Paul Jones
American Pageant Chapter 8
1. George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the
commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)
and served as the first President of the United States of America (1789–1797). For his
central role in the formation of the United States, he is often referred to as the father of
his country.
2. Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (February 9, 1737 – June 8, 1809) was an author, pamphleteer,
radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the
United States. Born in England, Paine immigrated to the British American colonies in
1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were
the powerful, widely-read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), advocating colonial
America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis
(1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series.
3. Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the third President of the
United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence
(1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals
of republicanism in the United States. Major events during his presidency include the
Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806).
4. Patrick Henry
Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) served as the first post-colonial
Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779. A prominent figure in the American
Revolution, Henry is known and remembered for his "Give me Liberty, or give me
Death!" speech, and as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Along with
Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, he is remembered as one of the most influential (and
radical) advocates of the American Revolution and republicanism, especially in his
denunciations of corruption in government officials and his defense of historic rights.
5. Marquis de Lafayette
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (or
Lafayette) (6 September 1757 – 20 May 1834) was a French aristocrat and military
officer born in the province of Auvergne in south central France. Lafayette was a general
in the American Revolutionary War and a leader of the Garde Nationale during the
French Revolution.
6. William Howe
William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe, KB, PC (August 10, 1729 – July 12, 1814)
was a British General who was Commander-in-Chief of British forces during the
American Revolutionary War, one of the three Howe brothers. He was knighted after his
successes in 1775 and was henceforth Sir William, inheriting the viscountcy only upon
his brother Richard's death in 1799.
7. Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold V (January 14, 1741 – June 14, 1801) was a general during the
American Revolutionary War who originally fought for the American Continental Army
but switched sides to the British Empire. While he was still a general on the American
side, he obtained command of the fort at West Point, New York, and plotted
unsuccessfully to surrender it to the British. After the plot failed, he served in the British
military.
8. John Burgoyne
General John Burgoyne (24 February 1722 – 4 August 1792) was a British army
officer, politician and dramatist. During the American War of Independence, on 17
October, 1777, at the Saratoga he surrendered his army of 6,000 men.
9. Nathanael Greene
Nathaniel Greene (August 7, 1742 – June 19, 1786) was a major general of the
Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War. When the war began, Greene was
a militia private, the lowest rank possible; he emerged from the war with a reputation as
George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer. Many places in the United
States are named for him.
10. General Cornwallis
Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, KG (31 December 1738 – 5
October, 1805) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. In the United
States and Britain, he is best remembered as one of the leading generals in the American
War of Independence. His 1781 surrender to a combined American-French force at the
Siege of Yorktown is often incorrectly considered the end of the war; in fact, it continued
for a further two years.[1] Despite this defeat, he retained the confidence of successive
British governments and continued to enjoy an active career. In India, where he served
two terms as governor general, he is remembered for promulgating the Permanent
Settlement. As Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he argued for Catholic emancipation and
oversaw the response to the 1798 Irish Rebellion and a French invasion of Ireland.
11. George Roders Clark
George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 – February 13, 1818) was a soldier
from Virginia and the highest ranking American military officer on the northwestern
frontier during the American Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the Kentucky
militia throughout much of the war, Clark is best-known for his celebrated capture of
Kaskaskia (1778) and Vincennes (1779), which greatly weakened British influence in the
Northwest Territory. Because the British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the
United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Clark has often been hailed as the "Conqueror
of the Old Northwest."
12. Republicanism
Republicanism is the value system of governance that has been a major part of American
civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and rights as central
values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, rejects inherited political power, expects
citizens to be independent in their performance of civic duties, and is strongly inclined
against corruption. American republicanism was founded and first practiced by the
Founding Fathers in the 18th century. This system was based on early Roman and
English models and ideas. It formed the basis for the American Revolution and the
consequential Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787), as well as
the Gettysburg Address. It is not the same as democracy, for republicanism asserts that
people have inalienable rights that cannot be voted away by a majority of voters. In a
government made up as a constitutional republic, the Rule of Law and clearly defined
constitutional principles dictate the actual administration of government.
13. Natural rights
Natural rights (also called moral rights or inalienable rights) are rights which are
not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of a particular society or polity. Natural
rights are thus necessarily universal, whereas legal rights are culturally and politically
relative.
14. Popular consent
Popular consent is the belief that the legitimacy of the state is created by the will
or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated
with the social contract philosophers, among whom are Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Popular sovereignty expresses a concept and does not necessarily
reflect or describe a political reality.[1] It is often contrasted with the concept of
parliamentary sovereignty. Benjamin Franklin expressed the concept when he wrote, "In
free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and
sovereigns."
15. Mercenaries
A mercenary is a professional soldier hired by a foreign army, as opposed to a
soldier enlisted in the armed forces of a sovereign state. He or she takes part in armed
conflict on many different scales, and is "motivated to take part in the hostilities
essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a
party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or
paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party"
(Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of August 1949).[1][2] A non-conscript
professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he
gets remuneration for his service.
16. Second Continental Congress
The Second Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from the
Thirteen Colonies that met beginning on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
soon after warfare in the American Revolutionary War had begun. It succeeded the First
Continental Congress, which met briefly during 1774, also in Philadelphia. The second
Congress managed the colonial war effort, and moved slowly towards independence,
adopting the United States Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. By raising
armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and making formal treaties, the
Congress acted as the de facto national government of what became the United States.[1]
With the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, the Congress became
known as the Congress of the Confederation.
17. Bunker Hill
Charlestown is a part of the city of Boston, Massachusetts located on a peninsula
north of Boston proper. Charlestown was originally a separate town and the first capital
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; it became a city in 1847 and was annexed by Boston
on January 5, 1874. While it has had a substantial Irish American population since the
migration of Irish during the Irish famine of the 1840s, since the late 1980s the
neighborhood has changed dramatically because of its close proximity to downtown, and
its colonial architecture.
18. Common Sense
Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published
anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense was
signed "Written by an Englishman", and the pamphlet became an immediate success. In
relation to the population of the Colonies at that time, it had the largest sale and
circulation of any book in American history. Common Sense presented the American
colonists with a powerful argument for independence from British rule at a time when the
question of independence was still undecided. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that
common people understood; forgoing the philosophy and Latin references used by
Enlightenment era writers, Paine structured Common Sense like a sermon and relied on
Biblical references to make his case to the people. Historian Gordon S. Wood described
Common Sense as, “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary
era.”
19. Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the
Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American
colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a
part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a
formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from
Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.
The birthday of the United States of America—Independence Day—is celebrated on July
4, the day the wording of the Declaration was approved by Congress.
20. Loyalist/Tories
In general, a loyalist is someone who maintains loyalty to an established
government, political party, or sovereign, especially during war or revolutionary change
such as the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. In modern English usage, the most
common application is to loyalty to the British Crown, which is the focus of this article.
Toryism is a traditionalist political philosophy, which grew out of the Cavalier
faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is most prominent in Great Britain, but also
features in some parts of The Commonwealth — particularly in Canada. Historically it
also had exponents in former parts of the British Empire, for instance the Loyalists of
British North America who sided with Britain and Crown during the Revolutionary War.
The Tory ethos can be summed up with the phrase God, King and Country. Tories
advocate monarchism, are usually of a High Church Anglican or Recusant Catholic
religious heritage and opposed to the radical liberalism of the Whig faction. Some call
their stance counter-revolutionary, neo-feudal and medievalist.
21. Patriots/Whigs
Patriots (also known as Americans, Whigs, Revolutionaries, Congress-Men or
Rebels) was the name the colonists of the British Thirteen United Colonies who rebelled
against British control during the American Revolution called themselves. It was their
leading figures who, in July 1776, declared the United States of America an independent
nation. Their rebellion was based on the political philosophy of republicanism, as
expressed by pamphleteers such as Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas
Paine.
22. Battle of Trenton
The Battle of Trenton took place on December 26, 1776, during the American
Revolutionary War after General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River
north of Trenton, New Jersey. The hazardous crossing in adverse weather allowed
Washington to lead the main body of the Continental Army against Hessian soldiers
garrisoned at Trenton. After a brief struggle, nearly the entire Hessian force was captured,
with negligible losses to the Americans. The battle boosted the Continental Army's
flagging morale, and inspired re-enlistments.
23. Battle of Princeton
The Battle of Princeton (January 3, 1777) was a battle in which General
Washington's revolutionary forces defeated British forces near Princeton, New Jersey.
24. Battle of Saratoga
The Battles of Saratoga (September 19 and October 7, 1777) conclusively decided
the fate of British General John Burgoyne's army in the American Revolutionary War,
and are generally regarded as a turning point in the war. The battles were fought nineteen
days apart on the same ground, nine miles (14.5 km) south of Saratoga, New York.
25. Battle of Yorktown
The Siege of Yorktown or Battle of Yorktown in 1781 was a decisive victory by
combined assault of American forces led by General George Washington and French
forces led by General Comte de Rochambeau over a British Army commanded by
General Lord Cornwallis. It proved to be the last major land battle of the American
Revolutionary War, as the surrender of Cornwallis’s army (the second major surrender of
the war, the other being Burgoyne's surrender at the Battle of Saratoga) prompted the
British government to eventually negotiate an end to the conflict.
26. Treaty of Paris 1783
The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, ratified by the Congress of the
Confederation on January 14, 1784 and by the King of Great Britain on April 9, 1784
formally ended the American Revolutionary War between the Kingdom of Great Britain
and the United States of America, which had rebelled against British rule.