Module 5 – Salutary Neglect and

Revolution
 Colonial Freedom during Salutary Neglect
• Despite the increased reliance on an enslaved
population for wealth, the colonists took the
opportunity to strengthen their political
institution and began to challenge the rules of
the mercantilist system.
• With the relaxed British administration the
colonies, colonists created their own regional
economies and enjoyed widespread control of
their political institutions with little
interference from the British crown.
• After the Glorious Revolution and William and Mary took
power colonies were allowed much more control over their
governments and internal affairs
• Glorious Revolution introduced a period of salutary neglect
- monarchy loosely controlled the internal affairs of
colonies allowing them to rule themselves as long as they
could continue to profit from them.
• Glorious Revolution also set the stage for the creation of a
constitutional monarchy - monarchy and Parliament split
power.
• British Constitution included a Bill of Rights protecting
individual rights of citizens - create the idea of "rights of
Englishmen“
• Whigs which was a political party that secured the creation
of the Constitutional monarchy - wanted larger property
owners in the House of Commons to have more say in
governing the country especially over passing taxes
• Colonial assemblies use Whig political philosophy to grab
more control over their governments by limiting the power
of the crown in the colonies and refused to pay the salaries
of the governors in the colonies in protest.
• colonial legislatures controlled taxation and appointments
• Result - an elitist political system as only men of
considerable wealth stood for election and control of the
representative governments in the colonies.
• But the power of these colonial assemblies were checked
by popular crowd action.
• In the tradition of popular protest crowds took to the
streets to protest unpopular laws and other community
actions deemed unsuccessful
• By 1750 most colonial political institutions were broadly
responsive to public pressure.
• British policy during the reigns of George I and II
from (1714-1760) contributed to the rise of
American assemblies.
• They passed laws focused on trade and defense
of the colonies, instead of focusing on internal
colonial affairs – furthered Salutary neglect
– The colonists enjoyed a significant degree of self-
government and economic autonomy, which put them
in a position to challenge the rules of the mercantilist
system – idea that colonies exist for the purpose of
increasing economic wealth of the colonial power.
Prime Minister Walpole’s tactics weakened the empire by
undermining faith in the integrity of England’s political
system both in England and in the American colonies.
– This use of patronage weakened the imperial system by
filling the Board of Trade and the royal governorships with
associates of his who were not knowledgeable or
experienced.
– In England radical minded Whigs argued that Walpole had
betrayed the constitutional monarchy established by the
Glorious Revolution by using patronage and bribery to
strengthen his political party.
– Politically minded colonists in North America adopted
these arguments as their own, claiming that royal
governors in the colonies were also abusing their power.
– To preserve American liberty, colonists sought to
strengthen the powers of their own colonial assemblies.
• The colonists also began to undermine the British
mercantile system
– Avoided the Navigation Acts which required colonies
to trade only with Britain and British protectorates.
– Finding a loophole in the law that allowed them to
continue to trade with French and Spanish islands to
obtain sugar for molasses and rum production.
– colonial assemblies established their own banks and
issue their own currencies.
– The New England colonists began to produce
manufactured goods in the colonies instead of
importing them from Britain – further undermined
mercantilism
 Colonial Upheaval: Ideological
Changes, Imperial Competition and
the Struggle for Empire

1700-1763
• Two great European ideological movements
took root in America in the late 17th and 18th
Centuries that embodied new emphasis on
freedom in the colonies between the 1720s
and the 1760s - the Enlightenment and the
Great Awakening.
 Enlightenment Thought
• The Enlightenment was a major revival in learning that
took place in the early 18th century prompting dramatic
revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics
• Enlightenment thought emphasized the power of
human reason to shape the world an idea that
appealed especially to well-educated men and women
from merchant or planter families and to urban
artisans.
• During the Enlightenment philosophers used research
and scientific reasoning to study all aspects of life,
including social institutions and human behavior.
 Two Treatises on Government
• John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government was very
influential during this period.
• Locke wrote that political authority was not given by
God to monarchs but was derived from social
agreements between the people and the government -
rejects Divine Right
• He also argued that the role of government was to
preserve the natural rights to life, liberty and property.
• If their interests are not protected could overthrow
that government
• These ideas came to American colonists through books,
travelers, and educated migrants.
• Though a new emphasis on using reason to
interpret the world may have caused an
increase in secular ideas throughout the
western world, there was also a revival in
religion around the same time as well.
• In the 1730s, in response to the decline in the
importance of religion in society, a new
religions revival began.
 The Great Awakening
• Great Awakening
– movement to reassert religion in society
– Great Awakening was a native-born pietistic movement appeared in Puritan
New England as many Puritan congregations had lost their religious zeal
– This Great Awakening featured young preachers who evoked a deep
emotional response, with inflammatory speech urging sinners to seek
salvation.
– Hundreds of men and were converted.
• George Whitefield, a young English evangelist, transformed local
revivalism into the “Great Awakening”
• Whitefield had experienced conversion after reading German Pietistic
tracts and became a follower of John Wesley, the founder of English
Methodism
• In 1739 Whitefield carried Wesley’s fervent preaching style to America and
over the next 2 years attracted crowds in every colony.
• Whitefield did not read his sermons but spoke from memory
• he preached as if inspired: gesturing, raising his voice for dramatic effect
• As the Great Awakening proceeded it
undermined support for traditional churches and
challenged the authority of governments to
impose taxes that supported them.
• In New England many people left the
Congregational church and founded Presbyterian
and Baptist churches.
• These Baptist churches advocated greater
separation of church and state – challenging the
tax-supported status of the Congregationalist
churches in New England.
• Moreover in these new religions the minister’s
authority came not from theological training
but through the conversion experience so it
expanded the scope of people who could
minister.
• Baptist teachings stated that anyone who had
experienced the saving grace of God could
speak with ministerial authority.
• The Great Awakening challenged both the
Church of England and the power of the
southern planter elite.
• Number of attendants to the Anglican Church
decreased as did the power of the elites
connected to the church.
• There were also challenges to the
government’s ability to tax the people to
support the Anglican church.
• The Baptist Church grew the most during the
Great Awakening
– The Baptists were a radical and persecuted sect
– Baptist preachers were supported mainly by yeoman
and tenant farmers because of the religion’s
democratic nature.
– Even slaves were welcome to Baptist religious revivals.
– The first significant conversion of slaves to Christianity
came in Virginia in the 1760s – the Baptist message
that all people were equal in God’s eyes attracted
them to the church
– Baptists condemned the customary pleasures of
Chesapeake planters- drinking, gambling, prostitution
and cockfighting.
• Baptist revivals in the Chesapeake did not bring
radical changes to the social order.
• Baptist slaveholding men kept power.
• It did however:
– Give spiritual meaning to the lives of the poor yeomen
and tenant families and created a sense of
community, assisted them to assert their social values
and economic interests.
– it also undermined some of the justifications for
slavery and gave blacks a new sense of spiritual
identity. African Americans would develop their own
versions of Protestant Christianity.
 Imperial Conflict in North
America – England vs France
• As the English population in the colonies
continued to increase, backcountry settlers put
more pressure on colonial governments to
expand westward.
• As colonial settlements expanded inland, English
colonists began to infringe on the land claimed by
France. This sparked a new series of conflict
between England and France.
• The French and English battled for supremacy
over land in North America between 1750 and
1765.
• These conflicts culminated in the French and
Indian War.
 French and Indian War
• Both French colonists and Native Americans were
threatened by the English colonists’ relentless need for
and expansion to the west.
• Native Americans in the mid-west areas who had been
able to maintain their independence by playing the
French and British against each other saw their power
diminish.
• European governments refused to pay the rising cost of
gifts of guns and money to the Indians for their support
and the alliances between the groups crumbled.
• The English colonists demand for Indian lands was
causing strong resistance among Indian peoples.
• In 1755 Henry Pelham the British Prime Minister sent
the military to America, where they joined with
colonial militia in attacking French forts.
• They advanced on Fort Duqesne in July of that year and
was attacked in retaliation by French forces helped by
the Shawnees and Delawares Indians, and suffered
large losses.
• By 1756 the fighting in America spread to Europe,
where France, Spain and Austria was fighting against
Britain, and Prussia
• The conflict became a war for empire as there were
major battles among the powers in India and west
Africa – Seven Years War in Europe and the French and
Indian War in the colonies.
• In the colonies the Brits had a distinct advantage
– population of settlers in the colonies. The 2
million English settlers outnumbered the French
by 14 to 1.
• Beginning in 1758 powerful Anglo-American
forces moved from one victory and eventually
took over Quebec – the heart of New France - to
win the war.
• In North America they were able to take hold of
French Canada, all French territory east of the
Mississippi River, and Spanish Florida in addition
to concessions in the Pacific, Africa and India.
 Effects of the French and Indian War
• Pontiac’s Rebellion - Trying to stop this influx of Anglo-
American settlers Pontiac chief of the Ottowa Indians called
for the expulsion of all Europeans Pontiac’s Rebellion.
• Proclamation Line of 1763 - Pontiac’s Rebellion prompted
the English to address some of the Indian’s concerns,
temporarily barring Anglo-Americans from settling west of
the Appalachians by establishing the Proclamation Line
• England in debt – raise taxes to pay for the war and
institute trade restrictions to improve collection of tariffs.
• Also increase number of customs officials and judges to
enforce those trade restrictions
• British standing Army placed in colonies – put there to
enforce Proclamation Line, prevent new Native American
uprisings, enforce new policy, and ensure stability.
 End of Salutary Neglect
• British government were tightening control over
the American colonies.
• This signaled an end of salutary neglect to the
colonists.
• Royal governors come under direct control of
British government instead of colonial
assemblies.
• For the colonists the main concern is that Britain
is regulating their economies as well as limiting
the power of the colonial assemblies.
• These two factors are what lead to rebellion.
The American Revolution
• The end of the French and Indian War marked the
end of the period of salutary neglect.
• It is ultimately this loss of control over the
colonial assemblies and trade that push colonists
to demand independence.
• British officials began to believe that the colonial
relationship had gone awry – that the colonists
were not providing as many financial benefits as
they should.
• Britain begins to pass legislation regulating
colonies’ economies and limiting the economic
freedom of the colonists
• The British government passed taxes to raise revenue
to pay of the debts from the French and Indian War.
• They also imposed and enforced trade restrictions
(Navigation Acts) to make sure that the colonists
adhered to these restrictions and paid taxes.
• American port cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and
New York had grown considerably over the course the
eighteenth century and the colonies locally produced
goods that competed with English-made products. So
there were alternative products available for sale in
every colony.
• In some instances the British government also began to
interfere in the decisions made by colonial assemblies.
• George Grenville, who became Prime Minister, initiated
new, more stringent Navigation Acts and the Sugar Act in
1764 to replace the weaker, more easily evaded Molasses
Act.
• Many New England merchants and their allies raised
constitutional objections to the new legislation which
adversely affected their trade
• They claimed that the Sugar Act imposed taxes on the
colonists without their consent – no taxation without
representation.
• Those who violated the act would be tried by vice-
admiralty courts - (military court) with only a judge not by
a common-law jury
• The Sugar Act signaled the beginning of England’s creation
of a truly imperial relationship between England and her
North American colonies.
 British Imperial Legislation
• 1764 – Sugar Act
• 1765 – Stamp Act
– Quartering Act
• 1767 – Townshend Act
– Restraining Act on New York
• 1770 – Boston Massacre
• 1773 – Tea Act
– Boston Tea Party
• The relationship leading to the war was not
just about Britain imposing legislation –
American colonists consistently reacted to
these laws which they viewed as being unfair
and forced Britain to retract some of them.
• In some instances they were official meetings
of and statements from the colonial
governments and at other times it was crowd
action in the streets.
 Colonists Responses to the taxes and
trade restrictions
• 1765 – Stamp Act Congress
– Sons of Liberty
• 1776 – Stamp Act Repealed
• 1767 – Non-Importation Movement
– Daughters of Liberty
• 1770 – Repeal of Townshend taxes
• 1773 – Boston Tea Party
• The Boston Tea Party proved to be the breaking
point – Britain refused to back down again –
passing the Coercive Acts (colonists called the
Intolerable Acts) in 1774
• These acts closed down the Boston harbor and
prevented the Boston assembly from meeting.
• The Continental Congress who passed the
Declaration of Rights and Grievances officially
protesting the Coercive Acts and began a
program of economic retaliation, beginning with
non-importation and no-consumption
agreements that would take effect by the end of
1774
• By 1775 Massachusetts was in open rebellion.
– British General Thomas Gage tried to maintain
British imperial power by seizing Patriot armories
and storehouses.
– In response twenty thousand colonial militiamen
mobilized to safeguard their military supply
depots in Concord and Worcester.
– They in all essence raised their own military the
famed Minutemen and assumed the
responsibilities of government.
– The British troops and colonial forces clashed in
April of 1775 in Concord and Worcester
 Ideological Origins of the Revolution
• Initially the American resistance movement had no
acknowledged leaders and no central organization.
• It had risen up spontaneously in port towns because its
residents were directly affected by British policy.
• So the first protests focused on particular economic
and political matters.
• However men trained as lawyers gradually took the
lead – partly because merchants hired them to protect
their trade interests
• Composing pamphlets Patriot lawyers through their
arguments created an ideology and political agenda
that united the diverse groups of protestors
throughout the colonies behind one voice.
• The justifications for rebellion for the colonists
was that the government was essentially violating
their rights as British citizens – British Common
Law
• They believed that the British Parliament and
crown were not ruling for the benefit of all of its
citizens and that the government no longer
represented the interests of the colonists.
– Right to trial by jury violated by vice-admiralty courts
– Right to representation in government had been
violated as they had no colonial representatives in
Parliament.
• Leveled criticisms of corruption in Parliament
– arguments used by the Radical Whigs and
Country Party in Britain.
• Because of these actions - according to Locke’s
Two Treatises of Government -since the British
government was not protecting their rights as
citizens, they must overthrow the government
– Enlightenment thought.
• Initial conflicts over the control of trade and
government happened in port cities – New
York, Boston, Philadelphia - and that was
where independence fervor was strongest.
• Why did farmers support the Independence
movement?
• Why did planters support the Independence
movement?
• Backcountry farmers were angry with the British
government for preventing them from moving
westward.
• British also were seizing property for unpaid
taxes.
• Southern planters feared the loss of power in
colonial assemblies with a British government
more focused on strict administration of the
colonies.
• Many southern planters, especially in the
Chesapeake area, who exported their crops in
exchange for manufactured British goods found
themselves indebted to British merchants who
were increasingly calling in their debts as British
taxes were increasing – did not want their wealth
threatened
• Initial fighting between colonial militias and
British soldiers began in Massachusetts in
1775.
• Though the fighting began there was not
consensus among colonial leaders that
rebellion was the best option.’
• Some wanted to remain part of the British
empire but return to the period of salutary
neglect, others wanted no change in the
colonial relationship believing the protection
and economic benefits of being part of the
British Empire outweighed the grievances.
Not everyone in the colonies supported
independence.

Patriots – people who wanted independence from

Britain
Loyalists (Tories) – wanted to remain part of the
British empire.

So in many ways the Revolution was in the colonies

like a Civil War as well between Patriots and
Loyalists.
 The Declaration of Independence
• By the summer of 1776 the Continental Congress
agreed to issue an official Declaration of
Independence - July 4, 1776.
• The Declaration of Independence expressed the
grievances of colonists and listed the ways in
which their rights had been violated by the British
government.
• You can clearly see the influence of the ideologies
contributing to the American Revolution – British
common law, enlightenment thought, and Radical
Whig ideology – in the Declaration.
• By linking the ideas of individual liberty and
the good of the commonwealth, Jefferson
articulated the ideology that would come to
be known as revolutionary republicanism.
• This rhetoric of republicanism can be found
throughout history by people of all races,
ethnicities, classes, backgrounds, gender, and
political affiliations.
• The legacy of republicanism: the ideals of
freedom, individuality, and equality are still
inherent in today’s society.
 Lopsided Odds in British favor
On paper the American odds of winning independence were
slight – they were the clear underdogs. Why?
• Great Britain had 11 million people vs the colonies’ 2.5
million (1/5 of whom were slaves)
• British government was more wealthy b/c of immense
profits from the South Atlantic system and the emerging
industrial revolution.
• Britain also had the largest and most powerful navy in the
world.
• The Americans were militarily weak – had no navy and the
army was poorly trained and lacked supplies.
• The Continental Army did have the support of militia but
their training and resources varied.
• British government had support from thousands of
American Loyalists, Native Americans hostile to white
expansion, and in Virginia slaves who were promised
freedom if they fought for the British Army.
 How did the Americans stay in the fight then?
Military mistakes on the part of the British
• British General Howe took a more moderate stance in
order to try to compromise with the patriots in order
to end the conflict – did not want to destroy colonies
• conventions of 18th century warfare focused on
winning the surrender of opposing forces rather than
destroying them
• British general was cautions because his troops were
on alien territory far from home - if they sustained
substantial losses it could take up to 6 months before
reinforcements would arrive.
• Though understandable, General Howe’s tactics cost
the British an opportunity to nip the rebellion in the
bud.
General Washington
• Washington was able to avoid major defeat –
retreating in the face of superior strength
• Avoidance of a major defeat in the early years of the
war took away British morale and made the
Continental army a symbol of American resistance.
• His strategy was to walk the British away from the
seacoast, extend their line of supply eventually double
back surrounding them.
French alliance
• Help from the French. In 1778 Americans were able to
secure an alliance with the French government who
provided money, supplies, and troops to aid the
Americans.
War Weariness in England
• the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in
Britain.
• Some British citizens supported the criticisms of the
American colonists – demanding more rights and
political reform in Britain, including broadening voting
rights and more equitable representation for cities in
Parliament.
• Large landowners and merchants protested increases
taxes used to raise funds to pay for the war.
• The King told Prime Minister North to seek a
settlement with the American Patriots in 1778 –
offered to return colonies to the period of salutary
neglect.
• Americans refused.
 End of the War
• British General Cornwallis and his troops
suffered a staggering defeat at the Battle of
Yorktown in Virginia in 1781.
• Economic pressure on England to end the war
– The combined French and Spanish fleet was
menacing the British sugar islands
– Dutch merchants were capturing European
markets from British traders.
– British commercial traders were demanding an
end to Britain’s blockade of France.
• The Treaty of Paris 1783– made peace between
America and Britain
• Great Britain formally recognized the
independence of its seaboard colonies
• Britain was able to retain its control over Quebec
but lost control over all land south of the Great
Lakes between the Appalachian Mountains and
the Mississippi River.
• This left the Native Americans of this region who
had been pro-English to their own fate – British
did not insist on a separate Indian territory for
their allies
The Paradox of Slavery in the Age
of Revolution
• With the new emphasis on freedom and
equality during the American Revolution
slavery became a growing contradiction.

• How would Americans reconcile slavery with

new ideas of freedom and equality?
Justifications for slavery
• Slavery was used as an equalizer for all classes
of whites in American slave societies.
• They tried to create a common identity among
all classes of whites – that identity was slave
owner.
• Southern whites’ celebrated ideals of
– economic independence,
– freedom from tyranny
– civic virtue
• These values went hand in hand with the
definition of a freeman as property owner –
including ownership of slave property
The American Paradox
• According to historian Edmund Morgan the Founding
Fathers’ devotion to freedom for all whites elevated
them above all black slaves – this was the American
paradox
• This paradox was not lost on some of our founding
fathers
– In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence
Jefferson had made reference to blacks when he blamed
King George III for the slave trade –
– Said the King waged war against human nature violating
the sacred rights of life and liberty of Africans by capturing
and carrying them into slavery.
– This was edited out by southern slave-holding patriots
– Thomas Paine –wrote an anti-slavery pamphlet African
slavery that associated slavery with murder, robbery,
lewdness, and barbarity.
Arguments against slavery
• The British government used the idea of the American
paradox to undercut American arguments about freedom
– They argued that the colonists’ protests about the policies of
British limiting their hypocritical b/c many were slave owners.
• Quakers also question the morality of slavery in the
middle colonies – their religion declared slavery to be
unjust
• In Massachusetts slaves themselves made their own
arguments against slavery –
– Drawing from revolutionary political ideology black males made
similar arguments in favor of their own natural rights and
petitioned for freedom
– Brought freedom suits to court
http://www.mass.gov/courts/court-info/sjc/edu-res-
center/abolition/abolition3-gen.html
– In Boston there were interracial protests of servants in the
streets
In Boston where there was a fluidity in race relations
slaves participated in both the patriot movement
and used the ideas of the Revolution to attack
slavery
• Crispus Attucks – mulatto runaway slave served as
a nautical worker
• Participated in patriot movement – participated in
the Patriot protests on the streets of Mass
• In the crowd that converged at the Custom House
on King Street taunting and insulting the British
Army
• The army opened fire on the crowd – later called
the Boston Massacre - and Attucks was one of
those who were killed
• Phyllis Wheatley – slave in Boston who became a famous
writer and poet
• Poetry addressed subjects of religion, nature,
revolutionary turmoil, and death
• Wheatley traveled to England where British publisher
published her writings
• The newspaper editor criticized American slavery – saying
they could not understand how such an ingenious women
could be enslaved when the colonists of Boston boasted
on their principles of liberty
• Wheatley herself called attention to the contradiction of
slaveholders’ cries for liberty in a private letter that was
later published
Native Americans and the
Revolution
• American victory in the American Revolution
meant the decline of Native American autonomy.
• Egalitarianism among white men increased after
the Revolution.
• The promise of equality in an agrarian society
such as America meant land ownership for more
Americans
• This resulted in threats to Indian territory and
further displacement of Native Americans.
• Disease continued to be a struggle for Native
Americans and alcoholism plagued tribes.
• Native Americans continued to incorporate
aspects of European culture.
• This sometimes caused tension within tribes
between Native Americans who wanted to
retain traditional indigenous cultural practices
and those who adopted European ways.