History 101: Week 5 (Professor Messer-Kruse)

. Lecture 12: The Imperial Crisis

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, England's empire stretched from the Artic Circle to Northern Florida, from London to Calcutta. England, it appeared at the time, having routed France from North America, was now the undisputed superpower of European colonial powers. But England's victory over France provoked a crisis that would, within twenty years, end in the independence of the American colonies.

I. The Legacy of the French-Indian War (or 7 Years War): A. The War left behind a huge war debt. The interest on the national debt at war's end was equal to two-thirds of the total budget before the war. B. England suddenly doubled the size of its colonies, and therefore drastically increased the cost and complexity of governing them. 1. Proclamation of 1763 intended to prevent the outbreak of costly Indian warfare on the frontier. (Paxton Boys demonstrated the unpopularity of such a measure). C. With the French threat gone, the empire had little to offer to Americans. D. Recession, specie crisis and increasingly imbalanced trade plagued the colonial economy at wars end.

II. Sir George Grenville, the man who became secretary of the exchequer at the conclusion of the 7 Years War, devised a plan to administer the colonies while lowering the English debt. Noting that the American customs service cost about twice what it collected in revenue, his first mission was to place the machinery of American administration on an independent footing.

A. Sugar (Revenue) Act of 1764: It was widely known that the Navigation acts, particularly the Molasses Act was a paper tiger. Customs agents routinely took bribes of 1 1/2 cents per gallon. Grenville decided that bribery and smuggling would be undercut by dropping the duty by half, (3 cents) extending it to all cargoes English or foreign, and vigorously enforcing it. 1. violations of the Act would be tried by the vice- admirality courts, (without local juries). 2. customs officials would recieve 1/3 of the confiscated cargo and ship.

B. Stamp Act of 1764: stamps must be affixed to legal, church, political, and commercial documents, passports, playing cards, books, newspapers, etc. Stamps had to be bought with hard currency. 1. The Stamp Act appeared even more threatening because of the indepence it gave to to the colonial administration. Revenues from Stamp Act would pay for the colonial administration, freeing them from dependence on colonial assemblies for their salaries. (Colonists knew quite well from Parliamentary and local experience that the power of the purse was the key to political liberty).

III. Colonial protest against these measures was of two sorts, ELITE reaction and POPULAR RESISTANCE:

A. ELITE reaction: 1. colonial assemblies passed protest resolutions. a. Stamp Act Congress of Oct. 1765. 2. pamphleters published denunciations (James Otis)

B. POPULAR RESISTANCE: 1. Boston Riots of August - effigies, burning of customs collectors office, ransacking of Thomas Hutchinson's house. 2. Threatening (tar and feathering) of officials.

IV. Stamp Act repealled 1766. (with the face-saving Declaratory Act). Ben Franklin himself had been sent to London to argue for repeal and he made the distinction between "internal" and "external" taxes, the colonists objecting only to the former.

V. 1767, London imposes three new acts: A. Townsehend Duties (a clever revenue measure that was unarguable based on an "external" levy) B. Enforced earlier requirment that colonial assemblies provision Imperial troops stationed within their borders (New York assembly suspended for not doing so) C. Customs service adminstration moved to Boston to make it less corrupt and more efficient at enforcement.

VI. Colonists responded with Non-importation movement. A. When Mass. legislature drafted a circular letter calling for intercolonial unity and a joint letter of petition to the King, Crown ordered the assembly to recall it. When they refused by a vote of 92-17, he had his governor dissolve the assembly in 1768. (92 became a number of great symbolism to the Revolutionary struggle: feast tables were set with 92 glasses, the Sons of Liberty celebrated with 92 toasts).

B. Later in 1768, after mobs destroyed some customs commissioners property after seizure of Hancock's sloop The Liberty, several regiments of troops sent to Boston.

Lecture 13: The Roots of Colonial Resistance

I. Checkpoint established on Boston Neck became a site of constant tension and conflict. (Bostons workers most upset because British troops allowed to work on their off-time to support themselves). 1. Boston Massacre March 5, 1770.

II. 1770 Parliament repealled the Townshend Acts. Non- imporatation was clearly the key here, British trade dropped by L1,000,000 in the first year of the movement.

III. 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act. What was the big deal? British tea was to be imported duty free and made cheaper than Dutch tea - American merchants and artisans feared the precedent of a trade monopoly. A. Dec. 17, 1773, Boston Tea Party.

IV. 1774 Four Coercive Acts passed in response: 1. Boston harbor closed until restitution made. 2. Revocation of Mass. charter of 1691. 3. Extradition for accussed British soldiers/officers. 4. Billeting of troops in private homes.

A. Then that same year the Quebec Act passed: 1. preserved Catholic liberty and French law in Quebec. 2. ceded to Quebec claims over lands north of Ohio R. 3. extended Proclamation of 1763.

V. Committees of Correspondence spread throughout the colonies. A. Initially, the committees of correspondence were an extra-legal institution, a shadow government of sorts that bypassed the more conservative assemblies dominated by elites that wanted no part of non-importation. By 1774, many of these merchant elites began attending the popular committees as that was were power began to lie and they sought to control them so as to delay the imposition of a new trade boycott. Many of these elite patriots were subsequently elected to the Revolutionary congresses in sufficient numbers to control them.

VI. Sept. 1774, First Continental Congress, the first intercolonial representative assembly, seated at Philadelphia. A. The Continental Congress decidedly split between popular leaders like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, and the more conservative patriot elites who wanted to appease Britian, calm protest, and get on with business. B. The First Congress proved a complete victory for the popular leaders. 1. non-importation and non-exportation with Britain. 2. declaration that American rights were based on nature, colonial charters, and the English Constitution.)

C. resolution calling for creation of Local Committees to enforce trade boycott with Britain. Hundreds were established and the shadow government was now in place. Indeed, the creation of local committees that superseded county and colonial government institutions accomplished a political revolution as a fact on the ground. The Revolutionary War was, in one sense, an attempt by Britain to uproot and overturn a political Revolution that had already been accomplished. a. Unlike colonial governing structures, no qualifications other than eagerness to serve and committment to the cause were required for membership or election to these committees. Elections were truly democratic. In the formation of these committees can be seen one aspect of a revolution not from Britain, but within the colonies themselves. For the first time the common man had a voice and even an official position within the polity of the colonies. (1) in many counties, "peoples militias" closed the existing county courts and elected a new peoples court to oversee law and justice in their communities.

b. Common folks liked their new democratic and popular governments so much they had the audacity to want to keep them after the struggle with Britain was over. The popularity and spread of this grass-roots government spurred the patriot elite to draft State Constitutions and thereby reassert control over what they percieved as the spreading anarchy they had unleashed. In one sense then, we should view the actions of the Continental Congress and the State Congresses in moving quickly in 1776 to draft constitutions as a conservative attempt to regain control over the popular organizations. Richard Henry Lee wrote to a member of the Virginia Convention in the spring of 1776, "Do you not see the indispensible neccesity of establishing a government this convention? How long popular commotions may be suppressed without it, and anarchy be prevented, deserves intense consideration. A wise and free government may now be formed and the sensible advantages soon derived from it, will, added to the magistrate's authority, effectually prevent the numerous evils to be apprehended from popular rage and license whenever they find the bonds of government removed..." c. The State Constitutions were, for the most part, victories for the Patriot elite for they restored much of the appointive system that had been in place before.

D. Patriot elites had lost control of the situation and now were deeply concerned that the mob would now rule and rule them. One South Carolina politician observed: "the men of property begin at length to see that the many-headed power of the people, who have hitherto been obediently made use of by their numbers and occasional riots to suport the claims set up in America, have discovered their own strength and importance and are not now so easily goverened by their former leaders." 1. Virginia had the highest proportion of its elite supporting the patriot cause and thereby maintained its control of popular resistance. The tensions between the elite gentry patriots and the popular leaders is palpable in a letter written by Landon Carter, one of the wealthiest planters in Virginia, to George Washington: "the present convention abounds with too many of the inexperienced creatures...I need only tell you of one definition that I heard of Independenc[e]: it was expected to be a form of government that, by being independent of the rich men, every man would then be able to do as he pleased... I shamed the fool so much for it that he slunk away; but he got elected by it." 2. Elites supported the Congresses call for the creation of a Continental army and the issuence of Continental money in the Second Congress because they believed that American liberty had to be preserved and hoped beyond hope that a reconcilliation was forthcoming. They were not prepared to declare for independence until they were forced to face this reality in 1776.

VII. April 1775 Lexington and Concord. A. Reaction: 1. mobs seize control of NYC. 2. backcountry farmers in Penn. begin to organize into militias and arm themselves. 3. Second Continental Congress

VIII. Paine's Common Sense published Jan, 1776. Independence July 4, 1776.

Lecture 14: Liberty and Slavery

I. By middle of 18c., colonists began questioning slavery for the first time. Factors leading to this reexamination:

A. environmentalist enlightenment thought (slaves not deserving of their slavery because they are heathens or naturally depraved.) 1. Montesquieu Spirit of the Laws (1748) 2. Thomas Jefferson advocated gradual emancipation. 3. Thomas Paine and ardent abolitionist.

B. rising capitalist/protestant ethic (slavery seemed to remove the incentive for slaves to work and to degrade free labor). 1. Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments (1764)

C. religious concerns (Quakers) 1. John Woolman a. 1774 Quakers banned slave-owners 2. Many New England Ministers began to define slavery as "communal sin". 3. Southern Methodists banned slavery in 1784 (later forced to repeal this stance in 19c.)

D. Economic concerns - many colonists (such as George Washington) began to fear that the southern colonies dependence on slave plantation labor would undermine its longterm economic prospects. Such men wanted to diversify the economy of the plantation colonies, a move that required wage labor to achieve the sorts of specialization of industries and economic flexibility a modern economy required.

II. Manumission movement: Between 1767-1775 the slave population was cut in half. (The overall black population declined as well as fewer slaves were imported in these depressed times).

A. The tobacco economy fell into serious recession in the 1760's, again due to a glutted world supply and stagnant demand. 1. slave owners discovered that unlike wage labor, their workers had to be fed, clothed and sheltered even if there was no productive work to be done. As the demand for tobacco fell, some owners preferred to free their slaves rather than support them. 2. other slave owners, having ethical second thoughts about the institution, wrote manumission articles into their wills.

B. By the 1780s, many southern states eased the restrictions that had previously been placed on manumissions. 1. In Delaware by 1810, 3/4 black people in the state were free.

III. Slavery and the American Revolutionary War:

A. From the outset of the Rev., (Nov. 1775) the British offered freedom to any slave who enlisted and fought against the rebels. 1. In Charleston, Patriot mobs lynched a black harbor pilot who they accussed of conveying fugitive slaves to British war ships in the harbor. 2. Robert Carter, one of the largest Patriot slave owners in Virginia, warned his slaves that if the British won, they would all be sold off to the sugar plantations of Jamaica. 3. South Carolina debated enlisting 3,000 slaves into the Continental army on promise of emancipation, but the proposal was eventually voted down. 4. New York did enlist a few slaves on the promise of freedom after three years militia duty.

But overall, slaves naturally saw little to be gained in the Revolutionary cause, though a handfull of free black men fought.

B. To most slaves, the American Revolution was an opportunity to escape their bondage. Over the course of the war, thousands fled, many in entire families and even whole plantation communities. Thomas Jefferson lost thirty of his several hundred slaves. When the British evacuated Charleston and Savanah at the end of the war, over ten thousand slaves accompanied them (many however died under the harsh conditions of British "freedom" and others were ultimately reenslaved in the West Indies.)

IV. Patriots and slaves: The holding of 1 out of 3 Americans in bondage while screaming for liberty was clearly a contradiction evident to all by the years of the Revolution. The British Tory, Samuel Johnson, asked, "How is that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

A. Continental Congress debated abolition and ultimately pledged in Art. II of the Continental Association (1774) to end the slave trade. B. Virginia on its own outlawed the slave trade in 1778. C. But all the Patriots understood that the success of their Revolution depended upon slave labor. 1. French arms bought with slave-produced tobacco. 2. Slave labor freed farmers for the army.

V. Northern Abolition: By 1805, every Northern state had abolished slavery. And by 1810, 3/4 of northern blacks were free. A. Vermont led the way in writing an abolitionist clause into the state constitution in 1777. B. Soon afterwards, Mass. courts interpreted its constitution to prohibit slavery. C. Penn. legislated gradual emancipation in 1780 (freeing future born slaves at age 28). D. New York in 1799, freed future born boys at 28 and girls at 25. E. New Jersey in 1804, freed future born boys at 25 and girls at 21.

VI. Slavery and the New Nation: A. 1784, Jefferson drafted a bill to bar slavery from all western territories after 1800 (defeated by one vote) B. 1787, NW Ordinance did abolish slavery in NW territories. C. Powerful advocates of the slave trade forced the Constitutional Convention to postpone abolishing slave trade nationally until 1807. (Consequently, a slave trade rush ensued and more slaves were imported to America between 1787 and 1807 than in any comparable period in American history). 1. Some leaders mistakenly saw this measure as a move that would eventually doom slavery as an institution.

D. But by the early 19c. the economy of the South was on the move. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794 and by 1807, cotton exports amounted to more than 1/5 of all exports. By 1819, they accounted for nearly 1/2. 1. The new economics of cotton revived slavery in the US and decisively ended any talk of abolition. Thomas Jefferson understood well that the period of debate over slavery was over: "We have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale, self-preservation on the other." Jefferson, who had previously vowed to emancipate his own hundreds of slaves upon his death, recanted and willed them to his heirs. 2. Soon after 1800, most southern states made manumission illegal.

ID: NOTES-101.5.

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