Unit 5: Rising Dissent in the Colonies

The main objective of the lesson

By the end of this unit, the students will 

. be aware of the different reasons that led the colonies to revolt against Great Britain

· Describe the differences between the Chesapeake Bay colonies and the New England colonies

· Compare and contrast the wars between native inhabitants and English colonists in both the Chesapeake Bay and New England colonies

· Explain the role of Bacon’s Rebellion in the rise of chattel slavery in Virginia

Introduction

Britain’s victory led directly to a conflict with its American colonies. This was due to many political and notably economic reasons.

1.      Mercantilism and the period of “salutary neglect”

From the beginning, England, like most Western European countries, based its economic relationship with its colonies on the doctrine of mercantilism. Under this system, the colonies were seen as valuable primarily as supplies of raw materials to the mother country and as markets to finished products manufactured in England. Before the end of the French and Indian War, England passed many Navigation and Trade Acts in order to strengthen and regulate the systems of mercantilism. These laws were not practically hard on the colonists, however, and frequently went unenforced. Thus, the years before 1763 are sometimes referred to as the period of “salutary Neglect”.

British Attempts to Raise Money:

After the Seven Years’ War, during which Great Britain’s national debt had doubled, its attitude towards the colonies changed. Some members of the government reasoned that since England had spent a large amount of money in defending the American colonist against the French and Indians, it was only natural that the colonist should pay a larger share of imperial expenses. The Sugar Act of 1764 provided for stricter enforcement of duties on rum, spirits, sugar, and molasses imported into the colonies from a foreign source. It also added new taxes on wine, coffee, silk, and other luxury goods. 

  The Stamp Act passed the following year, required that a stamp (certifying that a tax had been paid) be affixed on virtually all printed materials including legal documents, newspapers, almanacs, and even playing cards. Colonists protested these measures and organized boycotts of English goods. Since the acts had been passed by the British Parliament, and without the consent of the colonial assemblies, many colonists felt that the laws were fundamentally unfair and undemocratic.

Popular Slogans in the colonies in the Years preceding the Revolutionary War

Taxation without Representation is Tyranny. 

No Taxation without Representation.

The Boston Massacre  

Boston was the scene of some of the strongest opposition to Great Britain’s rule. In 1770, the tension between the colonists and the British troops stationed in the city led to fracas in which the soldiers, without orders, opened fire on the crowd. Five civilians died, and, though the colonists were at least partly to blame for having incited the redcoats, radical patriots exploited the incident for purposes of anti-British propaganda, labeling it the “Boston Massacre”.

The Boston Tea Party

The colonists became angered again in 1773 with the passage of the Tea Act which granted the British East India Company a monopoly on the transport of tea to America. While tea actually became cheaper, the fact that the price still included a tax decided on by Parliament made the act unpopular. On the night of December 16, a group of colonists, disguised as Indians, boarded three of the East India Company’s ships and dumped their cargoes of tea into Boston harbor In response, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts to punish the unruly colonists' Representatives of twelve colonies gathered in Philadelphia at the First Continental Congress to protest these acts, but Parliament refused to repeal

 The Outbreak of Hostilities at Lexington and Concord

By 1715, the British began to fear the possibility of armed conflict with the American colonists. In April, troops were sent to destroy colonial military supplies just outside Boston. Patriots learned of these plans, however, and Paul Revere and others galloped through the countryside giving the alarm. Though the soldiers met minimal resistance at Lexington, upon arriving at Concord’s North Bridge they were attacked by armed colonists, sometimes known as Minutemen because they agreed to be ready “at a minute’s notice”. They were able to prevent the redcoats from destroying all of the supplies and relentlessly fired at them as they made their way to Boston. Independence had not yet been declared, but the first shots of the war had been fired.

References

Faren R. Siminoff, Crossing the Sound: The Rise of Atlantic American Communities in Seventeenth Century Eastern Long Island (New York: New York University Press, 2004

Richard Maxwell Brown, Strains of Violence; Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 43–4

W. Eugene Hollon, Frontier Violence: Another Look (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 8.

Joan de Lourdes Leonard, “Elections in Colonial Pennsylvania,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1954), pp. 385–401, and William T. Parsons, “The Bloody Election of 1742,” Pennsylvania History, Vol. 36, No. 3 (1969), p. 290

Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), pp. 63, 15

Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 113, and Rachel N. Klein, “Ordering the Backcountry: The South Carolina Regulation,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. 38, No. 4 (1981), pp. 661–80.

Robert Leckie, George Washington’s War: The Saga of the American Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), p. 49

 Lloyd I. Rudolph, “The Eighteenth Century Mob in America and Europe,” American Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1959), p. 450

Benson Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), p. 62.

Arthur Meier Schlesinger, “Political Mobs and the American Revolution, 1765–1776,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 99, No. 4 (1955), p. 246.

Roger J. Champagne, “New York’s Radicals and the Coming of Independence,” Journal of American History, Vol. 51, No. 1 (1964), pp. 22–3

Gordon S. Wood, “A Note on Mobs in the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1966), p. 640.

Richard B. Morris, “Insurrection in Massachusetts,” in Daniel Aaron, America in Crisis: Fourteen Crucial Episodes in American History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), p. 29

Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, pp. 25–6, 77, and Wilfried Nippel, “Policing Rome,” Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 74 (1984), pp. 20–9.