The American Revolution
The American colonies prospered during the eighteenth century , with the cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia in particular becoming home to a wealthy, highly educated and highly articulate middle class. Frustration began to mount at the inequities of the colonies' relationship with Britain. While they were allowed to trade among themselves, the Americans could otherwise only sell their produce to the British, and all transatlantic commerce had to be undertaken in British ships. Although full-scale independence was not an explicit goal until late in the century, the main factor making it possible was the economic impact of the pan-European conflict known as the Seven Years War . Officially, the war in Europe lasted from 1756 to 1763, but fighting among the English, French and Spanish in North America broke out a little earlier. Beginning in 1755 with the mass expulsion of French settlers from Acadia in Nova Scotia (triggering their epic migration to Louisiana, where as the Cajuns they remain to this day), the British went on to conquer all of Canada. In forcing the surrender of Quebec in 1759, General Wolfe brought the war to a close; the French ceded Louisiana to the Spanish rather than let it fall to the British, while Florida passed into British control for a year before reverting to the Spanish. All the European monarchs were left hamstrung by debts, and it became apparent to the British that colonialism in America was not as profitable a business as in those parts of the world where the native populations could be coerced into working for their overseas masters. There was one other major player on the scene - the Iroquois Confederacy . Evidence of Iroquois culture, characterized by military expansionism and even human sacrifice, has been found in the Great Lakes region dating from around 1000 AD onwards. Forever in competition with the Algonquin and the Huron, the southern Iroquois had by the eighteenth century resolved themselves into a League of Five Nations - the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk, all in what's now upstate New York. Wooed by both French and British, the Iroquois for most of the century charted an independent course between the two. During negotiations with the colonists in 1744, an Onondaga chief, unimpressed by the squabbling representatives of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, had recommended "by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power." Benjamin Franklin, who was present, wrote in 1751 that "It would be a very strange thing if ? ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union ? that has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies." Shortly after the Seven Years War, an unsuccessful insurrection by the Ottawa tribe in 1763, led by their chief Pontiac , led the cash-strapped British to conclude that, while America needed its own standing army, it was not unreasonable to expect the colonists to pay for it. In 1765, the British introduced the Stamp Act , which required duty on all legal transactions and printed matter in the colonies to be paid to the British Crown. Firm in the belief that there should be "no taxation without representation," delegates from nine of the colonies met in the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765. By that time, however, the British prime minister responsible for the Act had already been dismissed by King George III. Only briefly, in Georgia, were the offending stamps ever distributed, and the Act was repealed in 1766. However, in 1767, Chancellor Townshend made political capital at home by proclaiming "I dare tax America" as he introduced a program of legislation that included the broadly similar Revenue Act. That led the merchants of Massachusetts, inspired by Samuel Adams , to vote to boycott English goods; they were subsequently joined by all the other colonies except New Hampshire. Townshend's Acts were repealed in turn by a new prime minister, Lord North, on March 5, 1770. By chance, on that same day a stone-throwing mob surrounded the Customs House in Boston; shots from the guards killed five people in what became known as the Boston Massacre . Even so, most of the colonies resumed trading with Britain, and the crisis was postponed for a few more years. In May 1773, Lord North's Tea Act relieved the debt-ridden East India Company of the need to pay duties on exports to America, while still requiring the Americans to pay duty on tea. Massachusetts called for the colonies to unite in action, and its citizens took the lead on December 16 in the Boston Tea Party , when three tea ships were boarded and 342 chests thrown into the sea. As John Adams put it, "to let it be landed would be giving up the principle of taxation by Parliamentary authority." The infuriated British Parliament thereupon began to pass a body of legislation collectively known as both the "Coercive" and the "Intolerable" Acts, which included closing the port of Boston and disbanding the government of Massachusetts. Thomas Jefferson argued that the acts amounted to "a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." To discuss a response, the first Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia on May 5, 1774, and attended by representatives of all the colonies except Georgia. War finally broke out on April 18, 1775, when General Gage, the newly imposed governor of Massachusetts, dispatched four hundred British soldiers to destroy the arms depot at Concord , in order to prevent weapons from falling into rebel hands. Silversmith Paul Revere was dispatched by the citizens of Boston on his legendary ride to warn the rebels, and the British were confronted en route at Lexington by 77 American "Minutemen," and the resulting skirmish led to the "shot heard round the world." Congress set about forming an army at Boston, and decided for the sake of unity to appoint a Southern commander, George Washington . One by one, as the war raged, the colonies set up their own governments and declared themselves to be states, and the politicians set about defining the society they wished to create. The writings of pamphleteer Thomas Paine - especially Common Sense - were, together with the Confederacy of the Iroquois , a great influence on the Declaration of Independence . Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, this was adopted by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. The anti-slavery clauses originally included by Jefferson - himself a slave-owner - were omitted to spare the feelings of the Southern states, though the section that denounced the King's dealings with "merciless Indian Savages" was left in. At first, the Revolutionary War went well for the British. General Howe crossed the Atlantic with around twenty thousand men, took New York and New Jersey, and ensconced himself in Philadelphia for the winter of 1777-78. Washington's army was encamped not far away at Valley Forge, freezing cold and all but starving to death. However, General Burgoyne's expedition, which set out from Canada to march on New England, was so harried by rebel guerrillas that he found himself obliged to surrender at Saratoga in October 1777. As the logistical difficulty of maintaining the British war effort became ever more apparent, other European powers took delight in coming to the aid of the Americans. Benjamin Franklin led a wildly successful delegation to France to request support, and soon the nascent American fleet was being assisted in its bid to cut British naval communications by both the French and the Spanish. The end came when Cornwallis, who had replaced Howe, was instructed to dig in at Yorktown and wait for the Royal Navy to come to his aid, only for the French to seal off Chesapeake Bay and prevent reinforcement. Cornwallis surrendered to Washington on October 17, 1781, just fifteen miles from the site of the first English settlement at Jamestown. The ensuing Treaty of Paris granted the Americans their independence on generous terms - the British completely abandoned their Native American allies, including the Iroquois, to the vengeance of the victors - and Washington entered New York as the British left in November 1783. The Spanish were confirmed in their possession of Florida. The victorious US Congress met for the first time in 1789, and the tradition of awarding political power to the nation's most successful generals was instigated by the election of George Washington as the first president. He was further honored when his name was given to the new capital city of Washington DC , deliberately sited between the North and the South.
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