{"id":680,"date":"2026-07-01T02:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T02:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/?page_id=680"},"modified":"2026-07-01T02:15:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T02:15:12","slug":"06-the-american-revolution","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/06-the-american-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"06. The American Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"In
Paul Revere, “Landing of the Troops,” ca. 1770, via The American Antiquarian Society<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I. Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the 1760s, Benjamin Rush, a native of Philadelphia, recounted a visit to Parliament. Upon seeing the king\u2019s throne in the House of Lords, Rush said he \u201cfelt as if he walked on sacred ground\u201d with \u201cemotions that I cannot describe.\u201d((Rush to Ebenezer Hazard, October 22, 1768, in L. H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush<\/em>, vol. 1 (Princeton University Press, 1951), 68.)) Throughout the eighteenth century, colonists had developed significant emotional ties with both the British monarchy and the British constitution. The British North American colonists had just helped to win a world war and most, like Rush, had never been more proud to be British. And yet, in a little over a decade, those same colonists would declare their independence and break away from the British Empire. Seen from 1763, nothing would have seemed as improbable as the American Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Revolution built institutions and codified the language and ideas that still define Americans\u2019 image of themselves to this day. Moreover, revolutionaries justified their new nation with radical new ideals that changed the course of history and sparked a global \u201cage of revolution.\u201d But the Revolution was as paradoxical as it was unpredictable. A revolution fought in the name of liberty allowed slavery to persist. Resistance to centralized authority tied disparate colonies ever closer together under new governments. The revolution created politicians eager to foster republican selflessness and protect the public good but also encouraged individual self-interest and personal gain. The \u201cfounding fathers\u201d instigated and fought a revolution to secure independence from Britain, but they did not fight that revolution to create a \u201cdemocracy.\u201d To successfully rebel against Britain, however, required more than a few dozen \u201cfounding fathers.\u201d Common colonists joined the fight, unleashing popular forces that shaped the Revolution itself, often in ways not welcomed by elite leaders. But once unleashed, these popular forces continued to shape the new nation and indeed the rest of American history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

II. The Origins of the American Revolution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The American Revolution had both long-term origins and short-term causes. The long-term origins included political, intellectual, cultural, and economic developments in the eighteenth century that set the context for the crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. Between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the middle of the eighteenth century, Britain had largely failed to define the colonies\u2019 relationship to the empire and institute a coherent program of imperial reform. Two factors contributed to these failures. First, Britain was at war from the War of the Spanish Succession at the start of the century through the Seven Years\u2019 War in 1763. Constant war was politically consuming and economically expensive. Second, competing visions of empire divided British officials. \u201cEstablishment\u201d Whigs and their Tory supporters envisioned an authoritarian empire, based on conquering territory and extracting resources. They wanted to eliminate Britain\u2019s growing national debt by raising taxes and cutting spending on the colonies. The \u201cradical\u201d (or \u201cpatriot\u201d) Whigs based their imperial vision on trade and manufacturing instead of land and resources. They argued that economic growth, not raising taxes, would solve the national debt. Instead of an authoritarian empire, patriot Whigs supported a laissez-faire (hands-off) approach to empire that would prioritize fostering trade between the colonies and the mother country. There were occasional attempts to reform the administration of the colonies, but debate between the two sides prevented coherent reform.((Jack P. Greene, The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution<\/em> (Cambridge University Press, 2010).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"This
Figure 6.2. This 1763 map shows the territorial divides of the North American continent among colonizing European nations following the Seven Years War. A New Map of North America, 1763. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Colonists, however, developed their own understanding of how they fit into the empire. They saw themselves as British subjects \u201centitled to all the natural, essential, inherent, and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great-Britain.\u201d The eighteenth century brought significant economic and demographic growth to the colonies. This success, they believed, resulted partly from Britain\u2019s hands-off approach to the colonies. With their growing economic importance, colonists believed that they held a special place in the empire. In 1764, James Otis Jr. wrote, \u201cThe colonists are entitled to as ample rights, liberties, and privileges as the subjects of the mother country are, and in some respects to more.\u201d((James Otis, The Rights of the Colonies Asserted and Proved<\/em> (Boston, 1764), 52, 38.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this same period, the colonies developed their own local political institutions. Samuel Adams, in the Boston Gazette, described the colonies as each being a \u201cseparate body politic\u201d from Britain. Almost immediately upon each colony\u2019s settlement, they created a colonial assembly. These assemblies assumed many of the same duties as the Commons exercised in Britain, including taxing residents, managing the spending of the colonial government\u2019s revenue, and granting salaries to royal officials. In the early 1700s, colonial leaders lobbied the British government to define their assemblies\u2019 legal prerogatives, but Britain was too occupied with European wars. Royal governors tasked by the Board of Trade attempted to limit the power of the assemblies, but the assemblies\u2019 power only grew throughout the eighteenth century. Many colonists came to see their assemblies as having the same jurisdiction over them that Parliament exercised over those in England. They interpreted British inaction as justifying their tradition of local governance. The Crown and Parliament, however, disagreed.((Michael D. Hattem, Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution<\/em> (Yale University Press, 2020), 81\u201382; Greene, Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution<\/em>, 118. On the development of colonial politics, see Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: The Origins of American Political Practice in Colonial Philadelphia<\/em> (Johns Hopkins University, 2014).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political culture in the colonies also developed differently than that of the mother country. In both Britain and the colonies, land ownership was the key to political participation, but because land was more easily obtained in the colonies, a higher proportion of male colonists participated in politics. Colonial political culture drew inspiration from the \u201ccountry\u201d party in Britain. These ideas\u2014generally referred to as the ideology of republicanism\u2014stressed the corrupting nature of power and the importance of \u201cvirtue\u201d (i.e., putting the \u201cpublic good\u201d over their own self-interest). Patriots would need to be ever vigilant against the rise of conspiracies, centralized control, and tyranny. Though only a small fringe in Britain held these ideas, in the colonies, they were widely accepted.((Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution<\/em> (Belknap, 1967).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1740s, two seemingly conflicting bodies of thought\u2014the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening\u2014began to combine in the colonies. Both of these movements would challenge older ideas about authority in ways that would help shape the Revolution. Perhaps no single philosopher had a greater impact on colonial thinking than John Locke. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke argued that the mind was originally a tabula rasa (blank slate) and that individuals were formed primarily by their environment. The aristocracy, then, were wealthy or successful because they had greater access to wealth, education, and patronage and not because they were innately superior. Locke followed this essay with Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which introduced radical new ideas about the importance of education. Education would produce rational human beings capable of thinking for themselves and questioning authority rather than tacitly accepting tradition. These ideas slowly came to have far-reaching effects in the colonies and, later, the new nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Locke\u2019s ideas spread in North America, the colonies also experienced an unprecedented wave of evangelical Protestant revivalism. Between 1739 and 1740, the Rev. George Whitefield, an enigmatic, itinerant preacher, traveled the colonies preaching Calvinist sermons to huge crowds. Unlike the rationalism of Locke, his sermons were designed to appeal to his listeners\u2019 emotions. Whitefield told his listeners that salvation could only be found by taking personal responsibility for one\u2019s own unmediated relationship with God, a process that came to be known as a \u201cconversion\u201d experience. He also argued that the current church hierarchies populated by \u201cunconverted\u201d ministers only stood as a barrier between the individual and God. In his wake, new traveling preachers picked up his message, and many congregations split as the Great Awakening caused an unprecedented challenge to church authorities. Both Locke and Whitefield had empowered individuals to question authority and to take their lives into their own hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other ways, eighteenth-century colonists were becoming more culturally similar to Britons, a process often referred to as Anglicization. As colonial economies grew, they quickly became an important market for British manufacturing exports. Colonists with disposable income and access to British markets attempted to mimic British culture. By the middle of the eighteenth century, middling-class colonists could also afford items previously thought of as luxuries, like British fashions, dining wares, and more. The desire to purchase British goods meshed with the desire to enjoy British liberties.((Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 170\u201371. Also see John Murrin, \u201cAnglicizing an American Colony: The Transformation of Provincial Massachusetts,\u201d PhD diss., Yale University, 1966.)) These political, intellectual, cultural, and economic developments built tensions that rose to the surface when, after the Seven Years\u2019 War, Britain finally began to implement a program of imperial reform that conflicted with colonists\u2019 understanding of the empire and their place in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

III. The Causes of the American Revolution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Most immediately, the American Revolution resulted directly from attempts to reform the British Empire after the Seven Years\u2019 War. The Seven Years\u2019 War was the culmination of nearly a half century of war between Europe\u2019s imperial powers. It was truly a world war, fought between multiple empires on multiple continents. At its conclusion, the victorious British Empire had never been larger. Britain now controlled the North American continent east of the Mississippi River, including French Canada. It had also consolidated its control over India. But the realities and responsibilities of the postwar empire were daunting. War (let alone victory) on such a scale was costly. Britain doubled the national debt to 13.5 times its annual revenue. It also faced significant new costs required to secure and defend its far-flung empire, especially the western frontiers of the North American colonies. These factors led Britain to attempt to consolidate control over its North American colonies, which, in turn, led to resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King George III took the crown in 1760 and brought Tories into his government after three decades of Whig rule. His new ministers represented the authoritarian vision of empire in which colonies would be subordinate. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was Britain\u2019s first major postwar imperial action targeting North America. The king forbade settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains in an attempt to limit costly wars with Native Americans. Colonists, however, protested and demanded access to the territory for which they had fought alongside the British.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1764, Parliament passed two more reforms. The Sugar Act sought to combat widespread smuggling of molasses in New England by cutting the duty in half but increasing enforcement. In addition, smugglers would be tried by vice-admiralty courts and not juries. Parliament also passed the Currency Act, which restricted colonies from producing paper money. Hard money, such as gold and silver coins, was scarce in the colonies. The lack of currency impeded the colonies\u2019 increasingly sophisticated transatlantic economies, but it was especially damaging in 1764 because a postwar recession had already begun. Between the restrictions of the Proclamation of 1763, the Currency Act, and the Sugar Act\u2019s canceling of trials by jury for smugglers, some colonists began to fear a pattern of increased taxation and restricted liberties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. The act required that many documents be printed on paper that had been stamped to show the duty had been paid, including newspapers, pamphlets, diplomas, legal documents, and even playing cards. The Sugar Act of 1764 was an attempt to get merchants to pay an already-existing duty, but the Stamp Act created a new, direct (or \u201cinternal\u201d) tax. Parliament had never before directly taxed the colonists. Instead, colonies contributed to the empire through the payment of indirect, \u201cexternal\u201d taxes, such as customs duties. In 1765, Daniel Dulany of Maryland wrote, \u201cA right to impose an internal tax on the colonies, without their consent for the single purpose of revenue, is denied, a right to regulate their trade without their consent is, admitted.\u201d((Daniel Dulany, Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue, by Act of Parliament<\/em>. The Second Edition (Annapolis, MD, 1765), 34. For a 1766 London reprint, see https:\/\/\u200barchive\u200b.org\/\u200bdetails\/\u200bcihm\u200b_20394.)) Also, unlike the Sugar Act, which primarily affected merchants, the Stamp Act directly affected numerous groups throughout colonial society, including printers, lawyers, college graduates, and even sailors who played cards. This led, in part, to broader, more popular resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
Figure 6.3 Men and women politicized the domestic sphere by buying and displaying items that conspicuously revealed their position for or against Parliamentary actions. This witty teapot, which celebrates the end of taxation on goods like tea itself, makes clear the owner\u2019s perspective on the egregious taxation. \u201cTeapot, Stamp Act Repeal’d,\u201d 1786, in Peabody Essex Museum. Salem State University, http:\/\/teh.salemstate.edu\/USandWorld\/RoadtoLexington\/pages\/Teapot_jpg.htm. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Resistance to the Stamp Act took three forms, distinguished largely by class: legislative resistance by elites, economic resistance by merchants, and popular protest by common colonists. Colonial elites responded by passing resolutions in their assemblies. The most famous of the anti-Stamp Act resolutions were the Virginia Resolves, passed by the House of Burgesses on May 30, 1765, which declared that the colonists were entitled to \u201call the liberties, privileges, franchises, and immunities . . . possessed by the people of Great Britain.\u201d When the Virginia Resolves were printed throughout the colonies, however, they often included a few extra, far more radical resolutions not passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses, the last of which asserted that only \u201cthe general assembly of this colony have any right or power to impose or lay any taxation\u201d and that anyone who argued differently \u201cshall be deemed an enemy to this His Majesty\u2019s colony.\u201d((Newport Mercury<\/em>, June 24, 1765. This version was also reprinted in newspapers in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Maryland.)) These additional resolves spread throughout the colonies and helped radicalize subsequent responses in other colonial assemblies. These responses led to the calling of the Stamp Act Congress in New York City in October 1765. Nine colonies sent delegates, who included Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Thomas Hutchinson, Philip Livingston, and James Otis.((Proceedings of the Congress at New-York<\/em> (Annapolis, MD, 1766).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Stamp Act Congress issued a \u201cDeclaration of Rights and Grievances,\u201d which, like the Virginia Resolves, declared allegiance to the king and \u201call due subordination\u201d to Parliament but also reasserted the idea that colonists were entitled to the same rights as Britons. Those rights included trial by jury, which had been abridged by the Sugar Act, and the right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. As Daniel Dulany wrote in 1765, \u201cIt is an essential principle of the English constitution, that the subject shall not be taxed without his consent.\u201d((Dulany, Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies<\/em>, 8.)) Benjamin Franklin called it the \u201cprime Maxim of all free Government.\u201d((Benjamin Franklin, \u201cThe Colonist\u2019s Advocate: III,\u201d January 11, 1770, Founders Online, National Archives. http:\/\/\u200bfounders\u200b.archives\u200b.gov\/\u200bdocuments\/\u200bFranklin\/\u200b01\u200b-17\u200b-02\u200b-0009.)) Because the colonies did not elect members to Parliament, they believed that they were not represented and could not be taxed by that body. In response, Parliament and the Crown argued that the colonists were \u201cvirtually represented,\u201d just like the residents of those boroughs or counties in England that did not elect members to Parliament. However, the colonists rejected the notion of virtual representation, with one pamphleteer calling it a \u201cmonstrous idea.\u201d((George Canning, A Letter to the Right Honourable Wills Earl of Hillsborough, on the Connection Between Great Britain and Her American Colonies<\/em> (London, 1768), 9.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second type of resistance to the Stamp Act was economic. While the Stamp Act Congress deliberated, merchants in major port cities were preparing nonimportation agreements, hoping that their refusal to import British goods would lead British merchants to lobby for the repeal of the Stamp Act. In New York City, \u201cupwards of two hundred principal merchants\u201d agreed not to import, sell, or buy \u201cany goods, wares, or merchandises\u201d from Great Britain.((\u201cNew York, October 31, 1765,\u201d New-York Gazette, or Weekly Mercury<\/em>, November 7, 1765.)) In Philadelphia, merchants gathered at \u201ca general meeting\u201d to agree that \u201cthey would not Import any Goods from Great-Britain until the Stamp-Act was Repealed.\u201d((\u201cResolution of Non-Importation Made by the Citizens of Philadelphia,\u201d October 25, 1765, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, http:\/\/\u200bdigitalhistory\u200b.hsp\u200b.org\/\u200bpafrm\/\u200bdoc\/\u200bresolution\u200b-non\u200b-importation\u200b-made\u200b-citizens\u200b-philadelphia\u200b-october\u200b-25\u200b-1765. For the published notice of the resolution, see \u201cPhiladelphia Merchants & Traders to Merchants in Great Britain, November 7, 1765,\u201d broadside, Pennsylvania Stamp Act and Non-Importation Resolutions Collection, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.)) The plan worked. By January 1766, London merchants sent a letter to Parliament arguing that they had been \u201creduced to the necessity of pending ruin\u201d by the Stamp Act and the subsequent boycotts.((\u201cThe Petition of the London Merchants to the House of Commons,\u201d in Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764\u20131766<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 130\u201331.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third, and perhaps, most crucial type of resistance was popular protest. In August 1765, riots broke out in Boston. Crowds burned the appointed stamp distributor for Massachusetts, Andrew Oliver, in effigy and pulled a building he owned \u201cdown to the Ground in five minutes.\u201d((Governor Francis Bernard to Lord Halifax, August 15, 1765, in Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764\u20131766<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 107.)) Oliver resigned the position the next day. The following week, a crowd also set upon the home of his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who had publicly argued for submission to the stamp tax. Before the evening was over, much of Hutchinson\u2019s home and belongings had been destroyed.((For Hutchinson\u2019s own account of the events, see Hutchinson to Richard Jackson, August 30, 1765, in John W. Tyler, ed., The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson, Volume 1: 1740\u20131766<\/em> (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2014), 291\u201394.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popular violence and intimidation spread quickly throughout the colonies. In New York City, posted notices read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PRO PATRIA,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first Man that either<\/p>\n\n\n\n

distributes or makes use of Stampt<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paper, let him take care of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

his House, Person, & Effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vox Populi;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We dare.((Edmund O\u2019Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, Procured in Holland, England, and France, vol. 7 <\/em>(Albany, NY, 1856), 770, https:\/\/\u200bpbs\u200b.twimg\u200b.com\/\u200bmedia\/\u200bBtm5M84IMAA4MCY\u200b.png:\u200blarge.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By November 16, all of the original twelve stamp distributors had resigned, and by early 1766, groups calling themselves the Sons of Liberty were formed in most colonies to direct and organize further resistance. These tactics had the dual effect of sending a message to Parliament and discouraging colonists from accepting appointments as stamp distributors. With no one willing to distribute the stamps, the act became unenforceable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pressure on Parliament grew until, in February 1766, it repealed the Stamp Act. But to save face and to try to avoid this kind of problem in the future, Parliament also passed the Declaratory Act, asserting that Parliament had the \u201cfull power and authority to make laws . . . to bind the colonies and people of America . . . in all cases whatsoever.\u201d((Parliament of Great Britain, \u201cThe Declaratory Act,\u201d Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http:\/\/\u200bavalon\u200b.law\u200b.yale\u200b.edu\/\u200b18th\u200b_century\/\u200bdeclaratory\u200b_act\u200b_1766\u200b.asp.)) However, colonists were too busy celebrating the repeal of the Stamp Act to take much notice of the Declaratory Act. In New York City, the inhabitants raised a huge lead statue of King George III in honor of the Stamp Act\u2019s repeal. It could be argued that there was no moment at which colonists felt more proud to be members of the free British Empire than 1766. But Britain still needed revenue from the colonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The colonies had resisted the implementation of direct taxes, but the Declaratory Act reserved Parliament\u2019s right to impose them. And, in the colonists\u2019 dispatches to Parliament and in numerous pamphlets, they had explicitly acknowledged the right of Parliament to regulate colonial trade. So, Britain\u2019s next attempt to draw revenues from the colonies was aimed at taxing trade. Passed in June 1767, the Townshend Acts created new customs duties on common items, like lead, glass, paint, and tea, instead of direct taxes. They also created and strengthened formal mechanisms to enforce compliance, including a new American Board of Customs Commissioners and more vice-admiralty courts to try smugglers. Revenues from seizures would be used to pay customs officers and other royal officials, including the governors, thereby incentivizing them to convict offenders. These acts increased the presence of the British government in the colonies and circumscribed the authority of the colonial assemblies, since paying the governor\u2019s salary had long given the assemblies significant power over them. Unsurprisingly, colonists, once again, resisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Five
Figure 6.4. Violent protest by groups like the Sons of Liberty created quite a stir both in the colonies and in England itself. While extreme acts like the tarring and feathering of Boston\u2019s Commissioner of Customs in 1774 propagated more protest against symbols of Parliament\u2019s tyranny throughout the colonies, violent demonstrations were regarded as acts of terrorism by British officials. This print of the 1774 event was from the British perspective, picturing the Sons as brutal instigators with almost demonic smiles on their faces as they enacted this excruciating punishment on the Custom Commissioner. Philip Dawe (attributed), \u201cThe Bostonians Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring and Feathering,\u201d Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even though these were duties, many colonial resistance authors still referred to them as \u201ctaxes,\u201d because they were designed primarily to extract revenues from the colonies, not to regulate trade. John Dickinson, in his \u201cLetters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,\u201d wrote, \u201cThat we may legally be bound to pay any general duties on these commodities, relative to the regulation of trade, is granted; but we being obliged by her laws to take them from Great Britain, any special duties imposed on their exportation to us only, with intention to raise a revenue from us only, are as much taxes upon us, as those imposed by the Stamp Act.\u201d((\u201cLetters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. Letter II,\u201d Pennsylvania Gazette<\/em>, December 10, 1767.)) Hence, many authors asked: once the colonists assented to a new tax in any form, what would stop the British from imposing ever more and greater taxes on the colonists?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New forms of resistance emerged in which elite, middling, and working-class colonists participated together. Merchants reinstituted nonimportation agreements, and common colonists agreed not to consume these same products. Lists were circulated with signatories promising not to buy any British goods. These lists were often published in newspapers, bestowing recognition on those who had signed and leading to pressure on those who had not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women, too, became involved to an unprecedented degree in resistance to the Townshend Acts. They circulated subscription lists and gathered signatures. The first political commentaries in newspapers written by women appeared.((\u201cAddress to the Ladies,\u201d Boston Post-Boy<\/em>, November 16, 1767; Boston Evening-Post<\/em>, February 12, 1770. Many female contributions to political commentary took the form of poems and drama, as in the poetry of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson and Hannah Griffitts and satirical plays by Mercy Otis Warren. Caroline Wigginton, \u201cLetters from a Woman in Pennsylvania, or Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson Dreams of John Dickinson,\u201d in Community without Consent: New Perspectives on the Stamp Act<\/em>, ed. Zachary McLeod Hutchins (Dartmouth College Press, 2016), 89\u2013114.)) Also, without new imports of British clothes, colonists took to wearing simple, homespun clothing. Spinning clubs were formed, in which local women would gather at one of their homes and spin cloth for homespun clothing for their families and even for the community.((Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America\u2019s Independence<\/em> (Knopf, 2005), 17\u201318; Mary Beth Norton, Liberty\u2019s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750\u20131800<\/em> (Little, Brown & Co., 1980), 157\u201363. On the many roles women played in colonial and revolutionary society, see Jacqueline Beatty, In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America<\/em> (New York University Press, 2023); Ellen Hartigan-O\u2019Connor, The Ties that Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America<\/em> (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Figure 6.5. Mercy Otis Warren was a poet, playwright, and pamphleteer whose writings attacked royal authority in Massachusetts and encouraged colonialists to resist British infringements on colonial rights and liberties. \u201cMrs. James Warren (Mercy Otis),\u201d oil painting by John Singleton Copley, circa 1763. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Homespun clothing quickly became a marker of one\u2019s virtue and patriotism, and women were an important part of this cultural shift. At the same time, British goods and luxuries previously desired now became symbols of tyranny. Nonimportation and, especially, nonconsumption agreements changed colonists\u2019 cultural relationship with the mother country. Committees of Inspection monitored merchants and residents to make sure that no one broke the agreements. Offenders could expect to be shamed by having their names and offenses published in the newspaper and in broadsides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonimportation and nonconsumption helped forge colonial unity. Colonies formed Committees of Correspondence to keep each other informed of the resistance efforts throughout the colonies. Newspapers reprinted exploits of resistance, giving colonists a sense that they were part of a broader political community. The best example of this new \u201ccontinental conversation\u201d came in the wake of the Boston Massacre. Britain sent regiments to Boston in 1768 to help enforce the new acts and quell the resistance. On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered outside the Custom House and began hurling insults, snowballs, and perhaps more at the young sentry. When a small number of soldiers came to the sentry\u2019s aid, the crowd grew increasingly hostile until the soldiers fired their muskets. After the smoke cleared, five Bostonians were dead, including one of the ringleaders, Crispus Attucks, a formerly enslaved mixed-race man turned free dockworker. The soldiers were tried in Boston and won acquittal, thanks, in part, to their defense attorney, John Adams. News of the Boston Massacre spread quickly through the new resistance communication networks, aided by a famous engraving initially circulated by Paul Revere, which depicted bloodthirsty British soldiers with grins on their faces firing into a peaceful crowd. The engraving was quickly circulated and reprinted throughout the colonies, generating sympathy for Boston and anger with Britain.((See Serena Zabin, The Boston Massacre: A Family History<\/em> (Harper Collins, 2020).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"On
Figure 6.6. This iconic image of the Boston Massacre by Paul Revere sparked fury in both Americans and the British by portraying the redcoats as brutal slaughterers and the onlookers as helpless victims. The events of March 5, 1770 did not actually play out as Revere pictured them, yet his intention was not simply to recount the affair. Revere created an effective propaganda piece that lent credence to those demanding that the British authoritarian rule be stopped. Paul Revere (engraver), \u201cThe bloody massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt.,\u201d 1770. Library of Congress. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Resistance again led to repeal. In March 1770, Parliament repealed all of the new duties except the one on tea, which, like the Declaratory Act, was left, in part, to save face and assert that Parliament still retained the right to tax the colonies. The character of colonial resistance had changed between 1765 and 1770. During the Stamp Act resistance, elites wrote resolves and held congresses while violent, popular mobs burned effigies and tore down houses, with minimal coordination between colonies. But methods of resistance against the Townshend Acts became more inclusive and more coordinated. Colonists previously excluded from meaningful political participation now gathered signatures, and colonists of all ranks participated in the resistance by not buying British goods and monitoring and enforcing the boycotts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain\u2019s failed attempts at imperial reform in the 1760s created an increasingly vigilant and resistant colonial population and, most importantly, an enlarged political sphere\u2014both on the colonial and continental levels\u2014far beyond anything anyone could have imagined a few years earlier. A new sense of shared grievances began to join the colonists in a shared American political identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IV. Independence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tensions between the colonies and England eased for a time after the Boston Massacre. The colonial economy improved as the postwar recession receded. The Sons of Liberty in some colonies sought to continue nonimportation even after the repeal of the Townshend Acts. But in New York, a door-to-door poll of the population revealed that the majority wanted to end nonimportation.((New York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy<\/em>, June 18, July 9, July 16, 1770.)) Yet Britain\u2019s desire and need to reform imperial administration remained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 1773, Parliament passed two acts to aid the failing East India Company, which had fallen behind in the annual payments it owed Britain. But the company was not only drowning in debt; it was also drowning in tea, with almost fifteen million pounds of it stored in warehouses from India to England. In 1773, Parliament passed the Regulating Act, which effectively put the troubled company under government control. It then passed the Tea Act, which would allow the company to sell its tea in the colonies directly and without the company having to pay the usual export tax in London. Even though this would greatly lower the cost of tea for colonists, they resisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Merchants resisted the Tea Act because they resented the East India Company\u2019s monopoly. But like the Sugar Act, the Tea Act affected only a small, specific group of people. The widespread support for resisting the Tea Act had more to do with principles. By buying tea, even though it was cheaper, colonists would be paying the duty and thereby implicitly acknowledging Parliament\u2019s right to tax them. According to the Pennsylvania Chronicle, Prime Minister Lord North was a \u201cgreat schemer\u201d who sought \u201cto out wit us, and to effectually establish that Act, which will forever after be pleaded as a precedent for every imposition the Parliament of Great-Britain shall think proper to saddle us with.\u201d((Pennsylvania Chronicle<\/em>, September 27, 1773. For an example of how fast news and propaganda was spreading throughout the colonies, this piece was reprinted in Massachusetts Gazette<\/em>, October 4, 1773; New-Hampshire Gazette<\/em>, and<\/em> Historical Chronicle<\/em>, October 15, 1773; and Virginia Gazette<\/em>, October 21, 1773.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tea Act stipulated that the duty had to be paid when the ship unloaded. Newspaper essays and letters throughout the summer of 1773 in the major port cities debated what to do upon the ships\u2019 arrival. In November, the Boston Sons of Liberty, led by Samuel Adams and John Hancock, resolved to \u201cprevent the landing and sale of the [tea], and the payment of any duty thereon\u201d and to do so \u201cat the risk of their lives and property.\u201d((Massachusetts Gazette, and Boston Post-Boy<\/em>, November 29, 1773.)) The meeting appointed men to guard the wharfs and make sure the tea remained on the ships until they returned to London. This worked and the tea did not reach the shore, but by December 16, the ships were still there. Hence, another town meeting was held at the Old South Meeting House, at the end of which dozens of men disguised as Mohawks made their way to the wharf. The Boston Gazette reported what happened next:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, behold what followed! A number of brave & resolute men, determined to do all in their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted, in less than four hours, emptied every chest of tea on board the three ships . . . amounting to 342 chests, into the sea ! ! without the least damage done to the ships or any other property.((Boston Gazette<\/em>, December 20, 1773.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In
Figure 6.7. Following a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, a mob pulls down a gilded lead equestrian statue of George III at Bowling Green, New York City, 9 July 1776. ”Pulling Down the Statue of George III”, oil painting by William Walcutt, circa 1854. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As word spread throughout the colonies, patriots were emboldened to do the same to the tea sitting in their harbors. Tea was either dumped or seized in Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York, with numerous other smaller \u201ctea parties\u201d taking place throughout 1774.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popular protest spread across the continent and down through all levels of colonial society. Fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina, for example, signed an agreement\u2014published in numerous newspapers\u2014in which they promised \u201cto do every Thing as far as lies in our Power\u201d to support the boycotts.((Virginia Gazette<\/em>, November 3, 1774; Cynthia A. Kierner, \u201cThe Edenton Ladies: Women, Tea, and Politics in Revolutionary North Carolina,\u201d in North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times<\/em>, ed. Michele Gillespie and Sally G. McMillen (University of Georgia Press, 2014), 12\u201333.)) The ladies of Edenton were not alone in their desire to support the war effort by what means they could. Women across the thirteen colonies could most readily express their political sentiments as consumers and producers. Because women often made decisions regarding household purchases, their participation in consumer boycotts held particular weight.((Hartigan-O\u2019Connor, The Ties That Buy<\/em>, 178\u201384.)) Some women also took to the streets as part of more unruly mob actions, participating in grain riots, raids on the offices of royal officials, and demonstrations against the impressment of men into naval service. The agitation of so many helped elicit responses from both Britain and the colonial elites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain\u2019s response was swift. The following spring, Parliament passed four acts known collectively, by the British, as the Coercive Acts. Colonists, however, referred to them as the Intolerable Acts. First, the Boston Port Act shut down the harbor and cut off all trade to and from the city. The Massachusetts Government Act put the colonial government entirely under British control, dissolving the assembly and restricting town meetings. The Administration of Justice Act allowed any royal official accused of a crime to be tried in Britain rather than by Massachusetts courts and juries. Finally, the Quartering Act, passed for all colonies, allowed the British army to quarter newly arrived soldiers in colonists\u2019 homes. Boston had been deemed in open rebellion, and the king, his advisors, and Parliament acted decisively to end the rebellion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Crown, however, did not anticipate the other colonies coming to the aid of Massachusetts. Colonists collected food to send to Boston. Virginia\u2019s House of Burgesses called for a day of prayer and fasting to show their support. Rather than isolating Massachusetts, the Coercive Acts fostered the sense of shared identity created over the previous decade. After all, if the Crown and Parliament could dissolve Massachusetts\u2019s government, nothing could stop them from doing the same to any of her sister colonies. In Massachusetts, patriots created the Provincial Congress, and, throughout 1774, they seized control of local and county governments and courts.((Ray Raphael, The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord<\/em> (New Press, 2002), 59\u2013168.)) In New York, citizens elected committees to direct the colonies\u2019 response to the Coercive Acts, including a Mechanics\u2019 Committee of middling colonists. By early 1774, Committees of Correspondence and\/or extralegal assemblies were established in all of the colonies except Georgia. And throughout the year, they followed Massachusetts\u2019s example by seizing the powers of the royal governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Committees of Correspondence agreed to send delegates to a Continental Congress to coordinate an intercolonial response. The First Continental Congress convened on September 5, 1774. Over the next six weeks, elite delegates from every colony but Georgia issued a number of documents, including a \u201cDeclaration of Rights and Grievances.\u201d This document repeated the arguments that colonists had been making since 1765: colonists retained all the rights of native Britons, including the right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives as well as the right to a trial by jury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Figure 6.8. This 1819 painting by John Trumbull depicts the drafters of the Declaration of Independence presenting the document to the Continental Congress. John Trumbull, Declaration of Independence, 1818. Yale University Art Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Most importantly, the Congress issued a document known as the \u201cContinental Association.\u201d The Association declared that \u201cthe present unhappy situation of our affairs is occasioned by a ruinous system of colony administration adopted by the British Ministry about the year 1763, evidently calculated for enslaving these Colonies, and, with them, the British Empire.\u201d The Association recommended \u201cthat a committee be chosen in every county, city, and town . . . whose business it shall be attentively to observe the conduct of all persons touching this association.\u201d These Committees of Inspection would consist largely of common colonists. They were effectively deputized to police their communities and instructed to publish the names of anyone who opposed the Association so they \u201cmay be publicly known, and universally condemned as the enemies of American liberty.\u201d The delegates also agreed to a continental nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation agreement and to \u201cwholly discontinue the slave trade.\u201d In all, the Continental Association was perhaps the most radical document of the period. It sought to unite and direct twelve revolutionary governments, establish economic and moral policies, and empower common colonists by giving them an important and unprecedented degree of on-the-ground political power.((Peter Force, ed., American Archives: Fourth Series Containing a Documentary History of the English Colonies in North America, vol. 1 (<\/em>Washington, DC, 1837), 913\u201316, https:\/\/\u200barchive\u200b.org\/\u200bstream\/\u200bAmericanArchives\u200b-Fourth SeriesVolume1\u200b-ContainingADocumentaryHistory\/\u200bAaSeries4VolumeI\u200b#page\/\u200bn455\/\u200bmode\/\u200b2up.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not all colonists were patriots. Indeed, many remained faithful to the king and Parliament, while a good number took a neutral stance. As the situation intensified throughout 1774 and early 1775, factions emerged within the resistance movements in many colonies. Elite merchants who traded primarily with Britain, Anglican clergy, and colonists holding royal offices depended on and received privileges directly from their relationship with Britain. Initially, they sought to exert a moderating influence on the resistance committees, but, following the Association, a number of these colonists began to worry that the resistance was too radical and aimed at independence. They, like most colonists in this period, still expected a peaceful conciliation with Britain and grew increasingly suspicious of the resistance movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, by the time the Continental Congress met again in May 1775, war had already broken out in Massachusetts. On April 19, 1775, British regiments set out to seize local militias\u2019 arms and gunpowder stores in Lexington and Concord. The town militia met them at the Lexington Green. The British ordered the militia to disperse when someone fired, setting off a volley from the British. The battle continued all the way to the next town, Concord. News of the events at Lexington spread rapidly throughout the countryside. Militia members, known as minutemen, responded quickly and inflicted significant casualties on the British regiments as they chased them back to Boston. Approximately twenty thousand colonial militiamen laid siege to Boston, effectively trapping the British. In June, the militia set up fortifications on Breed\u2019s Hill overlooking the city. In the misnamed \u201cBattle of Bunker Hill,\u201d the British attempted to dislodge them from the position with a frontal assault, and, despite eventually taking the hill, they suffered severe casualties at the hands of the colonists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Twenty-three
“The Battle of Lexington,” Published by John H. Daniels & Son, c1903. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-00995.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While men in Boston fought and died, the Continental Congress struggled to organize a response. The radical Massachusetts delegates\u2014including John Adams, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock\u2014implored the Congress to support the Massachusetts militia, who were laying siege to Boston without supplies. Meanwhile, many delegates from the Middle Colonies\u2014including New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia\u2014took a more moderate position, calling for renewed attempts at reconciliation. In the South, the Virginia delegation contained radicals such as Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson, while South Carolina\u2019s delegation included moderates like John and Edward Rutledge. The moderates worried that supporting the Massachusetts militia would be akin to declaring war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Congress struck a compromise, agreeing to adopt the Massachusetts militia and form a Continental Army, naming Virginia delegate George Washington commander in chief. They also issued a \u201cDeclaration of the Causes of Necessity of Taking Up Arms\u201d to justify the decision. At the same time, the moderates drafted an \u201cOlive Branch Petition,\u201d which assured the king that the colonists \u201cmost ardently desire[d] the former Harmony between [the mother country] and these Colonies.\u201d Many understood that the opportunities for reconciliation were running out. After Congress had approved the document, Benjamin Franklin wrote to a friend saying, \u201cThe Congress will send one more Petition to the King which I suppose will be treated as the former was, and therefore will probably be the last.\u201d((Franklin to Jonathan Shipley, July 7, 1775, Founders Online, National Archives, http:\/\/\u200bfounders\u200b.archives\u200b.gov\/\u200bdocuments\/\u200bFranklin\/\u200b01\u200b-22\u200b-02\u200b-0057.)) Congress was in the strange position of attempting reconciliation while publicly raising an army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The petition arrived in England on August 13, 1775, but before it was delivered, the king issued his own \u201cProclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition.\u201d He believed his subjects in North America were being \u201cmisled by dangerous and ill-designing men,\u201d who were \u201ctraitorously preparing, ordering, and levying war against us.\u201d In an October speech to Parliament, he dismissed the colonists\u2019 petition. The king had no doubt that the resistance was \u201cmanifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire.\u201d((\u201cHis Majesty\u2019s Most Gracious Speech to Both Houses of Parliament, on Friday, October 27, 1775,\u201d https:\/\/\u200bwww\u200b.loc\u200b.gov\/\u200bitem\/\u200brbpe\u200b.10803800\/.)) By the start of 1776, talk of independence was growing while the prospect of reconciliation dimmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the opening months of 1776, independence, for the first time, became part of the popular debate. Town meetings approved resolutions in support of independence. Yet, with moderates still hanging on, it would take another seven months before the Continental Congress officially passed the independence resolution. A small forty-six-page pamphlet published in Philadelphia and written by a recent immigrant from England captured the American conversation. Thomas Paine\u2019s Common Sense argued for independence by denouncing monarchy and challenging the logic behind the British Empire, saying, \u201cThere is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.\u201d((Thomas Paine, Common Sense<\/em> (Philadelphia, 1776), https:\/\/\u200bwww\u200b.gutenberg\u200b.org\/\u200bfiles\/\u200b147\/\u200b147\u200b-h\/\u200b147\u200b-h\u200b.htm.)) His combination of easy language, biblical references, and fiery rhetoric proved potent, and the pamphlet was quickly published and dispersed. Arguments over political philosophy and rumors of battlefield developments filled taverns throughout the colonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Washington had taken control of the army and, after laying siege to Boston, forced the British to retreat to Halifax, Nova Scotia. In Virginia, the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation declaring martial law and offering freedom to \u201call indentured servants, Negros, and others\u201d if they would leave their enslavers and join the British. Though only about five hundred to a thousand enslaved people joined Lord Dunmore\u2019s \u201cEthiopian regiment,\u201d thousands more flocked to the British later in the war, risking capture and punishment for a chance at freedom. Formerly enslaved people occasionally fought, but primarily served in companies called Black Pioneers as laborers, skilled workers, and spies. British motives for offering freedom were practical rather than humanitarian, but the proclamation was the first mass emancipation of enslaved people in American history. Enslaved people could now choose to run and risk their lives for possible freedom with the British Army or hope that the United States would live up to its ideals of liberty.((Pennsylvania Evening Post<\/em>, September 21, 1776.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dunmore\u2019s proclamation unnerved white southerners already suspicious of rising antislavery sentiments in the mother country. Four years earlier, English courts dealt a serious blow to slavery in the empire. In Somerset v Stewart, James Somerset sued for his freedom, and the court not only granted it but also undercut the very legality of slavery on the British mainland. Somerset and now Dunmore began to convince some enslavers that a new independent nation might offer a surer protection for slavery. Indeed, the proclamation laid the groundwork for the very unrest that loyal Southerners had hoped to avoid. Consequently, enslavers often used violence to prevent their enslaved laborers from joining the British or rising against them. Virginia enacted regulations to prevent freedom-seeking, threatening to ship rebellious enslaved people to the West Indies or execute them. Many enslavers transported their enslaved people inland, away from the coastal temptation to join the British armies, sometimes separating families in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 10, 1776, nearly two months before the Declaration of Independence, the Congress voted on a resolution calling on all colonies that had not already established revolutionary governments to do so and to wrest control from royal officials.((Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774\u20131789, vol. 4 <\/em>(US Government Printing Office, 1904\u20131937), 342, https:\/\/\u200barchive\u200b.org\/\u200bdetails\/\u200bjournalsofcontin04unit\/\u200bpage\/\u200b342\/\u200bmode\/\u200b2up.)) The Congress also recommended that the colonies should begin preparing new written constitutions. In many ways, this was the Congress\u2019s first declaration of independence. A few weeks later, on June 7, Richard Henry Lee offered the following resolution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connexion between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.((\u201cReport & the Resolution for Independancy Agreed to July 2d. 1776,\u201d Papers of the Continental Congress<\/em>, No. 23, folio 17, National Archives, Washington, DC, http:\/\/\u200bwww\u200b.archives\u200b.gov\/\u200bexhibits\/\u200bamerican\u200b_originals\/\u200bdeclarat\u200b.html.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delegates went scurrying back to their assemblies for new instructions and nearly a month later, on July 2, the resolution finally came to a vote. It passed 12\u20130, with New York, under imminent threat of British invasion, abstaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The passage of Lee\u2019s resolution was the official legal declaration of independence, but, between the proposal and vote, a committee had been named to draft a public declaration in case the resolution passed. Virginian Thomas Jefferson drafted the document, with edits being made by his fellow committee members John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and then again by the Congress as a whole. The famous preamble went beyond the arguments about the rights of British subjects under the British Constitution, instead referring to \u201cnatural law\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.((\u201cThe Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, July 1776,\u201d in Journals of the Continental Congress<\/em>, 1774\u20131789, vol. 5, 1776, June 5\u2013October 8, ed. Worthington Chauncy Ford (Government Printing Office, 1906), 510, https:\/\/\u200barchive\u200b.org\/\u200bdetails\/\u200bjournalscontinen05unit\/\u200bpage\/\u200bn5\/\u200bmode\/\u200b2up. On this rhetorical turn toward \u201cnatural law,\u201d see Hattem, Past and Prologue, 127\u201339.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Figure 6.10. The Declaration of Independence. National Archives and Records Administration. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The majority of the document outlined a list of specific grievances that the colonists had with British attempts to reform imperial administration during the 1760s and 1770s. An early draft blamed the British for the transatlantic slave trade and even for discouraging attempts by the colonists to promote abolition. Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia as well as those from Northern states who profited from the trade all opposed this language, and it was removed.((For more on the process of writing the Declaration of Independence, see Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence<\/em> (Knopf, 1997). On its spread, see Emily Jane Sneff, \u201cWhen the Declaration of Independence Was News,\u201d PhD diss., College of William and Mary, 2024.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither the grievances nor the rhetoric of the preamble were new. Instead, they were the culmination of both a decade of popular resistance to imperial reform and decades more of long-term developments that saw both sides develop incompatible understandings of the British Empire and the colonies\u2019 place within it. The Congress approved the document on July 4, 1776. However, it was one thing to declare independence; it was quite another to win it on the battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V. The War for Independence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The war began at Lexington and Concord, more than a year before Congress declared independence. In 1775, the British believed that the mere threat of war and a few minor incursions to seize supplies would be enough to cow the colonial rebellion. Those minor incursions, however, turned into a full-out military conflict. Despite an early American victory at Boston, the new states faced the daunting task of taking on the world\u2019s largest military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 1776, the British forces that had abandoned Boston arrived at New York. The largest expeditionary force in British history, including tens of thousands of German mercenaries known as Hessians, followed soon after. New York was the perfect location to launch expeditions aimed at seizing control of the Hudson River and isolating New England from the rest of the continent. Also, New York contained many loyalists, particularly among its merchant and Anglican communities. In October, the British finally launched an attack on Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Continental Army took severe losses before retreating through New Jersey.((Barnet Schecter, The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution<\/em> (Walker, 2002).)) With the onset of winter, Washington needed something to lift morale and encourage reenlistment. Therefore, he launched a successful surprise attack on the Hessian camp at Trenton on Christmas Day by ferrying the few thousand men he had left across the Delaware River under the cover of night. The victory won the Continental Army much-needed supplies and a morale boost following the disaster at New York.((David Hackett Fischer, Washington\u2019s Crossing<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2004).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In
Figure 6.11. This 1775 etching depicts George Washington taking command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Washington Taking Command of the American Army \u2013 At Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 3rd, 1775. Metropolitan Museum of Art. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An even greater success followed in upstate New York. In 1777, British General John Burgoyne led an army from Canada to secure the Hudson River. In upstate New York, he was to meet up with a detachment of General William Howe\u2019s forces marching north from Manhattan. However, Howe abandoned the plan without telling Burgoyne and instead sailed to Philadelphia to capture the new nation\u2019s capital. The Continental Army defeated Burgoyne\u2019s men at Saratoga, New York.((Richard M. Ketchum, Saratoga: Turning Point of America\u2019s Revolutionary War<\/em> (Holt, 1997).)) This victory proved a major turning point in the war. Benjamin Franklin had been in Paris trying to secure a treaty of alliance with the French. However, the French were reluctant to back what seemed like an unlikely cause. News of the victory at Saratoga convinced the French that the cause might not have been as unlikely as they had thought. A Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed on February 6, 1778. The treaty effectively turned a colonial rebellion into a global war as fighting between the British and French soon broke out in Europe and India.((For more on Franklin\u2019s diplomacy in France, see Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America<\/em> (Thorndike, 2005).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Howe had taken Philadelphia in 1777 but returned to New York once winter ended. He slowly realized that European military tactics would not work in North America. In Europe, armies fought head-on battles in attempts to seize major cities. However, in 1777, the British had held Philadelphia and New York and yet still weakened their position. Meanwhile, Washington realized after New York that the largely untrained Continental Army could not win head-on battles with the professional British Army. So, he developed his own logic of warfare that involved smaller, more frequent skirmishes and avoided major engagements that would risk his entire army. As long as he kept the army intact, the war would continue, no matter how many cities the British captured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1778, the British shifted their attentions to the South, where they believed they enjoyed more popular support. Campaigns from Virginia to South Carolina and Georgia captured major cities, but the British simply did not have the manpower to retain military control. And upon their departures, severe fighting ensued between local patriots and loyalists, often pitting family members against one another. The war in the South was truly a civil war.((David K. Wilson, The Southern Strategy: Britain\u2019s Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775\u20131780<\/em> (University of South Carolina Press, 2005).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In
Figure 6.12. In this 1782 cartoon, the British lion faces a spaniel (Spain), a rooster (France), a rattlesnake (America), and a pug dog (Netherlands). Though the caption predicts Britain\u2019s success, it illustrates that Britain faced challenges\u2014and therefore drains on their military and treasury\u2014from more than just the American rebels. J. Barrow, The British Lion Engaging Four Powers, 1782. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By 1781, the British were also fighting France, Spain, and Holland. The British public\u2019s support for the costly war in North America was quickly waning. The Americans took advantage of the British southern strategy with significant aid from the French Army and Navy. In October, Washington marched his troops from New York to Virginia in an effort to trap the British southern army under the command of General Charles Cornwallis. Cornwallis had dug his men in at Yorktown awaiting supplies and reinforcements from New York. However, the Continental and French armies arrived first, quickly followed by a French Navy contingent, encircling Cornwallis\u2019s forces and, after laying siege to the city, forcing his surrender. The capture of another army left the British without a new strategy and without public support to continue the war. Peace negotiations took place in France, and the war came to an official end on September 3, 1783.((Richard M. Ketchum, Victory at Yorktown: The Campaign That Won the Revolution<\/em> (Holt, 2004). On the experiences of the war, see Donald F. Johnson, Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution<\/em> (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In
Figure 6.13. Lord Cornwallis\u2019s surrender signaled the victory of the American revolutionaries over what they considered to be the despotic rule of Britain. This moment would live on in American memory as a pivotal one in the nation\u2019s origin story, prompting the United States government to commission artist John Trumbull to create this painting of the event in 1817. John Trumbull, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, 1820. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Americans celebrated their victory, but it came at great cost. Soldiers suffered through brutal winters with inadequate resources. During the single winter at Valley Forge in 1777\u20131778, over 2,500 Americans died from disease and exposure. Life was not easy on the home front either. Women on both sides of the conflict were frequently left alone to care for their households. In addition to their existing duties, women took on roles usually assigned to men on farms and in shops and taverns. Abigail Adams addressed the difficulties she encountered while \u201cminding family affairs\u201d on their farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. Abigail managed the planting and harvesting of crops, in the midst of severe labor shortages and inflation, while dealing with several tenants on the Adams property, raising her children, and making clothing and other household goods. In order to support the family economically during John\u2019s frequent absences and the uncertainties of war, Abigail also invested in several speculative schemes and sold imported goods.((Woody Holton, Abigail Adams<\/em> (Free Press, 2009), 208\u201317.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Abigail remained safely out of the fray, other women were not so fortunate. The Revolution was not only fought on distant battlefields but also on women\u2019s very doorsteps, in the fields next to their homes. There was no way for women to avoid the conflict or the disruptions and devastations it caused. As the leader of the state militia during the Revolution, Mary Silliman\u2019s husband, Gold, was absent from their home for much of the conflict. On the morning of July 7, 1779, when a British fleet attacked nearby Fairfield, Connecticut, it was Mary who calmly evacuated her household, including her children and servants, to North Stratford. When Gold was captured by loyalists and held prisoner, Mary, six months\u2019 pregnant with their second child, wrote letters to try to secure his release. When such appeals were ineffectual, Mary spearheaded an effort, along with Connecticut Governor John Trumbull, to capture a prominent Tory leader to exchange for her husband\u2019s freedom.((Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America<\/em> (Norton, 1995), 145\u201370; Lauren Duval, The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 2025); Holly A. Mayer, ed., Women Waging War in the American Revolution<\/em> (University of Virginia Press, 2022).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Americans, enslaved and free, also impacted (and were impacted by) the Revolution. The British were the first to recruit Black (or \u201cEthiopian\u201d) regiments, as early as Dunmore\u2019s Proclamation of 1775 in Virginia, which promised freedom to any enslaved person who would escape their enslavers and join the British cause. At first, Washington, an enslaver himself, resisted allowing Black men to join the Continental Army, but he eventually relented. In 1775, Peter Salem\u2019s enslaver freed him to fight with the militia. Salem faced British Regulars in the battles at Lexington and Bunker Hill, where he fought valiantly with around three dozen other Black Americans. Salem not only contributed to the cause; he also earned the ability to determine his own life after his enlistment ended. Salem was not alone, but many more enslaved people seized on the tumult of war to run away and secure their own freedom directly. Historians estimate that between thirty thousand and one hundred thousand formerly enslaved people deserted their enslavers during the war.((Judith L. Van Buskirk, Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution<\/em> (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017); Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2009). For discussion of these numerical estimates, see Gary Nash\u2019s introduction to Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution<\/em> (University of North Carolina, Press, 1996), xxiii.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Figure 6.14. American soldiers came from a variety of backgrounds and had numerous reasons for fighting with the American army. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, a French sublieutenant at the Battle of Yorktown, painted this watercolor soon after that battle and chose to depict four men in men military dress: an African American soldier from the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment, a man in the homespun of the militia, another wearing the common \u201chunting shirt\u201d of the frontier, and the French soldier on the end.\u202fJean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, \u201cAmerican soldiers at the siege of Yorktown,\u201d 1781. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Men and women together struggled through years of war and hardship. For patriots (and those who remained neutral), victory brought new political, social, and economic opportunities, but it also brought new uncertainties. The war decimated entire communities, particularly in the South. Thousands of women throughout the nation had been widowed. The American economy, weighed down by war debt and depreciated currencies, would have to be rebuilt following the war. State constitutions had created governments, but now men would have to figure out how to govern. The opportunities created by the Revolution had come at great cost, in both lives and fortune, and it was left to the survivors to seize those opportunities and help forge and define the new nation-state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VI. The Consequences of the American Revolution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like the earlier distinction between \u201corigins\u201d and \u201ccauses,\u201d the Revolution also had short- and long-term consequences. Perhaps the most important immediate consequence of declaring independence was the creation of state constitutions in 1776 and 1777. The Revolution also unleashed powerful political, social, and economic forces that would transform the new nation\u2019s politics and society, including increased participation in politics and governance, the legal institutionalization of religious toleration, and the growth and diffusion of the population, particularly westward. The Revolution affected Native Americans by opening up western settlement and creating governments hostile to their territorial claims. Even more broadly, the Revolution ended the mercantilist economy, opening new opportunities in trade and manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new states drafted written constitutions, which, at the time, was an important innovation from the traditionally unwritten British Constitution. These new state constitutions were based on the idea of \u201cpopular sovereignty,\u201d that is, that the power and authority of the government derived from the people.((Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era<\/em> (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 126\u201346.)) Most created weak governors and strong legislatures with more regular elections and moderately increased the size of the electorate. A number of states followed the example of Virginia and included a declaration or \u201cbill\u201d of rights in their constitution designed to protect the rights of individuals and circumscribe the prerogative of the government. Pennsylvania\u2019s first state constitution was the most radical and democratic. They created a unicameral legislature and an executive council, but no genuine executive. All free men could vote, including those who did not own property. Massachusetts\u2019s constitution, passed in 1780, was less democratic in structure but underwent a more popular process of ratification. In the fall of 1779, each town sent delegates\u2014312 in all\u2014to a constitutional convention in Cambridge. Town meetings debated the constitution draft and offered suggestions. Anticipating the later federal constitution, Massachusetts established a three-branch government based on checks and balances between the branches. Independence came in 1776, and so did an unprecedented period of constitution making and state building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Continental Congress ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781. The articles allowed each state one vote in the Continental Congress. But the articles are perhaps most notable for what they did not allow. Congress was given no power to levy or collect taxes, regulate foreign or interstate commerce, or establish a federal judiciary. These shortcomings rendered the postwar Congress weak and largely ineffectual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
Figure 6.15. Another John Trumbull piece commissioned for the Capitol in 1817, this painting depicts what would be remembered as the moment the new United States became a republic. On December 23, 1783, George Washington, widely considered the hero of the Revolution, resigned his position as the most powerful man in the former thirteen colonies. Giving up his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army ensured that civilian rule would define the new nation and that a republic would be set in place rather than a dictatorship. John Trumbull, General George Washington Resigning His Commission, c. 1817-1824. From the Architect of the Capitol.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Political and social life changed drastically after independence. Political participation grew as more people gained the right to vote, leading to greater importance being placed on representation within government.((Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776\u20131787<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 1969).)) In addition, more common citizens (or \u201cnew men\u201d) played increasingly important roles in local and state governance. Hierarchy within the states underwent significant changes. Society became less deferential and more egalitarian, less aristocratic and more meritocratic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Revolution\u2019s most important long-term economic consequence was the end of mercantilism. The British Empire had imposed various restrictions on the colonial economies including limiting trade, settlement, and manufacturing. The Revolution opened new markets and new trade relationships. The Americans\u2019 victory also opened the western territories for invasion and settlement, which created new domestic markets. Americans began to create their own manufactures, no longer content to rely on those in Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite these important changes, the American Revolution had its limits. Following their unprecedented expansion into political affairs during the imperial resistance, women also served the patriot cause during the war. However, the Revolution did not result in civic equality for women. Instead, during the immediate postwar period, women became incorporated into the polity to some degree as \u201crepublican mothers.\u201d Republican societies required virtuous citizens, and it became mothers\u2019 responsibility to raise and educate future citizens. This opened opportunities for women regarding education, but they still remained largely on the peripheries of the new American polity.((On \u201crepublican motherhood,\u201d see Norton, Liberty\u2019s Daughters<\/em>; Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 1980). On women after the war, see Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic<\/em> (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government<\/em> (University of Virginia Press, 2000).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approximately sixty thousand loyalists ended up leaving America because of the Revolution. Loyalists came from all ranks of American society, and many lived the rest of their lives in exile from their homeland. A clause in the Treaty of Paris was supposed to protect their property and require the Americans to compensate Loyalists who had lost property during the war because of their allegiance. The Americans, however, reneged on this promise and, throughout the 1780s, states continued seizing property held by Loyalists. Some colonists went to England, where they were strangers and outsiders in what they had thought of as their mother country. Many more, however, settled on the peripheries of the British Empire throughout the world, especially Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec. The Loyalists had come out on the losing side of a Revolution, and many lost everything they had and were forced to create new lives far from the land of their birth.((Maya Jasanoff, Liberty\u2019s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World<\/em> (Knopf, 2011).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"This
Figure 6.16. In the thirteen colonies, boycotting women were seen as patriots. In British prints such as this, they were mocked as immoral harlots sticking their noses in the business of men. Philip Dawe, A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton in North Carolina, March 1775. Metropolitan Museum of Art. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1783, thousands of formerly enslaved Loyalists fled with the British Army. They hoped that the British government would uphold the promise of freedom and help them establish new homes elsewhere in the empire. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, demanded that British troops leave formerly enslaved people behind, but the British military commanders upheld earlier promises and evacuated thousands of freedpeople, transporting them to Canada, the Caribbean, or Great Britain. They would eventually play a role in settling Nova Scotia, and through the subsequent efforts of David George, a Black Loyalist and Baptist preacher, some settled in Sierra Leone in Africa. Black Loyalists, however, continued to face social and economic marginalization, including restrictions on land ownership within the British Empire.((Alan Gilbert, Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War of Independence<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 2012).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fight for liberty led some Americans to manumit their enslaved laborers, and most of the new Northern states soon passed gradual emancipation laws. Some manumissions also occurred in the Upper South, but in the Lower South, some enslavers revoked their offers of freedom for service, and other freedpeople were forced back into bondage. The Revolution\u2019s rhetoric of equality created a \u201crevolutionary generation\u201d of enslaved people and free Black Americans that would eventually encourage the antislavery movement. Slave revolts began to incorporate claims for freedom based on revolutionary ideals. In the long term, the Revolution failed to reconcile slavery with these new egalitarian republican societies, a tension that eventually boiled over in the 1830s and 1840s and effectively tore the nation in two in the 1850s and 1860s.((Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America<\/em> (Harvard University Press, 1998), 217\u201389.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Native Americans, too, participated in and were affected by the Revolution. Many Native American groups, such as the Shawnee, Creek, Cherokee, and Iroquois, had sided with the British. They had hoped for a British victory that would continue to restrain the land-hungry colonial settlers from moving west beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Unfortunately, the Americans\u2019 victory and Native Americans\u2019 support for the British created a pretense for justifying rapid and often brutal expansion into the western territories. Native American peoples would continue to be displaced and pushed farther west throughout the nineteenth century. Ultimately, American independence marked the beginning of the end of what had remained of Native American independence.((Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution<\/em> (Random House, 2015); Claudio Saunt, West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776<\/em> (Norton, 2015); Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities<\/em> (Cambridge, 1995).))<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Figure
Figure 6.17. Joseph Brandt as painted by George Romney. Brandt was a Mohawk leader who led Mohawk and British forces in western New York. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

VII. Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The American Revolution freed colonists from British rule and offered the first blow in what historians have called \u201cthe age of democratic revolutions.\u201d The American Revolution was a global event.((For a summary of the global aspects of the Revolution, see Ted Brackemyre, \u201cThe American Revolution: A Very European Ordeal,\u201d U.S. History Scene<\/em>, http:\/\/\u200bushistoryscene\u200b.com\/\u200barticle\/\u200bam\u200b-rev\u200b-european\u200b-ordeal.)) Revolutions followed in France, then Haiti, and then South America. The American Revolution meanwhile wrought significant changes to the British Empire. Many British historians even use the Revolution as a dividing point between a \u201cfirst British Empire\u201d and a \u201csecond British Empire.\u201d At home, however, the Revolution created a new nation-state, the United States of America. By September 1783, independence had been won. What the new nation would look like, however, was still very much up for grabs. In the 1780s, Americans would shape and then reshape that nation-state, first with the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, and then with the Constitution in 1787 and 1788.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historians have long argued over the causes and character of the American Revolution. Was the Revolution caused by British imperial policy or by internal tensions within the colonies? Were colonists primarily motivated by constitutional principles, ideals of equality, or economic self-interest? Was the Revolution radical or conservative? But such questions are hardly limited to historians. From Abraham Lincoln\u2019s use of the Declaration of Independence in the Gettysburg Address to twenty-first-century Tea Party members wearing knee breeches, the Revolution has remained at the center of American political culture. Indeed, how one understands the Revolution often dictates how one defines what it means to be American.((Michael D. Hattem, The Memory of \u201976: The Revolution in American History<\/em> (Yale University Press, 2024).))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Revolution was not won by a few founding fathers. Men and women of all ranks contributed to the colonies\u2019 most improbable victory, from the commoners who protested the Stamp Act to the women who helped organize boycotts against the Townshend duties; from the men, Black and white, who fought in the army to the women who contributed to its support. The Revolution, however, did not aim to end all social and civic inequalities in the new nation, and, in the case of Native Americans, it created new inequalities. But over time, the Revolution\u2019s rhetoric of equality, as encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence, helped highlight some of those inequalities and became a shared aspiration for future social and political movements, including, among others, the abolitionist and women\u2019s rights movements of the nineteenth century, the suffragist and civil rights movements of the twentieth century, and the gay rights movement of the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VIII. Primary Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1. George R. T. Hewes, A retrospect of the Boston Tea-party, 1834<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

George R.T. Hewes wrote the following reminiscence of the Boston Tea Party almost 61 years after it occurred. It is likely that his memories included more than a few stories he picked up well after 1773. Nonetheless Hews provides a highly detailed account of this important event.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Thomas Paine calls for American independence, <\/em>1776<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britons had long understood themselves as the freest people on earth, blessed with a limited monarchy and an enlightened parliament. Paine\u2019s pamphlet offered a very different portrayal of the British government. His criticisms swept across the North American continent and generated widespread support for American independence. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Declaration of Independence, 1776<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is hard to overstate the significance of the Declaration of Independence. Designed as a measured justification for the severing of ties with Britain, the document has also functioned as a transformative piece of political philosophy. Most of the conflicts of American history from this point forward emerged from attempts to understand and implement what it means to believe \u201call men are created equal.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Women in South Carolina experience occupation, 1780<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The British faced the difficult task of fighting a war without pushing more colonists into the hands of the revolutionaries. As a result, the Revolutionary War included little direct attacks on civilians, but that does not mean that civilians did not suffer. The following account from Eliza Wilkinson describes the stress faced by non-combatants who had to face the British army. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Oneida declaration of neutrality, 1775<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Oneida nation, one of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), issued a formal declaration of neutrality on June 19, 1775 to the governor of Connecticut after the imperial crisis between Great Britain and their North American colonies erupted into violence. This declaration hints at the Oneida conceptions of their own sovereignty among the Six Nations confederacy, the independence of other Native American nations, and how the Oneida understand the conflict as a war \u201cbetween two brothers.\u201d Samuel Kirkland, a missionary living in Iroquois country, interpreted and transcribed the Oneida\u2019s words and sent them to Governor Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Boston King recalls fighting for the British and securing his freedom, 1798<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boston King was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1760. He escaped to the British Army during their invasion of South Carolina in 1780. He served as a Loyalist in the British Army, and participated in several important battles. Although captured, and once again enslaved by the Americans, King was able to escape to the British again, who secured his freedom by sending him and other Black Loyalists to Canada. Many Black colonists sought freedom by joining with the British, with estimates as high as 5,000. King later became a missionary and one of the first Black Canadian settlers of Sierra Leone in West Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Abigail and John Adams converse on women\u2019s rights, 1776<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American Revolution invited a reconsideration of all social inequalities. Abigail Adams, in this letter to her husband John Adams, asked her husband to \u201cremember the ladies\u201d in any new laws he may create. In his reply, John Adams treated this sentiment as a joke, demonstrating the limits of revolutionary liberty.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. American Revolution cartoon, 1782<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political cartoons provide insight into public opinion and the decisions made by politicians. These cartoons became an important medium for voicing criticism and dissent during the American Revolution. In this 1782 cartoon, the British lion faces a spaniel (Spain), a rooster (France), a rattlesnake (America), and a pug dog (Netherlands). Though the caption predicts Britain\u2019s success, it illustrates that Britain faced challenges \u2013and therefore drains on their military and treasury\u2014from more than just the American rebels.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. Drawings of the uniforms of the American Revolution, 1781<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

American soldiers came from a variety of backgrounds and had numerous reasons for fighting with the American army. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, a French sublieutenant at the Battle of Yorktown, painted this watercolor soon after that battle and chose to depict four men in men military dress: an African American soldier from the 2nd Rhode Island Regiment, a man in the homespun of the militia, another wearing the common \u201chunting shirt\u201d of the frontier, and the French soldier on the end.<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IX. Reference Material<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This chapter was edited by Michael Hattem, with content contributions by James Ambuske, Alexander Burns, Joshua Beatty, Christina Carrick, Christopher Consolino, Michael Hattem, Timothy C. Hemmis, Brenda Lakhani, Joseph Moore, Emily Romeo, John Saillant, Christopher Sparshott, Ben Wright, and Caroline Wright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recommended Reading<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution<\/em>. Belknap, 1967.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Beatty, Jacqueline. In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America<\/em>. New York University Press, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America\u2019s Independence<\/em>. Knopf, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Breen, T. H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence<\/em>. Oxford University Press, 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Carp, Benjamin L. Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution<\/em>. Oxford University Press, 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 DuVal, Kathleen. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution<\/em>. Random House, 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Duval, Lauren. The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence<\/em>. University of North Carolina Press, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Egerton, Douglas R. Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America<\/em>. Oxford University Press, 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Eustace, Nicole. Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution<\/em>. University of North Carolina Press, 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Gould, Eliga. Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire<\/em>. Harvard University Press, 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Hattem, Michael D. The Memory of \u201976: The Revolution in American History<\/em>. Yale University Press, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Hattem, Michael D. Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution<\/em>. Yale University Press, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Holton, Woody. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia<\/em>. University of North Carolina Press, 1999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Jasanoff, Maya. Liberty\u2019s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World<\/em>. Knopf, 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Knott, Sarah. Sensibility and the American Revolution<\/em>. University of North Carolina Press, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Landers, Jane G. Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions<\/em>. Harvard University Press, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence<\/em>. Knopf, 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765\u20131776<\/em>. Vintage Books, 1974.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Nash, Gary B. The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America<\/em>. Viking, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty\u2019s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750\u20131800<\/em>. Cornell University Press, 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 O\u2019Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson. The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire<\/em>. Yale University Press, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Schiff, Stacy. A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America<\/em>. Thorndike Press, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Waldstreicher, David. Slavery\u2019s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification<\/em>. Hill and Wang, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution<\/em>. Vintage Books, 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Zabin, Serena. The Boston Massacre: A Family History<\/em>. Harper Collins, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I. Introduction In the 1760s, Benjamin Rush, a native of Philadelphia, recounted a visit to Parliament. Upon seeing the king\u2019s throne in the House of Lords, Rush said he \u201cfelt as if he walked on sacred ground\u201d with \u201cemotions that I cannot describe.\u201d((Rush to Ebenezer Hazard, October 22, 1768, in L. H. Butterfield, ed., Letters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-680","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":688,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/680\/revisions\/688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/feedback_second_edition\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}