SOCIAL STUDIES NOTES: GRADE 8

 

CHAPTER 5              THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION: 1745-1776

 

Section 1: Trouble on the Frontier

 

I. Competing Empires

 

-Between 1650 and 1750, American colonists developed a large degree of self-government, and they were proud of their hard-won

rights.

 

-By the middle of the 1700s, France and Britain each controlled large areas of North America which bordered on each other for thousands of miles.

 

-Each country feared the other and sought to increase the area it controlled.

 

-These ambitions collided on the frontier and eventually led to war.

 

-Native Americans lived on most of the territory claimed by France and Britain. Since there were few French settlers, the French did not threaten to seize Native American lands.

 

-However, the need of British settlers for farmland led to conflict with the Native Americans.  By the 1740s, British settlers were pushing into the Ohio River valley lands claimed by the French.

 

-In 1753, the French began building forts to back their claim to the land between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. This news alarmed the Virginia Colony which also claimed the Ohio River valley.

 

-The Governor of Virginia sent the Virginia militia led by George Washington to tell the French to leave. They refused.

 

-The next year, Washington traveled west again with orders to build a fort where the Allegheny and the Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River.

 

-Washington arrived too late. The French were already there building their own fort, Fort Duquesne. Washington marched south for about 50 miles and built a small fort of his own called Fort Necessity.

 

-Later, a larger French army arrived and forced Washington to surrender Fort Necessity. The French allowed Washington and his men to return home to Virginia with the message that they would never give up the Ohio River valley.

 

-Expecting war to break out soon, the British government called a meeting of colonial leaders in Albany, New York. The British wanted the colonies to agree to cooperate in defending themselves against the French.

 

-The British also invited the Iroquois tribes to the meeting. They hoped to form an alliance with the Iroquois against the French, but the Iroquois, who expected the French to defeat the British in a war, refused.

 

-Franklin drew up a plan called the Albany Plan of Union which called for a council of representatives that would have authority over western settlements, relations with Native Americans, and other urgent matters.

 

-The council could also organize armies and collect taxes to pay its expenses.

 

-The Albany Congress approved Franklin’s plan but the colonial assemblies rejected it. They wanted to control their own taxes and armies.

 

 

 

 

II. Early British Defeats

 

 -Soon after Washington’s return, the British government decided it had to push the French out of the Ohio River valley. In 1755, it sent General Edward Braddock with orders to capture Fort Duquesne.

 

-General Braddock understood military tactics used in Europe where armies fought in formation on open fields, but he knew nothing about fighting in North America where conditions were very different.

 

-As Braddock’s force neared Fort Duquesne in early July, it was ambushed by French troops and their Native American allies. More than half of Braddock’s men were killed or wounded with the general himself among the dead.

 

-The British had other setbacks during 1755. An army led by the governor of Massachusetts failed to take Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario.

 

-Further east, an army of British colonists and Native Americans was ambushed and suffered heavy losses near Lake George.

 

-These defeats may have strengthened Iroquois leaders’ resolve not to ally with Britain.

 

-In May 1756, Britain declared war on France, marking the beginning of the Seven Years’ War between the two countries. Shortly thereafter, French troops led by General Louis de Montcalm captured and destroyed Britain’s Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario.

 

-In 1757, Montcalm captured Fort William Henry on Lake George. 

 

III. The British Turn the Tide

 

-The situation improved for Britain during 1757 when William Pitt became Prime Minister. Pitt sought top generals who had military talent, among them was 30 year-old James Wolfe.

 

-With Pitt’s generals in command, the war entered a new phase. In the summer of 1758, Britain scored its first victory of the war when it captured the fort at Louisbourg in present-day Canada.

 

-In the fall, the British took Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt, in William Pitt’s honor. It later became the city of Pittsburg.

 

-These and other victories led the Iroquois to side with the British and set the stage for the British attack on Quebec.    

 

-Quebec, the capital of New France, was located on a high cliff overlooking the Saint Lawrence River. At first the British made little progress, but one night they found an unguarded trail that allowed them to climb the cliffs protecting the city.

 

-In September 1759, British and French soldiers met on a plain in front of the city. More than 2,000 soldiers were killed or wounded in the battle.

 

-After losing Quebec, France could no longer defend the rest of its North American territory. Montreal, the other major French city in Canada, fell in 1760.

 

-In February 1763, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Paris. France lost almost all of its North American possessions. It ceded French Canada to Great Britain. Great Britain also gained all other French territories east of the Mississippi except New Orleans.

 

-Britain also received Spanish Florida. New Orleans, along with all French territories west of the Mississippi, went to Spain.

 

-Native Americans also lost a great deal. Without French help, they could not stop British settlers from moving in on their lands.

 

-The defeat of the French left the British in control of a vast area in North America.

 

 

Section 2: The Colonists Resist Tighter Control

 

I. Conflict with Native Americans

 

-By 1763, Britain controlled almost all of North America east of the Mississippi River. Native Americans living west of the Appalachian Mountains were desperately trying to keep their lands. Fighting between Native Americans and white settlers began as soon as the French and Indian War ended.

 

-In the last days of the French and Indian War, the leader of the Ottawa nation, Pontiac, formed an alliance of western Native Americans. In May 1763, Pontiac and his allies attacked British forts and settlements throughout the area. This was called Pontiac’s War.

 

-The British finally defeated Pontiac’s forces in early August at a battle near Fort Pitt. Pontiac continued to fight for another year, but by the fall of 1764, the war was over.  

 

-Britain wanted to avoid further wars with Native Americans, so the British government issued the Proclamation of 1763. It banned colonial settlement west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. Settlers were told they had to move to a location east of that line.

 

-The Proclamation of 1763 angered many colonists who believed they had the right to reside wherever they wanted. The proclamation was widely ignored and proved impossible for the British to enforce. 

 

II. British Rule Leads to Conflict

 

-The French and Indian War left Britain deeply in debt. Furthermore, these expenses continued. The British government had to keep troops in North America to make sure France did not try to regain its lost territory and to protect settlers against Native American attacks.

 

-British leaders believed the colonists should pay part of the debt.

-The British effort to impose new taxes on the colonies began in 1764 when Parliament passed the Sugar Act, which put a duty or import tax on several products, including molasses.

 

-It called for harsh punishment for smugglers. Colonial merchants, who sometimes traded in smuggled goods, protested.

 

-One year later, Parliament passed the Quartering Act. The purpose of the Quartering Act was to save money. To enforce the Proclamation of 1763, Britain kept about 10,000 soldiers in the colonies. The act required colonists to quarter, or house, the British troops and provide them with food and other supplies.

 

-The colonists protested angrily.

 

 

III. The Stamp Act

 

-An even more unpopular law was the Stamp Act, passed by Parliament in early 1765. The Stamp Act required that all colonists buy special stamps for all kinds of products and activities. The stamps had to be placed on newspapers, wills, licenses, insurance policies, land titles, contracts, and other documents.

 

-Protests against the Stamp Act were widespread. Colonial assemblies passed resolutions declaring that they alone had the power to tax people.

 

-Merchants in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia organized a boycott of British goods.

 

-In October, delegates from nine colonies met in New York for the Stamp Act Congress. They sent a petition to the King and Parliament demanding the end of both the Sugar Act and Stamp Act.

 

 

-The protests worked. In 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. However, at the same time it passed the Declaratory Act, which said that Parliament had total authority over the colonies.

 

IV. Protests Spread

 

-British officials sought a means of taxing the colonists in a way that would not anger them. Under the Townshend Acts of 1767, Britain would no longer tax products or activities inside the colonies. It would only tax products brought into the colonies.

 

-The Townshend Acts set up a system to enforce the new import duties. To help customs officers find illegal goods, they were allowed to use writs of assistance. These were court orders that allowed officials to make searches without saying what they were searching for.

 

-Many colonists saw these writs and the searches they allowed as yet another violation of their rights.

 

-Charles Townshend, the official in charge of the British treasury, also wanted to weaken the colonial assemblies. When the New York assembly refused to supply money to house and feed soldiers under the Quartering Act, Parliament suspended the assembly.

 

-The colonists again reacted by boycotting British goods.

 

-Once again, the protests worked. On March 5, 1770, Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties—except the one on tea. That tax was left in force to demonstrate Parliament’s right to tax the colonies.

 

-On March 5, 1770, the same day Parliament repealed the duties but before word of their action reached the colonies, an angry crowd in Boston surrounded a small group of soldiers. They shouted at the soldiers and threw snowballs and rocks at them.

 

-The frightened soldiers fired into the crowd, killing five and wounding six. This event is known as the Boston Massacre. 

-The nine soldiers involved in the shooting were arrested and tried for murder.

 

-John Adams, a leading defender of colonial rights against recent British policies, defended the soldiers because he believed that in a free country every person accused of a crime had the right to a lawyer and a fair trial.

 

-Only two soldiers were convicted of the crime. Their punishment was having their thumbs branded.

 

-As tensions grew, colonial leaders saw the need to keep in closer contact with people in other colonies. After the Boston Massacre, Samuel Adams, a cousin of John Adams, established what he called a Committee of Correspondence. The aim was to keep colonists informed of British actions.

 

-These Committees of Correspondence helped unite the colonists against Britain.

 

Section 3: From Protest to Rebellion

 

I. A Dispute over Tea

 

-In 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act. It was intended to help the British East India Company, one of Britain’s most important companies. For many years, the company had made money growing tea in India and selling it in Britain and in the colonies.

 

-The colonial boycott of tea seriously hurt the company.

 

-The Tea Act actually lowered the price of tea by allowing the East India Company to sell directly to the colonies. Prior to the Tea Act, the tea first had to be shipped to Britain. Despite the lower price, some colonists reacted angrily to the part of the act that gave the East India Company a monopoly on selling British tea in the colonies.

 

-The monopoly hurt colonial merchants. Many of them sold Dutch tea that was smuggled into the colonies. Now they would not be able to compete with the lower-priced East India Company tea. Many colonial leaders argued that even though the price of tea was lowered, colonists still had to pay the tax on it.

 

-A group of colonists called the Sons of Liberty soon organized in port cities to stop the East India Company tea from being unloaded.

 

-No tea was unloaded in New York, Philadelphia or other ports. However, in Boston, Governor Thomas Hutchinson ordered the tea to be unloaded.

 

-For more than two weeks, feelings were tense in Boston. Finally, on the night of December 16, 1773, a large group of men disguised as Native Americans boarded the tea ship.

 

-During the next three hours, they threw 342 cases of tea into the harbor. The raiders destroyed 90,000 pounds of tea worth thousands of dollars.  

 

II. The Intolerable Acts

 

-The Boston Tea Party outraged the British government. King George III called for tough action to make examples of the people of Boston and Massachusetts.

 

-In response, Parliament passed four laws. These laws were so harsh that colonists called them the Intolerable Acts.

 

-The first act closed the port of Boston.

 

-Two others increased the powers of the royal governor, abolished the upper house of the Massachusetts legislature, and cut the powers of town meetings. Now anyone accused of murdering a British colonial official could be tried in Britain rather than in the colonies.

 

-The fourth law strengthened the 1765 Quartering Act.

-Parliament also passed the Quebec Act which set up a government for the territory taken from France in 1763. The Quebec Act claimed land between the Ohio and Missouri rivers as part of Canada. Quebec’s new boundaries took away the western lands claimed by several colonies and blocked colonists from moving west.

 

-Americans in all the colonies reacted by trying to help the people of Boston by sending food and other supplies.

 

-Meanwhile, the Committee of Correspondence organized a meeting to discuss what to do next.

 

- That meeting, known as the First Continental Congress, took place in Philadelphia in September and October of 1774. Twelve of the thirteen colonies sent delegates. Only Georgia did not send representatives.

 

-The Congress demanded the repeal of the Intolerable Acts and declared that the colonies had a right to tax and govern themselves.

 

-It called for the training of militias to stand up to the British troops if necessary. The Congress also called for a new boycott of British goods.

 

 

III. The Shot Heard Round the World

 

-The British government had no intention of meeting the demands of the First Continental Congress. It chose, instead, to use force to restore its authority.

 

-Meanwhile, colonists began to arm and form new militia units called minutemen.

 

-In April 1775, General Thomas Gage, the new governor of Massachusetts, learned the minutemen were storing arms in Concord. On April 18, 1775, he sent about 700 troops to seize the arms and capture some important colonial leaders.

 

-As the troops set out, a signal sent by the Patriots appeared in the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church. Two men, Paul Revere and William Dawes, then rode through the night to warn the minutemen.

 

-Five miles from Concord in the town of Lexington about 77 minutemen were waiting when the British arrived. The British commander ordered the minutemen to go home, but they refused.

 

-Suddenly a shot rang out. Nobody knows who fired it, but it turned out to be the first shot of the American Revolution—“the shot heard round the world.”   The British then opened fire, killing eight Americans.

 

-A larger battle took place in nearby Concord. This time 400 minutemen fought the British, killing three of them. As the British retreated toward Boston, about 4,000 American fired at them from behind trees and fences.

 

-By the time the British reached Boston, almost 300 of them had been killed or wounded.

 

 

Section 4: The War Begins

 

I. The Second Continental Congress

 

-Even after Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolution, most colonists still did not favor independence.

 

-As the crisis with Britain deepened, the Second Continental Congress came together in Philadelphia in May 1775. The Congress, at first, was divided about what to do.

 

-A group of delegates from New England wanted to declare independence. A more moderate group from the Middle Colonies favored less drastic action. However, nearly all delegates felt they needed to prepare for war.

 

-The first step was to form an army. The Congress chose George Washington as the commander of the newly formed Continental army.

 

-The Congress took steps to pay for its army by printing paper money. The Second Continental Congress was beginning to act like a government.

 

-By 1775, a split was developing in the American colonies. Colonists who favored independence and were willing to fight for it took the name Patriots.

 

-Those who remained loyal to Britain and the king called themselves Loyalists.

 

-Most colonists were Patriots. However, as many as one third of the colonists may have had Loyalist sympathies.

 

-The Loyalists came from every colony and every section of the population, but they were a minority. During 1774 and 1775, the Patriots took control of local governments.

 

-The Loyalists included some people from the wealthiest families in the colonies as well as many leading merchants and landowners. They feared a rebellion would lead to a change in government and that they would lose their property.

 

-Many enslaved Africans also sided with the British hoping to win their freedom. So did most Native Americans who feared they would lose their lands if the colonists won independence.

 

-During the Revolution, thousands of Loyalists fought on the British side. During and after the Revolutionary War, about 100,000 left the country forever. Many settled in Canada.

 

-Even months after Lexington and Concord, many delegates at the Second Continental Congress hoped that peace could be restored between Britain and its American colonies.

 

-Two resolutions passed in July showed the uncertainty of Congress. The first resolution was called the Olive Branch Petition and was sent to King George. The petition stated that the colonists were loyal to the king and asked George to stop the fighting so all disputes between the colonists and Britain could be solved peacefully.

 

-The next day, Congress passed a tougher statement called the Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of taking up arms. The document stated that the colonists were ready “to die freemen rather than live as slaves.”

 

-The effort at peace failed. King George did not bother to answer the Olive Branch Petition. Instead, he declared the colonies were “in open… rebellion.”

 

-Parliament, meanwhile, voted to send 20,000 soldiers to the colonies to end the revolt.

 

-On May 10, 1775, the same day the Second Continental Congress began meeting, an important battle took place in northern New York. A daring band of colonists made a surprise attack on Fort Ticonderoga.

 

-The fort stood at the southern end of Lake Champlain and protected the water route to Canada.

 

-Leading the force was Ethan Allen, and since many of his men came from the Green Mountains of today’s Vermont, they were known as the Green Mountain Boys.  

 

-Allan’s force of 83 men reached the fort by crossing the lake at night and surprising the British in the morning. Only 42 British troops guarded the fort, and they surrendered almost immediately.

 

-Fort Ticonderoga was important for two reasons. It controlled the main route between Canada and the Hudson River valley.

 

-It also held valuable weapons, especially cannons that Americans needed to match the powerful British weapons.

 

-When the Green Mountain Boys took the fort, they seized several dozen cannons. Later, those cannons were moved to Boston where George Washington used them to drive the British from the city.

 

II. Early Battles

 

-By June 1775, the British had 6,500 troops in Boston, and the Americans had about 10,000 surrounding the city. About 1,600 of these occupied Breed’s Hill overlooking the city. From this position, they could fire on British ships in Boston Harbor. Nearby was Bunker Hill, also controlled by the Americans.

 

-The Americans surrounding Boston were farmers and workers, not trained soldiers. Nobody knew if they would stand up and fight against tough British troops.

 

-British General William Howe decided to attack straight up the hill. The Americans, short on ammunition, waited until the British were only about 150 feet away. When they fired, hundreds of British troops fell dead and wounded.

 

-The first British attack failed. So did the second. The third attack succeeded only because the Americans ran out of ammunition and had to retreat. The British won the battle but at a terrible cost.

 

-Even after Bunker Hill, Boston was still surrounded by American forces. In July 1775, George Washington arrived and took charge of the army.

 

-In March, Washington placed the cannons on high ground overlooking Boston. This made it impossible for the British to defend the city. On March 17, 1776, they withdrew from Boston by sea and never returned.

 

-Although the Americans won in Boston, Britain still held most of the advantages. They had the most powerful navy in the world. They used it to blockade American ports. They also strengthened their army by hiring mercenaries.

 

-While Washington was training one army outside of Boston, two other American armies were moving north into Canada. One, led by Richard Montgomery, left from Fort Ticonderoga. The other, led by Benedict Arnold, moved north through Maine.

 

-In late December 1775, the Americans attacked Quebec during a severe snowstorm. The attack was turned back. Montgomery was killed and Arnold was wounded.

 

-Weakened by disease and hunger, the Americans withdrew in May 1776, leaving Canada to the British.