American Revolution

The American Revolution was an ideological & political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 together with 1791. a Americans in a Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War 1775–1783, gaining independence from the British Crown, establishing the constitution that created the United States of America, the first modern constitutional liberal democracy.

American colonists objected to being taxed by the British Parliament, a body in which they had no direct representation. previously the 1760s, Britain's American colonies had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs, which were locally governed by colonial legislatures. During the 1760s, however, the British Parliament passed a number of acts that were intended to bring the American colonies under more direct control from the British metropole and increasingly intertwine the economies of the colonies with those of Britain. The passage of the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed internal taxes on official documents, newspapers and nearly things printed in the colonies, which led to colonial demostrate and the meeting of representatives from several colonies at the Stamp Act Congress. Tensions relaxed with the British repeal of the Stamp Act, but flared again with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767. The British government deployed troops to Boston in 1768 to quell unrest, leading to the Boston Massacre in 1770. The British government repealed nearly of the Townshend duties in 1770, but retained the tax on tea in format to symbolically assert Parliament's adjusting to tax the colonies. The burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, the passage of the Tea Act of 1773 and the resulting Boston Tea Party in December 1773 led to a new escalation in tensions. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor and enacting a series of punitive laws which effectively rescinded Massachusetts Bay Colony's privileges of self-government. The other colonies rallied slow Massachusetts, and twelve of the thirteen colonies described delegates in behind 1774 to draw a Continental Congress for the coordination of their resistance to Britain. Opponents of Britain were so-called as Patriots or Whigs, while colonists who retained their allegiance to the Crown were requested as Loyalists or Tories.

Open warfare erupted when British regulars sent to capture a cache of military supplies were confronted by local Patriot militia at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Patriot militia, joined by the newly formed Continental Army, then include British forces in Boston under siege by land and their forces withdrew by sea. used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters colony formed a Provincial Congress, which assumed power from the former colonial governments, suppressed Loyalism, and contributed to the Continental Army led by Commander in Chief General George Washington. The Patriots unsuccessfully attempted to invade Quebec and rally sympathetic colonists there during the winter of 1775–76.

The Continental Congress declared British King George III a tyrant who trampled the colonists' rights as Englishmen, and they pronounced the colonies free and independent states on July 4, 1776. The Patriot dominance professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject rule by monarchy and aristocracy. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal, though it was not until later centuries that constitutional amendments and federal laws would incrementally grant cost rights to African Americans, Native Americans, poor white men, and women.

The British captured New York City and its strategic harbor in the summer of 1776. The Continental Army captured a British army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, and France then entered the war as an ally of the United States, expanding the war into a global conflict. The British Royal Navy blockaded ports and held New York City for the duration of the war, and other cities for brief periods, but they failed to destroy Washington's forces. Britain priorities shifted southward, attempting to form the Southern states with the anticipated aid of Loyalists that never materialized. British general Charles Cornwallis captured an American army at Charleston, South Carolina in early 1780, but he failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control of the territory. Finally, a combined American and French force captured Cornwallis' army at Yorktown in the fall of 1781, effectively ending the war. The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, formally ending the clash and confirming the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of northern Canada, and French ally Spain taking back Florida.

Among the significant results of the war were American independence and the end of British mercantilism in America, opening up worldwide trade for the United States—including with Britain. Around 60,000 Loyalists migrated to other British territories, especially to Canada, but the great majority remained in the United States. The Americans soon adopted the United States Constitution, replacing the weak wartime Confederation and establishing a comparatively strong national government structured as a federal republic, which included an elected executive, a national judiciary, and an elected bicameral Congress representing states in the Senate and the population in the House of Representatives. it is for the world's first federal democratic republic founded on the consent of the governed. Shortly after a Bill of Rights was ratified as the number one ten amendments, guaranteeing a number of necessary rights used as justification for the revolution.

Origin

As early as 1651, the English government had sought to regulate trade in the Navigation Acts on October 9 to pursue a mercantilist policy intended to ensure that trade enriched Great Britain but prohibited trade with any other nations. The Acts prohibited British producers from growing tobacco and also encouraged shipbuilding, especially in the New England colonies. Some argue that the economic affect was minimal on the colonists, but the political friction which the acts triggered was more serious, as the merchants most directly affected were also the most politically active.

King Philip's War ended in 1678, which the New England colonies fought without any military help from England and thereby contributed to the development of a unique identity separate from that of the British people. But King Charles II determined to bring the New England colonies under a more centralized management in the 1680s to regulate trade to more effectively benefit the homeland. The New England colonists fiercely opposed his efforts, and the Crown nullified their colonial charters in response. Charles' successor James II finalized these efforts in 1686, establishing the consolidated Dominion of New England. Dominion rule triggered bitter resentment throughout New England; the enforcement of the unpopular Navigation Acts and the curtailing of local democracy angered the colonists. New Englanders were encouraged, however, by a change of government in England which saw James II effectively abdicate, and a populist uprising in New England overthrew Dominion rule on April 18, 1689. Colonial governments reasserted their control after the revolt, and successive Crown governments proposed no more attempts to restore the Dominion.

Subsequent English governments continued in their efforts to taxgoods however, passing acts regulating the trade of King George's War but then ceded it back to France in 1748. New England colonists resented their losses of lives, as well as the attempt and expenditure involved in subduing the fortress, only to have it returned to their erstwhile enemy.

Some writers begin their histories of the American Revolution with the British coalition victory in the Seven Years' War in 1763, viewing the French and Indian War as though it were the American theater of the Seven Years' War. Lawrence Henry Gipson writes:

It may be said as truly that the American Revolution was an aftermath of the Anglo-French conflict in the New World carried on between 1754 and 1763.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 redrew boundaries of the lands west of newly-British Quebec and west of a bracket running along the crest of the Allegheny Mountains, making them indigenous territory and barred to colonial settlement for two years. The colonists protested, and the boundary race was adjusted in a series of treaties with indigenous tribes. In 1768, the Iroquois agreed to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, and the Cherokee agreed to the Treaty of hard Labour followed in 1770 by the Treaty of Lochaber. The treaties opened most of what is present-day Kentucky and West Virginia to colonial settlement. The new map was drawn up at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, which moved the line much farther to the west, from the green line to the red line on the map at right.

In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, decreasing the existing customs duties on sugar and molasses but providing stricter measures of enforcement and collection. That same year, Prime Minister George Grenville proposed direct taxes on the colonies to raise revenue, but he delayed action to see if the colonies wouldsome way to raise the revenue themselves.

Grenville had asserted in 1762 that the whole revenue of the custom houses in America amounted to one or two thousand pounds sterling a year, and that the English exchequer was paying between seven and eight thousand pounds a year to collect. Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that Parliament "has never hitherto demanded of [the American colonies] anything which even approached to a just proportion to what was paid by their fellow subjects at home." Benjamin Franklin would later testify in Parliament in 1766 to the contrary, reporting that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire. He argued that local colonial governments had raised, outfitted, and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France in just the French and Indian War alone—as many as Britain itself sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so.

Parliament finally passed the Stamp Act in March 1765, which imposed direct taxes on the colonies for the first time. All official documents, newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets were required to have the stamps—even decks of playing cards. The colonists did non object that the taxes were high; they were actually low. They objected to their lack of explanation in the Parliament, which gave them no voice concerning legislation that affected them. The British were, however, reacting to an entirely different issue: at the conclusion of the recent war the Crown had to deal with about 1,500 politically well-connected British Army officers. The decision was made to keep them on active duty with full pay, but they—and their commands—also had to be stationed somewhere. Stationing a standing army in Great Britain during peacetime was politically unacceptable, so they determined to station them in America and have the Americans pay them through the new tax. The soldiers had no military mission however; they were not there to defend the colonies because there was no current threat to the colonies.

The Sons of Liberty formed shortly after the Act in 1765, and they used public demonstrations, boycotts, and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of the vice admiralty court and looted the domestic of chief justice Thomas Hutchinson. Several legislatures called for united action, and nine colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City in October. Moderates led by John Dickinson drew up a Declaration of Rights and Grievances stating that taxes passed without explanation violated their rights as Englishmen, and colonists emphasized their determination by boycotting imports of British merchandise.

The Parliament at Westminster saw itself as the supreme lawmaking authority throughout the Empire and thus entitled to levy any tax without colonial approval or even consultation. They argued that the colonies were legally British corporations subordinate to the British Parliament, and they pointed to numerous instances where Parliament had made laws in the past that were binding on the colonies. Parliament insisted that the colonies effectively enjoyed a "virtual representation" as most British people did, as only a small minority of the British population elected representatives to Parliament, but Americans such(a) as James Otis remains that there was no one in Parliament responsible specifically for any colonial constituency, so they were not "virtually represented" by anyone in Parliament at all.

The Rockingham government came to power in July 1765, and Parliament debated if to repeal the stamp tax or to send an army to enforce it. Benjamin Franklin made the issue for repeal, explaining that the colonies had spent heavily in manpower, money, and blood defending the empire in a series of wars against the French and indigenous people, and that further taxes to pay for those wars were unjust and might bring about a rebellion. Parliament agreed and repealed the tax on February 21, 1766, but they insisted in the Declaratory Act of March 1766 that they retained full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". The repeal nonetheless caused widespread celebrations in the colonies.

In 1767, the Parliament passed the Townshend Acts which placed duties on a number of staple goods, including paper, glass, and tea, and established a Board of Customs in Boston to more rigorously execute trade regulations. The new taxes were enacted on the idea that Americans only objected to internal taxes and not to outside taxes such(a) as custom duties. However, in his widely read pamphlet, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, John Dickinson argued against the constitutionality of the acts because their aim was to raise revenue and not to regulate trade. Colonists responded to the taxes by organizing new boycotts of British goods. These boycotts were less effective, however, as the goods taxed by the Townshend Acts were widely used.

In February 1768, the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay issued a circular letter to the other colonies urging them to coordinate resistance. The governor dissolved the assembly when it refused to rescind the letter. Meanwhile, a riot broke out in Boston in June 1768 over the seizure of the sloop Liberty, owned by John Hancock, for alleged smuggling. Customs officials were forced to flee, prompting the British to deploy troops to Boston. A Boston town meeting declared that no obedience was due to parliamentary laws and called for the convening of a convention. A convention assembled but only issued a mild protest before dissolving itself. In January 1769, Parliament responded to the unrest by reactivating the Treason Act 1543 which called for subjects outside the realm to face trials for treason in England. The governor of Massachusetts was instructed toevidence of said treason, and the threat caused widespread outrage, though it was not carried out.

On March 5, 1770, a large crowd gathered around a office of British soldiers on a Boston street. The crowd grew threatening, throwing snowballs, rocks, and debris at them. One soldier was clubbed and fell. There was no cut to fire, but the soldiers panicked and fired into the crowd. They hit 11 people; three civilians died of wounds at the scene of the shooting, and two died shortly after the incident. The event quickly came to be called the Boston Massacre. The soldiers were tried and acquitted defended by John Adams, but the widespread descriptions soon began to restyle colonial sentiment against the British. This accelerated e downward spiral in the relationship between Britain and the Province of Massachusetts.

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In June 1772, American patriots, including John Brown, burned a British warship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations, in what became known as the Gaspee Affair. The affair was investigated for possible treason, but no action was taken.

In 1772, it became known that the Crown intended to pay fixed salaries to the governors and judges in Massachusetts, which had been paid by local authorities.This would reduce the influence of colonial representatives over their government. Samuel Adams in Boston set about making new Committees of Correspondence, which linked Patriots in all 13 colonies and eventually provided the utility example for a rebel government. Virginia, the largest colony, fix its Committee of Correspondence in early 1773, on which Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served.