Bailey APUSH Notes
Summary:
225 million years ago, Earth was one supercontinent (Pangaea) and ocean. About 10 million years ago, the North America that we know today was formed (geographical shape). The first discoverers of North America were nomadic Asians who wandered over here by way of an exposed land bridge from Russia to Alaska during the Ice Age. Though they were hunters at first, by 5000 BC, they had become hunter-gatherers with a diet of basically corn. Great pre-European Indian cultures included the Pueblos, the Iroquois, the Mound Builders, the Mayans, the Incas, the Aztec, and the Sioux, among others (map of tribes on pg. 8). The Indians revered nature and land, and didn’t carelessly destroy it. Everything was put to use.
In 1000 AD, Vikings discovered Newfoundland, but later abandoned it due to unfavorable conditions. Europeans, though, slowly began to proliferate into non-European worlds starting around the 1400s. After Marco Polo came back with stories of China and its riches, Europeans began to explore. First, they set up settlements in Africa, near the coast, where they used African slaves to work on plantations. In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India, opening a sea route to the Far East.
Complications and dangers of this eastern sea route influenced Christopher Columbus to sail west. In doing so, he inadvertently discovered the Americas, though he never knew it. The Portuguese were first to settle in America, but the Spanish later became the dominant nation in the Americas. Spanish Conquistadores swept through Latin and South America, destroying the Aztecs and the Incas. Meanwhile, Magellan’s crew sailed around the world in 1519, becoming the first voyage to do so. As the chapter ended, Spain was very much in control of much of the Americas, though other countries were beginning to challenge the Spanish dominance.
Important People:
Native Americans who that lived in what is now Mexico and routinely offered their gods human sacrifices, these people were violent, yet built amazing pyramids and built a great civilization without having a wheel.
Indians of the Ohio River Valley.
At Cahokia, near present-day East St. Louis, Illionis, was home to about 40,000 people in at 1100 A.D.
This was legendary leader who inspired the Iroquois, a powerful group of Native Americans in the northeaster woodlands of the U.S.
These Vikings discovered America in about 1000 A.D., when they discovered modern-day Newfoundland. They abandoned it later due to bad conditions.
Italian adventurer who supposedly sailed to the Far East (China) in 1295 and returned with stories and supplies of the Asian life there (silk, pearls, etc…)
A Portuguese sailor, he was the first to round the southernmost tip of Africa, a feat he did in 1488.
In 1498, he reached India and returned home with a small but tantalizing cargo of jewels and spices.
Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile-
The wedded king and queen of Spain, their marriage united the previously non-existing country.
An Italian seafarer who persuaded Spain to give him three ships for which to sail west to look for a better route to India, he “discovered” America in 1492
Discoverer of the Pacific Ocean in 1513.
In 1519, his crew began a voyage and eventually ended up becoming the first to circumnavigate the world, even though he died in the Philippines. The sole surviving ship returned to Europe in 1522.
In 1513 and 1521, this Spanish Explorer explored Florida, searching for gold (contrary to the myth of his seeking the “Fountain of Youth”).
From 1540 to 1542, he explored the pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico, penetrating as far east as Kansas. He also discovered the Grand Canyon and enormous herds of bison.
From 1539 to 1542, he explored Florida and crossed the Mississippi River. He brutally abused Indians and died of fever and battle wounds.
In 1532, he crushed the Incas of Peru and got lots of bounty.
A Spanish missionary who was appalled by the method of encomienda, calling it “a moral pestilence invented by Satan.”
Annihilator of the Aztec in 1519.
A female Indian slave who knew Mayan and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec.
The leader of the Aztecs at the time of Cortés’ invasion who believed that Cortés was the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl.
AKA John Cabot, he explored the northeastern coaster of North America in 1497-98.
An Italian explorer dispatched by the French king in 1524 to probe the eastern seaboard of U.S.
Leader of a Spanish group that traversed parts of Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas in 1598, he and his men proclaimed the province of New Mexico in 1609 and founded its capital, Santa Fe.
Sent by the French, he went on an expedition down the Mississippi in the 1680s.
He explored the California coast in 1542 but failed to find anything of interest.
The Spanish missionary who founded 21 missions in California, in 1769, he founded Mission San Diego, the first of the chain.
Key Terms & Words, etc…:
maize - the Indian word for corn
Conquistadores - the Spanish word for “conqueror,” these explorers claimed much of America for Spain, slaughtering millions of natives in the process
encomienda - a euphemism for slavery in which Indians were given to colonists to be “Christianized.”
Día de la Raza - Spanish for Columbus Day.
Lake Bonneville - massive prehistoric lake, all of which remains today in the form of the Great Salt Lake.
Treaty of Tordesillas - treaty that settled Spanish and Portuguese differences in the Americas, Portugal got modern-day Brazil; Spain got the rest.
Popé’s Rebellion - revolt in which Indians took over New Mexico and held control for nearly half a century.
Places and Countries:
Capital of the West African kingdom of Mali, a place located in the Niger River Valley.
Areas where sugar plantations were established by Portugal then Spain where African slaves were forced to work.
A rich silver mine in Bolivia that enriched Spain with lots of wealth.
Timeline:
|
c. 33,000 – 8000 BC |
First humans come to Americas from land bridge connecting Asia and Alaska. |
|
c. 5000 BC |
Corn is developed as a stable crop in highland Mexico. |
|
c. 4000 BC |
First civilized societies develop in the Middle East. |
|
c. 1200 BC |
Corn planting reaches present-day American Southwest. |
|
c. 1000 AD |
Norse voyagers discover and briefly settle in Newfoundland (Vinland). Also, corn cultivation reaches Midwest and southeaster Atlantic seaboard. |
|
c. 1100 AD |
Height of Mississippian settlement at Cahokia |
|
c. 1100 – 1300 |
Christian crusades arouse European interest in the East. |
|
1295 |
Marco Polo returns to Europe from Asia. |
|
Late 1400s |
Spain unites. |
|
1488 |
Díaz rounds the southern tip of Africa. |
|
1492 |
Columbus land in the Bahamas. |
|
1494 |
Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal. |
|
1498 |
da Gama reaches India. Cabot explores northeastern coast of North America for England. |
|
1513 |
Balboa claims all lands touched by the Pacific Ocean for Spain. |
|
1513 & 1521 |
Ponce de León explores Florida. |
|
1519 – 1521 |
Cortés conquers Mexico for Spain, defeating the Aztecs. |
|
1522 |
Magellan’s crew completes circumnavigation of the world. |
|
1524 |
Verrazano explores eastern seaboard of Norh America for France. |
|
1532 |
Pizarro crushes the Incas. |
|
1534 |
Cartier journeys up the St. Lawrence River. |
|
1539 – 1542 |
de Soto explores the Southeast and discoveres the Mississippi River. |
|
1540 – 1542 |
Coronado explores present-day Southwest |
|
1542 |
Cabrillo explores California coast for Spain. |
|
1565 |
Spanish build fortress at St. Augustine. |
|
Late 1500s |
Iroquois Confederacy founded (according to Iroquois legend) |
|
c. 1598 – 1609 |
Spanish under Oñate conquer Pueblo peoples of Rio Grande Valley. |
|
1609 |
Spanish found New Mexico. |
|
1680 |
Popé’s rebellion of New Mexico. |
|
1680s |
French expedition down Mississippi River under La Salle |
|
1769 |
Father Junipero Serra founds Mission San Diego, in California. |
Makers of America:
- Conquistadores included Hernán Cortes and Francisco Pizarro, who conquered the Aztecs and the Incas respectively.
- Within half a century of Columbus’ “discovery” of America, they had claimed, for Spain, territory that stretched form Colorado to Argentina.
- They spread from Cuba through Mexico and from Panama, south through Peru.
- As the Spanish crown tightened its grip on its colonies, though, the conquistadors lost more and more power.
- Most of them never achieved their dreams of glory, though a few received royal titles.
- Many of them married Indian women, creating a new class of people called mestizos.
- The mestizos formed a bridge between Latin America’s Indian and European races.
Chapter 2: “The Planting of English America”
I. England’s Imperial Stirrings
A. North America
1. North America in 1600 was largely unclaimed, though the Spanish had much control in Central and South America.
2. Spain had only set up Santa Fe, while France had founded Quebec and Britain had founded Jamestown.
3. In the 1500s, Britain didn’t really colonize because of internal conflicts.
a. King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s and launched the English Protestant Reformation.
b. After Elizabeth I became queen, Britain became basically Protestant, and a rivalry with Catholic Spain intensified.
c. In Ireland, the Catholics sought Spain’s help in revolting against England, but the English crushed the uprising with brutal atrocity, and developed an attitude of sneering contempt for natives.
II. Elizabeth Energizes England
A. Colonization
1. After Britain basically defeated Spain (i.e. Spanish Armada defeat), British swarmed to America and took over lead in colonization and power.
a. Sparked new literature, like Shakespeare
2. After Drake circumnavigated the globe, Liz I knighted him on his ship.
3. However, English tries at colonization in the New World failed often and embarrassingly.
4. Britain and Spain finally signed a peace treaty in 1604.
III. England on the Eve of the Empire
A. Reasons for Emigration
1. In the 1500s, Britain’s population was mushrooming.
2. Farmers were enclosing land for farming.
3. Puritanism took a strong root in the woolen districts of western and eastern England.
4. Younger sons of rich folk (who couldn’t inherit money) tried their luck with fortunes elsewhere, like America.
5. By the 1600s, the joint-stock company was perfected, being a forerunner to today’s corporations.
IV. England Plants the Jamestown Seedling
A. Jamestown
1. In 1606, the Virginia Company received a charter from King James I to make a settlement in the New World.
a. Such joint-stock companies usually did not exist long, as stockholders hoped to form the company, make a profit, and then quickly sell for profit a few years later.
2. The charter of the Virginia Company guaranteed settlers the same rights as Englishmen in Britain.
3. On May 24, 1607, about a 100 English settlers disembarked from their ship and founded Jamestown.
a. Forty colonists perished during the voyage.
b. In mosquito-ridden Virginia, disease was rampant. It didn’t help that a supply ship shipwrecked in the Bahamas in 1609 either.
4. Luckily, in 1608, a Captain John Smith took over control and whipped the colonists into discipline.
a. He had been kidnapped by local Indians and forced into a mock execution by the chief Powhatan and had been “saved” by Pocahantas.
b. The act was meant to show that Powhatan wanted peaceful relations with the colonists.
5. Still, the colonists were reduced to eating cats, dogs, rats, even other people.
6. Finally, in 1610, a relief party headed by Lord De La Warr arrived to alleviate the suffering.
7. By 1625, out of an original overall total of 8000 would-be settlers, only 1200 had survived.
V. Cultural Clash in the Chesapeake
A. The Indian’s Begin to Lose Power
1. At first, Powhatan possibly considered the new colonists potential allies and tried to be friendly with them, but as time passed and colonists raided Indian food supplies, relations deteriorated and eventually, war occurred.
2. The First Anglo-Powhatan War ended in 1614 with a peace settlement sealed by the marriage of Pocahontas to colonist John Rolfe.
3. Eight years later, in 1622, the Indians struck again with a series of attacks that left 347 settlers, including John Rolfe, dead.
4. The Second Anglo-Powhatan War began in 1644, ended in 1646, and effectively banished the Chesapeake Indians from their ancestral lands.
5. After the settlers began to grow their own food, the Indians were useless, and were therefore banished.
VI. Virginia: Child of Tobacco
A. Tobacco Info
1. Tobacco created a greed for land, since it heavily depleted soil and ruined the land.
2. King James I detested tobacco.
3. Representative self-government was born in Virginia, when in 1619, settlers created the House of Burgesses.
4. Slavery in the Americas was also born in 1619.
VII. Maryland: Catholic Heaven
A. Religious Diversity
1. Founded in 1634 by Lord Baltimore, Maryland was the second plantation colony and the fourth overall colony to be formed.
2. It was a place for persecuted Catholics to find refuge.
3. Lord Baltimore gave huge estates to his Catholic relatives, but the poorer people who settled there where mostly Protestant, creating friction.
4. However, Maryland prospered with tobacco.
5. It had a lot of indentured servants.
6. Only in the later years of the 1600s (in Maryland and Virginia) did Black slavery began to become popular.
7. Maryland’s religious statute guaranteed toleration to all Christians, but decreed the death penalty to Jews and atheists and others who didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
VIII. The West Indies: Way Station to Mainland America
A. Their Use
1. As the British were colonizing Virginia, they were also settling in the West Indies (Spain’s declining power opened the door).
2. By mid-1600s, England had secured claim to several West Indies islands, including Jamaica in 1655.
3. They grew lots of sugar there.
4. Thousands of African slaves were needed to operate sugar plantations, and these weren’t for the poor either.
5. To control so many slaves “codes” were set up that defined the legal status of slaves and the rights of the masters. They were typically strict.
IX. Colonizing the Carolinas
A. Restoration Period
1. In England, King Charles I had been beheaded. Oliver Cromwell had ruled for ten years before tired Englishmen restored Charles II to the throne.
2. The bloody period had interrupted colonization.
3. Carolina was named after Charles II, and was formally created in 1670.
4. Carolina flourished by developing close economic ties with the West Indies.
5. Many original Carolina settlers had come from Barbados.
6. Interestingly, Indians as slaves in Carolina was protested, but to no avail. Slaves were sent to the West Indies to work, as well as New England.
7. Rice emerged as the principle crop in Carolina.
a. African slaves were hired to work on rice fields, due to their immunity to malaria and their familiarity with rice.
8. Despite violence with Spanish and Indians, Carolina proved to be too strong to be wiped out.
X. The Emergence of North Carolina
A. Conflict
1. Many newcomers to Carolina were “squatters,” people who owned no land.
2. North Carolinians developed a strong resistant to authority, due to geographic isolation from neighbors.
3. In 1712, North and South Carolina were officially separated.
4. In 1711, when Tuscarora Indians attacked North Carolinas, the Carolinians responded by crushing the opposition, selling hundreds to slavery and leaving the rest to wander north, eventually becoming the Sixth Nation of the Iroquois.
XI. Late-Coming Georgia: The Buffer Colony
A. Georgia’s Purpose
1. Georgia was intended to be a buffer between the British colonies and the hostile Spanish settlements in Florida and the enemy French in Louisiana.
2. Founded in 1733 by a high-minded group of philanthropists, it was the last colony founded.
3. Named after King George II of England, Georgia was also meant to be a haven for wretched souls in debt.
4. James Oglethorpe, the ablest of the founders and a dynamic soldier-statesman, repelled Spanish attacks.
a. He saved “the Charity Colony” by his energetic leadership and by using his own fortune to help with the colony.
5. All Christians except Catholics enjoyed religious toleration, and many missionaries came to try to convert the Indians.
a. John Wesley was one of them, and he later returned to England and founded Methodism.
6. Georgia grew very slowly.
XII. The Plantion Colonies
A. Comparisons and Contrasts
1. Slavery was found in all the plantation colonies.
2. Growth of cities was often stunted by forests.
3. Establishment of schools and churches was difficult.
4. In the South, the crops were tobacco and rice.
5. All the plantation colonies permitted some religious toleration.
6. Confrontations with Native Americans was often.
XIII. Makers of America: The Iroquois
- In what is now New York State, the Iroquois once were a great power.
- They were made up of the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Deganawidah, and the Hiawatha.
- They vied with neighboring Indians and later French, English, and Dutch for supremacy.
- The longhouse was the building block of Iroquois society.
- Only 25 feet wide but over 200 feet long, longhouses were typically occupied by a few blood-related families (on the mother’s side).
- The Mohawks were middlemen with European traders.
- The Senecas were fur suppliers.
- The Five Nations of the Iroquois’ rivals, the neighboring Hurons, Eries, and Petuns, were vanquished.
- Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, the Iroquois allied with the British and French (whichever more beneficial).
- When the American Revolution broke out, the decision to side with who was split. Most sided with the British, but not all.
- Afterwards, the Iroquois were forced to reservations, which proved to be unbearable to these proud people.
- An Iroquois named Handsome Lake arose to warn his tribespeople to mend their ways.
- His teachings live today in the form of the longhouse religion.
He died in 1815.
Chapter 3: “Settling the Northern Colonies”
I. The Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism
A. Beginnings
1. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral.
a. He ignited the Protestant Reformation.
2. John Calvin preached Calvinism
a. Basic doctrines were stated in the 1536 document entitled Institutes of the Christian Religion.
b. Stated that all humans were weak and wicked.
c. Only the predestined could go to heaven, no matter what.
d. Calvinists were expected to seek “conversions,” signs that they were one of the predestined, and afterwards, lead “sanctified lives.”
3. In England, King Henry VIII was breaking his ties with the Holy Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s.
4. Some people, called Puritans, were influenced to totally reform the Christian faith.
B. Puritans
1. All believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership.
2. Separatists vowed to break away from the Church of England because the “saints” would have to sit with the “damned.”
3. King James I, father of the beheaded Charles I, harassed the Separatists out of England because he thought that if people could defy him as their spiritual leader, they might defy him as their political ruler.
II. The Pilgrims End Their Pilgrimage at Plymouth
A. The Voyage
1. The Separatists that left were from Holland, where they had fled to after they had left England.
a. They were concerned that their children were getting to “Dutchified.”
b. They wanted a place where they were free to worship their own religion and could live and die as good Puritans.
2. After negotiating with the Virginia Company, the Separatists left Holland and sailed for 65 days at sea on the Mayflower until they arrived off the rocky coast of New England in 1620, a trip in which only one person died and one person was born.
a. Less than half of the pilgrims on the Mayflower were actually Separatists.
b. Contrary to myth, the Pilgrims undertook a few surveys before deciding to settle at Plymouth, an area far from Virginia.
c. The Pilgrims became squatters, people without legal right to land and without specific authority to establish government.
3. Captain Myles Standish (a.k.a. Captain Shrimp) proved to be a great Indian fighter and negotiator.
4. Before disembarking from ship, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact, a set of rules by which to obey.
a. Though it wasn’t a constitution, it did set the standard for later constitutions.
5. In the winter of 1620-21, only 44 of the 102 survived.
6. 1621 brought bountiful harvests, though, and the first Thanksgiving was celebrated that year.
7. William Bradford, chosen governor of Plymouth 30 times in the annual elections, was a great leader, and helped Plymouth to survive and trade fur, fish, and lumber.
8. In 1691, Plymouth finally merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
III. The Bay Colony Bible Commonwealth
A. Settling In
1. In 1629, some non-Separatist Puritans got a royal charter from England to settle in the New World. Secretly, they took the charter with them and later used it as a type of constitution.
2. It was a well-equipped group of which about 11,000 people came to Massachusetts.
3. John Winthrop was elected governor or deputy governor for 19 years, helping Massachusetts prosper in fur trading, fishing, and shipbuilding.
IV. Building the Bay Colony
A. Government
1. Soon after the establishment of the colony, the franchise was extended to all “freemen:” adult males who belonged to the Puritan congregations (later called the Congregational church), making people who could enjoy the franchise about two fifths of the total population.
a. Unchurched men and women weren’t allowed in.
2. The provincial government was not a democracy.
a. Governor Winthrop feared and distrusted the common people, calling democracy the “meanest and worst” of all forms of government.
3. Religious leaders wielded powerful influence over the admission to church membership.
4. John Cotton, a prominent clergy member, was educated at Cambridge and had immigrated to Massachusetts to avoid persecution fro his criticism of the Church of England.
5. However, congregations could hire and fire their ministers at will.
6. Still, there were laws to limit Earthly pleasures, such as a fine of twenty shillings for couples caught kissing in public.
7. The Puritan concept of Hell was very serious and scary.
a. Michael Wigglesworth’s “Day of Doom,” written in 1662, sold one copy for every twenty people.
V. Trouble in the Bible Commonwealth
A. Defiance
1. Tensions arose in Massachusetts.
a. Quakers were fined, flogged, and/or banished.
b. Anne Hutchinson was a very intelligent, strong-willed, talkative woman who claimed that a holy life was no sure sign of salvation and that the truly saved need not bother to obey the law of either God or man.
(1) Brought to trial in 1638, Anne boasted that her beliefs were directly from God.
(2) She was banished from the colony and eventually made her way to Rhode Island.
(3) She died in New York after an attack by Indians.
c. Roger Williams was a radical idealist hounded his fellow clergymen to make a clean and complete break with the Church of England.
(1) He went on to deny that civil government could and should govern religious behavior.
(2) He was banished in 1635, and flew to the Rhode Island area the next year.
VI. The Rhode Island “Sewer”
A. Land of the Outcasts
1. People who went to Rhode Island weren’t necessarily similar; they were just unwanted everywhere else.
2. They were against special privilege.
3. “Little Rhody” was later known as “the traditional home of the otherwise minded.”
4. It finally secured a charter in 1644.
VII. New England Spreads Out
A. More Settling
1. In 1635, Hartford, Connecticut was founded.
2. Reverend Thomas Hooker led an energetic group of Puritans west.
3. In 1639, settlers of the new Connecticut River colony drafted in open meeting a trailblazing document called the Fundamental Orders.
a. It was basically a modern constitution.
4. In 1638, New Haven was founded and eventually merged into Connecticut.
5. In 1623, Maine was absorbed by Massachusetts and remained so for nearly a century and a half.
6. In 1641, the granite-ribbed New Hampshire was absorbed into Massachusetts.
a. In 1679, the king separated the two and made New Hampshire a royal colony.
VIII. Puritans vs. Indians
A. Violence
1. Before the Puritans had arrived in 1620, an epidemic had swept through the Indians, killing over three quarters of them.
2. At first, Indians tried to befriend the Whites.
a. Squanto, a Wampanoag, helped keep relative peace.
3. In 1637, though, after mounting tensions exploded, English settlers and the powerful Pequot tribe fought in the Pequot War, in which the English set fire to a Pequot village on Connecticut’s Mystic River, annihilating the Indians and bringing about forty years of tentative peace.
a. In an attempt to save face, the Puritans did try to convert some of the Indians, though with less zeal than that of the Spanish and French.
4. IN 1675, Metacom (called King Philip by the English) united neighboring Indians in a last-ditched attack that failed.
a. The King Philip’s War slowed colonial western march, but Metacom was beheaded and quartered and his head was stuck on a sharp pike for all to see, his wife and son sold to slavery.
IX. Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence
A. A Bit of Unity Shown
1. In 1643, four colonies banded together to form the New England Confederation.
a. It was almost all Puritan.
b. It was weak, but still a notable milestone toward American unity.
2. The colonies were basically allowed to be semiautonomous commonwealths.
3. After Charles II was restored to the British throne, he hoped to control his colonies more firmly, but was shocked to find how much his orders were ignored by Massachusetts.
a. As punishment, a sea-to-sea charter was given to rival Connecticut (1662), and a charter was given to Rhode Island (1663).
b. Finally, in 1684, Massachusetts’ charter was revoked.
X. Andros Promotes the First American Revolution
A. Opposition to England Grows
1. In 1686, the Dominion of New England was created to bolster the colonial defense against Indians and tying the colonies closer to Britain by enforcing the hated Navigation Acts.
a. The acts forbade American trade with countries other than Britain.
b. As a result, smuggling became common.
c. Head of the Dominion was Sir Edmund Andros.
(1) Establishing HQ in Boston, he openly showed his association with the locally hated Church of England.
(2) His soldiers were vile-mouthed.
2. Andros responded to opposition by curbing town meetings, restricting the courts and the press, and revoking all land titles.
3. He taxed the people without their consent.
4. At the same time, the people of England staged the Glorious Revolution, instating William and Mary to the crown.
a. Result, the Dominion of New England collapsed.
b. Massachusetts got a new charter in 1691, but this charter allowed all landowners to vote, as opposed to the previous law of voting belonging only to the church members.
XI. Old Netherlanders at New Netherland
A. The Little Guys Gain Power
1. In the 17th Century, the Netherlands revolted against Spain, and with help of Britain, gained their independence.
2. The Dutch East India Company was established, with an army of 10,000 men and a fleet of 190 ships (including 40 men-of-war).
3. The Dutch West India Company often raided rather than traded.
4. In 1609, Henry Hudson ventured into Delaware and New York Bay and claimed the area for the Netherlands.
5. It was the Dutch West India Company that bought Manhattan Island for some worthless trinkets (22,000 acres of the most valuable land in the world today).
6. New Amsterdam was a company town, run by and for the Dutch company and in the interests of stockholders.
7. The Dutch gave patroonships (large areas of land) to promoters who agreed to settle at least 50 people on them.
8. New Amsterdam attracted people of all types and races.
a. One French Jesuit missionary counted 18 different languages being spoken on the street.
XII. Friction with English and Swedish Neighbors
A. Trouble for the Dutch
1. Indian’s attacked the Dutch for their cruelties.
2. New England was hostile against Dutch growth.
3. The Swedes trespassed Dutch reserves from 1638 to 1655 by planting the anemic colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River.
4. Things got so bad that the Dutch erected a wall in New Amsterdam, for which Wall Street is named today.
5. In 1655, the Dutch sent one legged Peter Stuyvesant to besiege the main Swedish fort, and he won, ending Swedish colonial rule and leaving only Swedish log cabins and place names as evidence that the Swedes were every in Delaware.
XIII. Dutch Residues in New York
A. The Dutch Get Voted Off the Island
1. In 1664, Charles II granted the area of modern-day New York to his brother, the Duke of York, and that year, British troops landed and defeated the Dutch, kicking them out, without much violence.
2. New Amsterdam was renamed New York.
B. The Dutch Legacy
1. The people of New York retained their autocratic spirit.
2. Dutch names of cities remained, like Harlem, Brooklyn, and Hell Gate.
3. Even their architecture left its mark on buildings.
4. The Dutch also gave us Easter eggs, Santa Claus, waffles, sauerkraut, bowling, sleighing, skating, and golf.
XIV. Penn’s Holy Experiment in Pennsylvania
A. William Penn and the Quakers
1. The Quakers (characteristics)
a. They “quaked” under deep religious emotion.
b. They were offensive to religious and civil rule.
c. They addressed everyone with simple “thee”s and “thou”s and didn’t swear oaths because Jesus had said “Swear not at all,” this last part creating a problem, since you had to swear a test oath to prove that you weren’t Roman Catholic.
d. Though stubborn and unreasonable, they were simple, devoted, democratic people against war and violence.
2. William Penn, a well-born Englishman, embraced the Quaker faith.
3. In 1681, he managed to secure an immense grant of fertile land from the land.
a. It was called Pennsylvania, in honor of Penn, who, being the modest person that he was, had insisted that it be called Sylvania.
b. It was the best advertised of all the colonies.
XV. Quaker Pennsylvania and Its Neighbors
A. Penn Settles
1. Thousands of squatters already lived in Pennsylvania.
2. Philadelphia was more carefully planned than most cities, with beautiful, wide streets.
3. Penn bought land from the Indians, like Chief Tammany, later patron saint of New York’s political Tammany Hall.
4. His treatment of the Indians was so gentle that Quakers could walk through Indian territory unarmed without fear of being hurt.
5. However, as more and more non-Quakers came to Pennsylvania, they mistreated the Indians more and more.
6. Freedom of worship was available to everyone except for Jews and Catholics (only because of pressure from London), and the death penalty was only for murder and treason.
7. No restrictions were placed on immigration, and naturalization was made easy.
8. The Quakers also developed a dislike toward slavery.
9. Pennsylvania attracted a great variety of people from all races, class, and religion.
10. By 1700, only Virginia was more populous and richer.
11. Penn, unfortunately, was not well-liked because of his friendliness towards James II, the deposed Catholic king, and he was jailed at times, and also suffered a paralytic stroke, dying full of sorrows.
12. New Jersey and Delaware prospered as well.
XVI. The Middle Way in the Middle Colonies
A. New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania
1. All had fertile soil and broad expanse of land.
2. All except for Delaware exported lots of grain.
3. The Susquehanna River tapped the fur trade of the interior, and the rivers were gentle, with little cascading waterfalls.
4. The middle colonies were the middle way between New England and the southern plantation states.
5. Landholdings were generally intermediate in size.
6. The middle colonies were more ethnically mixed than other colonies.
7. A considerable amount of economic and social democracy prevailed.
8. Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston, entered Philadelphia as a seventeen-year-old in 1720 with a loaf of bread under each arm and immediately found a congenial home in the urbane, open atmosphere of the city.
9. Americans began to realize that not only were they surviving, but that they were also thriving.
XVII. Makers of America: The English
- In the 1600s, England was undergoing a massive population boom.
- About 75% of English immigrants were indentured servants.
- Most of them were young men from the “middling classes.”
- Some had fled during the cloth trade slump in the early 1600s while others had been forced off their land due to enclosure.
- Some 40% of indentured servants died before their seven years were over.
- Late in the 17th Century, as the supply of indentured servants slowly ran out, the southerners resolved to Black Slaves.
- From 1629 to 1642, 11,000 Puritans swarmed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
- In contrast to the indentured servants, Puritans migrated in family groups, not alone.
- Puritans brought the way of life from England with them to America.
· i.e. Marblehead, Mass. had mostly fishermen because most of the immigrants had been fisherman in England.
· i.e. Rowley, Mass. brought from Yorkshire, England their distinctive way of life.
- In Ipswich, Massachusetts, settled by East Anglian Puritans, the rulers had long terms and ruled with an iron hand.
However, in Newbury, people rarely won reelection.
Chapter 4: “American Life in the Seventeenth Century”
~ 1607 – 1692 ~
I. The Unhealthy Chesapeake
1. Life in the American wilderness was harsh.
a. Diseases like malaria, dysentery, and typhoid killed many.
b. Few people lived to 40 or 50 years.
c. In the early days of colonies, women were so scarce that men fought over all of them.
d. Few people knew any grandparents.
e. A third of all brides in one Maryland county were already pregnant before the wedding (scandalous).
f. Virginia, with 59,000 people, became the most populous colony.
II. The Tobacco Economy
1. The Chesapeake was very good for tobacco cultivation.
2. Chesapeake Bay exported 1.5 million pounds of tobacco yearly in the 1630s, and by 1700, that number had risen to 40 million pounds a year.
a. More availability led to falling prices, and farmers still grew more
b. Early on, most of the laborers were indentured servants.
(1) Life for them was hard, but there was hope at the end of seven years for freedom.
(2) Conditions were brutal, and in the later years, owners unwilling to free their servants extended their contracts by years for small mistakes.
III. Frustrated Freemen and Bacon’s Rebellion
1. By the late 1600s, there were lots of free, poor, landless, single men frustrated by the lack of money, land, work, and women (that’s nicely put).
2. In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a few thousand of these men in a rebellion against the hostile conditions.
a. These people wanted land and were resentful of Virginia governor William Berkeley’s friendly policies toward the Indians.
b. Bacon’s men murderously attacked Indian settlements after Berkeley refused to retaliate for a series of savage Indian attacks on the frontier.
3. Then, in the middle of his rebellion, Bacon suddenly died of disease, and Berkeley went on the crush the uprising.
a. Still, Bacon’s legacy lived on, giving frustrated poor folks ideas to rebel, and so a bit of paranoia went on for some time afterwards.
IV. Colonial Survey
1. In the 300 years following Columbus’ discovery of America, only about 400,000 of a total of 10 million African slaves were brought over to the United States.
2. By 1680, though, many landowners were afraid of possibly mutinous white servants, by the mid 1680s, for the first time, black slaves outnumbered white servants among the plantation colonies’ new arrivals.
3. After 1700, more and more slaves were imported, and in 1750, Blacks accounted for nearly half of the Virginian population.
a. Most of the slaves were from West Africa, from places like Senegal and Angola.
4. Some of the earliest Black slaves gained their freedom and some became slaveholders themselves.
5. Eventually, to clear up issues on slave ownership, it was made so that slaves and their children would remain slaves to their masters for life, unless they were voluntarily freed.
a. Some laws made teaching slaves to read a crime, and not even conversion to Christianity might qualify a slave for freedom.
V. Africans in America
1. Slave life in the deep South was very tough, as rice growing was much harder than tobacco growing.
a. Many Blacks in America evolved their own languages, blending their native tongues with English.
b. Blacks also contributed to music with instruments like the banjo and bongo drum.
2. A few of the slaves became skilled artisans (i.e. carpenters, bricklayers and tanners), but most were relegated to sweaty work like clearing swamps and grubbing out trees.
3. Revolts did occur.
a. In 1712, a slave revolt in New York City cost the lives of a dozen Whites and 21 Blacks were executed.
b. In 1739, South Carolina blacks along the Stono River revolted and tried to march to Spanish Florida, but failed.
VI. Southern Society
1. A social gap appeared and began to widen.
a. In Virginia, a clutch of extended clans (i.e. the Fitzhughs, the Lees, and the Washingtons) owned tracts and tracts of real estate and just about dominated the House of Burgesses.
(1) They came to be known as the First Families of Virginia (FFV).
2. In Virginia, there was often a problem with drunkenness.
3. The largest social group was the farmers.
4. Few cities sprouted in the in the South, so schools and churches were slow to develop.
VII. The New England Family
1. In New England, there was clean water and cool temperatures, so disease was not as predominant as in the South.
2. The first New England Puritans had an average life expectancy of 70 years.
3. In contrast to the Chesapeake, the New Englanders tended to migrate as a family, instead of individually.
a. Women usually married in their early twenties and gave birth every two years until menopause.
b. A typical woman could expect to have ten babies and raise about eight of them.
c. Death in labor for women was not rare, so that wasn’t exactly something to look forward to as an event.
4. In the South, women usually had more power, since the Southern men typically died young and women could inherit the money, but in New England, the opposite was true.
a. In New England men didn’t have absolute power over their wives (as evidenced by the punishments of unruly husbands) but they did have much power over women.
5. New England law was very severe and strict.
a. For example, adulterous women had to wear the letter “A” on their bosoms if they were caught (ala The Scarlet Letter)
VIII. Life in the New England Towns
1. Life in New England was organized.
a. New towns were legally chartered by colonial authorities.
b. A town usually had a meetinghouse surrounded by houses and a village green.
c. Towns of more than 50 families had to provide primary education.
d. Towns of more than 100 had to provide secondary education.
2. In 1636, Massachusetts Puritans established Harvard College to train boys to become ministers.
a. (Note: in 1693, Virginia established their first college, William and Mary.)
3. Puritans ran their own churches, and democracy in Congregational church government led logically to democracy in political government.
IX. The Half-Way Covenant and the Salem Witch Trials]
1. As Puritans began to worry about their children and whether or not they would be as loyal and faithful, and new type of sermon came about called “jeremiads.”
a. Earnest preachers scolded parishioners for their waning piety in hope to improve faith.
2. Troubled ministers announced a new formula for church membership in 1662, calling it the “Half-Way Covenant.”
a. Jeremiads continued to thunder from the pulpits.
b. All people could come, whether or not they were converted (with the exception of a few extremely hated groups).
3. In the 1690s, a group of Salem girls claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women.
4. What followed was a hysterical witch-hunt that led to the executions of 20 people (19 of which were hung) and two dogs.
a. Back in Europe, larger scale witch-hunts were already occurring.
5. Witchcraft hysteria eventually ended in 1693.
X. The New England Way of Life
1. Due to the hard New England soil (or lack thereof), New Englanders became great traders.
2. New England was also less ethnically mixed than its neighbors.
3. The climate of New England encouraged diversified agriculture and industry.
a. Black slavery was attempted but didn’t work.
4. Rivers were short and rapid.
5. The Europeans in New England chastised the Indians for “wasting” the land, and felt a need to clear as much land for use as possible.
6. Fishing became a very popular industry.
XI. The Early Settlers’ Days and Ways
1. Early farmers usually rose at dawn and went to bed at dusk.
2. Few events were done during the night unless they were “worth the candle.”
3. Life was humble but comfortable, at least in accordance to the surroundings.
4. The people who emigrated from Europe to America were most usually lower middle class citizens looking to have a better future in the New World.
5. Because of the general sameness of class in America, laws against extravagances were sometimes passed, but as time passed, America grew.
XII. Makers of America: From African to African-American
- Africans’ arrival into the New World brought new languages, music, and cuisines to America.
- Africans working on the rice fields of North Carolina produced lots of rice.
- The first slaves were men; some eventually gained freedom.
- By 1740, large groups of African slaves lived together on plantations, where female slaves were expected to perform backbreaking labor and spin, weave, and sew.
- Most slaves became Christians, though many adopted elements from their native religions.
- Many African dances led to modern dances (i.e. the Charleston).
- Christian songs could also be code for the announcement of the arrival of a guide to freedom.
Jazz is the most famous example of slave music entering mainstream culture.
Chapter 5: “Colonial Society on the Eve of the Revolution”
~ 1700 – 1775 ~
I. Conquest by the Cradle
1. By 1775, Great Britain ruled 32 colonies in North America.
a. Only 13 of them revolted.
b. Canada and Jamaica were wealthier than the 13.
2. All of them were growing by leaps and bounds.
3. By 1775, the population numbered 2.5 million people.
4. The average age was 16 years.
5. Most of the population was densely cooped up east of the Alleghenies, though by 1775, some had slowly trickled into Tennessee and Kentucky.
6. About 90% of the people lived in rural areas.
II. A Mingling of the Races
1. Colonial America, though mostly English, had other races as well.
a. Germans accounted for about 6% of the population, or about 150,000 people by 1775.
(1) Most were Protestant (primarily Lutheran) and were called the Pennsylvania Dutch.
2. The Scots-Irish were about 7% of the population, with 175,000 people.
a. Over many decades, they had been transplanted to Northern Ireland, but they had not found a home there (the already existing Irish Catholics resented the intruders).
b. Many of them reached America and became squatters, quarreling with both Indians and white landowners.
c. They seemed to try to move as far from Britain as possible, trickling down to Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
d. In 1764, the Scots-Irish led the armed march of the Paxton Boys.
e. They were very hotheaded.
f. Many eventually became American revolutionists.
3. About 5% of the multicolored population consisted of other European group, like French Huguenots, Welsh, Dutch, Swedes, Jews, Irish, Swiss, and Scots Highlanders.
4. Americans were of all races and mixed bloods, so it was no wonder that other races from other countries had a hard time classifying them.
III. The Structure of the Colonial Society
1. In contrast to contemporary Europe, America was a land of opportunity.
2. Anyone who was willing to work hard could easily go from rags to riches, and poverty was scorned upon.
3. Class differences did emerge, as a small group of aristocrats (made up of the rich farmers, lawyers, officials, clergymen) had much of the power.
4. Also, armed conflicts in the 1690s and 1700s enriched a number of merchant princes in the New England and middle colonies.
5. War also created many widows and orphans who eventually became to charity.
6. In the South, the hugely rich plantation owners had lots of slaves.
7. Far less fortunate than the indentured servants of America were the paupers and the criminals sent to the New World.
a. Some of them were actually unfortunate victims of Britain’s unfair laws and did become respectable citizens.
8. The least fortunate were the Black slaves, who had little or no hope of freedom again.
a. Slavery became a divisive issue because some colonies didn’t want slaves while others needed them, and therefore vetoed any bill banning the importation of slaves.
IV. Clerics, Physicians, and Jurists
1. The most honored profession in the colonial times was the clergy, which in 1775, had less power than before but still wielded a great amount of it.
2. Physicians were not highly esteemed and many of them were bad.
a. Bleeding was often a favorite, and deadly, solution to illnesses.
3. Plagues were a nightmare.
a. Smallpox (afflicting 1 of 5 persons, including George Washington) was rampant, though a crude form of inoculation for it was introduced in 1721.
b. Some of the clergy and doctors didn’t like it though, preferring not to tamper with the will of God.
4. At first lawyers weren’t liked, being regarded as noisy scumbags.
a. Criminals often represented themselves in court.
b. By 1750, lawyers were recognized as useful, and many defended high-profile cases, were great orators and played important roles in the history of America.
V. Workaday America
1. Agriculture was the major leading industry (by a huge margin), since farmers could seem to grow anything.
a. In Maryland and Virginia, tobacco was the staple crop, and by 1759 New York was exporting 80,000 barrels of flour a year.
2. Fishing could be rewarding, though not as much as farming, and it was pursued in all the American colonies especially in New England.
3. Trading was also a popular and prevalent industry, as commerce occurred all around the colonies.
a. The “triangular trade” was common: A ship, for example, would leave New England with rum and go to the Gold Coast of Africa and trade it for African slaves. Then, it would go to the West Indies and exchange the slaves for molasses, which it’d sell to New England once it returned there.
4. Manufacturing was not as important, though many small enterprises existed.
5. Strong-backed laborers and skilled craftspeople were scarce and highly prized.
6. Perhaps the single most important manufacturing activity was lumbering.
a. Britain sometimes marked the tallest trees for its navy, and colonists resented that, even though there were countless other good trees in the area and the marked tree was going toward a common defense (it was the principle).
7. In 1733, Parliament passed the Molasses Act, which, if successful, would have struck a crippling blow to American international trade by hindering its trade with the French West Indies.
a. The result was disagreement, and colonists got around it through smuggling.
VI. Horsepower and Sailpower
1. Roads in 1700s America were very bad, and not until the 18th century did they even connect large cites.
a. It took a young Benjamin Franklin 9 days to get from Boston to Philadelphia.
2. Roads were so bad that they were dangerous.
a. People who would venture these roads would often sign wills and pray with family members before embarking.
3. As a result, towns seemed to cluster around slow, navigable water sources, like gentle rivers, or by the ocean.
4. Taverns and bars sprang up to serve tired travelers and were great places of gossip.
5. An inter-colonial mail system was set up in the mid-1700s, but mailmen often passed time by reading private letters, since there was nothing else to do.
VII. Dominant Denominations
1. Two “established” (tax-supported) churches by 1775 were the Anglican and the Congregational.
2. A great majority of people didn’t worship in churches.
3. The Church of England (Anglican) was official in Georgia, both Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and a part of New York.
a. Anglican sermons were shorter, its descriptions of hell were less frightening, and amusements were less scorned.
b. William and Mary was founded in 1693 to train young clergy members.
4. The Congregational church had grown from the Puritan church, and it was established in all the New England colonies except for Rhode Island.
a. There was worry that people weren’t devout enough.
5. For Anglicans, not having a resident bishop proved to be a problem for unordained young ministers.
VIII. The Great Awakening.
1. Due to less religious fervor than before and worry that so many people would not be saved, the stage was set for a revival, which occurred, and became the Great Awakening.
2. Jonathan Edwards was a preacher with fiery preaching methods, emotional moving many listeners to tears while talking of the eternal damnation that nonbelievers would face after death.
a. He began preaching in 1734, and his methods sparked debate among his peers.
3. George Whitefield was even better than Edwards when he started four years later.
a. An orator of rare gifts, he even made Jonathan Edwards weep and persuaded Ben Franklin to empty his pockets into the collection plate.
b. Imitators copied his emotional shaking sermons and his heaping of blame on sinners.
4. These new preachers were met with skepticism by the “old lights,” or the orthodox clergymen.
5. However, the Great Awakening led to the founding of “new light” centers like Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth.
6. The Great Awakening was the first religious experience shared by all Americans as a history.
IX. Schools and Colleges
1. Education was most important in New England, where it was used to train young future clergymen.
2. In other parts of America, farm labor used up most of the time that would have been spent in school.
3. However, there were fairly adequate primary and secondary schools in areas other than New England.
4. In a gloom and grim atmosphere, colonial schools put most of the emphasis on religion and on the classical languages, as well as doctrine and orthodoxy.
5. Discipline was quite severe, with such punishments as a child being cut by a piece from a birch tree.
6. Also, at least in New England, college education was regarded more important than the ABC’s.
7. Eventually, some change was made in emphasis of curriculum from dead languages to live ones, and Ben Franklin helped by launching the school that would become the University of Pennsylvania.
X. Culture in the Backwoods
1. Though there was little time for recreation (farm work, fear of Indians, etc…), the little free time that was there was used on religion, not art.
2. Painters were frowned upon.
a. John Trumbull of Connecticut was discouraged, as a youth, by his father.
b. Charles Willson Peale, best know for his portraits of George Washington, also ran a museum, stuffed birds, and practiced dentistry in addition to his art.
c. Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley had to go to England to complete their ambitious careers.
3. Architecture was largely imported from the Old World and modified to meet American needs.
a. The log cabin was borrowed form Sweden.
b. The red-bricked Georgian style was introduced in about 1720.
4. Colonial literature was also generally undistinguished.
a. However, a slave girl, Phillis Wheatley, who had never been formally educated, did go to Britain and publish a book of verse and subsequently wrote other polished poems that revealed the influence of Alexander Pope.
b. Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was very influential, containing many common sayings and phrases, and was more widely read in America and Europe than anything except for the Bible.
5. Ben Franklin’s experiments with science, and his sheer power of observation, also helped advance science.
XI. Pioneer Presses
1. Few libraries were found in early America, and few Americans were rich enough to buy books.
2. On the eve of the revolution, many hand-operated presses cranked out leaflets, pamphlets, and journals signed with pseudonyms.
3. In one famous case, John Peter Zenger, a New York newspaper printer, was taken to court and charged with seditious libel.
a. The judge urged the jury to consider that the mere fact of publishing was a crime, no matter whether the content was derogatory or not.
b. Zenger won after his lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, excellently defended his case.
c. Afterwards, freedom of the press was pretty much assured in America.
XII. The Great Game of Politics
1. By 1775, eight of the colonies had royal governors who were appointed by the king.
2. Three had governors chosen by proprietors.
3. Practically every colony utilized a two-house legislative body.
a. The upper house was appointed by royal officials or proprietors.
b. The lower house was elected by the people.
4. Self-taxation with representation came to be a cherished privilege that Americans came to cherish above most other rights.
5. Most governors did a good job, but some were just plain corrupt.
a. Lord Cornbury, first cousin of Queen Anne, was made governor of New York and New Jersey in 1702 but proved to be a drunkard, a spendthrift, a gafter, and embezzler, a religious bigot, and a vain fool.
6. The right to vote was no available to anyone, just white landowners.
a. However, the ease of acquiring land to hard workers made voting a privilege easily attainable to many people.
XIII. Colonial Folkways
1. Americans had many hardships, as many basic amenities that we have today were not available.
a. Churches weren’t heated at all.
b. Running water in houses was nonexistent.
c. No plumbing was available either.
d. Garbage disposal was primitive at best.
2. Yet, amusement was permitted, and people often worked on house-raisings, apple parings quilting bees, husking bees, and other merrymaking.
3. In the South, card playing, horse racing, cockfighting, and fox hunting were fun.
4. Lotteries were universally approved, even by the clergy because they helped raise money for churches and colleges.
5. Stage plays were popular in the South, but not really in the North.
6. Holidays were celebrated everywhere in the colonies (New England didn’t like Christmas, though).
7. America in 1775 was like a quilt, each part different and individual in its own way, but all coming together to form one single, unified piece.
XIV. Makers of America: The Scots-Irish
1. Life for the Scots was miserable in England, as many were too poor, and Britain still taxed them, squeezing the last cent out of them.
2. Migrating to Ulster, the Scots still felt unwelcome, and eventually came to America.
3. They constantly tried to further themselves away from Britain.
a. Most went to Pennsylvania, where tolerance was high.
4. The Scots-Irish were many of America’s pioneers, clearing the trails for others to follow.
5. Otherwise independent, religion was the only thing that bonded these people.
6. Their hatred of England made them great allies and supporters of the United States during the Revolutionary War.
XV. Varying Viewpoints- Colonial America: Communities of Conflict of Consensus?
Read about it yourself, please.
~ 1608 – 1763 ~
I. France Finds a Foothold in Canada
1. Like England and Holland, France was a latecomer in the colony race.
a. It was convulsed in the 1500s by foreign wars and domestic strife.
b. In 1598, the Edict of Nantes was issued, allowing limited toleration to the French Huguenots.
2. When King Louis XIV became king, he took an interest in overseas colonies.
3. In 1608, France established Quebec, overlooking the St. Lawrence River.
4. Samuel de Champlain, an intrepid soldier and explorer, became known as the “Father of New France.”
a. He entered into friendly relations with the neighboring Huron Indians and helped them defeated the Iroquois.
b. The Iroquois, however, did hamper French efforts into the Ohio Valley later.
5. Unlike English colonists, French colonists didn’t immigrate to North America by hordes.
a. The peasants were too poor, and the Huguenots weren’t allowed to leave.
II. New France Fans Out
1. New France’s (Canada) one valuable resource was the beaver.
a. Beaver hunters were known as the coureurs de bois and littered the land with place names, including Baton Rouge (red stick), Terre Haute (high land), Des Moines (some monks) and Grand Teton (big breasts). (by the way, they drank a lot)
b. The French voyageurs also recruited Indians to hunt for beaver as well, but Indians were decimated by White Man’s diseases, and the beaver population was heavily extinguished.
2. French Catholic missionaries zealously tried to convert Indians.
3. To thwart English settlers from pushing into the Ohio Valley, Antoine Cadillac founded Detroit (“city of straits”) in 1701.
4. Louisiana was founded, in 1682, by Robert de La Salle, to thwart Spanish expansion into the area near the Gulf of Mexico.
a. Three years later, he tried to fulfill his dreams by returning, but instead landed in Spanish Texas and was murdered by his mutinous men in 1687.
5. The fertile Illinois country, where the French established forts and trading posts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, became the garden of France’s North American empire.
III. The Clash of Empires
1. King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War (two different fights)
a. The English colonists fought the French coureurs de bois and their Indian allies.
i. Neither side considered America important enough to waste real troops on.
b. The French-inspired Indians ravaged Schenectady, New York, and Deerfield.
c. The British did try to capture Quebec and Montreal, failed, but did temporarily have Port Royal.
d. The peace deal in Utrecht in 1713 gave Acadia (renamed Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to England, pinching the French settlements by the St. Lawrence. It also gave Britain limited trading rights with Spanish America.
2. The War of Jenkin’s Ear
a. An English Captain named Jenkin’s had his ear cut off by a Spanish commander, who had sneered at him to go home crying (essentially).
b. This war was confined to the Caribbean Sea and Georgia.
c. This war soon merged with the War of Austrian Succession and came to be called King George’s War in America.
d. France allied itself with Spain, but England’s troops captured the reputed impregnable fortress of Cap Breton Island.
e. However, peace terms of this war gave Louisbourg, which the New Englanders had captured, back to France, outraging the colonists, which feared it.
IV. George Washington Inaugurates War with France
1. The Ohio Valley became a battleground among the Spanish, British, and French.
a. It was lush and very good land.
2. In 1754, the governor of Virginia sent 21 year-old George Washington to the Ohio country as a lieutenant colonel in command of about 150 Virginia minutemen.
a. Encountering some Frenchmen in the forest about 40 miles from Fort Duquesne, the troops opened fire, killing the French leader.
b. Later, the French returned and surrounded Washington’s hastily constructed Fort Necessity, and after a 10-hour siege, made him surrender.
c. He was permitted to march his men away with the full honors of war.
V. Global War and Colonial Disunity
1. The fourth of these wars between empires started in America, unlike the first three.
2. The French and Indian War (aka Seven Years’ War) began with Washington’s battle with the French.
3. It was England and Prussia vs. France, Spain, Austria, and Russia.
4. In Germany, Fredrick the Great won his title of “Great” by repelling French, Austrian, and Russian armies, even though he was badly outnumbered (skill…).
5. In previous wars, the Americans were not unified, but now they were.
6. In 1754, an intercolonial congress was held in Albany, New York.
a. A month before the congress, Ben Franklin had published his famous “Join or Die” cartoon featuring a snake in pieces, symbolizing the colonies.
7. Franklin helped unite the colonists in Albany, but the Albany plan failed because it compromised too much.
VI. Braddock’s Blundering and Its Aftermath
1. In the beginning, the British sent haughty 60 year-old general Braddock to lead a bunch of inexperienced soldiers with slow, heavy artillery.
2. In a battle with the French, the British were routed.
a. In this battle, Washington reportedly had two horses shot from under him and four bullets go through his coat, but never him.
3. Afterwards, the frontier from Pennsylvania to North Carolina felt the Indian wrath, as scalping was everywhere.
4. As the British tried to attack a bunch of strategic wilderness posts, defeated after defeat piled up.
VII. Pitt’s Palms of Victory
1. In this hour of British trouble, William Pitt, the “Great Commoner,” took the lead.
2. In 1757, he became a foremost leader in the London government.
3. Later earning the title of “Organizer of Victory,” he soft-pedaled assaults on the French West Indies, assaults which sapped British strength, and concentrated on Quebec-Montreal.
4. In 1758, Louisbourg fell after a blistering siege.
5. 32 year-old James Wolfe, dashing and attentive to detail, commanded an army that boldly scaled the cliff walls of a part protecting Quebec, met French troops near the Plains of Abraham, and in a battle in which he and French commander Marquis de Montcalm both died, the French were defeated and the city of Quebec surrendered.
a. The 1759 Battle of Quebec ranks as one of the most significant engagements in British and American history, and when Montreal fell in 1760, that was the last time French flags would fly on American soil.
6. In the peace treaty at Paris in 1763, Britain got all of Canada, but the French were allowed to retain several small but valuable sugar islands in the West Indies and two never-to-be-fortified islets in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for fishing stations.
7. France’s final blow came when they gave Louisiana to Spain to compensate for Spain’s losses in the war.
a. Great Britain took its place as the leading naval power in the world, and a great power in North America.
VIII. Restless Colonials
1. The colonists, having experienced war firsthand and come out victors, were very confident.
a. However, the myth of British invincibility had been shattered.
2. Ominously, friction developed between the British officers and the colonial “boors.”
3. The British refused to recognize any American officers above the rank of captain.
4. However, the hardworking Americans believed that they were equals with the Redcoats, and trouble began to brew.
5. Brits were concerned about American secret trade with enemy traders during the war; in fact, in the last year of the war, the British forbade the export of all supplies from New England to the middle colonies.
6. Also, many American colonels refused to help fight the French until Pitt offered to reimburse them.
7. During the French and Indian War, though, Americans from different parts of the colonies found, surprisingly to them, that they had a lot in common (language, ideals), and barriers of disunity began to melt.
IX. Americans: A People of Destiny
1. Now that the French had been beaten, the colonists could now roam freely, and were less dependent upon Great Britain.
2. The French consoled themselves with the thought that if they could lose such a great empire, maybe the British would one day lose theirs too.
3. Spain was eliminated from Florida, and the Indians could no longer play the European powers against each other, since it was only Great Britain in control now.
4. In 1763, Ottawa chief Pontiac led a few French-allied tribes in a brief but bloody campaign through the Ohio Valley, but the Whites quickly and cruelly retaliated after being caught off guard.
a. One commander ordered blankets infected with smallpox to be distributed among the Indians.
b. Such violence convinced Whites to station troops along the frontier.
5. Now, land-hungry Americans could now settle west of the Appalachians, but in 1763, Parliament issued its Proclamation of 1763, prohibiting any settlement in the area beyond the Appalachians.
a. Actually, this document was meant to work out the Indian problem, but colonists saw it as another form of oppression from a far away country.
b. In 1765, an estimated on thousand wagons rolled through the town of Salisbury, North Carolina, on their way “up west” in defiance of the Proclamation.
6. The British, proud and haughty, were in no way to accept this blatant disobedience by the lowly Americans, and the stage was set for the Revolutionary War.
X. Makers of America: The French
1. Louis XIV envisioned a French empire in North America, but defeats in 1713 and 1763 snuffed that out.
2. The first French to leave Canada were the Acadians.
a. The British who had won that area had demanded that all residents either swear allegiance to Britain or leave.
b. In 1755, they were forcefully expelled from the region.
3. The Acadians fled far south to the French colony of Louisiana, where they settled among sleepy bayous, planted sugar cane and sweet potatoes, and practiced Roman Catholicism.
a. They also spoke a French dialect that came to be called Cajun.
b. Cajuns married Spanish, French, and Germans.
c. They were largely isolated in large families until the 1930s, when a bridge-building spree engineered by Governor Huey Long, broke the isolation of these bayou communities.
4. In 1763, a second group of French settlers in Quebec began to leave, heading toward New England because bad harvests led to lack of food in Quebec.
a. Most hoped to return to Canada someday.
b. These people also preserved their Roman Catholicism and their language.
c. Yet today, almost all Cajuns and New England French-Canadians speak English.
5. Today, Quebec is the only sign of French existence that once ruled.
a. French culture is strong there in the form of road signs, classrooms, courts, and markets, eloquently testifying to the continued vitality of French culture in North America.
Chapter 7: “The Road to Revolution”
~ 1763 – 1775 ~
I. The Deep Roots of Revolution
1. In a broad sense, the American Revolution began when the first colonists set foot on America.
2. The war may have lasted for eight years, but a sense of independence had already begun to develop because London was over 3000 miles away.
a. Sailing across the Atlantic in a ship often took 6 to 8 weeks.
b. Survivors felt physically and spiritually separated from Europe.
c. Colonists in America, without influence from superiors, felt that they were fundamentally different from England, and more independent.
d. Many began to think of themselves as Americans.
II. The Mercantile Theory
1. Of the 13 original colonies, only Georgia was formally planted by the British government.
a. The rest were started by companies, religious groups, land speculators, etc…
2. The British embrace a theory that justified their control of the colonies: mercantilism:
a. A country’s economic wealth could be measured by the amount of gold or silver in its treasury.
b. To amass gold and silver, a country had to export more than it imported.
c. Countries with colonies were at an advantage, because the colonies could supply the mother country with materials, wealth, supplies, etc…
d. For America, that meant giving Britain all the ships, ships’ stores, sailors, and trade that they needed and wanted.
e. Also, they had to grow tobacco and sugar for England that Brits would otherwise have to buy from other countries.
III. Mercantilist Trammels on Trade
1. The Navigation Laws were the most famous of the laws to enforce mercantilism.
a. The first of these was enacted in 1650, and was aimed at rival Dutch shippers who were elbowing their way into the American carrying trade.
b. The Navigation Laws restricted commerce from the colonies to England (and back) to only English ships, and none other.
c. Other laws stated that European goods consigned to America had to land first in England, where custom duties could be collected.
d. Also, some products could only be shipped to England and not other nations.
2. Settlers were even restricted in what they could manufacture at home; they couldn’t make woolen cloth and beaver hats to export (they could make them for themselves).
3. Americans had no currency, but they were constantly buying things from Britain, so that gold and silver was constantly draining out of America, forcing some to even trade and barter.
a. Eventually, the colonists were forced to print paper money, which depreciated.
4. Colonial laws could be voided by the Privy Council, though this privilege was used sparingly (469 times out of 8563 laws).
a. Still, colonists were inflamed by its use.
IV. The Merits of Mercantilism
1. The Navigation Laws were hated, but until 1763, they were not really enforced much, resulting in widespread smuggling.
a. In fact, John Hancock amassed a fortune through smuggling.
2. Tobacco planters, though they couldn’t ship it to anywhere except Britain, still had a monopoly within the British market.
3. Americans had unusual opportunities for self-government.
4. Americans also had the mightiest army in the world, and didn’t have to pay for it.
a. After independence, the U.S. had to pay for a tiny army and navy.
5. Basically, the Americans had it made: even repressive laws weren’t enforced much, and the average American benefited much more than the average Englishman.
a. The mistakes that occurred didn’t occur out of malice, at least until the revolt.
b. In fact, France and Spain also embraced mercantilism, but enforced it heavily.
V. The Menace of Mercantilism
1. However, after Britain started to enforce mercantilism in 1763, the fuse for the American Revolution was lit.
2. Disadvantages:
a. Americans couldn’t buy, sell, ship, or manufacture under the most favorable conditions for them.
b. The South, which produced crops that weren’t grown in England, was preferred over the North.
c. Virginia, which grew just tobacco, were at the mercy of the British buyers, who often paid very low and were responsible for putting many planters into debt.
d. Many colonists felt that Britain was just milking her colonies for all their worth.
e. Theodore Roosevelt said, “Revolution broke out because England failed to recognize an emerging nation when it saw one.”
VI. The Stamp Tax Uproar
1. After the Seven Years’ War, Britain had a HUGE debt, and though it fairly had no intention of making the Americans pay off all of it for Britain, it did feel that they should pay off one-third of the cost, since Redcoats had been used for the protection of the Americans.
2. Prime Minister George Grenville, an honest and able financier not noted for tact, ordered that the Navigation Laws be enforced, arousing resentment of settlers.
a. He also secured the “Sugar Act” of 1764, which increased duty on foreign sugar imported from the West Indies; after numerous protests from spoiled Americans, the duties were reduced.
3. The Quartering Act of 1765 required certain colonies to provide food and quarters for British troops.
4. In 1765, he also imposed a stamp tax to raise money for the new military force.
a. The Stamp Act mandated the use of stamped paper of the affixing of stamps, certifying payment of tax.
b. Stamps were required on bills of sale for about 50 trade items as well as on certain types of commercial and legal documents.
c. Both the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act provided for offenders to be tried in the admiralty courts, where defenders were guilty until proven innocent.
d. Grenville felt that these taxes were fair, as he was simply asking the colonists to pay their share of the deal; plus, Englishmen paid a much heavier stamp tax.
5. Americans felt that they were unfairly taxed for an unnecessary army (hadn’t the French army and Pontiac’s warriors been defeated?), and lashed back violently, especially against the stamp tax.
a. “No taxation without representation!”
6. Americans took it upon themselves to enforce principle, reminding Brits of the principles that England’s own Puritan Revolution had brought forth.
7. Americans denied the right of Parliament to tax Americans, since no Americans were seated in Parliament.
8. Grenville replied that these statements were absurd, and pushed the idea of “virtual representation,” in which every Parliament member represented ALL British subjects.
9. Americans rejected “virtual representation,” and in truth didn’t really want representation because that wouldn’t have done them good, and if they had really had representation, there wouldn’t be a principle for which to rebel.
VII. Parliament Forced to Repeal the Stamp Act
1. In 1765, representatives from nine colonies met in NYC to discuss the Stamp Tax.
a. The Stamp Act Congress was largely ignored in Britain, but was a step toward intercolonial unity.
2. Some colonists agreed to boycott supplies, instead, making their own and refusing to buy British goods.
3. Sons and Daughters of Liberty took law into their own hands, tarring and feathering violators among people who had agreed to boycott the goods.
a. They also stormed the houses of important officials and took their money.
b. Stunned, demands appeared in Parliament for repeal of the stamp tax, though many wanted to know why 7.5 million Brits had to pay heavy taxes to protect the colonies, but 2 million colonials refused to pay only one-third of the cost of their own defense.
c. In 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act but passed the Declaratory Act, proclaiming that Parliament had the right “to bind” the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”
VIII. The Townshend Tea Tax and the Boston “Massacre”
1. Charles Townshend (a man who could deliver brilliant speeches in Parliament even while drunk) persuaded Parliament to pass the Townshend Acts in 1767.
a. They put light taxes on white lead, paper, paint, and tea.
2. In 1767, New York’s legislature was suspended for failure to comply with the Quartering Act.
3. Tea became smuggled, though, and to enforce the law, Brits had to send troops to America.
4. On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd of about 60 townspeople in Boston were harassing some ten Redcoats.
a. One got hit in the head, another got hit by a club.
b. Without orders but heavily provoked, they opened fire, wounding or killing eleven “innocent” citizens, including Crispus Attucks, the “leader” of the mob.
c. Only two Redcoats got prosecuted.
IX. The Seditious Committees of Correspondence
1. King George III was 32 years old, a good person, but a bad ruler who surrounded himself with sycophants like Lord North.
2. The Townshend Taxes didn’t really do much, so they were repealed, except for the tea tax.
3. The colonies, in order to spread propaganda and keep the rebellious moods, set up committees of correspondence; the first was started by Samuel Adams.
X. Tea Parties at Boston and Elsewhere
1. In 1773, the powerful British East India Company, overburdened with 17 million pounds of unsold tea, was facing bankruptcy.
2. The British decided to sell it to the Americans, who were suspicious and felt that it was a shabby attempt to trick the Americans with the bait of cheaper tea and pay tax.
3. On December 16, 1773, some Whites disguised as Indians opened 342 chests and dumped the tea into the ocean.
a. People in Annapolis did the same and burned the ships to the ground.
b. Reaction was varied, from approval to outrage to disapproval.
c. Edmund Burke declared, “To tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to men.”
XI. Parliament Passes the “Intolerable Acts”
1. In 1774, by huge majorities, Parliament passed a series of “repressive acts” to punish the colonies, namely Massachusetts.
2. The Boston Port Act
a. Boston Harbor was closed until retribution was paid.
b. Also, enforcing officials who killed colonials could now be tried in England.
3. Massachusetts Government Act
a. The charter of Massachusetts was revoked.
4. The Quebec Act
a. A good law in bad company, it guaranteed Catholicism to the French-Canadians, permitted them to retain their old customs, and extended the old boundaries of Quebec all the way to the Ohio River.
b. Americans saw their territory threatened and aroused anti-Catholics were shocked at the enlargement that would make a Catholic area as large as the original 13 colonies.
XII. The Continental Congress and Bloodshed
A. The First Continental Congress
1. In Philadelphia, from September 5th to October 26th, 1774, the First Continental Congress met to discuss problems.
2. While not wanting independence then, it did come up with a list of grievances, which were ignored in Parliament.
3. Only Georgia didn’t have a representative there.
4. Also, they came up with a Declaration of Rights.
5. They agreed to meet again in 1775 (the next year) if nothing happened.
B. The “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”
1. In April 1775, the British commander in Boston sent a detachment of troops to nearby Lexington and Concord to seize supplies and to capture Sam Adams and John Hancock.
2. Minutemen, after having eight of their own killed at Lexington, fought back at Concord, pushing the Redcoats back, sniping them from behind rocks and trees.
XIII. Imperial Strength and Weaknesses
1. WAR!!! Britain had the heavy advantage: 7.5 million people to America’s 2 million, superior naval power, great wealth.
2. Some 30,000 Hessians (German mercenaries) were also hired by George III, in addition to a professional army of about 50,000 men, plus about 50,000 American loyalists and many Native Americans.
3. However, Britain still had Ireland (used up troops) and France was just waiting to stab Britain in the back; plus, there was no William Pitt.
a. Many Brits had no desire to kill their American cousins, as shown by William Pitt’s withdrawal of his son from the army.
b. English Whigs at first supported America, as opposed to Lord North’s Tory Whigs, and they felt that if George III won, then his rule of England might become tyrannical.
c. Britain’s generals were second-rate, and its men were brutally treated.
d. Provisions were often scarce, plus Britain was fighting a war some 3000 miles away from home.
e. America was also expansive, and there was no single capital to capture and therefore cripple the country.
XIV. American Pluses and Minuses
A. Advantages
1. Americans had great leaders like George Washington (giant general), and Ben Franklin (smooth diplomat).
2. They also had French aid (indirect), as the French provided the Americans with guns, supplies, gunpowder, etc…
3. Marquis de Lafayette, at age 19, was made a major general in the colonial army.
4. The colonials were fighting in a defensive way, and they were self-sustaining.
5. They were better marksmen.
a. A competent American rifleman could hit a man’s head at 200 yards.
6. The Americans enjoyed the moral advantage in fighting for a just cause, and the historical odds weren’t unfavorable either.
B. Disadvantages
1. Americans were terribly lacking in unity, though.
2. Jealousy was prevalent, as colonies resented the Continental Congress’ attempt at exercising power.
a. Sectional jealousy boiled up over the appointment of military leaders; some New Englanders almost preferred British officers to Americans from other colonies.
3. Inflation also hit families of soldiers hard, and made many people poor.
XV. A Thin Line of Heroes
1. The American army was desperately in need of clothing, wool, wagons to ship food, and other supplies.
2. Many soldiers had also only received rudimentary training.
3. German Baron von Steuben, who spoke no English, whipped the soldiers into shape.
4. Blacks also fought and died in service, though in the beginning, many colonies barred them from service.
a. By war’s end, more than 5000 blacks had enlisted in the American armed forces.
5. African-Americans also served on the British side.
6. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation declaring freedom for any enslaved black in Virginia who joined the British Army.
a. By war’s end, at least 1400 Blacks were evacuated to Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and England.
7. Many people also sold to the British because they paid in gold.
8. Many people just didn’t care, and therefore, raising a large number of troops was difficult, if not impossible.
9. Only because a select few threw themselves into the cause with passion, did the Americans win.
10. Seldom have so few done so much for so many.
NOTE: Read Varying Viewpoints: “Whose Revolution?” on your own, please. Thanks.
Chapter 8: “America Secedes from the Empire”
~ 1775 – 1783 ~
I. Congress Drafts George Washington
1. After the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, about 20,000 Minutemen swarmed around Boston, where they outnumbered the British.
2. The Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, with no real intention of independence, merely a desire to continue fighting in the hope that the king and Parliament would consent to a redress of grievances.
a. It sent another list of grievances to Parliament.
b. It also adopted measures to raise money for an army and a navy.
c. It also selected George Washington to command the army.
(1) George had never risen above the rank of colonel, and his largest command had only been of 1200 men, but he was a tall figure who looked like a leader, and thus, was a moral boost to troops.
(2) He radiated patience, courage, self-discipline, and a sense of justice, and though he insisted on working without pay, he did keep a careful expense account amounting to more than $100,00.
II. Bunker Hill and Hessian Hirelings
1. In the first year, the war was one of consistency, as the colonists maintained their loyalty while still shooting at the king’s men.
2. In May 1775, a tiny American force led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, surprised and captured the British garrisons at Ticonderoga and Crown Point.
3. In June 1775, the colonials seized Bunker Hill (before known as Breed’s Hill).
a. Instead of flanking them, the Redcoats launched a frontal attack, and the heavily entrenched colonial sharpshooters mowed them down until meager gunpowder supplies ran out and they were forced to retreat.
4. After Bunker Hill, George III slammed the door for all hope of reconciliation and declared the colonies to be in open rebellion, a treasonous affair.
5. The King also hired many German mercenaries, called Hessians, who, because they were lured by booty and not duty, had large numbers desert and remained in America to become respectful citizens.
III. The Abortive Conquest of Canada
1. In October 1775, the British burned Falmouth (Portland), Maine.
2. The colonists decided that invading Canada would add a 14th colony and deprive Britain of a valuable base for striking at the colonies in revolt.
a. Also, the French-Canadians would support the Americans because they supposedly were bitter about Britain’s taking over of their land.
b. General Richard Montgomery captured Montreal.
c. At Quebec, he was joined by the bedraggled army of General Benedict Arnold.
d. On the last day of 1775, in the assault of Quebec, Montgomery was killed and Arnold was wounded in one leg, and the whole campaign collapsed as the men retreated up the St. Lawrence River, reversing the way Montgomery had come.
e. Besides, the French-Canadians, who had welcomed the Quebec Act, didn’t really like the anti-Catholic invaders.
3. In January 1776, the British set fire to Norfolk, Virginia, but in March, they were finally forced to evacuate Boston.
4. In the South, the rebels won a victory against some 1500 Loyalists at Moore’s Creek Bridge, in South Carolina, and against an invading British fleet at Charleston Harbor.
IV. Thomas Paine Preaches Common Sense
1. In 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, which urged colonials to stop this war of inconsistency, stop pretending loyalty, and just fight.
2. Nowhere in the universe did a smaller body control a larger one, so Paine argued, saying why tiny Britain had to control gigantic America.
3. He called King George III “the Royal Brute of Great Britain.”
V. Paine and the Idea of “Republicanism”
1. Paine argued his idea that there should be a “republic” where senators, governors, and judges should have their power from the consent of the people.
2. He laced his ideas with Biblical imagery, familiar to common folk.
3. His ideas about rejecting monarchy and empire and embrace an independent republic fell on receptive ears in America, though it should be noted that these ideas already existed.
a. The New Englanders already practiced this type of government in their town meetings.
4. Some patriots, though, favored a republic ruled by a “natural aristocracy.”
VI. Jefferson’s “Explanation” of Independence
1. Members of the Philadelphia Congress, instructed by their colonies, gradually moved toward a clean break with Britain.
2. On June 7, 1776, fiery Richard Henry urged for complete independence, an idea that was finally adopted on July 2, 1776.
3. To write such a statement, Congress appointed Thomas Jefferson, already renown as a great writer, to concoct a Declaration of Independence.
a. He did so eloquently, coming up with a list of grievances against King George III and persuasively explaining why the colonies had the right to revolt.
b. His “explanation” of independence also upheld the “natural rights” of humankind.
4. When Congress approved it on July 2nd, John Adams proclaimed that date to be celebrated from then on with fireworks, but because of editing and final approval, it was not completely approved until July 4th, 1776.
VII. Patriots and Loyalists
1. The War of Independence was a war within a war, as not all colonials were united.
a. There were Patriots, who supported rebellion and were called “Whigs.”
b. There were Loyalists, who supported the King, often went to battle against fellow Americans, and were called “Tories.”
c. There were those who didn’t care, and these people were constantly being asked to join one side or another.
2. During the war, the British proved that they could only control Tory areas, because when Redcoats packed up and left other areas, the rebels would regain control.
3. The Patriot militias constantly harassed small British detachments.
4. Loyalists were generally conservatives, but the war divided families.
a. Benjamin Franklin was against his illegitimate son, William, the last royal governor of New Jersey.
5. The Patriots were generally the younger generation, like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry.
6. Loyalists were most numerous where the Anglican Church was strongest.
7. There were also those who sold to the highest bidder, selling the British and ignoring starving, freezing soldiers (i.e. George Washington at Valley Forge).
8. Loyalists were less numerous in New England, where Presbyterianism and Congregationalism flourished.
VIII. The Loyalist Exodus
1. After the Declaration of Independence, Loyalists and Patriots were more sharply divided, and Patriots often confiscated Loyalist property and resell it (good way to raise money).
2. Some 50,000 Loyalists served the British in one way or another (fighting, spying, etc…), and it was an oddity that the Brits didn’t make more use of them during the war.
IX. General Washington at Bay
1. After the evacuation of Boston, the British focused on New York as a HQ for operations.
a. An awe-inspiring fleet appeared off the coast in July 1776, consisting of some 500 ships and 35,000 men—the largest armed force seen in America ever until the Civil War.
b. Washington could only muster 18,000 ill-trained men to fight, and they were routed at the Battle of Long Island.
c. Washington escaped to Manhattan Island, crossed the Hudson River to New Jersey, reaching the Delaware River with taunting, fox-hunt calling British on his heels.
d. Crossing the Delaware River at Trenton on a cold December 26, 1776, and surprised and captured a thousand Hessians who were sleeping off their Christmas Day celebration (drinking).
e. He then left his campfires burning as a ruse, slipped away, and inflicted a sharp defeat on a smaller British detachment at Princeton, showing his military genius at its best.
f. It was odd that General William Howe, the British general, didn’t crush Washington when he was at the Delaware, but he well remembered Bunker Hill, and was cautious.
X. Burgoyne’s Blundering Invasion
1. London officials adopted a complicated scheme for capturing the vital Hudson River Valley in 1777 which, if successful, would severe New England from the rest of the colonies:
a. General Burgoyne would push down the Lake Champlain route from Canada.
b. General Howe’s troops in New York, if needed, could advance up the Hudson and meet Burgoyne in Albany.
c. A third and much smaller British force commanded by Colonel Barry St. Ledger would come in from the west by way of Lake Ontario and the Mohawk Valley.
2. However, Benedict Arnold, after failure at Quebec, retreated slowly along the St. Lawrence back to Lake Champlain, where the British would have to win control (of the lake) before proceeding.
a. The Brits stopped to build a huge force, while Arnold assembled a tattered flotilla from whatever boats he could find.
b. His “navy” was destroyed, but he had gained valuable time, because winter set in and the British settled in Canada; they would have to begin anew the next spring.
(1) Had Arnold not contributed his daring and skill, the Brits most likely would have recaptured Ticonderoga and Burgoyne could have started from there and succeeded in his venture.
3. Burgoyne began his mission with 7000 troops and a heavy baggage train consisting of a great number of the officers’ wives.
a. Meanwhile, sneaky rebels, sensing the kill, were gathering along his flanks.
4. General Howe, at a time when he should be starting up the Hudson, deliberately embarked for an attack on Philadelphia.
a. He wanted to force an encounter with Washington and leave the path wide open for Burgoyne’s thrust; he thought he had enough time to help Burgoyne if needed.
b. Washington transferred his troops to Philly, but was defeated at Brandywine Creek and Germantown.
c. Then, the fun-loving Howe settled down in Philadelphia, leaving Burgoyne “to the dogs.”
d. Ben Franklin, in Paris, joked that Howe hadn’t captured Philadelphia, but that “Philadelphia had captured Howe.”
5. Washington finally retired for the winter at Valley Forge, where his troops froze in the cold, but a recently arrived Prussian drill master, Baron von Steuben, whipped the cold troops into shape.
6. Burgoyne’s doomed troops were bogged down, and the rebels swarmed in with a series of sharp engagements, pushing the St. Legers force back at Oriskany while Burgoyne, unable to advance or retreat, surrendered his entire force at Saratoga, on October 17, 1777.
a. Perhaps one of the most decisive battles in British and American history.
XI. Strange French Bedfellows
1. France was eager to get revenge on Britain, and secretly supplied the Americans throughout much of the war.
2. After the humiliation at Saratoga, the British offered the Americans a measure that gave them home rule—everything they wanted except independence.
3. After Saratoga, France finally was persuaded to enter the war against Britain.
a. Louis XVI’s ministers argued that this was the perfect time to act, because if Britain regained control, she might then try to capture the French West Indies for compensation for the war.
b. Now was the time the strike, rather than risk a stronger Britain with its reunited colonies.
4. France, in 1778, offered a treaty of alliance, offering America everything that Britain had offered, plus recognition of independence.
a. The Americans accepted with caution, since France was pro-Catholic, but since they needed help, they’d take it.
XII. The Colonial War Becomes a World War
1. In 1779, Spain and Holland entered the war against Britain.
2. In 1780, Catherine the Great of Russia took the lead in organizing the Armed Neutrality (she later called it the Armed Nullity) that lined up all of Europe’s neutrals in passive hostility against England.
3. America, though it kept the war going until 1778, didn’t win until France, Spain, and Holland joined in and Britain couldn’t handle them all.
4. Britain, with the French now in the seas, decided to finally evacuate Philadelphia and concentrate their forces in New York, and even though Washington attacked them at Monmouth on a blisteringly hot day in which scores of men died of sunstroke, the British escaped to New York.
XIII. Blow and Counterblow
1. French reinforcements, commanded by Comte de Rochambeau, arrived in Newport, Rhode Island in 1780, but flares sometimes erupted between the Americans and the French.
2. In 1780, feeling unappreciated and lured by British gold, General Benedict Arnold turned traitor by plotting with the British to sell out West Point.
a. When the plot was discovered, he fled with the British.
b. “Whom can we trust now?” cried George Washington in anguish.
3. The British devised a plan to roll up the colonies from the South.
a. Georgia was ruthlessly overrun in 1778-1779.
b. Charleston, South Carolina, fell in 1780.
c. In the Carolinas, Patriots bitterly fought their Loyalist neighbors.
d. However, in 1781, American riflemen wiped out a British detachment at King’s Mountain, and then defeated a smaller force at Cowpens.
e. At the Carolina campaign of 1781, Quaker-reared tactician General Nathanael Greene distinguished himself with his strategy of delay.
(1) By slowly retreating and losing battles but winning campaigns, he helped clear the British out of most of Georgia and South Carolina.
XIV. The Land Frontier and the Sea Frontier
1. 1777 was known as the “bloody year” on the frontier, as Indians went on a scalping spree.
2. Most of the Indians supported Britain and believed that if they won, it would stop American expansion into the West, and save Indian land.
3. Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, recently converted to Anglicanism, and his men ravaged the backcountry of Pennsylvania and New York until check by Americans in 1779.
4. In 1784, the pro-British Iroquois (the Oneidas and the Tuscaroras had sided with the Americans, the other four with the British) signed the Treaty of For Stanwix, the first treaty between the U.S. and an Indian nation.
a. Under its terms, the Indians ceded most of their land.
5. Even in wartime, pioneers moved west, showing their gratitude to the French with such town names as Louisville while remembering the Revolution with Lexington, Kentucky.
6. George Rogers Clark, an audacious frontiersman, floated down the Ohio River with about 175 in 1778-1779 and captured forts Kaskaskia, Chohokia, and Vicennes in quick succession.
7. The tiny American navy never really hurt the British warships, but it did destroy British merchant shipping and carried the war into the waters around the British Isles.
8. Swift privateers preyed on enemy shipping, capturing many ships and forcing them to sail in convoys.
XV. Yorktown and the Final Curtain.
1. Before the last decisive victory, inflation continued to soar, and the government was virtually bankrupt, and announced that it could only repay many of its debts at a rate of 2.5 cents on the dollar.
2. However, Cornwallis was blundering into a trap.
a. Retreating to Chesapeake Bay and assuming that British control of the seas would give him much needed backup, Cornwallis instead was trapped by Washington’s army, which had come 300 miles from New York, Rochambeau’s French army, and the navy of French Admiral de Grasse.
3. After hearing the news of Cornwallis’ defeat, Lord North cried, “Oh God! It’s all over!”
4. Stubborn King George wanted to continue the war, since he still had 54,000 troops in North America and 32,000 in the U.S., and fighting did continue for about a year after Yorktown, especially in the South, but America had won.
XVI. Peace at Paris
1. Many Brits were weary of the war, since they had suffered heavy reverse in India and the West Indies, the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean had fallen, and the Rock of Gibraltar was tottering.
2. Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay met in Paris for a peace deal.
a. Jay suspected that France would try to keep the U.S. cooped up east of the Alleghenies and keep America weak.
b. Instead, Jay, thinking that France would betray American ambitious to satisfy those of Spain, secretly made separate overtures to London (against instructions from Congress) and came to terms quickly with the British, who were eager to entice one of their enemies from the alliance.
3. The Treaty of Paris of 1783, Britain formally recognized the USA and granted generous boundaries, stretching majestically to the Mississippi on the west, the Great Lakes on the north, and to Spanish Florida on the South.
a. The Yankees also retained a share in the priceless fisheries of Newfoundland.
b. Americans couldn’t persecute Loyalists, though, and Congress could only recommend legislatures that confiscated Loyalist land.
XVII. A New Nation Legitimized
1. Britain had ceded so much land because it was trying to entice America from its French alliance.
a. Remember, George Rogers Clark had only conquered a small part of the land.
2. Also, during the time, the American-friendly Whigs were in control of the Parliament, which was not to be the case in later years.
3. France approved the treaty, though with cautious eyes.
4. In truth, America came out the big winner, and seldom, if ever, have any people been so favored.
XVIII. Makers of America: The Loyalists
1. Loyalists were conservative, well-educated, thought that a complete break with Britain would invite anarchy, and felt that America couldn’t win against the more powerful army in the world.
2. Many Britons had settled in America after the Seven Years’ War, and they had reason to support their home country.
3. Thousands of African-Americans joined the British ranks for hope of freedom from bondage.
a. Many Black Loyalists won their freedom from Britain.
b. Others suffered betrayal, such as when Cornwallis abandoned over 4000 former slaves in Virginia and when many Black Loyalists boarded ships expecting to embark for freedom and instead found themselves sold back into slavery.
c. Some Black exiles settled in Britain, but weren’t really accepted easily.
4. Most Loyalists remained in America, where they faced special burdens and struggled to re-establish themselves in a society that viewed them as traitors.
5. Hugh Gaine, though, succeeded.
a. He reopened his business and even won contracts fro the new government.
b. He also published the new national army regulations authored by Baron von Steuben.
c. When New York ratified the Constitution in 1788, Gaine rode the float at the head of the city’s celebration parade.
d. He had, like many other former Loyalists, become an American.
Chapter 9: “The Confederation and the Constitution”
~ 1776 – 1790 ~
I. A Revolution of Sentiments
1. The American Revolution was more of an accelerated evolution than a revolution.
2. However, the exodus of some 80,000 Loyalists left a great lack of conservatives.
3. This weakening of the aristocratic “upper crust” let Patriot elites emerge.
4. The fight for separation of church and state resulted in notable gains.
a. The Congregational church continued to be legally established by some New England states, but the Anglican Church was humbled and reformed as the Protestant Episcopal Church.
5. Slavery was a big, problematic issue, as the Continental Congress of 1774 had called for the abolition of slavery, and in 1775, the Philadelphia Quakers founded the world’s first antislavery society.
a. This new spirit of “all men are created equal” even inspired a few slave owners to free their slaves.
6. Another issue was women: they still were unequal to men, even though some had served (disguised as men) in the Revolutionary War.
a. There were some achievements: New Jersey’s 1776 constitution allowed women to vote (for a time).
b. Mothers devoted to their families were developed as an idea of “republican motherhood” and elevated women to higher statuses as keepers of the nation’s conscience.
II. Constitution Making in the States
1. The Continental Congress of 1776 called upon colonies to draft new constitutions (thus began the formation of the Articles of the Confederation).
a. Massachusetts contributed one innovation when it called a special convention to draft its constitution and made it so that the constitution could only be changed through another specially called constitutional convention.
b. Many states had written documents that represented a fundamental law.
c. Many had a bill of rights and also required annual election of legislators.
d. All of them deliberately created weak executive and judicial branches (they distrusted power due to Britain’s abusing it).
e. In most states, the legislative branch was given sweeping powers, though some people, like Thomas Jefferson, warned that “173 despots [in legislation] would surely be as oppressive as one.
2. Many states moved westward, like New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.
III. Economic Crosscurrents
1. After the Revolution, Loyalist land was seized, but people didn’t chop heads off (France…).
2. Goods formerly imported from England were cut off, forcing Americans to make their own.
3. Still, America remained agriculturalist by a lot.
4. While, with Britain, Americans had great trade, and now they didn’t, they could now trade with foreign countries, and with any nation they wanted to, a privilege they didn’t have before.
5. Yankee shippers like the Empress of China (1784) boldly ventured into far off places.
6. However, inflation was rampant, and taxes were hated; the rich had become poor, and the new rich were viewed with suspicion; disrespect of private property became shocking.
IV. A Shaky Start Toward Union
1. While the U.S. had to create a new government, the people were far from united.
2. In 1786, after the war, Britain flooded America with cheap goods, greatly hurting American industries.
3. However, the states all did share similar constitutions, had a rich political inheritance form Britain, and America was blessed with men like Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and John Adams, great political leaders of high order.
V. Creating a Confederation
1. Even during the war, the states had created their individual currencies and tax barriers.
2. The Articles of the Confederation was finished in 1777, but in was finally completely ratified (that was needed) by the last state, Maryland, on March 1, 1781.
3. A major dispute was that states like New York and Virginia had huge tracts of land west of the Alleghenies that they could sell off to pay off their debts while other states could not do so.
a. As a compromise, these lands were ceded to the federal government, which pledged to dispense them for the common good of the union (states would be made).
b. The Northwest Ordinance later confirmed this.
VI. The Articles of the Confederation: America’s First Constitution
1. The Articles had no executive branch (hence, no single leader), a weak Congress in which each state had only one vote, required 2/3 majority on any subject of importance, and a fully unanimous vote for amendments.
2. Also, Congress was pitifully weak, and could not regulate commerce or enforce tax collection.
3. Congress could only call up soldiers from the states, which weren’t going to help each other.
a. Example: in 1783, a group of Pennsylvanian soldiers harassed the government in Philadelphia, demanding back pay. When it pleaded for help from the state, and didn’t receive any, it had to shamefully move to Princeton College in New Jersey.
4. However, it was a model of what a loose confederation should be, and was a significant stepping-stone towards the establishment of the U.S. Constitution.
5. Still, the states wielded an alarmingly too great amount of power.
VII. Landmarks in Land Laws
1. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided the acreage of the Old Northwest should be sold and that the proceeds be used to pay off the national debt.
a. This vast area would be surveyed before settlement and then divided into townships six miles square, which would then be divided into 36 square sections with one set aside for public schools.
2. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 made admission into the union a two stage affair:
a. There would be two evolutionary territorial stages, during which the area would be subordinate to the federal government
b. When a territory had 60,000 inhabitants, Congress as a state might admit it.
c. It worked so well to solve a problem that others had plagued many other nations.
VIII. The World’s Ugly Duckling
1. However, Britain still refused to repeal the Navigation Laws, and closed down its trading to the U.S. (proved useless to U.S. smuggling); it also sought to annex Vermont to Britain with help from the Allen brothers and continued to hold a chain of trading posts on U.S. soil.
a. One excuse used was that the soldiers had to make sure the U.S. honor its treaty and pay back debts to Loyalists.
2. In 1784, Spain closed the Mississippi River to American commerce.
3. It also claimed a large area near the Gulf of Mexico that was ceded to the U.S. by Britain.
a. At Natchez, on disputed soil, it also held a strategic fort.
4. Both Spain and England, while encouraging Indian tribes to be restless, prevented the U.S. from controlling half of it territory.
5. Even France demanded payment of U.S. debts to France.
6. The pirates of the North African states, including the arrogant Dey of Algiers, ravaged U.S. ships in the area and enslaved Yankee sailors; America was too weak to stop them.
IX. The Horrid Specter of Anarchy
1. States were refusing to pay taxes, and national debt was mounting as foreign credibility was slipping.
2. Boundary disputes erupted into small battles while states taxed goods from other states.
3. Shays’ Rebellion, which flared up in western Massachusetts in 1786, attacked tax collectors, etc… and caused all sorts of violence.
a. Shays was convicted but later pardoned.
b. The fear of such violence lived on, though, and paranoia existed.
4. People were beginning to doubt republicanism and this Articles of the Confederation.
5. However, many supporters believed that the Articles merely needed to be strengthened.
6. Things began to look brighter, though, as prosperity was beginning to emerge, Congress was beginning to control commerce, and overseas shipping was regaining its place in the world.
X. A Convention of “Demigods”
1. An Annapolis, Maryland convention was called, but only five states were represented.
2. On May 25, 1787, 55 delegates from 12 states (Rhode Island wasn’t there) met in Philadelphia to “revise the Articles only.”
a. Among them were people like Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, and Madison.
b. However, people like Jefferson, John and Sam Adams, Thomas Pain, Hancock, and Patrick Henry were not there (for various purposes).
XI. Patriots in Philadelphia
1. The 55 delegates were all well-off and young, and they hoped to preserve the union, protect the American democracy from abroad and preserve it at home, and curb the unrestrained democracy rampant in various states (like rebellions, etc…).
XII. Hammering Out a Bundle of Compromises
1. Some people decided to totally scrap the Articles and create a new Constitution.
a. Virginia’s large state plan called for Congressional representation based on state population, while New Jersey’s small state plan called for equal representation from all states (in terms of numbers, each state got the same number of reps.)
b. Afterwards, the “Great Compromise” was worked out so that Congress would have TWO houses, the House of Representatives, were reps were based on population, and the Senate, where each state got two reps.
i. All tax bills would start in the House.
2. Also, there would be a strong, independent executive branch with a president who would be military commander in chief and could veto legislation.
3. Another compromise was the election of the president through the Electoral College, rather than by the people directly.
4. Also, slaves would count as 3/5 of a person in census counts.
a. Also, the Constitution enabled a state to shut off slave importation if it wanted after 1807.
XIII. Safeguards for Conservatism
1. The delegates at the Convention all believed in a system with checks and balances, and the more conservative people deliberately erected safeguards against excesses of mobs.
2. Federal chief justices were appointed for life.
3. However, the people still had power, and government was based on the people.
4. By the end of the Convention, on Sept. 17, 1787, only 42 of the original 55 were still there to sign the Constitution
XIV. The Clash of Federalists and Antifederalists
1. Knowing that state legislatures were certainly veto the new Constitution, the Founding Fathers sent copies of it out to state conventions, where it could be debated and voted upon.
a. The people could judge it themselves.
2. The American people were shocked, because they had expected a patched up Articles of the Confederation and had received a whole new Constitution (the Convention had been VERY well concealed and kept secret).
3. The federalists, who favored the proposed stronger government, were against the antifederalists, who were opposed.
a. The antifederalists were mostly the poor farmers, the illiterate, and states’ rights devotees; it was basically the poorer classes.
b. The federalists were more respectable and generally embraced the cultured and propertied groups, and many were former Loyalists.
4. Antifederalists truthfully cried that it was drawn up by aristocratic elements and was therefore antidemocratic.
5. They decried the dropping of annual elections of congressional reps and the erecting of what would become Washington D.C., and the creation of a standing army.
XV. The Great Debate in the States
1. Elections were run to elect people into the state conventions.
2. Four small states quickly ratified the Constitution, and Pennsylvania was the first large state to act.
3. In Massachusetts, a hard fought race between the supporters and detractors (including Samuel Adams, the “Engineer of Revolution” who now resisted change), and Massachusetts finally ratified it after a promise of a bill of rights to be added later.
a. Had this state not ratified, it would have brought the whole thing down.
4. Three more states ratified, and on June 21, 1788, the Constitution was officially adopted after nine states (all but Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island) had ratified.
XVI. The Four Laggard States
1. Virginia, knowing that it could not be an independent state (the Constitution was about to be ratified by the 9th state, New Hampshire, anyway), so it finally ratified by a vote of 89 to 79.
2. New York was swayed by The Federalist Papers, written by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, and finally yielded after realizing that it could prosper apart from the union.
3. North Carolina and Rhode Island finally ratified after intense pressure from the government.
XVII. A Conservative Triumph
1. The minority had triumphed again, and the transition had been peaceful.
2. Only about ¼ of the adult white males in the country (mainly those with land) had voted for the ratifying delegates.
3. Conservationism was victorious, as the safeguards had been erected against mob-rule excesses.
4. Revolutionaries against Britain had been upended by revolutionaries against the Articles.
a. It was a type of counterrevolution.
5. Federalists believed that every branch of government effectively represented the people, unlike antifederalists who believed that only the legislative branch did so.
6. In the United States, conservatives and radicals alike have championed the heritage of democratic revolution.
Please read Varying Viewpoints – “The Constitution: Revolutionary or Counterrevolutionary?” on your own, please.
~ 1789 – 1800 ~
I. A New Ship on an Uncertain Sea
1. In 1789, the new U.S. Constitution was launched, and population was doubling every twenty years.
a. America’s population was still 90% rural, with 5% west of the Appalachians.
b. Vermont became the 14th state in 1791, and Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio (states where trans-Appalachian overflow was concentrated) became states soon after.
c. Visitors looked down upon the crude, rough pioneers, and these western people were restive and dubiously loyal at best.
2. In the twelve years after American independence, laws had been broken and a constitution had been completely scrapped and replaced with a new one, something that was not best of government
3. America was also heavily in debt, and paper money was worthless, but meanwhile, restless monarchs watched to see if the U.S. could succeed in setting up a republic while facing such overwhelming odds.
II. Washington’s Profederalist Regime
1. At 6’2”, 175 pounds, broad and sloping shoulders, a strongly pointed chin and pockmarks from Smallpox, George Washington was an imposing figure, which helped in his getting unanimously drafted as president by the Electoral College in 1789.
2. His long journey from Mt. Vernon to New York (capital at the time) was a triumphant procession filled with cheering crowds and roaring festivities, and he took his oath of office on April 30, 1789, on a balcony overlooking Wall Street.
3. Washington established a diverse cabinet (which was not necessary, Constitution-wise).
a. Secretary of State: Thomas Jefferson
b. Secretary of the Treasury: Alexander Hamilton
c. Secretary of War: Henry Knox
III. The Bill of Rights
1. Many states had ratified the Constitution on the condition that there would be a Bill of Rights, and many antifederalists had criticized the Constitution for its lack of a Bill.
2. The necessary number of states adopted it in 1791.
a. Amendment I: Freedom of religion, speech or press, assembly, and petition.
b. Amendment II: Right to bear arms (for militia).
c. Amendment III: Soldiers can’t be housed in civilian homes during peacetime.
d. Amendment IV: No unreasonable searches; all searches require warrants.
e. Amendment V: Right to refuse to speak during a civil trial; Double Jeopardy.
f. Amendment VI: Right to a speedy and public trial.
g. Amendment VII: Right to trial by jury when the sum exceeds $20.
h. Amendment VIII: No excessive bails and/or fines.
i. Amendment IX: Other rights not enumerated are also in effect.
j. Amendment X: Non-federal powers belong to the state.
3. The Judiciary Act o f 1789 created effective federal courts.
4. John Jay became the first chief justice of the United States
IV. Hamilton Revives the Corpse of Public Credit
1. Born in the British West Indies, his loyalty to the U.S. was often questioned, even though he claimed he loved his adopted country more than his native country.
2. He urged the federal government to assume its debts ($54 million) and try to pay them off at face value, PLUS interest, as well as assume the debts of the states ($21.5 million).
a. Massachusetts had a huge debt, but Virginia didn’t, so there needed some haggling. This was because Virginia felt it unfair that all debts were to be assumed, instead of just a set amount. Essentially, its rival states would be at the same level as it even though they had obtained larger debts.
b. Virginia would have the District of Columbia built on its land (therefore gaining prestige) in return for letting the government assume all the states’ debts.
3. The “Funding at Par” would gain the support of the rich to the federal government, not the states.
V. Customs Duties and Excise Taxes.
1. With the national debt at a huge $75 million, Alexander Hamilton was strangely unworried.
2. He used the debt as an asset: the more people the government owed money to, the more people who would care about what would happen to the U.S.
3. To pay off some of the debt, Hamilton first proposed custom duties, and the first one, imposing a low tariff of about 8% of the value of dutiable imports, was passed in 1789.
a. Hamilton also wanted to protect America’s infant industries, though since the U.S. was still dominated by agricultural programs, little was done for that.
4. In 1791, Hamilton secured an excise tax on a few domestic items, notably whiskey (7 cents per gallon).
VI. Hamilton Battles Jefferson for a Bank
1. Hamilton proposed for a national treasury, to be a private institution modeled after the Bank of England, to have the federal government as a major stockholder, to circulate cash to stimulate businesses, to store excess money, and to print money that was worth something, and was opposed by Jefferson.
2. Hamilton’s Views:
a. What was not forbidden in the Constitution was permitted.
b. A bank was “necessary and proper” (from Constitution).
c. He evolved the Elastic Clause.
3. Jefferson’s Views:
a. What was not permitted was forbidden.
b. A bank should be a state controlled item (9th Amendment).
c. The Constitution should be interpreted literally and strictly.
4. End result: Hamilton won, and Washington reluctantly signed the bank measure into law; the Bank of the Untied States was created by Congress in 1791, and was chartered for 20 years.
a. It was located in Philadelphia and was to have a capital of $10 million.
b. Stock was thrown open to public sale, and surprisingly, a milling crowd oversubscribed in two hours.
VII. Mutinous Moonshiners in Pennsylvania
1. In 1794, in western Pennsylvania, the Whiskey Rebellion flared up when fed up farmers revolted against Hamilton’s excise tax.
a. Around those parts, liquor and alcohol was often used as money.
2. Washington cautiously sent an army of about 13,000 troops from various states to the revolt, but the soldiers found nothing upon arrival; the rebels had scattered.
3. Washington’s new presidency now commanded new respect, but antifederalists criticized the government’s use of a giant to crush a gnat.
VIII. The Emergence of Political Parties
1. Hamilton’s policies (national bank, suppression of Whiskey Rebellion, excise tax) had seemed to encroach on states’ rights.
2. As resentment grew, what was once a personal rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson gradually evolved into two political parties.
3. The Founding Fathers had not envisioned various political parties (Whigs and Federalists and Tories, etc… had existed but they had been groups, not parties).
4. Since 1825, the two-party system has helped strengthen the U.S. government, helping balance power and ensuring no huge deviation from the norm.
IX. The Impact of the French Revolution
1. Near the end of Washington’s first term, in 1793, two parties had evolved: the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans and the Hamiltonian Federalists.
2. However, the French Revolution greatly affected America.
3. At first, people were overjoyed, since the first stages of the revolution were not unlike America’s dethroning of Britain. Only a few ultraconservative Federalists were upset at this “mobocracy” and revolt.
4. When the French declared war on Austria, then threw back the Austrian armies and then proclaimed itself a republic people sang “The Marseillaise” and other French revolutionary songs, and renamed various streets and places.
5. After the revolution turned radical and bloody, the Federalists rapidly changed opinions and looked nervously at the Jeffersonians, who felt that no revolution could be carried out without a little bloodshed.
6. Still, neither group completely approved.
7. America was sucked into the revolution when France declared war on Great Britain and the battle for North American land began…again.
X. Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation
1. With war came the call by the JDR’s (Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans) to enter on the side of France, the recent friend, against Britain, the recent enemy.
2. However, Washington knew that war could mean disaster and disintegration, since the nation in 1793 was militarily and economically weak and politically disunited.
3. In 1793, he issued the Neutrality Proclamation, proclaiming the U.S.’s official neutrality and warning Americans to stay out of the issue and be impartial.
4. JDR’s were incensed, as this controversial statement irked both sides.
5. Soon afterwards, Citizen Edmond Genêt, landed at Charleston, South Carolina, as representative to the U.S.
a. On his trip to Philadelphia, he had been cheered rousingly by Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans, who supported France, and he came to wrongly believe that Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation didn’t truly reflect the feelings of Americans.
b. Also, he equipped privateers to plunder British ships and to invade Spanish Florida and British Canada.
c. He even went as far as to threaten to appeal over the head of Washington to the sovereign voters, and afterwards, he was basically kicked out of the USA.
6. Actually, America’s neutrality helped France, since only in that way could France get needed American foodstuffs.
7. The U.S. didn’t have to honor its alliance from the Treaty of 1778 because France didn’t call on it to do so.
XI. Embroilments with Britain
1. Britain still had many posts in the frontier, and supplied the Indians with weapons.
2. The Treaty of Greenville, in 1795, had the Indians cede their vast tract in the Ohio country to Americans after General “Mad Anthony” Wayne crushed them at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794.
3. Ignoring America’s neutrality, British commanders of the Royal Navy seized about 300 American merchant ships and impressed scores of seamen into their army.
4. Many JDR’s cried for war with Britain, or at least an embargo, but Washington refused, knowing that such drastic action would destroy the Hamilton financial system.
XII. Jay’s Treaty and Washington’s Farewell
1. In a last-ditch attempt to avert war Washington sent John Jay to England to work something out.
2. However, his negotiations were sabotaged by Hamilton, who secretly gave the Brits the details of America’s bargaining strategy.
3. The results weren’t pretty:
a. Britain would repay the lost money from recent merchant ship seizures, but it said nothing about future seizures, impressments, and Indians arms supplying.
b. America would have to pay off its pre-Revolutionary War debts to Britain.
4. Result: the JDR’s from the South were INCENSEND and pissed, as the southern farmers would have to pay while the northern merchants would be paid.
5. At this time, the Pinckney Treaty of 1795 with Spain gave Americans free navigation of the Mississippi and the large disputed territory north of Florida.
6. After his second term, Washington stepped down, creating a strong two-term precedent that wasn’t broken until FDR was prez.
7. His Farewell Address warned against binding, permanent alliances, and talked about other stuff.
8. Washington had set the U.S. on its feet and had made it sturdy.
XIII. “Bonny Johnny” Adams Becomes President”
1. Hamilton was the logical choice to become the next president, but his financial plan had made him very unpopular.
2. John Adams, the ablest statesmen of his day, won, 71 to 68, against Thomas Jefferson, who became vice president.
3. Adams had a hated rival and opponent in Hamilton, who plotted with Adams’ cabinet against the president, and a political rival in his vice president.
4. He also had a volatile situation with France that could explode into war.
XIV. Unofficial Fighting with France
1. France was incensed by Jay’s Treaty, calling it a flagrant violation of the 1778 Franco-American treaty, and began seizing defenseless American merchant ships.
2. In the XYZ Affair, John Adams sent three envoys (including John Marshall) to France, where they were approached by three agents, “X,” “Y,” and “Z,” who demanded a load of 32 million florins and a $250,000 bribe just for talking to Talleyrand.
a. Even though bribes were routine in diplomacy, such a large sum for simply talking weren’t worth it, and there was no guarantee of an agreement.
b. The envoys returned to America, cheered by incensed Americans as having done the right thing for America.
