60 C h a p t e r 13 The Continued Move West Learning.docx

60 C h a p t e r 13 The Continued Move West
Learning Outcomes
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the
following:
4-1 Describe the development of the English colonies during the
1700s, including a discussion of each group of colonies: New
England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake, and the
Southern
Colonies.
4-2 Discuss the impact of the Enlightenment and the Great
Awakening on colonial America.
4-3 Chronicle the development of slavery in the American
colonies,
and analyze the reasons for changes in attitudes and in the legal
system that helped the distinctively American slave system
flourish.
4-4 By 1763, American colonists had become used to making
their
own decisions and taking care of their own needs. Describe the
events in England that contributed to this situation, and explain
their effects on the colonists.
Expansion and
Control, 1700–1763
Chapter 4

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9781305211827, HIST, Third Edition, Schultz - © Cengage
Learning. All rights reserved. No distribution allowed without
express authorization.
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Expansion of Colonial Economy and Society, 1700–1763 61
“Between 1700 and 1763, the North American colonies
developed
a stable manufacturing economy

that could potentially rival many
European nations.”As the last chapter discussed,
British colonial America grad-
ually evolved into four unique
regions. This chapter explores
the development of these
regions from 1700 to 1763,
the expansion of an intellec-
tual and cultural life distinct
from that of Britain, and the
ways in which African slav-
ery became ingrained in the life of colonial North America. It
concludes with Britain’s
attempts to regain control of its increasingly feisty and
independent-minded colony, an
effort that would eventually foster a revolution.
4-1 Expansion of Colonial Economy
and Society, 1700–1763
By 1700, four distinct regions had developed in colonial North
America: New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, Connecticut), the Middle Colonies (New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware), the Chesapeake (Virginia and
Maryland), and the Southern Colonies (North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia) (see Map 4.1 on page 63). Each region had
a unique economy based on its geographical location and its
founding ideology, and each region’s society developed in
response to those two factors.
The idea that all colonists possessed “natural rights” as
Englishmen was perhaps the
only unifying feature among the colonists. Otherwise, they lived
incredibly distinct lives,
based largely on the region in which they resided. These
regional distinctions would

remain significant, and would perhaps even lead to the
American Civil War nearly a
century later.
4-1a New England
New England’s terrain, climate, and founding ideology
encouraged the development of
certain types of agriculture, business, trade, and society.
Economy
Like most other colonists, most New Englanders were farmers.
New England’s hilly land
and a short growing season encouraged diversified farming, a
system in which a single
home could farm many different crops that would sustain the
household throughout
the year. Farmers lived in towns and walked each day to their
fields to tend their crops.
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It was slavery that led to racism, not racism that led to
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Strongly Disagree Strongly Agree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
What do you think?
<< During the first half of the eighteenth century, England’s
colonies in North America grew socially, economi-
cally, and culturally—so much so, in fact, that they began to
appear increasingly distinct from their mother country.
diversified farming

System in which a single
home could farm various
crops to sustain the
household throughout
the year
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62 C h a p t e r 4 Expansion and Control, 1700–1763
Livestock was allowed to
graze on community-owned
land, such as the town com-
mon. New Englanders, how-
ever, were consistently alert
to new economic opportu-
nities. They grew surplus
agricultural goods to trade
for tools and other finished
goods such as furniture. At
first their surplus was limited to grains and cereals,
but by the early 1700s New Englanders were trad-
ing meat, dairy, and orchard products as well. In
the mid-1600s and throughout the early 1700s, New
Englanders also maintained an active trade in furs,
fish, and timber.
In this highly agrarian society, New Englanders
often produced their own furniture and agricultural
implements, and they spun their family’s flax and
wool to make clothing. Over time, some small indus-
tries developed around New England’s two principal
products: fish and lumber. New Englanders used
local timber to establish a shipbuilding industry,
and by the mid-1700s, one-third of all ships used by
England were built in New England, a truly remark-
able statistic.
Developing industries require money, salesmen,
and trade routes, and the merchants who met these
needs became prominent players in the develop-
ment of New England from 1700 to 1763. They
brought in capital and managerial expertise, and

when land opened up to the west, the commer-
cial leaders of New England were some of the first
speculators, originating the practice of western land
speculation around 1670.
These commercial adventurers also participated
in a pattern of trade that came to be called the
Triangular Trade, although it was much more com-
plicated than a simple triangle. The New England
colonies traded fish and grains to England and to
southern Europe in return for wine, spices, and gold.
They also sold their goods to the West Indies in
return for sugar and molasses. The New Englanders
then distilled the molasses to make rum and traded
it, along with other manufactured goods, to Africa in
return for slaves and gold. The gold from this trade
allowed New Englanders to purchase manufactured
goods, tools, and linens from England, which in turn
bought New England’s manufactured ships. By 1763,
this was a thriving arena of commerce that gave
the colonies a good deal of economic independence,
which later supported their insistent demands for
increased political independence. New Englanders
had also established a diversified economy that pos-
sessed but was not dependent upon slave labor.
Society
In 1660, New England had a population of more
than 30,000 people of European descent. These
people lived a mostly provincial life in small, family-
centered towns. By 1700, the population had tripled
to 90,000, and by 1760 it had reached 450,000. Still,
most of these people lived in small towns.
The dramatic increase in population reflected

the stability and importance of families and an
environment hospitable to life and commerce. Some
>> By the mid-1700s, one-third of
all ships used by England were built in
New England. This fact alone signified
that the North American colonies were
no longer simply providing raw materials
for Europe, but were developing large,
complex industries on their own.
triangular trade
Pattern of trade in
which fish, grains,
spices, sugar, ships,
slaves, and gold were
traded between the
New England colonies,
England, southern
Europe, the West Indies,
and Africa
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One English import that
crossed the Atlantic suc-
cessfully was a social sys-
tem demarcated by class.
Theoretically at the top of
the system was a small
group of aristocrats—
governors, judges, and
wealthy businessmen with
English backgrounds—who
endeavored to live a prop-
erly refined life above the
rest of the population. The
wealthiest attempted to
recreate the privileged life
of urban England, building
large homes and filling them
with English furnishings. To
flaunt their wealth, some
possessed slaves.
A bigger group in New
England society was what the
colonists called the “natu-
ral aristocracy”—merchants
and wealthy landholders
who made their fortunes in
the New World and usually
did not possess noble titles.

These men dominated eco-
nomic affairs and owned an
increasing percentage of the
area’s wealth.
A group of commercial
middlemen, farmers, and
artisans constituted the class
in the middle and made up
the majority of the popula-
tion. They may have owned
their own farms or small
businesses producing hand-
made goods. Beneath them
was a laboring class that
consisted mostly of young
men waiting to inherit land
from their fathers or pre-
paring to enter a craft. In
time, most of this laboring class would own property
and enjoy some level of wealth. Slaves, employed by
the wealthiest members of the natural aristocracy,
dwelled at the bottom of the social structure.
Life in New England
With the growth that occurred between 1660 and
1763, the now-idealized image of an agricultural and
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© Cengage Learning 2014
immigrants came, and slaves were forced to come,
but most of the growth was due to a high birthrate.
This burgeoning population was the impetus for
rapid westward expansion. A family with six sons
could not divide its land six ways and bequeath a
plot of land large enough for each son to ensure his
prosperity or success. Some of the children had to
strike out on their own.
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religiously orthodox New
England receded into the
past. In its place emerged an
increasingly commercialized
society characterized by eco-
nomic mobility and social
differentiation. Although New England remained

overwhelmingly agricultural, the small towns
became increasingly connected to one another.
This was a significant transition from a century
earlier. In the 1660s, colonial New England was a
provincial land freckled with unconnected towns.
There were few roads in the 1660s, and they con-
nected only the largest towns. By the 1700s, this had
begun to change. Commerce had grown exponen-
tially, as colonists tracked the markets in England
and knew which ships were carrying which goods.
One historian has called this developing society “an
empire of goods” because of the large number of
goods newly available for purchase.
As the population multiplied, colonists pushed
westward and developed one town after another,
creating a large half-circle of small towns around
any large Atlantic port city. These hinterland towns
lay on the margins of the bustling economic and
social world of New England’s cities.
Such robust growth meant that the religious and
social orthodoxy enforced by the Puritans could not
last. Prosperity weakened the younger generations’
commitment to the strict religious practices of their
forefathers. Ministers slowly lost stature, no longer
defining New England life as they had when the
Puritans first arrived. In their place, the “natural
aristocracy” assumed a privileged place. By 1700,
many Puritan ministers had begun to rely on the
jeremiad—a long speech emphasizing society’s fall
from purity and grace to its current, depraved
state—as a way to stir up congregations. Often they
had little luck. The Puritan ideal had hardly lasted

beyond a generation or two.
Despite the decline of the church’s importance,
the growth of cities, and the rise in importance
of commerce, most New Englanders maintained
a strong commitment to family life. If all else
was changing, these values remained constant.
The sexual division of labor continued (as imported
from England): women remained in charge of
“indoor affairs” (raising children, preparing
food, cleaning house, doing laundry) and men
took charge of “outdoor affairs” (cultivating
fields, chopping wood, and conducting the
daily business transactions, such as buy-
ing horses and selling crops). In sum, New
England consisted mostly of stable, agricul-
turally based families, an expanding economy
that led to the growth of some cities, and a
rapid westward migration to accommodate
the growth of the population. And of course
there continued to be the presence of Indians,
who, although being pushed west, still occu-
pied significant terrain in all the colonies.
4-1b The Middle Colonies
The warmer climate and distinct foundings of
the Middle Colonies created some important
differences from New England.
>> Life in colonial New England, as merchants discuss the
most recent business developments.
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>> By 1760 New England no longer looked like the Puritan
ideal. Instead it looked a lot like England, though with greater
eco-

nomic and social mobility and a higher rate of literacy.
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A long speech or liter-
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society’s fall from purity
and grace to its current,
depraved state
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Economy
In the Middle Colonies, farms were larger than in
New England, and farmers lived on their farms rather
than in the village. Many of the Middle Colonies’
farms achieved relative self-sustenance, and some
were so bountiful they exported goods. Fruit, live-
stock, and wheat were the principal exported crops
of the region, wheat being the biggest export. Indeed,

by the early 1700s, New York and Pennsylvania were
sometimes known to English traders as the “bread
colonies.” Agricultural production grew 2 to 3 percent
every year from 1700 to 1770, and the best farmers
in the Middle Colonies could afford to bring nearly
40 percent of their produce to market, meaning that
this area quickly grew wealthier than New England as
money from England poured in.
As in New England, families in the Middle
Colonies produced their own furniture and agri-
cultural implements and spun their family’s flax
and wool to make clothing. Clay from the riverbeds
allowed them to build houses of brick, usually two
stories high. Unlike the many small towns of New
England, commerce focused on the two hubs of the
Middle Colonies: New York and Philadelphia. The
chief industries developed around corn and wheat,
and mills built alongside rivers ground these grains
into flour. Nearly all of these goods passed through
New York or Philadelphia to be traded overseas. If
you lived in the Middle Colonies during these years,
it is likely you would have either lived on a wheat
farm or in the commercial cities of New York or
Philadelphia.
The success of the mills allowed the Middle
Colonies to participate in the Triangular Trade by
supplying wheat, grain, and excess fish to England
and southern Europe, where they were traded for
wine and gold. They traded other surplus items,
such as meat and horses, to the West Indies in
return for sugar and molasses. As in New England,
they turned the molasses into rum, which they
shipped with other goods to Africa in
return for slaves and gold. Some

families were slaveholders, and by
the 1760s slavery was generally well
established in the Middle Colonies,
although most families owned only
small numbers of slaves.
Society
In 1660, just 5,000 non-Indian people lived in the
Middle Colonies. In 1710, that number had grown
to 70,000, and by 1760 it was 425,000. This growth
was fueled by a high birthrate and also (unlike New
England) continued immigration from Scotland,
Ireland, Germany, and England.
In the Middle Colonies, several members of the
natural aristocracy owned enormous tracts of land.
These people grew wealthier and wealthier through-
out the 1700s as they sold some of their extensive
lands. Below them socially were urban merchants
and small family farmers, who comprised the
majority of the population. Below these groups were
tenant farmers who rented the farms they worked.
And in the cities there was a growing number of
poor. There were also around 35,000 slaves in the
Middle Colonies in 1770, most of whom worked in
the agricultural areas of New York, usually cul-
tivating wheat. Slavery was also visible in
the cities, usually because the wealthi-
est colonists liked to have a servant
in tow to show off their wealth. By
1750, New York City was a major
hub of the American slave trade.

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>> Wheat.
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>> The wealthiest colonists liked to have a servant in tow to
show off their wealth.
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Life in the Middle Colonies
Life in the Middle Colonies can be differentiated
by looking at the big cities (Philadelphia and New
York) on the one hand, and everywhere else on
the other. Family farms owned and worked by one
family produced huge amounts of grain. In New
York, however, large landowners owned baronial
estates and had tenants work their lands. As in New
England, the population boom pro-
pelled youngsters off family plots
and farther west. Some tried to
purchase farms, and some were
reduced to tenant farming. In most
areas, the sexual division of labor
continued, with women controlling
indoor activities and men controlling outdoor
activities. Families remained generally stable,
and, in the absence of large villages, the number
of people living on a farm grew.
The cities were booming as
well. In 1765, almost one out of
every five Pennsylvanians lived
in a sizeable town. A professional
class of lawyers, craftsmen, and mill-
ers emerged. The populace founded
urban institutions such as centers of
public education, newspapers, the-
aters, fire departments, and
libraries. More so than the
other colonies, the Middle
Colonies’ thriving population
was diverse. In New York City and
Philadelphia, many languages were
spoken, and people often grouped

together by language. In general, the labor-
ing people of the Middle Colonies exerted
an impressive amount of control over civic life, as
a ruling elite was slow to emerge. This civic input
combined with devotion to family and individual
happiness to form the cornerstone of society.
4-1c The Chesapeake
The Chesapeake, with more fertile soil than either
New England or the Middle Colonies, had fewer
towns and more land devoted to a single crop:
tobacco.
Economy
Tobacco was the chief product of the Chesapeake
area, and, rather than developing a diversified
economy, farmers in the Chesapeake remained tied
to this single lucrative crop. For instance, in the late
1600s, tobacco generated 90 percent of the enor-
mous wealth in Virginia and Maryland. Flour and
grains came in a distant second as exports, growing
in importance only in the mid-1700s. From 1660 to
1763, tobacco was king of the Chesapeake, its pro-
duction influencing everything else in the colony.
Because people lived on huge stretches of
land that grew tobacco, there were few towns and
hardly any developed industries in the Chesapeake.
Virginia did mine some iron ore,
and after 1730, when grain became
profitable, mills sprang up along
the rivers. Indeed, just before
the American Revolution, the
Chesapeake’s mills had developed

into one of the strongest sectors of
the economy. But this was a late development. The
Chesapeake relied on its staple crop for its wealth,
and the anemic growth of other industries would
suffer because of it.
Cities, too, failed to develop. By the
middle 1700s, the Chesapeake had only
one sizeable city in Baltimore, which
was developed as a port town for the
area’s grain. Other than that, most of
the Chesapeake’s cities (such as Norfolk)
were little more than small towns.
Instead of living in cities or towns,
the people of the Chesapeake settled
on farms. Key to a farm’s success was
access to a riverbank where product
could be transported to market. Thus, a
developmental map of the Chesapeake
would show a number of large farms
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>> In most areas, the sexual division of labor continued, with
women controlling indoor activities and men controlling
outdoor
activities.
Tobacco was king
of the Chesapeake.
>> Tobacco plant.
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Art Library
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moving farther and farther up the major rivers. In
1660, there were around 35,000 non-Indians living in
the Chesapeake. By 1760 that number had reached
500,000. Just below two-fifths of this total (about
190,000) were slaves, most of whom worked on
tobacco plantations that lined the major waterways.
Society
In this economically minded society, social relations
were based on knowing one’s place in the social
hierarchy and deferring to one’s superiors. At the top
of the structure were the few families with access to
public land who profited from selling tobacco and
grain. They increased their wealth throughout the
1700s, constructing a visible structure of leadership
and power and modeling their lives after those of

the landed English gentry, not wealthy Londoners.
By setting themselves up as an elite class with
social responsibilities, they gained total control over
political and religious institutions. By the mid-1700s,
commentators were noting the extravagance and
indulgences of this elite. They sat high above the
less affluent free colonists, who were usually small
landholders and who were, in turn, socially above
the slaves.
Life in the Chesapeake
The majority of the people in the Chesapeake lived
on widely scattered farms and plantations. Because
settlements were scattered, individual households
grew larger and larger in size, and it was common
to live with one’s siblings for most of one’s life.
Throughout the 1700s, kinship networks among
neighbors prospered.
As roads slowly developed, settlements began
to spring up farther from the rivers. Horses provided
the main mode of transportation. By the 1750s, the
Chesapeake supported a rural commercial network
along these roads, where mer-
chants, innkeepers, and traders
could hawk their wares. Life was
slowly moving away from being
entirely agricultural, although in
contrast to New England and the
Middle Colonies, urban life in the
Chesapeake was nonexistent.
Until 1700, there were also
many more men than women in
the Chesapeake. This meant that
many people married late and that

women possessed ample power.
The region suffered from high
death rates, economic inequal-
ity among free people, and weak
social institutions, such as churches (where a sense
of community could develop).
This began to change around 1700. A temporary
lull in tobacco prices slowed the rush of new arrivals,
allowing Chesapeake society to settle down as its
sex ratio evened out. In addition, after 1675 slavery
replaced indentured servitude as
the preferred type of labor. By 1720,
slaves made up 25 percent of the
population, a percentage that sta-
bilized at about 40 percent by 1760,
when almost 50 percent of fami-
lies owned slaves, usually in small
numbers. The declining number
of indentured servants meant the
eventual decline of a class of free
white people, who would have con-
stituted the region’s middle rung
of society. Because of the growth of
slavery, this middle rung remained
narrow in the Chesapeake; there
was little middle class to speak of.
>> The governor’s palace at Williamsburg, Virginia, the seat of
royal power in the colony, exemplified the standard to which
wealthy
Virginia families aspired.
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By the mid-1700s,
commentators
were noting the
extravagance and
indulgences of the
Chesapeake elite.
They sat high above
the less affluent free
colonists.
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For women, this meant a changed domestic life,
and a less influential one. Following the model of the
landed English gentry, Chesapeake society viewed
men as benign patriarchs presiding over their flock
of dependents. The result was that women’s roles in
the region declined in importance from 1660 to 1760.
As opposed to the variety of religions in the
Middle Colonies and, increasingly, New England,
throughout the 1700s the Anglican Church became
entrenched in the life of the Chesapeake. Unlike
Puritans, Anglicans did not demand strict adher-
ence, and the Chesapeake institutions remained
generally secular. This situation was aided by the
fact that there were few ministers in the growing
region, and the gentry did not care to pay for more
to come.

Throughout the 1700s, then, the Chesapeake
developed a strongly aristocratic social structure and
a largely rural, English model of living. This pattern
stood in contrast to New England, which featured
small towns and social mobility. It also stood in
contrast to the Middle Colonies, which relied on
New York and Philadelphia as central urban hubs to
support the many middle-rung farmers. Life in the
Chesapeake was more deferential regarding status,
more rural, and, at the top, more luxurious and
comfortable.
4-1d The Southern Colonies
Impressive as it was, the wealth of the Chesapeake
could not compete with that of the Southern Colonies.
Like the Chesapeake, the Southern Colonies relied
overwhelmingly on a few staple crops, but life was
generally so miserable that few colonists resided
there permanently. Only two towns of any size were
established, and no social models of leadership
developed. The wealthy landowners enjoyed the prof-
its, but they chose to live elsewhere. The Southern
Colonies were thought of as sources of wealth only,
not a place to establish and develop a life.
Economy
The staple crops of the Southern Colonies were
tobacco, rice, and indigo, and they dominated the
region’s economic life. Cotton would become sig-
nificant only after 1793, when Eli Whitney invented
the cotton gin, which allowed the cultivation of
the crop on lower-quality land, thus expanding the
amount of cotton that could be grown. By the early
1700s, however, large plantations started springing
up to grow those staple crops. Slave labor was the

key to their development, allowing a few success-
ful farmers to develop large plantations of over a
thousand acres.
There was little industrial development in the
Southern Colonies. Local artisans and their appren-
tices developed small establishments for manufac-
turing guns and other ironware. For the most part,
however, the people of the Southern Colonies relied
on trade with England for their industrial goods.
Indeed, the Southern Colonies were key players in
the Triangular Trade, shipping their tobacco, rice,
and indigo to England in return for manufactured
goods.
Society
Because of the miserable living conditions, including
heat, humidity, and insects, the population of the
Southern Colonies was slow to grow. In 1660, there
were very few non-Indian settlers. In 1710, there
were 26,000, and in 1760 there were just 215,000,
about 95,000 of whom were slaves. The social struc-
ture reflected this differentiation. Plantation bosses
were heads of large fiefdoms. Under them was a
tiny middle class of lawyers, merchants, and skilled
workers who usually lived in the region’s few small
towns or worked in the lumber mills of North
Carolina. The bulk of the working class was made up
of slaves imported from Africa.
Life in the Southern Colonies
There was a difference in lifestyle between the upper
and lower Southern Colonies. In the lower colonies
(today’s South Carolina and Georgia), life expectancy
continued to be perilously short. Few people lived
to be sixty, and many died before they were twenty.

This meant that, for the most part, those who could
live elsewhere did.
Nevertheless, the lucky and the entrepreneurial
amassed great wealth in the Southern Colonies. The
commercial gentry who enjoyed this wealth lived a
stylish life, usually in the manner of the English elite,
enjoying West Indian accent pieces for their home’s
furnishings. They customarily owned two homes: one
on their plantation (where they spent little time), and
one in either Charleston or Savannah. To make use
of the gentry’s wealth and leisure time, these two cit-
ies developed such institutions as libraries, theaters,
social clubs, and concert houses.
Throughout the Southern Colonies, communi-
ties were not always based around families, mostly
because there was no certainty that parents would
survive long. Law enforcement was slack, depth of
religious commitment was shallow, and interest in
public education was limited. The wealthy frequently
sent their children to England to be educated.
In dramatic contrast to the pleasant life they
were leading, elite white Southerners developed
draconian slave codes to govern the lives of their
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Expansion of Colonial Intellectual and Cultural Life 69
slaves. Punishment for slave insurrections was
severe, travel for slaves was limited, and accumu-
lation of wealth denied. Yet, there were few slave
revolts, probably because most slaves did not yet
work in gangs. The single major uprising, the Stono
Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina, was put down
brutally and spurred the reinforcement of strict
slave codes (see page 76). However, because of the
high rates of white absenteeism from plantations,
there was little owner oversight, meaning that
slaves actually led a slightly freer life than the laws
dictated.

4-2 Expansion of
Colonial Intellectual
and Cultural Life
The expanding economic and social life of the
1700s gave some people the time and inclination to
engage in intellectual and cultural pursuits. It also
allowed Americans to participate in a monumental
transition affecting much of
the Western world, a move-
ment away from medieval
thought toward that of the
Enlightenment. This was
important for American his-
tory because Enlightenment ideals played a sub-
stantial role in the American Revolution and in the
development of the American political system that
was to come.
4-2a The American Enlightenment
The American Enlightenment stemmed from the
European Enlightenment, which was a movement
to prioritize the human capacity for reason as the
highest form of human attainment. In the early
1600s, most people of the Western world believed:
(1) in the unquestioned primacy of rulers (spiri-
tual and secular); (2) in humans’ incapacity for
social change; and (3) that our time here on earth
is a temporary interlude on our journey toward
either eternal salvation or damnation. In the 1500s,
European scientists, most notably Copernicus,
began to question these foundational beliefs, and
by the 1600s educated people were postulating
whether natural laws (not divine ones) governed
society and the universe, and whether these natu-

ral laws were accessible to humans through the use
of reason.
The most prominent of these thinkers were John
Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Locke argued that
one’s environment was more significant than divine
decree in the development of one’s character, and
Rousseau contended that individuals had “natural
rights” to life, liberty, and property, which even a king
or a pope could not deny. The key Enlightenment
economist was Adam Smith, who postulated a natu-
ral balance in the economy determined by laws of
supply and demand. Each of the central ideas put
forward by these thinkers implied that progress
was possible as people achieved more and more of
their natural rights and that people had a stake in
their own life and were entitled to reject authority if
certain rights were denied. The Enlightenment was
a fundamental transformation in the way people in
the Western world thought about themselves and
the societies in which they lived.
The American Enlightenment and Religion
These ideas inspired both harmony and conflict
with religious leaders, and many of the most con-
sequential American intellectual outpourings from
the colonial period are either rejections of or sup-
port for the Enlightenment. Cotton Mather, for
>> Town homes in Charleston, South Carolina.
iS
to
ck
p

h
o
to
.c
o
m
/R
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d
P
as
ib
e
Enlightenment
A movement to prioritize
the human capacity for
reason as the highest form
of human attainment
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70 C h a p t E r 4 Expansion and Control, 1700–1763
St
. L
aw
re
nc
e
R.
O
hi

o
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.
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a
ke
M
ic
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ig
a
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La
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La k e
O n t a
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Lake H
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A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
V I R G I N I A
N O RT H C A R O L I N A
SO U T H
C A R O L I N A
G EO R G I A
(Established 1732)
N . H .
M A S S .
CO N N .
N E W YO R K
P E N N SY LVA N I A
N E W
J E R S EY
M A R Y L A N D
D E L .
R . I .
M A I N E
( M A S S . )

N E W F R A N C E
N E W
E N G L A N D
C O L O N I E S
M I D D L E
C O L O N I E S
C H E S A P E A K E
C O L O N I E S
S O U T H E R N
C O L O N I E S
70°W
80°W
40°N
0
0 50 100 Mi.
50 100 Km.
N
Dutch Reformed preponderance
Quaker preponderance
Numerous competing sects
Other religion

Anglican established church
Congregational established church
Church established by law
Cengage Learning
Ms00678
Forms of Government and Religions in the Colonies, 1720
Trim 45p0 x 45p6
Final: 7/13/12
Overtake: 8/16/12 - added date to Georgia
TYPE BLOCK MAP
Bleeds top, left
Position top map trim at top page trim
Align right map trim on type block
Map 4.2. Religion in the Colonies, 1720
instance, produced important sermons as he refined
a Puritan theology that articulated the centrality of
God to an individual’s well-being. William Bradford,
John Winthrop, and Edward Johnson wrote his-
tories of New England, giving special testament
to the sacrifices made to religion by the colo-
nial founders, but also hedging a bit toward the
Enlightenment by praising the individual fortitude
of those founders. And religion animated the poems
of Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Michael
Wigglesworth. The American Enlightenment did not
produce many atheists or agnostics, but it did begin

a process whereby religious thinkers tried to find a
balance between science and religion.
It also produced several generations of thinkers
who, despite being across the Atlantic Ocean from
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Expansion of Colonial Intellectual and Cultural Life 71
most of the progenitors of these ideas, engaged
with them thoughtfully. Colonists debated how the
Enlightenment idea of “natural rights” might influ-
ence their actions as colonists under the rule of the
British crown. They discussed how far an individu-
al’s reason could push them away from established
faiths, as they rejected authoritarianism, irrational-
ity, and obscurantism. Some became deists, a faith
holding that God had merely set up this world and
then allowed humans to develop it as their reason
allowed. Famous American Enlightenment thinkers
include Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and
Thomas Paine.
Education
The necessity of training ministers, especially in
New England, had led to the creation of an educa-
tional system, and the Enlightenment ideals of indi-
vidual progress via human reason prodded the slow
democratization of the system over the course of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Reflecting
this balance between religious and secular ideals,
America’s first college, Harvard, was founded in
1636, not as an official church school, but under the
prevailing Puritan philosophy and with a mission
to create a literate ministry. In 1642, Massachusetts
passed a law requiring parents to teach all children
to read. In 1647, it passed a law requiring towns to
maintain a primary school. Although they did so
more slowly than New England, the Middle Colonies
also launched endeavors in public education.
Over time, the presence
of schools grew, especially

in New England. Secondary
schools opened there in the
1700s. They would not be
established southward in significant numbers until
after the American Revolution. Nine colleges were
founded during the colonial period, four of them in
New England. All, like Harvard, were in some way
church schools.
The Secular Press
At the same time, Enlightenment ideals took hold
with many laypeople, as did the secular practices of
politics and commerce. This trend was reflected in
the expansion of nonreligious newspapers through-
out the 1700s, especially in New England. In Boston,
Benjamin Harris published the first North American
newspaper in 1690, and the first regularly published
paper was the Boston News-Letter, begun in 1704.
By the middle of the 1700s, every major town had
its own newspaper (although they published more
about events in Europe than about those in the colo-
nies). In 1741, Andrew Bradford published the first
magazine, the American Magazine. The title alone
reflects the unity that the colonists were beginning
to feel.
The freedom encouraged by Enlightenment ide-
als also led to expansion of individual liberties,
as in the case of John Peter Zenger, a New York
newspaperman who was arrested after publishing
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>> Harvard College, founded in 1636,
was a symbol of New England’s commitment
to education.
Read Cotton
Mather on
the need for
education.
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an attack on the governor.
Zenger was acquitted of the
crime (because his attack
was factually correct), set-
ting a crucial precedent for
freedom of the press; truth
became a legitimate defense
against a charge of libel, no
matter how elevated in rank
the alleged libel victim was.
Illustrating the deep anti-
authoritarianism that ran
through the case (and the
Enlightenment), the jury, in
coming to its decision, defied
the wishes of the judge.
4-2b The Great Awakening

During this expansion of Enlightenment ideals,
American churches experienced something of a
revival. A combination of the threat of Enlightenment
ideals and a general unhappiness with social and
economic developments bred dissatisfaction with
the direction American life was taking. Many colo-
nists felt that the established religions had overly
accommodated the rise of rational thought, allowing
rationalization too much free rein in the spiritual
world; many colonists had also begun to feel alien-
ated from the mainstream establishment and the
traditions that ensconced them in power.
In response, ministers and laypeople alike origi-
nated a Protestant revival that emphasized the
notion that individuals could find heaven if they
worked hard enough (not just if they were pre-
destined to go to heaven) and that allowed—even
invited—emotional expres-
sions of religion. Ignoring
tradition, this new group of
preachers stressed that all
were equal in Christ. The
result was the growth and
development of several new Protestant denomina-
tions that invariably emphasized the laity’s role in
matters both spiritual and temporal, as well as a
more emotional type of religion. Called the Great
Awakening, it was America’s first large-scale reli-
gious revival.
Old Lights Versus New Lights
Jonathan Edwards was the intellectual leader of the
Great Awakening, although itinerant evangelical
preachers such as George Whitefield played a consid-

erable role in fomenting the revival. These itinerants
advocated an emotional style of religion and some-
times attacked local ministers. By the time it had run
its course (by about 1745), the Great Awakening had
opened a tremendous rift among Protestants. On one
side were the Old Lights, who condemned emotion-
alism and advocated a more rationalistic theology No
rt
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A

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ri
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h
ts
r
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se
rv
e
d
>> John Peter Zenger’s trial.
G
e
o
rg
e
W
h
it
e
fi
e
ld
p

re
ac
h
in
g
,
C
o
lle
t,
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n
(
c.
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7
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)/
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/T
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ry
>> Whitefield’s preaching moved many.
Take an interac-
tive look at the
trial of John
Peter Zenger.
Read Jonathan
Edwards on
the Great
Awakening.
Great awakening
America’s first large-scale
religious revival, origi-
nated by preachers who
stressed that all were
equal in Christ
Old Lights
Protestant leaders who
condemned emotional-
ism and advocated a
more rationalistic theol-
ogy favored by elements
of the Enlightenment
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African Slavery 73
favored by elements of
the Enlightenment; on the
other were the New Lights,
who supported evange-
lism, the new methods of
prayer, and equality before
Christ. The revival slowed
during the 1750s, but it is
significant for at least five

reasons (see “The reasons
why . . .” box below).
4-3 African Slavery
Alongside the American Enlightenment and the
Great Awakening, an intricate and harsh slave sys-
tem developed. Although slavery existed everywhere
in colonial North America, it was especially brutal
in the Southern Colonies. Numerically speaking, the
colonies that would become the United States were
a tiny part of a much larger Atlantic slave trade, a
huge system of trade and migration that brought
millions of slaves to the New World and Europe
and that served as a pillar in the economy of one
of the earliest forms of globalization. Europeans
and colonials forced perhaps as many as 12 million
Africans to cross the Atlantic (many died during the
arduous passage, masking the true number of forced
migrants). A vast majority of the Africans went
to colonies controlled by Spain or Portugal: about
2 million to Brazil and 3 million to the West Indies,
usually to work on sugar plantations. Of these many
millions, just 350,000 Africans, less than 5 percent
of the total, came to the future United States. Of
this 350,000, Europeans forced 10,000 Africans to
come during the 1600s and the remainder during
the 1700s. Although some would become free after
earning enough money to purchase their freedom,
more than 95 percent of colonial Africans remained
slaves for life.
4-3a Enslavement
Enslavement was a brutal process in all three of its
stages: (1) initial capture in Africa; (2) the middle
passage across the ocean; and (3) the period of

adjustment to the New World.
Capture
The process by which the captured slaves came to
North, South, and Central America was rational-
ized by the profits to be made. Acquired either
through barter between a European slave trader
and an African kingdom or through kidnapping,
“The congregation was
extraordinarily melted by every
sermon; almost the whole assembly
being in tears for a great part of
sermon time.”
—Jonathan Edwards on Great Awakening preacher
George Whitefield’s sermons
Growth of churches. As ministers formed new sects to meet the
demands of the population, they greatly increased the number of
churches in colonial America.
Rise of lower churches. Many of these new churches emerged
from evangelical sects, such as the Baptists, who became promi-
nent in the Chesapeake and sought to overturn the aristocratic
social
structure.
Development of colleges. Seeking to train all these new minis-
ters, many religious orders established several colleges, many
of
which still exist today (for example, Princeton, Brown, Rutgers,
and
Dartmouth).

Religion and science. Unlike in Europe, in the North American
colonies, the Great Awakening made accommodations with the
Enlightenment, allowing the persistence of religion in
conjunction
with Enlightenment ideals. This compromise was vital because,
although contrarian faiths like deism did arise, there was never
any
widespread atheism or agnosticism.
Decline of authority. The Great Awakening also severed
colonial
ties to established structures of authority (religious authority, in
this
case), serving in some ways as a precursor to revolution.
The Great Awakening was significant for at least five reasons:
the reasons why . . .}{
New Lights
Protestant leaders who
supported evangelism, the
new methods of prayer,
and equality before Christ
atlantic slave trade
Huge system of trade and
migration that brought mil-
lions of slaves to the New
World and Europe in the
1600s and 1700s
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the enslaved Africans were
bound at the neck in a leather
brace. The slave trader con-
nected a gang of slaves
together by chains attached
to these neck braces. Then

the chained gang was marched to the coast, a jour-
ney sometimes as long as 550 miles, which could
take up to two months. Once on the African coast,
the traders herded their captives into stucco pens to
be inspected and sorted by desirability. Some trad-
ers branded the slaves with hot irons to mark their
property. Then the slaves waited in captivity for
cargo ships to arrive.
The Middle Passage
When the ships arrived, slave traders forced the
slaves from their pens and onto canoes and then
paddled them out to the larger ships. At this point,
some slaves jumped overboard, keeping themselves
under water long enough to drown.
Once aboard the transport ship, slaves faced the
“middle passage,” their horrible journey across the
Atlantic. Traders packed the ships until they were
overfilled. They cuffed the slaves and kept them
below decks, away from fresh air. The captives were
denied access to latrines, and the stench in the
holds became unbearable. Many captives vomited
in response, making the stench even worse. The
Europeans also fed the slaves paltry food and threw
sick slaves overboard to try to prevent the spread of
diseases. They force-fed with a mouth wrench those
who sought to commit suicide by starvation. Because
the slaves came from varied tribes, it was likely they
did not speak one another’s language, cutting them
off completely from the life they once knew. The
middle passage took between four and eight weeks,
and more than one in four captives died along the
way. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
any trans-Atlantic journey

was perilous and poten-
tially fatal, but especially so
for the captured Africans.
To a New Life
Once in the New World, slave traders auctioned off
their cargo in public squares, chiefly in New York
and Charleston, but in several other cities as well.
Potential buyers inspected the captured men and
women’s teeth, underarms, and genitals. Strong
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>> To meet the labor demands of the New World, European
merchants developed the Atlantic slave trade, which would
eventually force as
many as 12 million Africans to cross the Atlantic to work as
human property. Of this huge number, roughly 5 percent came
to land that would even-
tually become the United States.

middle passage
The perilous journey
across the Atlantic
endured by captives from
Africa
Read a doctor’s
account of the
middle passage.
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African Slavery 75
young men were the most valuable, but women
of childbearing age were also prized because they
could have children who, by law in the 1700s, were
also the slaveholder’s property. Then the buyer
transported the slaves to what lay ahead: a life of
ceaseless labor. In total, the journey from African vil-
lage to New World plantation routinely took as long
as six months.
This process began in the 1600s and continued
into the 1800s, although the 1780s were the years of
the Atlantic slave trade’s peak. Before the American
Revolution, there were only a few scattered move-
ments to protest the slave trade and the practice of
slavery (primarily by the Quakers, the Mennonites,
and a few other religious groups). Much of European
society simply accepted the horrors of slavery as a
necessary cost of colonial expansion.
4-3b The Spread of Slavery
Tobacco, rice, and indigo—the three staple crops
of the Southern and Chesapeake colonies—all
demanded significant labor, and by the late 1600s,
the favored form of labor in the American colonies
was rapidly becoming African slaves. Between 1680
and 1700, the average number of slaves transported
on English ships rose from 5,000 slaves a year to
more than 20,000.
Although slavery was most common in the

Southern Colonies and the Chesapeake, it was legal
in all English colonies in America. In the North, slaves
worked as field hands on farms and as domestic
servants, dockworkers, and craftspeople in cities. But
because of their labor-intensive cash crops, the market
for slaves was much more lucrative in the South and
the Chesapeake. Nevertheless, many northerners were
involved in the trade. Northern traders, especially from
Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, engaged
in and profited from the slave trade before the United
States outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808.
4-3c Life Under Slavery
The daily life of a slave in colonial America depended
on where he or she lived. In New England, where
only about 3 percent of the population was African
during the colonial era, slaves worked as field hands
on small farms, as house servants for wealthy colo-
nists, or as skilled artisans. Slaves could be isolated
from one another (and most were), or they could live
in a port town like Newport, Rhode Island, where
slaves made up 18 percent of the population. In the
Middle Colonies, some slaves worked as field hands
on small farms, while smaller numbers worked in
cities in nearly every labor-intensive occupation.
Neither of these regions relied on gang labor.
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>> Slave traders packed their ships tightly to maximize profits.
E
o
n
I
m
ag
e
s
>> A 1780s newspaper ad for a slave auction held near
Charleston, South Carolina.
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In the Southern Colonies
and the Chesapeake, on the
other hand, most slaves were
field hands who grew sugar
cane, rice, tobacco, or cotton.
Some were house servants
who cooked, cleaned, and
helped care for children. A
very few were skilled artisans.
As arduous as the southern
labor system was, however,
plantation life allowed for
development of a slave cul-
ture. This was possible because of the large number of

slaves who could gather together after working hours.
Plantation Life
The plantations where slave life developed most fully
were entirely in the South, especially in the lower
South, where slaves outnumbered other colonists.
Many slaves here spoke Gullah, a hybrid language
of several African tongues. They preserved several
African religious traditions, such as a couple’s jump-
ing over a broomstick to seal a marriage. Over
time, these traditions merged with Christianity in
the same way that Catholic images
merged with the traditional beliefs
of Native America.
For slaves, family life was
unpredictable, fragile, and subject
to the arbitrary whims of their
owners. Children typically stayed
with their family until they were
eight, at which time they were
sometimes sold. Masters occasion-
ally raped or coerced female slaves
into sexual relations, further dem-
onstrating their limitless power
over their property. Nevertheless,
families did struggle through, and
wherever possible, strong family
structures emerged. The hazards
and difficulties inherent in the process of sustaining
a family life under these conditions led slave men
and women to take on roles different from those of
their masters. Slave women, for instance, worked
both in the field and in the home. Slave men, mean-
while, took on occasional domestic duties.

Rebellion and Resistance
Despite the horrific nature of slave life, slave rebel-
lions were infrequent, principally because slave
owners had taken such drastic measures to main-
tain control over their slaves. The few slave rebel-
lions that did arise met with violent resistance and
led to even tighter controls. One planned insurrec-
tion in New York City in 1740 ended with the burning
of thirteen slaves and the hanging of eighteen oth-
ers (along with four white allies).
The most notable slave revolt of the 1700s—the
Stono Rebellion—occurred in Stono, South Carolina,
in 1739, when, on a quiet Sunday morning, a group
of mostly newly arrived slaves marched into a fire-
arms shop, killed the colonists manning the shop,
stole several firearms, and marched south, probably
in an effort to get to Florida, where the Spanish gov-
ernment promised England’s slaves freedom. After
traveling only a few miles, the number of slaves had
grown to more than one
hundred. They marched
from house to house, mur-
dering slave owners and
their families as they went. After 10 miles, the band
was met by an armed militia, which killed at least
thirty of the rebelling slaves and captured almost
all of the rest. Nearly all who were captured were
eventually killed.
In response to the rebellion, South Carolina
passed the Negro Act, which consolidated all of
the separate slave codes into one
code that forbade slaves from

growing their own food, assem-
bling in groups, or learning to read.
This sharp response to the Stono
Rebellion continued a pattern of
harsh legal retributions for slave
insurrections.
4-3d Slavery and Racism
In the end, slavery promoted the
rise of extreme, sustained rac-
ism against African Americans in
North America. Since their arrival
in the Chesapeake in 1619, dark-
skinned people had been consid-
ered of lower status by Europeans. But because until
the 1680s there were so few African slaves in the
American colonies, they were generally not treated
harshly. During this early period, a few slaves broke
the bonds of enslavement and became landown-
ers and politically active freedmen. Yet as the cost
of indentured servants went up and that of slaves
went down (for the reasons why, see Chapter 3),
slaves were employed as the central labor force of
the South and the Chesapeake.
As the number of slaves rose, so did restrictions
on Africans and African Americans. Rabid manifes-
Religious writers,
philosophers,
scientists, and lay
writers (among
them, Thomas

Jefferson) concocted
theories about the
“inferior” nature of
African Americans.
Stono rebellion
Slave rebellion in South
Carolina in 1739, the larg-
est slave uprising of the
century
Negro act
South Carolina state law
that consolidated all the
separate slave codes
into a single code that
forbade slaves from
growing their own food,
assembling in groups, or
learning to read
Learn more
about the Stono
Rebellion.
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Attempted Expansion of English Control 77
tations of racism emerged out of owners’ growing
fears. The result was the creation of a caste-like sys-
tem of segregation in which African Americans were
considered inherently inferior to Europeans and
Euro-Americans, and sometimes less than human.
At the same time, religious writers, philosophers,
scientists, and lay writers (among them, Thomas
Jefferson) concocted theories about the “inferior”
nature of African Americans, thus creating an intel-
lectual framework to support the economic reality.
Slavery lasted until the Civil War, and elements of
this racial caste system have persisted well into the
present day.

4-4 Attempted Expansion
of English Control
Slavery was, of course, a huge part of the economic
expansion of the early 1700s—an expansion that led
to increased interest in the colonies by the British
crown. Most importantly, the exceptional production
of raw materials had propelled the colonies into a
second stage of economic development, whereby
manufacturing and industry began to prosper (and
not just the creation of raw materials). This develop-
ment stimulated economic competition between the
North American colonies and England, something
the Crown could not tolerate.
4-4a Salutary Neglect
Any attempt by the Crown to reassert control of
the colonies would aggravate the colonists because
they had become accustomed to a hands-off style
of relations between the Crown and the colonies, a
relationship labeled salutary neglect. The principle
developed in the late 1680s, when, upon King Charles
II’s death in 1685, his brother, James II, became king
and promptly attempted to make England Catholic
once again. This change created such a severe rift
within England that it almost fell into civil war.
Unlike the Cromwellian revolution of the 1650s, how-
ever, this second revolution was bloodless, and in
the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, Protestant
factions forced James II to flee England. His exit left
the Crown to his Protestant daughter and son-in-
law, William of Orange and Mary II, more commonly
referred to as William and Mary.
For the colonists, the result of the Glorious
Revolution was looser governance by the Crown and

the removal of many of the proprietors who had
founded the colonies. William and Mary continued
to have a definite economic interest in the colonies,
establishing a Board of Trade
to oversee affairs and collect
data. They also established
a privy council to admin-
ister colonial laws. But, in
general, royal administration
over the colonies grew much
looser with the decline of the
proprietors.
The colonists loved,
advocated, and fought for
the loose system of over-
sight that came to be called
salutary neglect. The con-
cept is simple: the Crown
would essentially ignore
governance of its colonies
and enforcement of its trade
laws so long as the colo-
nies continued to provide
England with sufficient cash and produce. Politically,
this system gave colonial assemblies a high level of
legitimacy, which was accomplished at the expense
of the royal governors. Of course, the risk of salutary
neglect was that, if England ever decided to enforce
the laws on its books, a serious conflict was inevita-
ble. This is exactly what would happen in the French
and Indian War, yet another of the “Wars for Empire”
that occurred from 1754 to 1763.
4-4b The French and Indian War,

1754–1763
The truce from Queen Anne’s War lasted nearly
thirty years, but the battles between the European
powers were not over. In King George’s War (1744–
1748), England and France continued their New
World spat, but the war ended with resolutions con-
cerning only Europe; in the New World, the ramifica-
tions remained unclear.
Meanwhile, English colonists pushed deeper into
the Ohio Valley, further infuriating the French, who
were already established traders there. Eventually
the French attempted to build a series of military
strongholds that would intimidate the English, the
largest of which was Fort Duquesne in today’s
southwest Pennsylvania. They wanted to keep the
English out. Virginia colonists who were speculating
on lands to the west retaliated against the French
forts by building Fort Necessity nearby. When the
Virginians sent an inexperienced young militia colo-
nel named George Washington to deter the French
from building more forts, a skirmish between the
French and the English ignited yet another war, with
salutary neglect
Hands-off style of relations
between the Crown and
the colonies; a loose sys-
tem of oversight whereby
the Crown ignored gover-
nance of its colonies and
enforcement of its trade
laws so long as the colo-
nies provided England with
cash and crops

Glorious revolution
of 1688
Overthrow of King James
II by Protestant factions;
his exit left the crown to
William and Mary
King George’s War
Continued New World
battles between England
and France (1744–1748)
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more consequences than
before.
George Washington was
swiftly forced to surren-
der, and it seemed that the
French were going to con-
trol trade relations in the
American interior for the
foreseeable future. But
English merchants in
London lobbied to use this
backwoods dispute to forge a war that would eject
the French from North America once and for all.
Without the French, London merchants would have
a monopoly on much of the New World trade, which
promised to be incredibly lucrative. They succeeded
in their lobbying, and a hesitant Crown used this
minor provocation to start a major war. It was in this
contrived way that a skirmish on the Pennsylvania
frontier exploded into a world war that involved
France, England, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Spain, and
numerous Indian tribes. In Europe, the war was
called the Seven Years’ War; in North America, it was
the French and Indian War.

4-4c The Albany Congress
The coming war put the English colonists on high
alert. To discuss the matter, seven of the colonies
sent representatives to Albany, New York, in the
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
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Fort Necessity
Fort
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Fort Niagara Fort Oswego
Fort Crown Point
Fort Ticonderoga
Fort William Henry
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Fort Gaspereau
Fort Le Boeuf
Fort Machault
Fort Presqu’ Isle
4 0 ° N
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Halifax
Boston
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Québec
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(MASS.)
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MD.
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V I R G I N I A
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C O
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100 200 Km.
British territory
French territory
Disputed territory
British forces
French forces
British fort

French fort
British victory
French victory
New France’s boundary with
Maine, New Hampshire, and
New York was uncertain.
British deport
6,000 Acadians,
summer of 1755.
Cengage Learning
The Seven Years War in N. Am., 1754-1760
Ms00276
Trim 45p0 x 35p
final: 3/25/08
Overtake: 4/16/08
Revised to correct trim: 4/17/08—cm
Revised 10/14/09—cm: Add ds to legend arrows and
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Map 4.3. French and Indian War
Seven Years’ War
European label for the
world war (1754–1763)
between France,

England, Austria, Russia,
Prussia, Spain, and
numerous Indian tribes
French and
Indian War
Colonial label for the
Seven Years’ War
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summer of 1754. The meeting, called the Albany
Congress, represented the first time the mainland
English colonies met for a unified purpose.
The Albany Plan
Part of their purpose was to convince the Iroquois to
join the English side in the battle, but the Iroquois
chose to remain neutral to preserve their trade
routes. Another part of the colonists’ strategy was to
develop what would have been the first-ever colonial
union under the Albany Plan, drafted by the printer,
scientist, and, later, politician Benjamin Franklin.
The plan would have placed all of England’s colo-
nies in America under a single president-general,
appointed by the Crown, whose responsibility would
be to manage all activity on the frontier and handle
negotiations with Indians. It also would have cre-
ated a single legislature, made up of representatives
from each of the colonies, whose number would
depend on how much in taxes each colony paid.
The union failed to materialize, however, mainly
because the colonists felt allegiance only to their
particular colony and (to a lesser extent) to the
Crown. They did not yet fully identify with their fel-
low colonists. England was unhappy with the pros-
pect of colonial unity, but slowly, the colonists were
beginning to perceive the need for it. The French
and Indian War did much to solidify the feeling that
the English colonies along the Atlantic Coast would
share one fate and should, perhaps, unite.

Results
As the colonists had foreseen, war came, and
under the leadership of General James Braddock,
the English fared badly.
Braddock’s attempts to raise
money from the colonists
to help supply his troops
provoked colonial ire, and
his patronizing attempts to
work with Indian tribes also
failed. Worse, he bumbled
his way from one military
defeat to another. Within
three years, two-thirds
of his troops were dead,
including Braddock himself
(Map 4.3).
In 1758, the English
began to take the conflict
more seriously and sent a
large army under the leader-
ship of Jeffrey Amherst to take over military opera-
tions. What followed was warfare marked by extreme
brutality on all sides. After a year, the English were
prevailing, and a year later, in 1760, hostilities largely
ended. In 1763 the three warring nations (Spain,
England, and France) signed the Treaty of Paris
(Map 4.4), which laid out the so-called Proclamation
Line giving England the western interior of North
America, Canada, and Florida. Spain received
Louisiana from France, and the Mississippi River
became the boundary between England’s holdings
and Spain’s. France had been evicted from North

America.
The French and Indian War was significant
for several reasons (see “The reasons why . . .” box
below).
albany Congress
Meeting of representatives
from seven colonies in
Albany, New York, in 1754,
the first time the mainland
English colonies met for a
unified purpose
albany plan
Concept for the first-ever
colonial union, drafted by
Benjamin Franklin
treaty of paris
1763 agreement between
Spain, England, and France
that made the Mississippi
River the boundary
between England’s hold-
ings and Spain’s, and
evicted France from North
America
Colonial ire toward England. During the war, the colonists
gained experience dealing with the English army. They disliked
its
hierarchical style, especially after having experienced extensive
self-
rule in the colonies. For their part, the English saw the colonists
as

ragtag and undisciplined, and contempt between the two peoples
increased.
Colonial unity. The French and Indian War allowed the English
colonies to see themselves as a united body distinct from
England.
The Albany Congress proved to be the first demonstration of an
increasingly unified colonial identity.
The British financial burden. The war was costly for England,
and
its attempts to recoup its losses through taxes on the colonies
led
directly to the Revolution.
French anger. The French wanted revenge against the British for
this battle, a chance they would get by helping the Americans
during
the American Revolution.
Pan-Indianism. With the French removed, the English could
dictate
the terms of trade and land possession. This did not bode well
for
the future of the northeastern Indians. Looking for a response,
many
Indians participated in pan-Indian resistance movements.
The French and Indian War was significant to the colonies for
several reasons:
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80 C h a p t E r 4 Expansion and Control, 1700–1763
40°N
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70°W

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OJIBWA
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Ft. Miami
Ft. Sandusky
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Ft. Presque Isle
Ft. St. Joseph
Ft. Edward
Augustus
Ft. Chartres
Ft. Niagara
Ft. Pitt

Montréal
Portsmouth
Boston
Newport
Hartford
New Haven
New York
Perth Amboy
Burlington
New Castle
Annapolis
Williamsburg
St. Mary’s
Jamestown
New Bern
Wilmington
Charleston
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(MASS.)
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DELAWARE
MARYLAND
VIRGINIA
NORTH CAROLINA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
GEORGIA

RHODE ISLAND
S P A N I S H
L O U I S I A N A
W E S T F L O R I D A
I N D I A N
R E S E R V E
Q U E B E C
N O V A
S C O T I A
H U D S O N B A Y
C O M P A N Y
E A S T
F L O R I D A
Territory claimed by
Spain and Britain
N
0
0 100 200 Mi.
100 200 Km.
European settlement before 1700
European settlement 1700–1763

Proclamation Line of 1763
Pontiac’s Rebellion, 1763
Fort destroyed by Indians
Fort successfully defended against
or not attacked by Indians
Cengage Learning
Ms00279b
Territories after the Treaty of Paris, 1763
Trim 45p0 x 50p0
Final: 7/20/12
TYPE BLOCK MAP
Bleeds top, left
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the ability to negotiate with one group of colonists
and play the European nations off against one
another to win concessions. Now Indian–colonial
relations were centralized in London. The Indians
recognized this transition and began to realize an
increased unity between tribes in opposition to the
4-4d Pan-Indianism
The outcome of the French and Indian War would
prove to be a disaster for the Indians of North
America. With all the lands east of the Mississippi
River now belonging to England, Indian tribes lost
Map 4.4. Territories After the Treaty of Paris, 1763

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>> Pontiac and his Native American allies visit
British officer Major Gladwyn.
What else was happening . . .
1709 Bartolomeo Cristofori invents the piano.
1712 The last execution of an accused witch takes place
in England.
1751 Benjamin Franklin sends up a kite during a thun-
derstorm and discovers that lightning is a form of
electricity.
1752 The first eraser is put on the end of a pencil.
Visit the CourseMate website
at www.cengagebrain.com for
additional study tools and review
materials for this chapter.
English. Simply put, in the aftermath of the French
and Indian War, many of the tribes of Native America

shifted from favoring a tribal identity to assuming a
racial one, or pan-Indianism. This was especially
true in the Northwest, between the Great Lakes and
the Appalachian Mountains, where contact with the
colonists was most sustained.
Neolin
In the late 1750s and 1760s, Neolin, a Delaware
prophet, began preaching a return to old Indian
ways, as they were before Europeans had come to
America. Central to this revitalization movement
was the notion of purging all European habits, such
as reliance on material goods, use of alcohol, and
belief in Christianity. Neolin traveled to several
tribes preaching his message of pan-Indianism and
anti-Europeanism.
Pontiac’s Rebellion
By 1763, several Indians had followed Neolin’s advice
and come together to present a unified front against
the colonists. Under the leadership of Pontiac, chief
of the Ottowa, they were ready to protest English
intrusion into their lands and attempt to drive
the colonists back across the Appalachians. The
resulting battles in Pontiac’s Rebellion were brutal,
with the English attempting to introduce smallpox
into Indian communities (through infected blan-
kets) and Indians deliberately poisoning English
troops’ drinking water (by putting rotten meat in
Looking Ahead . . .
Little did England suspect that, although it had won
the Wars for Empire, it had done so at great cost:
it had sparked the process of colonial unification.
The fight for political freedom was about to begin.
During the years between 1700 and 1763, the North

American colonies had developed into a stable,
manufacturing economy that could potentially rival
many European nations. It had large numbers of
free white farmers and slave laborers performing
much of the backbreaking labor. It also had a grow-
ing class of merchants and wealthy landowners who
provided leadership and governance.
As the French and Indian War was fought on
American soil, many colonists began to feel them-
selves a people apart from their Mother Country. The
initial and uncertain itching for political indepen-
dence had begun. Many colonists could not, or would
not, fathom the idea of independence—they had too
much to lose. But many outspoken colonists felt that
if England persisted in proclaiming the end of salu-
tary neglect, and intended to intrude upon colonial
affairs more pointedly, there would be trouble.
springs upriver from English
camps). The English troops
were better equipped for
warfare, however, and the
tribes of Native America,
without the French available
to help, could not withstand
the English armies. They
were beaten back, pushed
farther west in yet another
battle of what one historian
has called “the long war for
the West.”
pan-Indianism
Movement in which many
of the tribes of Native

America shifted from
favoring a tribal identity to
assuming a racial one
Neolin
Prophet from the Dela-
ware tribe who began
preaching a return to old
Indian ways
pontiac’s rebellion
Brutal battles between
Ottowa Indians and
English troops in 1763
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Learning Outcomes
following:
5-1 Explain Britain’s main reasons for attempting to overturn
salutary neglect.
5-2 Explain how the colonists responded to the new acts, and
trace
the evolutionary process that brought the colonies closer to
rebellion.
5-3 Trace the path to revolution from the Townshend Acts of
1767
to the meeting of the First Continental Congress.
5-4 Explain how the American Revolution began, and describe
the
first battles of the conflict.
Toward
Revolution,
1763–1775

Chapter 5
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British Attempts to Rein in the Colonies 83
“The British came to see the colonists as not only resisting the
demands of their mother country,

but also as getting free armed
protection from the world’s most
powerful army.”Getting the colonies organized
for the French and Indian War
revealed a number of prob-
lems for Britain, the most
serious of which was the lax
enforcement of royal policies
in the colonies, the principle
labeled “salutary neglect.” The
tradition of salutary neglect
meant that the colonies were
slower to mobilize when the
British demanded adherence to their dictates. It also meant the
colonists paid few taxes.
After the expensive French and Indian War, the British came to
see the colonists as not
only resisting the demands of their mother country, but also as
getting free armed pro-
tection from the world’s most powerful army. The British,
meanwhile, were being taxed
pretty stiffly, in part to help secure American economic
development. Moreover, the
British Army had removed the colonists’ most powerful
competition (the French) from
the land. Should the colonists not pay for these benefits?
As the French and Indian War came to a close in 1763, Britain
decided to remedy
these problems through a series of reforms that tightened
control over the colonies and
limited areas where colonists could settle. The colonists resisted
these encroachments
because they had become accustomed to the self-rule implied in

salutary neglect. In
addition, since the Enlightenment, Englishmen had sought to
protect their “natural
rights” from encroachment by their rulers. It did not matter if
the ruler was a king or
a parliament: if either institution violated one’s rights to life,
liberty, and property, all
Englishmen felt they could reasonably rebel. The colonists
hoped that England’s King
George would protect them from what they saw as the enmity of
a jealous Parliament.
The English, on the other hand, saw the colonists as a bunch of
headstrong upstarts, demanding rights without assuming the
responsibilities inherent to them. As this rhetoric escalated,
conflict escalated as well. And it all began because of the
French
and Indian War.
5-1 British Attempts to Rein in the Colonies
The British plan to reform colonial relations had three main
goals: (1) to tighten control
by eliminating absenteeism and corruption of royal officials in
the colonies and by limit-
ing smuggling, which colonists were using to avoid taxes,
tariffs, and regulations; (2) to
limit the areas where colonists could settle; and (3) to raise
greater revenue.
Simple boycotts of British goods were meaningful
because they radicalized the population, forcing colonists
to choose sides.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

What do you think?
<< Artist John Trumbull fought on the side of the colonists
during the Revolutionary War and was at the Battle
of Bunker Hill. This image, of a fallen colonist, became an
iconic symbol of the valiant suffering of the new nation.
Explore an inter-
active module
showing life on
the eve of the American
Revolution.
(D
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84 C h a p t e r 5 Toward Revolution, 1763–1775
5-1a Tightening
Control
England began its attempts
to rein in the colonies in
1760, shortly before the end
of the war with France. In
that year, the Privy Council,
which advised the Crown on
various matters, issued the
“Orders in Council,” which
required absentee officials to
occupy their posts instead
of collecting the salary and
then paying a substitute to
occupy the post. The Privy
Council also rewarded officers and crews of naval
vessels for seizing smuggling ships.
5-1b Limiting Settlement
The next major reform was the Proclamation of
1763, which did three things: (1) it placed a mor-
atorium on government sale of western lands;
(2) it put trade with Indians under royal control; and
(3) it forbade settlement west of the Proclamation
Line, which followed the crest of the Appalachians
(see Map 4.4 on page 80). The Proclamation’s thrust
was to control British settlement and push the
colonists into the newly acquired colonies of Canada
and Florida. Royal officials also believed that the
policy would protect British manufacturing, because

if colonists moved too far from the Atlantic Coast,
they would develop their own manufacturing indus-
tries rather than import British goods.
Many colonists who were merely frustrated
by the Orders in Council were infuriated by the
Proclamation. After all, in their minds, the French
and Indian War had been fought to allow the colo-
nists to move farther west. Many colonists had
celebrated the war, believing that the removal of the
French from the region would make westward colo-
nial expansion a possibility. King George’s procla-
mation directly contradicted this belief. Ultimately,
the Proclamation of 1763 was impossible to enforce.
Settlers moved across the line anyway, and the royal
government lacked the resources to stop them. But
colonial ire was piqued.
5-1c Raising Revenue
The final piece of reform was George Grenville’s
plan for paying off Britain’s debt. The British had
tried to prevent the colonists’ evasion of royal taxes
earlier in the 1700s, most notably with the 1751
Writs of Assistance, which gave British officials the
right to inspect not only places of work, but also pri-
vate homes. The colonists fought this infringement
on their liberties, although they did not persuade
the Crown to reverse the decision. Grenville, who
became England’s prime minister in 1763, contrib-
uted to these woes. He convinced Parliament to pass
several specific acts in the 1760s that significantly
increased the Crown’s interference in the economy
of its colonies. It was these rev-
enue acts as much as anything

else that signaled the end of
salutary neglect.
The first of these acts was
the Sugar Act of 1764, which
was technically a cut in taxes on
molasses and sugar brought into
the colonies from non-British
colonies in the West Indies.
But it was troublesome to the
colonists because, even though
it reduced the assessment on
sugar, it increased enforcement
of tax collection. Furthermore,
the act taxed items besides sugar,
including indigo, pimento (all-
spice), some wines, and coffee.
Britain was now evidently look-
ing to the colonies as a source of
direct revenue.
privy Council
A group of close advisors
to the Crown that offered
suggestions on how
the Crown should best
exercise its executive
authority
Sugar act of 1764
Act that reduced taxes
on molasses and sugar,
laid taxes on indigo,
pimento (allspice), some
wines, and coffee, and
increased enforcement

of tax collection; signaled
the end of the era of
salutary neglect
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upstarts.
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Beginnings of American Resistance 85
the Sugar Act had, for three
reasons (see “The reasons

why. . .” box on the next page).
5-2a The Stamp Act
Congress
To try to force Parliament to
repeal the Stamp Act, oppo-
nents in Massachusetts initi-
ated a circular letter inviting
all of the colonies to send
representatives to a congress
to discuss resistance to the
Stamp Act. This was a radical
move; convening an inter-
colonial congress without
British authorization was an
illegal act. Nevertheless, the
Stamp Act Congress con-
vened in New York City in
October 1765, with represen-
tatives from nine colonies in
attendance.
Although it began as an
act of defiance, the Stamp
Act Congress was largely
conciliatory to the Crown.
It acknowledged that the
colonies were “subordinate”
N
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>> British soldiers were harassed by colonial boys.
Quartering Act of 1765
This act required the
colonies to feed and house
British troops stationed in
their territory
Stamp Act
Passed in 1765, this
act mandated the use
of stamped (embed-
ded) paper for all official
papers, including diplo-
mas, marriage licenses,
wills, newspapers, and
playing cards

circular letter
Communication among a
number of interested par-
ties that was sent from col-
ony to colony to keep the
disparate colonies together,
or united; a primary form
of communication for the
colonies during the revolu-
tionary period
Stamp Act Congress
Gathering of colonial lead-
ers from nine states in
New York City in October
1765 to discuss resistance
to the Stamp Act; one
of the early instances of
collaboration between
colonies and of identifying
Parliament as the opposi-
tion rather than the king
The next intrusive act, the Quartering Act of
1765, required the colonies to feed and house British
troops stationed in their territory. Colonists bristled
at the idea of British soldiers living in their houses,
and the colonial assemblies often refused to provide
the money required to feed and house these soldiers.
Most disruptive of all, however, was the Stamp
Act. Passed by Parliament in 1765, the Stamp Act
mandated the use of stamped paper for all official
papers, including diplomas, marriage licenses, wills,
newspapers, and playing cards. The stamp, embed-

ded in the paper (not a topical stamp), indicated
that a tax had been paid on the document. Grenville
insisted that revenues from the tax go directly to
soldiers protecting the North American colonies.
He also mandated that those who avoided using
taxed paper would be tried in a Crown-operated
vice admiralty court, rather than by a trial of one’s
peers. Not only had the Crown declared its intention
to raise revenues from the colonists, but it had also
indicated it was ready to enforce its actions.
5-2 Beginnings of
American Resistance
The Sugar Act was widely unpopular. New Englanders
in particular saw that the new regulations threatened
their profitable (though now illegal) rum trade. And
the Quartering Act seemed wildly intrusive. But the
Stamp Act provoked a much stronger backlash than
N
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to Parliament in matters
of administration, but it
maintained that the colo-
nists’ rights as Englishmen
were infringed upon when
Parliament levied taxes
without providing the colo-
nists with representation in
Parliament. Resolutely non-
inflammatory, the Stamp Act
Congress avoided words like
slavery and tyranny, which
were common in editorials of
the day. Nevertheless, it did
declare that taxes had never
been imposed on the colo-
nists by anyone other than colonial legislatures. It also
differentiated between the
Crown, to which the colo-
nists pledged allegiance, and
Parliament, to which they
acknowledged a grudging

“subordination.” In the end,
the congress showed the colonists’ increasing ten-
dency to collaborate as a single unit; it also began a
pattern of finding fault with Parliament rather than
with the king.
5-2b Boycotts
In addition to these legalistic
declarations, there were other,
more potent forms of protest. In
Boston, New York, Philadelphia,
Charleston, and smaller ports, merchants signed
agreements not to import British goods until the
Stamp Act was repealed. In New England, women’s
groups called “Daughters of Liberty” organized
local boycotts against cloth and tea imported from
Britain. These women also held “spinning bees”
that encouraged American women to show loyalty
to the resistance by producing homespun cloth.
Locally produced clothing was a sign that one was
a “patriot,” and colonial women like Abigail Adams
and Deborah Sampson Franklin were the key to
making it happen.
The boycott proved effective, especially in New
York, where boycotters shut down the port. British
exports to the colonies declined, and the opposition
party in Parliament began to advocate repealing
the Stamp Act. The boycotts were also meaning-
ful because simple participation in a colonywide
boycott radicalized the population, forcing people
to choose sides. This was becoming larger than a
protest of elite lawyers. The very clothes that people
wore became a form of protest.

5-2c Rioting
Although the Stamp Act Congress and boycotts
proved fruitful, rioting proved to be the most effec-
tive means of protest. To coordinate the riots, sev-
eral colonists formed groups called
the Sons of Liberty. Typically led
by men of wealth and high social
standing, the Sons of Liberty served
as leaders in organizing protests
and intimidating stamp officials.
Mobs in Massachusetts, New York,
Rhode Island, and South Carolina
burned the homes of stamp offi-
cials and hanged effigies of tax collectors, occasion-
ally even tarring and feathering them. As a result of
An educated resistance. The Stamp Act applied to the kinds of
goods used by merchants and lawyers, which stirred up an
educated
and powerful opposition.
Time to organize. Although Parliament passed the Stamp Act in
March, the act did not go into effect until November 1, 1765.
This
gave colonists time to organize.
Undermining colonial self-rule. The Stamp Act was a direct tax
on the colonists (instead of a regulation of trade), and the
proceeds
were meant to pay the salaries of colonial officials, something
the
colonists themselves had done in the past. Taxing the colonies
so
that the Crown could pay these salaries undermined colonial

control
over royal officials and seemed to indicate that Parliament was
limit-
ing colonists’ liberties.
The Stamp Act provoked a stronger colonial response than the
Sugar or Quartering Acts for
three principal reasons:
Daughters of Liberty
Group of colonial
American women who
organized boycotts of
tea and other imported
British goods and who
produced homespun
clothes as a protest of
British imported clothing
Sons of Liberty
Groups of colonial
leaders who organized
protests and intimidated
stamp officials; their
actions caused the res-
ignation of all known
stamp officials
The very clothes
that people wore
became a form of
protest.

Learn more
about (and read)
the Resolu-
tions of the Stamp Act
Congress.
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Beginnings of American Resistance 87
this intimidation, all known stamp officials resigned
before the Stamp Act went into effect on November
1, 1765. When the Crown offered the positions to
others, they refused the jobs. Furthermore, when the
stamps and stamped paper arrived in America, colo-
nists sent them back to England, destroyed them, or
locked them away.
5-2d Ideological Opposition
In addition to these physical forms of protest,
several colonial assemblies sent Parliament writ-
ten protests, called “resolves.” The wording of the
resolves was usually influenced by British political
pamphlets that circulated at the time. Both the
pamphlets and the resolves are significant because
they articulated the ideas of liberty that positioned
the colonists against Britain all the way to the
Revolution.
The central drafters of the pamphlets called
themselves Radical Whigs (which referred to the
opposition party in England, the Whigs). Radical
Whigs in England cast a suspicious eye on any
infringement of personal liberties, and Radical
Whigs in colonial America, such as James Otis of
Massachusetts, argued that, because the colonists
were not represented in Parliament, Parliament
had no authority to tax them. These men coined
the phrase “no taxation without representation.”
The Radical Whigs claimed that the principle that
taxation required representation had precedent in
British law (in the Magna Carta) and was one of the
basic English liberties.

In Virginia, Patrick Henry followed this line of
reasoning. He argued that the Stamp Act was uncon-
stitutional because only the Virginia legislature had
the authority to tax Virginians. He introduced a series
of Resolutions Against the Stamp Act to the Virginia
legislature and asserted that anyone who supported
the Stamp Act was an enemy to Virginia. Several of
his Resolutions were passed by the Burgesses and
forwarded to Parliament, indicating the high level
of radicalization provoked by
the Stamp Act.
John Adams of Massa-
chusetts framed another
argument against Parlia-
ment’s right to tax the col-
onists. In his Instructions of
the Town of Braintree to Their
Representative, Adams argued
that allowing Parliament to
tax the colonists without their
consent threatened the sanc-
tity of private property and
personal liberty. If Parliament
could seize colonists’ prop-
erty, Adams argued, then
colonists were dependents
of Parliament and not free
men. Furthermore, Adams
railed against Parliament for
creating the specific courts
(called vice admiralty courts)
that denied the colonists the

right to a trial by a jury of
one’s peers. More than any-
thing else, Adams argued,
the colonists wanted the
liberties promised through
Enlightenment thought;
they did not want to become
slaves to the whim of a
Parliament over which they
had no control.
Benjamin Franklin and Daniel Dulany (a cel-
ebrated Maryland attorney) promoted another argu-
ment against the Stamp Act. They insisted that
colonists accept Parliament’s right to regulate trade
through the use of duties—a form of taxation they
called external taxes. What the colonists objected
to, according to these writers, was the Stamp Act’s
imposition of an internal tax that directly affected
Radical Whigs
Political activists and pam-
phleteers who vigorously
defended the rights and
liberties of Englishmen
and who coined the
phrase “no taxation with-
out representation”
external taxes
Duties designed to protect
the British Empire; part
of Parliament’s right to
regulate trade, as argued
by Benjamin Franklin and
Daniel Dulany

internal taxes
Duties that directly
affected the internal affairs
of the colonies; according
to Benjamin Franklin and
Daniel Dulany, this internal
legislation threatened pri-
vate property
>> Tarring and feathering a stamp collector was a brutal occur-
rence, especially with the threatening noose hanging from the
“liberty
tree” in the background.
Fo
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Read Adams’s
Instructions of
the Town of
Braintree to Their Repre-
sentative.
View a short film
about Benjamin
Franklin’s life.
Read some of
Patrick Henry’s
Resolutions
Against the Stamp Act.
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the internal affairs of the col-
onies. Dulany and Franklin
feared that internal legis-
lation threatened private
property. Both the Crown
and many colonists ques-
tioned the validity of this
distinction between the two
forms of taxation. Although
this was a milder argument
than that of Adams, who rejected all taxes, it also
demonstrated strong opposition to the Stamp Act.
5-2e Opposition to the Opposition
Not all colonists agreed with these dissenters. In
fact, a large portion of colonists did not care one
way or another about the Stamp Act. Meanwhile,
some, such as James Otis, opposed the Stamp
Act and resistance to it, favoring instead to advo-
cate for a parliamentary repeal. Still others, such
as Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Hutchinson of
Massachusetts, defended the Stamp Act. Hutchinson

personally disliked the Stamp Act but believed that,
because Parliament was the supreme legislative
body in the empire, everything it did was constitu-
tional. Hutchinson said that no matter how incon-
venient the Stamp Act was, duty and law required
obedience. Hutchinson became a focal point of the
rioters, who viewed him as a stooge of the Crown.
They sent Hutchinson fleeing, and a mob eventu-
ally pulled the roof off his house and trashed all his
possessions. In 1765, resentments were heating up.
In Britain, few people accepted any of the colo-
nists’ arguments. Since they shouldered a heavy tax
burden already, most of them felt that the colonists
were asking for a better deal than those living in
the mother country received. The British regarded
the colonists’ arguments as mere rationalizations to
avoid paying taxes.
Members of Parliament also rejected the opposi-
tion to the Stamp Act. They argued the dubious point
that the House of Commons represented the inter-
ests of all the king’s subjects, wherever they might
reside. This theory of virtual representation, they
said, was vital to parliamentary legitimacy because
many regions within England were not directly rep-
resented in Parliament. In addition, in some areas
virtual representation
Theory endorsed by
Parliament that said the
House of Commons
represented the interests
of all the king’s subjects,
wherever they might

reside; this was the
pretext for rejecting the
colonists’ demand for
actual representation
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>> Many colonists rioted in protest of the Stamp Act. No one
paid more dearly than Thomas Hutchinson, shown here fleeing
his burning house.
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Taxation Without Representation, 1767–1773 89
that were represented in
the House of Commons,
the people had no say in
who represented them.
Instead, the local nobil-
ity or the king selected
their representative. King
George himself owned
the right to appoint more
than fifty members to the House of Commons—
more than 10 percent of the entire body. Under this
theory, Parliament rejected the colonists’ demand
for actual or deputy representation.
5-2f Repeal of the Stamp Act
A trade recession in late 1765 ended the bitter dis-
pute. With a downturn in the economy, the king
withdrew his tacit support of the Stamp Act for fear
that the opposition to it would damage revenues too
much. His withdrawal of support doomed the Stamp
Act, and Parliament eventually repealed it. In repeal-
ing the act, however, Parliament stated it was yield-
ing not to the colonists’ demands, but to the king’s.
To make this clear, on the same day it repealed the
Stamp Act, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act,
which affirmed its authority to legislate for the colo-
nies “in all cases whatsoever.” Although it was largely
symbolic, the Declaratory Act became one of the non-
negotiable claims that Parliament was unwilling to
relinquish throughout the struggle. Its leaders would
rather go to war than have Parliament lose authority.

News of the Declaratory Act perplexed Amer-
ican leaders, leaving them to wonder whether
Parliament had accepted the distinction between
internal and external taxation. If the distinction
was not accepted, the Declaratory Act asserted
Parliament’s raw power over the colonies because it
gave no concessions on the issue of representation.
Most colonists, however, overlooked such abstruse
concerns and simply celebrated the Stamp Act’s
repeal. When Parliament passed few new taxes in
1766, many colonists believed that the crisis was
over. They were wrong.
5-3 Taxation Without
Representation,
1767–1773
In 1766, Charles Townshend, a British politician
who believed it was fair for England to tax the
colonies “to provide their own safety and pres-
ervation,” was installed as
Britain’s chancellor of the
Exchequer. The first act he
sponsored did not impose a
new tax on the colonies, but
it did alert colonists that their
struggle with Parliament was
not over. In the Restraining
Act, Townshend suspended
the New York Assembly for
failing to comply with the
Quartering Act. This move
bred suspicions that Townshend would deal harshly
with the colonies. It also pushed the debate beyond
mere revenue issues, such as taxation without rep-

resentation. Now Parliament was infringing on the
colonists’ self-government and self-rule.
5-3a The Townshend Acts of 1767
Townshend confirmed the colonists’ worst fears in the
summer of 1767, when he steered new taxes through
Parliament. Although he considered the colonists’
S
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>> John Adams.
“No freeman should be subject to
any tax to which he has not given
his own consent”
—John Adams, 1765
deputy representation
The practice of the
people’s interests being
advocated by a deputy;
also known as actual
representation
Declaratory act
Passed by Parliament in
1766, this act affirmed its
authority to legislate for
the colonies “in all cases
whatsoever”; largely sym-
bolic, it became one of the
nonnegotiable claims that
Parliament was unwilling

to relinquish throughout
the struggle
restraining act
In this act, Chancellor of
the Exchequer Charles
Townshend suspended the
New York Assembly for
failing to comply with the
Quartering Act
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distinction between internal
and external taxes invalid,
he saw how he could use it to
his advantage. He intended
to raise revenue with new,
external duties on the goods
that the colonists imported
from Britain. The resulting
Townshend Acts laid duties
on glass, lead for paint, tea,
paper, and a handful of other
items. The Townshend Acts
also demanded the collection of duties and bol-
stered the importance of colonial
governors who were friendly to the
Crown. Once again, they threatened
the previous status quo of salutary
neglect and signified that England
would not give up control so easily.
Opposition
Opposition to the Townshend Acts
followed the pattern of the Stamp
Act opposition—although more
slowly, largely because of internal
splits among merchants. But many
colonists eventually began to boycott British goods
again. Women stopped wearing silks and satins or

serving tea and wine, making fashionable what they
saw as a modest, patriotic life. By 1769 the boycotts
were effective in every colony, having been spread by
colonial newspapers, which shared information and
important essays.
One essay, published in all but four colonial
newspapers, offered a distinctive ideological protest
to the Townshend Acts. Posing as a simple country
gentleman resisting a corrupt government, the prom-
inent lawyer John Dickinson
wrote a series of essays
called Letters from a Farmer
in Pennsylvania—published in
both Britain and America. Dickinson explained that
the colonies had tolerated earlier duties because
they accepted the idea that Parliament should regu-
late trade. The purpose of the Townshend duties,
however, was not regulation, but revenue. Dickinson
considered this unconstitutional. His letters were
yet another argument against Britain’s attempts to
overturn salutary neglect.
The Boston Massacre
Opposition to the Townshend Acts triggered rioting
as well. Radicals in the Massachusetts legislature
drafted a circular letter rejecting the Townshend
Acts that was sent to all the colonies. Written pri-
marily by Samuel Adams, the letter urged all mer-
chants to enforce the boycott. In one case, colonist
John Hancock’s sloop Liberty arrived in port in Boston
with a cargo of wine. Colonists held the customs
official hostage as the wine was unloaded without

payment of the required duties. Similar protests fol-
lowed in other towns. In response, the British sent
troops to restore order, and by 1770 British troops
were quartered in New York, Boston, and other
major towns. The conflict was growing increasingly
tense. Now there was a seemingly permanent British
military presence in the colonies.
On March 5, 1770, a crowd
of Boston rebels began throwing
snowballs, oyster shells, and other
debris at a British sentry in front
of the Customs House, prompting
the British captain to order more
guards outside. When a stick hit
one of the soldiers, he fell, and
someone shouted, “Fire!” prompt-
ing a British guard to shoot into the
crowd. Hearing the report, other
soldiers shot into the crowd, and
in the end, five colonists lay dead
and six were wounded. The colonists called this the
Boston Massacre. Nine British soldiers were tried
for the act, and two were convicted of manslaugh-
The British
regarded the
colonists’
arguments as mere
rationalizations to
avoid paying taxes.
Read Dickinson’s
twelve short

letters.
townshend acts
These acts of 1767 insti-
tuted duties on glass,
lead for paint, tea, paper,
and a handful of other
items
Boston Massacre
Incendiary riot on March
5, 1770, when British sol-
diers fired into a crowd
and killed five people
E
o
n
I
m
ag
e
s
>> A color print of the Boston Massacre by Paul Revere, used
as propaganda to spur on the cause of colonial rebellion.
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ter (they were all defended
by the future president John
Adams). The “Massacre”
served as important propa-
ganda for the colonial agitators, despite the fact
that the English had followed the rule of law and
that most of the soldiers were found innocent in a
colonial court of law. Furthermore, responses to the
“Boston Massacre” sparked a vigorous debate within

the colonies about how far rebellion should go. Many
colonists remained on the side of the soldiers.
Repeal
The same day as the Boston Massacre, Parliament
repealed most provisions of the Townshend Acts.
But, as a symbol of its continued control, it left the
tax on tea in place; the colonists accepted the tea
tax and dropped their boycott, claiming victory in
the conflict.
But this sort of compromise meant that
Parliament and the rebelling colonists had not
reached a clear agreement, leaving the situation ripe
for future conflicts. For the next several years, no
major issue emerged to galvanize colonial opposi-
tion, lulling many in Britain and in the colonies into
the belief that the crisis was over. This was a relief
to the Crown, as well as to the many colonists who
were content with the colonies’ relationship to the
royal government. Furthermore, royal officials in
America did their best to foster this pacified view,
asserting that subordination of the colonies had
finally been achieved. This, however, was merely the
surface view.
5-3b Local Conflicts, 1770–1773
If unified colonial opposition declined between 1770
and 1773, local conflicts continued, demonstrating
that colonists remained assertive and that royal
control was tenuous.
The Gaspée Incident
The most noteworthy local conflict was the Gaspée
incident. In Rhode Island, colonists from Providence
boarded and burned an English naval vessel, the

Gaspée, that had run aground while in pursuit of a
colonial ship accused of smuggling. This was quite
a radical move. Britain assembled a royal commis-
sion of British officials in America to identify the
perpetrators and remand them to England for trial.
The local commission, however, shortly became
the target of colonial protest. Committees of cor-
respondence, or organized groups of letter writers,
coordinated opposition to the extradition of the
suspects, and, as a result, the
perpetrators of the Gaspée
incident were never identi-
fied or tried.
Committees of
Correspondence
Massachusetts colonists also
continued their resistance to
royal policies. In 1772, several
Bostonians set up a com-
mittee of correspondence to
inform other Massachusetts
towns and other colonies of their grievances, “as
Men, as Christians, and as Subjects.” This organiza-
tion aimed to stir up dissent and unite the colonists
in their opposition. Several other colonists from
towns outside of Boston joined these committees,
creating a method for the relatively quick transmis-
sion of information between the colonies. As letters
circulated from one committee to the next, they
passed along information, helping to unify colonial
opposition to the Crown.
Choosing Sides
Although local opposition to Crown policies was sig-

nificant between 1770 and 1773, it was not as wide-
spread as the protests that emerged in response
to the Stamp Act or the Townshend Acts. And,
although some colonial leaders tried to transform
local concerns into colonywide grievances, most
issues never achieved more than local prominence,
mainly because most colonists were reluctant to
engage in a full-on confrontation with the Crown.
Within cities like Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia, wealthy people remained mostly sup-
portive of the Crown, while artisans and merchants,
who had been financially stung by several economic
acts passed by the Crown, were the most avid
patriots. Many people did not favor conflict and
could not imagine rebellion. New England’s slaves,
meanwhile, attempted to use the language of politi-
cal freedom to their benefit, and in 1773 and 1774
they petitioned the colonial government for their
freedom. When the legislature passed a bill on their
behalf, the royal governor vetoed it. Regardless, the
slaves made it clear that whoever promised to free
them would earn their support.
In the Southern Colonies and the Chesapeake,
many of the most powerful families remained sup-
portive of the Crown, whose policies had enriched
them in the first place. Meanwhile, those living
in rural areas were more supportive of the rebels,
mainly because they felt slighted by the meager
Read an eyewit-
ness account
of the Boston
Massacre.

Gaspée incident
Conflict that occurred
when colonists from
Providence boarded and
burned the English naval
vessel Gaspée
committees of
correspondence
Organized groups of letter
writers who would provide
quick and reliable infor-
mation throughout the
colonies
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amount of self-rule that the
colonial elite granted them.
These internal cleavages
would persist through the
Revolutionary War, although
between 1770 and 1773, they
were less visible because no
single issue stoked the fires of dissent. In 1773, how-
ever, an issue emerged that would prod more and
more colonists toward open oppo-
sition to royal control.
5-3c The Tea Act, 1773
In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea
Act. The act was designed not to
anger the colonists, but to give the
East India Company a monopoly
on the sale of tea to North America
(the company was badly in debt
and had influence in Parliament).
Provisions of the Act
The Tea Act had three provisions:

(1) it lowered the colonists’ duty on tea; (2) it granted
the East India Company the monopoly; and (3) it
appointed royal agents who were to pay the duty
in England and then sell the tea to the colonists.
This last provision meant that colonial merchants
could no longer sell tea. Prior to the Tea Act, most
colonists had bought smuggled Dutch tea because
it was cheaper than the English variety. The Tea Act
was designed to bring British tea to the colonies at
a lower price, thus undercutting the illegal Dutch
trade. Because tea was the most common beverage
consumed by the colonists, Parliament and the East
India Company hoped that the colonies would be
pleased with the measure and buy more tea.
Colonial Response
This was not the case, for two reasons. Naturally,
powerful colonial tea merchants were upset at
losing the business. Whether or not the tea
they were selling was smuggled, tea mer-
chants were upset that the Tea Act legally
replaced them with royal agents; they had
lost their livelihood. But in addition, the tim-
ing of the act meant that many colonists
interpreted it as yet another move to estab-
lish Parliament’s authority. Radical Whigs
pointed out that until 1773 the duty on tea
had been paid in Britain. But now, under
the Tea Act, the duty would be collected
from British agents who had collected the
revenue from the Americans. Instead of a tax laid in
England and collected in England, it was a tax laid in
England and collected in America.
The colonists responded as they had before,

only more violently. They published protests and
pressured anyone concerned with the enforcement
of the law to send tea back to Britain. They forged
a campaign of intimidation by threatening anyone
who tried to enforce the act. In short, the colonists
planned to nullify the Tea Act by
refusing to comply with it. Women
were the key players in reducing
tea consumption, while men were
the staunchest advocates of using
violent means.
The Boston Tea Party
Most of the tea-bearing ships
that encountered resistance sim-
ply returned to England. But in
Boston, the tea issue was espe-
cially sensitive because Governor
Thomas Hutchinson’s son was
one of the major consignees, and
Hutchinson was determined to support his son’s
enterprise. In addition, Hutchinson viewed the Tea
Act as a chance to demonstrate his fidelity to the
Crown in the face of the most rebellious colony in
North America. Thus, when
Bostonians pressed to have
the tea returned to England,
Hutchinson said that was
fine, so long as they paid
the tax on the tea first.
The rebelling colonists refused, and in this
impasse, the ship simply sat in Boston Harbor. The
deadlock could not last: by law, the tax had to be

paid within twenty days, which, in this case, meant
it had to be paid by December 17, 1773. Governor
Hutchinson vowed to have the tea unloaded and the
tax paid on the day of the deadline. To prevent this,
on the night of December 16, an organized
squad of roughly sixty colonists dressed
as Mohawk Indians boarded the ship
and dumped the entire cargo—342
chests of tea—into Boston Harbor.
Historians are unsure why they
chose that particular disguise
to commit their act of protest.
Perhaps it was to distinguish them-
selves from others? Perhaps cos-
>> It wasn’t the tax on tea that caused the colonists
problems, but the enforcement. The Granger Collection,
New York/The Granger Collection
tea act
Passed in 1773, this act
was designed to give the
East India Company a
monopoly on the sale of
tea to North America
Read a par-
ticipant’s eyewit-
ness account of
the Tea Party.

Women were
the key players
in reducing tea
consumption,
while men were
the staunchest
advocates of using
violent means.
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tumes promoted unity?
Perhaps Native Americans
symbolized both savagery
and radical democracy,
freed from the constraints
of British “civilization”?
For Boston radicals
like the Sons of Liberty,
the Boston Tea Party was
momentous. Bostonians
were proud that they had
made a powerful strike
against the Crown, and
they noted that disci-
pline among their ranks
was maintained. Beyond
the tea, the squad did not
commit vandalism or destroy any other property.
But they also recognized that they had pushed
the conflict to a new level. After the destruction of
British property, colonists could only speculate on
how the British government would react to this new
provocation. Refraining from buying tea was essen-
tially a passive protest; destroying an entire ship’s
worth was something altogether different.

5-3d The Coercive
and Quebec Acts, 1774
Parliament’s response came quickly. A few members
of Parliament argued that the Tea Party’s ringleaders
should be arrested. The majority disagreed, recall-
ing the failure of the government to bring to trial
the perpetrators of the Gaspée incident. To avoid the
difficulties of prosecuting the individual Bostonians,
Parliament opted to pass punitive legislation—the
so-called Coercive Acts—in 1774.
The Coercive Acts
The laws that came to be called the Coercive
Acts actually comprised four separate acts, most
of which attempted to punish Massachusetts for
the Tea Party. Parliament thought it could attack
Massachusetts and thus divide the colonists in order
to reconquer them. The four acts were (1) the Boston
Port Act, which closed Boston’s harbor until the town
paid for the destroyed tea; (2) the Massachusetts
Government Act, which terminated most self-
government in the colony; (3) the Administration of
Justice Act, which dictated that any British official
charged with a capital offense in the colonies could
be tried in Great Britain (this issue had arisen after
the trials that resulted from the Boston Massacre);
and (4) the Quartering Act, which applied to all
the colonies and allowed
the British Army to house
troops wherever necessary,
including private buildings.
Boston tea party
Protest staged December
16, 1773, when an orga-

nized squad of roughly
sixty colonists dressed as
Mohawk Indians boarded
Hutchinson’s ship and
dumped 342 chests of tea
into Boston Harbor
Coercive acts
Four separate acts,
passed in 1774, that
were meant to punish
Massachusetts for the
Tea Party: the Boston Port
Act, the Massachusetts
Government Act, the
Administration of Justice
Act, and the Quartering Act
“I immediately dressed myself in
the costume of an Indian, equipped
with a small hatchet . . . and a
club, after having painted my face
and hands with coal dust in the
shop of a blacksmith, I repaired to
Griffin’s wharf, where the ships lay
that contained the tea.”
—Eyewitness to the Boston Tea Party
>> This nineteenth-century image of the 1773 Boston Tea Party
highlights the Indian costumes worn by the radical protestors.
N
o

ri
g
h
ts
r
e
se
rv
e
d
Read the Coer-
cive Acts.
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The Quebec Act
A fifth act followed the
same year. The Quebec Act
straightened out several
legal issues in Canada but
also did two other things:
(1) it guaranteed French
Canadians the right to prac-
tice Roman Catholicism,
which appalled the colonists,
especially in New England,
where almost everyone was
a Protestant unaccustomed
to accommodating other
religions; and (2) it declared
that much of England’s hold-
ings across the Proclamation
Line of 1763 (everything west
of the Appalachian Mountains) would be governed
from Quebec. The colonists were infuriated that
the Crown was governing this land from the north

rather than the east. After all, many colonists felt
they had fought for possession of this land during
the French and Indian War. The colonists’ wide-
spread anti-Catholicism and their land lust led
them to link the Quebec Act and the Coercive Acts,
referring to them both as Intolerable Acts.
Colonial Response
The various acts were intended to break the colo-
nists’ spirit, to dissolve colonial unity, and to isolate
Massachusetts. The actual consequences were quite
different. At the most basic level, Bostonians refused
to pay the penalties required by the Port Act. A small
number of pro-British merchants offered to pay the
fines on the city’s behalf, but a group of rebellious
colonists threatened them, too. The rejection of the
offer was a strong measure of the colonists’ convic-
tions because the port closure inflicted considerable
suffering on the people who depended on trade to
maintain their economic well-being.
Through committees of correspondence, colo-
nists everywhere heard of Massachusetts’s plight.
Virginia, South Carolina, and Connecticut sent food.
Thus, rather than isolating Massachusetts, the acts
unified the colonies.
The First Continental Congress
This colonial unity is best seen in the meeting
of the First Continental Congress. In May 1774,
Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia
called for an intercolony congress to address the
growing crisis (doing so without consent from the
Crown was still illegal). In September, delegates
from twelve colonies met in the First Continental

Congress at Philadelphia to consider the American
response to the Coercive Acts. Only Georgia was
absent, principally because Creek Indians were
actively fighting Georgians over western expansion,
and the colonists there felt they needed British
defensive support.
The delegates considered several plans
of action. Ultimately, the Congress created the
Continental Association, which supervised a boy-
cott of British trade. The Association was prefaced
with a “Declaration of Rights” that asserted the
natural-rights foundation of the colonists’ resis-
tance, affirming the trio of natural rights put for-
ward by John Locke—“life, liberty, and property.” This
was not yet independence, though. The delegates
to the First Continental Congress tried to maintain
a balance between supporting colonists’ rights and
affirming the role of the Crown. In 1774 they were
pursuing autonomy, not independence. They agreed
to meet again the next year.
5-4 The Shot Heard
’Round the World
Meanwhile, back in Boston, local militias were
preparing for battle. Parliament, these men felt,
had pushed far enough; they would no longer
tolerate more infringements on their liberties.
Furthermore, who knew what the Crown would do
next to plague their economic existence? Indeed,
by mid-1774 colonists in western Massachusetts
had essentially taken over the towns and evicted
British officials. Like many colonists, they really
did believe the British were coming to take away
their freedoms.

5-4a Militia Preparations
To ready themselves for battle, Massachusetts colo-
nists stockpiled guns in several locations outside
Boston, while militia groups drilled defiantly in town
squares. They also developed a “Provincial Congress”
that assumed the role of a colonial government
outside the Crown. Other Massachusetts counties
organized conventions to unify the resistance. In
some areas, colonists opposed the Administration of
Justice Act by closing courts rather than permitting
the governor’s appointed judges to sit.
Other colonies followed Massachusetts’s lead,
organizing their own provincial congresses, commit-
tees, and conventions. Patriots near urban centers
formed committees of correspondence to circulate
Intolerable acts
Colonists’ collective label
for the Quebec Act and
the Coercive Acts
First Continental
Congress
Meeting of twelve colo-
nies at Philadelphia in
May 1774 to consider the
American response to
the Coercive Acts
Continental
association
Group that supervised a
boycott of British trade;
the association was pref-

aced with a “Declaration
of Rights” that affirmed
the natural rights of “life,
liberty, and property”
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The Shot Heard ’Round the World 95

news, information, and instructions throughout the
colonies. Although not all colonists were enthusi-
astic for war, especially outside the cities that were
affected most by Britain’s policies, there was a grow-
ing sense that the conflict between Britain and its
North American colonies might result in a full-scale
rebellion.
5-4b Britain’s Response
to the Preparations
The colonists’ military preparedness became
evident to the British in September 1774, when
Massachusetts patriots responded to false rumors
that the royal governor had ordered the British
Army to seize colonial gunpowder and that British
troops had fired on the people of Boston. Roughly
3,000 colonists responded to the “Powder Alarm” by
converging on Boston, a city of approximately 15,000
inhabitants. Many more patriots were on the road
to Boston when news came that the rumors were
untrue. The royal governor, Thomas Gage, realized
that his army was outnumbered in Massachusetts
and that the colonists were prepared to actually
fight. In response, he ordered the construction of
fortifications across the small strip of land that con-
nected Boston to the mainland (see Map 5.1) and
asked Parliament for 20,000 more British troops.
5-4c Lexington and Concord
By the spring of 1775, tensions were at a fever
pitch. Feeling threatened, the British secretary of
state pressured Gage to curb the colonists’ military
planning. Thus, in April 1775, Gage sent troops to

the town of Concord, about 20 miles northwest of
Boston, to capture the colonial military supplies
hidden there and to arrest the patriot leaders John
Hancock and Samuel Adams.
The British soldiers were armed and resolute
when they left Boston on April 18, 1775. Despite
the soldiers’ efforts to move quietly, Boston patriots
detected the troop movement and sent Paul Revere,
William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott on horseback
to alert the colonists in the countryside between
Boston and Concord (only Prescott made it all the way
to Concord; Revere was captured on the way while
Dawes was chased off the route). On the morning
42°20'N
71°05'W71°10'W71°15'W71°20'W
42°25'N
Charlestown
Neck
North
Church
North Bridge
Meriam’s
Corner
Charlestown
LexingtonConcord

Boston
Waltham
Menetomy
(Arlington)
Woburn
MaldenMedford
Cambridge
Newton
Brookline
Roxbury
Dorchester
Watertown
Winnisimmet
Lincoln
Boston
Harbor
Su
db
ury
R.
Charles R.

Charles R
.
M
ystic R.
M
a
ld
en
R.
Con
co
rd
R.
Concord
April 19, 1775,
mid-morning.
British retreat begins.
Revere, Dawes & Prescott are
stopped by British patrol.
Revere captured.
Bunker Hill and
Breed’s Hill
June 17, 1775

Lexington Green
April 19, 1775,
early morning
0
0 2.5 5 Mi.
2.5 5 Km.
Paul Revere’s ride
Continuation by
Samuel Prescott
William Dawes’s route
British forces
British retreat
American forces
British victory
American victory
American entrenchment
N
Cengage Learning
Ms00282b
Lexington, Concord, and Boston, 1775
Trim 37p6 x 25p0

Final: 7/9/12
TYPE BLOCK MAP
No bleeds
Map 5.1. Lexington, Concord, and Boston, 1775
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of April 19, a militia assem-
bled in Lexington to halt the
British before they reached
Concord. The British, still the
most powerful army in the
world at the time, did not
back down. The American
militia captain ordered his
men (called “Minutemen”
because they supposedly
were ready on a minute’s
notice) to retreat after the
much stronger British forces
ordered them to disperse.
As some of the rebelling
colonists retreated, someone
fired a shot (both sides later
claimed the other fired first),
and the British soldiers began
firing on the militia. The colo-
nists suffered eighteen casu-
alties (eight killed and ten
wounded), while the British suffered only one, after
this, the supposed “shot heard ’round the world.”
After the British rout of the Minutemen, the
British marched to Concord, but by the time they
arrived, Hancock and Adams had fled, and it is
uncertain whether the cautious British would have
exacerbated the already explosive situation by car-

rying out the capture of these two prominent colo-
nists. Instead, when they took their position at one
end of the North Bridge in Concord, they were met
by another armed militia that positioned itself at the
opposite end of the bridge. The militia fired on the
British troops and forced them to alter their route
back to Boston. This was the first time Americans
had fired against the British Army (colloquially
referred to as the Redcoats)
in a formal confrontation. It
was also the first time the
Redcoats had been forced
to retreat in the face of an
American enemy.
The Minutemen made the Redcoats’ return
to Boston a nightmare. Militiamen gathered from
surrounding towns to pursue the British the entire
way, firing from behind stone walls and trees.
The British suffered heavy casualties and, once in
Boston, found themselves besieged by thousands
more militiamen. Over the course of the day, the
Americans suffered 95 casualties, while the British
suffered 273, including 73 dead. This was a marked
escalation of the colonial conflict; for the first time,
Americans had killed British soldiers in battle.
5-4d Colonial Response to Lexington
and Concord
Following the battles of Lexington and Concord, the
colonists had to decide what their best response
might be. Had an all-out war begun? What about the
many colonists who did not support the rebellion?

On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental
Congress gathered in Philadelphia to answer
this question. The Congress enacted several poli-
cies, including acknowledging the militia compa-
nies surrounding Boston as the core of a new
“Continental Army” and appointing as its general
a Virginian, George Washington. (The selection of a
Virginian was meant to balance the predominance
of Massachusetts militiamen in the army, thus
showing colonial unity.) The Second Continental
Congress passed resolutions supporting war, which
included a sharp rejection of all authority under the
king in America. It also adopted the “Declaration of
the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms.” These
were bold, brave actions, although no one was sure
whether this was a battle over grievances against
Parliament or one with a goal of independence.
Regardless, without formally declaring the colo-
nies’ independence, the Continental Congress was
beginning to behave more like the government of an
independent nation than that of a territory within
an empire. The Congress remained cautious about
the word independence, though, and in July 1775 it
approved the “Olive Branch Petition,” written by John
Dickinson, which declared that the colonists were
still loyal to King George III and implored the king to
seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The king
ignored the petition, viewing the colonists as insub-
ordinate subjects of the Crown.
Minutemen
Nickname for American
militia soldiers because
of their reputation for
being ready on a min-

ute’s notice
Second Continental
Congress
Gathering of colonial
leaders in May 1775
to determine the colo-
nies’ response to the
battles of Lexington and
Concord; they passed
resolutions supporting
war that included a sharp
rejection of all authority
under the king in America
Olive Branch petition
A 1775 declaration to
King George III that the
colonists were still loyal
to him and imploring the
king to seek a peaceful
resolution to the conflict
>> British generals searching for the colonial militia, who were
busy recruiting Minutemen on the other side of the hill. View of
the
Town of Concord, Plate II, Replica of engraving by Amos
Doolittle, Boston,
1903, Engraving on paper, hand colored, Concord Museum,
Concord, MA
www.concordmuseum.org
Watch a film
about Lexington,
Concord, and

the “shot heard ’round the
world.”
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The Shot Heard ’Round the World 97
key effects. First, it prompted

thousands of additional
colonists to join the oppo-
sition to Britain, as small
conflicts spread across the
land. Second, it convinced
Britain that many colonists,
not just a handful of trou-
blemakers, were part of the
rebellion. Because of this
realization, Parliament issued
the American Prohibitory
Act, which declared the colo-
nies to be “in open rebellion,”
forbade commerce with the
colonies by blockading their
ports, and made colonial ships and their cargo sub-
ject to seizure as if they were the property “of open
enemies.” Now that Parliament had declared the col-
onies to be in rebellion, any leaders who were caught
could be tried for treason and executed. This devel-
opment raised the stakes dramatically. A rebellion
was turning into a revolution. What had begun in the
early 1760s as the Crown’s attempt to tighten control
over its North American colonies had led those colo-
nies to unite in order to claim their independence.
5-4e The Battle of Bunker Hill
Within weeks, the hesitancy shown at the Second
Continental Congress vanished. Local battles inspired
this eagerness, especially the biggest battle, which
occurred in Boston. After Lexington and Concord,
thousands of men from throughout the colonies
joined the Minutemen around Boston to besiege the
British military. On June 17, 1775, the British Army
sent troops across the Charles River to capture the
colonists’ cannons located on Breed’s Hill, which

overlooked Boston and was connected to nearby
Bunker Hill by a saddle of land. The colonists had for-
tified Breed’s Hill because they could fire their can-
nons at British ships in Boston Harbor from there.
The ensuing battle was fought primarily on Breed’s
Hill but came to be known as the Battle of Bunker
Hill. It was the first all-out battle of the Revolutionary
War. Although British troops forced the patriots to
abandon their hilltop position, the colonists inflicted
heavy casualties on the British. In one particularly
brutal episode, the British lost 1,000 men in an hour.
The British killed around 400 Minutemen.
Looking Ahead . . .
When news of the Battle of Bunker Hill spread
through the colonies and reached Britain, it had two
1700s American innkeepers think nothing of requesting
that a guest share his bed with a stranger when
accommodations become scarce.
1760s Because the British Macaroni Club’s members are
known for having affected manners and long, curled
hair, “macaroni” becomes a slang term for “dandy.”
The song “Yankee Doodle” is invented by the British
to insult American colonists. The section where
Doodle puts a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni
is a slap at the ragged bands of American troops.
1769 Shoelaces are invented in England.
1772 Joseph Priestley invents soda water.
1773 Seamstress Betsy Ross and her husband, John,

begin renting the Philadelphia house where she will
sew the first American flag.
1774 Empress Catherine II’s Russian troops defeat
Turkey, adding the Southern Ukraine, the Northern
Caucasus, and Crimea to the Russian Empire.
Chronology
1763 French and Indian War ends
1764 Sugar Act
1765 Quartering Act
March 22, 1765 Stamp Act passed
Summer/Fall 1765 Colonial protests and riots
August 1765 Sons of Liberty
October 1765 Stamp Act Congress meets
March 1766 Stamp Act repealed
1767 Townshend Acts
1770 Boston “massacre”
May 10, 1773 Tea Act passed
December 16, 1773 Boston Tea Party
Spring 1774 Coercive, or Intolerable, Acts
May 1774 First Continental Congress

April 19, 1775 Lexington and Concord
May 10, 1775 Second Continental Congress
June 17, 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill
Battle of Bunker hill
Outbreak of fighting
on June 17, 1775, near
Boston Harbor; the
first all-out battle of the
Revolutionary War
american
prohibitory act
This act declared the
colonies to be “in open
rebellion,” forbade com-
merce with the colonies
by blockading their ports,
and made colonial ships
and their cargo subject
to seizure as if they were
the property “of open
enemies”
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Learning Outcomes
following:
6-1 Describe the long-term causes and more immediate events
that
led the colonists into a true revolution against Britain.
6-2 Discuss the various phases of the American Revolution, and

analyze the circumstances that eventually helped the colonists
win a conflict that Britain, by rights, should never have lost.
6-3 Assess the significance of the American Revolution to the
following groups: colonists, slaves, Native Americans, and
women.
The Revolution
Chapter 6
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From Rebellion to Revolution 99
“Ostensibly, the battle was between freedom and tyranny
(if you were a patriot), or about
the responsibilities of being
an Englishman (if you were a
Loyalist).”After the “long train of abuses”
leading up to the Declaration
of Independence, from 1776 to
1783 American patriots fought
a long and difficult war with
Britain. Ostensibly, the battle
was between freedom and
tyranny (if you were a patriot),
or about the responsibilities
of being an Englishman (if
you were a Loyalist). In reality, choosing sides was much more
personal, depending, for
instance, on whether your landlord was a Loyalist or a patriot,
whether you thought
political freedom would improve your economic situation, or
whether you felt the earn-
ings you made from a slave-based economy were threatened. All
colonists, of course,
were forced to choose sides, although many remained
ambivalent about each position.
Loyalists were scorned, but revolutionaries would be punished
brutally if their side lost
the war. Choosing sides was no small matter, and the
consequences could be deadly.

But the war and the political independence that followed made
up only one of sev-
eral revolutions that took place during these years. The
Revolutionary War brought with
it fundamental questions about freedom and liberty, and about
what kind of society
Americans wanted. How far would the American Revolution go
in promoting equality?
Would economic and educational differences be eradicated by a
leveling state? Would
slavery be abolished? How different would the new society look
compared with the old?
How revolutionary would be the Revolution be?
6-1 From Rebellion to Revolution
As in most revolutions, the American Revolution had long-term,
underlying causes that
finally came to a head because of short-term, precipitating
events.
6-1a Underlying Causes
Between 1660 and 1763, the colonies had formed a unique
society distinct from that of
England. Perhaps most important, they had developed a dynamic
economy in manu-
facturing and developing goods, as well as supplying raw
materials to trading partners
in both the Old and New Worlds. In other words, the colonies
were not just a primary
economic supplier (supplying raw materials to a mother
country), but a well-rounded
economic system unto themselves. Of course, many wealthy
southerners owed their for-
tunes to slave-based cash crops that were then traded with
England, so these colonists

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By the end of 1775, the colonists had no choice but to
seek full independence from England.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

What do you think?
<< While in many parts of the colonies revolutionary fervor ran
hot, in many others it did not. As well as being a
revolution, then, the war from 1776 to 1783 was something of a
civil war as well.
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100 C h a p t e r 6 The Revolution
shied away from confron-
tation with the Crown.
Nevertheless, large sec-
tors of the North American
economy were becoming
increasingly independent of
England.
Along similar lines, property ownership was
more common in the colonies than in England. This
meant that, with the notable exception of slaves,
the people working the land owned it, which gave
them something to fight for should their position
be threatened. The colonies also had developed
without the titled aristocracy or widespread poverty
found in England, two further factors that made
them an entity unique from England. And, in fact,
each colony had developed a self-elected govern-
ment, something it was not willing to give up easily.
6-1b Precipitating Events
These long-term causes could not have detonated
into a war without several precipitating sparks.

Three were substantial: (1) increased local conflicts;
(2) the uncompromising attitude of Britain; and
(3) a shift in opinion among the colonists—toward
revolution.
The Widening War
At the local level, the war’s scope was widen-
ing even before any official declaration of war.
In 1775, for instance, Ethan Allen and his “Green
Mountain Boys” attacked and captured Britain’s
Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in backwoods
New York. The patriots’ Continental Army invaded
Canada and captured Montreal but failed to capture
Quebec. In Charleston, patriots beat back an attack
by a British fleet. In Boston, patriots surrounded and
laid “siege” on the city after the British had taken
control after the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Virginians meanwhile forced the
royal governor, Lord Dunmore,
to retreat from the main-
land to a British warship
in the harbor at Norfolk.
These local conflicts,
organized without the
assistance of any unified
colonial body, indicated
a widening war between
England and the colonies, and the transformation of
grassroots opinion toward favoring war.
Lord Dunmore’s actions are significant, how-
ever, for another reason. After retreating to an off-
shore ship as he awaited British military support,
Dunmore issued a procla-
mation offering freedom

to any slave who agreed
to fight for the British. His
program, “Liberty to Slaves,”
angered the colonists, who would later cite Dunmore’s
actions in the Declaration of Independence. To many
colonists, liberty was meant only for Europeans and
Euro-Americans, and it stung that the governor was
offering it to slaves. Within weeks of Dunmore’s
call, between five hundred and six hundred slaves
responded, and before the war was over, several thou-
sand more fought for Britain and for their freedom.
In contrast, George Washington refused to use black
soldiers during the first years of the war. Indeed, only
during the final months of the war were colonists
forced to press slaves into service, delaying doing so
mostly because they feared arming them as enemies.
Uncompromising Britain
As the war widened, King George III grew increas-
ingly angry at the colonies for their continued
insubordination. He rejected the “Olive Branch
Petition” of the Second Continental Congress
and in August 1775 denounced the colo-
nists as rebels. He also hired mercenaries
from Germany, called “Hessians,” to fight
the colonists. And in December 1775 he
closed all American ports. This last action
was particularly significant because it
made independence absolutely neces-
sary to open trade with other countries.
The king’s uncompromising attitude pre-
sented the colonists with few options other

than revolution.
>> The king’s uncompromising
attitude presented the colonists with
few options other than revolution.
iStockphoto.com/Simon Smith
hessians
German soldiers hired by
Britain to fight against
the rebelling American
colonies
>> Fort Ticonderoga stamp, celebrating a local conflict
of 1775.
Learn more
about Lord Dun-
more and read
his proclamation.
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From Rebellion to Revolution 101
The Shift in American Opinion
Finally, popular opinion had gradually shifted toward
independence. The decline of salutary neglect and
the spread of local violence led many colonists to side
with the revolutionaries. These economic and social
events pushed the war of ideas about freedom and
sovereignty into the lives of everyday Americans, and
the more the Crown proved uncompromising, the
more American opinion shifted toward revolution.
6-1c Choosing Sides
There was, however, never unanimity, and thus, in
addition to this being a revolutionary war, it was also
very much a civil war.
The Loyalists
Why remain loyal? In the end, somewhere between
one-fifth and one-third of the colonists remained
loyal to Britain throughout the war (see “The reasons
why . . .” box below). Most prominent in this group
were wealthy landholders and slave owners, who
had the most to lose in a revolution. Furthermore, a
large percentage of colonists remained indifferent to
both the British and the revolutionaries.
Although all the colonies had some pro-Crown
families, geographically most Loyalists lived in the
southern colonies and New York.

The Revolutionaries
Why revolt? Each rebelling colonist had a different
motive for supporting a break with England, and
these reasons were just as complicated as those for
remaining loyal.
Personal and commer-
cial considerations were
vitally important. But per-
haps most influential was
the ideology of republican-
ism, the idea that govern-
ment should be based on the
consent of the governed and
that the people had a duty
to ensure that their government did not infringe on
individual rights. The American Revolution was the
first serious modern attempt to craft a government
based on these principles.
Republicanism set down deep roots in England
before it flowered on American soil. The British
Radical Whigs of the 1600s, for example, harked back
to the classical Roman ideal of a “republican society,”
in which governmental power was curtailed by the
actions of the people, who were presumed to be
virtuous and willing to sacrifice for the public good.
Drawing on these Roman ideals, the Radical Whigs
outlined a theory according to which a government
was legitimate only when it was based on an agree-
ment between the members of a society and govern-
ment. In this formulation, the members of society
would agree to sacrifice a degree of liberty and the
government would maintain security and order, but
otherwise avoid infringing on a person’s life, liberty,
or property. Any ruler who transgressed natural

laws was a tyrant, and under tyranny the rebellion of
a people was justifiable. (Republicanism was different
from liberalism, which viewed any government as an
unwanted infringement on individual liberty.)
Republican ideas spread throughout the colo-
nies in the 1700s, mainly by the work of two English
republicanism
The theory that govern-
ment should be based
on the consent of the
governed and that the
governed had a duty to
ensure that their govern-
ment did not infringe on
individual rights
Personal connections in Britain. Many still felt a strong attach-
ment to Britain and the king, and many still had family and
friends in
Britain.
Economic ties. Many also had strong commercial ties with
Britain
(the slave-based economy of the southern colonies was
particularly
dependent on such trade). To rebel was to risk their present and
future wealth.
Geopolitical concerns. Some feared that France or Spain might
take over if Britain were driven out of the colonies, and they
pre-
ferred British rule to that of some other European nation.
Fears of what American independence might mean. Some of

the smaller religious groups felt that Britain had protected them
from
more powerful denominations that could potentially flourish if
the
new American state adopted a national religion.
Personal motives. Economically, it was often a matter of
settling
small scores. If, for instance, your landlord was a revolutionary,
you
were likely to be a Loyalist; if your landlord was a Loyalist,
you were
likely to be a patriot.
Uncertainty about American success. Some colonists doubted
the colonies’ ability to throw off British rule. After all, Britain
was the
most powerful nation in the world, with the mightiest army.
Colonists were reluctant to withdraw from the British Empire
for at least six reasons:
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authors—John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon—who
wrote a short book called Cato’s Letters. In America,
Cato’s Letters and other Radical Whig writings were
quoted every time Britain attempted to raise taxes
after the French and Indian War.
But the best-known expression of republican
ideas in revolutionary America was corset maker
Thomas Paine’s political pamphlet Common Sense,
published in January 1776. Its simple wording of
republican ideals nudged the colonists further
toward independence. Paine asserted that the king
never had the welfare of his subjects in mind and
that he was entirely concerned with his own exer-
cise of power. Paine also argued that independence

was the only answer to this problem, using language
so powerful that it made any other course of action
seem absurd. He set forth a vision of America as a
dynamic, independent nation, growing in popula-
tion and prosperity, with a kindly government
doing a substantial amount of economic
and political leveling to ensure equality.
Pointing to the tremendous growth of
the American colonies in the eigh-
teenth century, Paine argued that
America was more than just capable of
maintaining independence from Britain;
America was so strong, he claimed, that
independence was inevitable. “Until an
independence is declared,” Paine wrote,
“the continent will feel itself like a man who con-
tinues putting off some unpleasant business from
day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set
about it, wishes it over, and is
continually haunted with the
thoughts of its necessity.”
Paine’s pamphlet was enormously influential in
changing the minds of those who had opposed inde-
pendence, especially in extending republican ideals
to colonists beyond the educated elite. Emerging just
as local conflicts spread throughout the colonies,
Common Sense was reprinted several times; in total,
150,000 copies were distributed throughout the
colonies—a number equivalent to 15 million copies
being distributed in the United States today.

6-1d The Declaration
of Independence
The increase in local conflicts, Britain’s inflexibility,
and the spreading of republican ideals made a break
with Britain inevitable by 1776. But independence
was expedited further by events on the ground. In
March 1776, the Continental Army forced the British
to evacuate Boston, ending the eleven-month siege
of the city that had begun after Lexington and
Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Rather than
sail for home, however, the British Army headed
for New York, where more Loyalists resided than
in any other colony. Choosing not to establish their
base where the colonists were united in opposition
(Boston), the British hoped to divide the colonies by
setting their base of operations in an area less com-
mitted to independence.
The Drafting
With this crisis at hand, Richard Henry Lee, a Virginia
delegate to the Continental Congress, proposed, on
June 7, 1776, that the colonies officially declare
their independence. With regional balance in mind,
>> This woodcut image from 1776 shows patriots tearing down
a statue of King George III, symbolically declaring their
independence.
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Powered by Light/Alan
Spencer/Alamy
Cato’s Letters
Book that spread repub-
lican ideas throughout
the colonies; written by
English authors John
Trenchard and Thomas
Gordon
Common Sense
Influential political pam-
phlet written by Thomas
Paine, published in
January 1776, contain-

ing a simple wording of
republican ideals
Read Common
Sense.
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The War for Independence 103
The Signing
Once the Congress had read
the Declaration, they debated
it and made several major
changes (the most important
one was deleting Jefferson’s
tortured assertions that
England had been respon-
sible for implanting the evil
institution of slavery in the
New World and then, through
Lord Dunmore, provoking slave rebellions). On July 2,
the Continental Congress voted to dissolve ties with
Britain, essentially declaring independence, which
is why John Adams later wrote that July 2 could
be called the birthday of the United States. But
on July 4, Congress chose
to adopt the document we
now call the Declaration of
Independence. On that date,
two people signed it: John
Hancock as president of
the Congress, and Charles
Thomson, the Congressional
secretary. On August 2, approximately 50 others signed
a clean copy of the Declaration, with six more adding
their names later.
6-2 The War for
Independence
With the July 2 declaration, the Revolution had a
goal—political independence from Britain. With the
July 4 Declaration, however, American colonists had

declared their intention not just to seek nationhood,
but to do so in the belief that all men were created
equal and that all people possessed certain rights
that nobody could deny.
>> Common Sense was reprinted several times; in total,
150,000 copies were distributed throughout the colonies—a
number
equivalent to 15 million copies being distributed in the United
States
today.
E
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the Congress created a committee to draft a dec-
laration. The committee consisted of John Adams
of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut,
Robert R. Livingston of New York, Benjamin
Franklin of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Jefferson of
Virginia, who was selected as the principal drafts-
man. After the committee made minor revisions to
Jefferson’s first draft, it presented the Declaration of
Independence to the Congress on June 28, 1776.
The Declaration
The document consisted of two parts: (1) a preamble

justifying the revolution on the basis of natural
rights, as espoused in the language of republican-
ism; and (2) a list of grievances accusing George III
of tyranny and therefore justifying revolt.
View a film about
the drafting of
the Declaration
of Independence.
Declaration of
Independence
Statement adopted by
the Second Continental
Congress declaring that
the thirteen American
colonies, then at battle
with Britain, constituted
a free and independent
state; drafted primarily
by Thomas Jefferson and
adopted in 1776
Read the
Declaration.
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>> John Hancock’s is the largest, most prominent signature on
the Declaration of Independence.
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6-2a The Opposing
Sides
The colonists had declared
their independence, but now
they would have to fight for
it. But how could they? They
had long been protected by
the British, and, other than
a few small colonial militias, they had no standing
army.
The Continental Army
Efforts to build an army began in
earnest even before the Declaration
of Independence. It was an uphill
battle. The army of the patriots,
called the Continental Army, was
often ill equipped, undermanned,

and hungry. From the beginning,
recruitment was a problem. Many
colonists wanted freedom, but not
many wanted to give their lives
for it. The Continental Congress
had to offer large bounties of land to induce men to
enlist, and eventually it reduced the term of service
to just three months. Although the Congress set
enlistment quotas for all the new states, the states
rarely met them. At any given time, there were usu-
ally 10,000 poorly trained troops in the Continental
Army. They were usually hungry and unpaid, but the
Continental Congress could not help because it did
not have much money itself. As fighting progressed,
the army had to live off the kindness of surround-
ing farmers (hoping they were patriots and not
Loyalists).
The Continental Army acted under the orders
of George Washington, a patrician Virginia tobacco
farmer whose wealth came from his wife’s family.
He believed in the republican ideology to the very
marrow of his bones. He also had a brilliant grasp of
the war’s military strategy. He rec-
ognized that, because of the ideo-
logical nature of the Revolution
and the nature of his ragtag army,
his chances would be better if he
did not try to win every battle.
Indeed, if he refused to engage the
British at all and made them wear
themselves out in pursuing him, he
could win simply by surviving. This
strategy, of course, also depended

on nonmilitary colonists continu-
ing to resist and harass the British
governors and troops. Without this grassroots sup-
port in colonial cities and
towns, the British might
have simply starved the
colonists into submission.
The Revolutionary Government and Finances
Washington received his orders from the
Continental Congress, the only centralized
authority in the colonies, although it had
no legal standing or charter document. The
Continental Congress could only request assis-
tance from the various states, which had no
obligation to grant those requests. Although
the revolutionaries planned a national gov-
ernment in 1777, its founding charter (the
Articles of Confederation) was not completed
until 1781. Throughout the Revolutionary War,
then, the revolutionaries had no official central
authority.
This hindered them organizationally, and
worse, it meant that the revolutionaries could
not easily raise money. They had neither the
power to levy taxes nor the infrastructure of
a treasury. The main way they raised money
was simply to print it and hope people would
accept the bills. The Continental Congress
issued these bills of credit throughout the war.
The states issued their own money as well,
almost all of which was generally more stable
The main way they

raised money was
simply to print it
and hope people
would accept the
bills.
>> A recruitment poster urging men to serve under Gen.
George Washington.
Recruitment was difficult for the revolutionaries throughout the
campaign.
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View a film about
the life of George
Washington.
bills of credit
Currency printed by the
Continental Congress
during the Revolutionary
War; printing these bills
in huge numbers and
without any backing led
to high inflation
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than the Continental dol-
lars. Toward the end of the
war, the phrase “not worth
a Continental” became
common, suggesting the centralized currency’s lack
of buying power and the widespread lack of faith
in it. Only after 1781, when Robert Morris became
superintendent of finance, did monetary conditions
improve, mainly because he could borrow from
friendly European nations. But throughout the war,
the United States endured the highest inflation in
its history. This took a tremendous toll on consum-
ers, which is to say, all colonists.
The British Army
The British, on the other hand, had the most
powerful army in the world, supremacy of the
seas, and an organized hierarchy of authority that
extended all the way to the king. But they also had
the more difficult military task of trying to destroy

Washington’s army, which was adept at running
up hills and into forests to avoid being captured.
The Crown sent seasoned British troops who were
well armed and accustomed to large battles on vast
battlefields. It also had hired German mercenar-
ies, the Hessians, to fight the revolutionaries. Many
times, the British outnumbered the revolutionar-
ies and were better trained and better armed, but
they confronted three insurmountable problems:
(1) Britain could never supply its troops adequately,
especially as Washington prolonged the war by con-
stantly retreating inland, away from places where
British ships could easily resupply British troops;
(2) Washington avoided directly engaging the British
troops, so the regimented British Army was sub-
jected to unaccustomed guerrilla warfare as it
chased him around the countryside; and (3) other
European nations (notably France) eventually sup-
ported the revolutionaries. These other nations
were only too glad to see mighty Britain humbled by
upstart New World backwoodsmen.
6-2b The Second Phase of the War,
1776–1779
Historians have identified three phases of the
war. The first took place in New England from
1774 to 1777 and was viewed by England mostly
as a police action. The pursuits in Lexington and
Concord, as well as the Battle of Bunker Hill, rep-
resented England’s attempts to bring their colonial
George Washington.

George Washington in the uniform of a Colonel of the Virginia
Militia dur-
ing the French & Indian War (1755–63) (colour litho), Peale,
Charles Willson
(1741–1827) (after)/Private Collection, Peter Newark American
Pictures/The
Bridgeman Art Library
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>> Continental Congress bills of credit were unpredictable
and sometimes worthless.

Read more
about how the
revolutionaries
paid for the war.
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upstart back into line. The
second phase, which began
in 1776, was fought in the
Middle Colonies and was a
more traditional battle, with
the British trying to fight
large military battles and
take the capital (see Map 6.1
on page 109). The third and final phase was fought
in the South and led to widespread guerrilla warfare.
Generally speaking, the Americans’ strategy was to
run and survive. They attacked only when they were
convinced of victory.
Early British Successes
After evacuating Massachusetts in March 1776, the
British Army repositioned on Long Island and pressed
to drive patriot forces from New York City, thus ini-
tiating the second phase of the war. Their goal was
to isolate New England (which it saw as the center
of resistance) by taking control of New York City and
the Great Lakes, then subduing the South, leaving
Massachusetts stranded in its revolutionary fervor.
In July 1776, 34,000 British troops delivered a
crushing defeat to the patriots on Long Island and
forced the revolutionary army of 18,000 to give up
New York City. The patriots withdrew all the way to
New Jersey, then to Pennsylvania. Fleeing was mili-
tarily embarrassing and bad for morale, but it was
tactically sound: so long as the Continental Army
remained intact, the colonies were still fighting for

independence.
Crossing the Delaware
As recruitment suffered because of the demoral-
izing loss at New York, Washington realized he
needed a victory. Furthermore, most of his soldiers
were enlisted only through the end of 1776, and he
feared that without a victory before the end of the
year, the majority of his soldiers would not reenlist.
Washington decided on a bold, brilliant action. On
Christmas night 1776, the army crossed the ice-filled
Delaware River and captured Trenton, New Jersey,
which at the time was held by 1,500 Hessian merce-
naries working for the British Army. The American
victory at Trenton had little strategic significance,
but it boosted morale and energized the Revolution.
Reversal of Fortune
Because the loss at Trenton was of minor strategic
importance, the British let it go, and, in 1777, British
leaders planned a two-pronged invasion that they
hoped would finish off the war. British general John
Burgoyne was to lead his army south from Canada.
At the same time, General William Howe was to
capture Philadelphia, the seat of the colonial gov-
ernment, and then sail up the Hudson River to join
Burgoyne, completely isolating New England and
testing the revolutionaries’ unity.
At first, the plan was successful. Burgoyne’s army
captured outposts in New York (Fort Ticonderoga)
and began moving south. Meanwhile, Howe drove
the patriots from Philadelphia on September 26,
1777 (forcing the Continental Congress to flee the
capital), and headed north.

Then the British faced obstacles.
General Burgoyne’s troops were slowed
by assorted Loyalists seeking protec-
tion from the revolutionary fervor of
the northern states, and the delay
allowed guerrilla fighters and an orga-
nized camp of the Continental Army
to catch up and harass the British
troops. By the time Burgoyne neared
the Hudson River, the Americans had
forced him to halt, and, while he waited
for reinforcements, he found him-
self surrounded by 6,000 Continental
soldiers. Recognizing their advantage,
the Americans attacked.
At the end of the fighting,
Burgoyne surrendered all 5,700 men
who remained of his army. This was
the Battle of Saratoga. The American
victory there proved two things:
(1) that the patriots could defeat
>> The American victory at Trenton, after Washington’s
crossing the Delaware, had
little strategic significance, but it boosted morale and energized
the Revolution.
E
o
n
I
m
ag

e
s
Battle of Saratoga
Battle in New York State
in 1777 between the
Continental Army and
General Burgoyne’s
British Army troops;
Burgoyne surrendered,
giving hope to the revolu-
tionary effort
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sizeable regiments of the larger British Army and
(2) that, if the British were to win this war, it was
going to be a long, expensive affair.
The French Alliance
The Battle of Saratoga was also significant in that it
convinced several European powers, including Spain
and the Dutch, to fight against the British. Obtaining
the support of France, however, was key. The French
allied themselves with the Americans for two rea-
sons: they wanted to help weaken the British Empire,
and they wanted access to New World trading posts,
which they had lost in the French and Indian War.
Up until this point, the French had been reluctant to
advocate a losing cause, however, and the Saratoga
victory helped alleviate these concerns.
In addition to France’s backing, the Americans
also received aid from an influential Frenchman. The
Marquis de Lafayette, a nineteen-year-old nobleman
committed to the republican cause in France, vol-
unteered for the American fight. Lafayette became
an instrumental leader in the American Army and
played a key role in several pivotal American victo-
ries. The youngest of all the generals in the war, he

successfully lobbied the French to more fully sup-
port the patriots’ cause.
In the end, French support was vital. The French
naval fleet battled Britain’s mighty navy in both the
eastern (European) and western (American) Atlantic.
The French also fought naval battles in the West
Indies, the Mediterranean, and India, further divert-
ing British efforts from the American Revolution.
With the French involved, the British now had to
defend their entire empire. By 1780, French armies
were actively fighting alongside Washington’s army,
giving a considerable boost to the revolutionaries.
The War in the West
In the American West—in land west of the
Appalachian Mountains, south of the Great Lakes,
and east of the Mississippi River—the Revolutionary
War was a brutal and violent “Indian War,” where
the British and the revolutionaries vied for Indian
allies and control of the various forts European set-
tlers had built since first contact. Like the colonists,
the Indians were greatly divided as to which side
to support, and the stakes for them were incredibly
high, considering their already plummeting fortunes
in North America. If they picked the wrong side, they
could easily be destroyed for their allegiance. Several
major tribes, including the Iroquois, Cherokee, and
Shawnee, divided into factions over which side to
support. The Iroquois who sided with the British
were eventually destroyed by the American military,
and their lands were torched as a punitive lesson.
The British, in general, had more success finding
allies and establishing forts near the Great Lakes,
and they often used those forts as staging grounds

for raids into western New York and Pennsylvania.
Again, as they advanced, they encountered a variety
of Indian tribes and settlers, and they never could
be quite sure whose side these people were on. This
uncertainty made the war in the West a violent and
unstable concoction.
In Ohio country, the Virginian George Rogers
Clark sought to end British control in Detroit and
in other vital throughways to the West. In 1779,
Clark captured some key British and Indian troops
and controlled parts of Ohio territory. Despite this
advantage, a decisive victory proved ephemeral, and
uncertainty reigned.
In perhaps the most horrific example of the
brutality of the war in the West, in 1782, more than
150 Pennsylvania militiamen were on the hunt for
enemy warriors. Instead, they came across nearly
N
o
rt
h
W
in
d
P
ic
tu
re

A
rc
h
iv
e
s/
A
la
m
y
>> From the perspective of the winter at Valley Forge, the
Revolutionary War would not last long.
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100 Delaware Indians who
had converted to Chris-
tianity and were non-
combatants. The Indians
were starving and were
in an unexpected loca-
tion searching for food.
Uncertain of the verac-
ity of the Delaware Indi-
ans’ story, the militiamen
held a council and voted
to massacre the whole
lot, leading to the execu-
tion (they were scalped)
of 28 men, 29 women,
and 39 children. Two boys
escaped the vicious exe-
cution, telling the story
of what has come to be called the Gnadenhutten
Massacre, named after the Pennsylvania town in
which it occurred. Several militiamen refused to
participate in the slaughter, but the violence and the

uncertainty that surrounded it suggest the frightful
nature of the war in the West.
The Winter of 1777–1778
Aside from the victory at Saratoga and the French
commitment to enter the conflict, the Americans
were slowly losing the war. General Howe’s forces
were continually besting George Washington’s
troops, enabling the British to capture Philadelphia
and other locations. And Washington, keeping with
his chief tactic, kept on running. As a result, while
Howe’s army wintered in the comforts of Philadelphia,
Washington and his army stayed 20 miles away
in the wilderness of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. It
was a harsh winter, and Washington’s men were
close to starvation. They were poorly equipped, and,
although the country had enjoyed one of its best
harvests ever, the Congress had allowed the military
supply system to deteriorate into chaos. The men’s
clothes were threadbare and the troops were losing
heart. From the perspective of the winter at Valley
Forge, the Revolutionary War would not last long.
6-2c The Third Phase of the War,
1778–1781
But the victory at Saratoga reemerged to stimulate
the revolutionary fervor once again. When the snow
finally melted, the colonists realized the British had
changed tactics once again. The patriots’ victory at
Saratoga meant that Britain had to commit more
troops to America, and to
do this it needed to raise
money, most plausibly by
raising taxes in England.

This was unpopular in
England, and the people’s
resistance to increased
taxes forced Parliament
to make a peace offer-
ing to the revolutionar-
ies. Parliament’s offering
would have maintained
the colonial status of
America but abandoned
British attempts to tax
the colonists—returning
things to the way they
had been in 1763. To the
patriots, this offer was unacceptable; they now
wanted freedom.
Giving Up on New England
So instead of attempting the costly venture of
replacing Burgoyne’s troops in an effort to capture
New England, the British planned to contain New
England by holding New York while harassing the
coastline and the South (see Map 6.2, page 110). They
also aimed to demoralize the patriots and break the
will of the fighters. For example, the British recog-
nized that the American treasury had little to offer
its generals, so they tried to “buy” major American
leaders, hoping that the defection of prominent
patriots would spread disaffection. The purchase
of General Benedict Arnold in 1779 (for more than
£10,000) was their chief victory on this front. Arnold
had been a revolutionary hero, serving in many of
the war’s major battles, including Ticonderoga and
Saratoga, where he had been badly injured. After
having invested his personal fortune in the war

effort, he was somewhat suddenly charged with cor-
ruption by political adversaries and was investigated
by the Congress. He thus was a ready, bitter target
for bribing. But aside from Arnold, Britain’s bribery
policy proved unsuccessful.
Britain’s Southern Plan
Meanwhile, the British prepared to invade the south-
ern colonies. Understanding that the South pos-
sessed more abundant natural resources than the
North, they sought to preserve their claim to at least
that region. They also believed that Loyalists were
abundant in the South, so they hoped to exacerbate
divisions along Loyalist–patriot lines. They had sev-
eral reasons to believe this, the main one being that,
“I saw several of the men roast
their old shoes and eat them, and
I was afterwards informed by one
of the officers’ waiters, that some of
the officers killed and ate a favorite
little dog that belonged to one of
them.”
—Joseph Plumb Martin, Continental soldier, on
northern campaigns of the winter of 1780
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Fort Oswego
Fort Ticonderoga
Crown Point
Oriskany
Aug. 6, 1777
Fort Stanwix
Aug. 23, 1777
Long Island

Aug. 27, 1776
Arnold’s
naval battle
Oct. 11, 1776
Monmouth Court House
June 28, 1778
Trenton Dec. 26, 1776
Princeton Jan. 3, 1777
Fort Washington Nov. 16, 1776
Germantown Oct. 4, 1777
Brandywine Sept. 11, 1777
Québec Dec. 1776
H
u
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so
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R
.
St
. L
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nc
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ec
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L. George
L. Champlain
L a k e O n t a r i o
Chesapeake
Bay
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
Washington’s retreat 1776Washington Dec. 1776
Cornwallis Dec. 1776

Arnold 17
7
5
B
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77
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St.
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(from England)
Admiral Richard Howe Aug. 1776
Gen. W
illiam
How
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ly 1
776
(fr
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Ha
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C
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to
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Ju
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7
7
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(fro
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Gen. William Ho
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177
6
(retrea
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G
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s
1
7
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Boston
siege 1775–1776
Philadelphia
Valley Forge
Montréal
Manchester
Albany
Newburyport
Falmouth
Wilmington
VIRGINIA
MD.
DEL.
N.J.
PENNSYLVANIA

NEW YORK
CONN.
MASS.
R.I.
N.H.
MAINE
(MASS.)
40°N
70°W
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA
(CANADA)
N
0
0 100 200 Mi.
100 200 Km.
Saratoga
Burgoyne surrenders
Oct. 17, 1777.
Arnold and

Montgomery
begin retreat
May 7, 1776.American forces
British forces
Fort
American victory
British victory
Cengage Learning
Ms00283c
Revolution in the North, 1775–1176 +
New York-Pennsylvania Theater, 1777–1778
Trim 30p0 x 38p6
Final proof: 8/16/12
TEXT BLOCK MAP
No bleeds
Map 6.1. Revolutionary War in the North
in the South, the Revolutionary War really was a civil
war between frontiersmen, who generally favored
independence, and landholders, who usually sided
with the British to protect their assets. These two
factions had battled among themselves during the
early years of the war in countless backwoods
battles.
The British miscalculated in their estimation
of Loyalist support in the South, however. For one

thing, Loyalists lacked the fervor and militancy of
the patriots. For another, Loyalists were not as prev-
alent as British leaders had hoped. The British plan
was doomed from the beginning.
Indeed, it had become a dangerous thing to
admit sympathy to the British this late in the war.
As the British moved through the area hoping to
unearth Loyalist support, the region broke down
into what has to be called civil war, as old grudges
and family squabbles led to widespread violence.
Patriots often subjected Loyalists to public humili-
ation, as they looted their land and ransacked their
homes.
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40°N
35°N
80°W 75°W
A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
NEW YORK
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
VIRGINIA
GEORGIA
SOUTH
CAROLINA
NORTH
CAROLINA

NEW
JERSEY
PENNSYLVANIA
Fort
Moultrie
Fort Sunbury
Fort
Charlotte
New
York
Philadelphia
Charlottesville
Norfolk
Portsmouth
Hillsboro
Charlotte
Cheraw
Elk Hill
Salem
Elizabethtown

Wilmington
Georgetown
Beaufort
Salisbury
Orangeburg
Richmond
Petersburg
Savannah
Oct. 9, 1779
Charleston
May 12, 1780
Battle
of the Capes
Sept. 5, 1781
Gre
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Cornwallis
C
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Lafayette
Cowpens
Jan. 17, 1781
Kings Mountain

Oct. 7, 1780 Yorktown
Aug. 30–Oct. 19, 1781
Surrender of Cornwallis
0
0 50 100 Mi.
50 100 Km.
N
American movements
British movements
American victory
British victory
Fort
Cengage Learning
The War in the South, 1778–1781
Ms00285a
Trim 30p x 40p3
Final: 8/7/08
Kennedy 14e variant: delete sites and routes;
show Savannah as British Victory, Oct. 9, 1779, also
Charleston as British victory
TEXT BLOCK MAP
No bleeds
In 1779, the British landed a large army at

Charleston. Commanded by General Sir Charles
Cornwallis, the army speedily captured Savannah,
Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Through
1780, Cornwallis continued to capture southern
towns, and he planned to march north to subdue the
rest of the colonies, particularly Virginia, which he
viewed as crucial to holding the South.
Washington and Greene’s Strategy for Victory
In 1780, the Continental Army in the South, now
led by Nathanael Greene, attempted to counter
Cornwallis’s successes by fleeing inland and thus
sucking the British Army farther into the continent,
away from the coast and easily accessible British
support. This approach served two purposes: (1) it
stretched British supply lines, and (2) it countered
Map 6.2. Revolutionary War in the South
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British attempts to rally Loyalist opposition. By
drawing the British away from their supplies, Greene
hoped to force them to “live off the land,” a military
euphemism for stealing food from the populace.
Greene and Washington expected that any support
for the British would evaporate as hungry British
soldiers began to raid farms.
Their plan succeeded. For several months,
Cornwallis pursued the Continental Army across
the Carolinas (note Cornwallis’s movements in Map
6.2). British supplies gradually ran low and, just as
Washington and Greene had predicted, the troops
began stealing from once-sympathetic farmers. On
top of this, when the two armies actually fought,
the Continental soldiers inflicted major casualties
on the British. Although the British won most of the
engagements, meaning that they took control of the
territory being fought over, the Continental strate-
gies made British victories costly.

In early 1781, Cornwallis was forced to cease
his pursuit and take his army north, into Virginia, to
await reinforcements. Faced with mounting casual-
ties, he planned to reunite with his naval fleet at
Chesapeake Bay.
Yorktown and Victory
The problem with Cornwallis’s plan was positioning:
while Cornwallis waited for the British fleet (which
the French had forced to retreat to New York), his
army was stranded at the tip of the Yorktown pen-
insula in Virginia. Seizing the opportunity to attack,
Washington moved a combined force of American
and French troops across the lower peninsula; the
American victory was complete when the French
naval fleet arrived just before the British fleet could
rescue Cornwallis’s 27,000-man army.
After a night of bombardment, on October
19, 1781, Cornwallis turned his sword over to
Washington. More accurately, an emissary for
Cornwallis handed it to American general Benjamin
Lincoln, whom Washington appointed to accept
the surrender when he learned that the British
commander had refused to offer his sword person-
ally. When news of Cornwallis’s surrender reached
England, King George III grudgingly accepted defeat.
The surrender ended six long years of battle.
Newburgh Conspiracy
It took more than a year after the last major
battle before a peace treaty was crafted, however,
and while negotiations were ongoing, the armies
remained mobilized. Unpaid and undersupplied,
several American military leaders proposed a coup,

seeking to take control from the relatively impotent
Continental Congress in order to implement a tax
to pay for unpaid expenses, including their own
salaries. The Continental Army was at the time
positioned in Newburgh, New York, about 60 miles
north of New York City, which was still occupied
by the British, and thus the plan became called the
Newburgh Conspiracy.
With the British in close striking range, any
hint of turmoil within the Continental Army might
have provoked Britain to resume hostilities. But
Washington rapidly quashed the proposed conspir-
acy, principally by demonstrating the costs of the
war on him personally. The generals were not the
only ones who had suffered during the war, he said,
reminding them that independence was more con-
sequential than worldly gain. Washington’s words
derailed the revolt, but the unrest demonstrated the
significance of the peace treaty that was to come.
6-2d Peace Negotiations, 1782–1783
With battle over, the American team of negotiators—
Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and John Adams—found
themselves in a difficult situation. They traveled to
Paris for the talks in 1782, with instructions to con-
sult with the French. However, the Americans knew
that both France and its ally, Spain, had territorial
goals of their own in the New World, goals that the
Americans did not want to encourage. As a result,
Franklin, Jay, and Adams determined that it was in
their best interest to negotiate with the British sepa-
rately and deal with the French later.
The Treaty of Paris

The treaty that Franklin, Jay, and Adams fashioned
in 1782 included so many provisions favorable to
the Americans that it has frequently been called
the greatest triumph in the history of American
diplomacy. To guarantee that France did not have
the best trading rights to the New World, Britain
offered generous terms to the Americans in terms of
land and trading rights. America and Britain signed
a treaty in November 1782. In doing so, Franklin,
Adams, and Jay violated one of the provisions of
the Franco-American Alliance of 1778: namely, that
neither France nor America would negotiate a sepa-
rate peace with the British. Nevertheless, the French
were eager to end the war, and on January 2, 1783,
preliminary treaties were signed between Britain
and France and Britain and Spain, and on February
4 hostilities formally ceased. All parties signed the
Treaty of Paris in September 1783.
There were five major parts to the Treaty of Paris
of 1783: (1) American independence; (2) American
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expansion west to the
Mississippi River and north
to the Great Lakes (a much
greater area than Americans
had thus far settled); (3) freedom of all parties to
travel the Mississippi River; (4) Spanish control of
Florida; and (5) “no lawful impediment” placed on
British merchants seeking to recoup debts from
America.
6-3 Significance
of the War
The six long years of the Revolutionary War were
filled with suffering. A doctor in the Continental
Army suggested that American losses totaled 70,000,
but the number of war-related deaths was more

likely 25,000, with perhaps another 25,000 injured.
Disease and infection killed off many more. Indeed,
the war took place in the midst of a widespread
smallpox epidemic, which may have killed as many
as 130,000 colonists. (Washington wisely had his
troops inoculated, perhaps his smartest move in
the entire campaign.) But it was nevertheless a long
war, longer than the Civil War, World War I, or World
War II.
Furthermore, the war had divided the colonists
between Loyalists, rebels, and those who were indif-
ferent to either side. It had also greatly disrupted
daily life, as soldiers were recruited to join the
army and leave their families for extended periods
of time, women were asked to shoulder a heavier
burden in their household and in civic life, and
slaves contemplated their future in a new American
republic, one that showed little sign of granting
them freedom. Beyond this tremendous disruption
of daily life, the American war for independence had
six major results.
6-3a The Impact on Politics
Politically, the American Revolution was the first
world conflict whose winners embraced the prom-
ise of the Enlightenment. In promising the “natural
rights” of life, liberty, and property, the American
Revolution served as an ideological model for later
revolutions in France and in Central and South
America, among others.
But the Revolution was a bellwether of not only
liberty but also republican democracy. The American
revolutionaries hoped that their struggles would
curb the system of Old World aristocracy. They no

longer wanted to be ruled by a few powerful people
with long-entrenched methods of perpetuating their
wealth and status. Many also did not want an estab-
lished church that denied the freedom of belief.
No one was sure what would arise in the place of
Old World aristocracy, but they knew that, after the
Revolution, the old system was dead.
Eventually, this awareness would lead to the
formal separation of church and state and limited
(but growing) access to the ballot. During the revolu-
tionary era, access to the ballot was still dependent
on owning property, which usually excluded women
and African Americans, but the Revolution geared
up the machinery for a more expansive democracy
in the future.
6-3b The Impact on American
Nationalism
Before the American Revolution, the colonists living
in what became the United States did not think of
themselves as having a national culture fundamen-
tally unique from England’s. In terms of national-
ity, most colonists considered themselves as their
great-grandfathers were, English. But the French and
Indian War and the American Revolution unified the
colonists under a new, ideological definition of what
it meant to be an American. A nation is composed
of people who recognize that they share certain
qualities that set them apart from other nations,
whether those qualities are ideological, political,
linguistic, religious, cultural, racial, or historical.
For Americans, in the revolutionary era and after,
a strong belief in democracy and the experience of

fighting for their political independence were the
impetus for the mounting tide of patriotism that fol-
lowed the Revolutionary War.
6-3c The Impact on Slavery
By illustrating the contradiction between slavery
and liberty, the Revolutionary War triggered the abo-
lition of slavery in the North. During the war, slaves
participated in the fight on both sides, although
the British welcomed them more willingly than the
revolutionaries. Cornwallis himself employed 5,000
slaves, promising to free them after the war. Many
slaves simply fled their masters during the confu-
sion of battle. In all, there were about 50,000 fewer
slaves after the war than before it. Some former
slaves went to New England, some went to Canada,
and many stayed in the South to live free.
After the war, the progress of formal abolition
was slow and gradual, but it was progress nonethe-
less. Some advances were even made in the South,
View a map of
America after
the Treaty of
Paris.
53548_ch06_ptg01_hr_098-115.indd 112 10/29/12 10:19 AM
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Significance of the War 113
where the vast majority of slaves lived (see Map
6.3). Virginia and Maryland made it easier for own-
ers to manumit (or willingly free) their slaves, and
many revolutionaries chose to do so. By 1800, one
in ten African Americans in the Chesapeake region
was free. This meant there were large communities
where escaped slaves could hide in the growing
cities of the Chesapeake. Nevertheless, slavery had
not been abolished in the South, and leaders like
Thomas Jefferson, who were well aware of the con-
tradiction between the practice of slavery and the
rhetoric of independence, never freed their slaves.

The most dramatic changes occurred in the
North when abolition was set in motion legally.
Vermont outlawed slavery in its first constitution
in 1777. In Massachusetts and New Hampshire,
slaves sued for their freedom—and won. In the
Middle States, where the slave population was
larger, progress was slower, but both Pennsylvania
and New York favored gradual emancipation, which,
in Pennsylvania’s case, meant that all slaves born
in 1780 or later were free when they turned twenty-
one. Throughout the North,
five states allowed African
Americans to vote, and in
total, by 1810, three-quarters
of the 30,000 African Americans living in the North
were free. By 1840, there were only 1,000 slaves
in the North, and the freed slaves and their chil-
dren had developed large social institutions, includ-
ing various sects of historically black churches
and numerous fraternal organizations, such as the
African American Masons.
Perhaps most importantly, however, by 1790,
all states except Georgia and South Carolina had
outlawed the importation of slaves from abroad. As
Americans began to consider the political mean-
ings of liberty and freedom,
they were confronted by
the obvious contradiction
of having freed themselves
of the Crown while others
lived in slavery. After the
Revolution, only compromise would keep the issue
of slavery at bay, as the North and South took differ-

ent tactics in handling the contentious issue.
A
m
e
ri
ca
n
S
ch
o
o
l/
T
h
e
B
ri
d
g
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m
an
A
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ib
ra
ry
/G
e
tt
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s
>> The experience of fighting for their political independence
was the impetus for the mounting tide of patriotism and
patriotic imag-
ery that followed the Revolutionary War.
GA
(TN)
(MISSISSIPPI
TERRITORY)
NORTHWEST
TERRITORY
(KY)

VA
NY
PA
SC
NC
(VT)
NH
DE
NJ
MA
CT
RI
MD
Majority
20–50%
5–20%
Less than 5%
Other U.S territory

Percentage of population black
Cengage Learning
Ms00629
African American Population, 1790
Trim 20p6 x 25p0
Final proof: 4/30/10
Positioning guide
SINGLE COLUMN MAP
No bleeds
manumit
To willingly free one’s
slaves
Map 6.3. Distribution of African
American Population, 1790
Read one
Quaker’s attempt
to point out
inconsistencies between
American freedom and
slavery.
53548_ch06_ptg01_hr_098-115.indd 113 10/29/12 10:19 AM
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6-3d The Impact on Native America
The war also greatly affected the fate of Native
Americans, who were generally worse off after the
war than before it. By the time of the Revolution,
there were few tribes still living on the Atlantic
Coast, as disease and violence had decimated the
tribes of that region. The most powerful tribes
in contact with the colonists lived between the
Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River,
where the Iroquois dominated in the North and the
Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, and Cherokee dominated

in the South. The battles throughout Native America
were unspeakably harsh, as the war often served
as a pretext to remove Indian tribes and empty
Indian land for land-hungry colonists. Anyone could
become a casualty on the frontier. By the end of
the war, nearly one-third of the Iroquois nation
was dead. Their supremacy in the land between the
Appalachians and the Great Lakes did not survive
the war.
In addition to these violent encounters, with
the war over, the tribes of Native America had
to contend with an expanding nation of settlers
who respected no practical western boundary and
answered to no governmental authority preventing
them from moving farther west. This situation por-
tended a grim outlook for American Indians.
6-3e The Impact on Women
Women played key roles during the Revolution.
They enforced boycotts, sewed clothing made of
nonimported fibers, raised impressive funds for the
Continental Army, and sometimes even engaged in
battle. This was a significant shift from the colonial
era, when women only rarely protested their total
exclusion from politics. New Jersey’s constitution of
1776 opened the franchise to “all free inhabitants”
who were worth at least fifty pounds, thus allowing
many New Jersey women to vote for the first time.
But immediately after the war, women generally
lost out politically as the new nation decided how
far it would extend the rewards of citizenship. In
many states, women were not eligible to own prop-
erty. And, in every other state besides New Jersey,
there is no evidence that women were ever offered

the vote. In 1807, even New Jersey rescinded its offer
of the franchise.
Men confined women’s role to that of “repub-
lican motherhood,” which historians now describe
as a double-edged identity—one that put women in
charge of raising young male republicans through a
demanding path of education, religious adherence,
and political engagement but that also confined
women’s role to familial relations outside the realm
of direct intervention in the public sphere.
6-3f The Impact on Religious
Minorities
Many historians have pointed to the Great
Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s as laying part
of the foundation for the revolutionary events of
the 1760s and 1770s. With its emphasis on personal
religious experience rather than the authority of the
ministers, and as one of the first events to create
a shared experience for people from New England
to the southern colonies, the Great Awakening has
been viewed as an early form of revolutionary activ-
ity. Colonists were also afraid that, around 1763,
Parliament was planning to establish a bishop of the
Anglican Church for America. They feared that any
such appointment would extend England’s official
church to the colonies.
Two American actions after the war reflected their
concerns about an established church: (1) Most of the
E
o

n
I
m
ag
e
s
>> Molly Pitcher: fact or fiction? It is true that women played
a significant role in the Revolution. One in particular,
however—nick-
named Molly Pitcher—has achieved legendary status for taking
her
husband’s place in battle when he was incapacitated. It is not
clear
whether the New Jersey woman known as Molly Pitcher was
based
on Mary Ludwig Hayes, who was praised for her courage at the
Battle
of Monmouth, or Margaret Corbin, who similarly fought at the
Battle of
Fort Washington.
53548_ch06_ptg01_hr_098-115.indd 114 10/29/12 10:19 AM
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not only did the Revolution
inspire laws mandating the
separation of church and
state, but it also encouraged
the creation of two major
antidogmatic sects.
Looking Ahead . . .
Historians have long weighed the question of how
revolutionary the Revolutionary War really was.
At a basic level, the war set the patriots free from
English political control, but it did not necessarily
overturn economic or gendered structures that had
been in place long before the war. For the most part,
a working man was still a working man, a woman’s
role was largely confined to the domestic sphere,
and the racial hierarchy that was in place since

Bacon’s Rebellion (if not long before) still stood. But
the war provoked the question of how far republi-
can democracy would extend. Many revolutionary
leaders feared that too much freedom might lead
to chaos: if everyone were free, who would ensure
order? On the other hand, too little freedom might
trigger a second revolution.
With the war over, the leaders of the new nation
confronted yet another daunting task: forming a
new nation that embodied the revolutionary spirit
without letting that spirit extend to anarchy.
Virginia Statute on
Religious Freedom
Bill drafted by Thomas
Jefferson in 1786 articulat-
ing distrust of an estab-
lished state church and the
value of religious liberty
new state constitutions included some guarantee of
religious toleration, although a few of the states that
already had an official church (like Massachusetts)
moved more slowly toward disestablishment and
many allowed tolerance for Christians only; and
(2) the democratic ideals of the Revolution called into
question public financial support of churches that
were not attended by everyone.
The best-known representation of these ideas
came in 1786, when the Virginia legislature passed
a Thomas Jefferson–drafted bill that called for the
disestablishment of the Episcopal Church. Jefferson’s
Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom was one of
the accomplishments that Jefferson himself was

most proud of. The stat-
ute said that no Virginians
would be “compelled” to go
to any church or form of reli-
gious worship against their
will and that all Virginians
were free to profess their
own opinion “in matters of religion.” It immediately
influenced several state constitutions, and several
states made their ratification of the United States
Constitution in 1787 contingent on an amendment
promising that the federal government would not
infringe on religious liberties.
At the same time, the Revolution led to the
creation of several divisions of American churches,
such as the Methodist Episcopal Church of America
and the Presbyterian Church of the United States.
Two “freedom churches” also opened, both of
which stressed the brotherhood of man and the
freedom of conscience: the Universalist Church
(1779) and the Unitarian Church (1785). Thus,
Significance of the War 115
See numerous
primary sources
connecting the
Revolution with religion,
including a revolutionary

flag.
July 4,
1777
The United States celebrates its first birthday.
Ships lined up on the Delaware River discharge
thirteen cannon shots in honor of the thirteen
states.
1778 New Orleans businessman Oliver Pollock creates
the $ symbol.
1784 A new trade route opens for Americans when the
Empress of China sails from New Jersey around
Cape Horn in South America to China.
1787 The first U.S. penny, designed by Benjamin Franklin,
is minted.
1789 The French Revolution begins, initiating a long bat-
tle in France over “liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
1790 The cornerstone of the mansion known as the
White House is laid.
Chronology
1763 End of salutary neglect
1775 Local conflicts escalate
January 1776 Tom Paine’s Common Sense
July 1776 Declaration of Independence

December 25, 1776 Crossing the Delaware
September–October
1777
Battle of Saratoga
1778 France enters war on the side of the
United States
1779 Britain invades the South
1780 Inland battles force British away from
supply lines
October 1781 Yorktown and American victory
53548_ch06_ptg01_hr_098-115.indd 115 11/6/12 1:13 PM
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Condensed_HIST_Schultz_ch04Ch 4: Expansion and Control,
1700-
1763��
��4-1: Expansion of Colonial Economy
and Society, 1700-
1763��
��4-2:
Expansion of Colonial Intellectual and Cultural
Life��
��4-3:
African
Slavery��4-4:
Attempted Expansion of English
Control��
��Condensed_HIST_Schultz_ch
05Ch 5: Toward Revolution, 1763-
1775��
��5-1: British Attempts to Rein in the
Colonies��
��5-2: Beginnings of
American
Resistance��
��5-3: Taxation without
Representation, 1767-
1773��
��5-4: The Shot Heard
'Round the
World��

��Condensed_HIST_Schultz_ch06Ch 6: The
Revolution��6-1:
From Rebellion to
Revolution��
��6-2: The War for
Independence��
��6-3: Significance of the
War��
��
All questions require two (2) citations from an authoritative
source in APA format, INCLUDING a citation from the attached
textbook - Chapters 4-6..placing any direct quotes in quotation
marks.
Question #1 – The minimum word count is 250
1. What role did George Washington play in starting the French
and Indian War and how did the war's outcome set the stage for
the American Revolution?
2. Discuss the impact of the Enlightenment and the Great
Awakening on colonial society in America.
3. Explain how the colonists responded to the new acts imposed
on them by the British, and trace the evolutionary process that
brought the colonies closer to rebellion.
4. Assess the significance of the American Revolution to the

following groups: colonists, slaves, native populations, and
women.
See page 2 for textbook cover.

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