American Colonial History, 1607-1775

 

American Colonial History, 1607-1775

 

Preliminary Comments

 

Between 1607 and 1775 about 550,000 – 600,000 Europeans migrated to the American colonies. Most American families were immigrants (or refugees) or had recent immigrant pasts. They were risk-takers. They left long-settled communities and societies to get on small, crowded sailing ships to make the dangerous 3,000 voyage to a new land that was mostly wilderness. Many died. They had to adapt to a new, frontier environment. They had to “tame the howling wilderness.” A high percent of the European immigrants in this period were from England, Scotland, and Scots from Northern Ireland. Almost all were Protestants.

 

Emigrants from England and Scotland came over in four “waves.” They were four distinctly different groups of people from different areas of the English isles.

 

To understand why these four groups left England and Scotland, at different times, it is necessary to know a little bit of English history during this period.

 

THE 1600s

 

The Failure of the First Settlements

 

The earliest settlements of Pilgrims coming to Plymouth (1620) and immigrants coming to Jamestown (1607) were failures. About half of the Pilgrims died on the voyage or in the first year. Very few new immigrants came to Plymouth. 

 

The company that settled Jamestown continued to send over thousands of new immigrants and many supply ships. But in the first 15 years, about 75% of the settlers died. There were many reasons, including that Jamestown was built on a malarial swamp. Neither group was prepared to deal with the harsh “wilderness” of America.

 

But there was one success. Some of the Jamestown settlers began growing tobacco.

 

The First Wave – Puritans coming to the Boston area. (1629-1642)

 

English background. In the early 1600s, there was political tension and conflict in England. The English kings thought they could rule without consulting Parliament. But many people in England thought the King and Parliament should rule together. They opposed the kings right to rule without Parliament. 

 

At the same time, there was a bitter conflict over who would control the Church of England. The Church of England was the official, government-supported church. It was Protestant (it was illegal to be a Catholic in England at this time). Most English were members. But some members wanted a church controlled by its bishops, who were appointed by the king. Top-down, hierarchical control. Others wanted to “reform” or “purify” the Church, move it further away from traditional practices and beliefs. Some even thought individual congregations should be able to appoint their ministers without interference from the bishops. These people were called Puritans.

 

The fights over who should control the government and who should control the Church of England were connected. Supporters of the king also supported a Church controlled by its leaders, the bishops. Many supporters of Parliament were also Puritans.

 

By the late 1620s, it was obvious that the king and the bishops had won the fight over power and control. Many Puritans recognized they had lost and wanted to leave England. They came to the American colonies.

 

From 1629 to 1642, about 20,000 Puritans came to the Boston area and started to spread out. This area was known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were highly organized and well-prepared to set up towns and farms. They came in families, brought farm equipment and supplies, and their own Puritan ministers. They quickly set up a seminary to train new Puritan ministers; we now call this school Harvard. They prospered and their numbers increased rapidly. They spread out into much of New England and beyond.

 

They wanted to set up a Puritan society that they controlled. They discouraged anyone who wasn’t a Puritan from settling in New England.

 

The Second Wave – Royalists coming to Virginia (1649-1660)

 

In 1642, civil war broke out in England – the Puritans and Parliament supporters against the king and his supporters. Supporters of the king were called royalists (also called cavaliers). Many were members of landowning aristocratic and gentry families.

 

The king and his supporters lost. Many royalists didn’t want to live under a government and church controlled by Parliament and Puritans. So many came to Virginia, where a pro-royalist governor created a society dominated by royalists. He gave them large tracts of land, the basis of the spread of tobacco plantations. 

 

They tried to recreate the kind of society and government they ruled before the civil war. Fortunately, there was hundreds of miles of wilderness between Virginia and Massachusetts.

 

The Third Wave – Quakers coming to Pennsylvania (late 1600s and early 1700s)

 

Not everyone in England belonged to the official Church of England. They were called “dissenting sects.” One of the most prominent was the Quakers.

 

The Quakers were persecuted by government and church officials. In the 1680s, William Penn worked out a deal with the king, who granted Penn, who had converted to Quakerism, ownership and control over a large area in America. Pennsylvania. It became a haven for Quakers. Many of the Quakers in England, over 20,000, emigrated to Pennsylvania and nearby areas. 

 

About 100,000 Europeans emigrated to the American colonies in the 1600s. By the end of the 1600s, there were about 200,000 European immigrants and their descendants along the Atlantic coast. A very high percent, maybe 90% or more, were from England and Wales. Their numbers increased rapidly because of this immigration and high birth rates.

 

FROM 1700 TO 1775 (THE FIRST YEAR OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION)

 

Immigration was different in the 1700s than in the 1600s. There were four main groups:

 

English – about 100,000

Scots and Scot-Irish – also about 100,00

German speaking – somewhat less than 100,000

African slaves – about 300,000

Small numbers of other groups, including French Huguenots (Protestants) and Irish Catholics

 

Total immigration was around 600,000. English immigrants were a minority of the European immigrants and a small minority of total immigrants. By 1775, the American colonies were made up of a diverse population; English immigrants and their descendants may have been a minority of the total population.

 

Over half of the European immigrants were poor people who couldn’t afford the ship passage to America. To get to America, they became “indentured servants.” When the ships landed in America, the immigrants were auctioned off to pay the shipowners. Typically, an indentured servant “agreed” to work for their owners for four to seven years. They had almost no rights. After their indenture was complete, they were free; some received some compensation. They were often offered free or cheap land, so they had little reason to continue working on plantations. But since most of the good land along the Atlantic Ocean was owned by earlier immigrants and their descendants, the new immigrants had to move west to the unsettled frontier, much of which were the foothills and valleys of the Appalachian Mountains. 

 

English Immigrants

 

The composition of English immigrants in the 1700s were somewhat different than that of English immigrants in the 1600s. They were not part of distinct religious or political groups. They were generally poor. They came from different parts of England, including the borderlands. Many, maybe 20,000 or 20%, were criminals or convicts (in England, you could be sent to prison for not paying a debt). England emptied its jails and sent the inmates to America. They were indentured for seven years and did not get any land or compensation. Many became part of the landless poor.

 

People from the borderlands between northern England and Scotland (1700s)

The Scots and Scot-Irish

 

Fighting between northern English and lowland Scots, and among the Scots, had been going on for hundreds of years. This was a frontier, lawless area – little organized government or military control. There was much violence, including raids to cause destruction, pillage, and steal cattle. In addition, there was family and clan feuds on the Scottish side of the border.

 

In the 1600s and 1700s, England completed its campaign of clearing out Irish Catholics from Northern Ireland. Favored English were given large land grants. Many of the farm workers came from Scotland. They were Protestant. They were called Scot-Irish.

 

In the 1700s, a stronger English government successfully established control over northern England. Through battles and brutal military campaigns, England subdued the lowland (borderland) Scots. Many didn’t like the new order. At the same time, highland Scot landowners began clearing out their Scottish tenant farmers. Many Scots went to Northern Ireland to work. But conditions were not much better than in Scotland. In the 1700s, about 100,000 Scots and Scot-Irish emigrated to the American colonies.

 

Many of the settled colonies weren’t happy about the less “civilized” new immigrants. But the expanding plantation colonies of Virginia (tobacco) and South Carolina (rice) needed their labor.

 

Many of the borderland people settled into a similar frontier environment of little formal control in the foothills, valleys, and mountains of the Appalachian Mountains (the western geographical border of the colonies). For a long time, there was little government or legal presence. Few churches and little organized religion. Disputes were often settled by violence. Many raised cattle as in the borderlands. In America, they were called the “backcountry” people.

 

German-Speaking Immigrants

 

Many of the German-speaking immigrants came to America to avoid religious persecution. They held similar religious beliefs as the Quakers. They also were persecuted by German governments and their official (state-supported) religions. When the Quakers established Pennsylvania, it was a safe haven for the German sects, including the German-speaking Amish, Mennonites, Moravians and Schwenkfelders.

 

The German sects, like the Puritans and the Quakers, tended to come over as families and often with their ministers. They moved to the new lands west of the Quaker-dominated region around Philadelphia. Even today, part of their settlement is called the “Pennsylvania Dutch” country. The word “Dutch” is derived from the German word for Germans.

 

African Slaves

 

The largest colonial immigrant group was African slaves. About 300,000 African slaves were brought to the American colonies up to 1775. The number started to go up in the late 1600s and then accelerated after 1725. The total black population of colonial North America in 1775 was probably over 350,000, mostly slave but some free. Most of the slaves in the South worked on plantations, especially in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina.

 

Why was there African slavery in colonial America? There are demand side and supply reasons. 

 

The short answer is: the rapid expansion of the production of plantation crops. The limiting growth factor, as always in colonial America, was labor. Expansion originally depended on indentured servants. But many immigrants, including indentured servants, didn’t want to work on plantations. German-speaking immigrants went to Pennsylvania, not Virginia, Maryland, or South Carolina. Many Scottish immigrants avoided indenture. Then there were the long-run costs. Indentured servants only worked for four to seven years. Plantation owners had to buy new servants to replace leaving servants. For complicated reasons, the cost of indenture servants rose in the late 1600s. African slaves cost more but they were slaves for life. Children of slaves belonged to the slaveowner, a cheap source of future labor.

 

South Carolina was a special case. Plantation agriculture started when a few slaveowners and their slaves migrated from Barbados. Rice, not sugar, was the most profitable crop. Rice was exported to Europe and to Caribbean islands. By the late 1700s the rice growers in South Carolina were some of the richest families in America.

 

Slaves were available. The American continent was importing large number of slaves in the 1700s, mostly for the sugar-producing Caribbean islands and Brazil. Much of the trade to the Caribbean was controlled by English slavers. It was a short step to expand to the North American colonies.

 

Native Americans

 

I have not mentioned Native Americans. I assume there is currently much writing and discussion about Native Americans. It is a complicated topic.

 

In the end, unlike Spanish or Portuguese America, the rapid increase in the European population, combined with the pressure to expand farming into Native American lands with relatively small Native American populations, doomed Native American independence in parts of colonial and early Federalist America. Some tribes adapted. Some moved west. The Iroquois Confederation avoided most of the pressure and remained independent for some time. But the long, tragic history of land-hungry white Americans taking Native American land had begun.

 

Consequences

 

Many of the European immigrants came to America to avoid religious and political persecution. Equally important was the lure of unlimited new farmland. Rather than being tenant farmers (paying rent to a landowner) or landless farm laborers in Europe, immigrants had a chance to own large farms (by European standards) and be independent. For many, religious freedom and economic independence went together. For Africans, the exact opposite happened.

 

All groups had different ideas about how government, religion, and society should be organized. Or not organized. After the American Revolution, as the separate colonies became the United States, the clash of their different ideas would be the basis of many of America’s political conflicts.

 

The rapid increase in the population of these groups and their westward expansion looking for new farmland would have a profound influence on American history. The first consequence was that the western movement to new lands was a contributing factor in causing the American Revolution.

 

America in 1775

 

America in 1775 was a much different colony than the America of 100 years earlier. Population in the middle 1600s of around 100,000 – almost all of English descent and few slaves – had become a society of about 2 million people – about 1.5 million European immigrants and their descendants and about 350,000 African slaves. With high birth rates, plentiful and diverse food, and open immigration, Americans could expect their population to double by 1800.

 

Why the change? 

 

·      Access to “unlimited” free and cheap land for farming. 

·      Geographic mobility – individuals, families and groups leaving settled communities to move west. 

·      Fortunes to be made producing plantation crops and exporting into protected English markets (similar to the sugar islands in the Caribbean). 

·      Expanding merchant and shipping class to handle rapidly expanding domestic and foreign trade.

·      Development of craft production to fill rapidly rising standards of living. 

·      Overall opportunity – fewer obstacles to personal and family advancement. Individual and political freedom and democratic government compared to Europe and even England.

 

The Economy

 

Most Americans, like people everywhere, engaged in agriculture. But agriculture by 1775 was very different than the subsistence (producing food just for the farm family) agriculture in most of the rest of the world. Americans with large family-owned farms and plantations, produced enough food to make Americans well-fed, plus a surplus of grain and commercial crops for sale to local markets, towns, and for export.

 

Americans produced a surprisingly variety of food and crops. For example, many farms and plantations had apple orchards. The apples were mostly used to produce cider. I was also astonished to learn that bananas were grown in South Carolina. 

 

Americans had begun to experiment with growing mulberry trees throughout the colonies. Mulberry trees were the food for silkworms. Americans were trying to develop a silk industry. This venture would eventually fail. But many towns and rural areas even today have a Mulberry Street. Including Boston.  

 

America’s largest exports in colonial times were the plantation crops of tobacco and rice, followed by indigo (a blue dye from the indigo plant for England’s growing textile industry). The colonies also exported grain and other products like lumber and horses to the sugar-producing islands in the Caribbean. 

 

The American colonists imported most of their manufactured products from England. Everything from cloth, clothes, shoes, guns, swords, clocks, furniture, dinnerware, china (including Wedgwood), silverware and silver products, and all sorts of manufactured metal products including pots and shoe buckles. And tea.

 

The American colonies were England’s largest trading partner by 1775.

 

In the 1600s, almost all this trade was carried on English ships and controlled by English merchants. But by 1775, the American colonies had become major ship builders; more of the trade was carried in American ships. And more of the trade was organized by a growing merchant class in American ports. 

 

And by 1775, Americans were producing some of their own manufactured goods. Most farm families made cloth. American craftsmen were producing furniture, dinnerware, and silver products. The most famous silversmith was Paul Revere.

 

A colonial image shows a farm family with metal pots and other metal goods, a gun over the mantel, metal buckles on man’s shoes, a butter churn (kept cows?), and a spinning wheel to make yarn. They also owned a grandfather clock. These products were of a simple style; some of them were probably made in America.

 

With unlimited land and a rapidly-growing population, rising exports, and new types of economic activity, the American economy was also rapidly growing and developing. On average, white Americans enjoyed a high standard of living by 1775. 

 

Politics and Government

 

America was more democratic than England. No king, no aristocracy who dominated land-holding and political power. No state-supported church. Much higher literacy rates. A much higher percent of white males voted and were active in government than in England. 

 

From the very beginning, the American colonies were self-governing. At both the local and provincial (colony) level, most of the government officials were democratically elected. The exception was that some of the provincial governors were appointed by London. But their salaries had to be approved by provincial assemblies, which gave them some control over the governors.

 

One example of America’s political independence from English control was that Americans found it easy to evade the Navigation Acts. The Navigation Acts basically said that all American exports and imports had to be with England or English colonies. But Americans routinely ignored the Navigation Acts by trading with other countries and their colonies. Although illegal, Americans and American ships imported goods from other countries. England had too few officials and ships in America to stop this smuggling (sneaking in illegal imports). Probably the best-known smuggler was John Hancock. 

 

By 1775, over 50% of free adult males were qualified to vote. And Americans were very active voters, with high turn-outs at election times. In England, by contrast, fewer then 5% of adult males were qualified to vote. In over half of parliamentary elections, there was only one candidate. 

 

Americans were highly literate; about 70% of white males and 50% of white females could read and write. The percents in England were much lower.

The American colonies had more newspapers than England, which had a larger population. Foreign observers often remarked that Americans seemed to love to read and talk about politics (often in taverns).

 

OVERVIEW

 

By 1775, the American colonies had become a rather unique society. It was very different than most of the rest of the world, even England. Large, family-owned farms. New land on the frontier. Commercially active. Literate. Democratic and politically engaged. Economic opportunity – few barriers to start new businesses or develop new skills (no guilds). Physical (move west) and economic mobility. King far away and no aristocratic landowning class. No long-settled rural class society. No official (state-supported) religion. (But in a few colonies, the dominant religion was supported by local taxes.) No large standing army. Low taxes.

 

By 1775, Europeans had become or were becoming Americans. England’s North American colony was less “English” and more diverse than a century earlier. Puritans were becoming Yankees; many were challenging their Puritan roots and moving away from the Boston area.  By the early 1700s, many New Englanders thought Harvard (established to train Puritan ministers and teachers), had become too “liberal.” Virginia royalists had become plantation owners, with African slaves replacing European indentured servants. Many had gone from being Tories (supporters of king and aristocrats) to becoming Whigs (critics of king and his royal governors of Virginia) as they engaged in bitter political battles with appointed English governors. Many big South Carolina plantation and slave owners were also becoming Whigs.

 

These three groups would contribute many of the leaders and military officers of the coming American Revolution, including George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

 

Quakers came to America as a small persecuted religious group and had become the dominant merchant and political group in the greater Philadelphia regions. Maybe the Scots and Scot-Irish, relatively late arrivers, probably changed the least by 1775, but many hated the English and already had a strong sense of personal independence.

 

There was individual mobility. The most famous example was Benjamin Franklin, who went from being a penniless “immigrant” from Boston to the richest man in Philadelphia. He was an urban entrepreneur and a major investor in urban real estate. An anglophile (lover of the English), he also went from a man who retired to England and expected to die there to be one of the leaders of American independence from England.

 

The Manigault family went from penniless religious refugees (French Huguenots) to the richest family in South Carolina in three generations. (They would be followed after the Revolution by the du Pont family, French political refugees)

 

This was not a settled or stagnant society. By the standards of the time, colonial America was a “modern” society. The only threat to dynamic change and growth was that America was still an English colony. That would change.

 

 

 

 

French and Indian War

 

In the 1700s, England and France fought five wars. The French and Indian War was part of the fourth.

 

Fighting broke out between English soldiers and their American allies on the one side and French Canadians and their Native American allies on the other in 1755. 

American colonists contributed many troops and much material support. Thousands of Americans died or were wounded. 

 

The first shots of the war were probably fired by a Virginia colonial regiment. Its commander was Colonel George Washington.

 

This conflict then became part of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), a global conflict between England and France. This war was fought in Europe, India, the Caribbean and North America. It ended in victory for the English; England took over French Canada and French territory in the upper Ohio Valley.

 

England was now a global imperial power, ruling much of India, much of the Caribbean, and much of North America. But England had a problem. The war had been long and very expensive. Taxes were raised at home and the government’s debt went way up. England had to issue new bonds and pay interest to the bondholders. The government of George III looked around for new sources of revenue.

 

England had another problem. It had to leave troops in North America to protect Americans along the frontier from Native American attacks, to occupy Canada, and to garrison the many French forts west of the Appalachian Mountains. Conflicts with Native American tribes broke out right after the war ended. Fighting with the powerful Iroquois Confederation and other tribes seemed inevitable as American farmers, plantation owners and land speculators started to move west into former French territory.

 

To minimize English military expenditures and try to avoid warfare with the Native Americans, the English government decreed that Americans had to stay out of the new territory. Nothing could have dissolved American goodwill faster. Pride in being part of England’s victory quickly turned to anger. Americans believed that access to free or cheap new lands was part of their birthright.

 

As if this weren’t enough, England decided it was time to bring its American colonies under stricter English control. Their policy of “benign neglect” of over 150 years was at an end. English warships patrolled American waters to capture American smugglers. English officials were sent to America to enforce the Navigation Acts and collect tariffs (taxes on imports). All governors had to appointed by London; before, some had been elected by provincial voters. They answered to English government directives. 

 

England also felt that Americans benefited from the war and should help pay for it. So the English government passed a series of laws imposing new taxes on their American colonies. Americans were not accustomed to paying taxes, except for local taxes they voted on themselves. Every time England imposed a new tax, howls of protest went up in America. Then Parliament would repeal (cancel) the tax and try a different one. That just made the Americans angrier. Protests became larger and better organized. Americans from the different colonies set up a correspondence network to share information and coordinate strategies. Local groups called “Sons of Liberty” were formed. Some Americans began talking about their rights as Englishmen, shifting the opposition from new taxes to abstract rights. Always dangerous. Shouts of “no taxation” became “no taxation without representation,” meaning Americans shouldn’t pay taxes unless they voted for the taxes themselves or were represented in Parliament. This was not going to happen since most Englishmen were not represented in Parliament.

 

And then came tea. Americans imported tea from the English East India Company, which had a monopoly to buy and distribute Chinese tea throughout the British Empire. The East India Company sold tea to American merchants. But in the early 1770s, the company had warehouses full of tea they couldn’t sell. They decided to auction the tea rather than negotiate prices with individual merchants, thus cutting out the middle-men. They believed that, even with a tariff on tea, this would reduce the price of tea to American consumers and American tea drinkers would buy more. American merchants were very angry since some of them would be cut out of the trade. 

 

Everyone focused on the tariff, not the lower price. A colony-wide boycott was begun (not the first). As East India ships arrived at American ports, local mobs (or protest groups) blocked the unloading of the tea. In Boston, a mob boarded a ship and dumped the tea into the harbor. This was the final straw for the frustrated English. The damned colonists were destroying English private property! 

 

Boston was singled out for harsh punishment. English soldiers were sent to seize Boston, close the port, suspend elected governments, and close the courts. In short, martial law was declared. The head of the English army in North America, General Gage, had total authority. This was probably unexpected. In the past, England always backed down in the face of organized protests and boycotts. 

 

New England Puritans, who had no love lost for English kings anyway (many supported the beheading of an English king by English Puritans during the English Civil War), increased organized protest and boycotts, and stepped up the size and training of local militias. Weapons and gunpower were stockpiled. They also strengthened their ties with sympathetic groups throughout the colonies. 

 

1775

 

War was not inevitable.

 

The Boston Tea Party happened in December 1773. The first shots of the Revolution were fired in April 1775. Still, the war could have been avoided. It was more than a year later before the Continental Congress declared independence from England. Until it happened, most Americans did not want a break with England. Many Americans had personal and families ties with England. Wealthy Americans sent their sons to schools in England. Until the very end, most members of the Continental Congress tried to avoid a break with England.

 

Until 1775, almost all Americans did not think of themselves as Americans. Many, especially the political and economic elite, thought of themselves as Englishmen with all the historic rights of Englishmen. Others identified with different religious, language, and ethnic groups. If anything, most of the white population identified with their colony. Before 1775 (and after the Revolution), it was common for someone in a colony or state to refer to people from other colonies or states as “aliens.”

 

How did the Americans win? 

 

Before the war began

 

Most textbooks tell the story as a David vs. Goliath contest. On paper, the English should have won easily. They were a world power. They had a professional, well-trained, experienced army, considered one of the best in the world. England also had a large and powerful navy. It had proven during the last war that military forces in America could be supplied by the British navy and merchant marine from England. The country was not at war, so it could concentrate its military might on America.

 

Many of its officers and soldiers had fought in North America during the recent French and Indian War. They had fought alongside American militia units. General Gage had been the commander of British forces in America for 12 years. His wife was American. America was not foreign territory. 

 

If this were a traditional war fought in the traditional European manner, England would have won. But it mostly wasn’t. It was something new. And something modern – grassroots political organization, a vigorous propaganda campaign, guerrilla warfare, wearing down the will of the occupying country until they decided the cost of trying to stay was too high. I found it amazing in the 1960s that America’s strategic and military planners didn’t see the analogy between a massive American commitment in Vietnam and the massive English commitment at the start of the American Revolution. 

 

Each colony was separate and different until years of colony-wide protests and boycotts promoted some cooperation. Political networks throughout the colonies had been established. Local protest leaders and organizers corresponded with similar leaders elsewhere (Americans, like the English, were prolific letter writers.)

 

Public opinion shifted quickly in 1775 and 1776 as England cracked down in Boston. The rhetoric of the English government was belligerent and showed no signs of wanting to negotiate differences or grievances. In the colonies, the change in sentiment towards independence accelerated with the publication of Tom Paine’s Common Sense in early 1775. His short book was an instant best-seller. It was read aloud and debated throughout America (often in taverns). It was a brilliant and effective piece of political propaganda. It set out in plain language how England had a tyrannical government, oppressed Americans, and why America should be free of English rule.

 

Americans began to organize for independence. Local “patriotic” groups like the Sons of Liberty, started during the earlier protests, seized local (county) governments and local militias. They demanded that everyone sign a loyalty oath to support American independence. Local Tories (supporters of England) were attacked, driven from their homes, and occasionally killed. The most politically-active rebels had seized the initiative and silenced active and potential opposition.

 

The story of American farmers putting down their plows and taking up their guns to fight the British had some truth, especially in the first months of the war, but is not the whole story. Americans were not quite the untrained and unorganized military amateurs pictured here. Many were already members of local militias, whose training became more serious as the war approached. Many American officers and soldiers had fought in the French and Indian War. Since they fought as detachments of the regular British army, they knew how British officers thought and the strengths and weaknesses of British soldiers. Many future American generals saw combat in the earlier war, including George Washington, Israel Putnam, Philip Schuyler (future father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton), Benedict Arnold, and Daniel Morgan. Two other American generals, Charles Lee and Horatio Gates, had been officers in the English army. Ethen Allen was part of the joint force that captured Fort Ticonderoga from the French. He returned 16 years later, along with Continental Army troops under Benedict Arnold, to take it away from the English.

 

Americans had “home court advantage.” They knew the geography. The American colonies were a large area of about 100,000 square miles, larger than the English isles. Much of it was wilderness or sparsely populated. There were no way English forces could occupy this much territory.

 

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, England might be able to defeat an American army, but they could never conquer the country. And there were rebels everywhere.

 

Winning the war

 

In England, there were groups that supported American independence or favored negotiating differences. They included Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, manufacturers, merchants, and William Pitt, the former English prime minister who devised the brilliant strategy that won the Seven Years War. But these groups had little political power and were ignored by King George and his ministers. But they persisted and their opposition grew as the war dragged on.

 

The war started badly for the Brits.

 

After being forced to evacuate Boston, the English government decided on a major commitment of English forces to occupy the colonies and punish the rebels. The obvious target was New York. Both sides believed that controlling the port of New York was key. In the spring of 1776, the British sent over about half of their regular army and over half of their navy. In the battle of New York, the Brits routed Washington’s Continental Army, drove the remnants across the Hudson River, and pursued the Americans as they retreated through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Lord Cornwallis’ cavalry almost caught them. Later, in Washington’s most daring move of the war, his small army crossed over the Delaware River, caught England’s Hessian mercenaries napping in Trenton, drove north to capture Princeton, and once more eluded Cornwallis.

 

In September/October 1777, the Americans won the most important victory of the war. They defeated a large English army at Saratoga, New York. The battlefield American commanders, who were most responsible for the victory, were Benedict Arnold and Daniel Morgan. The English strategy of controlling the Hudson River area and isolating New England failed. But just as important, the American victory (and Benjamin Franklin’s brilliant diplomacy in France) convinced the French to support the rebels.

 

Over the next three years, England won battlefield victories but didn’t annihilate the Continental Army or convince the rebels to give up. The Brits occupied Philadelphia but were overextended and evacuated its army. George Washington, who started with the conventional belief that you won wars by winning battles, began to realize that the goal of winning independence was avoiding defeat and keeping the Continental Army together.

 

On the other side, the Brits had all but given up the idea of militarily conquering America. Many British soldiers and ships were assigned elsewhere. General Clinton, the commander of English forces, privately wrote that England would eventually leave.

 

In 1780, France made a major commitment in arms and money. A large force landed in New England and preliminary discussions about joint operations began. 

 

At about the same time, Clinton and Lord Cornwallis decided on one last attempt at offensive action. Starting with the assumption that there was widespread support for England in the southern colonies, an illusion the Sons of Liberty had destroyed years earlier, Cornwallis was to lead a large part of the English army through the South, rally local support, and defeat the Continental Army units sent to oppose him.

 

It was a slow-moving disaster. After taking Charleston, Cornwallis marched his army north, mostly through “backcountry” territory. He was constantly ambushed and harassed by the highly-effective guerilla tactics of local militias under Frances Marion and a detachment of mobile Virginian cavalry and infantry under Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee (father of Robert E. Lee). Frustrated and unable to engage the main Continental Army force under Nathanael Greene, Cornwallis approved a terrorist campaign by his cavalry commander, Colonel Tarleton, to intimidate the locals. It had the opposite effect. Local militias and state troops rallied to the side of the Continental Army; Daniel Morgan came out of retirement. After a campaign of small-scale encounters, Morgan and Greene decided on a battle at a place called Cowpens. Morgan adopted a daring, unorthodox strategy. After inflicting heavy losses on the English, especially Tarleton’s cavalry, the Americans withdrew. Cornwallis continued his pursuit, engaged in further engagements but couldn’t force a decisive battle. By now, his army reduced in numbers and effectiveness, exhausted, riven with malaria, he headed for Yorktown, Virginia, dug in, and sent a message to Clinton asking for the British navy to rescue his army.   

 

This created a dilemma for Washington. Washington always hoped that someday his forces would be strong enough to attack the English stronghold of New York and remove the personal disgrace of his earlier loss. With French support, he felt the time had come. But Rochambeau, the French commander, had been given secret orders not to attack the main English force in New York. Yorktown appeared as an alternative. Washington reluctantly agreed and the combined force marched and sailed south.

 

Luck was with the Americans and French. Clinton had sent a fleet to evacuate Cornwallis and his army. But a French fleet from the Caribbean arrived just in the nick of time and fought off the English fleet, which returned to New York. The Americans and French started a classic siege, moving closer and closer to British defensive positions. Finally, Colonel Alexander Hamilton stormed a key English redoubt (strong defensive position) and took it. English defenses started to crumble. Cornwallis and his army surrendered.

 

It was over. The war had been long, expensive and undecisive for England. Opposition to the war in England was growing. Everyone in the English government, except King George, knew it was time to negotiate a treaty.

 

Independent America

 

The rebels had won the war, but America was not a country.

 

There was almost no central (federal) government. The Confederation government had almost stopped functioning.

 

As during the war, the federal government could not tax the people to raise revenue.

 

The currency was worthless. There was no gold or silver to mint coins.

 

There was no way to resolve conflicts between states.

 

America was no longer within the British imperial trading system. Exports fell. Planters in Virginia and South Carolina suffered. As did port cities. There was a general recession.

 

English troops continued to man former French forts in the interior, contrary to the treaty agreement.

 

France withdrew its soldiers and financial support. Spain and France still claimed much of the land beyond the Appalachians.

 

The army had been disbanded. Having been occupied by the English army, no one was in favor of a permanent standing army to defend the new country.

 

There was fighting with Native Americans along the frontier. 

 

With England gone, governments in the separate colonies no longer had any strong reasons to cooperate.

 

George Washington retired to his plantation.

 

A small group of the Revolution leaders found this state of affairs intolerable. They decided to do something about it. The result was the Constitution.

 

There was some doubt about whether the members of the Constitutional Convention had a legal mandate to write an entirely new federal constitution. But the Constitutional Convention including George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. John Adams was absent because he was America’s ambassador to Great Britain, but he had input through correspondence with delegates. 

 

After the Constitution was written and sent to the states for ratification (approval), it was opposed by many people with good revolutionary credentials, including Patrick Henry. John Hancock opposed it but was eventually convinced to support it. Thomas Jefferson opposed it (he was in France as America’s ambassador) but was convinced to remain neutral after a very long correspondence with his friend James Madison (who wrote the first draft of the Constitution).

 

The Constitution narrowly passed but only after Madison and other backers promised to support amendments that limited the powers of the new federal government. Madison kept his promise. As the first Speaker of the House of Representatives, he wrote the amendments and saw they were passed. These amendments became the Bill of Rights. Later, Madison joined Jefferson as a strong advocate of states’ rights. Some of their arguments were later used by southern states to defend slavery and defy federal laws. (Some are still used today. America has never resolved this conflict.)

 

General Washington, who had taken over the new Continental Army around Boston, proposed a toast at an officers’ dinner. He hoped for a short war. But Israel Putnam, one of his three generals, countered with "I expect nothing but a long war, and I would have it a moderate one, that we may hold out till the mother country becomes willing to cast us off forever." Putnam seemed to understand that long, indecisive wars ground down the will of a more powerful enemy and promoted American nationalist feeling and cooperation.