1754–1783

5 The Making of a
Revolution

Listen on MyHistoryLab to Far more than anyone else, George Washington dominated the era leading up to and through
Chapter 5 the American Revolution. It is important to remember that for much of this time, he was an
officer in the British army before becoming—as shown here—a leader of the American forces.

O
n May 28, 1754, George Washington, then a 22-year-old gentleman
farmer recently promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Virginia
CHAPTER OBJECTIVE militia, and Tanaghrisson, an Iroquois chief, led a force of Virginia
Demonstrate an understanding of how militia and Indians to attack French soldiers in what is now western
Britain’s victory over France in the war of Pennsylvania. The French troops had been sent from Fort Duquesne—
1754–1763 exacerbated the grievances of modern Pittsburgh—to look for Washington’s force. Fort Duquesne was part
many colonists and led to renewed conflict of a string of French forts built along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to
culminating in the American Revolution and
maintain New France’s claims in the region. The French perspective was that
the Declaration of Independence.
the English were trespassing on their territory. Washington, however, was
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S asserting the British claim to the Ohio River Valley.
The English-Iroquois force surprised the French with a dawn attack. It
PRELUDES TO REVOLUTION had been raining and the French had failed to post sentries. Ten of the French
Explain Britain’s victory over France in the French and Indian were killed and 22 taken prisoner. The shots fired that May morning in what
5.1 War and what conflicts followed this victory. came to be called Jumonville Glen, after the French commander who was
killed there, were among the first in a war that would have effects worldwide.
Although Washington defeated the French in that first attack, he knew
THE REVOLUTION WAS IN THE MINDS
OF THE PEOPLE
that a much larger French force actually controlled the Ohio River Valley. He
retreated from Jumonville Glen and built a small armed camp that he named
Explain why, in the 15 years before the Revolutionary War Fort Necessity. In July, 50 French soldiers and 300 of their Indian allies forced
5.2 began, support for the patriot cause spread so quickly
among many different groups of North Americans who
Washington to surrender. The French allowed the English to return to Virginia
opposed Britain for different reasons. but only after Washington signed a document admitting that he had attacked and
killed—or assassinated, depending on how one translated the French—French
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE troops in the May skirmish while Britain and France were officially at peace.
Explain how political and military strategy, support for the That skirmish in Western Pennsylvania helped provoke a world war in the 1750s,
5.3 patriot cause, and American alliances with France and Spain and that war then influenced the residents of British North America, including
led to an American victory in the war for independence. George Washington, to fight for and win their independence in the 1770s.

130 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
 Significant Dates
5.1
1754–1763 French and Indian War
1763–1766 Pontiac’s Rebellion
Paxton Boys attack Pennsylvania Indians 5.2
1765 Stamp Act crisis
Mid-1760s Regulator movement in North and South
Carolina 5.3

1770 Boston Massacre

1772 Slavery declared illegal in England
1773 Boston Tea Party
1774 Closing of the Port of Boston, Quebec Act
and other Intolerable Acts
First Continental Congress meets in
Philadelphia
1775 First battles of the Revolution at
Lexington and Concord
Second Continental Congress convenes at
Philadelphia
Battle of Bunker Hill
British governor of Virginia, Lord
Dunmore, declares freedom for slaves that
join the British cause
Far more than anyone else, George Washington dominated the era leading up to and through the American
Revolution. It is important to remember that for much of this time, he was—as pictured here—an officer in 1776 Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
the British army.
British evacuate Boston but take New
York City
PRELUDES TO REVOLUTION5.1
Congress adopts the Declaration of
Independence
5.1 Explain Britain’s victory over France in the French and Indian War and what conflicts
followed this victory. Washington’s troops capture Trenton,
New Jersey
In North America, the world war that started near Pittsburgh was known as the French
1777 Congress adopts the Articles of
and Indian War. Because of its outcome, French Canadians came to call it the War Confederation to govern the new United
of Conquest. In most of Europe, it was called the Seven Years’ War. Whatever the war States
was called, it was fought over more of the planet than any previous war. The voyages of American victory at Saratoga, New York
Columbus and subsequent maritime trade and migrations had created a vast interactive
1778 France and United States agree to an
world, and in 1756, that world exploded. alliance
1779 Washington’s troops attack British-allied
The French and Indian War, 1754–1763 Iroquois villages
In North America, the formal declaration of war in 1756—2 years after Washington’s Spain enters war against Britain
skirmish with the French—surprised no one. The English and their Iroquois allies 1780 British victories in the South
were in constant tension with the French and their Ottawa, Delaware, and Shawnee British take Charleston, South Carolina
allies. Both sides hated each other and were ready for war.
1781 American victory at Cowpens, South
During that time, Britain and France were also sliding toward war in Europe, Asia, Carolina
Africa, and the Caribbean. In January 1756, England and the German kingdom of
Lord Cornwallis surrenders to George
Prussia agreed to defend each other’s territory. In response, Austria signed a treaty Washington and allied French forces
with France. War among these countries was declared in May 1756, and the French
1783 Treaty of Paris
navy defeated a British fleet in the Mediterranean the next month. Counting on his
English allies to provide support, King Frederick the Great of Prussia then attacked
Austria and Russia. Sweden and Saxony joined the French alliance against Prussia. French and Indian War
Known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War and in
The war quickly spread to Asia. The British East India Company and the French French Canada as the War of Conquest, this war
Compagnie des Indes each controlled parts of the Indian subcontinent, either directly or was fought in North America between 1754 and
through alliances with local rulers. Suraj ud Dowlah, the ruler of Bengal, who was allied 1763 and ended with the defeat of the French.
with France, used the situation to attack and capture British Calcutta. A British force
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 131
 under Robert Clive retook the city and the French post at Chandernagor. British control
5.1 of Bengal, won in that war, laid the foundation for Britain’s 200-year rule in India.
The British also attacked the main African slave-trading island of Goree off the coast
of Senegal and took control of it from the French, hurting the French economy but hav-
5.2 ing no impact on the slave trade on the island. Goree had been the port for transshipment
of slaves since the Portuguese founded it in the 1500s and was valuable no matter which
government controlled the island because many nations purchased slaves there.
While battles took place in North America, Europe, India, and Africa, much of the
5.3
Seven Years’ War was fought in the Caribbean. British warships based in Jamaica captured
the French islands of Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago as well
as Martinique and Guadeloupe with their rich sugar plantations. At the war’s end in 1763,
Martinique and Guadeloupe were returned to France in exchange for concessions in North
America, but the British kept the remaining islands. After Spain entered the war on the
side of France in 1761, the British captured Havana, Cuba, and Manila in the Philippines,
all of which were returned to Spain in 1763 in exchange for Spanish Florida.
The war changed the landscape of North America (see Map 5-1 and Map 5-2). In
1758, after a French force defeated the English at Fort Ticonderoga in New York, a

CAPE
BRETON IS.
Gulf of
St. Lawrence

4 Louisburg
N E W F R A N C E
N O V A
7 S C O T I A
.

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e Port Royal
r
w
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8
Montreal

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AT L A N T I C
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5
Ft. Frontenac Crown Point
Portsmouth
Ft. Ticonderoga
Ft. Oswego 3 Boston
Conn

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Lak [Link] Henry

6 Albany
Ft. Niagara British conquest of New France
French settlements
Ft. Presque Isle British settlements
rie Iroquois settlements
eE
Lak New York Land claimed by the
Ft. Venango Ohio Company of Virginia
French victories
Ft. Duquesne Philadelphia
British victories
2
French forts
Ft. Cumberland
British forts
Ft. Necessity 1
R.
.

1 Washington gives up Ft. Necessity to French, July 3–4, 1754

R

ha
o
hi

2
w

Braddock’s army destroyed near Ft. Duquesne, July 9, 1755

O

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3 British yield Ft. William Henry to Montcalm, Aug. 9, 1757

Williamsburg
e
tl

4 British capture French fort at Louisburg, July 26, 1758

it
L

5 British take Ft. Frontenac from the French, Aug. 27, 1758

6 Johnson captures Ft. Niagara from the French, July 25, 1759

7 Wolfe defeats Montcalm, Plains of Abraham, Sept. 13, 1759

8 Amherst accepts French surrender of Montreal, Sept. 8, 1760

MAP 5-1 North America Before and During the French and Indian War, 1754-1763.
132 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
 Hudson Bay 5.1
Company

Quebec Nova Scotia

Halifax 5.2
Three Rivers
Annapolis
ME Royal

.
Quebec (part of Mass.)

e R
Montreal

nc
5.3

re
Lake w
Nipissing La
.

St
Ft. Edward Augustus, NH
abandoned June 15, 1763 Portsmouth
Ft. Michilimackinac, Windham Salem
June 2, 1763 Marblehead
Albany Lebanon Boston
Hartford MA Pomfret
Ft. Niagara NY Wethersfield RI
Plymouth
Wallingford Newport
Ft. Presque Isle, New Haven CT Norwich
West Haven New London
June 14–17, 1763 Lyme
PA Milford Stratford
Ft. Detroit Paxton Woodbridge Fairfield
New York
Ft. Venango, Piscataway
Elizabeth Town
June 13, 1763 Amwell Twp. Perth Amboy
Ft. Le Boeuf, Lancaster Brunswick
Ft. St. Joseph, June 18, 1763 NJ
Ft. Sandusky, Conestoga Philadelphia
May 25, 1763 Salem
May 16, 1763 Baltimore
Ft. Pitt Frederick Town Elk Ridge Landing
Annapolis Talbot
Ft. Miami, DE Lewes
May 27, 1763 Dumfries MD
Ft. Ouiatenon,
Leeds
May 31, 1763 AT L A N T I C
Tappahannock
OCEAN
VA Williamsburg
Norfolk
Ft. Chartres Indian
reserve
(by proclamation 1763)
NC
New Bern
Spanish Cross Creek
Louisiana Duplin

Wilmington
R.

Brunswick
Fort Johnson
pi
ip

SC
ss

British dominance in eastern North America

si

Pr

Charleston Acquired by Britain from France

oc
Mis

lam

Acquired by Britain from Spain

ati

GA Prior British colonies, as of 1763

on

Reserved to Indians under British rule

Lin

Savannah
er 1764
e1

Boundary aft Spanish Louisiana

76
3

Points of violence, 1763–1766

West Florida British forts seized during Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763
S t . M a r y ’s R .
1763 Towns demonstrating against the Stamp Act in 1765
Boundary in
Mobile Ft. Apalachee St. Augustine Distribution of British troops
New Orleans British posts 100–250 soldiers
Pensacola British posts 250–600 soldiers
British posts over 600 soldiers
East
Gulf of Florida
MAP 5-2 North America After the French and
Mexico
Indian War, 1763. Maps 5-1 and 5-2 show the
extraordinary changes brought about by the
French and Indian War of 1754–1763. The first
map shows the relatively limited range of control
exercised by both the British and the French
colonies in North America when the war began, as
British force—with George Washington as one of its officers—took Fort Duquesne, well as significant battles between the powers. The
second map shows the huge expanse of territory
renaming it Fort Pitt (today’s Pittsburgh) in honor of William Pitt, who had led Britain claimed by the British at the war’s end in 1763
as prime minister during the war. That same year, Teedyuscung, leader of the Delaware including the 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast,
tribe, decided that his French allies could not be trusted and sought an alliance with the large Indian reserve of land promised to the
tribes that had supported the British, the former
the English and the Iroquois. Although Teedyuscung and the Delaware did not get the French colonies in Canada and the former Spanish
Pennsylvania lands they sought, they and the Iroquois received a British promise that colonies of East and West Florida that were also in
after the war there would be no white settlement west of the Alleghenies—a promise British hands.
the British attempted to keep until the American Revolution.
In the most significant North American battle, a British army under General James
Wolfe defeated a French army led by the Marquis de Montcalm and captured Quebec,
the capital of French Canada, in September 1759. The British victory ended French
control of all of Canada.
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 133
 By the early 1760s, both Britain and France were exhausted from the fighting. Although
5.1 Britain had won major victories, its new king, George III (r. 1760–1820) wanted peace, and
in 1763, the two countries signed the Treaty of Paris to end the war. (Both this treaty and
the later treaty ending the American Revolution in 1783 were known as the Treaty of Paris.)
5.2 The world war had many outcomes. All of the governments that fought the war
emerged deeply in debt. In Europe, little land changed hands, but in other parts of the
world, the changes were dramatic. Britain made concessions to bring hostilities to an
end, but was still the biggest winner. Its dominance of India was secure, and the British
5.3
presence on the coast of Africa and in the Caribbean was enhanced. In addition, Spain
ceded Florida to England. Most significantly, the war eliminated France as a North
American power although France did regain its control of the rich sugar-producing
islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean. France ceded Canada and
the land east of the Mississippi River to the British. To compensate its Spanish allies
for their support, France also ceded its claim to the lands west of the Mississippi River,
along with New Orleans, to Spain. The French threat to New England and New York
ended. Britain now controlled most of North America east of the Mississippi River.

Pontiac and Indian Responses

Pontiac’s Rebellion For American Indians living between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic, the end
Indian uprising (1763–1766) led by Pontiac of of the French and Indian War was an unmitigated disaster. As a British official had
the Ottawas and Neolin of the Delawares. said, “to preserve the balance between us and the French is the great ruling principle
of the modern Indian politics.” For the tribes further south—including the Cherokee
and Creeks—the Spanish presence in Florida had allowed them to play
a three-way balancing act between Britain, France, and Spain. But with
the French and Spanish out of eastern North America for the time
being, the potential for bargaining virtually disappeared.
Even for the Iroquois, the cost was high. Although they were allied
with the British, Iroquois power had partly come from Britain’s need
for Iroquois allies in its competition with the French. After 1763,
the French were gone. At the war’s beginning, the Iroquois Chief
Hendrick, or Theyanoguin, had told the representatives of the British
colonies who met at Albany, New York:
Brethren—The Governor of Virginia and the Governor of
Canada, are both quarrelling.…The Governor of Virginia
and Pennsylvania have made paths thro’ our Country…they
should have first asked our consent.
Without the presence of the French in Canada, the British governors of
Virginia and Pennsylvania had little reason to ask the Iroquois for con-
sent to anything. The British general Lord Jeffrey Amherst, seeking to
save money for his government and seeing no reason now to placate the
Indians, refused to provide the gifts of ammunition and gunpowder that
various tribes had come to see as a kind of rent for the use of their lands.
The Indians considered the move to be both an insult and a fundamental
threat since the tribes’ survival depended on the gunpowder to hunt deer.
For the Indians who had sided with the French, the outlook was even
worse. Neolin, a Delaware, living on the Ohio River, preached resistance
to the “dogs clothed in red” as he called the British. His visionary mes-
sage, calling on the Indians to return to the “original state that they were
in before the white people found out their country,” sparked a wide-
ranging Indian movement to return to former Indian ways.
Pontiac, an Ottawa chief, was inspired and heeded Neolin’s call,
Hendrick, a chief of the Mohawk tribe—one of the nations of the sparking what came to be known as Pontiac’s Rebellion. In the spring
Iroquois—was a close ally of the British until killed in battle in 1755. of 1763, only months after the Treaty of Paris was signed, Pontiac

134 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
 55.1
THINKING HISTORICALLY
5.2
Pontiac’s Vision

S eeking support for an uprising, Pontiac described a vision

similar to Neolin’s in which the Master of Life or the Great
Spirit told him to return to living by “the bow and arrow” with
Thinking Critically
1. Documentary Analysis
5.3

Who did Pontiac blame for the occupation of Indian lands by

no need of “gun or powder” and to cleanse his people and their
whites, the English colonists or his own people?
land of the ways of the whites. Pontiac said:
2. Historical Interpretation
This land where ye dwell I have made for you and not for
In what ways does Pontiac’s vision represent a call for cultural
others. Whence comes it that ye permit the Whites upon
and spiritual reform? What connections might Pontiac have
your lands? Can ye not live without them? I know that
seen between such reforms and successful resistance to
those whom ye call the children of your Great Father sup-
white encroachment?
ply your needs, but if ye were not evil, as ye are, ye could
surely do without them. Ye could live as ye did live before
knowing them—before those whom ye call your brothers
had come upon your lands.

convened a meeting of Ottawa, Chippewa, Pottawatomi, and Wyandot people near

Detroit. Pontiac told his listeners of his vision in which he had been promised that, if they
would cleanse themselves of the ways of the whites, they would see their lands and old
powers restored. He insisted, “It is important for us, my brothers, that we exterminate
from our lands this nation which seeks only to destroy us.”
Pontiac and his followers attacked British forts across the region. The British held
Detroit and Fort Pitt, but many other forts surrendered to the Indians: Fort Miamis, near
Fort Wayne, Indiana; Fort Ouiatenon, near Lafayette, Indiana; Fort Michilimackinac on
the Great Lakes; and most of the old French posts in Indiana and Ohio. Most of the Ohio
country was again in Indian hands. The British were caught off guard but fought back.
The English commander, Jeffrey Amherst, ordered his troops to put “every Indian
in your Power to Death.” His troops won several battles. Amherst also encouraged
the distribution of smallpox-infected blankets to Indians, a move that rapidly spread
the disease. In October, Pontiac received a letter from the French telling him that the
French were not going to come to his aid. On receiving this news, Pontiac initiated a
peace process. He met with the British authorities in Oswego, New York, in July 1766
and signed a treaty of peace. Three years later, he was murdered, probably by other
Indians who resented both the deaths his rebellion had caused and his relatively quick
surrender that meant the deaths were in vain.

The Proclamation Line of 1763

Soon after the long French and Indian War, the new British monarch King George III
and his first minister George Grenville tried to ensure peace in North America. They
meant to honor the commitments they had made in 1758 to the Delaware and Iroquois
tribes and protect them from white settlement. Already embroiled in Pontiac’s con-
flict, which largely involved formerly French territories, they did not want other rebel-
lions, and they were wary that land-hungry settlers would quickly begin to expand
into Indian-dominated areas. In October 1763, the king issued a proclamation that
there should be no British settlement west of the crest of the Appalachian Mountains
and that Indian rights to western lands would be protected forever. The proclama-
tion also directed any colonists who had already settled in these lands “forthwith to
remove themselves from such Settlements.” For many of the tribes who lived on the
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 135
 The Proclamation Line western slopes of the mountains and beyond, the Proclamation Line fulfilled what
Royal proclamation of 1763 designed to they believed they had been promised.
5.1
protect Indian tribes by setting a boundary The Grenville administration took other steps to keep peace with the Indians. They
at the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains
beyond which no western white settlement replaced Amherst with the more conciliatory General Thomas Gage, who immediately
5.2 was to take place. resumed negotiations and gift giving with the tribes. The Grenville administration also
strengthened the authority of the superintendents of Indian affairs, who had sought
accommodations with the tribes since the 1750s.
The Proclamation Line slowed white settlement into western Pennsylvania, Ohio,
5.3
and what would become Kentucky. But it also infuriated the British colonists—both
land-hungry farmers and rich speculators—and did far too little to protect the Indians.
Grenville and Parliament were too far away, and despite the British military outposts,
their efforts to enforce the line were ineffectual, which had fateful consequences in the
next decade.

The Paxton Boys and Rural White Responses

In the town of Paxton in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, a group of farmers decided
that the way to end warfare between whites and Indians on the frontier was to get rid of
all Indians, whether they were allied with the British or the French. Calling themselves
the Paxton Boys or the Hickory Boys, these frontier vigilantes said:
We have long been convinced from sufficient evidence that the Indians that
lived as independent commonwealths among us or near our borders were our
most dangerous enemies.
In December 1763, the Paxton Boys attacked a Delaware village, killed six people, and
burned the town. Then they killed 14 Indian survivors who were in protective custody
in the town of Lancaster. They began a march to Philadelphia to find other Indians,
especially Delawares, who had taken refuge there. Before the mob got to Philadelphia,
Benjamin Franklin and a delegation of the colony’s leading citizens negotiated an
end to the rebellion, but the hatred of Indians would haunt the inhabitants of North
America for a long time to come. After 1763, many white residents of British North
America began to lump all American Indians together as an enemy race, even though
their parents and grandparents had viewed different tribes quite separately, depending
on a tribe’s relationship to the British cause. Like many earlier wars, the fighting in the
French and Indian War was between the British and the Iroquois allies on one side
and the French and the Ojibwa, Ottawa, Shawnee, Wyandot, and other tribes allied
with them. Soon after the war, the lines came to be seen as much more racial, with all
whites allied against virtually all Indians. This change in attitudes had far-reaching
consequences for the residents of North America.

Threats of New Taxes

Relations between the British colonists and the American Indians were not the only
concern of British authorities after 1763. Victory in the war had virtually drained the
kingdom’s treasury. Britain’s national debt was double what it had been when the war
began. In 1764, George Grenville and the majority in Parliament asked Britain’s North
American colonists to pay what the authorities in London thought was a fair share of
the war’s cost. Their argument was that the war had protected colonists far more than
it had anyone living in Britain. What seemed just and equitable in London, however,
was seen quite differently in the colonies. These differences on who should bear the
cost of the war would soon have significant consequences.

Quick Review What expectations and concerns did Indians come to have regarding the
5.1
British in the aftermath of the war of 1756–1763? What expectations and concerns were
colonists beginning to have regarding Native Americans? Regarding the British government?
How were the various expectations and concerns in conflict?

136 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
“THE REVOLUTION WAS IN THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE”
5.1
5.2 Explain why, in the 15 years before the Revolutionary War began, support for the patriot
cause spread so quickly among many different groups of North Americans who opposed
Britain for different reasons.
5.2
Long after the Revolution was over, former president John Adams wrote to another
former president, Thomas Jefferson, describing the Revolutionary War that began in
1775 as “only an effect and consequence.” According to Adams, “The Revolution was 5.3
in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of
fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.” He was right. For many
British North Americans, a revolutionary change did indeed take place in their minds
between 1760 and 1775, and it took place for many different reasons.
While people like Adams and Jefferson and many of their peers moved from being
loyal British subjects to revolutionary advocates of independence in those years, others
did not. People such as Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, William Franklin
(Benjamin’s son), and perhaps a fifth of the white colonists remained Loyalists— Loyalists
Americans who wanted to maintain loyal ties to Great Britain and who opposed the The name given to those in the colonies—
American Revolution. For reasons of their own, a majority of African slaves were perhaps one-fifth to one-third of the total
population—who supported the British and
probably also Loyalists. The Loyalists lived through the same momentous changes as opposed American independence.
those who embraced the revolutionary cause, but they came to different conclusions.
Still other colonists remained neutral throughout the struggle, focusing on personal
matters or simply not caring who ultimately governed them.
In addition, people in the colonies came to their own differing conclusions at
varying times. Sailors and shop owners in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia as
well as backwoods farmers in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas
were sometimes much more ready for revolution, much sooner, than their better-
known leaders.
For African slaves, the growing spirit of revolution held both potential and danger.
Some slaves and free blacks saw in the revolutionary rhetoric the possibility of their
own freedom. In contrast, other African-Americans saw the British government as a
potential protector and even liberator against slave owners who embraced the patriot
cause. Potential for freedom was not a guarantee in any scenario, however.
The Iroquois, Cherokee, and other Indian tribes knew that frontier whites had
little use for the king’s ban on white settlement and, if freed from British authority,
would stream west. As the possibility of expanded settlement fueled revolutionary
fervor among frontier whites, it also fed fears among Indians, most of whom sided
with the British after 1776.
In effect, during the 15 fateful years that John Adams described above, many Watch on MyHistoryLab
different groups of people with wide-ranging hopes and fears considered the possibility Video The American Revolution
of an American Revolution and arrived at different conclusions. Each of these groups as Different Americans Saw It
fought their own revolutions, sometimes in alliance with each other, sometimes acting
at cross-purposes. Far from being clear, the goals and tactics of the revolutionaries
were an ever-changing patchwork as different groups fought for their own purposes
and made shifting alliances.

Transition from the “Rights of Man” to Revolt

Many residents of the British colonies had grown up reading John Locke’s defense
of Britain’s Glorious Revolution of 1689. Long before tensions between the colonies
and the government in London reached a crisis, colonists believed, as Locke said,
that the people always retained “a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative”
authority when they wanted to. Throughout the 1770s, Locke’s ideas guided some of
the Revolution’s most articulate advocates such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and
Benjamin Franklin as well as backwoods rebels like Ethan Allen, a man of modest

Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 137

 education who was the leader of Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys. Using Locke’s
5.1 arguments in their speeches and lawsuits, they taunted royal governors, and ultimately,
they used Locke’s ideas to justify armed resistance.
Revolutionary leaders also read and cited French philosophers—Voltaire,
5.2 Rousseau, and Montesquieu—and authors from ancient Greece and Rome, all
of whom advocated a commitment to liberty and the need to overthrow unjust
authorities. Leaders of the patriot cause became convinced that England represented
republicanism the evils of empire while the colonists represented the virtues of republicanism, which
5.3
A complex, changing body of ideas, values, and supported a broad distribution of power to people, enabling them to determine how
assumptions that held that self-government and by whom they would be governed.
by the citizens of a country, or their representa-
tives, provided a more reliable foundation for Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, those who argued for independence and
the good society and individual freedom than those who argued to maintain the ties between Britain and the American colonies, all
rule by kings or any other distant elite. read the same literature. Nearly all of them believed that George III ruled only by the
consent of Parliament, not from any sort of divine right. For a hundred years before
the American Revolution, British subjects in the old and new worlds constituted a
community of people who valued “the rights of Englishmen” and distrusted efforts to
undermine those rights. When in 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote that the colonies had
a right to independence because it was a self-evident truth that “all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” he was
reflecting a way of thinking that was familiar in America and Britain.
Those who shared common ideas about rights, liberty, and freedom extended
beyond just residents of Britain and North America. The world that was at war in the
1750s and 1760s became a world involved in revolution in the 1770s and 1780s and
beyond. Although the government of the King Louis XVI of France would play an
essential role in the American victory, Louis XVI himself would lose his throne and
his head to a French revolution within the next decade. The French and American
Revolutions led to further revolutionary efforts across much of Europe as people in
Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, and Italy attempted their own revolutions. Future
president James Madison wrote in 1792 that “America has set the example and France
has followed it, of charters of power granted by liberty.”
Madison did not, however, mention another revolution that was much closer to
the United States than those in Europe. In 1791, slaves in the French colony of Saint
Domingue (modern Haiti) rebelled. Saint Domingue was one of the richest and most
oppressive slave systems in the world, where some 500,000 African slaves grew sugar
and coffee that made the 40,000 French owners very rich. A free black, Toussaint
L’Overture—who quoted the same philosophers as North American revolutionaries—
led the rebels in Haiti to win a series of victories. L’Overture himself was captured and
died in France, but a new free Republic of Haiti was proclaimed in 1804. The rebellion
was the most successful slave revolt in history and another in a long line of revolutions
against distant authorities.
In addition, not long after the American Revolution, between 1810 and 1826,
most of Latin America expelled its Spanish and Portuguese colonial masters. Simón
Bolívar led revolutionary movements in his native Venezuela and helped establish the
Republics of Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. His 1812 Manifesto of Cartagena
expressed the same philosophical ideas as those of his counterparts in North America
and Europe. The American Revolution, then, was part of a worldwide revolution
against distant authorities and old ideas, and it was based on a new philosophical
understanding of “the rights of man” and the way the world should be organized.

The Accompanying Revolution in Religion

In 1740, a Presbyterian minister, Gilbert Tennent, one of the leaders of the Great
Awakening (see Chapter 4), preached a sermon on “The Danger of an Unconverted
Ministry” in churches throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Tennent’s sermon,
with its plea to test the personal faith of ministers, was a direct challenge to the leaders
138 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
of the major Protestant denominations—Presbyterian, Congregational, and Episcopal.
As a result of the Great Awakening, church members claimed permission—indeed, the 5.1
responsibility—to judge their ministers. It was not a great leap for citizens to claim the
same permission, and responsibility, for judging those in civil authority.
One visiting revivalist asserted that Patrick Henry, rector of the Episcopal church Read on MyHistoryLab 5.2
in Hanover, Virginia (and uncle to the patriot leader Patrick Henry), was a “stranger Document Jonathan
to true religion.” Reverend Henry, in return, demanded that Virginia’s governor Boucher, An Anglican
Minister Denounces the
stop these “strolling preachers” who were, in his view, “a set of incendiaries, enemies
American Rebels, 1775 5.3
not only to the Established Church, but also common disturbers of the peace.” In a
way, Henry was right. The Great Awakening disturbed the peace, split churches, and
undermined all authorities.

Seaport Radicalism—From the Stamp Act to the Boston Massacre

and Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party of 1773 was probably the most famous act of resistance in Watch on MyHistoryLab
America before the Revolution, but it was far from the first. Between 1747 and 1774, Video The Boston Tea Party
dockworkers, sailors, and townspeople drove the leading British officials—customs
officials, navy officers, and even governors—away from the docks and out of Boston
five times. Similar acts of rebellion took place from New York to the Carolinas.
Impressment had been British navy policy for centuries and, since the 1690s, had Impressment
been a source of riots in colonial ports. When a warship was short of sailors, which The British policy of forcibly enlisting sailors
happened often due to high rates of death and desertion, the captain had the authority into the British navy against their will. It had
long been a source of resentment toward the
to impress (or kidnap) likely sailors from merchant ships or ports and sign them up British government in port towns.
for naval service. Commercial sailors were paid higher wages than those in the navy
and often had better working conditions, so impressments were, as one senior British
naval officer noted, a source of “Hatred for the King’s Service . . . [and] a Spirit of
Rebellion,” for many who lived along the waterfront.
In November 1747, British Commodore Charles Knowles sent sailors in search of
new recruits while his ship was in Boston Harbor. They impressed 46 men into service.
A rebellious crowd responded, taking some of Knowles’s officers hostage and chasing
the royal governor out of town. A successful brewer, Samuel Adams, defended the riot-
ers as an “Assembly of People drawn together upon no other Design than to defend
themselves and repel the Assaults of a Press-Gang.” He insisted that they “had a natural
right” to do so. Perhaps his cousin, John Adams, should have considered an earlier
date than 1760 for the start of revolutionary thinking in the colonies.
British actions in the 1760s and 1770s escalated tensions in North American
cities. The British government desperately needed to pay off the debt from the French
and Indian War and attempted to do so, in part, by imposing new taxes. With each
attempt—the Sugar and Currency Acts of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend
duties of 1767, and the Tea Act of 1773—colonial resistance grew. In a spiraling series
of encounters, Parliament sought to raise funds, backed off in the face of colonial resis-
tance, and then enacted new “get tough” policies that also backfired (see Table 5-1).
The impact of the persistent but failed efforts to raise taxes fueled colonial resistance
and the sense that resistance was effective. The taxes seemed fair only to those in
Britain who were in power. The colonists saw each tax as a new attack on their liberty
and each British effort at compromise as a sign of weakness.
The Sugar Act of 1764, the first tax, and the Currency Act of 1764 pro-
voked limited but spirited resistance. The tax on sugar included rum and molas-
ses, both made from sugar. The Currency Act prohibited colonies from issuing
their own paper money as legal tender for either public debts, including paying
taxes, or private debts, including paying merchants for goods made in Britain. In
response, merchants and artisans in New York and Boston joined in a nonimporta-
tion movement in 1764 that was the beginning of a growing refusal to buy or use
anything manufactured in Britain.
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 139
 TABLE 5-1 Parliamentary Acts that Fueled Colonial Resistance
5.1
Name of Act Description
The Sugar Act of 1764 Increased duties and strengthened collection of customs on rum and molasses, which particularly affected
5.2 merchants and importers
The Currency Act of 1764 Prohibited the colonies from issuing their own paper money as legal tender for public or private debts
to Britain
The Stamp Act of 1765 Taxed all legal and commercial documents, creating an immediate hardship for business leaders and
5.3 building resentment in many ports where people depended on those businesses for jobs
The Declaratory Act of 1766 Repealed the Stamp Act but said Parliament could legislate for the colonies in “all cases Whatsoever”
The Revenue Act of 1766 Restricted trade in sugar, which helped British and Caribbean merchants at the expense of North American
merchants
The second Revenue Act of 1767 Placed new duties on paper, lead, paint, glass, and tea. All but the tax on tea were repealed in
(also known as the Townshend 1770—the same day as the Boston Massacre.
duties after Charles Townshend,
chancellor of the Exchequer)
The Tea Act of 1773 Allowed the British East India Company to ship tea to the colonies without having to pay normally
required duties, making it cheaper than most smuggled tea. The Townshend tea tax would still apply once
it reached the colonies. The Act supported the East India Company, almost bankrupt because so many
customers were purchasing cheaper, smuggled tea from elsewhere.
The “Intolerable Acts” of 1774 Parliament’s response to the tea riots; they closed the port of Boston, expanded the royal governor’s
authority, shifted control of the Ohio River country to the British governor in Quebec (the Quebec Act),
and allowed British troops to use any uninhabited building as a barracks, without the owner’s authorization
(the Quartering Act).

Read on MyHistoryLab A year later, resistance to the Stamp Act of 1765 was stronger, and it united colonists
Document Patrick Henry, of many social classes. The act required legal and commercial documents, including
Give Me Liberty or Give Me magazines, newspapers, and playing cards to be printed on special paper showing an
Death, 1775
official stamp. Payment for the stamped paper had to be in British currency. In the
spring of 1765, Patrick Henry asked Virginia’s legislature, the House of Burgesses, to
pass resolutions that came to be known as the Virginia Resolves opposing the tax.
Middling and upper-class New Yorkers—including lawyers and merchants who would
have had to pay the highest taxes if the law was enforced—began writing articles against
the tax in the city’s many newspapers, which circulated widely. Some also formed a
Sons of Liberty new secret organization, the Sons of Liberty, which sent delegates to all the colonies
Secret organizations in the colonies formed to create a kind of underground resistance to the tax—a tax they described as a sign
to oppose the Stamp Act. From 1765 until of British tyranny. Nine colonies sent delegates to a gathering known as the Stamp Act
independence, members spoke, wrote, and
took direct action against British measures Congress in New York City in October 1765. There they issued a Declaration of Rights
especially the Stamp Tax and the tax on tea. and Grievances, which said that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies, and they
petitioned for a repeal of the Stamp and Sugar Acts.
More important than the petition was the fact that leaders of the growing resistance
movement met together and began to sense their unity. As one of the organizers of the
congress said, “There ought to be no New England men, no New Yorker, etc. known on
the Continent, but all of us Americans.” This appeal to unity was a new sentiment in
colonies that had, up until now, jealously guarded their independence from each other.
Britain’s parliamentary action had provoked this increasing unity.
While colonial leaders met and wrote petitions, some of the strongest resistance
to the stamp tax developed in the working-class taverns where laborers and sailors
gathered. Poor people had little reason to actually pay the tax because they did not
use many legal documents or paper products that would require the stamped paper,
but the tax was a symbol of British arrogance and threatened to slow the colonial
economy, which could put sailors and laboring people out of work. To the poor, the
haughty British authorities were becoming intolerable.
When Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden placed the embossing stamps
in Fort George—at the tip of Manhattan—until the new tax went into effect on
November 1, 1765, public protests mounted into what came to be known as the
New York Stamp Act Riot. New York merchants and groups like the Sons of Liberty
140 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
agreed not to import any British goods while the Stamp Act was in force. Read on MyHistoryLab
In taverns across the city, angry citizens shared their discontent with the Document Benjamin Franklin, Testimony 5.1
British. On the evening of November 1, a crowd paraded around the against the Stamp Act, 1776
city with torches as well as effigies of the lieutenant governor and the
devil. They dared the British troops to fire on them and burned Colden’s 5.2
coach. Next the crowd broke into the home of Major James of the Royal
Artillery, drank his considerable supply of liquor, and burned the house.
Calling themselves the Sons of Neptune to distinguish themselves from
5.3
the more middle class Sons of Liberty, the crowd resisted efforts to end
the violence. Months later, when news reached New York in May 1766
that the Stamp Act had been repealed, celebrating crowds fired guns,
broke windows, and erected a “liberty pole” to taunt British authorities.
Similar riots by the “lower sorts” took place in other colonial cit-
ies. In Boston, a mob ransacked the governors home, and in Annapolis,
Maryland, a crowd burned the stamp distributor’s warehouse and forced
him to flee the colony. In Wilmington, North Carolina, a mocking,
angry crowd paraded the stamp collector through the streets. And in
Charleston, South Carolina, a crowd of workers and seamen burned effi-
gies of the stamp distributor.
In response to the unrest, British authorities under the new prime
minister the Marquess of Rockingham decided to repeal the Stamp and
Sugar taxes but also to show force. In 1766, while repealing the taxes,
Parliament also voted the Declatory Act, which claimed its right to tax and
regulate the colonies “in all cases Whatsoever.” In addition, Parliament
passed the Revenue Act of 1766, restricting trade in sugar, which helped
British and Caribbean merchants at the expense of colonial merchants.
A year later, Charles Townshend, chancellor of the Exchequer
(treasurer) in a new British government, imposed new taxes on lead,
paint, paper, and tea, known as the second Revenue Act of 1767 (also
known as the Townshend duties of 1767). The new British government This picture, titled “The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man,” shows
many forms of resistance to British taxes that developed, including the
was desperate to find a way to pay off the war debt but also wanted to mob actions that sometimes coated an offending tax collector with
assert Parliament’s authority over the colonies. In particular, Parliament tar and feathers or forced him to drink boiling tea. In the background,
wanted to curtail smuggling by some of the most prosperous colonial a Liberty Tree—symbol of freedom—sports a hangman’s noose, and
merchants and to control the mobs that kept rioting in Boston and colonists dump tea off a ship.
New York. In September 1768, the warships of the Royal Navy arrived in Boston,
and British troops marched through town in a show of the government’s authority.
According to Paul Revere, the troops “Formed and Marched with insolent Parade,
Drums beating, Fifes playing, and Colours flying, up King Street.” The presence of so
many troops created a sense of siege in Boston.
A year and a half later, British soldiers were still stationed in Boston, creating
constant tensions with residents who resented their presence. One source of the ten-
sion was the fact that off-duty soldiers were allowed to work on their own part-time,
increasing competition with colonists for jobs by accepting lower wages. On the eve-
ning of March 5, 1770, an angry crowd began to throw snowballs at British soldiers.
They taunted the lone British sentry at the State House, Private Hugh White. As the
crowd around White grew, more people joined in the taunting or watched from the
sidelines. John Adams called the crowd “a motley rabble,” but they had strong support
in a city tired of the presence of so many soldiers.
British Captain Thomas Preston sent more soldiers to support White while the
crowd grew to 300 or 400. Preston asked the crowd to disperse, assuring them that the
soldiers would not fire since he himself was standing directly in front of them. However,
someone threw something that knocked one of the soldiers down, and some of the
soldiers started firing, even though no one heard Preston give any orders. Three men
were killed—including a seaman, Crispus Attucks, a former slave who was part African
and part American Indian and who would be celebrated as the first man and first black
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 141
 Boston Massacre person to die in the Revolution. Two more later died of their wounds. The Boston
After months of increasing friction between Massacre, as colonists called it, fueled anger at the British authorities. To avoid further
5.1
townspeople and the British troops stationed confrontation, the Royal Governor pulled the troops out of Boston. His action also left
in the city, on March 5, 1770, British troops
fired on American civilians in Boston who most of the town in the hands of an increasingly anti-British population.
5.2 were throwing projectiles at them, killing five Some of the British troops involved were accused of murder. John Adams defended
and stirring even greater hatred toward the them in a subsequent trial (in which they were found not guilty). Later, Adams said that
British army. his defense of the soldiers, though highly unpopular, was, “one of the most gallant, gen-
erous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life.” Nevertheless, Adams also said
5.3 Read on MyHistoryLab that there was “no Reason why the Town should not call the Action of that
Document Boston Gazette, Description
of the Boston Massacre, 1770 Night a Massacre.” Paul Revere described the event as a deliberate military
attack on a peaceful crowd. Sam Adams created a “committee of corre-
spondence” to encourage resistance in other colonies. With such rhetoric,
many Bostonians would likely never again be loyal British subjects.
In 1773, Britain decided to maintain the tax on tea, but repeal the other
Townshend duties. The Tea Act of 1773 not only asserted Parliament’s
authority to levy whatever taxes it wished but also attempted to protect the
almost-bankrupt British East India Company, which was struggling because
customers were purchasing cheaper, smuggled tea elsewhere. Under the act,
the East India Company could ship large quantities of tea to the colonies
without paying required duties, making the tea cheaper for the colonists,
even with the Townshend tea tax. The plan was to encourage colonists to
buy the taxed British East India Company tea instead of smuggled teas.
Given the tension and anger in Boston, the city’s response could easily
have been predicted. City residents had no intention of paying that tax, even
on discounted tea. In New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, patriotic
groups, often led by the Sons of Liberty, convinced merchants not to allow
the tea to land from the British ships. “No taxation without representation,”
became the rallying cry from colonists who were fed up with having no say
in matters that affected them.
In November 1773, a shipment of British tea arrived in Boston on the
ship Dartmouth. Even before it arrived, crowds had forced the tea merchants
to barricade themselves in their warehouse. Once the Dartmouth appeared, a
In this print, designed to fuel hostility toward the British more than crowd forced the ship to move to Griffin’s Wharf where dockworkers, sailors,
provide an accurate record, Paul Revere showed the British soldiers— and merchants, not the British authorities, controlled the dock. The customs
more organized than they actually were—firing on a helpless crowd. commissioners fled rather than risk getting tarred and feathered, an increas-
ingly popular punishment by patriotic crowds for those who supported royal authority.
Governor Thomas Hutchinson would not let the Dartmouth sail back to England, and the
crowd would not let the tea be unloaded. The stand-off lasted into December.
On December 16, angry citizens met at the Old South Meeting House. When the
governor would not back down, Samuel Adams said, “This meeting can do nothing
more to save the country.” The crowd’s response—probably well rehearsed—was a series
of faked Indian war whoops, a shout of “Boston harbor a tea-pot tonight,” and a call to
gather at Griffin’s Wharf. As thousands watched from the shore, men, slightly disguised
as Mohawks, boarded the Dartmouth and dumped the tea into Boston Harbor.
The Boston Tea Party galvanized anti-British sentiment in other colonies, and the
city was seen as the incubator of revolutionary activity long before the next shots were
fired. In response to the incident, the British closed the port of Boston to all shipping,
creating a financial crisis that led to further anger and unrest among not only dock-
workers but also the merchant elites who depended on the port for their wealth.
Daughters of Liberty
Organized as a women’s response to the Sons
Women, too, became increasingly involved in leading their own protests. In response
of Liberty, the Daughters opposed British to the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, small groups of women who were determined to boycott
measures, avoided British taxed tea, spun British goods in protest began calling themselves the Daughters of Liberty. New England
their own yarn, and wove their own cloth to women organized spinning bees to make their own cloth so they could avoid buying
avoid purchasing British goods.
English textiles. Among the elite and working people, wearing homespun clothing

142 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
became a symbol of loyalty to the patriot cause. Their efforts continued to
strengthen and spread, especially with the strong support they got from 5.1
newspapers. In 1774, 51 women in Edenton, North Carolina, promised not
to consume English goods, including tea, and other women organized sim-
ilar boycotts elsewhere. When war broke out after 1775 and many goods 5.2
became scarce, women protested when colonial merchants hoarded goods
or demanded higher prices. In 1777, women in Poughkeepsie, New York,
broke into the house of a merchant they thought was hoarding goods. As
5.3
the war continued, women led food riots throughout the colonies.

Revolts in the Back Country

Rural people on the frontier from New York to the Carolinas were also
taking matters into their own hands, but for different reasons. Back-
country Virginians had rebelled in various ways against royal authority
since Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, and in all of the colonies, major splits
reflected gaps between coastal areas that had more access to, and more
representation in, colonial governments than rural inland settlements.
In the mid-1760s, feeling ignored and cheated by what they saw as
distant and corrupt coastal authorities, farmers in the western regions of
North and South Carolina created what they called the Regulator move-
ment. In South Carolina, Regulators attacked when gangs of outlaws
stole from isolated farms. The governor eventually agreed to create cir- A British publication ridiculed American women’s efforts to boycott
tea, but the hostility shown in the cartoon reflects the degree to
cuit courts in the back country, which diminished the violence. In North which women’s protests were effective.
Carolina, the movement protested corrupt practices of sheriffs and court
officials who forced settlers to pay illegally high taxes and legal fees. Regulators rallied
settlers, who refused to pay the taxes, closed the courts, and attacked officials. The
governor sent in state militia from the coastal areas, and in their largest encounter
with the Regulators, 29 people were killed and 150 wounded.
Throughout the colonies, however, the most contentious issue for inland
communities was relationships with Indian tribes. Inland people complained that
those on the coast used inland settlers as a buffer from the Indians. In Pennsylvania,
there were also ethnic splits between the regions. Pennsylvania’s mostly English
Quaker elite had settled around Philadelphia. As pacifists, they tried to maintain
peaceful relations with the Indians. But between the Quakers and the Indians was
a zone inhabited by Scots-Irish and Germans who did not share the pacifism of the
Quakers and who found themselves much closer to potential Indian hostility.
The rapid growth of the white population exacerbated the conflicts between frontier
whites and Indians. The ever-increasing pressure for more land, a lot more land, could
be satisfied only by white movement into areas that belonged to Indian tribes. As whites
encroached, attacks by Indians increased. Settlers wanted, and expected, the British to
protect them. But after 1763, King George’s Proclamation Line halted further movement
west—at least legally. The British-imposed barrier caused intense anger on the frontier.
British agents sought to not only relieve the pressure among land-hungry white
settlers but also honor the king’s commitment to the Indians. A 1768 treaty allowed
white settlement in present-day West Virginia and Kentucky. A similar treaty opened
parts of western Pennsylvania and New York to white settlement. But colonists wanted
much more land than these treaties gave them and were prepared to fight to get it—
whether with Indian tribes or with the king’s representatives.
Violence extended all along the lines of settlement. A German immigrant,
Frederick Stump, was arrested for murdering 10 Indians in western Pennsylvania in
1768 and then freed from jail by a white mob. In Virginia, vigilantes who called them-
selves the Augusta Boys killed Cherokees.
General Thomas Gage, the senior British commander in North America, found the
situation intolerable. He complained to London that, “all the people of the frontiers

Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 143

 from Pennsylvania to Virginia inclusive, openly avow, that they never find a man guilty
5.1 of murder, for killing an Indian.” In response to the frontier resistance, Parliament
passed the Quebec Act of 1774, assigning all lands north and west of the Ohio River
to the British-controlled Province of Quebec. That action effectively took Indian policy
5.2 out of the hands of frontier agitators or royal governors along the coast. The Quebec
Act also recognized the legal rights of the Catholic Church, which deeply offended the
overwhelmingly Protestant Americans. Colonists saw the Quebec Act as one of what
they called the Intolerable Acts, a series of laws that included the act that closed the port
5.3
of Boston until the price of the tea and the tax on it was paid, a revision of the colonial
charter of Massachusetts, and a Quartering Act that allowed governors to place troops in
any uninhabited building. Patriots insisted that because Parliament was enacting these
First Continental Congress laws with no representation from colonists, Britain was violating the rights of English
Meeting of delegates from most of the subjects in North America. Parliament’s actions, including closing the port of Boston
colonies held in Philadelphia in 1774 and challenging frontier farmers, were unintentionally provoking a common sense of
in response to the British efforts to tax
grievance among people who had previously been quite separate in their complaints.
the colonies.

Growing Unity in the Colonies—The First Continental Congress

Somerset Decision
While people began to organize and challenge British authorities from Virginia to
A 1772 ruling by Britain’s Lord Chief Justice Massachusetts, leaders of the rebellion in Massachusetts asked the other colonies to join
in the case of James Somerset that set him it in united action against what they saw as British tyranny. All of them except Georgia—
free and essentially declared slavery illegal in which was fighting Creek Indians and wanted Britain’s support—sent delegates to
England, though not in British colonies. Philadelphia in September 1774 to what became known as the First Continental Congress.
Most of the delegates who came to Philadelphia agreed that Parliament had no right
to tax the colonies without their consent. The delegates also sought unified opposition
Read on MyHistoryLab to the British treatment of Boston. However, few were ready for a break with Britain.
Document Phillis Wheatley, The Virginians wanted to continue to export tobacco, and South Carolina depended on
Poems on Various Subjects, the export of rice and indigo. Finding common ground was not easy. But the delegates
Religious, and Moral, 1772 did gain experience working together, even when they argued—which they did a lot.
There was little talk of war or independence at the 1774 gathering. But before they
adjourned on October 26, the delegates declared that their rights were based on the
laws of nature, the British constitution, and the colonial charters, and were not to be
trifled with. They also agreed to a ban on British imports to take effect in December
1774, a ban on exports that would take effect in September 1775 (after the tobacco
and rice crops were safely on their way to Britain), and—for symbolic reasons—an
immediate ban on the consumption of tea from the East India Company. They agreed
to meet again in May 1775 if relations with Britain did not improve.

Talk of Freedom for Slaves

For African slaves in British North America, the most revolutionary moment of the
1700s took place in London in July 1772. An American slave named James Somerset
had been taken from Virginia to England as a personal servant by his master Charles
Stewart. In London, Somerset became friends with free blacks and white abolitionists.
In October 1771, he ran away. He was caught and put on a ship bound for Jamaica. But
Somerset’s white friends petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, requiring that Somerset
be brought before a judge to determine whether he was imprisoned lawfully. They insisted
that he was held against his will—which, like all slaves, he certainly was. Eventually, the
Lord Chief Justice ruled that since Parliament had never legalized slavery in England
itself, as opposed to the English colonies, Somerset had to be freed because “the state of
Phillis Wheatley lived an unusual life for an African
slave. Before she was given her freedom, she was slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reason, moral or
given considerable opportunity to learn and to political; but only by positive law.” This decision basically ended slavery in England itself.
write by the Wheatley family that claimed her. The Somerset decision caused a considerable stir in the colonies and in Britain.
Her poems reflected the yearning for freedom
that all colonists felt, but specifically the hopes of In September 1773, the Virginia Gazette noted that, as news of the decision spread,
enslaved Africans among them. running away to England was “a notion now too prevalent among the Negroes, greatly

144 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
 5.1
American Voices
Phillis Wheatley, Poem to the Earl of Dartmouth, 1773
5.2

P hillis Wheatley was born in West Africa in 1753. She was cap-
tured at age seven or eight and brought to Boston as a slave
where she was purchased by John and Susanna Wheatley, who pro-
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
5.3
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
vided her with a good education. The young Phillis was moved by
What pangs excruciating must molest,
English poets, Christianity, and the talk of democracy that she heard
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
in upper-class Boston in the 1760s and 1770s—which she believed
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
had to be applied to slaves as well as free people. In response, she
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d;
wrote poems about religion, slavery, and freedom, including this
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
one titled, “To The Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America, &c.”. She
was allowed to travel to London to see some of her poems published Source: Phillis Wheatley, “To The Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth,
in 1773 and was later freed on the eve of the American Revolution. His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North America, &c,” in Herb Boyd, editor,
Autobiography of a People (New York: Anchor Books, 2001, pp. 29–30.)
She died in 1784.
No more, America, in mournful strain Thinking Critically
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, 1. Documentary Analysis
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, How did Wheatley connect her personal experiences to the
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand revolutionary cause?
Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.
2. Historical Interpretation
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, What light does this poem shed on Wheatley’s hopes for the
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, coming revolution? How might her vision of revolution have
Whence flow these wishes for the common good, differed from that of her white Bostonian neighbors?

to the vexation and prejudice of their masters.”

masters ” Benjamin Franklin
Franklin, who was living in
London, had once owned slaves, but now, like many others, he was turning against the
institution, calling it “this pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men.”
In Massachusetts, after successfully defending a slave in a trial to obtain his freedom
in the Nantucket Court of Common Pleas, John Adams said, “I never knew a jury by a
verdict to determine a negro to be a slave. They always found him free.”
Legal challenges were not the main ways in which slaves sought freedom before
and during the American Revolution, however. Slaves heard about the protests of the
Stamp Act and saw how effective mob action was. Some 107 slaves ran away from
a plantation near Charleston to join other runaways who were creating their own
communities in hard-to-penetrate swamps.
Whites on both sides of the Atlantic noted the absurdity of colonists protesting
their own perceived enslavement by Parliament while, as one wrote, those same
colonists enslaved “thousands of tens of thousands of their fellow creatures!” The most
consistent voice for abolition in the 1760s and 1770s came from the Quakers, who
made it mandatory for members of their denomination to free their slaves or allow
them to purchase their freedom. Others such as Virginia’s Arthur Lee—from a great
slaveholding family in the colony—wrote that “freedom is unquestionably the birth-
right of all mankind, of Africans as well as Europeans.” In the 1700s, the slave trade
was still a profitable institution. While some whites wrote anti-slavery letters and pam-
phlets, 7,000 slaves were imported into Charleston in 1765. The debate around slavery
was as heated as the debate around British rule, and no one living through these years
could fail to notice the contradiction of fighting for liberty and enforcing slavery.

Quick Review Did Americans’ revolutionary ideas contradict their attitudes towards
5.2 Indians and slaves? To answer this question, consider the time and context in which the
American Revolution took place.
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 145
 THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE
5.1
5.3 Explain how political and military strategy, support for the patriot cause, and American
alliances with France and Spain led to an American victory in the war for independence.

5.2 Read on MyHistoryLab As talk of rebellion spread in 1774, not long after the Boston Tea Party, John Adams
Document When Historians overheard rural farmers discussing the events in Boston. One insisted, “If parliament
Disagree: Was the American can take away Mr. Hancock’s wharf and Mr. Rowe’s wharf, they can take away your
Revolution Radical or
5.3 Conservative? For Whom?
barn and my house.” Adams realized that if isolated farmers were agreeing with a mob
in Boston, revolution was possible. Indeed, battles would soon break out in Lexington
and in Concord, starting the American Revolution. At the same time, word was quickly
spreading among Africans regarding the disputes about slavery. They were poised to
take action to support either the colonists or the British—whichever side would benefit
them the most. Beginning in 1775, what had been occasional mob actions turned into
outright warfare as increasingly well-disciplined colonial militia fought against the
British army. While some colonial leaders met in Congress and declared independence
in 1776, other colonists, later aided by French forces, fought a long and bitter series of
battles that won the actual independence that had been declared.

From Lexington and Concord to Bunker Hill—Revolt Becomes War

General Thomas Gage also understood the growing rebellion. When Parliament passed
the Intolerable Acts, Gage was charged with moving British troops back into Boston
and allowing no trade until Massachusetts submitted to the crown (see Map 5-3).
Gage recommended to London that efforts be made to conciliate the colonists. But
the leaders in Parliament were in no mood for conciliation, and Gage received orders
to restore order at all costs. As he moved his troops, Gage kept a close eye on the
Massachusetts rebels who kept an equally close eye on him. Paul Revere, who had
helped lead the Boston Tea Party, now led an informal group of unemployed artisans
who noted every troop movement in Boston.
THE BATTLES OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD, APRIL 1775 In the inland towns
of Concord and Worcester, the colonial militia was collecting arms, and Gage knew
it. Hoping for secrecy, he ordered troops to prepare to march to Concord to seize the
arms. The colonists had been expecting such a move. Paul Revere was to report any
troop movements by hanging lanterns in the steeple of the North Church—one lantern
if the troops moved inland and “two if by sea,” meaning by boats across Back Bay.
When the British troops started to move, Revere had two lanterns hung in the steeple
(the British took the water route). Then he and William Dawes began their famous
rides through the night to alert the colonial militia. Revere himself was arrested
by British troops, but Dawes woke Sam Adams and John Hancock, who made it to
Concord to organize the militia.
When the British reached Lexington Town Green at little after 4:30 a.m. on April 19,
1775, they were met by colonial militia. Shots were fired, killing eight militiamen and
wounding 10 others. Only one British soldier was wounded in this first battle of the
Revolution.
There was no further gunfire until the British entered the town of Concord where they
found few arms. As they left to march the 16 miles back to Boston, militiamen hidden
behind trees, buildings, rocks, and fences attacked their easy targets. At the end of the
day, the British had 273 casualties, the militia 95. What had been unrest was now a war.
Word of the battles of Lexington and Concord spread quickly. Many shared
Thomas Jefferson’s belief that “the last hopes of reconciliation” had now ended. People
who were not sure about independence felt they had to make decisions. Some, perhaps
as many as a third of all white colonists, remained loyal to the crown, though in New
England they did so quietly. But many began to commit to what they saw as a patriotic
cause, some even taking matters into their own hands. Ethan Allen, who since 1770

146 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
 5.1

5.2

5.3

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Pensacola British posts 300–500 soldiers
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British post 4,800 soldiers
East
Gulf of Florida
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of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775
Within 1–7 days
Within 8–14 days
More than 14 days

MAP 5-3 British Courts and Troops Stationed in the Colonies as the Revolution Began. As unrest grew
in the colonies, British authorities made every effort to assert control. They stationed more troops in all of
the colonies, especially in restive Boston, and established a series of courts—Vice-Admiralty Courts—in
Charleston, Philadelphia, Boston, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Stationing more troops and clamping down
on smuggling did nothing to end colonial resistance and, as word spread of the battles of Lexington and
Concord after April 19, 1775, colonial resistance only grew.

had led his Green Mountain Boys in challenging royal authority in Vermont, and
Benedict Arnold of Connecticut, then on the rebels’ side, organized their own militia
and captured Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain on May 10, 1775. The cannons
from the fort would play a large role in the coming struggle.
FROM THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL TO THE FORMATION OF THE COLONIAL
ARMY In the weeks after the battles at Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts
militia, fortified with recruits from Connecticut, began to dig in on the hills surround-
ing British-occupied Boston—Dorchester Heights to the south and Bunker Hill and
Breed’s Hill to the north. Colonel William Prescott of the Massachusetts militia was
put in charge of fortifying the northern hills.
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 147
 General Gage again felt that he had to act. On June 17, Gage ordered an attack on
5.1 Breed’s Hill. It was a British victory, but at a high cost—226 British dead and 828 wounded
compared with 140 militia killed and 271 wounded. As one Englishman remarked, “If
we have eight more such victories, there will be nobody left to bring the news.”
5.2 The battle, which later became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, even though
it had taken place on Breed’s Hill, had been between ill-organized militia and regular
units of the British army. After that battle, however, the American forces became better
organized and gained support from all 13 colonies.
5.3

African-Americans in the Armies of Both Sides

The outbreak of war opened a new avenue to freedom for American slaves. While
some, like Wheatley, embraced revolution for liberty and freedom, others heeded
different words. Jeremiah, a free black in Charleston, heard the rumor that the British
intended to “come to help the poor negroes.” He did not wait for that help but began
to organize one of several slave uprisings in the Carolinas in 1775 and 1776. Jeremiah’s
plans for an insurrection were discovered, and he was hanged and burned at the stake
in August 1775 by prorevolutionary authorities in South Carolina.
There was a good reason for the rumors among the slaves. In 1775, Lord Dunmore,
the royal governor of Virginia, under attack from the rebels, fled Williamsburg.
In November of that year, from his refuge on a British warship, he announced:
I do hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others…free, that are
able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty’s Troops as soon as may be.
The proclamation terrified whites. With it, the slaves’ perspective of the revolu-
tionary struggle was transformed into a struggle about who would “give them their
liberty.” And in South Carolina where there were 80,000 slaves—60 percent of the
population—such liberty would be a radical revolution indeed.
Many slaves responded to the invitation. Between 800 and 1,000 slaves joined the
British army. Dunmore organized them into what he called the Ethiopian Regiment,
whose members wore a sash reading “Liberty to Slaves.” In one engagement, an
American colonel, Joseph Hutchings, was captured by two of his own former slaves.
When the British landed on Staten Island in 1776, New York and New Jersey slaves
joined them. When they Royal Navy sailed up rivers in Pennsylvania and Maryland,
more slaves joined them, and when the British attacked Charleston, still more joined.
Runaway slaves built forts, tended the wounded, carried supplies, and fought
alongside white soldiers. British generals understood that in recruiting slaves they
were also disrupting the economies of the rebellious colonies. Although disease took a
terrible toll among black soldiers and their families, and though many were captured
and reenslaved, the loyalty of slaves to the British cause eventually brought freedom
to some of them. Approximately 300 former slaves sailed with Dunmore when he left
Virginia in 1776, and by the end of the war, British forces had relocated some 3,000
more in Canada or in colonies in West Africa.
The American army was much slower to enlist free blacks or slaves than the British.
African-Americans, however, did serve among the colonial troops at Lexington and
Concord in 1775, including Lemuel Haynes, who became one of the leading ministers
in Massachusetts after the war.
Washington was reluctant to arm black soldiers, fearing not only the reaction of white
troops but also the possibility that arms given to black soldiers might eventually support
a slave revolt. Nevertheless, by the winter of 1777–78, when things looked grim for the
Revolution, Washington finally embraced black volunteers. Shortly after, in February 1778,
Rhode Island offered freedom to “every able bodied Negro, Mulatto, or Indian Man slave in
this state…to serve during the continuance of the present war with Great Britain.” Perhaps
one in four male slaves in the state eventually enlisted in what was known as Rhode Island’s
Black Regiment. Those who survived the war were given their freedom in 1783.

148 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
Moving Toward Independence Read on MyHistoryLab
Document Thomas Paine, 5.1
When the delegates to the Second Continental Congress gathered as promised in Common Sense, 1776
Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord had changed
everything. They knew that they had to manage a war and attempted to create the
Continental Army. The obvious choice to command it was George Washington, a 5.2
respected member of Congress and veteran of the French and Indian War.
Washington took command of the colonial militia, such as it was, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, on July 2, 1775, shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill. American 5.3
resistance would be more coordinated than it had been during the early skirmishes.
Washington commanded between 9,000 and 14,000 troops—he was never sure—while
Gage led about 5,000 in Boston. Despite the difference in numbers, the Royal Navy
controlled the water, and Gage’s troops were highly disciplined soldiers. Washington’s
troops were a ragtag army, capable of effective guerrilla fighting and great courage, but
hard to discipline, easily bored, and ready to return to their homes if fighting dragged on.
After selecting Washington and beginning to find the money—mostly in foreign
loans—to support an army, the Second Continental Congress turned to another press-
ing question: What did they want from the war? John Dickinson of Pennsylvania wanted
reconciliation with Britain if Parliament would respect the rights of the colonists. John
Adams and most of the Virginia delegates wanted independence. Others were not sure.
Recently arrived from England, Thomas Paine took
It took a year for the debate to be resolved, and before then, other matters intervened. up the patriot cause with a fervor that many more
established colonists lacked. In his easy-to-read
THOMAS PAINE’S COMMON SENSE While the Congress debated independence, a pamphlet, Common Sense, he attacked not only
new arrival from England, Thomas Paine, published a pamphlet, Common Sense, in the British treatment of the colonies but also the
January 1776. Soon, over 100,000 copies were in circulation. Paine asked, “Why is it very idea of monarchy. His words were significant
in fanning the flames of the independence
that we hesitate?…For God’s sake, let us come to a final separation.…The birthday of movement.
a new world is at hand.” Paine made two basic points: that monarchy was always a bad
way for people to be governed and that the time was right to declare independence.
Second Continental Congress
With his passionate words and exquisite timing, Paine shaped public opinion. Common An assemblage of delegates from all the
Sense appeared on the same day George III declared the North American colonies to colonies that convened in May 1775 that
be in a state of rebellion. The two events could not have contrasted more clearly. John eventually declared independence, adopted
Adams was no admirer of Paine or his pamphlet, which he saw as simple minded and the Articles of Confederation, and conducted
the Revolutionary War.
needlessly antagonistic, though he agreed with its conclusion. Nevertheless, Adams
said that he expected Common Sense to become the “common faith” of the new nation.
Watch on MyHistoryLab
Video The Second Continental
Declaring Independence, 1776 Congress
On June 7, 1776, after months of debate in the Congress, Richard Henry Lee, a delegate
from Virginia, offered a motion:
Resolved…that these United Colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free and
independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British
Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great
Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
John Adams immediately seconded the motion.
In the debate that followed, delegates led by John Dickinson opposed the
resolution. Most of the delegates had likely come to this Congress with the hope of
reconciliation, not with any plan for permanent separation. But the fighting with
British troops and the influence of publications like Common Sense had changed
many minds. Congress eventually agreed to delay a vote on independence until July 1
but to also appoint what became known as the Committee of Five—Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston—to draft a
declaration in case Congress did vote for independence.
Jefferson, known for his skill with words, was chosen to write the first draft. Adams
and Franklin, and ultimately the full Congress, made adjustments, which frustrated
and hurt the sensitive Jefferson. The most important changes included removing

Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 149

 Watch on MyHistoryLab Jefferson’s passionate attack on the slave trade, which was hypocritical in light of the
Video Declaring Independence fact that Jefferson owned many slaves and made no move to free them. In addition,
5.1
far too many of the others in the Congress had investments in the trade to accept
Jefferson’s language anywhere in the document. However, no one suggested removing
5.2 Jefferson’s assertion that the king “has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our
frontiers, the merciless Indian savages,” even when they all knew that it was whites
on the frontiers who were invading Indian territory, and the king’s government was
trying to keep the two apart. Those in Congress saw the frontier whites as essential
5.3
supporters of the patriot cause and were in no mood to antagonize them.
The waiting period before the vote paid off. By July 1776, no one was willing to
go on record as being opposed to independence. On July 2, a unanimous Congress
voted for independence, and on July 4, they adopted a declaration of independence
that began with these powerful words:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The philosophical ideas that John Locke had used to defend England’s change in
monarchs were now, a hundred years later, used to announce to the world that mon-
archy itself was being abolished in England’s former colonies. In Philadelphia, people
celebrated with “bonfires and ringing bells, with other great demonstrations of joy.”

When word of the Declaration of Independence reached New York City, a mob of soldiers and residents
celebrated by pulling down the statue of King George III that stood on lower Broadway. The metal was
eventually melted down to make bullets for the revolutionary cause.

150 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
A crowd in New York tore down the statue of George III, Washington built up morale
in the army by reading the Declaration to his troops, and the celebrations continued up 5.1
and down the coast.
THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION A year later, the Congress adopted a govern-
ing document for the new and fragile country they had created. In 1777, the Articles of Articles of Confederation 5.2
Confederation created a national, though weak, government for what was now called Written document setting up the loose
the United States of America. Although 11 of the colonies ratified the Articles within confederation of states that made up
the first national government of the
a year, the last, Maryland, did not do so until 1781. Nevertheless, with the Articles of United States from 1781 to 1788. 5.3
Confederation, states banded together in a formal—and ultimately successful—alliance
to prosecute the war and govern the nation in the peace they hoped would follow.
With the Declaration of Independence, the 13 different colonies declared themselves
to be 13 independent states that agreed to work together for certain limited common
purposes. Although they were committed to cooperate, especially in fighting for inde-
pendence, the representatives were distrustful of centralized government. Under the
Articles of Confederation, there would be no national executive or court system in
the new nation. In addition, Congress could raise money through taxes only if every
state agreed. Nevertheless, this government—really, an alliance of independent states
more than anything that looked like a modern nation—was able to coordinate its fight
and win the Revolution. Whether such a government could build a nation, however,
remained to be seen.

George Washington and His Victorious Patchwork Army

The American Revolution was a long and bloody war between two strikingly different
armies. On one side were Washington’s patchwork Continental Army and various
rebel militias—later supported by troops from France and Spain. In the course of the
long war, some 200,000 of the 350,000 men who could have served participated in
some military activity, but the turnover was such that no more than 25,000 served
at any one time. Fighting against them was a corps of extremely well-trained British
troops, supported by organized units of Loyalist colonists (as many as 8,000 at the start
of the war and increasing as the war continued) and hired soldiers from Germany.
Ultimately, many factors led to the success of the ragtag rebels and their allies in their
battles with the British troops (see Map 5-4) and perhaps more important their ability
to survive in spite of the British effort to eliminate them as a fighting force.
Most of the revolutionary Minute Men who fought at Lexington and Concord
(called Minute Men because they had pledged to be ready to fight on a minute’s
notice) were farmers who owned their own weapons and knew how to shoot. In some
of the early battles, the popular image of the “citizen soldier” may have been true as
farmers and townspeople took up arms to defend their communities. But as the war
continued, and as Washington and his officers created the kind of discipline neces-
sary for an effective army, more and more of the early volunteers faded away, replaced
by recently indentured servants, impoverished transients, or those who traded a jail
cell for a uniform. A colonial officer called the troops, “a wretched motley Crew,” but
Washington was an effective leader who never seemed to lose control when others
started to panic, and he was deeply committed to the cause.
Despite being ill-trained, ill-fed, ill-clothed, and restless, these troops continued to
fight, even after seeing the “horrors of battle…in all their hideousness,” as one soldier
remembered. Surprisingly, these often forgotten men are who won the independence
that others celebrated.
A few women also took a direct role in the war. Armies in the 1700s usually
included women known as camp followers. Some were the wives of soldiers, who could
not or would not leave their husbands. Others were single women seeking adventure
or simply survival in army life and army rations. Camp followers carried water to the
battlefield, fed and supported the troops, nursed the wounded, and occasionally fought
in battles. Mary Ludwig Hays, known as Molly Pitcher (for the water she carried),
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 151
5.1 Quebec, 1775

5.2 Montreal, 1775

Ft. Ticonderoga, 1775

5.3 Saratoga, 1777 Bennington, 1777

Boston, 1776
Ft. Stanwix, 1777
Newtown, 1777

Princeton, 1777 New York, 1776

Monmouth, 1777
Trenton, 1777
Brandywine, 1777 Germantown, 1777

Vincennes, 1779
Charlottesville, 1781
Naval Battle, 1781
Yorktown, 1781
St. Louis, 1780
Kaskaskia, 1778
Guilford Courthouse, 1781
Moore’s Creek
King’s Mountain, 1780 Bridge, 1776
Fishing
Creek, 1780 AT L A N T I C
Cowpens, 1781 OCEAN
Camden, 1780
R.
issippi

Charleston, 1780
Miss

Savannah, 1779

Natchez, 1778 Mobile, 1780

Pensacola, 1781

Overview of the Revolutionary War

British victories
Patriot victories

View on MyHistoryLab MAP 5-4 Major Battles of the American Revolution. The Revolutionary War was fought all across British
Closer Look Early Fighting, North America, not only in almost all of the 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast but well into British Canada
1775–1776 and in the Mississippi River valley.

also supposedly loaded her husband’s cannon after he was wounded at the Battle of
Monmouth in 1778. Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man, joined the army,
and fought for years until a doctor discovered her identity after she was wounded.
Washington understood that though his army could fight, they could not with-
stand a direct battle with British regulars. He told Congress that he needed to fight a
defensive war and avoid any general action. For much of the war, his goal was not a
decisive victory, but avoiding a decisive loss. The longer Washington was able to keep
his army together and out of too many battles, the better the chance that the British
would tire of the war. He knew how well-trained the British army was—having served
in it—but he also expected that training and discipline had narrowed their conception
of war and would give him the edge as long as his troops could use nontraditional
tactics and avoid capture or defeat.
152 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
 5.1
American Voices
Joseph Plumb Martin, Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier, 1775–1783 5.2

J oseph Plumb Marin was a private in the American army through

eight years of war. He saw few direct battles but many small skir-
mishes. Martin knew that his primary task was to survive and avoid
rear of the army, we were obliged to put us up huts by laying up
poles and covering them with leaves; a capital shelter from win-
ter storms.…About this time the whole British army left the city, 5.3
capture. His humorous journal, written when he was 70 years old, came out and encamped, or rather lay, on Chestnut-hill in our
makes clear that his greatest enemies were neglect and hunger. immediate neighborhood; we hourly expected an attack from
I, the redoubtable hero of this Narrative, first made my them; we had a commanding position and were very sensible
appearance in this crooked, fretful world, upon the twenty-first of it. We were kept constantly on the alert, and wished nothing
day of November, in the year 1760.…I remember the stir in the more than to have them engage us, for we were sure of giving
country occasioned by the stamp act, but I was so young that I them a drubbing, being in excellent fighting trim, as we were
did not understand the meaning of it; I likewise remember the starved and as cross and ill-natured as curs. The British, however,
disturbances that followed the repeal of the stamp act, until the thought better of the matter, and after several days maneuver-
destruction of the tea at Boston and elsewhere; I was then thir- ing on the hill, very civilly walked off into Philadelphia again.
teen or fourteen years old, and began to understand something Starvation seemed to be entailed upon the army and every ani-
of the works going on. . . . Time passed smoothly on with me till mal connected with it.…
the year 1774 arrived, the smell of war began to be pretty strong, 1780—Here was the army starved and naked, and there their
but I was determined to have no hand in it, happen when it country sitting still and expecting the army to do notable things
might; I felt myself to be a real coward. What—venture my carcass while fainting from sheer starvation.
where bullets fly! That will never do for me.…I was ploughing in
the field about half a mile from home, about the twenty-first day Source: Joseph Plumb Martin, A Narrative of the Adventures, Dangers, and Sufferings of a
Revolutionary Soldier (originally published 1830 republished New York: Signet Classics, 2010.)
of April [1775], when all of a sudden the bells fell to ringing, what
the cause was we could not conjecture.…During the winter of
Thinking Critically
1775–6, by hearing the conversation and disputes of the good
old farmer politicians of the times, I collected pretty correct ideas 1. Documentary Analysis
of the contest between this country and the mother country, (as How did Martin characterize his own journey toward support
it was then called).…I felt more anxious than ever, if possible, to of the revolutionary cause?
be called a defender of my country. 2. Historical Interpretation
1777—Next morning, we joined the grand army near What does this passage suggest about the differences
Philadelphia, and the heavy baggage being sent back to the between the American and British armies?

THE BRITISH EVACUATE BOSTON After the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British
controlled Boston but were hemmed in there. Through the winter of 1775–76,
Washington commissioned a promising soldier, Henry Knox, a young Boston
bookseller, as a colonel in the Continental Army and sent him and his men to move
the guns captured at Fort Ticonderoga on sleds over snow-covered mountains to
Boston. On the night of March 1, 1776, Washington’s troops assembled the guns on
Dorchester Heights and then bombarded the city until March 17 when the British
finally evacuated Boston.
THE WAR IN THE NORTH—MANHATTAN, TRENTON, AND VALLEY FORGE The
victory in Boston was one of the few outright victories Washington would achieve.
Washington’s goal, however, was to engage in more indirect strategies that would wear
down the British while preserving his own limited troops.
Just as the American Congress was declaring independence in Philadelphia in 1776,
Sir William Howe, who had replaced Gage as the British commander, landed his army
on Staten Island, across from Manhattan. Howe had some 32,000 troops, including 8,000
German mercenaries—essentially soldiers for hire—known as Hessians (since many
were from the German province of Hesse). During the war, some 30,000 Hessians fought
for the British, approximately a quarter of all of their soldiers. Hessian troops were
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 153
 recruited, often by force, from among the poorest Germans, and German princes would
5.1 rent them out as units, especially to the British. Many Hessians soldiers had little interest
in the British cause, but had little choice except to fight for it. Washington had his own
morale problems, but his soldiers were somewhat more willing to fight.
5.2 As the two sides watched each other, Washington’s troops dug fortifications to
defend Brooklyn and Manhattan. In late August, Howe’s larger and better-trained
force attacked Brooklyn. Rather than risk battle and capture at this point, Washington
abandoned Brooklyn and brought all 9,500 of his troops across the East River to Manhattan
5.3
on the night of August 30. When Howe attacked Manhattan in September, Washington
again retreated. Throughout the early fall, Washington continued a retreat, and the British
advanced through New Jersey. As they settled down for the winter, the British held most
of New Jersey, while Washington’s army was across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania.
Read on MyHistoryLab Then, on Christmas night of 1776, Washington and 2,400 troops made a daring
Document Thomas Paine, raid across the Delaware River and captured Trenton, New Jersey. They also cap-
The American Crisis, 1776 tured many Hessian soldiers, some of whom quickly joined the rebel side. In January,
they would go on to successfully attack a British force in Princeton. By the winter of
1776–77, Washington controlled southern New Jersey while the British held northern
New Jersey and New York City, which they would control throughout the war.
In May 1777, British General John Burgoyne assembled a large army in Canada.
His plan was to proceed down the Hudson River and smash the “unnatural Rebellion”
in New York and New England. Initially, the plan went well. Burgoyne had some 8,300
men, including 3,000 German troops. He led his army across Lake Champlain, over-
ran the Americans at Fort Ticonderoga, and continued south into New York’s Hudson
River Valley, an exhausting effort that involved moving a large army with heavy sup-
plies through dense forests. As he moved through the area, Burgoyne’s sometime
pompous pronouncements to colonists and the German troops’ inability to communi-
cate with them bred additional colonial resentment and motivated fresh volunteers for
the American cause.
Watch on MyHistoryLab In September 1777, near Saratoga, New York, Burgoyne’s army encountered
Video Battle of Saratoga American troops under the command of an experienced general, Horatio Gates, and
Benedict Arnold (still on the American side, but soon to be caught negotiating a plan
with the British to defect). The British were surprised that their bayonet charge could
not break the American lines. Both armies suffered heavy losses, but neither won a
decisive victory. Burgoyne’s army was now cut off from its winter quarters and, shortly
after, was forced to negotiate. Some 5,800 British troops were captured and held as
prisoners until the end of the war. The Battle of Saratoga, was a turning point for the
colonial cause. It eliminated a significant British force, and it proved to the world—
especially those in France and Spain who were watching the war closely—that the
Americans could stand up to Britain’s toughest troops. As a result, American diplomats
including Benjamin Franklin were able to negotiate an agreement with the French and
later the Spanish to recognize the united colonies and provide military assistance.
The British wanted not only to split the colonies and, especially, to capture
Washington and his army, but also to catch the members of the Continental Congress
by overtaking Philadelphia where the Congress met. In September 1777, British troops
captured Philadelphia, but the members of Congress escaped before the British arrived.
Washington was able to block supplies into the city, and the following spring, the
British abandoned Philadelphia, which remained in colonial hands for the rest of the
war, though there were continued riots between patriots and Loyalists in the city.
Before the British left Philadelphia, however, the American forces had to survive
perhaps their most difficult winter. Washington selected Valley Forge, Pennsylvania,
18 miles northwest from Philadelphia as a place to keep an eye on the British in the city.
His army was exhausted, cold, and hungry, and they got colder and hungrier as the win-
ter continued. For weeks, there was little to eat. In time, however, Washington was able
to appoint commissary officers who found food and clothing for the soldiers. A Prussian

154 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
officer volunteering in the American cause, Baron von Steuben, began training the troops
in close order drills. Von Steuben possessed expertise in military training and hoped to 5.1
make a name, and a home, for himself in a free America. In addition, a French officer, the
Marquis de Lafayette, was recruited to lead forces that harassed the British. By the time
the British sailed out of Philadelphia, the American troops were better fed and clothed, 5.2
better trained, and ready for new battles—preparation they would need in the next years.
In 1778, General Sir Henry Clinton replaced Howe, and a new British strategy
took shape. Clinton ordered the Royal Navy to harass the colonists up and down the
5.3
Atlantic coast and encouraged Britain’s Indian allies to attack frontier settlements.
In addition, he sent the main British land force south to overrun the Carolinas and
Georgia. If he could detach those three colonies, Clinton thought, the Revolution
might crumble. After 1778, the major battles of the war would be in the colonies’
western and southern regions.
THE IMPORTANCE OF FRANCE AND SPAIN The Revolution was won by the rebels
for many reasons, including the key fact that France and Spain were willing to help.
The two countries had their own reasons for wanting to embarrass the British and
reduce Britain’s power on the world stage. In particular, both France and Spain wanted
greater access to trade with North America, which was highly restricted as long as
the British controlled the colonies. By the 1770s, the French still resented the British
victory in the Seven Years’ War and wanted to ensure that France, not Britain, was the
dominant power in Europe. As early as 1775, France sent agents to America to see
what might be gained from assisting in the rebellion. Similarly, Spain started to supply
the colonists with food and gunpowder from Spanish-held New Orleans and Cuba.
While they were willing to support the rebellion, neither France nor Spain wanted
to engage in war with Britain unless the colonists were serious. In arguing for a dec-
laration of independence in 1776, Adams told the Congress: “Foreign powers cannot
be expected to acknowledge us, till we have acknowledged ourselves and taken our
station among them as a sovereign power, an independent nation.” He had two specific
foreign powers in mind.
In 1776, Benjamin Franklin led an American delegation in Paris to seek further
help. Franklin with his simple fur cap and plain spectacles, yet sophisticated man-
ner, charmed the French. However, Franklin needed more than charm to win real
help. With the Americans’ declared independence and victory over Britain’s troops
at Saratoga, French leaders started to take him more seriously. His diplomatic efforts
secured important supplies and, in February 1778, a full French alliance with the
United States of America, the first diplomatic recognition of the new nation. A few
months later, France formally declared war on Great Britain. For the rest of the war,
Washington could count on the French army and navy to fight the British.
In 1779, Spain also declared war on Britain. Spanish forces moved up the Mississippi
River from New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast and took the British forts at Baton
Rouge, Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola. Spanish attacks in the Mississippi River Valley
diverted British troops from the Atlantic coast, helping the American effort.
Once France and Spain went to war with Britain, the American Revolution became
a world war. The French and British navies fought in the English Channel, Spain
attacked British-held Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, and all of them fought battles
in the Caribbean. Most important for the American cause, the French fleet supported
Washington’s troops throughout the latter part of the war while Spanish funds and
smuggling efforts provided badly needed supplies.
THE IROQUOIS AND THE BRITISH The Iroquois were divided about how to respond
to the rebellion, and at the beginning of the war most sought to remain neutral.
However, many saw Britain as the key to their independence, and as the war contin-
ued, neutrality faded. Beginning in the summer of 1777, Mohawks under the lead-
ership of Thayendanegea, also known as Joseph Brant, attacked white communities

Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 155

 across New York and Pennsylvania. The attacks on farms threatened a crucial colonial
5.1 food supply. In response, in the summer of 1779 Washington sent perhaps a third of
his army to attack the Iroquois and “lay waste all the settlements around…that the
country may not be merely overrun but destroyed.” From Washington’s perspective,
5.2 the Iroquois had to be stopped. For the Iroquois, Washington’s fierce response was
proof that the American leadership would always be an implacable enemy. Both sides
adopted brutal scorched-earth tactics that left long-lasting hatreds.
5.3 BRITISH LOYALISTS Colonists who remained loyal to Britain formed their own
militia, and in the Carolinas, an army of over a thousand Loyalists challenged rebel
forces. Other Loyalists joined British regiments. American rebels had nothing but con-
tempt for them. In the New York-New Jersey area, Catherine and Phillip Van Cortland,
one of the area’s leading families, remained loyal to Britain. When Washington gained
control of their part of New Jersey, he ordered that the Van Cortland house be used
as an army hospital. With her husband away, Catherine and her children were told to
leave. She described their February 1777 departure:
Our youngest children could not pass a far yard where they were milking cows
without wishing for some. My little Willing was almost in agonies, springing in
my Arms and calling for milk. I therefore rode up and requested the good man
to let me have some from one of his pails.…the man stopped, asked who we
were, and…swore bitterly he would not give a drop to any Tory Bitch. I offered
him money, my children screamed; and, as I could not prevail, I drove on.
In some cities including Newark, New Jersey, in 1777 and Philadelphia in 1780, the
wives of missing Loyalists were exiled by the American forces. Some Loyalist families
were able to blend back into their old homes after the war, but many left for Canada or
England and never returned.
WOMEN’S SUPPORT FOR WASHINGTON’S ARMY In 1780, at a par-
ticularly bad time for the Continental troops, Esther De Berdt Reed
(wife of the governor of Pennsylvania) and Sarah Franklin Bache
(Benjamin Franklin’s daughter) asked patriot women to give up all lux-
uries and contribute to a fund for the Continental Army. Eventually,
the women raised $300,000, a huge sum at the time.
The women’s goal was to give $2 in hard currency to every soldier.
Washington refused the offer and asked the women instead to buy
cloth and sew shirts for the soldiers. The women agreed and produced
thousands of shirts for the ill-clad troops. The experience also led to
the creation of the Ladies Association, the first intercolonial organiza-
tion of women in America and a model for future national organiza-
tions of women.
Women throughout the colonies found additional ways to support
the cause. In Fishing Creek, South Carolina, young girls went from
farm to farm, asking, “Is the owner out with the fighting men?” If the
answer was yes, then they harvested the land. In five or six weeks, they
had completed the harvest for the whole county, saving patriot farm-
ers from economic ruin and providing food stores for the revolution-
ary cause. Stories of similar efforts abounded.
T H E WA R I N T H E S O U T H — F R O M C H A R L E S T O N T O
YORKTOWN After capturing Savannah, Georgia, in December
1778, the British attacked Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780, and on
May 12, 1780, that city surrendered. The loss was significant. If the
Sarah Franklin Bache, unlike her half-brother William, was a staunch
British took control of Georgia and the Carolinas, it would be hard
defender of the patriot cause. She led an effort to raise funds for
the troops in the Continental Army and later led an effort in which to continue the resistance in the name of the united colonies and the
Philadelphia women made 2,200 shirts for the soldiers. strategy seemed to be working.

156 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
 As the battle for control of the south continued, Washington named one of his gen-
erals, Nathaniel Greene, to lead a southern campaign. Greene divided the American 5.1
forces, taking command of half and assigning others—a contingent of Maryland and
Virginia militias—to Daniel Morgan, an experienced officer from Virginia. The British
commander, Lord Cornwallis also divided his army between himself and Lieutenant 5.2
Colonel Banastre Tarleton, who had a reputation for exceptional cruelty.
While the two armies maneuvered, smaller independent units fought their own
battles. Not every resident of South Carolina supported independence, and local 5.3
Loyalists fought against colonial units. Throughout 1780 and 1781, the South Carolina
backcountry was filled with ugly and often personal conflicts. Unlike other colonies,
the civilian death toll was high in South Carolina as a result.
Morgan made a stand against the British forces in a South Carolina pasture
known as Cowpens in January 1781. In one of the last full-scale battles of the war, the
American troops defeated Tarleton’s army and captured some 800 British soldiers—a
crucial American victory. Although the British still held Charleston and small units
loyal to the British harassed the revolutionaries, after Cowpens, the Americans were in
control of the South Carolina countryside.
Cornwallis saw little chance of further success in the Carolinas and marched into
Virginia in May 1781. He decided to fortify Yorktown on the York River where he
thought he could count on being resupplied by water. As Cornwallis’s troops dug in at
Yorktown, Washington was in the north planning another attack on New York City.
Greene’s army was far to the south. At the prodding of the French, Washington moved
quickly to take advantage of the situation. In September, the French navy blockaded
the York River and cut Cornwallis off from resupply. Then, supported by French
troops under the Count de Rochambeau, Washington marched his own army from
New York 450 miles south at surprising speed. On September 28, Washington’s 16,000
troops attacked Yorktown. The siege continued for the next 2 weeks, but after failing at
an attempted escape, Cornwallis surrendered on October 17, 1781.

View on MyHistoryLab
Closer Look Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, 1781

Pleading illness, Cornwallis actually failed to show up for the surrender ceremony, which was handled by
junior British officers. But everyone knew how significant the event was. Without the army that Cornwallis
led, British efforts to defeat the Continental Army were at a standstill.
Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 157
5.1 Explore the
5.2
American
Revolution on
5.3 MyHistoryLab
HOW DID THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION UNFOLD?
Between 1775, when fighting broke
out near Boston, and the 1783 Treaty
of Paris, the British and rebellious
American colonists fought the
Revolutionary War. This war, however,
The idealized prominence of General George Washington as a war leader is shown as he meets
was in reality a civil war, as some with other generals and officers of the American colonies in a large state room.

colonists remained loyal to the British

Empire while their neighbors rebelled HIGHEST LEVEL OF TROOP STRENGTH
against imperial power. Even though
George Washington’s Continental Army 50,000

was outmatched in military manpower 45,000

and lost more major battles than it 40,000
won, the superior decision making of its
35,000
leaders combined with patriotic support
30,000
throughout the colonies led to a victory
25,000
for the Americans, and the Thirteen
Colonies emerged as the independent 20,000

United States of America. 15,000

10,000

5,000

0
American Loyalist in British Army British
(1778) (1781) (1782)

Source: Longman American History Atlas, 1998

KEY QUESTIONS Use MyHistoryLab Explorer to answer these questions:

Comparison Where did the Analysis Which regions were Response What position did
Americans have military successes? Loyalist and Patriot strongholds? the major cities play in the conflict?
Map the losses and victories of the two Consider the roles of these two groups Understand the importance of urban
sides in the Revolutionary War. in the unfolding of the war. areas for the two sides.

158 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
THE TREATY OF PARIS The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown did not end View on MyHistoryLab
the war, but it virtually guaranteed that it would eventually end favorably for the Map Territorial Claims in Eastern 5.1
Americans. British troops still controlled New York City, Charleston, Savannah, and America after the Treaty of Paris
parts of the countryside, but many in Parliament were tired of the war, and public
opinion in Britain had turned against continued hostilities. In June, 1780, Congress 5.2
had sent John Jay to join Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in Paris to negotiate
peace. After news of the Yorktown surrender arrived, the British delegates agreed to a
draft treaty that began, “His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States . . .
5.3
to be free Sovereign and independent States.” The two sides continued to negotiate
boundaries, fishing rights, and legal claims, and Britain concluded separate treaties
with France and Spain. The final treaty was signed in Paris on September 3, 1783. The
Revolutionary War was over, and a new nation had been born.

Quick Review Did the French and Indian War lead directly to the coming of the American
5.3 Revolution? What other factors might have prevented or caused the outbreak of war in
1775? Make a list of some of the different groups that came to the conclusion that life
would be better for them if the colonies were independent from Great Britain. Why did
they want independence? Could any independent nation satisfy such diverse goals?

CONCLUSION
Many factors led to the beginning of the American Revolution. As American colonists
sought to evade British taxes, John Locke’s ideas about the “Rights of Man” influenced
some men—and women—and provided a moral justification for disobeying the crown.
The First Great Awakening led many to challenge religious and civil authority.
While ideas fueled the conflicts, the aftermath of the French and Indian War led
to some of the most decisive event leading up to the colonies’ break with Britain.
While the colonists benefitted from the British takeover of New France, many rebelled
against Parliament’s efforts to get colonists to help pay the cost of this war through
increased taxation without representation in Britain’s Parliament. Many colonists,
too, would not honor George III’s Proclamation Line of 1763, which prevented them
from appropriating Indian land. Slaves in the American colonies welcomed news that
courts in England were moving toward outlawing slavery there; however, plantation
owners, who depended on slavery and the slave trade, now had another reason for
supporting an open break with the mother country. As resistances to British policies
and taxes grew, Parliament responded with new taxes and sent more troops, which
only inflamed colonists’ passions and further united them against British rule.
At the first and second Continental Congresses, representatives of the colonies
debated the best course of action. In 1775, violence escalated. The combination of
unwanted British armed forces in North America as well as unwanted taxes and oppres-
sive laws culminated in armed resistance by the colonists. By mid-1775, Americans had
formed their own army under George Washington. The protracted war that followed
engulfed the colonies, involving not only white men but also white women, slaves,
and the Indians, along with armies and aid from France and Spain. Finally, after years
of avoiding capture by the British army and some successful victories by the patriot
forces, new alliances with France and Spain helped the colonists army commanded by
George Washington win the surrender of the largest British army in North America.
With the surrender of the British forces at Yorktown in 1781, and the Treaty of Paris
in 1783, the independence of the United States became a reality.

CHAPTER Which factors do you think were most important in leading to the colonists
R E V I E W victory against the British Empire?

Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 159

 Chapter 5 Summary and Review
Watch on MyHistoryLab
Video Review of Chapter 5
PRELUDES TO REVOLUTION “THE REVOLUTION WAS IN THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE”
Explain Britain’s victory over France in the French and Indian Explain why, in the 15 years before the Revolutionary War
5.1 War and what conflicts followed this victory. 5.2 began, support for the patriot cause spread so quickly among
many different groups of North Americans who opposed
Britain for different reasons.
Summary Summary
The Seven Years’ War, known in the colonies as the French and For many British North Americans, a revolutionary change in
Indian War, was fought in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, outlook occurred between 1760 and 1775, and it took place for
and the Caribbean. There were many outcomes of the world many different reasons. Some colonists were inspired by the ideas
war of 1754–1763. Britain victory secured its dominance of of the Enlightenment. Others were moved by religion to take a
India and enhanced the British presence on the coast of Africa more skeptical view of authority. Sailors and shop owners in
and in the Caribbean. Most significantly, the 1763 Treaty of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia as well as backwoods farmers
Paris that officially ended the hostilities eliminated France as a in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas were often
North American power. For American Indians living between much more ready for revolution, much sooner, than their better-
the Mississippi River and the Atlantic coast, the end of the war known leaders because British actions were seriously affecting
was an unmitigated disaster, particularly because they could no their lives. For African slaves the growing spirit of revolution had
longer play one country against the other to gain bargaining both potential and danger. Some slaves and free blacks saw in the
power. Britain’s victory came at a high financial cost—soaring revolutionary rhetoric the possibility of their own freedom. Other
debt from the war itself as well as new and expensive military African-Americans saw the British government as a protector and
obligations in North America. The British government was even liberator. Most Indians, fearing the colonists would expand
determined that colonists should shoulder some of the burden their settlements, sided with the British government.
of these costs.

Review Questions
Review Questions 4. Contextualization
1. Crafting an Argument Explain what John Adams meant when he said that the
Is it valid to describe the Seven Years’ War as a “world Revolution “was in the minds of the people, and this was
war”? Why or why not? effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years
2. Comparison before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.”
Compare and contrast the position of the European powers 5. Historical Interpretation
in North America before and after the Seven Years’ War. What were the political consequences of the “revolution in
What were the most important changes? religion” during the mid-1700s?
3. Historical Interpretation 6. Historical Interpretation
How did British victory in the Seven Years’ War alter the What might explain the fact that seaport cities were impor-
relationship between Indian peoples and British colonists? tant centers of revolutionary activity?
7. Crafting an Argument
Preparing to Write: Write a Thesis Why, in some ways, is the term American Revolutions more
A strong thesis statement that clearly articulates a central argu- appropriate than American Revolution?
ment is the foundation of any essay. With this in mind, review
the discussions of Pontiac’s Rebellion, the Paxton Boys, and the Preparing to Write: Mastering Details
Proclamation Line of 1763 included in this chapter. When you Suppose you were preparing to write an essay on the escalating
are finished, write a thesis statement for an essay on the role of tensions between Britain and its North American colonies in
anti-Indian sentiment in the growing tensions between British the years following the Seven Years’ War. With this goal in mind,
colonists and the British government in the decade following make a list of key developments between 1763 and 1774. Be sure
the Seven Years’ War. to note the significance of each event you include in your list.

160 Part III A New Birth of Freedom—Creating the United States of America, 1754–1800
THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE Review Questions
Explain how political and military strategy, support for the 8. Chronological Reasoning
5.3 patriot cause, and American alliances with France and Spain How and why did colonial resentment of British policies
led to an American victory in the war for independence. move from protest and demonstration to war and the
Declaration of Independence between 1774 and 1776?
Summary
9. Contextualization
British efforts to ensure the enforcement of the Intolerable
What do the Articles of Confederation indicate about the
Acts led to the first battles of the Revolutionary War at
political ideals and hopes and fears of the delegates to the
Lexington and Concord in April 1775. After these battles, the
Second Continental Congress?
Continental Congress began to prepare for war. By the sum-
mer of 1776, Congress was ready to declare independence. The 10. Crafting an Argument
Articles of Confederation that Congress agreed on created a What factors do you think are most important in explain-
clear, though weak, national government. George Washington’s ing the American victory in the Revolutionary War?
first task was to transform his forces into a real army. The
American victory at Saratoga in 1777 brought the French in on Preparing to Write: Using Evidence
the American side. After 1778, the British strategy shifted, and Suppose you were preparing to write an essay on the experi-
most of the fighting took place in the West and South. French ences of ordinary soldiers in the Continental Army. With this
and Spanish support proved crucial to the winning of the task in mind, reread the excerpt from the journal of Joseph
Revolutionary War. The decisive battle of the war was fought at Plumb Martin included in the American Voices feature for this
Yorktown, Virginia, in the fall of 1781. The final treaty ending section. Make a list of the quotes you might use in your essay.
the war was signed in Paris on September 3, 1783. Be sure to note the importance you attach to each quote.

Chapter 5 The Making of a Revolution 161