The Molasses Act of 1733 was particularly egregious to the colonists, as a significant part of colonial trade relied on molasses.
The British captured the fortress of Louisbourg during King George's War but then ceded it back to France in 1748.
American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 (2016) 704 pp; recent survey by leading scholar Weintraub, Stanley.
Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (1980) Norton, Mary Beth.
Before the 1760s, Britain's American colonies had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs, which were governed by colonial legislatures.
In 1775, the English Tory writer Samuel Johnson asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" In the late 1760s and early 1770s, a number of colonies, including Massachusetts and Virginia, attempted to restrict the slave trade, but were prevented from doing so by royally appointed governors.
Atlas of Early American History: The Revolutionary Era, 1760–1790 (1976) Fremont-Barnes, Gregory, and Richard A.
Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760–1791: Documents and Essays (2nd ed.
Empire or Independence: 1760-1776 (1976) Cogliano, Francis D.
The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800.
War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts (2006) Rothbard, Murray, Conceived in Liberty (2000), Volume III: Advance to Revolution, 1760–1775 and Volume IV: The Revolutionary War, 1775–1784.
That same year, Prime Minister George Grenville proposed direct taxes on the colonies to raise revenue, but he delayed action to see whether the colonies would propose some way to raise the revenue themselves. Grenville had asserted in 1762 that the whole revenue of the custom houses in America amounted to one or two thousand pounds a year, and that the English exchequer was paying between seven and eight thousand pounds a year to collect .
New England colonists resented their losses of lives, as well as the effort and expenditure involved in subduing the fortress, only to have it returned to their erstwhile enemy. Some writers begin their histories of the American Revolution with the British coalition victory in the Seven Years' War in 1763, viewing the French and Indian War as though it were the American theater of the Seven Years' War.
Lawrence Henry Gipson writes: The Royal Proclamation of 1763 redrew boundaries of the lands west of Quebec and west of a line running along the crest of the Allegheny Mountains, making them indigenous territory and barred to colonial settlement for two years.
Revolutionary America, 1763–1815; A Political History (2nd ed.
The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice, 1763–1789 (1983) Online in ACLS Humanities E-book Project; comprehensive coverage of military and domestic aspects of the war. Jensen, Merrill.
The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution 1763–1776.
The American Revolution, 1763–1783 (1898), older British perspective online edition Mackesy, Piers.
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (Oxford History of the United States, 2005).
Tracts of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (1967).
TwHP has created a variety of products and activities that help teachers bring historic places into the classroom. Library of Congress Guide to the American Revolution Museum of the American Revolution Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn, Revolution! explores the enormous transformations in the world's politics that took place from 1763–1815, with particular attention to three globally influential revolutions in America, France, and Haiti.
The new map was drawn up at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768 which moved the line much farther to the west, from the green line to the red line on the map at right. ===1764–1766: Taxes imposed and withdrawn=== In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, decreasing the existing customs duties on sugar and molasses but providing stricter measures of enforcement and collection.
As early as 1764, the Boston Patriot leader James Otis, Jr.
Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, 1764–1788, and the Formation of the Federal Constitution (1923).
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in colonial North America between 1765 and 1783.
The passage of the Stamp Act of 1765, which imposed internal taxes on the colonies, led to colonial protest, and the meeting of representatives of several colonies in the Stamp Act Congress.
Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that Parliament "has never hitherto demanded of [the American colonies] anything which even approached to a just proportion to what was paid by their fellow subjects at home." Parliament finally passed the Stamp Act in March 1765, which imposed direct taxes on the colonies for the first time.
He argued that local governments had raised, outfitted, and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France—as many as Britain itself sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone. The Sons of Liberty formed shortly after the Act in 1765, and they used public demonstrations, boycotts, and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable.
Parliament insisted that the colonies effectively enjoyed a "virtual representation" as most British people did, as only a small minority of the British population elected representatives to Parliament, but Americans such as James Otis maintained that they were not "virtually represented" at all. The Rockingham government came to power in July 1765, and Parliament debated whether to repeal the stamp tax or to send an army to enforce it.
Benjamin Franklin testified in Parliament in 1766 that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire.
Parliament agreed and repealed the tax on February 21, 1766, but they insisted in the Declaratory Act of March 1766 that they retained full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever".
Growth of the American Revolution: 1766–1775 (2003) Lecky, William Edward Hartpole.
Tensions relaxed with the British repeal of the Stamp Act, but flared again with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767.
The repeal nonetheless caused widespread celebrations in the colonies. ===1767–1773: Townshend Acts and the Tea Act=== In 1767, the Parliament passed the Townshend Acts which placed duties on a number of staple goods, including paper, glass, and tea, and established a Board of Customs in Boston to more rigorously execute trade regulations.
The British government deployed troops to Boston in 1768 to quell unrest, leading to the Boston Massacre in 1770.
In 1768, the Iroquois agreed to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and the Cherokee agreed to the Treaty of Hard Labour followed in 1770 by the Treaty of Lochaber.
The new map was drawn up at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768 which moved the line much farther to the west, from the green line to the red line on the map at right. ===1764–1766: Taxes imposed and withdrawn=== In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, decreasing the existing customs duties on sugar and molasses but providing stricter measures of enforcement and collection.
These boycotts were less effective, however, as the goods taxed by the Townshend Acts were widely used. In February 1768, the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay issued a circular letter to the other colonies urging them to coordinate resistance.
Meanwhile, a riot broke out in Boston in June 1768 over the seizure of the sloop Liberty, owned by John Hancock, for alleged smuggling.
In January 1769, Parliament responded to the unrest by reactivating the Treason Act 1543 which called for subjects outside the realm to face trials for treason in England.
In 1769, the women of Boston produced 40,000 skeins of yarn, and 180 women in Middletown, Massachusetts wove of cloth.
The British government deployed troops to Boston in 1768 to quell unrest, leading to the Boston Massacre in 1770.
The British government repealed most of the Townshend duties in 1770, but retained the tax on tea in order to symbolically assert Parliament's right to tax the colonies.
In 1768, the Iroquois agreed to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and the Cherokee agreed to the Treaty of Hard Labour followed in 1770 by the Treaty of Lochaber.
The governor of Massachusetts was instructed to collect evidence of said treason, and the threat caused widespread outrage, though it was not carried out. On March 5, 1770, a large crowd gathered around a group of British soldiers on a Boston street.
This began a downward spiral in the relationship between Britain and the Province of Massachusetts. A new ministry under Lord North came to power in 1770, and Parliament withdrew all taxes except the tax on tea, giving up its efforts to raise revenue while maintaining the right to tax.
The British tax system collected about 12 percent of the GDP in taxes during the 1770s. In sharp contrast, Congress and the American states had no end of difficulty financing the war.
Ray Raphael notes that thousands did join the Loyalist cause, but "a far larger number, free as well as slave, tried to further their interests by siding with the patriots." Crispus Attucks was one of the five people killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770 and is considered the first American casualty for the cause of independence. Many black slaves sided with the Loyalists.
From 1770 to 1790, the black proportion of the population (mostly slaves) in South Carolina dropped from 60.5 percent to 43.8 percent, and from 45.2 percent to 36.1 percent in Georgia. British forces gave transportation to 10,000 slaves when they evacuated Savannah and Charleston, carrying through on their promise.
Anti-slavery calls became more common in the early 1770s.
In 1775, the English Tory writer Samuel Johnson asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" In the late 1760s and early 1770s, a number of colonies, including Massachusetts and Virginia, attempted to restrict the slave trade, but were prevented from doing so by royally appointed governors.
The burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, the passage of the Tea Act of 1773 and the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 led to a new escalation in tensions.
This temporarily resolved the crisis, and the boycott of British goods largely ceased, with only the more radical patriots such as Samuel Adams continuing to agitate. In June 1772, American patriots, including John Brown, burned a British warship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations in what became known as the Gaspee Affair.
The affair was investigated for possible treason, but no action was taken. In 1772, it became known that the Crown intended to pay fixed salaries to the governors and judges in Massachusetts, which had been paid by local authorities.
The burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, the passage of the Tea Act of 1773 and the Boston Tea Party in December 1773 led to a new escalation in tensions.
Virginia, the largest colony, set up its Committee of Correspondence in early 1773, on which Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served. A total of about 7,000 to 8,000 Patriots served on "Committees of Correspondence" at the colonial and local levels, comprising most of the leadership in their communities.
When the First Continental Congress decided to boycott British products, the colonial and local Committees took charge, examining merchant records and publishing the names of merchants who attempted to defy the boycott by importing British goods. In 1773, private letters were published in which Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson claimed that the colonists could not enjoy all English liberties, and Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver called for the direct payment of colonial officials.
On December 16, 1773, a group of men, led by Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke the appearance of indigenous people, boarded the ships of the East India Company and dumped £10,000 worth of tea from their holds (approximately £636,000 in 2008) into Boston Harbor.
She came to public attention when her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in 1773, and received praise from George Washington. The effects of the war were more dramatic in the South.
In 1773, Benjamin Rush, the future signer of the Declaration of Independence, called on "advocates for American liberty" to oppose slavery, writing, "The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery.".
The other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts, and twelve of the thirteen colonies sent delegates in late 1774 to a "Continental Congress" to coordinate their resistance to Britain.
The fourth Act was the Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring permission of the owner. In response, Massachusetts patriots issued the Suffolk Resolves and formed an alternative shadow government known as the "Provincial Congress" which began training militia outside British-occupied Boston.
In September 1774, the First Continental Congress convened, consisting of representatives from each colony, to serve as a vehicle for deliberation and collective action.
Congress called for a boycott beginning on 1 December 1774 of all British goods; it was enforced by new committees authorized by the Congress. ==Military hostilities begin== Massachusetts was declared in a state of rebellion in February 1775 and the British garrison received orders to disarm the rebels and arrest their leaders, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775.
In 1774, as part of a broader non-importation movement aimed at Britain, the Continental Congress called on all the colonies to ban the importation of slaves, and the colonies passed acts doing so.
American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People (2010) 337 pages; examines rebellions in 1774–76 including loosely organized militants took control before elected safety committees emerged. Brunsman, Denver, and David J Silverman, eds.
Opponents of Britain were known as Patriots or Whigs, while colonists who retained their allegiance to the Crown were known as Loyalists or Tories. Open warfare erupted when British regulars sent to capture a cache of military supplies were confronted by local Patriot militia at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.
The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject rule by monarchy and aristocracy, and they proclaimed that all men are created equal. The Patriots unsuccessfully attempted to invade Quebec during the winter of 1775–76.
Congress called for a boycott beginning on 1 December 1774 of all British goods; it was enforced by new committees authorized by the Congress. ==Military hostilities begin== Massachusetts was declared in a state of rebellion in February 1775 and the British garrison received orders to disarm the rebels and arrest their leaders, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775.
The Battle of Bunker Hill followed on June 17, 1775.
As Benjamin Franklin wrote to Joseph Priestley in October 1775: "Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20,000 a head ...
From these data his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and expense necessary to kill us all.". In the winter of 1775, the Americans invaded northern Canada under generals Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery, expecting to rally sympathetic colonists there.
There still were many Loyalists, but they were no longer in control anywhere by July 1776, and all of the Royal officials had fled. ==Creating new state constitutions== Following the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, the Patriots had control of Massachusetts outside the Boston city limits, and the Loyalists suddenly found themselves on the defensive with no protection from the British army.
From early October 1777 until November 15, a siege distracted British troops at Fort Mifflin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and allowed Washington time to preserve the Continental Army by safely leading his troops to harsh winter quarters at Valley Forge. ===Prisoners=== On August 23, 1775, George III declared Americans to be traitors to the Crown if they took up arms against royal authority.
In 1775, there was at most 12 million dollars in gold in the colonies, not nearly enough to cover current transactions, let alone finance a major war.
Congress made issues of paper money in 1775–1780 and in 1780–1781.
In 1775, the English Tory writer Samuel Johnson asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" In the late 1760s and early 1770s, a number of colonies, including Massachusetts and Virginia, attempted to restrict the slave trade, but were prevented from doing so by royally appointed governors.
In 1775, the Quakers founded first antislavery society in the Western world, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves, in part based on revolutionary ideals.
The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (2019) (vol 1 of his 'The Revolution Trilogy'); called, "one of the best books written on the American War for Independence," [Journal of Military History Jan 2020 p 268]; the maps are online here Axelrod, Alan.
War for America: The Fight for Independence 1775–1783 (2001) 266pp; by leading British scholar Brown, Richard D., and Thomas Paterson, eds.
The War for America: 1775–1783 (1992), British military study online edition Middlekauff, Robert.
Triumph of Freedom, 1775–1783 (1948) online edition Miller, John C.
Origins of the American Revolution (1943) online edition, to 1775 Rakove, Jack N.
Iron Tears: Rebellion in America 1775–83 (2005) excerpt and text search, popular Wood, Gordon S.
Paul Revere's Ride (1995), Minutemen in 1775 Fischer, David Hackett.
Nevins, Allan; The American States during and after the Revolution, 1775–1789 1927.
War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts (2006) Rothbard, Murray, Conceived in Liberty (2000), Volume III: Advance to Revolution, 1760–1775 and Volume IV: The Revolutionary War, 1775–1784.
The Continental Congress declared King George III a tyrant who trampled the colonists' rights as Englishmen, and they declared the colonies free and independent states on July 4, 1776.
The newly created Continental Army forced the British military out of Boston in March 1776, but the British captured New York City and its strategic harbor that summer, which they held for the duration of the war.
The attack was a failure; many Americans who weren't killed were either captured or died of smallpox. In March 1776, the Continental Army forced the British to evacuate Boston, with George Washington as the commander of the new army.
There still were many Loyalists, but they were no longer in control anywhere by July 1776, and all of the Royal officials had fled. ==Creating new state constitutions== Following the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, the Patriots had control of Massachusetts outside the Boston city limits, and the Loyalists suddenly found themselves on the defensive with no protection from the British army.
They proclaimed that they were states, not colonies. On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire ratified the first state constitution.
In May 1776, Congress voted to suppress all forms of crown authority, to be replaced by locally created authority.
Thomas Paine called it a constitution unworthy of America. ==Independence and Union== In April 1776, the North Carolina Provincial Congress issued the Halifax Resolves explicitly authorizing its delegates to vote for independence.
Richard Henry Lee was instructed by the Virginia legislature to propose independence, and he did so on June 7, 1776.
At that point, the Continental Congress was dissolved and a new government of the United States in Congress Assembled took its place on the following day, with Samuel Huntington as presiding officer. ==Defending the Revolution== ===British return: 1776–1777=== According to British historian Jeremy Black, the British had significant advantages, including a highly trained army, the world's largest navy, and an efficient system of public finance that could easily fund the war.
The British government believed that they could overawe the Americans by sending a large military and naval force, forcing them to be loyal again: Washington forced the British out of Boston in the spring of 1776, and neither the British nor the Loyalists controlled any significant areas.
They returned in force in July 1776, landing in New York and defeating Washington's Continental Army in August at the Battle of Brooklyn.
Washington crossed the Delaware River back into New Jersey in a surprise attack in late December 1776 and defeated the Hessian and British armies at Trenton and Princeton, thereby regaining control of most of New Jersey.
He argues that this opportunity came only once, in the summer of 1776, and the British failed that test.
Reformers sought to destroy what they saw as widespread institutional corruption, and the result was a crisis from 1776 to 1783.
Starting in 1776, the Congress sought to raise money by loans from wealthy individuals, promising to redeem the bonds after the war.
Legal divorce, usually rare, was granted to Patriot women whose husbands supported the King. ==Other participants== ===France and Spain=== In early 1776, France set up a major program of aid to the Americans, and the Spanish secretly added funds.
These war parties managed to kill many settlers on the frontier, especially in Pennsylvania and New York's Mohawk Valley. In 1776, Cherokee war parties attacked American Colonists all along the southern frontier of the uplands throughout the Washington District, North Carolina (now Tennessee) and the Kentucky wilderness area.
Referring to this contradiction, English abolitionist Thomas Day wrote in a 1776 letter that "if there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves".
George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon was one of the first national pilgrimages for tourists and attracted 10,000 visitors a year by the 1850s. The Revolution became a matter of contention in the 1850s in the debates leading to the American Civil War (1861–1865), as spokesmen of both the Northern United States and the Southern United States claimed that their region was the true custodian of the legacy of 1776.
The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.
; popular narrative of the year 1776 Maier, Pauline.
The Revolutionary Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1776 to 1800 (2003), 384 pp; newspaper accounts excerpt and text search Jensen, Merill, ed.
English Historical Documents: American Colonial Documents to 1776: Volume 9 (1955), 890pp; major collection of important documents Morison, Samuel E.
The Continental Army captured a British army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, and France then entered the war as an ally of the United States, transforming the war into a global conflict.
The next step was to form a union to facilitate international relations and alliances. The Second Continental Congress approved the "Articles of Confederation" for ratification by the states on November 15, 1777; the Congress immediately began operating under the Articles' terms, providing a structure of shared sovereignty during prosecution of the war and facilitating international relations and alliances with France and Spain.
The victories gave an important boost to Patriots at a time when morale was flagging, and they have become iconic events of the war. In 1777, the British sent Burgoyne's invasion force from Canada south to New York to seal off New England.
It surrendered after the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777.
From early October 1777 until November 15, a siege distracted British troops at Fort Mifflin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and allowed Washington time to preserve the Continental Army by safely leading his troops to harsh winter quarters at Valley Forge. ===Prisoners=== On August 23, 1775, George III declared Americans to be traitors to the Crown if they took up arms against royal authority.
There were thousands of British and Hessian soldiers in American hands following their surrender at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777.
The greatest burden was borne by the soldiers of the Continental Army whose wages were usually paid late and declined in value every month, weakening their morale and adding to the hardships of their families. Beginning in 1777, Congress repeatedly asked the states to provide money, but the states had no system of taxation and were of little help.
Heavy expenditures and a weak taxation system pushed France toward bankruptcy. In 1777, Charles François Adrien le Paulmier, Chevalier d’Annemours, acting as a secret agent for France, made sure General George Washington was privy to his mission.
At the end of the war, both sides released their surviving prisoners. ===American alliances after 1778=== The capture of a British army at Saratoga encouraged the French to formally enter the war in support of Congress, and Benjamin Franklin negotiated a permanent military alliance in early 1778; France thus became the first foreign nation to officially recognize the Declaration of Independence.
On February 6, 1778, the United States and France signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance.
The northern war subsequently became a stalemate, as the focus of attention shifted to the smaller southern theater. ===The British move South, 1778–1783=== The British strategy in America now concentrated on a campaign in the southern states.
With fewer regular troops at their disposal, the British commanders saw the "southern strategy" as a more viable plan, as they perceived the south as strongly Loyalist with a large population of recent immigrants and large numbers of slaves who might be tempted to run away from their masters to join the British. Beginning in late December 1778, they captured Savannah and controlled the Georgia coastline.
The French secretly supplied the Americans with money, gunpowder, and munitions to weaken Great Britain; the subsidies continued when France entered the war in 1778, and the French government and Paris bankers lent large sums to the American war effort.
In 1778 and 1780, he led 300 Iroquois warriors and 100 white Loyalists in multiple attacks on small frontier settlements in New York and Pennsylvania, killing many settlers and destroying villages, crops, and stores.
William Pitt spoke out in Parliament urging Britain to make peace in America and to unite with America against France, while British politicians who had sympathized with colonial grievances now turned against the Americans for allying with Britain's rival and enemy. The Spanish and the Dutch became allies of the French in 1779 and 1780 respectively, forcing the British to fight a global war without major allies and requiring it to slip through a combined blockade of the Atlantic.
but it separately declared war on Britain on June 21, 1779.
The Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga of the Iroquois Confederacy also allied with the British against the Americans. In 1779, the Americans forced the hostile indigenous people out of upstate New York when Washington sent an army under John Sullivan which destroyed 40 evacuated Iroquois villages in central and western New York.
British general Charles Cornwallis captured an American army at Charleston, South Carolina in early 1780, but he failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control of the territory.
William Pitt spoke out in Parliament urging Britain to make peace in America and to unite with America against France, while British politicians who had sympathized with colonial grievances now turned against the Americans for allying with Britain's rival and enemy. The Spanish and the Dutch became allies of the French in 1779 and 1780 respectively, forcing the British to fight a global war without major allies and requiring it to slip through a combined blockade of the Atlantic.
In 1780, they launched a fresh invasion and took Charleston, as well.
Congress made issues of paper money in 1775–1780 and in 1780–1781.
By 1780, the paper money was "not worth a Continental", as people said.
By 1780, Congress was making requisitions for specific supplies of corn, beef, pork, and other necessities, an inefficient system which barely kept the army alive.
In 1778 and 1780, he led 300 Iroquois warriors and 100 white Loyalists in multiple attacks on small frontier settlements in New York and Pennsylvania, killing many settlers and destroying villages, crops, and stores.
Finally, a combined American and French force captured Cornwallis' army at Yorktown in the fall of 1781, effectively ending the war.
The articles were ratified on March 1, 1781.
In October 1781, the British surrendered their second invading army of the war under a siege by the combined French and Continental armies commanded by Washington. ===The end of the war=== Historians continue to debate whether the odds were long or short for American victory.
The national government did not have a strong leader in financial matters until 1781, when Robert Morris was named Superintendent of Finance of the United States.
The French army and navy departed, so the Americans were on their own in 1782–83.
Morris used a French loan in 1782 to set up the private Bank of North America to finance the war.
The example of the first successful revolution against a European empire, and the first successful establishment of a republican form of democratically elected government, provided a model for many other colonial peoples who realized that they too could break away and become self-governing nations with directly elected representative government. The Dutch Republic, also at war with Britain, was the next country to sign a treaty with the United States, on October 8, 1782.
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in colonial North America between 1765 and 1783.
The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, formally ending the conflict and confirming the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire.
They made New York their main political and military base of operations, holding it until November 1783.
Washington dispelled the unrest among officers of the Newburgh Conspiracy in 1783, and Congress subsequently created the promise of a five years bonus for all officers. ==Paris peace treaty== During negotiations in Paris, the American delegation discovered that France supported American independence but no territorial gains, hoping to confine the new nation to the area east of the Appalachian Mountains.
Reformers sought to destroy what they saw as widespread institutional corruption, and the result was a crisis from 1776 to 1783.
The peace in 1783 left France financially prostrate, while the British economy boomed thanks to the return of American business.
Indeed, the soldiers and officers were given land grants in 1783 to cover the wages that they had earned but had not been paid during the war.
In 1790, however, they resumed regular payments on their debts to the French, and settled their accounts with the French government in 1795 by selling the debt to James Swan, an American banker. ==Concluding the Revolution== ===Creating a "more perfect union" and guaranteeing rights=== The war ended in 1783 and was followed by a period of prosperity.
Loyalists who left the South in 1783 took thousands of their slaves with them as they fled to the British West Indies. ===Neutrals=== A minority of uncertain size tried to stay neutral in the war.
On April 3, 1783, Ambassador Extraordinary Gustaf Philip Creutz, representing King Gustav III of Sweden, and Benjamin Franklin, signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the U.S. The American Revolution was the first wave of the Atlantic Revolutions: the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American wars of independence.
The crisis ended after 1784 thanks to the King's shrewdness in outwitting Charles James Fox (the leader of the Fox-North Coalition), and renewed confidence in the system engendered by the leadership of Prime Minister William Pitt.
The Americans struggled to pay off the loans; they ceased making interest payments to France in 1785 and defaulted on installments due in 1787.
Nationalists led by Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other veterans feared that the new nation was too fragile to withstand an international war, or even internal revolts such as the Shays' Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts.
The Americans struggled to pay off the loans; they ceased making interest payments to France in 1785 and defaulted on installments due in 1787.
They convinced Congress to call the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 and named their party the Federalist party.
The Constitution was ratified in 1788, after a fierce debate in the states over the proposed new government.
The new government under President George Washington took office in New York in March 1789.
The American Declaration of Independence influenced the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789.
In 1790, conservatives gained power in the state legislature, called a new constitutional convention, and rewrote the constitution.
In 1790, however, they resumed regular payments on their debts to the French, and settled their accounts with the French government in 1795 by selling the debt to James Swan, an American banker. ==Concluding the Revolution== ===Creating a "more perfect union" and guaranteeing rights=== The war ended in 1783 and was followed by a period of prosperity.
American settlers moved rapidly into those areas, with Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee becoming states in the 1790s. However, the national government had no money either to pay the war debts owed to European nations and the private banks, or to pay Americans who had been given millions of dollars of promissory notes for supplies during the war.
In 1790, Congress combined the remaining state debts with the foreign and domestic debts into one national debt totaling $80 million at the recommendation of first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
From 1770 to 1790, the black proportion of the population (mostly slaves) in South Carolina dropped from 60.5 percent to 43.8 percent, and from 45.2 percent to 36.1 percent in Georgia. British forces gave transportation to 10,000 slaves when they evacuated Savannah and Charleston, carrying through on their promise.
The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions.
This paper money would supposedly be redeemed for state taxes, but the holders were eventually paid off in 1791 at the rate of one cent on the dollar.
The bonds were redeemed in 1791 at face value, but the scheme raised little money because Americans had little specie, and many of the rich merchants were supporters of the Crown.
James Madison spearheaded Congressional amendments to the Constitution as assurances to those cautious about federal power, guaranteeing many of the inalienable rights that formed a foundation for the revolution, and Rhode Island was the final state to ratify the Constitution in 1791. ===National debt=== The national debt fell into three categories after the American Revolution.
However, the British did sell them munitions and maintain forts in American territory until the Jay Treaty of 1795. Losing the war and the Thirteen Colonies was a shock to Britain.
In 1790, however, they resumed regular payments on their debts to the French, and settled their accounts with the French government in 1795 by selling the debt to James Swan, an American banker. ==Concluding the Revolution== ===Creating a "more perfect union" and guaranteeing rights=== The war ended in 1783 and was followed by a period of prosperity.
Calloway concludes: The British did not give up their forts until 1796 in the eastern Midwest, stretching from Ohio to Wisconsin; they kept alive the dream of forming an allied indigenous nation there, which they referred to a "Indian barrier state".
Aftershocks reached Ireland in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and in the Netherlands. The Revolution had a strong, immediate influence in Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France.
Indentured servitude (temporary slavery), which had been widespread in the colonies (Half the population of Philadelphia had once been bonded servants) dropped dramatically, and disappeared by 1800. No southern state abolished slavery, but for a period individual owners could free their slaves by personal decision, often providing for manumission in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court papers to free individuals.
The Revolutionary Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1776 to 1800 (2003), 384 pp; newspaper accounts excerpt and text search Jensen, Merill, ed.
The spirit of the Declaration of Independence led to laws ending slavery in all the Northern states and the Northwest Territory, with New Jersey the last in 1804.
By 1804, all the northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or over time.
The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions.
War erupted between America and Britain three decades later with the War of 1812, which firmly established the permanence of the United States and its complete autonomy. Washington did not know whether the British might reopen hostilities after Yorktown.
That goal was one of the causes of the War of 1812. ===Black Americans=== Free blacks in the North and South fought on both sides of the Revolution, but the majority fought for the Patriots.
Alan Heimert argues that New Light anti-authoritarianism was essential to furthering democracy in colonial American society, and set the stage for a confrontation with British monarchical and aristocratic rule. ===Class and psychology of the factions=== John Adams concluded in 1818: In the mid-20th century, historian Leonard Woods Labaree identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them essentially conservative, opposite to the characteristics of the Patriots.
In New York, the last slaves were freed in 1827.
But slaves carried to the Caribbean under control of Loyalist masters generally remained slaves until British abolition of slavery in its colonies in 1833-38.
George Washington's estate at Mount Vernon was one of the first national pilgrimages for tourists and attracted 10,000 visitors a year by the 1850s. The Revolution became a matter of contention in the 1850s in the debates leading to the American Civil War (1861–1865), as spokesmen of both the Northern United States and the Southern United States claimed that their region was the true custodian of the legacy of 1776.
Nevins, Allan; The American States during and after the Revolution, 1775–1789 1927.
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958).
(Harvard University Press, 1967).
The United States Bicentennial in 1976 came a year after the American withdrawal from the Vietnam War, and speakers stressed the themes of renewal and rebirth based on a restoration of traditional values. Today, more than 100 battlefields and historic sites of the American Revolution are protected and maintained by the government.
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (Oxford History of the United States, 2005).
Gale, 2006) Symonds, Craig L.
Selesky, ed., Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Gale, 2006) pp 501–508. Gibson, Alan.
On December 16, 1773, a group of men, led by Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke the appearance of indigenous people, boarded the ships of the East India Company and dumped £10,000 worth of tea from their holds (approximately £636,000 in 2008) into Boston Harbor.
The Declaration of Independence: A Study on the History of Political Ideas (1922) Becker, Frank: The American Revolution as a European Media Event, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: October 25, 2011. Breen, T.
The American Revolution Reader (Routledge Readers in History, 2013) 472 pp; essays by leading scholars Chernow, Ron.
The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (Yale University Press; 2013) 466 pages; on top British leaders Palmer, Robert R.
(New York University Press, 2014).
Independence War a Conservative Revolt in Favor of Slavery? Democracy Now! June 27, 2014. 1770s conflicts 1780s conflicts 1770s in the United States 1780s in the United States 18th-century rebellions 18th-century revolutions Legal history of the United States Age of Enlightenment 1760s conflicts
The Long American Revolution and Its Legacy(U of Georgia Press, 2019) online review emphasis on long-term global impact. Lockwood, Matthew.
(Yale University Press; 2019) McCullough, David.
The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (2019) (vol 1 of his 'The Revolution Trilogy'); called, "one of the best books written on the American War for Independence," [Journal of Military History Jan 2020 p 268]; the maps are online here Axelrod, Alan.
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