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As the French empire in North America expanded, it collided with the growing British empire. During the late 17th and first half of the 18th centuries, France and Great Britain had fought three inconclusive wars. Each war had begun in Europe but spread to their overseas colonies. In 1754, after six relatively peaceful years, the French–British conflict reignited. This conflict is known as the French and Indian War.
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In 1761, the royal governor of Massachusetts authorized the use of the writs of assistance, a general search warrant that allowed British customs officials to search any colonial ship or building they believed to be holding smuggled goods. Because many merchants worked out of their residences, the writs enabled British officials to enter and search colonial homes whether there was evidence of smuggling or not. The merchants of Boston were outraged.
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Locke maintained that people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Furthermore, he contended, every society is based on a social contract—an agreement in which the people consent to choose and obey a government so long as it safeguards their natural rights. If the government violates that social contract by taking away or interfering with those rights, people have the right to resist and even overthrow the government.
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To avoid further costly conflicts with Native Americans, the British government prohibited colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. The Proclamation of 1763 established a Proclamation Line along the Appalachians, which the colonists were not allowed to cross. However, the
colonists, eager to expand westward from the increasingly crowded Atlantic seaboard, ignored the proclamation and continued to stream onto Native American lands. -
The war officially ended in 1763 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. Great Britain claimed Canada and virtually all of North America east of the Mississippi River. Britain also took Florida from Spain, which had allied itself with France. The treaty permitted Spain to keep possession of its lands west of the Mississippi and the city of New Orleans, which it had gained from France in 1762. France retained control of only a few islands and small colonies near Newfoundland, in the West Indies,
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It halved the duties on foreign-made molasses in the hopes that colnists would pay a lower tax rather than risk arrest by smuggling, it placed duties on certain imports that had not been taxed before, and it provided that colonists accused of violating the act would be tried in a vice-admiality court rather than a colonial court (one judge, no jury). COLONIAL MERCHANTS="reduce profits" MERCHANTS=no right to tax bc they had no colonist representatives to the body.
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Imposed tax on documents and printed items such as wills, newspapers, and playing cards. A stamp would be placed on an item to prove the tax was paid. First tax that affected colonists directly bc it was on goods and services rather than imported goods. Colonists united to defy law--> Sons of Liberty. They boycotted British goods, then in May 1766, Parliament repealed the law.
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Boston shopkeepers, artisans, and laborers organized a secret resistence group called the Sons of Liberty to protest the law. Samuel Adams, one of the founders of the Sons of Liberty, protested the British goods again because of the Declatory Act
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This act was passed the same day that the Stamp Act was repealed. This asserted Parliament's full right "to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever."
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Named after Charles Townshend, the leading government minister. It taxed goods that were imported into the colony from Britain, such as lead, glass, paint, paper, and TEA.Colonists organized a new boycott of imported goods. IT WAS REPEALED because Grenville realized that it costed more to enforce than they would ever bring in. (ex.) the tax raised about 295 pounds while sendint troops to BOSTON costs 170,000 pounds.
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Taunted by an angry mob, British troops fire into the crowd, killing five colonists. Colonial agitators label the conflict a massacre and publish a dramtic engraving depicting the violence.
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A large group of Boston rebels disguised themselves as Native Americans and proceeded to take action against three British Tea ships anchored in the harbor. The "Indians" dumped 18,000 pounds of the East India Company's tea into the waters of the Boston harbor.
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Lord North devised this in order to save the nealy bankrupt British India Company. It granted the company the right to sell tea to the colonies free of taxes that colonial tea sellers had to pay. This action would cut colonial merchants out of the tea trade by esablishing the East India Company to sell its tea directly to consumers for less.
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Shut down Boston Harbor ; Quartering Act, authorized British commanders to house soldiers in vacant private homes and other buildings ; General Thomas Gage was appointed as the new governor of Massachusetts. He placed Boston under martial law, ir rule imposed by the military.
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56 delegates met in Philadelphia and drew up a declaration of colonial rights. They defended the colonies' right to run their own affairs and stated that, if the British used force against the colonies, the colonies should fight back.
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Civilian soldiers who pledged to be ready to fight against the British on a minute's notice
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General Thomas Gage ordered troops to march from Boston to Concord Massachusetts to seize illegal weapons. Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott rode out to spread the word that 700 British troops were headed for Concord.
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The king's troops reached Lexington and they saw 70 minutemen drawn up in lines. The British commander ordered them to lay down their weapons and leave, but the minutemen began to move out without laying down their arms. Someone fired, then the British troops senta volley to shots. 8 minutemen was killed and 10 more wounded, but only 1 British soldier was injured. This battle lasted 15 minutes.
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British got to Concord only to find an empty arsenal. They lined up to go back to Boston but things quickly escalated into a slaughter. 3,000-4,000 minutemen had assembled by now, and they fired onto the marching troops from behind stone walls and trees.British soldiers fell by the dozen.
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To debate their next next move.Some delegates called for independence, while others argued for reconciliation with Great Britain. Despite such differences, the Congress agreed to recognize the colonial militia as the Continental Army and appointed George Washington as its commander.
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The Continental Army was formed by the second continental congress after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the colonies that became the United States of America.
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Gage sent 2,400 British soldiers up the hill. By the time the smoke cleared, the colonists had lost 450 men, while the British had suffered over 1,000 casualties. Deadliest battle of the war.
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Congress sent the king the so-called Olive Branch Petition, urging a return to "the former harmony" between Britain and the colonies. King George flatly rejected the petition. He issued a proclamation stating that the colonies were in rebellion and urged Parliament to order a naval blockade to isolate a line of ships meant for the American coast.
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Although the Continental Army attempted to defend New York in late August, the untrained and poorly equipped colonial troops soon retreated. By late fall, the British had pushed Washington’s army across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
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Desperate for an early victory, Washington risked everything on one bold stroke set for Christmas night, 1776. In the face of a fierce storm, he led 2,400 men in small rowboats across the ice-choked Delaware River. They then marched to their objective—Trenton, New Jersey—and defeated a garrison of Hessians in a surprise attack. The British soon regrouped, however, and in September of 1777, they captured the American capital at Philadelphia.
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Drawing on Locke’s ideas of natural rights, Jefferson’s document declared the rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” to be “unalienable” rights—ones that can never be taken away. Jefferson then asserted that a government’s legitimate power can only come from the consent of the governed, and that when a government denies their unalienable rights, the people have the right to “alter or abolish” that government. Jefferson provided a long list of violations committed by the king an
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Loyalists—those who opposed independence and remained loyal to the British king—included judges and governors, as well as people of more modest means. Many Loyalists thought that the British were going to win and wanted to avoid punishment as rebels. Still others thought that the Crown would protect their rights more effectively than the new colonial governments would. Patriots—the supporters of independence—drew their numbers from people who saw political and economic opportunity in an indepe
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Paine attacked King George and the monarchy. Paine, a recent immigrant, argued that responsibility for British tyranny lay with “the royal brute of Britain.” Paine explained that his own revolt against the king had begun with Lexington and Concord. Paine declared that independence would allow America to trade more freely. He also stated that independence would give American colonists the chance to create a better society—one free from tyranny, with equal social and economic opportunities for all
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General John Burgoyne planned to lead an army down a route of lakes from Canada to Albany, where he would meet British troops as they arrived from New York City. The two regiments would then join forces to isolate New England from the rest of the colonies.While he was fighting off the colonial troops, Burgoyne didn’t realize that his fellow British officers were preoccupied with holding Philadelphia and weren’t coming to meet him. American troops finally surrounded Burgoyne at Saratoga=surrender
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The surrender at Saratoga turned out to be one of the most important events of the war. Although the French had secretly aided the Patriots since early 1776, the Saratoga victory bolstered France’s belief that the Americans could win the war. As a result, the French signed an alliance with the Americans in February 1778 and openly joined them in their fight.
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Washington and his Continental Army—desperately low on
food and supplies—fought to stay alive at winter camp in
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. More than 2,000 soldiers died,
yet the survivors didn’t desert. Their endurance and suffering
filled Washington’s letters to the Congress and his friends. The army contributed to the success. -
At the end of 1778, a British expedition easily took Savannah, Georgia. In their greatest victory of the war, the British under Generals Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis captured Charles Town, South Carolina, in May 1780. They were so strong because they had so many troops.
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Shortly after learning of Corwallis’s actions, the armies of Lafayette and Washington moved south toward Yorktown. Meanwhile, a French naval force defeated a British fleet and then blocked the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, thereby obstructing British sea routes to the bay. By late September, about 17,000 French and American troops surrounded the British on the Yorktown peninsula and began bombarding them day and night. Less than a month later, on October 19, 1781,Cornwallis finally surrendered
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Treaty of Paris, which confirmed U.S. independence and set the boundaries of the new nation. The United States now stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and from Canada to the Florida border.
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Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian captain and talented drillmaster, helped to train the Continental Army. Other foreign military leaders, such as the Marquis de Lafayette also arrived to offer their help. Lafayette lobbied France for French reinforcements in 1779, and led a command in Virginia in the last years of the war. With the help of such European military leaders, the raw Continental Army became an effective fighting force.
