American colonies

Colonization and early self-government

The opening of the 17th century found three countries—France,
Spain, and England—contending for dominion in North
America. Of these England, the tardiest on the scene, finally took
control of the beginnings of what is now the United States. The
French, troubled by foreign wars and internal religious quarrels,
long failed to realize the great possibilities of the new continent,
Pennsylvania and their settlements in the St. Lawrence Valley grew feebly. The
Spaniards were preoccupied with South America and the lands
Title page from “An accurate
description of the recently founded washed by the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. But the English,
province of Pennsylvania” by Francis after initial failures under Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter
Daniel Pastorius, who established the Raleigh, planted firm settlements all the way from Maine to
first German settlement in the
Georgia, nourished them with a steady flow of people and
colonies, 1700.
capital, and soon absorbed the smaller colonizing venture of the
Dutch in the Hudson Valley and the tiny Swedish effort on the Delaware River. Within a century and a half the
British had 13 flourishing colonies on the Atlantic coast: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Georgia.

In a short time the colonists pushed from the Tidewater strip toward the Appalachians and finally crossed the
mountains by the Cumberland Gap and Ohio River. Decade by decade they became less European in habit
and outlook and more American—the frontier in particular setting its stamp on them. Their freedom from
most of the feudal inheritances of western Europe, and the self-reliance they necessarily acquired in subduing
nature, made them highly individualistic.

How colonization took place

A variety of motives—political, religious, and economic—contributed to the settling of the Atlantic seaboard.
Both labour and capital in England had become fairly fluid by 1600 and were seeking more profitable fields.
A sharp rise in prices and living costs made many people restless; the increase in sheep grazing and the
fencing in of former common lands drove many from the soil; bold young men, including younger sons of the
gentry, losing in peace the occupation which the wars with Spain had given them, looked abroad. Many
Englishmen saw that the colonization of the New World might contribute to the power and affluence of their
homeland and felt that Spain, Portugal, and other lands should face competition. Finally, the spread of great
commercial trading companies assisted in the work.

These companies were chartered by the crown to give England new outlets abroad. The Muscovy Company,
for example, founded in 1555, intended to trade with Russia; the Levant Company controlled trade with
Venice and the Near East; and the East India Company (1600) covered the Pacific and Indian Ocean coasts.
Companies were also organized for Newfoundland, the Northwest Passage, and Bermuda. Most important for
America, however, were the two companies for which King James I granted a charter in 1606, one to colonize
the American coast anywhere between parallels 34° and 41° north and the other anywhere between 38° and
45° north. Because members of the first company lived in London, it became known as the Virginia Company
of London (Virginia Company); as members of the second dwelt in Plymouth, it was called the Plymouth
Company. Shareholders in the companies were to provide settlers and capital and were to control production
and trade. Government, however, was to remain in the hands of the crown, acting through councils. A
guarantee was given to the colonists of all the rights and liberties of English subjects, without any definition
of their scope. In return, the grantees were forbidden to draft any orders or make any laws contrary to those of
England.

The Virginia Company lost no time in using its powers. Before

Christmas in 1606 three ships sailed for Virginia, carrying among
others Capt. John Smith, who was to take an important part in
the American story, and Bartholomew Gosnold, who had
previously visited the New England coast. In the spring of 1607
the three ships sailed to Hampton Roads, christened the James

Jamestown River, landed 120 men, and founded Jamestown. Starvation,

disease, and Indian warfare ensued, and, though more ships with
Village of Jamestown, on the James
River, Virginia, c. 1615. fresh settlers arrived, for a time the colony had but precarious
life. In the end Virginia took sturdy root: “We hope to plant a
nation / Where none before hath stood,” sang a ballad maker among the early adventurers, and they achieved
their ambition.

In these years the Virginia Company had achieved a broader

legal basis. It obtained two new charters from the crown, one in
1609 and one in 1612. These new grants practically severed it
from the Plymouth Company and confirmed to it a great belt of
territory 400 miles (640 km) wide extending through the
American continent to the Pacific Ocean. The Virginia Company

John Smith: Virginia thus became proprietor of the colony of Virginia. At the same
time it obtained large rights of government. It could appoint the
Map of Virginia from John Smith's The
Generall Historie of Virginia, New resident governor, his resident council, and other officers and
England, and the Summer Isles, 1624. hold full control of them. The old system of joint-stock
management of land and trade was abolished, and private
property in land and stores took its place. An able soldier, Sir Thomas Dale, went to Virginia in 1611 with
three ships, 300 colonists, and some livestock, and for five years exercised statesmanlike control. During
these years the colony took up the cultivation of tobacco with great profit.

Meanwhile, the Plymouth Company had failed in an effort to plant a colony at the mouth of the Kennebec
River in Maine. Nothing more was done to colonize what is now New England until a group of Separatists,
who believed that the Bible was the only test of faith and revolted against all other creeds, turned to this area.
These Pilgrims placed themselves in partnership with a group of merchants and other businessmen who
 agreed to finance the venture. In return for advances of ready
money, the colonists promised to labour for seven years,
throwing all they produced into a common pool; both profits and
land were to remain undivided for that period. Of two vessels
dispatched, one turned back, but the other, the Mayflower, set
sail on September 16 (New Style; September 6, Old Style), 1620,

Bernard Gribble: Mayflower with about 100 passengers, and reached Cape Cod before the
year ended. After much suffering and peril courageously met, the
Pilgrim Fathers boarding the
Mayflower, painting by Bernard colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, took root. Within 10 years it
Gribble. was prosperously expanding, had separated itself from the
partners in England, and had replaced the joint-stock
arrangement with private properties and private enterprise.

First steps in self-government

Both in Virginia and New England the colonists soon began to
exercise a certain autonomy. In 1619 Gov. George Yeardley
brought out to Jamestown a new plan of government and a
momentous step forward was taken. A two-part legislature was
created, one part consisting of the governor and his council,
named by the company in England, and the other a house made

Pilgrims signing the Mayflower up of two burgesses from each settlement. It was to legislate
Compact upon Virginian home affairs, subject to the approval of the

Pilgrims signing the Mayflower governor and the company. During the summer the first true
Compact, reproduction of an oil legislature in continental America met in the log church in
painting, 1932. Jamestown. A little later the Pilgrims, before leaving their ship,
adopted the Mayflower Compact. It was not a form of
government but an agreement that they would live together in orderly fashion under civil officers of their own
selection. On board the ship, John Carver was chosen governor, soon to be succeeded by William Bradford.
As soon as they had begun housing themselves, the Plymouth settlers met and consulted upon laws both for
their civil and military government resulting in the first New England town meeting.

However, a colony of sturdier individualism, with a bolder

degree of self-government, was soon to be established. In the
years 1630–42 the “Great Migration” of the Puritans from
England to America occurred. These believers in a church purged
of old forms and abuses, and a society purified of gross evils,
were unhappy under King Charles I, who in 1629 dissolved
1 of 2 Parliament for 11 years, and under Archbishop William Laud,
who declared war upon them. Two men, John Endecott, who led
John Winthrop
a body of settlers to Salem, Massachusetts, and John Winthrop, a
John Winthrop, detail of a 19th-
country squire of great energy, showed special leadership. The
century painting by G.F. Wright after a
contemporary portrait by an unknown crown in 1629 gave a charter to the Massachusetts Bay
artist. Company. The Puritans quickly obtained control of it, and
Winthrop as governor persuaded the members to decide in
favour of transporting company, charter, and a large assemblage
of colonists all together to Boston, Massachusetts. At once new
groups migrated to this colony of Massachusetts Bay, with
Boston as its centre. Careful estimates show that by 1641, 300
ships had carried 20,000 settlers to America. This was an almost
purely English migration, which included a few aristocrats and
many university graduates. Religious zeal animated most of the
migrants.
2 of 2

Massachusetts Bay Colony The result was the erection of a church state which fell far short
of democracy but cherished a passion for liberty and self-
government. Each town of Massachusetts Bay had its own
church, minister, and town government and was an independent
Congregational community. Voting rights were limited to church
members, and the ministers exercised a powerful authority in
civil affairs. From an early date the voting freemen elected
deputies to sit in the general court, or legislature, where they, the
“A Vindication of the Government of
New-England Churches”
governor, and a small body of his assistants made laws and
levied taxes. Thus a self-sufficient commonwealth of oligarchical
Title page of “A Vindication of the
Government of New-England type sprang into being. Governor Winthrop and others declared
Churches,” a pamphlet by that it had absolute powers of self-government under the crown
Congregational minister and and owed no allegiance or deference to the English Parliament.
theologian John Wise, 1717.
The dominance of the clergy, however, and the narrowness and
harshness of their government aroused great discontent.

A combination of two impulses—the restlessness of men seeking

better land and a desire for greater independence in religion and
politics—led various elements in New England to establish other
colonies. Thus Roger Williams, a stout adherent of freedom and
tolerance, helped bring Rhode Island into existence, Thomas
Hooker and others founded settlements on the Connecticut River,
1 of 2 and the Rev. John Davenport and others established New Haven
colony, which expanded along Long Island Sound. The early
Roger Williams
inhabitants of Maine and New Hampshire were controlled by
Founder of Rhode Island Roger
Massachusetts Bay. All the New Englanders until 1680
Williams.
practically ruled themselves. They regarded the government in
England as sovereign but passed their own laws, traded under
their own regulations, and raised their own forces for defense.
 Their tie with England was one of sentiment, not force, and they
developed themselves in full freedom.

Particularly during the years of the Civil War and

Commonwealth in England, the colonies profited from the
preoccupation of the mother country with its own affairs. The
Massachusetts legislature boldly asserted that the laws of the
2 of 2
English Parliament did not reach New England. Under Oliver
Thomas Hooker Cromwell and the Commonwealth, Virginia was permitted to
Thomas Hooker and his followers elect its own governor and council as well as burgesses. During
settling Hartford, Connecticut, 1636. the period of civil strife in England, the four colonies of
Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven in 1643 formed the New England Confederation,
which lasted for a full generation. Its primary purpose was defense against Native Americans, the French, and
the Dutch, but it also dealt with boundary controversies and provided “mutual advice” on various questions.

Land policy in New England and Virginia

The New England colonies grew by a process of group settlement. The general courts of the various colonies,
most notably that of Massachusetts Bay, would make a grant of land to a migrating group, fixing its
boundaries carefully. This group would then establish a new town. Its common lands, fencing, grazing
practices, and the mode of apportionment of farms were regulated by the general court or legislature, but each
town then took control of land allotments and management. The legislature determined who should be
admitted to the town as settlers and freeholders. The town meetings, or boards of town proprietors, laid out
the land of each settlement as house lots, common fields, meadow and pasture, and ultimately divided it
among owners. Inhabitants of each town commonly dwelt together for society and protection and traveled
from the town centre to till their acres. The typical town was thus closely akin to an English manor, but with
no lord of the manor at its head. The town was, of course, the church centre, and its pastor was the community
leader. Militia service, elections, and taxation were based on the town.

In Virginia, settlement followed an entirely different pattern. There the colonists spread out widely up the
creeks and rivers, soon moving westward as far as the falls of the James River, where the city of Richmond
now stands. Partly because tobacco rapidly impoverished the soil, they tilled land in much larger units, known
as plantations, with almost no village centres, and they made much greater use of servants—and, significantly,
slaves—than did New England. This pattern was unfavourable to social life, cooperation, and communal
activities, but it created a spirit of independence equal to that existing farther north. Throughout the 17th
century the planters preferred white indentured servants to African slaves, and for a time as many as 1,500
arrived every year. They were mainly English, along with some Scotch and Irish, and in general bound
themselves, in return for transportation and support, to work without wages for four to six years. This
indenture or redemptioner system became a highly efficient aid to colonization. When they had worked out
their terms, the servants moved up the streams, took land, began shipping tobacco from their own wharves,
and thus became in turn independent planters or freehold farmers.
The natural political units in Virginia were parishes and counties. Parish institutions were chiefly
ecclesiastical, but under the English system they included education; every minister kept a school and the
vestry saw to it that all poor children could read and write. Children of prosperous families usually had private
tutors. The counties increased in number to keep pace with the steady spread of population. By 1652 Virginia
had 13 counties, of which 9 lay on the James River and 2 on the York. The county courts held large powers of
local government and tended to come under the control of a few influential families. Until 1636 the House of
Burgesses was practically elected on manhood suffrage; thereafter the vote was restricted, and, when Sir
William Berkeley became governor under the Restoration, he kept a compliant house in power for 15 years.

Founding of the middle colonies

Henry Hudson’s voyage of 1609 to what is now New York Bay
was intended to serve trade rather than colonization. The Dutch
wished for cargoes of fur, lumber, and tobacco. However, in
1621 the Netherlands government chartered the Dutch West
India Company with power to build forts, to establish a
government, and to colonize the land over wide areas, including
1 of 3 the American coast. Two years later the heads of the company
sent a vessel with 30 families of Walloons, Protestant refugees
Henry Hudson
from the southern provinces of the Netherlands, to the mouth of
A color lithograph based on a painting
the Hudson River, where they established the first permanent
done by American artist Frederic A.
Chapman depicting the 1609 voyage settlement on the island of Manhattan. More settlers arrived, and
of Henry Hudson's ship while Native in 1626 Peter Minuit “purchased” the island from Indian
Americans watch from the nearby sachems (variously characterized by historians as having
shore.
belonged to the Lenape, Delaware, Munsee, or Algonquin
people) and founded New Amsterdam as the seat of government
for a colony. Fort Orange (now Albany) had been planted up the
Hudson two years earlier as a fur trading post. New Amsterdam
quickly became a cosmopolitan town, attracting people of
various nations and faiths. It had the self-reliant lawless
atmosphere of a seaport, full of privateers, smugglers, tavern
2 of 3 keepers, and roistering sailors.

Henry Hudson For several reasons New Netherland did not grow as vigorously
as the English colonies. The Dutch West India Company was at
first much more interested in preying on Spanish commerce in
the Caribbean and Atlantic than in finding permanent settlers. It
was also anxious to develop the fur trade and to share in the
tobacco trade. When it turned to settlement in earnest, it adopted
an unfortunate method. Beginning in 1629, it granted any
patroon who brought out 50 families a great estate on which to
3 of 3
settle them as tenants, with certain monopolies, as of milling, in
 Alfred Fredericks: The Purchase of the hands of the owner. This kind of feudalism gave a few great
Manhattan Island families an unhealthy share of wealth and power. Some small
The Purchase of Manhattan Island, by farmers did establish independent farms or boweries here and
Alfred Fredericks, c. 1910. there, as did interloping Puritans from New England who sifted
into Westchester and the northern reaches of Long Island, but
they were not numerous. Finally, the governors and councils
appointed by the Dutch West India Company, who ruled without
any such popular assemblies as Virginia and New England
possessed, were harsh, autocratic, and blundering. Far from
gaining any popular following, they were generally disliked. The
Peter Stuyvesant most famous of the governors, Peter Stuyvesant, was also the
most headstrong and shortsighted.

It was impossible for England to permit a Dutch colony to break

the line of its possessions on the Atlantic seaboard for long. In
1664 a small English naval force obtained the surrender of the
New Netherland without firing a shot. The 7,000 inhabitants of
the area accepted the new regime without protest. Charles II
appointed his brother James, the duke of York, ruler and

The Surrender of Nieuw Amsterdam in proprietor of the colony of New York, a domain stretching from
1664 the Connecticut River to the Delaware. At once a more liberal

Peter Stuyvesant and Dutch soldiers regime began. The proprietor sent over a governor with
leaving New Amsterdam (Manhattan) instructions to treat the Dutch inhabitants generously, to permit
after ceding it to the English, as them to keep their lands, and to make no interference with their
depicted in The Surrender of Nieuw
language or religion. Immigration was encouraged and
Amsterdam in 1664, etching by
Charles Harris, 1908. settlements thickened. In 1683 Gov. Thomas Dongan summoned
a representative assembly for the province of New York.

One of the greatest of all colonial figures presided over the

founding of what became Pennsylvania and Delaware. William
Penn, son of the prominent English admiral Sir William Penn,
had been converted to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in
1667, in his early 20s. He aspired to establish a colony where
every race and every sect could find both political and religious

William Penn freedom. His friendship with the duke of York, and the fact that
the king owed a large unpaid debt to Admiral Penn, enabled
William Penn to gain control of a great part of the imperial domain assigned to the duke. When the crown
gave him a proprietary charter in 1681, he immediately began to advertise for settlers. Publishing a
description of Pennsylvania in four languages, he offered newcomers land on very liberal terms: 50 acres free,
larger farms at a purely nominal rent, and 5,000 acres for £100. Penn visited his “holy experiment” in 1682.
And in that year he laid down a charter of government which provided for a small elective council, to sit with
himself as governor and initiate laws, and a larger elective assembly to pass or reject the proposed laws.
Within a few years the assembly gained much larger powers and itself proposed legislation. In 1701 Penn
granted a new charter that lasted until the American Revolution.

It is not strange that Pennsylvania flourished beyond other

colonies. Immigrants flocked in large numbers, from England
and Germany especially, to enjoy the religious freedom, the
humane criminal legislation, the easy terms for gaining fertile
land, and the opportunities for trade and manufacture. Penn had
hoped that Philadelphia, his “city of brotherly love,” would

Free Public Library, Philadelphia always be “a green country town,” with gardens surrounding
every house, and it did become a beautiful as well as a
Free Public Library, Philadelphia,
1799. prosperous city. Quakerism, softened from its originally
somewhat rigid outlines, gave the colony a special atmosphere. It
was in Pennsylvania that a number of institutions on which America later prided itself found their first full-
scale trial: complete religious freedom, the distribution of land to actual settlers at very low cost, the
encouragement of a melting pot of peoples, and the establishment of excellent schools open to all. Because of
the high intellectual and moral standards of the Quakers, the cultural level of Pennsylvania soon became one
of unusual elevation. It was noted for its libraries, its refined homes, its interest in science, and its
architectural taste. When it was only 10 years old, it had the first printing press to be established outside of
New England.

Before Penn died, he bought from the duke of York three

counties on the Delaware River which became the province and
state of that name. Though they shared their governor with
Pennsylvania, from 1702 they had their own elective assembly.
The other middle colonies also began under proprietors.
Maryland had a history of special interest because of its initial
1 of 2 status as a refuge for Roman Catholics. Charles I granted the
district between the Potomac River and the 40th parallel in 1632
Maryland
to George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, who was much
Map dating from about 1700 showing
interested in colonization. His son, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron
Maryland and surrounding colonies.
Baltimore, almost immediately succeeded to the grant and
resolved to establish a colony where his fellow Roman Catholics
could find peace. Early in 1634 the first shipload of Roman
Catholic settlers chose a site at St. Marys on a tributary of the
Potomac near its mouth. Actually, Protestants soon constituted a
majority of the settlers, for the Roman Catholics preferred to stay
in England. To meet this situation, Cecilius Calvert persuaded
2 of 2 the assembly which he called to pass an act of religious

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

toleration in 1649. Unfortunately, this act was repealed before
many years.
 Though Maryland profited from the proximity to Virginia, which
gave it protection and trade, it had a troubled history. The
Protestant settlers were irked by Calvert’s bestowals of land,
offices, and favours on his relatives and Roman Catholic friends.
They were also irritated by the very limited authority that he
allowed his assembly. Friction over religious and economic

Virginia, Maryland, and the “improved questions culminated in hostilities in 1654, the Protestant small
parts” of Pennsylvania and New farmers finally winning their main objectives. When William and
Jersey Mary came to the throne in England in 1689, the Calverts lost
Map of Virginia, Maryland, and the control of Maryland; however, when a new Lord Baltimore
“improved parts” of Pennsylvania and embraced Protestantism in 1715, the family regained its rights.
New Jersey, 1685.
Meanwhile, the future New Jersey had undergone some
confusing and unprofitable changes of name and jurisdiction.
The duke of York, the original proprietor, had given the lands
between the Hudson and Delaware rivers to two friends, Lord
John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, as the province of Nova
Cesaria, or New Jersey. To bring in more settlers, they drew up a
charter or set of “concessions and agreements” which largely
Philip Carteret
anticipated Penn’s liberal ideas. That is, they offered generous
Philip Carteret arriving at the colony of terms for acquiring land, complete freedom of conscience, and a
New Jersey in 1665 to serve as its
popular assembly. In 1674 Berkeley sold his half share to two
governor, from a 19th-century
coloured engraving.
Quakers, who took the southwestern part of the future state. In
1680 Carteret’s widow sold the northeastern half to a new body
of proprietors. Ultimately, in 1702, the crown took over both sections.

The Carolinas and Georgia

The lands south of Virginia were also colonized under royal
grants to great proprietors. Under Charles II a group of eight men
obtained a grant of all North America between the 31st and 36th
parallels. Two segments of this great domain were developed in
very different ways. Sir John Colleton and Anthony Ashley
Cooper, who later became Lord Shaftesbury, founded
1 of 2 Charleston, South Carolina, in 1670 with settlers from England
and overcrowded Barbados. Groups of French Huguenots and
engraving of Charleston
Scots at once migrated to South Carolina, giving it by the year
A London Magazine engraving of
1700 a population, including black slaves, of about 5,000. At
Charleston, South Carolina, 1762.
first the colony was based on exports of foodstuffs to the West
Indies and of turpentine, tar, and furs to Europe. Then rice was
introduced from Madagascar, and the South Carolinians
developed large plantations which grew rice and indigo very
 profitably. The area to the north, meanwhile, was settled in
moderate-sized farms by a variety of immigrants: English,
Germans, drifters from Virginia, and adventurous New
Englanders. A settlement of Swiss at New Bern added one
especially prosperous element.

The “Fundamental Constitutions” which John Locke helped

2 of 2
Shaftesbury draw up for the Carolinas, providing for a hereditary
Swiss settlers of New Bern, North landed nobility bearing bizarre titles, was totally unsuited to the
Carolina
American scene and never went into real effect. The proprietors
Swiss settlers arriving in the New gave each colony instead a simple workable form of government
World and establishing New Bern in
with a governor, council, and assembly. In the Carolinas, as in
present-day North Carolina.
Virginia, the population spread widely over the land. Although
Charleston became an opulent and fashionable little city, other towns were few and small. In social and
economic character the two colonies differed sharply. North Carolina found that its tobacco and naval stores,
shipped from poor harbours, offered much less revenue than South Carolina’s staples. It had no merchants and
ship captains to match those of Charleston, and it had very few great planters. Its populace tended to be poorer
and less-educated, and only a few coastal centres could boast of the aristocratic atmosphere that was emerging
in the southern colonies. In South Carolina many planters accumulated wealth at their country estates, where
they lived most of the year. They had fine town houses in Charleston, where in the hottest summer months
they kept up a pleasant social life with rich traders and a robust professional class. They gave the commons
house, which they called the assembly, an English tone. North Carolina’s white population grew at a faster
rate, however, and its slave population was smaller than its southern neighbour’s.

Georgia, the last of the 13 colonies to be founded, was the

creation of a group of British philanthropists. These proprietors,
obtaining a grant of lands between the Savannah and Altamaha
rivers, hoped to give debtors and other deserving poor people a
new start in life In 1733 they sent over Gen. James Oglethorpe
with 100 settlers to establish the town of Savannah. Some of the

Savannah, Georgia regulations imposed by the trustees were more idealistic than
realistic. Slavery was prohibited; the importation of rum, brandy,
Savannah, Georgia, 1734.
and other strong drink was forbidden; and, to prevent the growth
of large estates, every charity colonist was restricted to 50 acres (20 hectares) of land, which he might
transmit only to a male heir. This benevolent paternalism retarded the growth of Georgia. The settlers quickly
found that they needed larger units of land for economic tillage and that slave labour would be advantageous.
They wanted to exchange their lumber for importations of rum from the West Indies. The trustees gradually
liberalized their rules, while in 1751 they allowed the colonists to elect an assembly. The following year, when
their tenure of the proprietorship lapsed, they made no effort to renew it but allowed the crown to take over
Georgia.

As a crown colony it still remained so weak that it needed constant subsidies. Its agriculture became more and
more like that of South Carolina, and it developed a society of slave-owning planters in the lowlands,
merchants in Savannah, and small farmers in the uplands. But the philanthropists had accomplished three
valuable results: they had saved a considerable number of neglected and abused people, they had maintained a
buffer between the other southern colonies and Spanish Florida, and they had laid the foundations for one of
the greatest of the southern states.
New shapes of colonial development
In the 80 years between 1660 and 1740, three great new forces began to reshape the British colonies in North
America. They were the economic regulations embodied in the Acts of Trade and Navigation, the partial
systematization of imperial administration, and the contest with the French for dominion over the continent.
By the year 1700 the colonists probably numbered about 250,000 and were increasing at a rate that has
seldom been equaled in the history of Western nations. Immigration, early marriages, the economic value of
children in an agricultural society, and the relatively high level of health sped this growth.

Under the concept of mercantilism generally accepted by western Europe, English economic policy regarded
the colonies as part of an imperial whole which should aim at self-sufficiency and a favourable trade balance.
Each part of the empire had something to give and something to receive. This policy was first embodied in
three Navigation Acts by Parliament in 1651, 1660, and 1663. The law of 1651 provided that all goods
imported into England or the colonies must be carried in ships of which the owner, captain, and crew were
English (colonials, of course, were considered Englishmen). The exception to this rule was that all goods
imported into England and the colonies from Europe might come in ships of the country which produced the
goods. The law of 1660, strengthening the first, required that ships used in carrying goods in and out of
England must be built as well as owned and manned in England or the colonies. It also required that certain
“enumerated articles,” of which sugar, tobacco, and indigo were the chief, be sold only to England or to other
colonies. To give the colonists full control of the home market, no one could grow tobacco in England or
import it from a foreign land. The law of 1663 was more serious. It stipulated that European goods must be
shipped to the colonies through England and thus made it necessary for many colonial merchants to add an
extra leg to their voyages.

Many colonists attempted to evade these acts. They shipped enumerated articles to Europe instead of to
England, and they imported European goods directly from Europe without stopping in English ports. New
laws of 1673 and 1696 were then passed by Parliament to end the evasions. Moreover, the list of enumerated
articles was lengthened, so that by the year 1721 rice, molasses, naval stores (tar, pitch, and turpentine), furs,
and copper, all important to the colonies, had been placed under control. In 1733 the British Parliament
adopted a still more serious measure, the Molasses Act, which placed heavy duties on all sugar, molasses,
rum, and other spirits imported into the colonies from the French, Dutch, and Spanish possessions. The object
was to restrict trade to the British West Indies. Had it been enforced, this law would have been disastrous, for
the colonies exchanged large quantities of fish, lumber, meat, and foodstuffs with the foreign islands for these
commodities. Fortunately, the British government winked at the wholesale violations.

Other irksome restrictions on the colonies concerned manufactures, for the mother country wished to preserve
the colonial market for its own industries. The Wool Act of 1699 prohibited the shipment of woolen fabrics
across any colonial boundary. The Hat Act of 1732 similarly forbade any colony to export its hats and limited
the number of apprentices. Late in the colonial period the Iron Act of 1750 stopped the erection in the
colonies of rolling and slitting mills, forges, and iron-making plants. Like all new communities, the colonies
needed a more abundant currency than they had and wished to print paper money, but the British authorities
feared an inflation which would hurt British creditors and raise the price of colonial exports. In 1751 they
therefore forbade the issuance of paper money by New England and in 1764 applied the ban to the other
colonies.

But the mercantilist enactments had many features favourable to the colonies, and in total effect they were far
from harsh. The navigation laws fostered shipbuilding in the colonies. A number of important American
products were given a monopoly of the British market. Colonial pig iron and bar iron were admitted to Great
Britain without duty. British bounties were paid on the production of naval stores. These facts, coupled with
the salutary neglect of the colonies introduced by Robert Walpole and the nonenforcement of the more
onerous laws, permitted a steady development of American economic life. The colonists meanwhile had the
protection of the British army and navy. Nevertheless, two facts respecting the acts of trade had their bearing
on later events. First, the colonies, like most frontier agricultural communities, were plainly exploited by the
older countries both as a source of low-priced raw materials and as a market for manufactured wares—and,
like other frontier lands, they resented the fact. Second, widespread law evasion fostered in the colonists a
spirit of disobedience and insubordination.

Imperial organization
Step by step the list of royal provinces lengthened. On the
accession of the duke of York to the throne, the proprietary
colony of New York entered the new status and there remained.
New Hampshire became a royal province in 1679. The
restoration of the Stuarts put an abrupt stop to the wide free
autonomy of Massachusetts Bay. A royal commission inquired

Sir Edmund Andros into charges that the Puritans had violated their charter and
disobeyed imperial enactments. Continued contumacy led
Charles II to abrogate the charter in 1684 and take special measures for governing the colony. Massachusetts,
with Maine, New Hampshire, and part of Rhode Island, was first given a single governor. Then in 1686 Sir
Edmund Andros arrived with instructions to take all of New England, New York, and New Jersey under his
jurisdiction as the Dominion of New England. His arbitrary regime ended, however, with the Glorious
Revolution of 1688–89 in England, and Massachusetts Bay by adroit effort obtained from William and Mary a
new charter which incorporated Plymouth in the colony.

By the time of George I, eight of the colonies were royal provinces. Connecticut and Rhode Island under their
old charters were virtually little republics; Pennsylvania and Maryland were still under proprietary regimes;
and Georgia struggled along under its trustees until 1752. Some British leaders wished to see all the colonies
put under uniform royal control, but successive ministries hung back, unwilling to arouse popular resentment
or increase the power of the crown. All the colonies had representative assemblies which controlled
appropriations and filled many offices and were usually in sharp opposition to the royal governors or
proprietors. Connecticut and Rhode Island elected their own governors. The colonists had the best of it in
these continuous quarrels, for self-interest gave them more persistence and skill. But representative self-
government did not mean a true democracy. The franchise in all the colonies was on a property basis, so that
the poorest people were unrepresented in the assemblies. Moreover, the oldest settled seaboard communities
saw to it that apportionment of seats favoured them as against the newer frontier settlements.

In all the royal and proprietary colonies, the assembly attempted to whittle away the powers of the executive.
Using their power of taxation as a lever, they steadily encroached on the authority of the governor and
widened that of the legislature. They seized control of fees on which the executive depended, turned
appointive positions into elective offices, and staged frequent revolts against the governors’ councils and other
“official cliques.” Popular government thus broadened decade by decade. One province, Pennsylvania, after
1701 had no legislative council, the assembly controlling all legislation.

Ultimate authority over English America rested in the crown, acting through the secretary of state and Privy
Council. But it was deputed to a succession of committees or boards: first, in 1660, to the Privy Council
committee for foreign plantations, then in 1675 to the Privy Council committee called lords of trade, and
finally in 1696 to the commissioners of trade and plantations, separate from the Privy Council. It was
impossible, however, to keep control highly centralized; it was distributed to various agencies. The treasury
board audited whatever revenues came from the colonies, oversaw expenditures for them, and scrutinized
appointments for the colonial service. The admiralty board dealt with the equipment of the navy in American
waters, the protection of commerce, and the punishment of smugglers. The war office had control over
military affairs within the colonies. The bishop of London supervised the appointment of clergymen of the
Anglican church and watched over their conduct and the parish schools they helped keep. The Privy Council
received letters and petitions on colonial business, arranged hearings and inquiries, and issued letters,
instructions, and orders in council on a wide variety of subjects. It also acted as a colonial court of appeals.

The administration thus required a considerable bureaucracy. But

in time a good deal of the business was handled directly by the
office of one of the secretaries of state in London, without going
before the Privy Council. That is, the cabinet took control; the
secretary of state for the southern department became especially
important. Various colonies sent to London agents, like Benjamin

Edmund Burke Franklin, or hired some able British subject, such as Edmund
Burke, to make sure their views were effectively presented. In
Edmund Burke, detail of an oil painting
from the studio of Sir Joshua general, imperial administration was loose rather than strict. The
Reynolds, 1771; in the National very remoteness of the colonies helped ensure this; to send a
Portrait Gallery, London. letter from England to New York and get an answer took at least
three months. Distance, a tradition of letting well enough alone,
and a belief that the Americans could mind their own affairs capably combined to make the crown authorities
complacent. Until 1760 the colonists possessed greater political freedom than perhaps any other people on
earth. They enjoyed many privileges and rights that were totally unknown in French and Spanish lands.

Rights in the colonies

Until 1760 Parliament passed only about 100 statutes in all relating to the colonies, and most of these dealt
with military and economic matters. Some of the provinces adopted great parts of the statute law of England,
and all of them attached high importance to the English guarantees of fundamental rights. The English
common law automatically came into force throughout British America. While the crown after 1690 generally
required the colonial assemblies to send their acts to England for approval or disapproval by the king in
council, this was not a great hardship. As the 18th century advanced, the imperial government was concerned
primarily with the acquisition of more colonial territory, the fixing of boundaries, and the maintenance of
commercial interests. It also gave some attention to the Anglican (Episcopal) church and its revenues.

By the end of the colonial period the Puritan or Congregational Church enjoyed establishment in
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. Farther south the Anglican church was established in the
Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland and in four southern counties of New York, but its hold in North
Carolina and western Virginia was precarious. In the other colonies, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
and New Jersey, church and state were separated. The discrimination involved in the Congregational and
Episcopal establishments did not mean that religious tolerance suffered. On the contrary, in the 18th century
freedom of faith was much more widely accepted in British America than in most other parts of the world.
The crusading Roger Williams and the liberal William Penn had founded model commonwealths whose
influence was widely felt. The crown, the various proprietors, and important colonial interests, eager to attract
settlers, had encouraged a variety of religious sects: Jews to New York and Rhode Island; Huguenots to South
Carolina and New York; Mennonites, Dunkards, and other German sects to Pennsylvania; Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians to lands all the way from New Hampshire to North Carolina; and Roman Catholics to
Maryland. This variety of denominations helped keep the religious atmosphere free. In some colonies Jews
were barred from the franchise and from office, but Jews were few in number. In most colonies Roman
Catholics (partly because of fear of the French) lay under some disabilities, but they had far more freedom
than Protestants enjoyed in Roman Catholic lands.

The temper of colonial life was friendly to freedom of thought in

every field. Both in New England and the southern provinces the
grip of the established churches was gradually loosened as the
18th century wore on. Dissenting sects grew rapidly among the
common people and Deism among the intellectuals. Taxation for
the establishment of churches naturally aroused increasing
1 of 2 resentment. The religious revival called the Great Awakening,
which reached full force in the 1730s, perhaps indicated that the
Jonathan Edwards
older churches had failed to provide the emotional and
Theologian and philosopher Jonathan
intellectual nutriment the people needed. It was led in
Edwards.
Massachusetts by Jonathan Edwards, an eloquent Yale graduate
whose sermons dealt with faith, sin, and punishment; in the
middle colonies by William Tennent, who came from Scotland to
preach with fervour and to establish a “log college” in
Pennsylvania for training other zealous clergymen; and in
Georgia by the indefatigable George Whitefield, who soon began
 touring other colonies and cast his spell everywhere over
immense audiences. The movement continued with vigour
throughout the 1740s, converted multitudes, and, by
strengthening a spirit of revolt against older forms of religion,
gave new strength to the Baptists, to new light Presbyterianism,
and in time to the Methodists headed by John Wesley.
2 of 2
The colonists had at least as much freedom of speech, of
George Whitefield assembly, and of the press as the British did at home. When John
George Whitefield, engraving by I. Peter Zenger allowed a political leader in New York to criticize
Taylor after a painting by N. Hone. the royal governor in his New York Weekly Journal, he was
arrested for libel. By a spirited appeal to the jury the aged but
intrepid Andrew Hamilton, an attorney of Philadelphia, won
Zenger’s release on the ground that a fundamental British liberty
was at stake. As this case suggests, America was soon a land of
newspapers. By 1765 every colony but Delaware and New
Jersey had at least one, and the whole list numbered 25. Debate
New York Weekly Journal in the colonial assemblies had even fewer inhibitions than in

Page from John Peter Zenger's New Westminster and was in general fully reported and discussed.
York Weekly Journal. Pamphlet publications increased. Intermarriage among peoples
of different national stocks produced new generations with no
firsthand knowledge of Europe who considered themselves purely American. All the conditions of life in the
new country, where the abundant natural resources could be seized only by determined efforts, encouraged a
spirit of individual enterprise which chafed at restraints.
The contest with France
Competing claims in North America
It was inevitable that Great Britain and France should wage a struggle for mastery in North America. Two
powers could not occupy the same land without a desperate battle for supremacy. In its century-long course
and its far-reaching consequences, this became one of the epic contests of modern history. It was a protracted
war between two peoples, two cultures, and two sets of political and religious institutions. Fought out with the
deep wilderness as the setting and background and involving the Native American tribes as participants on
both sides, its marches, sieges, and battles have a picturesqueness seldom found in modern war. It produced
leaders of high character and ability: Louis de Buade, comte de Palluau et de Frontenac, Antoine de la Mothe
Cadillac, and Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Grozon, marquis de Montcalm on the French side, and James Wolfe,
Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, John Forbes, and George Washington among the Anglo-Americans.

Led by Samuel de Champlain and by Jesuit, Recollect, and Franciscan churchmen, the French strove with
little success in the first half of the 17th century to develop Canada as a colony. Seeking fish, furs, and
converts in a chilly, difficult land, they failed to plant strong agricultural settlements. The despotic if paternal
government in Paris kept the colonists under tight rein instead of encouraging self-government and individual
initiative based on the English model; it refused to allow any but Roman Catholics to immigrate instead of
 inviting persons of all faiths. By 1660 only a few thousand
French were settled in all of Canada. But when Louis XIV came
to the throne, he showed an intelligent interest in New France.
His government sent out shiploads of emigrants, gave generous
subsidies, encouraged exploration, and helped fur traders and
missionaries carry French influence through the Great Lakes

Samuel de Champlain region. In 1659 the first bishop, François de Montmorency

Laval, an able, iron-willed man, arrived in Quebec, determined
French explorer Samuel de
Champlain. to make the church dominant in a livelier, more energetic colony.

Then in the last quarter of the century the greatest of the French
governors, the count de Frontenac, made New France a genuine threat to English America. During his regime,
which with one short interval lasted from 1672 to 1698, the great explorations of Jacques Marquette, René-
Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, and Louis Jolliet opened the way into the West. They mapped much of the
upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys; La Salle descended the Mississippi to its mouth and penetrated Texas.
Two other explorers, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, entered the country
beyond Lake Superior. Frontenac, with characteristic ability and determination, asserted the authority of the
secular arm over the church. The hostile Iroquois had practically wiped out the friendly Huron and Erie tribes
among whom the Jesuits had made their best converts. Frontenac chastised the Iroquois and temporarily broke
their strength. As New France expanded, the English became alarmed. In Europe the Stuarts, subservient to
the French crown, made way in 1688 for William and Mary; and William III, who had defended the
Netherlands against the attacks of Louis XIV, was ready to continue hostilities. The conflict at once spread to
North America, where it was called King William’s War (1689–97).

In this first round of the long conflict, neither side accomplished

much. Enlisting Indian allies in a ruthless campaign, the French
raided the English colonies from Schenectady, New York, to
Haverhill, Massachusetts, and along the Maine coast. In return
the English organized an expedition which captured Port Royal
in Acadia (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), and sent a fleet

Battle of Blenheim of 34 ships under Sir William Phips which disastrously failed to
take Quebec. The final Treaty of Rijswijk left matters just as they
John Churchill, 1st duke of
Marlborough, leading a cavalry charge had previously stood. After a brief breathing space, Queen
(centre) against the French, with the Anne’s War (1702–13), contemporaneous with the War of
support of Prince Eugene of Savoy Spanish Succession in Europe (1701–14), followed. While John
(right foreground, with sword), in the
Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, won his brilliant victories in
Battle of Blenheim, August 13, 1704,
during the War of the Spanish Europe, hostilities ran their former course in America. The
Succession; from an engraving by Jan French once more conducted raids with the Indians on exposed
van Huchtenburg. settlements; the Anglo-American forces once more retaliated
with descents on Canada. While a new expedition against
Quebec again failed, this time by shipwreck, New England troops and British marines recaptured Port Royal.
But this time the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave the British Empire great gains: in Europe, Gibraltar and
Minorca; in America, Acadia, Newfoundland, and a great belt of territory surrounding Hudson Bay.

The final test of strength lay not far ahead. In preparation the
French set up a belt of forts around British America. They had
founded Mobile, Alabama, in 1702, and established New
Orleans, Louisiana, in 1718. They connected these Gulf ports
with Quebec by nine important posts. Fort Chartres on the
Mississippi opposite St. Louis, Missouri; Vincennes and French
Fort on the Wabash River; Fort Miami on the Maumee River;
New France
Fort St. Joseph near the lower tip of Lake Michigan;
New France, 16th–18th century.
Michilimackinac and Sainte Marie on the upper lakes; Detroit,
guarding Lake Huron; and Niagara, guarding Lake Erie. Thus
New France possessed itself of the heart of the continent, confining British America to the seaboard. When a
new conflict broke out, King George’s War (1744–48), the American phase of the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740–48), the French maintained their vital positions. They had built a strong fortress at
Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island to guard the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, and it sheltered privateers
who harried New England commerce. Gathering all their energies, the New Englanders under William
Pepperrell astonished everyone by capturing it. This was a brilliant feat. When peace was made, however,
Great Britain returned Louisbourg to France.

Once more the French took steps to strengthen their position. Laying claim to the whole Ohio Valley, they
built a new chain of forts from what is now Erie, Pennsylvania (Presque-Isle), to the Allegheny River. This
was an area in which Anglo-American fur traders and land companies had a strong interest. When the French
warned British traders away from the country, Gov. Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia sent George Washington to
tell the French in turn to keep off and to build a fort on the site of present-day Pittsburgh. The sequel was the
capture of the site by the French, their erection of Fort Duquesne, and a clash between French troops and
Virginia militia under Washington. Thus opened the final conflict of the two empires in North America.

The French and Indian War

The French had certain advantages in this hard-fought struggle,
which became known as the French and Indian War (1754–63) in
America and the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) in Europe. France
was more populous than Great Britain, with larger military
forces, and theoretically could send over greater armies. The
highly centralized government of New France could wage

French and Indian War hostilities more efficiently than the loosely associated colonies
under 13 different governments. The strategically placed French
During the French and Indian War,
Edward Braddock's British and forts were an important asset. But in the end the British colonies
colonial troops are massacred along were certain of victory. They had a population by 1754 of about
the Monongahela River in 1755. 1,500,000, which was 15 times as great as that of New France.
They held a superior strategic position; operating from inside
lines, they could strike at almost any point in the long, thinly peopled French crescent extending from
Louisbourg to New Orleans. The British navy, superior to the French, could better reinforce and supply the
armies and could lay siege to the ports of New France. Finally, both Britain and British America excelled in
leadership. William Pitt the Elder, as prime minister of Great Britain, proved himself a greater statesman than
anyone in France; James Wolfe, Jeffery Amherst, and William Howe were a trio of generals the French could
not equal; and such colonial officers as George Washington and Phineas Lyman showed real ability.

At first the war went badly for the Anglo-American effort.

Expeditions in 1755 against the French forts at Niagara and at
Crown Point on Lake Champlain broke down. An army
marching under Gen. Edward Braddock to seize Fort Duquesne
fell into an ambush and was almost destroyed, with the death of
its commander. The next year a brilliant French soldier, the

Edward Braddock marquis de Montcalm, arrived and gave his forces new energy
and organization. He at once captured the British post at Oswego
The mortally wounded Gen. Edward
Braddock retreating with his army after on Lake Ontario, while in 1757 he took Fort William Henry at
being attacked by French and Indian the southern tip of Lake George. Later he defeated a British
forces near Fort Duquesne on July 9, attempt to invade New France by way of Ticonderoga and Lake
1755.
Champlain.

But after Pitt flung himself into the tasks of war with enthusiasm
and vision, the current changed its course. He mobilized the
army and navy on a scale never before seen in America. He
obtained from the colonial governments, impressed at last with
the gravity of the contest, a new degree of cooperation. In 1758 a
three-pronged plan of campaign was pushed with adequate
1 of 3 resources, able generals, and indomitable determination. Gen.
John Forbes cut a road across Pennsylvania and seized Fort
French and Indian War
Duquesne, evacuated by the French; Amherst took the fortress of
In 1759, during the French and Indian
Louisbourg for the second and last time; and other troops took
War, British troops landed upstream
from Quebec and defeated the French possession of outposts on the Ohio River. In the summer of 1759
troops on the Plains of Abraham. came the decisive stroke of the war in America. General Wolfe,
after two months of unsuccessful siege at Quebec, found a path
up the cliffs, led 4,500 troops up under cover of night, and at
dawn on September 13 confronted Montcalm on the Plains of
Abraham commanding the city. Wolfe died in battle, but not
before he heard that the French were in flight. Montcalm was
borne back mortally wounded during the rout. The capture of
Quebec decided the campaign, the war, and the fate of New
2 of 3
France. The next year Montreal fell to Amherst.
Plains of Abraham
The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Great Britain all the French
possessions in America east of the Mississippi save two small
Cannon displayed at Battlefields Park fishing islands and the island of New Orleans. Spain, which had
on the Plains of Abraham, Quebec entered the war, ceded Florida to Great Britain. The whole
city, Canada.
eastern half of the continent—except for New Orleans, which
France turned over to Spain—became part of the British Empire.
It was a matter of great and almost immediate concern to
Americans that Louisiana and all French claims west of the
Mississippi were ceded to Spain. The British during the war had
captured Cuba and the Philippines from the Spaniards; the fact
that they were quietly returned to Spain would in time also
3 of 3
concern American policy. But the greatest fact of all was that for
Death of the marquis de Montcalm the moment the colonies seemed free from all threat of

French military leader the marquis de aggression.

Montcalm dying during the Battle of American social and cultural
Quebec, in the French and Indian War,
development
1759.

Seven of the colonies made an effort in 1754 to devise a plan of

closer association. Their governors met at Albany to agree upon
a treaty with the Iroquois. Benjamin Franklin, who was present,
offered a scheme of colonial union which, if adopted, might have
prevented or delayed the American Revolution. It called for a
congress with power to negotiate with the Indians, control the

Albany Congress public lands, maintain military forces, and collect taxes for
common objects.
Benjamin Franklin (second from left)
and others at the Albany Congress, in
But though the Albany Congress accepted the scheme, the
Albany, New York, 1754; painting in
the Cox Corridors in the Great colonies were too jealous of their separate powers to approve it,
Experiment Hall, U.S. Capitol, while the British government feared that it might unduly increase
Washington, D.C. the strength and independence of the provinces. The 13 colonies
were separated by geographical distance and difficulties of
travel, by differences of temper, religious thought, and custom,
and by provincialism of spirit. Even in the crisis of war with the
French they cooperated poorly.

Yet they were united by their common English tongue and its
rich literature, by their common experience with representative
“Join, or Die” forms of government, by the English common law, and by a
“Join, or Die,” the first known basic similarity of outlook. They all believed in democracy in the
American cartoon, published by sense of a rough equality of opportunity and (after John Locke)
Benjamin Franklin in his Pennsylvania
the possession by every man of the basic human rights of life,
Gazette, 1754, to support his plan for
colonial union presented at the Albany
liberty, and property. During the 18th century, barriers between
Congress. the colonies were steadily reduced. Roads were opened, coastal
shipping increased, and intercolonial travel became more
common. The newspapers and pamphlets of one province were read widely in others. Restless young men
migrated freely, as Franklin moved from Boston to Philadelphia, and Alexander Hamilton from the British
West Indies to New York. A post office service was established for British America, with Franklin as
postmaster, 1753–55. Businessmen made frequent journeys from colony to colony to promote trade, and, if
they were members of a fraternal order such as the Masons or of a special religious body such as the Quakers,
found warm welcomes from fellow members. Mechanic groups were much the same in Charleston, New
York, or Boston; the lawyers and large landholders of the various colonies held the same views.

Seven different colleges and a large number of private academies

were established in the colonies before the Revolution. Harvard
was founded in 1636, William and Mary in 1693, Yale in 1701,
and King’s College (later Columbia) in 1754. The Great
Awakening helped bring about the opening of the institutions
which grew into Princeton (1746), Brown (1764), and Dartmouth

Brown University (1769). At first collegiate studies emphasized the classical

languages, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and astronomy, but later
Early illustration of Brown University,
founded as the College of Rhode science gained a strong foothold. Some large private libraries
Island, 1764. were collected, those of William Byrd in Virginia and Cotton
Mather in Massachusetts being especially noteworthy.

Not all the books were imported, for American printers began
reaching up toward a total of 1,000 titles, chiefly British, a year.
Franklin was the most versatile American author, publishing
essays, satires, scientific papers, and collections of aphorisms.
Historical works of importance were written in the first 60 years
of the 18th century by Robert Beverley for Virginia, John

Poor Richard's almanac

Lawson (an expert on Indian life) for North Carolina, and
Thomas Prince for New England.
Title page for Poor Richard's almanac
for 1739, written, printed, and sold by
Thirteen colonials obtained the high honour of election to the
Benjamin Franklin.
Royal Society in the 60 years preceding the Revolution; among
them were Cotton Mather of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin
of Pennsylvania, and Alexander Garden of South Carolina.
Arguably Mather’s most important work was the melange of
history, biography, religion, and science entitled Magnalia
Christi Americana. Jonathan Edwards made an important
contribution to philosophy in his treatise Freedom of Will (1754).
David Rittenhouse Botanist John Bartram and astronomer David Rittenhouse, both
Pennsylvanians, and the mathematician John Winthrop IV of
David Rittenhouse, after a painting by
Charles Wilson Peale. Harvard all did creditable work.

Many specimens of a truly beautiful architecture, mainly English in design and detail, could be found by 1750
in all the colonies from Maine to South Carolina. Skilled cabinetmakers, migrating from Europe, trained
 excellent colonial artisans. At least four painters attained such
distinction that their work has been carefully preserved and
highly prized: John Singleton Copley, John Smibert, Robert
Feke, and Benjamin West—the last of whom became head of the
Royal Academy of Arts in London. Town planning of a high
order was to be found in Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and
1 of 3 Savannah.

John Singleton Copley: Jane Browne Altogether, the colonies by the end of the French and Indian War
Jane Browne, oil on canvas by John were becoming mature in some cultural as well as political and
Singleton Copley, 1756; in the economic respects. Their lawyers, doctors, educators, and other
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
professional men looked to Europe for standards but hardly felt
D.C.
inferior to their European contemporaries. Their intellectual ties
with Great Britain grew closer with the improvement in
communications. Newspapers clipped much of their foreign
intelligence from British journals; students pursued law at the
London Inns of Court and medicine at the University of
Edinburgh; Anglican priests had to be trained and ordained in
England; and British ideas, notably those of Sir Edward Coke,
2 of 3 the Commonwealthmen, and John Locke, shaped political

Benjamin West: Helen Brought to

thought. Loyalty to the crown and affection for the mother
Paris country were still strong in 1763—stronger than intercolonial

Helen Brought to Paris, oil on canvas

ties. Franklin thought that a union of the colonies was impossible
by Benjamin West, 1776; in the without a course of flagrant oppression by Britain.
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington, D.C. 143.3 × 198.3 cm. But after the French and Indian War the colonists had no
intention of accepting a subordinate position in the empire. They
were proud of the fighting record of their soldiers. They knew
well that Philadelphia was the second largest city under the
British flag and that as a seat of learning, scientific inquiry, and
the arts it compared well with any city outside of London. They
knew that American commercial enterprise equaled that of
Britain and that they were making more rapid advances in some
3 of 3
respects than any other people in the world. A spirit of self-
John Smibert: Richard Bill sufficiency pervaded the land. It was especially strong among the
Richard Bill, oil on canvas by John settlers of mixed stock who had moved out toward the frontiers
Smibert, 1733; in the Art Institute of and among the artisans, mechanics, and labourers of the towns.
Chicago. The atmosphere was changing, and John Adams spoke truly
when he later declared: “The Revolution was effected before the
war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”
The bid for independence (1763–83)
 Early in 1763 King George III and his ministers proclaimed the
triumphant close of the Seven Years’ War and took the first long
steps toward another conflict that would shake the British
Empire to its foundations. Fifteen days after the signing of the
Treaty of Paris, the secretary at war announced in the House of
Commons a ministerial plan to raise the British garrison forces in

George III North America from a peacetime establishment of 3,100 men to

7,500, declaring that these troops should “be supported the first
King George III.
year by England, afterwards by the Colonies.” This simple
proposal raised issues that gradually drove the American colonists toward independence.

Earlier disagreements
Relations between Britain and the colonies had not been altogether harmonious before 1763; in fact, there had
been so many contests that one may think of them as chronic. The colonists had steadily striven to achieve
control of their local affairs and had actually reached that goal in Connecticut and Rhode Island before the end
of the 17th century. In the other colonies they had encountered resistance by proprietary and royal governors,
councillors, judges, and other officials. They had striven to make the elected lower house of the assembly the
dominant force in every colony. In these struggles the lower house had gradually seized the initiative with
regard to money bills and then with regard to legislative questions in general. It had also invaded the area of
executive authority. In all the colonies it was claimed that for domestic affairs the lower house was the
counterpart of the British House of Commons, and such was the case in fact, although in British theory the
colonial legislatures were merely municipal bodies. To be sure, parliamentary efforts to confine American
commerce and manufacturing had not yet created grave grievances, Parliament had not tried to tax the
mainland colonists for revenue, and the Americans had not questioned the control of foreign affairs by crown
and Parliament.

It may be argued that Britain entered upon its new colonial policy as early as 1759. In that year the tide of war
had shifted strongly in favour of Britain (and its colonies), and British officials therefore acted more
vigorously in colonial questions. Evidence of a marked change is to be found in the disallowance by the Privy
Council of the Virginia Two-Penny Tobacco Act in August 1759, increasing insistence in London that
instructions to royal governors had the force of law; orders from London requiring that new laws changing old
ones in Virginia, Massachusetts, and South Carolina should not go into effect until approved by the Privy
Council; and demands from the imperial capital that judges in New York and New Jersey hold office during
the king’s pleasure rather than during good behaviour.

The Anglican church supplied other grievances between 1759 and 1763. Its instrument, the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, had established “missions” in New England before the Seven
Years’ War but had then relaxed its efforts. In 1761 the Society, following the leadership of Thomas Seeker,
archbishop of Canterbury, opened a new mission church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the heart of
Congregationalism. Not content to proselytize in Cambridge, the archbishop also sought to prevent the
Congregationalists from sending missionaries to the Native Americans. A Massachusetts Act of 1762 to assist
them was, through the influence of the archbishop, disallowed by the Privy Council in the following year. The
activities of the Anglicans, supported by British officials, irked the Congregationalists, who had long feared
that the Church of England would send a bishop to America.

New colonial policy

If British colonial policy did not definitely turn a corner before
the end of the Seven Years’ War, it did soon thereafter. The
decision of George III and the ministry headed by John Stuart,
3rd earl of Bute to seek the enlargement of the garrison forces in
North America was unquestionably momentous. As the Seven
Years’ War drew to its end, the British government moved to

John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute reduce the regular army because it was expensive and because so
large a force would not be necessary in peacetime. Parliament
John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, detail of
an oil painting by Sir Joshua accepted a recommendation from the ministry that 75 regiments
Reynolds; in the National Portrait be kept in service, including 17 to be stationed in North America.
Gallery, London. Such an establishment, 50 percent larger than in 1754, might not
have been approved by Parliament had it not been announced
that the colonists, including those who resided in the West Indies, would be required to pay their share of its
cost.

It is doubtful that so many troops were needed in America for defense; a much smaller force had been thought
sufficient before 1754, when French Canada had posed a serious threat. Of course, garrison troops were
needed in the St. Lawrence Valley to prevent a French Canadian revolt, and it was logical to place others in
East and West Florida to check possible Spanish aggression. Other detachments to be maintained in interior
forts were specially assigned to the task of warding off Indian attacks. It is clear enough that only a portion of
the British army in America was to be directly devoted to the protection of the 13 colonies and that the
colonists were likely to bear a disproportionate part of the cost of the new establishment. What was worse, the
colonies were asked neither what kind of defense they desired nor whether they were willing to help pay for
it. Trouble would certainly come when the British government sought to compel the colonists to pay,
especially since it had been more or less understood in the past, at least by the colonists, that they had
accepted parliamentary regulation of their manufacturing and commerce only in exchange for protection.

Although the attempt to extract money from the colonists to pay for the new army in America was not
scheduled to take place until 1764, the Bute ministry was disposed to act vigorously in colonial matters in the
meantime and there was no slackening of energy when George Grenville became first lord of the treasury as
well as chancellor of the exchequer in April 1763 in a ministry formed by John Russell, 4th duke of Bedford.
During slightly more than two years in office, Grenville carried through a remarkable series of measures
intended to bolster imperial defenses, regulate colonial trade, and obtain an American revenue.

Proclamation line
One of the Grenville measures was the royal proclamation of October 7, 1763, that established the colonies of
Quebec, East Florida, and West Florida, plus a vast Indian reservation in the North American hinterland. By
 terms of the Proclamation of 1763, settlement was forbidden in
the vast area between the crest of the Appalachian Mountains
and the Mississippi River. Moreover, occupation of wide
stretches of land east of the mountains was also limited, since the
Native Americans were recognized as communal owners of the
territories they occupied and purchases of land from them were

Proclamation of 1763 declared illegal except at a public meeting presided over by an

official chosen by the British government. The chief purpose of
A map of the North American British
colonies after the Proclamation of the Proclamation of 1763 was to prevent, at least temporarily,
1763, which intended to limit the colonial expansion westward, for the principal cause of conflict
encroachment of settlers farther west. with the Indians was the seizure of their lands.

The uprising led by Pontiac (1763–64) stimulated action in

London. Whatever the justification for the restrictions, they were
a new exercise of royal power and limited the authority of both
governors and colonial assemblies. The order forbidding
purchase and exploitation of Indian territories was disliked by
both the farmers who wished to till the soil and the speculators

Pontiac who sought to buy land cheaply. Heated protests came from the
colonies, especially from Virginia; pioneers freely violated the
proclamation, and speculators refused to let the crown destroy their dreams of easy wealth. Though never
fully enforced, the measure won friends for Britain among the Indians, but it helped to turn many farmers and
not a few speculators—men of means and influence—against the mother country.

Trade with Native Americans

Had it not been for expense, the Bedford-Grenville ministry would also have undertaken to regulate the trade
between the colonists and the Native Americans. This traffic, in which the Indians exchanged furs and
deerskins for guns, knives, mirrors, clothing, and rouge, was also a source of Indian unrest, chiefly because
the white traders commonly cheated their Native American clients. Colonial efforts to compel the white
traders to deal honestly could not be effective because the trading was carried on in the distant villages and
hunting grounds of the Native Americans. In July 1764 the Board of Trade in London completed a “Plan for
the Future Management of Indian Affairs” that would have imposed severe restrictions on the traders. Because
the “Plan” required much money to execute, it was never brought before Parliament, and the trade with the
Indians continued without effective restraint.

Regulation of maritime trade

It was possible, however, to exercise tighter control over a far more important species of the trade of the
colonies—their maritime traffic—without an increase in expense. After April 1763 a British naval squadron
was stationed at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and its commander was ordered to do all within his power to enforce
the Navigation Acts, and similar instructions were sent to the colonial governors. Toward the same end, the
American customs service was renovated. That service had for many years been undermanned, lax, and
corrupt. It had been collecting no more than £2,000 per annum in duties, and its costs were as high as £8,000.
Now the customs men were told to do their job. In consequence, the Navigation Acts of the 17th century,
together with the Molasses Act of 1733, were being rigidly enforced on the shores of New England before the
end of 1763. The Molasses Act, in order to compel the mainland colonists to buy from the British West Indian
islands, had levied a duty of sixpence per gallon upon molasses imported from the foreign islands of the
Caribbean. The duty was actually prohibitive, and the collection of it would have put a stop to trade between
the northern colonies and those subtropical isles, but it had not been collected. The customs officers had taken
it upon themselves to reduce the rate, requiring importers to pay only a halfpenny or a penny per gallon.
Before the end of 1763, however, aware that it was no longer prudent for them to amend an act of Parliament,
they began to enforce the Molasses Act precisely as the lawmakers in London intended. The result was further
and serious cramping of the maritime commerce of the colonies.

Grenville taxes of 1764

In the spring of 1764 Grenville pushed through Parliament still
further devices to restrict the American economy, and also the
first tax upon the mainland colonies to raise money to pay part of
the cost of the troops to be stationed in America. In the revenue
act of that year, many changes were made in the British
commercial system, two of which were pivotal. Protests had

George Grenville been received from America against the enforcement of the
Molasses Act, together with a plea that the duty be set at one
George Grenville, detail of an
engraving by James Watson after a penny per gallon. Although warnings were issued that the traffic
painting by William Hoare. could bear no more than that, the government refused to listen.

The Bedford-Grenville ministry wished to either secure revenue from the tax or to protect the British West
Indian planters against foreign competition or to do both at the same time. Accordingly, the new law, the
Sugar Act (1764), placed a threepenny duty upon foreign molasses, and its preamble bluntly declared that its
purpose was to raise money for military expenses. The law also provided for the creation of an admiralty
court to deal with those who violated the trade rules or failed to pay duties. This court would sit at Halifax, an
inconvenient spot for the merchants of the 13 colonies. Hitherto, the colonists had been able to appeal to
juries in colonial tribunals, but juries would not be used in the new admiralty court. That same spring
Parliament also passed a new currency act that forbade the colonial assemblies from making their paper
currencies legal tender. Suffering from a shortage of money, partly because of an unfavourable balance of
trade with Britain, the colonies had partly met their need for money by printing it. They had also fallen into
the practice of making it legal tender, even though it commonly depreciated in value, thus injuring the
interests of creditors, both British and American, and causing economic disturbance. The British government
had outlawed such legal tender legislation for New England in 1751; as it now seemed likely that Virginia and
North Carolina would soon resort to such legislation, it was forbidden in all the colonies.

The Stamp Act

 The most famous and most important of all the Grenville
measures was the Stamp Act, passed in the spring of 1765. The
new tax on molasses would hardly bring in more than £30,000
toward the costs of the army, and the government believed that
the colonists ought to contribute about £200,000 each year.
Grenville conceived that stamp duties (on legal documents,

Stamp Act warning newspapers, licences, etc.) similar to those collected in Britain
should be imposed upon the colonies; such duties might extract
“An Emblem of the Effects of the
STAMP,” a warning against the Stamp
from colonial pockets £75,000 or £100,000. Grenville announced
Act published in the Pennsylvania in the spring of 1764 that a stamp bill would be introduced in the
Journal, October 1765; in the New following year. He claimed that he was willing to consider a
York Public Library.
substitute that would serve the same purpose, but he found
unacceptable a suggestion made by agents of several American
colonies in London that the king ask the colonial assemblies to vote appropriate sums. One of them, Benjamin
Franklin, vainly proposed the establishment of an American bank that would not only bring in handsome
profits to the British government but also supply a stable currency in the colonies. Actually, Grenville was
determined to have the stamp duties. When protests came in from America declaring them to be both
excessively burdensome and unconstitutional, he became more determined, and the measure was introduced
and quickly passed.

The Quartering Act

Together with the Stamp Act, the Bedford-Grenville ministry also pushed through important amendments to
the annual Mutiny Act. One of these specifically extended the act to America, for it had been claimed by some
soldiers there, encouraged by some civilians, that British officers had no legal authority beyond the Atlantic.
Colonials had excused and encouraged desertion. Another addition to the act required the colonial authorities
to supply foodstuffs, drink, fuel, quarters, and also transportation at fixed rates to British soldiers
(“Redcoats”) stationed in towns and villages. At the time, there were few troops in the American settlements,
and not much money would immediately have been taken from the colonists, but they considered this so-
called Quartering Act (1765), like the stamp duties, to be unconstitutional.

Conflicting views of the new policy

The many measures regarding the colonies undertaken by the
Bute and Bedford-Grenville ministries, together with those of the
period 1759–63, collectively meant that Britain had embarked
upon a new colonial policy. The measures were largely new in
fact if not in thought, and the whole of them was impressive. A
great turning point had been reached. The men responsible for

colonists reading the Stamp Act the great change felt that Britain was merely asserting its rightful
authority, and they did not expect formidable opposition in
Colonists reading the Stamp Act,
illustration from Colonial Days: Being America. Indeed, Americans in London, including Franklin,
Stories and Ballads for Young Patriots, assumed that although the innovations would be resented beyond
by Richard Markham, 1765. the ocean, there would be no strenuous resistance.

Some historians have argued that the new British policy can be defended on both constitutional and economic
grounds. Considering precedent in London, on the Isle of Man, on Jersey, in Ireland, and in common law, a
strong constitutional case for taxation without geographical representation can be made. The economic
argument is weaker. It runs to the effect that the colonies had small public debts and light taxes, while both the
public debt and taxes were heavy in Britain, and that the Americans, being protected by the British army and
navy, were obligated to help pay their share of the cost. On the whole, the public financial burdens of the
Americans were doubtless lighter than those of the British. But this circumstance is not conclusive. The
channeling by Parliament of American trade gave Britain a handsome income to the detriment of some
colonial interests, especially those of the tobacco planters of the Chesapeake Bay region. Moreover, the wars
from which the British debt and high taxes in large part resulted had not all been begun by the colonists; nor
had they been exclusively fought and paid for by the British. In addition, a debate on things economic, to be
complete, would necessarily include a comparison of incomes. It is doubtful that those of the Americans were,
on a per capita basis, larger than those of the British. The case for the colonists might also include the
contention that the elimination of sinecures and unearned pensions in Britain would have saved more money
than the government would have secured by taxing the colonists.

The Americans saw in the British innovations a pattern of tyranny and found part of them to be
unconstitutional. Though the adjective “tyrannical” may not apply perfectly to the new colonial policy, it is
not utterly unsuitable. Forbidden to exploit the lands of the West, ordered to pay for the protection of an
enlarged army for which they had not asked, told that their maritime trade would be closely regulated, injured
deeply by interference with their West Indian trade, at least mildly menaced by the Anglican church, suffering
a heavy loss in medium of exchange, faced by two very substantial taxes for revenue imposed by a Parliament
across the ocean in which they were not represented—all these in a time of postwar economic distress—the
colonists had real and great grievances. Moreover, they had been told that they could expect additional taxes.
If they feebly submitted, they might well expect more burdens to be placed upon them.

The Stamp Act crisis

In 1765 the colonists rebelled in accordance with one of the best
British traditions. Through their provincial assemblies, through
the Stamp Act Congress that met in New York in October, and by
other means, they voiced their hearty dislike of admiralty courts
with British judges and without American juries (though they
later found nothing wrong in American admiralty courts without

Sons of Liberty juries), of the new tax on molasses, of the quartering of troops,
and so on. Above all, they condemned the Stamp Act as both
The Sons of Liberty burning a copy of
the Stamp Act in 1765. onerous and unconstitutional. It was the right of British subjects,
they said, to be taxed for revenue only by themselves or by
representatives who would also pay the tax. This familiar doctrine, as indicated above, was soundly based
upon English law and custom, despite weighty argument to the contrary. By persuasion, mob violence, and
threats of violence, they forced the men who had been appointed as stamp distributors to resign or to refuse to
serve; stamps sent across the ocean were either destroyed or sequestered. A few were sold in Georgia.
Otherwise, the people of the colonies openly defied Britain and insisted that the tax be withdrawn. To
emphasize their demand, many of them ceased to buy British goods, and others neglected to pay their British
creditors.

Had Grenville been in power when news reached London that

the colonists had refused to obey the Stamp Act, it is likely that
Britain and America would quickly have come to blows. He
rejected utterly the American argument against taxation without
representation, and he was convinced that the colonists must not
be permitted to flout parliamentary authority. As it happened, the

Charles Watson Wentworth, 2nd decision was not in his hands, for he had been forced out of
marquess of Rockingham office in July 1765. A new ministry headed by Charles Watson-
Wentworth, 2nd marquess of Rockingham, and composed chiefly
of “Old Whigs” was disposed to conciliate rather than to coerce the colonists. The Rockingham faction did
not question Parliament’s right to impose the stamp duties and did not wish to yield to the demand for repeal,
but they found it easier to do so because the ugly situation they faced had been created by their political rivals.
They were also encouraged to move toward conciliation by William Pitt. He not only called for withdrawal of
the duties but emphatically declared his agreement with the American position that they were
unconstitutional. While Pitt had but few followers in Parliament, he had vast prestige with the public.
Moreover, British merchants and manufacturers who suffered from the American boycott, the effects of which
were keenly felt in a time of postwar economic slack, indicated that they desired repeal. Rockingham and the
“Old Whigs” chose to call for repeal of the Stamp Act.

Repeal of the Stamp Act

In acting to remove the principal American grievance, the Rockinghamites made no constitutional
concessions to the colonists. They said the Americans ought to have respected parliamentary law, and they
wished the power of Parliament to be solemnly asserted in a formal resolution, as did the many foes of repeal
of the Stamp Act. The result was the Declaratory Act of March 1766, passed by overwhelming majorities
despite the opposition of Pitt; in effect it proclaimed the authority of Parliament in America to be the same as
it was in Britain. The ministry also coupled with repeal a demand that the colonial assemblies compensate the
supporters of the Stamp Act in the colonies who had suffered property losses as the result of mob action. Still
further, in the Revenue Act of 1766, the ministry secured reduction of the duty on molasses from threepence
to one penny per gallon, extending it, however, to cover British as well as foreign molasses. While this step
was financially pleasing to the Americans, it should be observed that the revised duty, collected upon both
British and foreign molasses, looked very much like a tax for revenue. The Rockingham people thus agreed to
set aside the stamp duties and to permit the Americans to trade with the foreign islands in the West Indies but
to make no other substantial concessions in fact or theory.

Even so, repeal of the stamp tax was bitterly opposed in London. To mollify the enemies of repeal, the
ministry defined the American constitutional position regarding taxation as narrowly as possible. At least
some of the American protests against the Bute-Bedford-Grenville policy, notably one from the lower house
of the New York assembly, had condemned parliamentary taxation of whatever sort for revenue as
unconstitutional. The ministry preferred to believe that the colonists would be content with the removal of the
stamp duties. Although the Rockingham people kept their concessions to a minimum and although they did
everything possible to reduce the importance of those concessions, repeal would have been defeated had it
been opposed by George III. The king told his personal followers who held offices connected with the
ministry that they must in honour support it; he advised his other friends that they were free to do as they
chose. The result was a narrow victory for the ministry, the Commons and the Lords giving reluctant consent.

The grievances of the Americans were by no means fully removed, and the concessions that were made were
offered grudgingly. Nevertheless, the colonists very generally accepted them as a basic settlement of the
crisis. They joyfully celebrated the repeal, and they enthusiastically reaffirmed their allegiance to Britain.
They also eagerly resumed buying goods from the merchants of London, Bristol, and Liverpool. They were
happy to escape from the crisis so easily and so creditably. For a time they had little to say about the
grievances that continued. Of course, they would not be permanently satisfied with the situation as it was in
the spring of 1766, their ideas of their rights within the empire would inevitably enlarge with the passage of
time, and further concessions on the part of Britain would have been necessary to preserve a more or less
permanent peace within the empire. Given time, the Rockingham people might have been able to establish a
basic principle of conciliation in British policy. They were not granted the opportunity, being deprived of it by
Pitt and George III, who drove them from power and established the ministry of “All the Talents” in July
1766.

It is difficult to say whether Britain and America would have

found a modus vivendi had Pitt enjoyed both health and authority
for a few years after 1766. The majesty of Britain meant much to
him, and the warmly friendly language he had become
accustomed to use regarding the colonists does not constitute
proof that he would not have undertaken measures that were

Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd duke of repugnant to them. Certainly, the constitutional position he had
Grafton assumed did not preclude steps obnoxious to the Americans. Pitt

Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd duke of inadvertently assisted in bringing into office men inclined toward
Grafton, after an original painting by J. the American philosophy of Bute, Bedford, and Grenville. Some
Hopper, engraving by E. Bocquet. historians have observed that they and their monarch were
somewhat more moderate with respect to America than has been
generally recognized. Nevertheless, this new group of officeholders, including Charles Townshend and the
3rd earl of Hillsborough, supplied impetus in the ministry of “All the Talents” toward a second attempt to tax
the colonists for revenue and also toward the use of the army for repression in America. Although Pitt’s
friend, Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd duke of Grafton, continued as its head until 1770, Pitt’s people never
actually controlled the ministry. Their leader was too sick to supply leadership and resigned from the cabinet
in 1768. Except for the earl of Shelburne, they did not very vigorously protest against governmental measures
that brought on a second Anglo-American crisis.
The Townshend duties
The Grafton ministry adopted an energetic American policy,
thanks in part to Townshend, who pushed through Parliament in
the spring of 1767 his famous duties on tea, glass, lead, and
papers. These import taxes were forthrightly declared to be for
the purpose of raising revenue. Thus, Townshend revived a great
constitutional issue without hope of collecting more than a small

Charles Townshend fraction of the funds necessary to maintain the army in America.
Moreover, the first proceeds from the duties were to be used to
pay the salaries of British officials in America, toward buttressing British authority there, rather than to defray
military expenses. Townshend was also responsible for an act setting up an American Board of Customs
Commissioners, which zealously functioned at Boston after November 1767.

The Grafton ministry further antagonized the colonists by securing the passage, in May 1767, of the
Suspending Act, which prohibited the New York legislature from conducting any further business until it
complied with the provisions of the Quartering Act. In addition, three more admiralty courts were created in
1768, at Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston. In the spring of that year, the same ministry established a new
western limit upon American expansion, a boundary described in part by the courses of the Ohio and
Kanawha rivers; it permitted settlement well beyond the Proclamation Line of 1763.

Much more serious was a cabinet decision, announced simultaneously, to redistribute the army in America. Its
commander in chief, Gen. Thomas Gage, had hitherto employed it against the colonists on only one occasion.
In 1765 he had ordered a detachment at Fort Pitt to drive away pioneers who had settled beyond the
Proclamation Line of 1763. He had carefully avoided using troops against the Stamp Act rioters, although he
had brought 450 men into the settlements in order to make a show of strength in the event that American
resistance became rebellion. By 1768 the stationing of large numbers of British troops in the settled parts of
the colonies was risky. Nevertheless, toward securing economy and efficiency, the army in America was
reduced to 15 regiments, and Gage was ordered to station “large bodies, in the provinces of Quebec, Nova
Scotia, East Florida and in the middle colonies…to serve effectually upon any emergency whatever.” In
consequence, Gage’s army was concentrated on the eastern coast of North America. The phrase “any
emergency whatever” included one in which British soldiers would be used against the colonists.

Colonial resistance
Confronted by these actions by Parliament, which collectively
became known as the Townshend Acts, the Americans again
resisted, but with less unanimity than in the time of the Stamp
Act troubles, for many cautious colonists, especially men of
property who had been alarmed by the rioting of 1765–66, were
not disposed to struggle vigorously. The Americans had not

Townshend Acts earlier made it clear that their argument against taxation without
representation applied to duties collected at their ports as well as
 An American colonist reading with the stamp tax. Following the leadership of John Dickinson,
concern the royal proclamation of a whose Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants
tax on tea in the colonies, part of the
of the British Colonies appeared in many colonial newspapers,
Townshend Acts; political cartoon,
Boston, 1767. they now defined their constitutional position with greater
precision. Both internal and external levies for revenue were
unconstitutional; only duties to control commerce were within the powers of Parliament.

The colonists demanded repeal of the Townshend duties. They

also denounced the proposed use of part of the proceeds of the
duties to pay the salaries of royal officials as subversive of their
established system of government. The Americans were also
unhappy because their commerce was increasingly cramped. The
American commissioners of the customs after November 1767,

public acknowledgement of and the new admiralty courts after 1768, displayed zeal and
nonimportation agreement violation energy. British rules governing shipping were enforced almost to

A notice from New York merchant the last burdensome technicality, with the result that colonial
Simeon Coley on July 22, 1769, ships and cargoes were frequently seized for minor violations.
publicly acknowledging his violation of Since various British officials received shares of the profits of
the nonimportation agreement that
such seizures, they were accused, and with a show of reason in
had been established by colonists in
response to the duties imposed under some cases, of despoiling American merchants. Toward securing
the Townshend Acts. the repeal of the Townshend duties, the colonists again resorted
to a boycott upon British goods. As they hoped, British
manufacturers and merchants asked Parliament for repeal. The colonists also again employed minor physical
violence and the threat of it to coerce British officials and those colonists who supported them. In the spring
of 1768, the unpopular customs commissioners in Boston claimed that they were gravely menaced and asked
for military protection. The ministry ordered Gage to put two regiments in the city and sent two more from
Ireland.

The British government moved vigorously in the summer of

1768. There was then, and for many months thereafter, much talk
in London about compelling the colonists to obey. However,
sentiment in the ministry was quite divided. Townshend was no
longer alive to insist that his duties be collected, and his
successor, Lord Frederick North, disliked extreme measures. In

Paul Revere: engraving of British the spring of 1769 Gage was given authority to remove the
warships troops from Boston, and it was announced that the Townshend

British warships landing troops in duties would be substantially withdrawn. On March 5, 1770,
Boston, 1768; engraving by Paul North introduced a bill repealing all of the duties except that on
Revere. tea. He said that the Townshend taxes were injurious to trade and
therefore ought to be set aside. However, he declared that the
duty on tea had to be retained in order to assert the right of Parliament to impose external taxes for revenue.
Parliament complied, conceding enough to put an end to the second Anglo-American crisis.
The Boston Massacre
There was an ominous incident in Boston, however, on the very
day that North brought forward his repeal measure. Because the
royal governor, Thomas Hutchinson, asked that troops be kept in
Boston, some of those sent into the city were kept there until
March 1770. Tension developed between the soldiers and
civilians, leading on March 5 to the Boston Massacre, in which

Boston Massacre British soldiers, assaulted by civilians throwing stones and

chunks of ice at them, killed three Bostonians and mortally
The Boston Massascre as depicted in
a colour engraving by Paul Revere, wounded two others. A Boston jury found two of the soldiers
who plagiarized the design from guilty of manslaughter, and the shedding of blood by the troops
engraver Henry Pelham. widened the gap between Britain and America.

The Gaspee
No other incident of note occurred until June 1772, when Rhode
Islanders demonstrated their hostility to royal measures. On June
9 the Gaspee, a schooner used in customs enforcement, pursuing
a smuggling vessel, ran aground below Providence, Rhode
Island. Illegal trade had become extensive in Narragansett Bay.
That night the merchant John Brown headed a party of

Gaspee Providence men who boarded and burned the Gaspee as it thus
lay helpless. Rewards of £1,000 were offered for proof of the
Burning of the Gaspee, 1777.
identity of the ringleader, and Brown was put under arrest. But
the influence of his powerful family brought about his release, and a commission of inquiry which sat in
Newport and Providence failed to amass any real evidence. Such breakdowns of the law irritated the British
authorities. Indications that if the commission had succeeded, the lawbreakers would have been taken to
Britain for trial equally irritated the Americans.

The colonies join hands

When later in the year Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts
announced that the home government would provide the salaries
of the governors and superior court justices, many men felt
outraged. The legislature was determined to keep such officers
under check, but it could not do this if their pay came from
Britain. Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others, overruling the

Richard Henry Lee more conservative John Hancock, appealed to the Massachusetts
towns. The Boston town meeting, under their inspiration, created
Richard Henry Lee, portrait by Charles
Willson Peale, 1784; in Independence a Committee of Correspondence to communicate with the
National Historical Park, Philadelphia. smaller towns and with other provinces. Thus a mighty engine
was brought into existence. Other provinces one by one formed
similar committees until the continent was knit together by their network. The Virginia burgesses led the way
by appointing a standing body for intercolonial exchanges, with Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and
Richard Henry Lee among the members. Early in 1774 all the colonies but two, Pennsylvania and North
Carolina, shared in the web.

The Boston Tea Party

The Townshend tax on tea was an irritation, but most of the
colonists preferred not to quarrel about it. They drank beverages
made from smuggled Dutch tea and even some made from taxed
British tea. However, it should have been apparent in London
that no new important step with respect to the colonies should be
undertaken without careful consideration. Twice British

Boston Tea Party measures had led to American resistance, and twice Britain had
bent. It would be difficult for Britain to yield a third time.
The Boston Tea Party (1773) in
Boston Harbor, as depicted in a Nevertheless, the Americans were tried once more. As head of
Currier & Ives lithograph. the ministry after 1770, North behaved cautiously for many
months, then pushed through his remarkable Tea Act of 1773. It
rearranged the regulations so that the East India Company could pay the Townshend duty on tea and still
undersell the Dutch smugglers. Further, the East India Company planned to sell its tea only to certain
favoured colonial merchants and thus added the issue of monopoly, vexing American merchants who were not
among those chosen. When ships carrying the tea began to reach American harbours in the fall of 1773, the
colonists generally were determined to prevent its sale. If they permitted the extraction of some thousands of
pounds from their pockets by means of the Townshend duties, would not Parliament devise other taxes to
inflict upon them? Nowhere in the colonies was the tea landed and sold. Boston reacted vigorously. To make
sure that it would not be sold there, townsmen of Boston disguised as Mohawk Indians held their Tea Party
and tossed 342 chests of tea into the harbour. Similar parties were held later in other ports.

The Intolerable Acts

In London the news that the colonists had again defied
Parliament and had also destroyed British property was
exasperating. The North ministry undertook to punish Boston, a
centre of American recalcitrance, and to buttress British authority
in Massachusetts. Finding no way to proceed against the
disguised participants in the Tea Party, the king’s advisers hit

British ships in Boston Harbor upon the device of inflicting a penalty upon a city for the
behaviour of its citizens. The result was the Boston Port Bill,
British ships guarding Boston Harbor
in 1774. which closed the harbour of that city after June 1, 1774, until it
displayed proper respect for British authority. Toward bringing
Massachusetts to heel, the ministry later pushed through the Massachusetts Government Act, which would
have made Massachusetts a standard royal province and which violated its charter of 1691.
Other acts, in order to provide for troops who were to be sent into the colony to maintain order, contained new
arrangements for quartering and made possible a change of venue to another colony or to Britain for a soldier
or a British official indicted for crime while executing the major measures. General Gage was appointed
governor of the colony, instructed to put the punitive laws into effect, and authorized to station troops in
Boston to cow its inhabitants. The other colonies were to take warning from these measures, variously called
by Americans the Coercive Acts or Intolerable Acts.

The Quebec Act, passed at the same time, was not actually
related to the other acts, but it was lumped together with them by
the colonists. It alarmed the colonists because it established an
authoritarian government for Quebec and confirmed the
privileges of the Roman Catholic Church. It also extended
Quebec’s boundaries down to the Ohio River.

Boston refused to pay for its Tea Party, and Massachusetts rose
in revolt. Its lower house, also refusing to pay for the Tea Party,
issued a call for a Continental Congress. When Gage tried to
Province of Quebec, 1774 organize a new royal council, in the summer of 1774, its
members outside Boston were forced to resign. Some were
imprisoned. Royal authority collapsed, except in the city and its vicinity, where Gage prepared for armed
conflict. By the beginning of September, the men of Massachusetts were obviously ready to fight rather than
yield. Gage had already begun to fortify Boston against possible attack, but he was not strong enough to move
against the colonists. He continued to bring in soldiers until he had gathered the bulk of his army in Boston.

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts lower house also prepared for war. In October 1774 it took control of the
province outside Boston. Assuming the guise of a provincial congress, it became in effect a revolutionary
government. Writing to his superiors in London, Gage told them that if they chose to use the army to break
down resistance, they should send many reinforcements, for all of New England would fight, and fight well.
Besides, he said, it was quite possible that the other colonists would help the New Englanders. Alternatively,
he proposed that Britain subdue the rebellious spirit in the colonies by imposing a naval blockade. A third
solution, which he did not endorse, was to make concessions, as had been done in 1766 and 1770. He made it
clear that Britain must make a great decision.

The reports that reached London from the other colonies in the fall of 1774 and the following winter were not
much more encouraging. As the danger of war approached, many colonists chose to align themselves with
Britain, joining the relatively few who had earlier supported the mother country. But these loyalists, as they
were called, were in the minority and were quite unable to check the patriots, as those who opposed British
policy were called. Following the example of Massachusetts, the patriots everywhere began to turn the lower
houses of their legislatures into revolutionary bodies; they organized committees of safety; they dealt harshly
with aggressive loyalists; they sent protests to London; and they elected delegates to the First Continental
Congress, which met at Philadelphia in the fall of 1774.

Revolution and independence

The First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress gave the patriot cause greater
breadth, depth, and force. Its 56 members, representing all of the
colonies except Georgia, were lawyers, country gentlemen, and
merchants, respectable and responsible men, and America
followed them. They made it clear that Britain would not be
permitted to subdue Massachusetts without interference by the

George Washington and the other colonies. They demanded repeal of the Intolerable Acts and
Continental Congress the Quebec Act and described them, together with several other

George Washington (middle) measures taken after 1764, as unconstitutional. They called for a
surrounded by members of the return to the “good old days” of 1763. But they wanted more
Continental Congress, lithograph by than that. They urged that the crown abandon its right to name
Currier & Ives, c. 1876.
the councillors in the royal colonies. They questioned the
authority of Parliament much more forthrightly than had the
Stamp Act Congress but carefully refrained from petitioning it for redress. The Congress did, however, send
an appeal to the crown and an address to the British people. It also endorsed a declaration of rights, which
accused the British government of violating colonial charter rights, the rights of British subjects, and the
natural rights of mankind. The inclusion of natural rights was of the greatest importance. Hitherto, the
colonists had chosen to rely principally upon the rights of British subjects, although some of their leaders had
earlier invoked the rights of mankind. English law and custom had not turned out to be impregnable bastions
of American liberties. The Americans were moving away from the narrower argument concerning the rights of
British subjects toward the more fundamental one of the natural rights of man.

One of the decisions taken by the Congress was extraordinary. Calling upon Britain once more to repent and
repeal, it devised what it called the Association. Defenders of American liberty were urged to associate to
prevent the importation or consumption of goods from Britain or the British West Indies after December 1,
1774, and, if Britain failed to give ground, to stop the exportation of colonial products, except for rice, to the
same places after September 10, 1775. Since the will of the Congress was everywhere respected, there
followed the remarkable spectacle of 13 colonies carrying on an organized boycott of British goods.
Arranging to reconvene in May 1775 to take whatever further steps might be necessary, the delegates went
home in October 1774. During the winter months the patriots began to prepare for battle.

Parliament’s response
In Parliament early in 1775, Pitt, Edmund Burke, and John Wilkes urged the justice and necessity of
reconciliation with America. The opposition solemnly warned against trying to solve the problem by military
force. Its speakers predicted that the colonists would fight, and they voiced the fear that France and Spain
would seize the opportunity of an Anglo-American war to retrieve the losses they had suffered in the Seven
Years’ War. British manufacturers and merchants also urged an attempt to please the Americans, for they felt
the effects of the American boycott. George III and his political allies had double the votes of their opponents
in Parliament, however, and the decision was in their hands. As early as November 1774, the king had
expressed his conviction that Britain must assert its sovereignty. Most of his advisers took the same stand and
were even eager to use force. They scoffed at the arguments of an opposition that sympathized with the
Americans, because both were seen as enemies of the ministry. With the support of the monarch and of a large
segment of public opinion, they swept on to action. The king and his ministry chose not only to employ force
but to place their reliance upon the army, ignoring the advice of Gage and well-informed military men in
Britain, and overcoming the reluctance of Lord North and his stepbrother, William Legge, 2nd earl of
Dartmouth, who had become colonial secretary in 1772. Lord William Barrington, the secretary at war,
expressed grave doubt that Britain could put enough soldiers in the field to overrun the colonies and suggested
a naval blockade as a more appropriate means of coercion. North and Dartmouth wished to avoid bloodshed.
In the end, they could not stand against the will of their associates, but the prime minister insisted that the
employment of the army be not undertaken without a gesture toward conciliation. Parliament gave its support
to both economic and military coercion.

So it was that Britain, which had been tempted three times to

seek a settlement by arms, at length plunged into war. Parliament
also endorsed, reluctantly, Lord North’s conciliatory resolution,
which declared that Parliament would in the future refrain from
taxing any colony which through its assembly supplied its fair
share of funds necessary for imperial defense. It was addressed
2 of 2 separately to each colony, a device inevitably interpreted by the
colonists as intended to cause division among them. No message
Battle of Lexington
was sent to the Continental Congress. One was sent to Gage,
A line of minutemen being fired upon
who was ordered to make vigorous use of the troops he had
by British troops during the Battle of
Lexington in Massachusetts, April 19, available. In accordance with his instructions, received on April
1775. 14, 1775, he ordered a detachment of 700 men to march to
Concord to destroy patriot military supplies there. Forewarned,
patriot militiamen gathered to oppose the king’s troops, and the running Battles of Lexington and Concord
followed on April 19.

The decision for independence

Fifteen months after the beginning of hostilities, the Second Continental Congress proclaimed American
independence. Before 1775 the patriots generally desired to remain within the British Empire. As the war
went on, the majority of them became convinced that their happiness was better assured outside the empire.
They were driven to seek a complete separation by various forces and considerations: the shedding of blood
by British troops; attacks by the British navy upon American shipping, sailors, and ports; the enlistment by
Britain of African American soldiers, Native American auxiliaries, and German (Hessian) mercenary troops;
the increasing conviction among the patriots that Britain would not accept an accommodation; the belief that
if agreement with Britain were reached, it could not be relied upon; and a sound opinion that it was necessary
to proclaim independence in order to secure assistance from France and Spain. They moved toward the
assertion of independence reluctantly and hesitatingly. They felt an emotional attachment to Britain; they
knew that the imperial connection had brought them protection; they feared that foreign aid might lead to
foreign domination; and many of them were alarmed lest independence bring with it economic and social
leveling. Independent, they must form a stable republican government in an area extending for a thousand
miles along the Atlantic seaboard. Could it be done?

Months after the shooting had begun many of the patriots were
still hoping that Britain would offer acceptable peace terms.
They wished to believe that Adm. Richard Howe and Gen.
William Howe, brothers who were appointed peace
commissioners in 1776, would bring with them satisfactory bases
for a settlement. However, as it became evident that Britain

Declaration of Independence placed its chief reliance upon force of arms, the main body of the
patriots kept pace. Word that the colonies had been declared to
Declaration of Independence, oil on
canvas by John Trumbull, 1818; in the be in a state of rebellion in August 1775 had its effect, and news
U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. The of the passage of the Prohibitory Act of November 1775, which
members of the Continental Congress withdrew the king’s protection from the colonies and declared
signed the Declaration of
them under naval blockade, had a profound impact. By January
Independence in Philadelphia on July
4, 1776. 1776 the sober-minded George Washington had decided he
would be satisfied with nothing less than separation.
Revolutionary governments in the colony-states and the Second Continental Congress cut ties with Britain,
one by one, and at length on July 2, 1776, the Congress, speaking for all America, severed the last one,
declaring, “These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” Two days later it
gave its approval to the Declaration of Independence, wherein the patriots set forth the reasons for the action
they had taken.

In the Declaration of Independence the patriots rested their case

solely on the natural rights of mankind and the law of contract.
Setting aside Parliament as a “pretended” legislature, Thomas
Jefferson and the Congress proved to their own satisfaction that
George III had grossly violated the compact and invoked the
right of revolution.

Committee of Congress. Drafting the

Declaration of Independence Howe’s peace mission
Committee of Congress. Drafting the General Howe landed on Staten Island on the very day that the
Declaration of Independence.
Congress declared independence. He and his brother were not
Depiction of the drafters in
Philadelphia in 1776: (left to right) empowered to negotiate with the patriots until the rebellion had
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, been crushed, except to offer pardon to those who would lay
Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. down their arms. But the terms they were authorized to offer
Livingston, and Roger Sherman.
after the collapse of resistance were very interesting. They could
pardon all rebels and restore the royal protection, and they were to demand that Rhode Island and Connecticut
be made royal colonies, or at least that their governors should not take office until approved by the crown.
Here were no concessions to the Americans. However, the commissioners were also permitted to make a
proposal with respect to money. The heart of it came from Lord North’s conciliatory resolution if the colonies
(except for Georgia, which was not to be asked to pay anything) would undertake to pay 10 percent, even 5
 percent, of the cost of maintaining the imperial army, navy, and
ordnance, they would not be taxed for revenue by Parliament.
The bargain might have seemed attractive to many defenders of
American rights before the war. As it was, it was not even
presented to the patriots, since they were not beaten into
submission. Assuming that there was no ministerial intention to

William Howe deceive, these proposals indicate an intention to try to conciliate

the colonists after the close of hostilities. Ignorant of the terms,
British Gen. William Howe, 1778.
the patriots were left to imagine what their fate would be should
they be defeated. That the terms were not publicly announced was a remarkable failure of British propaganda.
Military failure followed.

The antagonists compared

John Montagu, 4th earl of Sandwich, the first lord of the admiralty, during parliamentary debates early in
1775, declared that the British army could easily subdue the colonists. The view of Lord Barrington, not
accepted by his superiors, that reliance should be chiefly placed on a naval blockade, was, as history has
revealed, good advice, since it would have cost Britain less in blood and treasure to lose the war by placing its
faith in naval blockade than it actually did. Nor is it by any means certain that Barrington’s plan would not
have brought victory. A blockade that seriously hurt the American economy, without taking American lives,
might not have driven the colonists to seek independence and might have led ultimately to an Anglo-
American accommodation. In any event, there would have been profits from American ships and cargoes
seized, and money saved by using the army only as auxiliary. Nevertheless, the ministry agreed with
Sandwich, tried to overrun the colonies, failed to achieve that goal, and at last had to acknowledge defeat.

Employing means sanctified by tradition to put down the rebellion, Britain did not toss away all its chances
for success. Britain possessed important advantages even in the sort of war that it waged after 1775. Its
population was about four times that of the American colonies. Moreover, perhaps no more than half the
Americans were firm patriots, one-fourth of them being neutral and another one-fourth being adherents of the
British government. On the other hand, there was not much enthusiasm in Britain for the war until France
intervened. Britain had a navy that the patriots could not hope to challenge; its government was a long-
established one; it could manufacture all necessary military equipment; it had great economic wealth; and it
had both cash and credit. Other sources of strength were the experience of its army and naval officers and the
possession of thousands of veterans who had fought on land and sea. On the other hand, the patriots were able
to put more men in the theatres of warfare than Britain, even though thousands of loyalists had rallied to the
British colours. In very few battles of the war were the Americans outnumbered. Moreover, the patriots could
and did send ships and sailors to sea to strike heavy blows at the British merchant marine. They had sufficient
basic wealth to carry on a long struggle, although they had difficulty in putting that wealth to military use, as
American cash and credit were not plentiful.

Geography heavily favoured the Americans, because the 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of water that lay between
them and the British Isles imposed a great supply problem on the British and made communication between
the British officers in the field and their superiors in London slow and uncertain. The very bulk of the colony-
states militated against British success. Another most important asset for the Americans was the fact that the
loss of several of their cities would not seriously diminish their capacity for resistance. America was in shape
and substance something like a serpent without vital organs. It was especially advantageous to the patriots that
they could fall back into the interior, gaining strength as they retreated, while the British forces necessarily
dwindled as they pursued, being compelled to maintain bases and supply lines. The British army was to lose
several major battles in the interior. Furthermore, it was not necessary for the Americans to destroy the forces
of Britain; it was only needful for them to keep the field until Britain should grow weary of the conflict. In
addition, the patriots were familiar with their own country, and their cause aroused in many of them a superb
and abiding devotion.

The turning point

From the military and diplomatic points of view, the turning
point of the war came with Gen. John Burgoyne’s signing of the
Convention of Saratoga in October 1777 and the resulting
decision of the French government in February 1778 to enter into
an alliance with the Americans. The coming into the war of
France, and then Spain, as enemies placed new and heavy

Surrender of General Burgoyne at burdens on Britain. The defeat of Burgoyne and the approaching
Saratoga entrance of France into the conflict caused alarm in London and

Surrender of General Burgoyne (at led to the sending of the Carlisle Commission to offer the
Saratoga, New York, October 17, Americans autonomy within the empire, a proposal that failed to
1777), oil on canvas by John Trumbull, attract the Congress. It also forced the British army and navy in
1821; in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda,
America to remain on the defensive during most of 1778.
Washington, D.C.

The shape of things to come loomed when a French fleet from

Toulon under Charles-Hector, comte d’Estaing, crossed the
Atlantic, temporarily depriving Britain of easy control of North
American waters. However, the French admiral failed to achieve
anything. Immediately before d’Estaing’s arrival, Admiral
Richard Howe and Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, who had succeeded
William Howe, executed an order to evacuate Philadelphia. With
George Washington at the Battle of
the bulk of the army, Clinton had marched across New Jersey,
Monmouth
beaten off an attack by Washington in the Battle of Monmouth,
George Washington at the Battle of
and had safely reached New York, where he was joined by Lord
Monmouth (1778) during the American
Revolutionary War. Howe. Washington and d’Estaing laid plans for a land and sea
attack upon New York but could not execute them. They were
also prevented from carrying through a joint assault upon Newport. The French fleet sailed off to the West
Indies. Reappearing in North American waters in 1779, d’Estaing participated in a Franco-American assault
upon Savannah that was bloodily repulsed by a British garrison. In 1780, after the British had evacuated
Newport, a French squadron established itself there, with a small French army. The possibility that the French
navy might secure control, even temporarily, of American waters and cooperate effectively with the patriots
seriously disturbed Clinton.

Mindful of the French menace, Clinton, who had on occasion

displayed brilliance and dash as a subordinate, was cautious as a
commander in chief. He made hardly more than a gesture of
attacking Washington, who hovered about New York from 1778
to 1781. Except in the far south, Clinton waged a war of
endurance, to which he added extensive raiding operations in

Sir Henry Clinton Connecticut and Virginia and efforts to seduce American leaders.
What would have been the ultimate outcome of such a policy
Sir Henry Clinton, engraving.
uniformly and steadily applied is difficult to say. By 1780 the
Continental currency had become worthless, and the Congress was unable to pay its soldiers regularly.
Supplies had to be requisitioned from the states. Even so, it is by no means certain that Britain would have
outlasted the patriots in a war of endurance, for the British also felt financial strain. The war might have ended
less rapidly and less dramatically, but with the same result.

War in the south

As it happened, Clinton did not insist that his cautious policy be
executed in the southern states. He permitted Lord Cornwallis to
embark upon aggressive adventures in the southern interior, for
there were many loyalists in the Carolinas and Georgia, and the
patriot forces were weak in those states. At the end of 1778, a
British expedition under Clinton’s orders captured Savannah, and

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess and it became increasingly apparent to Clinton that larger British
2nd Earl Cornwallis forces could take Charleston. In the spring of 1780 an army
under Clinton with an accompanying fleet surrounded the city
and compelled its surrender, together with more than 5,000 patriot soldiers. Its fall stunned the patriots of
South Carolina and Georgia, and patriot resistance in the two states temporarily collapsed. Stimulated to
further activity, Clinton established garrisons in a number of forts in their interior. Compelled to return to New
York, he left Cornwallis in command in the far south, telling him to defend the new conquests and to
undertake no ventures so expensive that the British grip on South Carolina and Georgia would be endangered.
He also informed Cornwallis that he might take command of British raiding contingents in Virginia, in the
event that it became advisable to do so.

Had Clinton remained in the far south, the British army there would have been primarily devoted to
preservation of the gains already made, but Cornwallis was of different stuff. He was brave and bold, a
fighting man rather than a thoughtful one. The British hold upon South Carolina and Georgia was soon
threatened, the patriots of the two states turning to partisan warfare, with larger patriot forces advancing to
their assistance from northward. At Camden, South Carolina, in August 1780, Cornwallis routed an American
army under Gen. Horatio Gates moving out of North Carolina. His easy victory persuaded him to invade the
interior of North Carolina. When a detachment of 1,000 loyalists that advanced with him was surrounded and
destroyed in the Battle of King’s Mountain in the fall of that year, he had to fall back. He might then prudently
have remained on the defensive, in consonance with the spirit, if not the letter, of his orders. Instead, receiving
reinforcements, he drove a second time into the interior of North Carolina. Nor did he stop when a British
detachment of more than a thousand men under Col. Banastre Tarleton was routed by Gen. Daniel Morgan at
Cowpens in January 1781.

Cornwallis aggressively pursued Morgan, and, when Morgan

joined Gen. Nathanael Greene, who had assumed command of
the Continental troops in the South, he drove on after Greene. He
pursued Greene to the Virginia boundary, although his own army
was wasting away from hardship and disease. When he at last
turned back, Greene, reinforced, followed him. At Guilford
Courthouse, in March, Cornwallis with about 1,900 men, less
than half the troops with whom he had started, attacked Greene
with 4,500 men and finally forced him back. However,
Cornwallis could not stay in the interior of North Carolina.
Prudence and his orders rather clearly dictated that he retreat and
defend the British conquests in South Carolina and Georgia.
Instead, he led the remains of his army to the North Carolina
final Southern campaigns of the
seacoast and then to Virginia to undertake a new adventure,
American Revolution
consigning the task of protecting the British gains in the far south
This map shows the major battles and
to his subordinates.
troop movements during the final
campaigns of the American Revolution
in the South during 1780−81, Yorktown
culminating in the Siege of Yorktown
and British surrender in October 1781. In Virginia Cornwallis encountered disaster. Adding British
raiding contingents there to the men he led from North Carolina,
he collected an army of 7,000 troops, campaigned vigorously
against the patriots without decisive achievement, and then built
a base at Yorktown. Clinton told him that he ought to leave a part
of his men to garrison the base and to lead the remainder
northward. Cornwallis declared that his whole force was needed
to defend Yorktown, and Clinton let him have his way. Then
John Trumbull: Surrender of Lord Cornwallis was swiftly surrounded by land and sea. A powerful
Cornwallis
French fleet under Admiral François-Joseph-Paul, comte de
Surrender of Lord Cornwallis (at Grasse, came to the Chesapeake from the West Indies. This fleet
Yorktown, October 19, 1781), oil on
was superior to that of the British at New York. Adm. George
canvas by John Trumbull, completed
in 1820. Rodney, commanding in the West Indies, failed to send enough
ships after de Grasse to restore the balance, and de Grasse was
able to push away the New York fleet from the mouth of the bay. The French squadron at Newport joined him.
Washington moved rapidly southward with the French soldiers from Newport and several thousand
Continentals. With these, the patriots in Virginia, and soldiers brought by de Grasse, he had 17,000 men to
prevent the escape of Cornwallis by land and lay siege to Yorktown. Franco-American attacks carried the
outer fortifications of Yorktown. A British relief expedition set out from New York, but it was too late and
probably too weak to save Cornwallis. He surrendered on October 19, 1781.

The British recognized Yorktown as decisive. Aggressiveness in the American interior had brought heavy
losses and few gains, and aggressiveness on the coast had led to defeat. Without the appearance of the French
fleet, would the outcome have been different? The bold Cornwallis was not achieving much before the
appearance of the French. His energy mercifully helped to bring the war to a swifter end in America.

The Treaty of Paris

The military verdict in North America was reflected in the preliminary Anglo-American peace treaty of 1782,
which was included in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and Henry
Laurens served as the American commissioners. By its terms Britain recognized the independence of the
United States (and the demise of the American colonies) with generous boundaries, including the Mississippi
River on the west. Britain retained Canada but ceded East and West Florida to Spain. Provisions were inserted
calling for the payment of American private debts to British subjects, for American access to the
Newfoundland fisheries, and for a recommendation by the Congress to the states in favour of fair treatment of
the loyalists.

Most of the loyalists remained in the new country. Perhaps as many as 37,000 Tories migrated to Canada, and
smaller numbers went to Britain or the British West Indies. Many of these had served as British soldiers, and
many had been banished by the American states. The less ardent and more cautious Tories, staying in the
United States, accepted the separation from Britain as final and could not be distinguished from the patriots
after the passage of a generation. The loyalists were harshly treated as dangerous enemies by the American
states during the war and immediately afterward. They were commonly deprived of civil rights, often fined,
and frequently deprived of their property. The more conspicuous were usually banished upon pain of death.
The British government compensated about 2,300 loyalists for property losses, paying out about £3,300,000.
In addition, it gave loyalists land grants, pensions, and appointments to enable them to reestablish themselves.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.

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