American Revolution
Captain Levi Preston of Danvers, Massachusetts, was asked late in life why the Americans had rebelled against England. His answer was plain. "We always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should." That instinct ran through a political movement in the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain between 1765 and 1789. It began as a rebellion over the rights of Englishmen. It ended as something larger, a sovereign United States built on a written constitution. How did a quarrel about taxes on molasses, stamps, and tea become a war for universal natural rights? Why did colonists who proudly called the British constitution the best guarantee of liberty come to see Parliament as a tyranny? And how did a people with twelve million dollars in gold defeat the world's largest navy? The answers run through philosophy and finance, through pulpits and prison ships, and through a king who privately wrote three words: "America is lost!"
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Great Britain unofficially adopted a policy known as "salutary neglect." The Thirteen Colonies were largely left to govern themselves. Historian Robert Middlekauff put it bluntly, writing that "Americans had become almost completely self-governing" before the Revolution. The roots of that independence reached back further still. During the English Civil War of 1642 to 1651, the Puritan colonies of New England supported the Commonwealth that executed King Charles I. After the Stuart Restoration of 1660, Massachusetts refused to recognize Charles II as legitimate king for more than a year after his coronation. In King Philip's War, fought from 1675 to 1678, the New England colonies battled a coalition of Native American tribes without military help from England. Each episode pulled the colonists further from a British identity and toward an American one. James II tried to reverse the drift. In 1686 he consolidated the New England colonies along with New York and New Jersey into the Dominion of New England, with Edmund Andros as royal governor under direct rule. Colonial assemblies and town meetings were restricted, new taxes levied, and rights abridged. The resentment was bitter. When the English aristocracy removed James in 1688, the 1689 Boston revolt overthrew Dominion rule, and the new monarchs William and Mary granted fresh charters. The Crown appointed a royal governor in each colony, but property owners elected a colonial assembly with power to legislate and tax. Before 1755 the British rarely sent troops to America at all. The colonies defended themselves with their own militias, a habit of self-reliance that would soon turn dangerous for London.
In 1651, Parliament passed the first of a series of Navigation Acts, restricting colonial trade with foreign countries. The logic was mercantilism. The colonies existed for the mother country's economic benefit, and the colonists' needs came second. Tobacco could ship only to Britain. European imports bound for British America first had to pass through an English port and pay customs duties. The Wool Act of 1698, the Hat Act of 1731, and the Iron Act of 1750 each curbed colonial industries that might compete with British ones. The Molasses Act of 1733 placed a duty of six pence per gallon on foreign molasses, which New England merchants protested as unconstitutional taxation without representation. Smuggling surged, and after the 1740s the British simply stopped enforcing it. The French and Indian War, fought from 1754 to 1763, changed the arithmetic of empire. Britain fielded 45,000 soldiers, half British Regulars and half colonial volunteers, and defeated France to acquire its territory east of the Mississippi River. The cost was staggering. The national debt had grown to 133 million pounds, with annual debt payments of 5 million pounds out of an 8 million pound budget. In early 1763 the Bute ministry decided to garrison 10,000 soldiers permanently in North America, a move that would cost another 360,000 pounds a year. The real motive was political. It let roughly 1,500 well-connected British Army officers stay on active duty with full pay, since stationing them in Britain during peacetime was unacceptable. To the colonists, a standing army among them looked less like protection than control.
Prime Minister George Grenville faced a problem that historian Middlekauff said shaped "every important decision" he made about the colonies. The need for money. On the 9th of March 1764 he proposed the Sugar Act, which lowered the duty on foreign molasses from six pence to three pence per gallon but tightened enforcement. Accused smugglers could now be tried in vice admiralty courts, where a presumption of guilt replaced the presumption of innocence and a Crown-appointed judge replaced the local jury. The Stamp Act, passed in March 1765, struck harder. It imposed direct taxes on the colonies for the first time, requiring stamps on official documents, newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, and even decks of playing cards. The colonists did not object that the taxes were high. They were low. They objected that they had no voice in the Parliament that passed them, captured in the slogan "No taxation without representation." Parliament answered that the colonists enjoyed "virtual representation," as most Britons did, since only a small minority could vote. James Otis rejected this, arguing that no member of Parliament was responsible to any colonial constituency. Resistance turned organized. Factions of the Sons of Liberty formed in each colony, using demonstrations, boycotts, and threats of violence. In Boston they burned the records of the vice admiralty court and looted the home of chief justice Thomas Hutchinson. In October, nine colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City, where moderates led by John Dickinson drew up a Declaration of Rights and Grievances. Benjamin Franklin appeared before Parliament to argue for repeal, warning that further taxes might bring rebellion. Parliament repealed the tax on the 21st of February 1766, sparking celebrations across the colonies. But in the Declaratory Act of March 1766 it insisted it retained full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever."
On the 5th of March 1770, a large crowd gathered around a group of British soldiers on a Boston street, throwing snowballs, rocks, and debris. One soldier was clubbed and fell. No order to fire was given, but the soldiers panicked and shot into the crowd, hitting eleven people. Three civilians died at the scene and two shortly after. The soldiers were tried and acquitted, defended by the American patriot John Adams, yet the widespread retellings turned colonial sentiment against Britain. This came after the Townshend Acts of 1767, which placed duties on paper, glass, and tea and set up a Board of Customs in Boston. Parliament's real aim was to assert authority, not raise revenue. John Dickinson countered in his widely read pamphlet, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, arguing the acts were unconstitutional because they aimed to raise revenue. In June 1768 a riot erupted over the seizure of John Hancock's sloop Liberty for alleged smuggling, prompting Britain to deploy troops to Boston. In 1773, private letters surfaced in which Governor Hutchinson claimed colonists could not enjoy all English liberties. The contents read as proof of a plot against American rights, and Franklin, the colonies' postmaster general, admitted he had leaked them and was removed from his position. From Boston, Samuel Adams built new Committees of Correspondence on the foundations of the Sons of Liberty network, linking Patriots across all thirteen colonies. About 7,000 to 8,000 Patriots served on them; Loyalists were excluded. Then came the tea. Parliament's Tea Act lowered the price of taxed tea so the British East India Company could undersell smuggled Dutch tea. A Boston town meeting refused to let the tea land and ignored the governor's demand to disperse. On the 16th of December 1773, men led by Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke Indigenous people boarded the ships and dumped 10,000 pounds worth of tea into Boston Harbor, an event later known as the Boston Tea Party.
Parliament responded with four laws the colonists called the Intolerable Acts. The Massachusetts Government Act altered the colony's charter and restricted town meetings. The Administration of Justice Act sent British soldiers to be tried in Britain. The Boston Port Act closed the port until the lost tea was paid for. The Quartering Act of 1774 let royal governors house troops in citizens' homes. Rather than break the colony, the laws unified it. In September 1774 the First Continental Congress convened in Pennsylvania, with representatives from each colony. Conservative Joseph Galloway proposed a colonial Parliament to approve or reject acts of the British Parliament, but his idea was tabled in a vote of 6 to 5 and struck from the record. Congress called for a boycott of all British goods beginning on the 1st of December 1774, enforced by local committees. King George III declared Massachusetts in a state of rebellion in February 1775, and orders to seize the rebels' weapons led to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on the 19th of April 1775. Patriots assembled a militia 15,000 strong and laid siege to Boston, held by 6,500 British soldiers. The Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on the 14th of June 1775, authorized the Continental Army, and appointed George Washington commander-in-chief. It also produced the Olive Branch Petition, an attempt to reach an accord with the king, who answered with a Proclamation of Rebellion in August branding the members traitors. The Battle of Bunker Hill on the 17th of June 1775 was a British victory at terrible cost, with about 1,000 British casualties to 500 American. Franklin captured the math in a letter to Joseph Priestley in October 1775. "Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is 20,000 pounds a head... During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America." By July 1776 the Loyalists controlled nowhere, and every royal official had fled.
On the 7th of June 1776, Richard Henry Lee, instructed by the Virginia legislature, rose in Philadelphia and proposed independence. Gathered at the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, 56 of the nation's Founding Fathers adopted the Declaration of Independence. It was drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson and refined by the Committee of Five. Congress struck several provisions and adopted it unanimously on the Fourth of July, famously proclaiming that "all men are created equal." What had begun as a rebellion demanding the rights of Englishmen had become a revolution for universal rights. The ideas came from the American Enlightenment, with its concepts of natural law, consent of the governed, and equality under the law. John Locke, often called "the philosopher of the American Revolution," had argued in his Two Treatises of Government, published in 1689, that all humans were created equally free and that governments needed the "consent of the governed." His thinking inspired the "Appeal to Heaven" on the Pine Tree Flag, an allusion to the right of revolution. Religion carried the message into ordinary lives. John Witherspoon, a "new light" Presbyterian, wrote widely circulated sermons tying the Revolution to the Bible. Dissenting Protestant ministers from Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches preached Revolutionary themes, while most Church of England clergymen preached loyalty to the king. The new states embraced republicanism with no inherited offices. They also drew sharp limits. On the 26th of May 1776, John Adams warned James Sullivan against extending the vote. "Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy... Women will demand a vote." Pennsylvania's radical constitution, with near-universal manhood suffrage, lasted only 14 years before conservatives rewrote it in 1790, a document Thomas Paine called unworthy of America.
British historian Jeremy Black noted the British held real advantages: a highly trained army, the world's largest navy, and an efficient system of public finance. Their fatal error was misreading the depth of Patriot support, treating a revolution as a large-scale riot. They believed a show of force would make a cowed loyal majority rise up and restore royal government. In July 1776 they landed in New York and beat Washington's army at the Battle of Brooklyn, the largest battle of the war. On the 11th of September 1776, a delegation including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin met Admiral Richard Howe on Staten Island. Howe demanded the Americans retract the Declaration of Independence; they refused, and talks ended. Britain then seized New York City and held it until November 1783. Late that December, Washington crossed the Delaware River and defeated the Hessian and British garrisons at Trenton and Princeton. The turning point came at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777, where a British invasion force from Canada surrendered after becoming trapped in northern New York. That capture brought France formally into the war. Benjamin Franklin negotiated a permanent military alliance in early 1778, and on the 6th of February the two nations signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance. Spain and the Dutch Republic followed in 1779 and 1780, forcing Britain to fight a global war without major allies. Money was the deeper struggle. In 1775 there was at most twelve million dollars in gold in the colonies. Congress issued paper money called "Continental Dollars," the first issue alone amounting to 242 million dollars, until "not worth a Continental" became a synonym for valueless. France secretly supplied money, gunpowder, and munitions. The end came at Yorktown. Cornwallis marched to Virginia expecting rescue by a British fleet, but a larger French fleet won the Battle of the Chesapeake and left him trapped. In October 1781 the British surrendered their second invading army of the war to the combined French and Continental forces under Washington. The news reached London late that year. Lord North's support ebbed away, and he resigned. George III drafted an abdication notice that was never delivered, and in early 1783 privately conceded, "America is lost!"
On the 3rd of September 1783, Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, recognizing the sovereign independence of the United States. The new nation gained nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, while Spain took Florida. Prime Minister Lord Shelburne, who led the British side, foresaw highly profitable two-way trade with the rapidly growing United States. The Americans had opened direct secret negotiations with London, cutting out the French, who had hoped to confine the new nation east of the Appalachian Mountains. Independence won, the government still operated under the Articles of Confederation, approved by Congress on the 5th of November 1777 and fully ratified on the 1st of March 1781. It had no power to tax. Nationalists led by Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other veterans feared the nation was too fragile to survive an international war or internal revolts like Shays's Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts. They persuaded Congress to call the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. The new Constitution it produced created a federal republic with authority to tax and a stronger national government balanced among executive, judiciary, and legislature. It was ratified in 1788. George Washington took office as president in New York in March 1789. The debts remained. Foreign loans from France stood at twelve million dollars, the national government owed forty million to Americans, and the states owed twenty-five million more. In 1790, at the recommendation of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Congress combined these into one national debt totaling eighty million dollars, paying face value so that national credit would be established. James Madison spearheaded the amendments that became the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791. When John Adams arrived as American Minister to London in 1785, George III had made his peace with the new order. "I was the last to consent to the separation," he told Adams, "but... I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power."
Common questions
What was the American Revolution and when did it happen?
The American Revolution was a political movement in the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain that ran from 1765 to 1789. It began as a rebellion over the rights of Englishmen and evolved into a revolution that produced the sovereign United States.
Why did the American colonists rebel against Britain?
The colonists rebelled because Parliament imposed taxes such as the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts without giving them representation, captured in the slogan "No taxation without representation." Discontent grew after the French and Indian War, when Britain sought greater control over colonial affairs and garrisoned troops in North America.
What was the Boston Tea Party in the American Revolution?
On the 16th of December 1773, men led by Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke Indigenous people boarded British East India Company ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 10,000 pounds worth of taxed tea into the water. It was a protest against the Tea Act, and Parliament responded with the punitive Intolerable Acts.
When was the Declaration of Independence adopted during the American Revolution?
The Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July 1776 at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. It was drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson and famously proclaimed that "all men are created equal."
How did the American Revolutionary War end?
The war turned decisively at the Siege of Yorktown in October 1781, when the British army under Cornwallis surrendered to combined French and Continental forces commanded by George Washington. Britain signed the Treaty of Paris on the 3rd of September 1783, recognizing American sovereignty and ceding territory east of the Mississippi River.
What role did France play in the American Revolution?
France formally entered the war after the American victory at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777, and Benjamin Franklin negotiated a permanent military alliance signed on the 6th of February 1778. France supplied money, gunpowder, and munitions, and its fleet's victory at the Battle of the Chesapeake left Cornwallis trapped at Yorktown.
What ideas inspired the American Revolution?
The American Revolution drew on the American Enlightenment, including natural law, natural rights, consent of the governed, and equality under the law. John Locke, often called "the philosopher of the American Revolution," argued in his Two Treatises of Government that all humans were created equally free and governments needed the consent of the governed.