Chapter 4 Notes/Comments I. New England s Freehold Society

Transcription

1 Chapter 4 I. New England s Freehold Society A. Farm Families: Women in the Household Economy 1. women were subordinate. 2. raised to be dutiful helpmates to their husbands. 3. The labor of the Puritan women was crucial to the rural household economy. 4. Bearing and rearing children were equally crucial. Most women married in their early twenties and by their early forties had given birth to six or seven children. 5. More women than men joined the churches so that their children could be baptized. 6. A gradual reduction in farm size prompted couples to have fewer children. Notes/Comments 7. With fewer children, women had more time to enhance their families standard of living. 8. Most New England women s lives were tightly bound by a web of legal and cultural restrictions; they should be employed only in the home and only doing women s work. B. Farm Property: Inheritance 1. Men who migrated to the colonies escaped many traditional constraints, including lack of land. 2. Parents with small farms who could not provide, placed them as indentured servants. 3. When indentures ended, some propertyless sons worked to become freeholders 4. Children in successful farm families received a marriage portion. 5. Parents chose their children s partners because the family s prosperity depended on it. 6. Brides relinquished ownership of their land and property to their husbands. 7. Fathers had a cultural duty to provide inheritances for their children. 8. Farmers created whole communities composed of independent property owners. C. Freehold Society in Crisis 1. With each generation, the population of New England doubled, mostly from natural increase. 2. Parents had less land to give their children, so they had less control over their children s lives.

2 3. By using primitive methods of birth control, many families were able to have fewer children. 4. Families petitioned the government for land grants and hacked new farms out of the forests. 5. Land was used more productively; crops of wheat and barley were replaced with high-yielding potatoes and corn. 6. Gradually, New England changed from a grain to a livestock economy. 7. A system of community exchange helped preserve the freehold ideal. II. Toward a New Society: The Middle Colonies, A. Economic Growth and Social Inequality 1. Fertile lands and long growing seasons attracted migrants to the Middle Atlantic, 2. The manorial lords of New York s Hudson River Valley attracted tenants by granting long leases and the right to sell their improvements, 3. Inefficient farm implements kept most tenants from saving enough money. 4. Rural Pa and NJ were initially marked by relative economic equality. 5. The rise of the wheat trade and an influx of poor settlers created social divisions 6. By the 1760s, one-half of all white men in the Middle Atlantic owned no property. 7. Merchants and artisans took advantage of the supply of labor and organized an out-work manufacturing system. 8. As colonies became crowded and socially divided, farm families feared a return to peasant status. B. Cultural Diversity 1. The middle colonies were a patchwork ethnically and religiously 2. Migrants tried to preserve their cultural identities through marrying and customs within their group 3. Quakers, the dominant social group in Pennsylvania, were pacifists 4. The Quaker vision attracted many Germans who were fleeing war, religious persecution, and poverty. 5. Germans guarded their language and cultural heritage, encouraging their children to marry within the community.

3 6. Emigrants from Ireland formed the largest group of incoming Europeans. 7. Most were Presbyterian Scots-Irish who had faced discrimination and economic regulation in Ireland. 8. Thousands of Scots-Irish sailed for Philadelphia beginning in the 1720s, first moving to central Pennsylvania and southward down the Shenandoah Valley into Maryland and Virginia. 9. The Scots-Irish also preserved their culture, holding firm to the Presbyterian faith. C. Religious Identity and Political Conflict 1. German ministers criticized the separation of church and state in Pennsylvania, believing the church needed legal power to enforce morality. 2. Religious sects in Pennsylvania enforced moral behavior through communal self-discipline. 3. Communal sanctions sustained a self-contained and prosperous Quaker community. 4. In the 1740s, the Scots-Irish Presbyterians c 5. Many Germans were denied fair representation in the Assembly and wanted laws that respected their inheritance customs. 6. The region s cultural and religious diversity start of conflict III. The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening, A. The Enlightenment in America 1. Many early Americans believed in folk wisdom, earth centered, and God intervened in daily life 2. European Enlightenment used empirical research and scientific reasoning to study all aspects of life 3. four fundamental principles: the order of the natural world, the power of human reason, the natural rights of individuals (including the right to self-government), and the progressive improvement of society. 4. John Locke proposed that human lives were not fixed but could be changed through education and purposeful action. 5. In Locke s Two Treatises on Government, he advanced the theory that political authority sprang from social compacts 6.European Enlightenment the way people saw the world 7. deism, the belief that God had created the world to run in

4 accordance with the laws of nature and natural reason, without His intervention. 8. The Enlightenment added a secular dimension to colonial intellectual life. B. American Pietism and the Great Awakening 1. Pietism, which came to America with German migrants in the 1720s and sparked a religious revival. 2. Pietism emphasized pious behavior, religious emotion, and the striving for a mystical union with God. 3. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the Dutch minister Theodore Jacob Frelinghuysen, 4. In the 1730s, the strict Calvinist New England minister Jonathan Edwards restored Christian zeal to Congregational churches 5. Beginning in 1739, George Whitefield transformed local revivals into a Great Awakening. 6. Hundreds of colonists felt the new light of God s grace and were eager to spread Whitefield s message C. Religious Upheaval in the North 1. Conservative, or Old Light, ministers condemned the New Light ministers for their emotionalism and for allowing women to speak in public. 2. condemned the Old Lights as unconverted sinners. 3. undermined support of traditional churches and challenged their tax-supported status; 5. gave a new sense of religious authority to many colonists through its challenge to the authority of ministers 6. founding of colleges such as Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, and Brown to train ministers 7. legacy: new sense of religious and ultimately political authority among the many. D. Social and Religious Conflict in the South 1. The Great Awakening challenged both the dominance of the Church of England and the planter elite. 2. freeholders left the established church for New Light revivals. 3. threatened the government s ability to impose taxes to support the established church. 4. Anglicans closed down Presbyterian meeting houses to prevent the spread of the New Light doctrine. 5. many poorer Virginians were drawn to enthusiastic Baptist revivals, where even slaves were welcome. 6. The gentry reacted violently to the Baptist threat to their social authority

5 7. The revival in the Chesapeake did not bring radical changes to the social order; 8. As Baptist ministers spread Christianity among slaves, the revival helped to shrink the cultural gulf between blacks and whites, undermining one justification for slavery IV. The Midcentury Challenge: War, Trade, and Social Conflict, A. The French and Indian War(Seven Years War) 1. Indians used their control of the fur trade to bargain with both the British and the French. 2. The Iroquois strategy of playing off the French against the British was breaking down as European resentment of the costs of gifts of arms and money rose. 3. Indian alliances crumbled in the face of escalating Anglo-American demands for land. 4. The Ohio Company obtained a royal grant of 200,000 acres along the upper Ohio River 5. To counter Britain s movement into the Ohio Valley, the French set up a series of forts. 6. The French seized George Washington and his men as they tried to support the Ohio Company s claim to the land. 7. Britain dispatched forces to America, where they joined with the colonial militia in attacking French forts. 8. In June 1755, Fort Beauséjour in Nova Scotia (Acadia) captured 9. In July, General Edward Braddock defeated by a small group of French and Indians at Fort Duquesne. B. The Great War for Empire 1. Britain saw France as its main obstacle to further expansion in profitable overseas trading. 2. William Pitt planned to cripple France by attacking its colonies. 3. The fall of Quebec was the turning point of the war. 4. The British ousted French traders from India, seized French territory in West Africa as well as the sugar islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, and won Cuba and the Philippines from Spain. 6. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 granted British sovereignty over half the continent of North America 7. Britain s victory alarmed Indian peoples, who feared an influx of Anglo-American settlers.

6 8. In 1763, the Ottawa chief Pontiac led a group of loosely confederated tribes in a major uprising known as Pontiac s rebellion against the British, capturing many British garrisons and killing or capturing over 2,000 settlers. 9. The Indian alliance gradually weakened, and they accepted the British as their new political fathers. 10. In return, the British established the Proclamation Line of 1763 C. British Industrial Growth and the Consumer Revolution 1. Britain s combination of strong commerce and industry made it the most powerful nation in the world. 2. Industrial Revolution allowed Britain to sell goods at lower prices 3. Americans paid for British imports by increasing their exports of wheat, rice, and tobacco. 4. This increased trade resulted in a consumer revolution that raised the living standard of many Americans. 5. The first American spending binge landed many colonists in debt. D. The Struggle for Land in the East 1. The growth of the colonial population caused conflicts over land, particularly in Pennsylvania and Connecticut; 2. Wappinger Indians, Massachusetts migrants, and Dutch settlers all tried to claim manor lands in the Hudson River Valley; mob violence erupted but was quashed by British general Thomas Gage, whose men joined local sheriffs and bailiffs. 3. English aristocrats in New Jersey and the southern colonies successfully asserted legal claims to land based on outdated charters. 4. Proprietary power increased the resemblance between rural societies in Europe and America. 5. Tenants and freeholders looked westward for cheap freehold land E. Western Rebels and Regulators 1. Movement to the western frontier created new disputes over Indian policy, political representation, and debts. 2. Scots-Irish demands for the expulsion of Indians and

7 the ensuing massacre led by the Paxton Boys left a legacy of racial hatred and political resentment. 3. In 1763, landowning vigilantes known as the North Carolina Regulators demanded greater political rights, local courts, and fairer taxes. 4. In 1766, a more radical Regulator movement arose in the backcountry of North Carolina, caused by plummeting tobacco prices that forced debt-ridden farmers into court. 5. To save their farms, debtors joined with the Regulators to intimidate judges, close courts, and free their comrades from jail. 6. The royal governor mobilized the eastern militia against the Regulator force, which resulted in the defeat of the Regulators and the execution of their leaders. 7. Tied to Britain, yet growing resistant toward its control, America had the potential for independent existence. I. Imperial Reform, A. The Legacy of War 1. American and British disagreed about strategy and cultural differences emerged 2. The war exposed the weak authority of British royal governors and officials. 3. To assert their authority, the British began a strict enforcement of the Navigation Acts a. Revenue Act in 1762 that curbed corruption in the customs service, and the Royal Navy was instructed to seize vessels that were carrying goods between the mainland colonies and the French islands. 4. The British victory over the French resulted in a shift in imperial military policy; in 1763, the ministry deployed a peacetime army in North America, indicating its willingness to use force in order to preserve its authority over the colonies, indians, and French

8 5. As Britain s national debt soared, higher import duties were imposed at home on tobacco and sugar, and excise levies were increased; the increases were passed on to British consumers. 6. To collect the taxes, the government doubled the size of the British bureaucracy and increased its powers; smugglers were arrested and cargo was seized. 7. The price of empire had turned out to be debt and a more intrusive government. To reverse the growth of government power, British opposition parties (the Country Party and the Radical Whigs) demanded that Parliament be made more representative of the property-owning classes. B. George Grenville: Imperial Reformer 1. In 1763, British taxpayers paid five times as much in taxes as Americans, motivating British leaders to increase taxation on America. 2. Prime Minister George Grenville won approval of a Currency Act (1764) that banned the use of paper money as legal tender, thereby protecting the British merchants from colonial currency that was not worth its face value. 3. Grenville then proposed the Sugar Act of 1764 (a new navigation act) to replace the widely evaded Molasses Act of Americans argued that the Sugar Act would not only wipe out trade with the French islands, but was also contrary to their constitution, since it established a tax and all taxes ought to originate with the people. 5. The Sugar Act closed a Navigation Act loophole by extending the jurisdiction of vice-admiralty courts to all customs offenses, many of which had previously been tried before local common-law courts. 6. After living under a policy of salutary neglect, Americans felt that the new British policies were discriminatory and challenged the existing constitutional practices and understandings.

9 7. British officials insisted on the supremacy of parliamentary laws and denied that colonists were entitled to even the traditional legal rights of Englishmen a. right of no taxation without representation was confined to inhabitants of Great Britain only C. An Open Challenge: The Stamp Act 1. The Stamp Act would require small, printed markings on all court documents, land titles, and various other documents and served as revenue to keep British troops in America. 3. Grenville vowed to impose a stamp tax in 1765 unless the colonists would lay taxes for their own defense. 4. Benjamin Franklin proposed American representation in Parliament a. dismissed due to virtual representation 5. Grenville introduced the Stamp Act in Parliament with the goals being to not only raise revenue but to also assert the right of Parliament to lay an internal tax on the colonies. 6. Quartering Act was passed directing colonial governments to provide barracks and food. 7. violations of the Stamp Act be tried in vice-admiralty courts. 8. Grenville s policies provoked a constitutional confrontation with the colonies on taxation, jury trials, quartering of the military, and the question of representative self-government. II. The Dynamics of Rebellion A. Politicians Protest and the Crowd Rebels 1. Patriots defenders of American rights organized protests 2. Nine colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and issued a set of Resolves challenging the constitutionality of the Stamp and Sugar acts a. Most delegates were moderate men who sought compromise, not confrontation 3. Popular resentment was not easily contained as angry colonial mobs, led by men who called themselves the Sons of Liberty, intimidated royal officials throughout the colonies.

10 4. The leaders of the Sons of Liberty tried to direct the raw energy of the crowd against new tax measures 5. resentment of cheap British imports dove some 6. religious passions that ignited resentment of the arrogance and corruption of royal bureaucrats, 7. Popular resistance throughout the colonies nullified the Stamp Act; 8. royal officials could no longer count on the popular support that had ensured the empire s stability for three generations. B. The Ideological Roots of Resistance 1. Initially, the American resistance movement had no acknowledged leaders, no organization, and no clear goals. 2. Patriot lawyers and publicists provided the resistance movement with an intellectual rationale, a political agenda, and a visible cadre of leaders. 3. Patriot publicists drew on three intellectual traditions: English common law, the rationalist thought of the Enlightenment, and an ideological agenda based on the republican and Whig strands of the English political tradition. 4. Writings espousing these traditions turned a series of riots and tax protests into a coherent political movement. C. Parliament Compromises, In Parliament, different political factions advocated radically different responses to the American challenge. 2. Hard-liners were outraged and wanted to send British soldiers to suppress the riots and force Americans to submit to the supremacy of Parliament. 3. Old Whigs felt that America was more important for its trade than its taxes and advocated repeal of the Stamp Act. 4. British merchants favored repeal because American boycotts of British goods had caused decreased sales. 5. Former Prime Minister William Pitt saw the act as a failed policy and demanded that it be repealed. 6. Lord Rockingham repealed the Stamp Act and modifying the Sugar Act, but pacified hard-liners with the

11 Declaratory Act of 1766, which reaffirmed Parliament s authority to make laws binding American colonists. 7. The Stamp Act crisis ended in compromise, which allowed hope that an imperial relationship could be forged that was acceptable to both British officials and American colonists. D. Charles Townshend Steps In 1. Charles Townshend he strongly favored restrictions on colonial assemblies and promised to find a new source of revenue. 2. To secure revenue for the salaries of imperial officials in the colonies, the Townshend Act of 1767 imposed duties on paper, paint, glass, and tea imported to America. 3. The Revenue Act of 1767 created the Board of American Customs Commissioners and viceadmiralty courts. 4. By using parliamentary-imposed tax revenues to finance administrative and judicial innovations, Townshend directly threatened the autonomy and authority of American political institutions. 5. The New York assembly was the first to oppose Townshend s policies when it refused to comply with the Quartering Act of the Restraining Act of 1767 was implemented, suspending the assembly until it submitted to the Quartering Act. 7. The Restraining Act declared American governmental institutions completely dependent on parliamentary favor. E. America Debates and Resists Again 1. Colonists saw the Townshend duties as taxes that were imposed without their consent. 2. Townshend s measures turned American resistance into an organized movement. 3. Public support for nonimportation of British goods emerged, influencing colonial women and triggered a surge in domestic production through the increase of homespun. 4. The boycott mobilized Americans into organized political action, but American resistance only increased British determination.

12 5. By 1768, American resistance had prompted a plan for military coercion, with 4,000 British regulars encamped in Boston, Massachusetts. F. Lord North Compromises, As food shortages mounted in Scotland and northern England. Riots in Ireland over the growing military budget there added to the ministry s difficulties. 2. The American trade boycott also began have a major impact on the British economy. Convinced some British ministers that the Townshend duties were a mistake and the king no longer supported the use of potential military force in Massachusetts. 3. In 1770, Lord North persuaded Parliament to accept a compromise plan that retained the tax on tea as a symbol of Parliament s supremacy. In response, colonists called off their boycott. 4. Even violence in New York and the Boston Massacre did not rupture the compromise. 5. By 1770, the most outspoken Patriots had repudiated parliamentary supremacy, claiming equality for the American assemblies within the empire. 6. Some Americans were prepared to resist by force if Parliament or the king insisted on exercising Britain s claim to sovereign power. III. The Road to Independence, A. A Compromise Repudiated 1. Samuel Adams established a committee of correspondence and formed a communication network between Massachusetts towns that stressed colonial rights. a. Trials in Britain for burning of the Gaspée roused other states to set up their own committees of correspondence that would communicate with other colonies. 2. The committees sprang into action after the passage of the Tea Act, which relieved the British East India Company of paying taxes on tea it imported to Britain or exported to the colonies. 3. The Tea Act made the East India Company s tea less expensive than Dutch tea, which encouraged

13 Americans to pay the Townshend duty. 4. Radical Patriots accused the ministry of bribing Americans to give up their principled opposition to British taxation. 5. The Patriots effectively nullified the Tea Act by forcing the East India Company s ships to return tea to Britain or to store it in public warehouses. 6. A scheme to land a shipment of tea and collect the tax led to a group of Patriots throwing the tea into Boston Harbor. 7. In 1774, Parliament rejected a proposal to repeal the Tea Act and instead enacted four Coercive Acts to force Massachusetts into submission. 8. The four Coercive Acts included a. Port Bill - close Boston port b. Government Act - cancelled Mass. charter c. new Quartering Act - provide barracks d. Justice Act - capital crimes tried in Britain 9. Patriot leaders branded these acts the Intolerable Acts. 10. The activities of the committees of correspondence created a sense of unity among Patriots. 11. Many colonial leaders saw the Quebec Act (1774) as another demonstration of Parliament s power to intervene in American domestic affairs, since it extended Quebec into territory claimed by American colonies and recognized Roman Catholicism B. The Continental Congress Responds 1. Delegates of the Continental Congress, a new colonial assembly, met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to address a set of controversial and divisive issues. 2. Under Pennsylvanian Joseph Galloway s proposal, America would have a president-general appointed by the king and a legislative council selected by the colonial assemblies. 3. Even though the council would have veto power over parliamentary legislation, the plan was rejected. 4. First Continental Congress passed a Declaration of Rights and Grievances a. wanted removal of Coercive and Declaratory Acts 5. The Congress began a program of economic

14 retaliation, beginning with a non-importation agreement that went into effect in December The British ministry branded the Continental Congress an illegal assembly and refused to send commissioners to America to negotiate. 7. The ministry declared that Americans had to pay for their own defense and administration and acknowledge Parliament s authority to tax them; it also imposed a blockade on American trade with foreign nations and ordered General Gage to suppress dissent in Massachusetts. C. The Rising of the Countryside 1. Ultimately, the success of the urban-led Patriot movement would depend on the actions of the large rural population. 2. At first, most farmers had little interest in imperial issues, but the French and Indian War, which had taken their sons for military duty and pre- and post-war taxes, changed their attitudes. 3. The urban-led boycotts of 1765 and 1769 had also raised the political consciousness of many rural Americans. 4. Patriots also appealed to the yeomen tradition of agricultural independence, as many northern yeomen felt personally threatened by British imperial policy. 5. Despite their higher standard of living, southern slave owners had fears similar to those of the yeomen. D. Loyalist Americans 1. Many prominent Americans worried that resistance to Britain would destroy respect for all political institutions, ending in mob rule. 2. Other social groups, such as tenant farmers, the Regulators, and some enslaved blacks, refused to support the resistance movement. 3. Some prominent Americans of loyal principles denounced the Patriot movement and formed a small, ineffective pro-british party, but Americans who favored resistance to British rule E. Armed Resistance Begins 1. When the Continental Congress met in 1774, New England was already in open defiance of British authority. 2. In September, General Gage ordered British troops to seize Patriot armories and storehouses at Charleston and

15 Cambridge. 3. In response, 20,000 colonial militiamen mobilized to safeguard supply depots, the most famous regiment being the Minutemen of Concord. 4. On April 18, 1775, Gage dispatched soldiers to capture colonial leaders and supplies at Concord. 5. Forewarned by Paul Revere and others, the local militiamen met the British first at Lexington and then at Concord. 6. As the British retreated, militiamen ambushed them from neighboring towns with both sides suffering losses. 7. Twelve years of economic conflict and constitutional debate ended in civil war. F. The Second Continental Congress Organizes for War 1. After losing battles at Breed s Hill and Bunker Hill, in 1775 the Continental Congress created a Continental army headed by General George Washington. 2. Moderates led by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania passed a petition that expressed loyalty to the king and requested the repeal of oppressive parliamentary legislation. 3. Zealous Patriots such as John Adams and Patrick Henry won passage of a Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms. 4. The king refused the moderates petition and issued a Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition in August Hoping to add a fourteenth colony to the rebellion, the Patriot forces invaded Canada and took Montreal in September but later failed to capture Quebec. 6. American merchants cut off all exports to Britain and its West Indian sugar islands, and Parliament retaliated with a Prohibitory Act, banning trade with the rebellious colonies. 7. Lord Dunmore of Virginia organized two military forces and offered freedom to slaves and indentured servants who joined the Loyalist cause. 8. Faced with black unrest and pressed by yeomen and tenant farmers demanding independence, Patriot planters called for a break with Britain.

16 9. By April of 1776, Radical Patriots had, through military conflict, transformed the North Carolina assembly into an independent Provincial Congress, which instructed its representatives to support independence. By May 1776, Virginia Patriots had followed suit. G. Thomas Paine s Common Sense 1. Many colonists retained a deep loyalty to the crown, as to do otherwise might threaten all paternal authority and disrupt the hierarchical social order. 2. By 1775, the Patriot cause was gaining greater support among artisans and laborers. 3. Many Scots-Irish in Philadelphia became Patriots for religious reasons, and some well-educated persons questioned the idea of monarchy altogether. 4. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense a call for independence and republicanism. 5. Common Sense aroused the general public and quickly turned thousands of Americans against British rule. 6. Paine s message was not only popular but also clear reject the arbitrary powers of the king and Parliament and create independent republican states. H. Independence Declared 1. On July 4, 1776, the Congress approved a Declaration of Independence. 2. Thomas Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration, justified the revolt by blaming the rupture on George III rather than on Parliament. 3. Jefferson proclaimed that all men are created equal ; they possess the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; and that government derives its power from the consent of the governed. 4. By linking these doctrines of individual liberty, popular sovereignty, and republican government with independence, Jefferson established them as defining values of the new nation. 5. Colonists celebrated the Declaration by burning George III in effigy and toppling statues of the king; these acts helped to break the ties to the monarch and to establish the legitimacy of republican state governments.

17 I. The Trials of War, A. War in the North 1. Great Britain had more people and more money with which to fight. 2. Few Indians supported the rebels; they were opposed to the expansion of white settlement. 3. The British were seasoned troops, and the Americans were militarily weak. 4. Prime Minister North assembled a large invasion force and selected General William Howe to lead it; North ordered Howe to seize control of the Hudson River in order to isolate the radical Patriots in New England. 5. General William Howe and his 32,000 British troops landed outside New York City in July the Continental army retreated across the Hudson to New Jersey, then across the Delaware River to Philadelphia. 7. The British halted their campaign for the winter months, which allowed the Continental army a few minor triumphs that still could not mask British military superiority. B. Armies and Strategies 1. General Howe s military strategy was one of winning the surrender of opposing forces, rather than destroying them; this tactic failed to nip the rebellion in the bud. 2. General Washington s strategy was to draw the British away from the seacoast, extending their supply lines and draining their morale in a war of attrition. 3. The Continental army drew most of its recruits from the lower ranks of society, the majority of whom fought for a bonus of cash. 4. The Continental army was also poorly provisioned and armed. 5. Given all these handicaps, Washington was fortunate to escape an overwhelming defeat in the first year of the war. C. Victory at Saratoga 1. To finance the war, the British ministry increased the land tax and prepared to mount a major campaign in The primary British goal, the isolation of New England, was to be achieved with the help of General John Burgoyne, a small force of Iroquois, and General Howe. 3. Howe had a scheme of his own; he wanted to attack Philadelphia home of the Continental Congress

18 and end the rebellion with a single victory. 4. Washington and his troops withdrew from Philadelphia, and the Continental Congress fled to the interior. 5. General Burgoyne s troops were forced to surrender to General Horatio Gates and his men at Saratoga, New York. 6. The American victory at Saratoga was the turning point of the war and virtually ensured the success of a military alliance with France. D. Social and Financial Perils 1. British naval blockade that cut supplies of European manufactures, the occupation of Boston and other major cities, and rising unemployment for urban and rural workers. 2. government officials began requisitioning goods directly from the people; women s wartime efforts increased farm household productivity and also boosted their self-esteem 3. The fighting exposed tens of thousands of civilians to displacement and death. Soldiers from both armies looted, raped, and burned farms. 4. On the brink of bankruptcy, the new state governments printed paper money that was worth very little. 5. Lacking the authority to impose taxes, the Continental Congress borrowed gold from France. When those funds were exhausted, Congress also printed currency and bills of credit, which quickly declined in value. 6. Farmers refused to sell their crops for worthless currency, even to the Continental army. Either out of pacifism or the hopes of higher prices 7. Military morale crumbled, causing some Patriot leaders to doubt that the rebellion could succeed. 8. The Continental army suffered from lack of necessities; the winter of at Valley Forge took as many lives as two years of fighting. 9. To counter falling morale, Baron von Steuben instituted a system of drill and maneuver that shaped the smaller Continental army into a much tougher and better-disciplined force. II. The Path to Victory, A. The French Alliance 1. the French were intent on avenging their loss of Canada to Britain. 2. Upon learning of the American victory at Saratoga, French foreign minister Comte de Vergennes sought

19 a formal alliance with the Continental Congress. 3. The Treaty of Alliance of 1778 specified that neither France nor America would sign a separate peace agreement before America s independence was ensured. 4. In return, American diplomats pledged that their government would recognize any French conquests in the West Indies 5. Alliance with the French gave the American army access to supplies and money. 6. Congress reluctantly agreed to grant officers half pay after the war for a period of seven years. 7. The war became increasingly unpopular in Britain as its people grew tired of being taxed. some actually agreed with Americans 8. In 1778, Parliament repealed the Tea and Prohibitory Acts and renounced its power to tax the colonies. 9. Idea rejected by the Continental Congress due in part to America s alliance with France. B. War in the South 1. France wanted to capture a rich sugar island in the West Indies; Spain loaned naval assistance because it wanted to regain Florida and Gibraltar. 2. The British strategy was to capture the rich tobacco and rice-growing colonies and to take advantage of racial divisions in the South. 3. By the end of 1779, Sir Henry Clinton and his men had reconquered Georgia, and in 1780, Lord Cornwallis and his men took control of South Carolina. 4. Battle turned when themarquis de Lafayette convinced Louis XVI to send French troops to America. 5. General Nathanael Greene devised a new military strategy: divide the militiamen into small groups with strong leaders so that they could harass the less mobile British. 6. His troops weakened by the war of attrition, abandoned by the British navy, and surrounded by the French navy and Washington s Continental army, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October Isolated diplomatically in Europe, stymied militarily in America, and lacking public support at home, Britain gave up prosecution of the war. C. The Patriot Advantage 1. Angry members of Parliament blamed the military leadership, pointing with some justification to a series of military

20 blunders. 2. The Patriots had experienced politicians who commanded public support and, in George Washington, an inspired leader who recruited outstanding officers to shape the new Continental army. 3. The Continental army was fighting on its own territory with the assistance of militiamen who could be mobilized at crucial moments and also had support from France. 4. Americans themselves preferred Patriot rule and refused to support Loyalist forces or accept occupation by the British army. D. Diplomatic Triumph 1. In the Treaty of Paris, signed September 1783, Great Britain recognized independence of its seaboard colonies and relinquished claims to lands south of the Great Lakes. 2. Leaving the Native Americans to their fate, British negotiators did not insist on a separate Indian territory and promised to withdraw their garrisons quickly. 4. Other treaty provisions granted Americans North Atlantic fishing rights, forbade the British from carrying away any negroes or other property, and guaranteed freedom of navigation on the Mississippi. 5. The American government promised to allow British merchants to recover prewar debts and to encourage the state legislatures to return confiscated property to Loyalists and grant them citizenship. 6. The British made peace with France and Spain through the Treaty of Versailles..III. Creating Republican Institutions, A. The State Constitutions: How Much Democracy? 1. In 1776 Congress urged Americans to suppress royal authority and establish new governing institutions by writing state constitutions to achieve republicanism. 2. The Declaration of Independence stated that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. 3. Pennsylvania s constitution abolished property owning as a test of citizenship, allowed all male taxpayers to vote and hold office, and created a unicameral legislature with complete power. 4. John Adams denounced the Pennsylvania unicameral legislature as so democratical that it must produce confusion and every evil work.

21 5. In his Thoughts on Government (1776), Adams devised a system of government that dispersed authority by assigning law-making, administering, and judging to separate branches; called for a bicameral legislature in which the upper house, filled with property-owning men, would check the power of the popular majorities in the lower house; and proposed an elected governor with the power to veto laws and an appointed not elected judiciary to review them. 6. Patriots endorsed Adams s system because it preserved representative government while restricting popular power, but were wary of a veto power for the governor and most states did retain property qualifications for voting. 7. The Adams bicameral legislature emerged as the dominant branch of government, and state constitutions apportioned seats on the basis of population. 8. Most of the state legislatures were filled by new sorts of political leaders; ordinary citizens increasingly chose to elect men of middling circumstances rather than electing their social betters. 9. Only in Vermont and Pennsylvania were radical Patriots able to take power and create democratic institutions, yet everywhere representative legislatures had more power. B. Women Seek a Public Voice 1. Upper-class women entered into the debate but remained second-class citizens unable to participate directly in politics. 2. Most politicians ignored women s requests, as did most men, who insisted on traditional gender roles that empowered themselves. 3. The republican quest for educated citizenry provided the avenue for the most important advances made by American women. C. The Loyalist Exodus 1. As the war turned in favor of the Patriots, thousands of Loyalists emigrated to the West Indies, Britain, and Canada. 2. While some Loyalist lands were either sold or given to Patriot tenants, in general the revolutionary upheaval did not alter the structure of rural communities. 3. Social turmoil was greatest in the cities as Patriot merchants replaced Tories at the top of the economic ladder. 4. The war replaced a tradition-oriented economic elite with a group of entrepreneurial-minded republican merchants who promoted new trading ventures and domestic manufacturing.

22 D. The Articles of Confederation 1. The Articles of Confederation were passed by Congress in November 1777 and ratified in The Articles provided for a loose confederation in which each state retained its independence as well as the powers and rights not expressly delegated to the United States. 3. The confederation government was given the authority to declare war and peace, make treaties, and adjudicate disputes between states, print money, and requisition funds from the states. 4. A major weakness under the Articles was that Congress lacked the authority to impose taxes. 5. Robert Morris persuaded Congress to charter the Bank of North America in the hope that its notes could stabilize the inflated Continental currency. 6. The Confederation refused Morris s proposal for an import duty to raise revenues for the national government. 7. Instead, Congress asserted the Confederation s title to the trans- Appalachian West in order to sell it and raise additional revenue for the government. 8. In 1783, Congress negotiated with Native American tribes to obtain new western lands. It created the Southwest Territory, the future states of Alabama and Mississippi, on lands ceded by North Carolina and Georgia. Slavery was allowed. 9. The Northwest Territory was established, and three ordinances in the 1780s provided for its orderly settlement while reducing the prospect of secessionist movements and dependent colonies of the states. E. Shays s Rebellion 1. In the East, peace brought recession: the British Navigation Acts barred Americans from trading with the British West Indies, and low-priced British goods flooded American markets. 2. State governments faced large war debts in the form of bonds, which speculators demanded they be redeem quickly, a policy that required high taxes; yet yeomen farmers and artisans, hard hit by the postwar recession, demanded and were given tax relief. 3. To assist indebted yeomen, many states printed more paper currency and passed laws allowing debtors to pay their creditors in installments. 4. The lack of such debtor-relief legislation in Massachusetts provoked an armed uprising led by Captain Daniel Shays,

23 known as Shays s Rebellion 5. To preserve its authority, Massachusetts passed a Riot Act outlawing illegal assemblies. 6. Shays s army dwindled during the winter of and was dispersed by Governor James Bowdoin s military force. 7. Many felt they had traded one kind of tyranny for another; others feared the fate of the republican experiment. IV. The Constitution of 1787 A. The Rise of a Nationalist Faction 1. Money questions dominated the postwar agenda, and officials looked at them from a national rather than a state perspective and became advocates of a stronger central government. 2. key commercial states in the North and most planters in the South opposed national tariffs. 3. In 1786, the Virginia legislature called for a convention in Philadelphia and a revision of the Articles of Confederation. B. The Philadelphia Convention 1. In May 1787, delegates from every state except Rhode Island arrived in Philadelphia; most were supported creditors property rights and a central government. 2. George Washington was elected as presiding officer and decided to deliberate in secret. 3. The delegates exceeded their mandate to revise the Articles of Confederation and considered James Madison s Virginia Plan for national government. 4. Madison s plan favored national authority, called for a national republic that drew its authority from all the people and had direct power over them, and created a three-tiered national government in which the people would elect only the lower house of the legislature. 5. The plan had two flaws: citizens would oppose the national government s vetoing of state laws, and small states would object because they would have less influence than larger states. 6. Delegates from the small states preferred the New Jersey Plan, which strengthened the Confederation by giving it the power to raise revenue, control commerce, and make binding requisitions on the states, but preserved the states control over their laws and guaranteed their equality. 7. The Virginia Plan was passed by a bare majority, but the final plan had to be acceptable to existing political interests and social groups. 8. A Great Compromise was accepted wherein the Senate would seat two members from each state, while seats in the House would be appointed on the basis of population.

24 9. The convention vested the judicial powers of the United States in one supreme Court and left the national legislature to decide whether to establish lower courts. 10. The convention placed the selection of the president in an electoral college chosen on a state-by-state basis. 11. Congress was denied the power to regulate slavery for twenty years. 12. To protect the property of southern slave owners delegates agreed to a fugitive clause that allowed masters to reclaim enslaved blacks who took refuge in other states; slavery explicitly missing from the Constitution 13. The Constitution was to be the supreme law of the land, and the national government was given power over taxation, military defense, external commerce, and the making of laws. 14. The Constitution, signed on September 17, 1787, mandated that the United States honor the national debt and restricted the ability of state governments to assist debtors. C.The People Debate Ratification 1. The Constitution would go into effect upon ratification by nine of the thirteen states. 2. Nationalists began calling themselves Federalists. 3. Antifederalists opposed the Constitution, feared losing their power at the state level and a declaration of individual rights. 4. Well-educated Americans with a traditional republican outlook wanted the nation to remain a collection of small sovereign republics tied together only for trade and defense. 5. The Federalists pointed out that each branch would check and balance the other. 6. The Federalists promised to amend the Constitution with a national bill of rights in order to satisfy the Antifederalists.