27 The American Revolution

The American Revolution was more than just the war of independence that the American colonists fought against British rule between 1775 and 1783. It began with the resentments expressed by the colonists against the taxes and restrictions placed upon them by the British, and continued through the conflict itself to the postwar debates by which the independent United States decided what kind of country it was going to be.

The mutual antipathy that arose between the colonists and their rulers back in London had its origins in two very different views of what the colonies were for. To the British government, colonies existed entirely for the benefit of the mother country, and should make a financial contribution to their own defense. To the colonists, who had no voice in the Westminster Parliament, this was a negation of natural justice. The unwillingness of King George III and his ministers back in London to compromise made conflict inevitable.

Rumblings of discontent During the French and Indian War (the North American component of the Seven Years’ War; see The age of empire), the vast majority of the American colonists regarded themselves as loyal subjects of the Crown, and many—including George Washington—fought for the British against the French. Although the war had ended in 1763 with British victory, it had proved enormously costly, and Parliament determined that the colonists should henceforth pay for their own defense via taxation. It introduced a number of measures to this effect, and also prohibited settlement west of the Appalachians, to prevent further expensive conflict with Native American peoples. This prohibition and the Stamp Act of 1765—introducing a stamp duty on legal documents and other transactions—provoked particular anger amongst the colonists, who had been used to a fair measure of self-government via their colonial assemblies. They argued that, given they were not represented in the British Parliament, only their own assemblies should have tax-raising powers—hence their slogan, “No taxation without representation.” In the face of extensive agitation, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, but still proclaimed its right to tax the American subjects of the Crown, and proceeded to levy duties on a variety of goods imported into the colonies.

“The Revolution was in the minds of the people … before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.”

Former President John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815

As the political temperature rose, many Americans began to adopt a radical new ideology in which they declared that their liberties as “free-born Englishmen” were being threatened by a corrupt tyranny. In 1770 Parliament withdrew all the import duties except that on tea, and then in 1773, in order to help the struggling East India Company, dumped a large quantity of tea—still with its controversial duty—on the American market. This provoked the famous Boston Tea Party, in which a group of “patriots,” as they now called themselves, dressed themselves up as Native Americans, boarded the ship carrying the tea and threw its cargo into Boston harbor.

The Revolutionary War When Britain imposed repressive measures against Massachusetts (the colony where the Tea Party had taken place), delegates from the colonies came together in the First Continental Congress and voted to ban all imports from Britain. Confrontation turned to military conflict on April 19, 1775 when British troops in search of a cache of weapons were confronted at Lexington, near Boston, by armed farmers, and shots were exchanged.

As far as King George and his government were concerned, the colonists were now traitors, and a large force of British troops and German mercenaries was dispatched across the Atlantic to deal with the rebellion. As open warfare began, a Second Continental Congress assembled in September 1775. By the following summer it had reached a momentous decision, and on July 4, 1776 it endorsed the Declaration of Independence.

Declaring independence was not the same as achieving it. The British had at their command a disciplined, well-armed force, and a large number of Americans remained loyal to the Crown. However, the rag-tag of patriot militias had the advantage of knowing the terrain, and were forged into an effective fighting force by their commander-in-chief, George Washington. They could also be resupplied locally, whereas the British depended on much longer supply lines. The decisive American victory at Saratoga in 1777 encouraged the French to join in against their old enemy, the British, and in 1781 a large British force besieged by Washington’s army and a French fleet in Yorktown was forced to surrender. Two years later, Britain recognized US independence at the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the war.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Thomas Jefferson, letter to W. S. Smith, November 13, 1787

Creating a new country Having achieved the independence of the United States, as the thirteen former British colonies now became, the question now arose as to what kind of country it was going to be. At first there was no strong central government, the states being reluctant to exchange one tyranny for another. The Second Continental Congress had drafted Articles of Confederation providing for a union between the states, but this was not adopted until 1781, when the Confederation Congress came into being. The states remained reluctant to surrender any powers to central government, and the Confederation Congress had no tax-raising powers. Two opposing factions arose: federalists, who saw the need for a strong central government to deal with external threats and internal disorder, and anti-federalists, who saw central government as threatening the rights of the states and the liberties of individual citizens. To resolve these difficulties, a Constitutional Convention was assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to thrash out a new federal constitution.

The Declaration of Independence

The job of drafting the Declaration of Independence was given by Congress to a young Virginian planter called Thomas Jefferson, who was later to become the third president of the USA. Its sentiments, justifying rebellion against tyranny, still ring down the centuries: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness …”

What eventually emerged provided for a stronger central government, but with its powers separated between the executive (the president), the legislature (Congress) and the judiciary, and balanced and checked by the powers of the states and the people. The US Constitution was ratified in 1788, and to mollify the anti-federalists the Bill of Rights, comprising the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was adopted. Among other things this guaranteed freedom of religion, speech and the press, upheld due process of law, and reserved to the states all powers not specifically assigned to the federal government. However, neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights resolved the issue that was to tear the country apart over the following decades—the issue as to whether slavery was to be allowed to continue in any part of the Union.

the condensed idea

A novel experiment in nation-building