Lecture 5

1. Lecture 5 Hist 110 American Civilization I Instructor: Dr. Donald R. Shaffer Upper Iowa University

2. Lecture 5 Imperial Reform: Background • The origins of the American Revolution mostly prompted by changes in British policies toward its colonies prompted by the French and Indian War • The British paid for the war primarily through borrowing, leaving a £133 million national debt that cost 60 percent of British tax revenue just to service the interest payments • It would cost even more to pay for troops to be permanently stationed to protect British North America • With the population of the British Isles paying five times as much taxes as the American colonists, it seemed to British fair that the Americans pay a share of the war debt and higher future defense costs • This change in British taxation signaled an end to salutary neglect and de facto American autonomy since 1688 Proclamation Line of 1763 which prohibited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian crest caused Anglo-American tension

3. Lecture 5 George Grenville’s Reforms • George Grenville became Prime Minister in 1763 and his reforms angered the American colonists • Currency Act of 1764 • Banned colonies from printing paper money, forcing Americans to use scarce British sterling • Sugar Act of 1764 • Lowered the tax on foreign molasses by 3 pence per gallon turning a tax meant to regulate trade into a revenue tax • Stamp Act of 1765 • Meant to fund stationing British troops in America • Levied taxes by placing stamps on all court documents, land titles, contracts, newspapers and other printed articles—even playing cards George Grenville Designs for British tax stamps in the colonies

4. Lecture 5Resistance to the Stamp Act • American opposition to the Stamp Act was immediate and zealous • Stamp Act Congress • Nine colonies sent representatives to New York City in October 1765 • Issued resolutions emphasizing that Americans could only be taxed by their own legislatures, not Parliament • Direct Action • Mobs in Boston and New York violently protested the Stamp Act, which caused unease of the colonial elites and efforts to control subsequent popular protest • Boycotts of British goods and popular resistance which made the Stamp Act impossible to enforce led to its repeal • Declaratory Act (1766): repealed the Stamp Act while reaffirming Parliament’s authority to tax Americans Different ways of protesting the Stamp Act

5. Lecture 5 Radical Whig Ideology • American resistance to British taxes in part a product of 18th-century English political culture • Hence, American protest about the Stamp Act was not just about the Americans not wanting to pay more taxes • Radical Whigs: political movement that feared any form of concentrated power as a threat to individual liberty • The Radical Whigs were always on the lookout for conspiracies against liberty by power hungry men • This tended to make them uneasy about monarchy • Radical Whig authors and the movement more generally passed on this fear of conspiracies against liberty to the American colonists • Hence, many American colonists tended to see the power grab of British imperial reform in the 1760s as a conspiracy against their liberties The Ambitious Man on a Horse Radical Whig fear of concentrated power had its origins in Stuart ambitions in the 17th century

6. Lecture 5Townshend Acts • William Pitt became Prime Minister in 1767, but was ill so day-to-day control of his government devolved to Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer • Townshend pushed a new scheme to tax the Americans • Townshend Acts • Revenue Act of 1767: levied indirect taxes on certain goods from Great Britain • Indirect taxes: levied during manufacture or transport rather than at time of final sale (“direct taxes”) • Taxes on glass, paint, paper, tea, etc. • Tax revenue would pay salaries of colonial officials in America • Americans feared the loss of leverage over officials, but the Revenue Act renewed their fears of a conspiracy against liberty Charles Townshend

7. Lecture 5Resistance to the Townshend Acts • Additional pieces of Townshend legislation created a Board of Customs Commissioners and Vice Admiralty courts in North America to tighten up enforcement of the Navigation Acts • Quartering Act also demanded the colonial assemblies provide certain facilities and supplies for British troops • Parliament suspended the New York assembly when it failed to cooperate • This action and the abuses by customs officials stirred up American fears of a British conspiracy against their liberties • Americans renewed their boycotts against the British and anti-British violence, particularly in Boston • The British were forced to send royal troops into Boston to protect royal officials

8. Lord North Lecture 5Lord North Takes Power • Becoming Prime Minister in 1770, Lord North engineered the repeal of the Townshend Acts, but kept the tax on tea as a symbol of Parliament’s power to tax the Americans • Renewed incidents of violence did not immediately undo North’s peace gesture • A week of riots occurred in New York City after British troops tore down the Patriot’s Liberty Pole • Boston Massacre (March 1770) • Cause: resentment toward British troops stationed in Boston, many of whom were Irish Catholics and competed with working-class Bostonians for casual employment in their off-duty hours • Crowds provoked the soldiers into firing by pelting them with rocks and snowballs • Five Bostonians killed • John Adams successfully defended the soldiers at their murder trial arguing self defense How is John Revere’s famous engraving at odds with the facts of the Boston Massacre?

9. Lecture 5Renewed Tensions • Two years of uneasy peace followed the Boston Massacre • The tea tax stayed in place and Patriots boycotted British tea • The uneasy peace came to an end in June 1772, when Rhode Islanders burned the HMS Gaspee, an unpopular British anti-smuggling ship that ran aground • British crown authorities alarmed Americans by wanting to try the perpetrators of Gaspee burning in Admiralty courts in Britain • Committees of Correspondence • The Gaspee affair prompted the formation of local committees across the colonies to monitor British activities and alert of committees through letters of any matter of concern • Patriot leaders, however, found it difficult to gain the interest of much of the American population who tended to focus more on local concerns Burning of the HMS Gaspee June 1772

10. Lecture 5 Boston Tea Party and Aftermath • Tea Act (May 1773): legislation aimed to encourage Americans to consume taxed British tea by giving the British East India Company special privileges in importing tea into America • Boston Tea Party (December 1773): Boston Patriots responded by dumping 342 chests of British tea into the harbor • The British responded to the Tea Party by closing Boston Harbor until the tea was paid for and by passing a series of laws that became known in the colonies as the “Intolerable Acts” • The Intolerable Acts convinced many Americans, who heretofore discounted Boston’s Patriots as hotheads, that British really were conspiring against the liberty of the American colonists Sons of Liberty throwing tea chests overboard during the Boston Tea Party

11. Lecture 5 Outbreak of Revolutionary War • After the passage of the Intolerable Acts most Americans essentially refused to follow British authorities instead shifting their allegiance to proto-state governments known as “Continental Associations” • The Continental Associations coordinated their actions through the Continental Congress, which as in the past initially tried pressuring the British through an import boycott • Lord North responded by ordering a naval blockade to block American trade and authorized the British forces in America to suppress dissent in Massachusetts • Lexington and Concord (April 1775): British and Patriot forces clashed as British tried to seize American military supplies • Bunker Hill (June 1775): British loses heavy in battle to dislodge American forces from hills overlooking Boston • British could not break Patriot siege of Boston and evacuated the city in March 1776 British forces suffered over 1,000 casualties to achieve a Pyrrhic victory in the Battle of Bunker Hill

12. Lecture 5Independence • Olive Branch Petition (July 1775) • The Continental Congress tried to restore peace by petitioning George III to intercede with Parliament on their behalf • With the news of heavy losses from Bunker Hill, the king dismissed the American attempt at conciliation • Thomas Paine’s Common Sense • Pamphlet published in January 1776 by English radical Whig, Thomas Paine • A recent arrival in America, he argued the only way for Americans to keep their liberties was to separate themselves monarchical Britain • Pamphlet widely read in the colonies and critical in severing remaining shreds of American loyalty to the British Empire • Declaration of Independence • Continental Congress declared American independence in July 1776 relying on John Locke’s natural rights arguments Thomas Paine