior to the state legislature; this is supposed to exercise the people's sovereignty, but two-thirds of the town meetings still have to ratify the final draft. This concept of a constitutional convention is an entirely unprecedented innovation in the history of government. Several other states follow suit.

May 1779

Jefferson Governor of Virginia

Thomas Jefferson succeeds Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia but only serves one term. During this period, he urges a war of extermination against the Shawnees in Ohio. The militia repeatedly crosses the Ohio River to burn Shawnee villages.³⁶

Sep 23, 1779

John Paul Jones “I Have Not Yet Begun To Fight”

Continental Navy Captain John Paul Jones wins a fierce battle with an English frigate off the coast of Britain. Jones's ship is badly damaged, and the British commander calls over to ask whether Jones is surrendering. Jones famously answers, "I have not yet begun to fight."³⁷ Then Jones and his crew capture the British ship and occupy it. (Jones's own ship does indeed sink shortly thereafter.) The small American navy is no match for the British fleet, but heroic encounters such as this one keep the British distracted until French naval reinforcements arrive.

Mar 1, 1780

Pennsylvania Gradual Emancipation

The Pennsylvania assembly passes a law that all blacks and mulattoes born from this day onward will be made free when they turn 28. Pennsylvania's is one of several gradual emancipation laws passed in northern states during and after the Revolution, as the doctrine of liberty confronts the paradox of slavery. Northern states can generally afford to confront this problem, as they have always had far fewer slaves than the South. Slaveowners south of Pennsylvania tend to express genuine moral dilemmas over the institution of bondage, and many of them manumit (free) their slaves in their wills, but states south of Pennsylvania do not pass similar legislation.

Mar 2, 1780

Artisans and Farmers Protest Massachusetts Constitution

Boston artisans and farmers attack the proposed Massachusetts state constitution—sent out to town meetings for public approval—as "aristocratic." Constructed in part by John Adams, who thought the Pennsylvania constitution went too far by vesting all power in a single democratically elected legislature, the Massachusetts constitution instead consists of a balance between two legislative houses and an independent executive.

May 12, 1780

Americans Surrender Charleston

British land forces pair with naval reinforcements under General Charles Cornwallis to inflict the biggest American loss of the war—the surrender of Charleston. American General Benjamin Lincoln acknowledges defeat and surrenders his force of 5,500 soldiers.

Jun 1, 1780

Massachusetts Adopts Constitution

When the Massachusetts constitutional convention reconvenes, it approves the state constitution, despite widespread public disapproval. The document goes into effect in October 1780.

Jun 10, 1780

Women in the American Revolution

Esther DeBerdt Reed of Philadelphia, age 33, publishes a broadside, entitled "The Sentiments of an American Woman." Reed is about to become president of the Ladies Association, the first large-scale women's organization in American history. A passionate patriot, Reed uses the broadside to make the case for women to renounce "vain ornaments," extravagant clothing, and elaborate hairstyles, and instead donate the money they would have spent on those things to the patriot troops, as "the offering of the Ladies."³⁸

Jun 1780

Ladies Association Fundraises

Esther DeBerdt Reed and her Ladies Association of Philadelphia have collected over $300,000 in continental dollars from over 1,600 people for the support of the patriot troops. Because of inflation, this amount actually equals about $7,500, but it is nonetheless substantial. This fundraising scheme is soon copied elsewhere, first by the women of Trenton, New Jersey, then in Maryland, and finally in Virginia.³⁹

Oct 7, 1780

Victory at King’s Mountain

Just when it seems that Lord Cornwallis has solidified British control over South Carolina, his own subordinates undercut their cause by savagely hanging all conquered forces from the mountains. The "over-mountain men" ally with other backcountry locals and together they defeat British forces at King's Mountain.

Aug 1780

Benedict Arnold Defects

Benedict Arnold defects to the British side, making his name a byword for betrayal ever since. Arnold switches sides in return for money and the rank of major general, which has eluded him in the Continental Army. Arnold has already committed treason by plotting to turn over the garrison at West Point to the British, and he also suggests in his correspondence how Sir Henry Clinton might go about catching George Washington himself. The plot is discovered when the Americans capture Major John André, the British go-between, and while André is hanged as a spy, Arnold manages to escape to join the British in New York.

Nov 1780

Nathanael Greene

In the wake of General Gates's discouraging defeat, Congress appoints the patient and exceptionally smart Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island to command the southern theater at the end of 1780. Greene wages a successful war of attrition, inflicting heavy losses on the British in skirmishes throughout the first half of 1781. By fall of 1781, Greene has reduced British control to Charleston and Savannah, while savage fighting continues between Whigs and Tories in the backcountry.

Nov 1780

Benedict Arnold Fights Americans

As a British general, Benedict Arnold engages in a war of maneuver against American forces under the Prussian Baron von Steuben and the French Marquis de Lafayette.

1781

Slaves Escape

Thomas Jefferson estimates that 30,000 slaves have run away during the British invasion of Virginia. This figure, if accurate, would represent approximately half of those slaves who may have been able to escape; the rest are too young, infirm, or with families.⁴⁰

Nov 1780 - Aug 1781

Cornwallis Marches North

General Charles Cornwallis, commander of the southern theater for the British, marches north to Virginia to make sure that Nathanael Greene cannot use that region as a source of reinforcement for the Carolina insurgency.

Mar 1, 1781

Maryland Ratifies Articles

Maryland becomes the last of the thirteen states to ratify the Articles of Confederation, allowing them to go into force. Up until this point, the Continental Congress has been exercising authority without any constitutional sanction. Maryland has held up the process since late 1777 because of its insistence that all states relinquish their claims to western lands and cede authority to the Congress. Maryland assents to the Confederation when Virginia finally withdraws its claims to the Ohio River valley.

Aug 1781

Cornwallis Fortifies at Yorktown

General Charles Cornwallis fatefully decides to dig in at Yorktown, a port in Virginia tobacco country, with forces of about 7,200 men. Cornwallis believes that his troops are invulnerable to a siege, since he thinks the British navy controls the seas and George Washington's land forces seem to be preoccupied with attacking New York.

Sep 28, 1781

Siege of Yorktown

A French fleet of some 3,000 soldiers under Admiral de Grasse has sailed up from the West Indies and combined with army forces under the command of George Washington and the French Comte de Rochambeau. Total American and French forces of some 16,000 dwarf Lord Cornwallis's 7,000-man British army, cutting off any hope of relief for Cornwallis, who sues for peace on 17 October, exactly four years after the American victory at Saratoga.

Oct 19, 1781

Cornwallis Surrenders

RANGEEND_YORKTOWN_SIEGE General Charles Cornwallis surrenders to a combined French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia. British forces march out with their colors cased (i.e., no flags flying), their band playing understandably somber songs and one distinctly apropos English nursery rhyme, "The World Turned Upside Down."

1782

Viriginia Repeals Manumission Prohibition

Virginia repeals its 1723 prohibition on private manumissions (a private owner's voluntary emancipation of his or her slaves).

Feb 27, 1782

House of Commons Votes Against War

In the wake of the defining American victory at Yorktown, the House of Commons votes against continuing the war.

Mar 5, 1782

Commons Offers Peace

The House of Commons authorizes the crown to make peace with the American rebels.

Mar 20, 1782

Sympathetic British Government

British Prime Minister Lord North resigns. The Duke of Rockingham (who led the movement for the Stamp Act repeal) heads the new government, which includes many men sympathetic to the Americans.

1783

Letitia Cunningham Advocates for Whigs

Philadelphia widow Letitia Cunningham publishes "The Case of the Whigs Who Loaned their Money on the Public Faith Fairly Stated," a well-researched pamphlet that argues on behalf of investors—especially widows. Cunningham thinks they are entitled to full interest payments on the bonds they have purchased during the war.⁴¹

Sep 3, 1783

Treaty of Paris

The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Revolutionary War. England recognizes the United States as a free and independent country. The two nations resolve the territorial boundaries in the Great Lakes region. The U.S. Congress agrees to recommend the restitution of property to rightful owners, even if they were Loyalists, although this provision of the treaty will not ever really be enforced. The United States also pledges to prevent any future property confiscation. Both countries are granted access to the Mississippi River.

Nov 24, 1783

British Leave New York City

The last British troops leave their stronghold at New York City.

Dec 4, 1783

George Washington Leaves Military

The British evacuate Staten Island and Long Island. George Washington takes leave of his officers in New York.

Dec 23, 1783

Washington Resigns Commission

George Washington appears before the Continental Congress to resign his commission. He makes it home to his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia, in time for Christmas.

 Chamakhe Maurieni is a Moroccan born Writer, Author, Public speaker. A psychology graduate, and a former nominee for the Bridport poetry prize, he is also a former columnist for the African Vanguard and lead writer for the Gafi Research institute, Tunis. He recently joined Twitter,follow Chamakhe Maurieni on Twitter @venimaurieni. His latest work is titled - FACEBOOK IS DECEPTION and available on the Smashwords online bookstore. Volume 1 and Volume 2