Blida University

English Department
Teacher: A. Hamzaoui

The American Revolution

In 1763, French power in America ended. Britain took all of its possessions east of the Mississippi River.
France ceded Louisiana to Spain in compensation for Spain’s loss of the Floridas. After few months settlers
began flowing into Indian lands, the lands of the Seneca, Delaware, Ottawa and others. Indian resentment of
settlers led to bloodshed. The war, called Pontiac’s Rebellion. The rebellion convinced King George III and
Parliament that the fighting should not be repeated. The British decided to keep the settlers and the angry
tribes apart. In October 1763, the king proclaimed that all lands beyond the Appalachians be closed to any
purchases and settlements.

Grenville Taxes the Colonies

Although Britain’s victory in the French War and Pontiac’s Rebellion expanded its empire and
strengthened its control, it proved costly. Britain’s national debt had doubled. The empire had to be protected
and governed, and that cost money. Britain’s new minister of finance, George Grenville, thought that the
colonies should bear some of these costs. Britain had levied customs duties to regulate colonial trade. The
British customs service levied lower duties on goods brought in from Britain than on goods imported from
other nations. However, colonists smuggled many goods. Grenville found that the customs service in America
cost more to operate than it collected in duties. To stop the smuggling, he strengthened the service. Collectors
were encouraged to use warrants, called writs of assistance, to search buildings that might contain illegal
goods. Moreover, accused smugglers would no longer be tried in courts with juries of their fellow colonists.
Instead, they would be tried in British admiralty.

Furthermore, Grenville imposed new duties on the colonists as a way to raise money. In 1764, for instance,
Parliament passed the Sugar Act which added or increased duties on foreign imports such as sugar, cloth,
wine, and coffee. In 1765, it found a way to reduce Britain’s costs for its troops in America. As a result, it
passed the Quartering Act which required colonial assemblies to provide the royal troops with barracks and
provisions. During the same year, it passed the Stamp Act under which written material such as newspapers,
contracts, diplomas, birth certificates, and advertisement would have to be printed on a special stamped paper.

Previous acts of Parliament had infuriated colonists; most colonists realized that they were not being taxed
more than people in Britain, who also paid a stamp tax. But colonists objected to the way they were taxed.
The colonial assemblies gave colonists direct representation, because the colonists themselves elected the
delegates who levied taxes. The colonists, however, did not elect representatives to the British Parliament.
A small but determined minority of colonists set to work. These Patriots formed groups called the Sons of
Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty. Patriotic merchants refused to trade with Britain. The atmosphere of
protest also generated the boycott of the British goods. In response, representatives from nine colonies met in
New York in October 1765. At the Congress, a South Carolina representative put the new spirit of unity into
words: “There ought to be no New Englander, no New Yorkers, known on the continent, but all of us
Americans.” In a petition to Parliament, the Congress urged repeal of the Stamp Act.
The petition reached an England already divided over the tax issue. The American boycott had hurt English
merchants. In March 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed, but Parliament in return passed the Declaratory Act
according to which it upheld Parliament’s power to make laws for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.

The Townshend Acts

Later, Britain was deeply affected by a depression. Like Grenville, Charles Townshend turned to the
colonies for revenue. In May 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts. New duties were levied on imports

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such as paper, glass, tea. The acts urged the establishment of a supervisory board in Boston to keep a close
eye on the collection of duties. Townshend also enforced the Quartering Act that the colonial assemblies had
been evading. In December 1766, the New York assembly refused to raise money to supply British troops,
claiming that the Quartering Act was a tax. The third Townshend Act suspended the New York assembly for
its defiance. Through that gesture, the colonists concluded that no assembly was safe. Without assemblies,
there would be no representative government. Across the colonies, people protested against theses taxes
disguised as duties.

The Boston Massacre

In September 1768, two regiments of British soldiers arrived in Boston and took up quarters in the hostile
city. Throughout 1769, an uneasy standoff prevailed. Then, on March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered at the Boston
customs-house, throwing snowballs at British troops guarding the place. When the smoke cleared, three of the
people in the crowd lay dead, and two were wounded.

The British commander, Thomas Preston, and eight soldiers were arrested and charged with murder. But
Massachusetts lawyer John Adams worried that if the British could not get a fair trial in America, so he himself
undertook the defense of the British. The Patriot lawyer managed to prove that the crowd had provoked the
shooting. Preston and six soldiers were acquitted.

In England, Lord Frederick North, the new Prime Minister, felt that the Townshend Acts had been a
mistake. Worse, British trade to major colonial ports had already been cut in half by the boycott. In 1770,
consequently, Parliament repealed the Townshend Acts. But Lord North did not want American colonists to
think that, by protesting, they could control Parliament. He advised to keep the tea tax as a symbol of
parliamentary authority.

The Tea Act and the Boston Tea Party

In 1773, Parliament gave the colonists another reason to protest when it passed the Tea Act. The purpose
was to aid the failing British East India Company which sold tea to America. British wholesale merchants had
bought tea from that company, then sold it to American wholesalers, who sold it to retailers to reach the shops,
its price was high; so Americans bought cheaper tea smuggled in from Holland. The Tea Act allowed the
company to sell its tea directly to American retailers. Additionally, Parliament reduced the duty the colonies
would have to pay for the imported tea. Now, the price of the company’s tea was less than that of smuggled
tea. The act came to hurt the business of American wholesale merchants. Once that kind of monopoly was
established, colonial merchants began to wonder, how soon would the precedent apply to other commodities?

As a result, colonial merchants alerted people to the new danger. The British government, they reported,
was trying to purchase their loyalty and passivity with cheap tea. Popular hostility within New York and
Philadelphia forced ships’ captains to leave without unloading. In Maryland, patriots burned a ship carrying
tea. In Boston, they disguised themselves as Indians, boarded the ships, and dumped the tea into the harbor.
This event – the Boston Tea Party – became the symbol of an angry people.

The Boston Tea Party outraged the British authorities. Destruction of valuable property could not be taken
slightly. So, in May 1774, Parliament passed the four Coercive Acts which were designed to punish
Massachusetts, the heart of American patriotism. Massachusetts would be an example to other colonies where
patriots might be tempted to destroy British tea.
The Boston Port Act closed the harbor until the tea was paid for.
The Administration of Justice Act protected Crown officials in Massachusetts. If British officials were
accused of committing an offense while collecting duties, they could be tried in another colony or in Britain.
The Massachusetts Government Act repealed most of the colony’s independent rights under the
Massachusetts charter. Members of the governor’s council appointed by the king. Under this act,
Massachusetts civil authority had been replaced by military authority.
The Quartering Act was applied to all colonies. The new act stated that if the quarters were not available,
troops would be quartered in occupied dwelling even homes.

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 The Coercive Acts shocked people throughout the colonies. Colonists who called them the Intolerable
Acts agreed to meet at a continental congress to decide what to do. The Massachusetts assembly, consequently,
suggested a meeting at Philadelphia.

In September 1774, the First Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia. There were delegates from all
the colonies except Georgia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the Floridas. The Adams cousins, that is, John Adams,
and Samuel Adams, a member of the Massachusetts assembly, and other patriots were already talking about
independence if their demands were not met. Although they were a minority in the Congress, these patriots
were united and determined. One of them was Patrick Henry, a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses.
Another was Richard Henry Lee, a Virginia planter, who strongly believed in print as a means of spreading
the Patriot point of view. Also a member of the group considering independence was Christopher Gadsen, a
plantation owner. Other patriots, such as Virginia planter George Washington, took a more moderate view
and wanted to compromise with Britain.

In the First Continental Congress, the delegates drew up a list of resolves in which they demanded an end
to the Coercive Acts, claiming that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies. The First Continental Congress
adjourned on October 26, 1774. People in Massachusetts were already preparing for war. In Britain, King
George took the colonial actions as open defiance, and Parliament declared Massachusetts to be in a state of
rebellion.
In May 1775, delegates convened at Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress. The colonists were
already at war with Britain. They created a Continental Army, and George Washington of Virginia became its
commander-in-chief.

As the breach between the American colonies and Britain was widened by bloodshed, moderates in the
Continental Congress searched for a compromise with Britain. In July1775, the delegates sent a petition to
King George. In The Olive Branch Petition, they pledged their loyalty to the king and asked him to resolve
colonial grievances, which they blamed on Parliament. In November, the delegates received their answer. The
king, who had refused to read their petition, declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. Consequently,
he closed the colonies to all trade, and commanded that American ships under sail be seized. The king’s actions
unified Congress which was for the first time truly representative of all colonies as Georgia had sent delegates
in September.

Common Sense
One person who helped Americans to define their loyalties was Thomas Paine, who had migrated to the
colonies from England. In 1776, he published Common Sense, a pamphlet in which he called for
independence. Paine wrote: “There is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually
governed by an island…. England (belongs) to Europe. America to itself.” He also attacked King George,
calling him a “royal brute” who menaced American freedom. Within a few months, 150,000 copies of
Common Sense had been sold. First North Carolina, then Virginia, advised their delegates in Congress to vote
for independence.

The Declaration of Independence

After debate, Congress formed a committee to write a declaration of independence. The committee members
were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman. Thomas
Jefferson, a Virginia legislator, was chosen, to do the actual writing of the document. He had studied the
political theory of John Locke, a philosopher of the previous century. Locke had written that government was
a contract, or compact, between the government and the people. If the government violated the people’s natural
rights, they could rebel and set up another government.
Jefferson applied Locke’s theory to the preamble of the Declaration. The last section of the Declaration
pointed out that Americans had tried, and failed, to convince Britain to set right these wrongs. Therefore, the
representatives of the United States of America, acting by the “authority of the good people of these colonies,”
declared their complete independence from Great Britain. Congress debated what Jefferson had written,

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making several changes. Then on the evening of July 4, 1776, the delegates approved the final wording of the
Declaration. All colonies voted for it except New York, which abstained.
The American Revolution lasted eight years. The fighting began at Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19,
1775 and then spilt over into the rest of the colonies. The peace treaty that was signed in Paris on April 15,
1783 acknowledged the independence, freedom, and sovereignty of the thirteen former British colonies, now
states.