Teaching the American Revolution

1. Teaching the American Revolution New Jersey History Colloquium Dr. Yohuru Williams, Fairfield University

2. The Civil War Within the Revolution • Reviewing ESP • Using S.O.A.P Primary Sources • A little historiography (the Imperial School) • Mercantilism and the end of Salutary Neglect • The Paradox of American Slavery and American Freedom • Desperate First Wives

3. SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR GRADES 9-12U.S. AND NJ HISTORY • II. The Revolution and Early National Period (to 1820) • A. Political • 1. Causes and results of the American Revolution • 2. Declaration of Independence • 3. Turning points and key role of New Jersey • 4. Consequences of colonial victory • 5. Rise of political parties • 6. Emergence of national leaders (e.g., Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Paterson) • 7. Foreign policy (e.g., Pinckney Treaty, Louisiana Purchase, Monroe Doctrine, War of 1812)

4. SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR GRADES 5-8U.S. AND NJ HISTORYSOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS 6.3 TO 6.6 • II. The Revolution and Early National Period (to 1820) • A. American Revolution • 1. Causes (e.g., taxation, representation) • 2. Strengths and weaknesses of colonies and England • 3. Effects (e.g., independence, new nation) • 4. Status and contributions of women • 5. Status and contributions of African Americans • 6. International assistance • 7. New Jersey’s central role in American Revolution (e.g., Battles of Monmouth, Trenton)

5. SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR GRADES 9-12U.S. AND NJ HISTORY • C. Cultural • 1. The development of an American cultural identity (e.g., Crevecoeur, Toqueville, Freneau, • Bradstreet and others in art, music and literature) • 2. Technology — inventors transform American industry (e.g., cotton industry enhancements • including the cotton gin, the first American mill, straw hat industry) • D. Economic • 1. Private property/U.S. Constitution • 2. Economic freedom (e.g., First and Second Banks, early industrialization, tariffs, national • assumption of war debt) • 3. National Free Trade Market • 4. Paterson, NJ • 5. Alexander Hamilton — Vision of an Industrial City

6. S.O.A.P a document Source Occasion Audience Purpose Did everyone use S.O.A.P today?

7. Adam Smith

8. Adam Smith • Scottish political economist and moral philosopher. His Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was one of the earliest attempts to study the historical development of industry and commerce in Europe. That work helped to create the modern academic discipline of economics and provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for free trade, capitalism and libertarianism

9. Whitey on the Moon • “A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon.I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon.Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon. • The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon.No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon?I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.”

10. Whitey on the Moon • Taxes takin' my whole damn check,The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,The price of food is goin' up,And as if all that shit wasn't enough: • A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon.Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.

11. Whitey on the Moon • Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.I think I'll send these doctor billsairmail special....to Whitey on the moon. Gil Scott Heron, 1972

12. 236 years ago yesterday • “It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

13. Patrick Henry • “Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. “ • Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death, March 23, 1775.

14. The Imperial School • Historians have long debated if we should not consider the revolution in the larger context of the British struggle to maintain empire rather than simply as a matter of the American colonist expressing a desire for more liberty.

15. Events Leading up to the American Revolution • The French and Indian War (1754-63) • The Sugar Act (4/5/1764) • The Stamp Act (3/22/1765) • Patrick Henry's "If This Be Treason" speech (5/29/1765) • The Stamp Act Congress (10/7-25/1765) • Townshend Acts (6/29/1767) • The Boston Massacre (3/5/1770) • The Boston Tea Party (12/16/1773) • The First Continental Congress (Philadelphia, 9/5-10/26/1774)

16. French and Indian War 1754-1763 • The French and Indian War (also known as the "Seven Years War") saw the British pitted against the French, the Austrians, and the Spanish. This war raged across the globe.

17. French and Indian War 1754-1763 • The war in the Americas started inauspiciously. George Washington was forced to surrender Fort Necessity in the Ohio Valley in 1754. The following year, British general Edward Braddock attempted to attack the French held Fort Duquesne. British troops were ambushed by the French and the Indians. Braddock was mortally wounded... It fell upon George Washington to extricate both British and Colonial forces from the wilderness

18. French and Indian War 1754-1763 • In 1758, William Pitt came out of retirement and took over the British war effort. He directed additional war efforts in the North American war theater. He also gave the colonists much greater independence in pursuing the war effort. This increased the enthusiasm among colonialists toward the war. By the end of 1758, the British had begun to turn the tide in the war in North America.

19. The End of Salutary Neglect • In 1764 the British for the first time imposed a series of taxes designed specifically to raise revenue from the colonies. The tax whose official name was the American Revenue Act, became popularly known as the Sugar Act. On of its major components was the raising of tariff on sugar. The act was combined with a greater attempt to enforce the existing tariffs.

20. The End of Salutary Neglect

21. The End of Salutary Neglect: Mercantilism meets George III • An unwritten though longstanding British policy of letting slide the many British laws meant to maintain the colonies as economically and politically subordinate to England. King George III wanted to more strongly govern the colonies and put an end to salutary neglect.

22. Stamp Tax Passed, Colonies Protest1765 • In 1765 a Stamp Tax was enacted. It imposed taxes on all legal documents (i.e. marriage licenses, newspapers, and 47 other documents). The colonists responded with vocal protests. Not only did these taxes hurt their pocketbooks, but they were highly visible (i.e. they were needed for every day transactions). In addition, to enforce the actions, the British announced that colonial offenders were to be tried in the hated Admiralty courts.

23. Stamp Tax Passed, Colonies Protest1765 • The protests, which grew, began developing new slogans including "No taxation without representation". One result of the protests was the meeting of the Stamp Act Congress in New York, to which many of the colonies sent representatives. Many colonies agreed not to import any British goods until the Stamp Tax was repealed.

24. In January of 1767, during the consideration of the House of Commons of the estimated cost of maintaining the British army in the colonies for the current year, George Grenville moved "That the troops to be kept up in America shou'd be Paid by the Colonies respectively for whose defence & benefit they were Employ'd." Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that he too "approved of our taxing the Colonies so as to provide for their own safety and preservation," and "by which the Colonies should be taxed conformable to their abilities, in a manner that should be least burdomsome and most efficacious." The Imperial School

25. The Townshend Duties • The Townshend Acts, British legislation intended to raise revenue, tighten customs enforcement, and assert imperial authority in America, were sponsored by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, (right - 1725-67) and enacted on June 29, 1767. The key statute levied import duties on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Its purpose was to provide salaries for some colonial officials so that the provincial assemblies could not coerce them by withholding wages.

26. The Imperial School • Other bills authorized blank search warrants called Writs of Assistance, created three additional vice-admiralty courts, which operated without juries, established a Board of Customs Commissioners headquartered in Boston, and suspended the New York assembly for not complying with the Quartering Act of 1765.  Parliament also passed the New York Restraining Act, which, in effect, suspended the provincial legislature until it provided “his Majesty's troops . . . with all such necessaries” as required by British law.

27. The Imperial School • Americans protested the Townshend duties, as they had the earlier Stamp Act, with constitutional petitions, boycotts, and violence to even include "tar and feathering" (left). They now rejected all forms of parliamentary taxation, whether external duties on imports or internal taxes like the stamp levies. After colonists began to boycott British goods, Parliament altered the revenue measure on March 5, 1770. Duties on all items except tea were repealed. The tea tax was retained because it was the most lucrative and to show Americans that Parliament still had the right to tax them.

28. George Kennan, American Diplomacy 1951 • “A democracy is peace-loving. It does not like to go to war. It is slow to rise to provocation. When it has once been provoked to the point where it must grasp the sword, it does not easily forgive its adversary for having produced this situation. The fact of the provocation then becomes itself the issue.”

29. George Kennan, American Diplomacy 1951 • “Democracy fights in anger -- it fights for the very reason that it was forced to go to war. It fights to punish the power that was rash enough and hostile enough to provoke it -- to teach that power a lesson it will not forget, to prevent the thing from happening again. Such a war must be carried to the bitter end.”

30. George Kennan, American Diplomacy 1951 • “This is true enough, and, if nations could afford to operate in the moral climate of individual ethics, it would be understandable and acceptable. But I sometimes wonder whether in this respect a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin:

31. George Kennan, American Diplomacy 1951 • he lies there in his comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment; he is slow to wrath -- in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed; but, once he grasps this, he lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat.”

32. George Kennan, American Diplomacy 1951 • “You wonder whether it would not have been wiser for him to have taken a little more interest in what was going on at an earlier date and to have seen whether he could have prevented some of these situations from arising instead of proceeding from an undiscriminating indifference to a holy wrath equally undiscriminating.”

33. Patrick Henry • “There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.” • Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death, March 23, 1775.

34. Get Local! • Don’t forget to Get Local! • During the American Revolutionary War, New Jersey was strategically located between the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and the British command center in New York City. From 1775 until 1783, New Jersey was the location of major battles and minor skirmishes that historic homes, battlefield sites and historical monuments bear testament to today.

35. Get Local! • For these reasons New Jersey has become known as the "Crossroads of the American Revolution". Although most battles were fought in southern New Jersey such as at Fort Monmouth, Fort Mercer and Trenton, Northern New Jersey offers many historical sites from this era. Prominent figures in American history who made their way through New Jersey during the war years included Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold, George Washington and Thomas Paine among others.

36. The CSI Approach • Make your students detectives!

37. NJ CSI COLD CASE # 1723-1794 • The “fatherly” gentleman pictured here was once accused of turning one of America’s preeminent institutions of higher learning into a “seminary of sedition.” His “traitorous” actions were lampooned by critics who said they would rather be “dogs” than this would be relative of actress Reese. Who was this “political parson” and what was he doing for the Garden State from 1776 to 1782 that earned him the enmity of his “pious” colleagues and the British government?

38. Cold Case # 1723-1794 Solved: John Witherspoon • was the sixth president of Princeton • a signer of the Declaration of Independence • and from 1776 to 1782 a leading member of the Continental Congress. • He came from Scotland in 1768 to assume the presidency of the college and held office until his death a quarter of a century later. • According to Historian W.F. Craven

39. What’s his ESP? Rev. John Witherspoon, the only active clergyman among the signers, achieved a greater reputation as a religious leader and educator than as a politician. Emigrating from Scotland to America in the midst of the controversy between the Colonies and the Crown, he took part in the Revolution, lost a son during the war, and signed the Articles of Confederation as well as the Declaration. He is better known, however, for his role in the growth of the Presbyterian Church and for his distinguished presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).

40. What’s his ESP? • “Witherspoon broadened and enriched the curriculum of the College” and “was the first to introduce the new rhetoric of the eighteenth century . . .” Though a man of strong convictions, he showed no inclination to protect his students from exposure to ideas with which he disagreed. The many books he added to the library gave the undergraduate access to a wide range of contemporary literature, including authors with whom he had publicly disputed. In his famous lectures on moral philosophy, not published until after his death and then probably contrary to his wish, his method was to lay out contending points of view and to rely upon persuasive reasoning to guide the student toward a proper conclusion of his own.”

41. What’s his ESP? • “The founders had hoped too that the College might produce men who would be ``ornaments of the State as well as the Church,'' and Witherspoon realized this hope in full measure. His students included, in addition to a president and vice-president of the United States, nine cabinet officers, twenty-one senators, thirty-nine congressmen, three justices of the Supreme Court, and twelve state governors. Five of the nine Princeton graduates among the fifty-five members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were students of Witherspoon.”

42. CONTITNETAL CONGRESS COLD CASE # 1780 • In 1780 a quick witted confidant of Benedict Arnold penned the poisonous poem reprinted here. Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to identify this wayward saint whom we have reason to believe is hiding somewhere in New Jersey.

43. Jonathan Odell (1737-1818) • rector at Burlington, New Jersey

44. Get Local Resources • www.njstatelib.org/NJ_Information/Digital_Collections/NJInTheAmericanRevolution1763-1783/index.php