Revolution and the New Country: American History, 1755-1790

 

The Causes of the American Revolution

How the Colonials Won

Creating a New Nation-State

 

Introduction

History is irony. Things turn out differently than expected or planned, there are unintended consequences, a short-run success can be the source of a long-run failure.

 

The French and Indian War is an example. England, with American help, won the war. But, as a consequence of the war, England changed its policies towards its American colony. And lost America.

 

The loss of the American colonies was more important than the gain of Canada.

 

The French and Indian War was part of a global conflict between England and France. After England’s victory in North America, they made bad decisions affecting their American colonies. From being an ally, Americans became increasingly angry at English policies. The result was that only 12 years after the official end of the French and Indian War (1763), Americans rose up in revolt against English rule. The American Revolution was on.

The French and Indian War, 1755-1761

 In the 1700s, England and France fought five wars. The French and Indian War was part of the third, named the Seven Year War (1756-1763).

 

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. 

Americans, especially from New England, fought with the British army against the French Canadians and their Native American allies. 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 part 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 (all territory west of the Appalachian Mountains, which were effectively the western border of the colonies). 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. And many Americans saw the new lands west of the Appalachians as an opportunity to own farmland and be independent.

 

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 be 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 opposition 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. This is 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 English and American distributors and exporters in England. But in the early 1770s, the company had warehouses full of tea in England they couldn’t sell. They couldn’t sell the tea in England because there was a very high tariff (tax) on imported tea and other people smuggled in tea without paying the tariff. So their tea was cheaper.

 

So the East India Company decided to sell tea directly to the American colonies. They would bring tea to America in their own ships and sell tea directly to Americans at a lower price. 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.

 

Everyone focused on the tariff, not the lower price. Another colony-wide boycott was begun. 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. But King George and his cabinet were in no mood to negotiate.

 

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 own 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.

Besides the "home court advantage," the Americans had a psychological advantage. After the fighting began and King George made it clear there would be no negotiations, the Americans knew their only choices were to lose the war and suffer under harsher English rule (and the leaders would be hung as traitors) or be independent. And Americans were motivated by a radical new ideology of liberty and equality. They knew the potential advantages of self-rule under their own national government. To paraphrase Tom Paine, England might be able to defeat an American army, but they could never conquer the country. And there were armed 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.

 

After the battle of Bunker Hill (June 1775), the Americans realized they needed a permanent standing army. They could not continue to fight the British with part-time militias. So they formed the Continental Army under the command of George Washington.

 

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.

 

General Washington, when he assumed command of 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. 

 

On the other side, after Saratoga 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, South Carolina, 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 (the basis of the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot). 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, fought in further small engagements but couldn’t force a decisive battle with the elusive Greene. By now, Cornwallis’ army was reduced in numbers and effectiveness, exhausted, and 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.

Approximately 25,000 men were killed on both sides. England could absorb this loss and continue to be a world power. For the Americans, this was a major loss of life, about 5% of the white male population. But the Americans had no alternatives; either they win the war or again become an English colony under harsher rule.

 

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, named the Continental, was worthless. There was no gold or silver to mint coins.

 

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

 

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.

 

George Washington retired to his plantation.

 

There was fighting with Native Americans along the frontier. 

 

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. 

 

The Constitution they created was an extraordinary document. No other democracy or republic in history, not Athens, Rome or England, had a written constitution. After much debate and compromise, the Constitution set up the structure of the new government, the responsibilities of different branches of government, and how power and responsibilities were to be distributed. The power of the judiciary was vague but later John Marshall vigorous expanded the power of the Supreme Court.

 

Abolishing or limiting slavery was discussed at the Convention. The delegates from the Southern states pointed out that if the Constitution abolished slavery, the Southern states would reject the Constitution and ratification (approval) would fail.

 

After the Constitution was written and sent to the states for ratification, it was opposed by many people with good revolutionary credentials. 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). Opponents included Patrick Henry. John Hancock opposed it for a long time but in the end reluctantly supported it, ensuring Massachusetts’ ratification.

 

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 of these arguments are still used today; America has never resolved this conflict between states rights and federal laws.)

 

After the government was established in 1789, political leaders like Jefferson and Hamilton debated America’s future and what role the federal government would play in it.

America in 1790:  The First Census

The census of 1790 counted approximately 3,900,000 people. Over 3 million were white Europeans and their descendants. About 700,000 were slaves, 18% of the total population. This was the highest percent recorded in any census. Over 100,000 Americans had already moved beyond the state borders into what was called the Western Territories, land on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains.

 

America had a young, rapidly-growing population There were as many whites under the age of 16 as 16 and over. 

 ======================================================

See the next post in this series, A New Nation, America From 1789-1860