Reform, Resistance, and Revolution

hello everyone welcome to lesson 2b reform resistance and revolution okay so the major questions we're going to be talking about here uh we're going to talk about what brought an end or what the end of the seven years war meant for native americans we're going to talk about how england sought to solve its national debt problem we're going to talk about the things the various factors that motivated the colonial protesters against england and then finally we'll answer the question of what factors influenced uh different colonists to support one side or the other during the american revolution so wrapping up the french and indian war we had talked before in the previous lecture about colonial poverty and unemployed soldiers um there was also an indian resistance that came up um pontiac's rebellion and this led to the proclamation of 1763. so before we had mentioned that indians were as well as the british indian department were increasingly annoyed with each other british indian department was annoyed that indians were asking for what they felt were excessive demands for presence and the indians were getting upset with the british indian department because unlike the french who really negotiated on indian terms and were very generous giving presents to the indians the english after they emerged victorious in the seven years war um really were asserting themselves as the dominant power so in order to save money they completely eliminated giving gifts as a part of their foreign policy when it came to native americans so you also have as you see in this image here increasing colonial land greed all right so you have uh indians worried about um now that england had acquired all this land east of the mississippi river uh they're increasingly worried about westward expansion uh by england and this was never really a concern when france was the dominant colonial power in north america so an indian named pontiac created a pan-indian confederation of nations who lived around the great lakes and began to attack all the british forts in the west england eventually recaptured these forts and defeated this native american confederation in 1766 but right after that war broke out the crown issued the proclamation of 1763 which banned white settlement west of the appalachian mountains and essentially drew what became known as the proclamation line you see it in red here tracing all the way down essentially right down the spine of the appalachian mountains so this was the proclamation line and the colonists were angry about this they felt that it was their god-given right to expand and to populate the land in the west but as we had mentioned before the biggest legacy of the seven years war was england's national debt which had doubled over the course of the seven years war and england's national debt was already big because england had constantly been at war since the end of the 11th century so how was england going to pay for this recent war their solution was to tax the colonies uh the seven years war had acquired lots of land for the colonies as we saw uh in this image here so um but the fact is is that you know that it acquired all this land but because of the proclamation line of 1763 which again you see traced in red here they weren't allowed to settle any of it england still had lots of troops in america and those troops were there for uh to protect the colonies against frontier attacks by uh upset native americans so uh the colonies weren't paying at that time any direct taxes to england colonists were paying taxes to their colonial governments but the overall tax rate that the colonists paid was still lower than what the average english citizen paid who is living in england the average tax paid by british citizens in england was 26 shillings per year and the average amount of taxes paid by the american colonist was around one shilling per year so after england raised taxes on the colonists beginning in 1764 the tax burden on the average colonist more than doubled to two shillings per year but again that was still only eight percent of what british mainland citizens were paying to the crown so the book does a good job of explaining the different methods that english used uh the england or english crown used to generate revenue so what i'm going to do is focus more on what motivated the different protesters against these the new set of taxes that was being levied by england so that brings us to point uh three letter c three on our outline the political ideologies of the protesters now it's important to understand that these groups who were protesting england there is tension within these ranks right you have a group of radicals who are protesting against england as well as a group of moderates yeah so it's important to understand that this is not just revolutionaries on one side and loyalists to the crown on the other right so there are different interests and different loyalties at play on one side you have the real whigs right known as the republicans and this is we say republicans here we're talking about a small r republicans they believe that people should have a say in representative government they believe in qualified democracy right meaning that usually qualified democracy meant that people had to be able to own land in order to be able to vote and there's a belief that in order to be able to be to run for office and to hold office you had to own a lot of land so they believe in democracy but with qualifications these real whigs were mostly educated elites lawyers and politicians and they believed that if people were complacent they could be enslaved right because power inevitably corrupts and then people could be figuratively enslaved by uh their government and they were students of history uh they studied uh for example roman history in the fall of its republic into an empire they also were okay with the attack on andrew oliver um remember oliver was the collector for the stamp act who was tarred and feathered and they supported that attack because it was measured but if you call in the book it talked about the burning of massachusetts lieutenant governor thomas hutchinson uh they felt that the hutchinson attack was over the top because uh hutchinson um his family was inside of the house when they burned it uh and there's a chance that everyone could have been killed right so these real wigs they support the protest but they want um more measured involvement on the other side you have believers in a so-called moral economy believers in a more moral economy believe that market relations should be the sole determinant of human relationships and they felt that the necessities of life things like food bread and milk should have a fixed cost regardless of supply and demand right so that everything should have a fair price uh they felt that jacking up prices in times of economic crisis was immoral so in the years leading up to the seven years war and eventually leading up of course to the revolution wages were going down and the price of commodities was going up and this was especially the case after 1775. so before this time uh wages and the cost of staple goods seemed to move in unison together right when cost of staple goods went up so did wages and vice versa so these two ideas coexist this idea of a moral economy and this idea the ideas held by the real whigs republicans for their part see the onset of tyranny with all of these taxes being passed by england uh the workers and the laborers these believers in a moral economy see a breakdown of the moral economy but it's important to understand that republicans don't want pure democracy they felt that that would be akin to mob rule so this tradition of hierarchy as well as deference that it kind of defined colonial relations between the colonial gentry and the underclass began to erode as some of the societal elites began to incite the rabble and this erosion of order is going to lead to mass protests against the british right commoners are becoming politicized and one of the events that really politicizes them was the boston massacre in 1770. in in this case a mob protesting uh english troops who were stationed in boston to enforce the edicts of parliament um were protesting uh the british and they started this mob started throwing snowballs with rocks in the middle so people were like taking a rock and building a snowball around it they were also throwing fecal matter at the soldiers and as a result of this the british soldiers fired into the crowd killing five people one of whom was a former slave uh named crispus addicts you also have the burning of the gatsby in 1772 the gatsby was a british ship that enforced smuggling laws and it ran aground in rhode island and local residents came out to the shore they burnt the ship they shot the captain in the groin and they stole his beaver hat so you kind of see that these actions right the mob is taking these protests to another level right and this at times is going to be a concern to the real wigs who feel that this is a sign that the order in american society is breaking down okay so we're going to fast forward and we're going to talk about the composition of the american army right the american honor army and who was fighting um on each side either for the colonies or fighting on behalf of england so not all americans are fighting for the same reasons right when you look at the common soldiers the people who were uh fighting in the war um when you look at their adversary they're fighting against the best trained and best equipped navy army and navy in the world and british soldiers had a hard job essentially they were charged with taking back the entire country and reinstituting colonial government and this meant that they couldn't fight an all-out war because they're trying to bring the colonies back into the fold if they fought an all-out war you know destroying farms um you know wreaking havoc on the citizen population really all that would do would just make everybody angry um and ensure that there was going to be a continued resistance uh if england did win the war so the makeup of the american army um really before 1775 when the continental army was created the only kind of national defense was colonial militias the militia soldiers raised up by each colony so uh the people who fought in the militia as well as the people who fought or enlisted as regular soldiers in the continental army um were the middling sort right they were commoners farmers people who were artisans blacksmiths gunsmiths etc and a lot of these people were inspired by common sense common sense was a pamphlet written by thomas paine published in january of 1776. and common sense was heavily influenced by enlightenment ideology it was written in very blunt terms written in the language of the common man it spoke out against the divine right of kings it advocated for a moral economy and it was very widely read and the fact that so many people read it was an indication of the level of education among the colonial population and essentially what common sense did is it helped to articulate the ideological basis for the revolution but not everyone supported thomas payne's ideas john adams who eventually became the second president of the united states and was george washington's vice president thought it was too democratic throughout the war uh you had about a 20 to 25 desertion rate among the continental army and the militia um and the greatest burden for fighting fell upon unmarried men um people who were day laborers as well as slaves and this is because wealthy people could afford to buy a substitute the people who fought were mostly poor whites people who didn't own land as well as immigrants and because of the makeup of the army and the conditions that they suffered under um there were a number of mutinies throughout the war where the men rose up against their officers and they did this for a number of reasons sometimes they would rise up refuse to obey the orders of an officer known for high living and there are also a couple of incidents where they rose up against state governments when the soldiers weren't being paid when they weren't being fed or properly clothed so that is the common soldiers on the other side you have officers officers came from the educated class they were mostly the colonial elite people like george washington it was a wealthy planter uh prior to the war and they were also very politically moderate right because they're at the top of the social hierarchy they enjoy their elevated position and they don't really want or favor a lot of changes that might upend that social order they were worried however that continued british wool was a threat to their freedom right and you can kind of see this picture on the right here um that they you know lived in a very different way than the soldiers sometimes soldiers didn't have tents or warm clothes but officers had these big what were known as marquis tents right and had all of the comforts of home brought along with them sometimes you know large wardrobes um for them as well as their family members who came along a lot of times their wives accompanied them out into the field and dueling was actually very common right a common uh way of resolving conflict between gentlemen in order to defend their honor right so when they had a problem with each other they would duel in order to resolve resolve disputes promotion among the officer corps was often based on seniority not on merit so it didn't matter what they did when in control of a army out in the field really had to depend on who was uh who had the most seniority well what about african americans so remember that if you go back to the declaration of independence slavery was not mentioned it was originally mentioned in thomas jefferson's initial draft but was taken out due to opposition by southern plantation owners because essentially it posed a contradiction to the ideals of the american revolution and so most african-americans who fought in the american revolution fought for the british army in fact ten times more african-americans fought for the british than for the americans because of the promise of freedom for slaves one example of this was dunmore's proclamation in 1775. so lord dunmore was a loyalist royal governor of virginia and basically he issued this proclamation that said any slaves who escaped the british lines and fought for england would be emancipated after the war this was followed by the phillipsburg declaration in 1779 which basically said that all slaves of the american rebels were free if they managed to escape back to english lines regardless of whether they agreed to fight for england or not so both of these proclamations and declarations were done out of military necessity by england they felt that creating you know this enticement of freedom would create a slave rebellion in the south and give them a military advantage because the continental army and local militias would be forced to suppress a slave rebellion instead of being able to fight english troops but as i mentioned before some african americans did in fact fight for the united states some did so unwillingly some were sent by their masters as a substitute when their masters had been drafted into the service some were impressed into service meaning that as the army went through an area they might commandeer slaves and force them to fight in the army when they were short on manpower and others were just drafted right so they fought unwillingly because they were drafted some also fought willingly for the united states some volunteered because they supported the cause or hoped that by serving on behalf of the americans that after the war they would be granted their freedom native americans also uh fought on behalf of the british as well as the americans the vast majority of native tribes sided with england um because they felt that the americans posed a bigger threat to their homeland remember going all the way back to pontiac's war the indians were worried about colonial expansion but remember it wasn't the british government doing the expanding it was these disaffected frontier colonists who were pushing and encroaching westward onto indian lands so many native americans sided with england because they felt that the american colonists posed a bigger threat to their homelands all but one of the six nations tribes aligned with england a lot of the algonquian indians that lived here in the midwest sided with england some tribes were divided straight down the middle divided some members of the tribe supported england while others supported the movement for independence so that's all we have for lesson 2b thanks for listening and we'll speak to you soon

hello everyone welcome to lesson 2b reform resistance and revolution okay so the major questions we&#39;re going to be talking about here uh we&#39;re going to talk about what brought an end or what the end of the seven years war meant for native americans we&#39;re going to talk about how england sought to solve its national debt problem we&#39;re going to talk about the things the various factors that motivated the colonial protesters against england and then finally we&#39;ll answer the question of what factors influenced uh different colonists to support one side or the other during the american revolution so wrapping up the french and indian war we had talked before in the previous lecture about colonial poverty and unemployed soldiers um there was also an indian resistance that came up um pontiac&#39;s rebellion and this led to the proclamation of 1763. so before we had mentioned that indians were as well as the british indian department were increasingly annoyed with each other british indian department was annoyed that indians were asking for what they felt were excessive demands for presence and the indians were getting upset with the british indian department because unlike the french who really negotiated on indian terms and were very generous giving presents to the indians the english after they emerged victorious in the seven years war um really were asserting themselves as the dominant power so in order to save money they completely eliminated giving gifts as a part of their foreign policy when it came to native americans so you also have as you see in this image here increasing colonial land greed all right so you have uh indians worried about um now that england had acquired all this land east of the mississippi river uh they&#39;re increasingly worried about westward expansion uh by england and this was never really a concern when france was the dominant colonial power in north america so an indian named pontiac created a pan-indian confederation of nations who lived around the great lakes and began to attack all the british forts in the west england eventually recaptured these forts and defeated this native american confederation in 1766 but right after that war broke out the crown issued the proclamation of 1763 which banned white settlement west of the appalachian mountains and essentially drew what became known as the proclamation line you see it in red here tracing all the way down essentially right down the spine of the appalachian mountains so this was the proclamation line and the colonists were angry about this they felt that it was their god-given right to expand and to populate the land in the west but as we had mentioned before the biggest legacy of the seven years war was england&#39;s national debt which had doubled over the course of the seven years war and england&#39;s national debt was already big because england had constantly been at war since the end of the 11th century so how was england going to pay for this recent war their solution was to tax the colonies uh the seven years war had acquired lots of land for the colonies as we saw uh in this image here so um but the fact is is that you know that it acquired all this land but because of the proclamation line of 1763 which again you see traced in red here they weren&#39;t allowed to settle any of it england still had lots of troops in america and those troops were there for uh to protect the colonies against frontier attacks by uh upset native americans so uh the colonies weren&#39;t paying at that time any direct taxes to england colonists were paying taxes to their colonial governments but the overall tax rate that the colonists paid was still lower than what the average english citizen paid who is living in england the average tax paid by british citizens in england was 26 shillings per year and the average amount of taxes paid by the american colonist was around one shilling per year so after england raised taxes on the colonists beginning in 1764 the tax burden on the average colonist more than doubled to two shillings per year but again that was still only eight percent of what british mainland citizens were paying to the crown so the book does a good job of explaining the different methods that english used uh the england or english crown used to generate revenue so what i&#39;m going to do is focus more on what motivated the different protesters against these the new set of taxes that was being levied by england so that brings us to point uh three letter c three on our outline the political ideologies of the protesters now it&#39;s important to understand that these groups who were protesting england there is tension within these ranks right you have a group of radicals who are protesting against england as well as a group of moderates yeah so it&#39;s important to understand that this is not just revolutionaries on one side and loyalists to the crown on the other right so there are different interests and different loyalties at play on one side you have the real whigs right known as the republicans and this is we say republicans here we&#39;re talking about a small r republicans they believe that people should have a say in representative government they believe in qualified democracy right meaning that usually qualified democracy meant that people had to be able to own land in order to be able to vote and there&#39;s a belief that in order to be able to be to run for office and to hold office you had to own a lot of land so they believe in democracy but with qualifications these real whigs were mostly educated elites lawyers and politicians and they believed that if people were complacent they could be enslaved right because power inevitably corrupts and then people could be figuratively enslaved by uh their government and they were students of history uh they studied uh for example roman history in the fall of its republic into an empire they also were okay with the attack on andrew oliver um remember oliver was the collector for the stamp act who was tarred and feathered and they supported that attack because it was measured but if you call in the book it talked about the burning of massachusetts lieutenant governor thomas hutchinson uh they felt that the hutchinson attack was over the top because uh hutchinson um his family was inside of the house when they burned it uh and there&#39;s a chance that everyone could have been killed right so these real wigs they support the protest but they want um more measured involvement on the other side you have believers in a so-called moral economy believers in a more moral economy believe that market relations should be the sole determinant of human relationships and they felt that the necessities of life things like food bread and milk should have a fixed cost regardless of supply and demand right so that everything should have a fair price uh they felt that jacking up prices in times of economic crisis was immoral so in the years leading up to the seven years war and eventually leading up of course to the revolution wages were going down and the price of commodities was going up and this was especially the case after 1775. so before this time uh wages and the cost of staple goods seemed to move in unison together right when cost of staple goods went up so did wages and vice versa so these two ideas coexist this idea of a moral economy and this idea the ideas held by the real whigs republicans for their part see the onset of tyranny with all of these taxes being passed by england uh the workers and the laborers these believers in a moral economy see a breakdown of the moral economy but it&#39;s important to understand that republicans don&#39;t want pure democracy they felt that that would be akin to mob rule so this tradition of hierarchy as well as deference that it kind of defined colonial relations between the colonial gentry and the underclass began to erode as some of the societal elites began to incite the rabble and this erosion of order is going to lead to mass protests against the british right commoners are becoming politicized and one of the events that really politicizes them was the boston massacre in 1770. in in this case a mob protesting uh english troops who were stationed in boston to enforce the edicts of parliament um were protesting uh the british and they started this mob started throwing snowballs with rocks in the middle so people were like taking a rock and building a snowball around it they were also throwing fecal matter at the soldiers and as a result of this the british soldiers fired into the crowd killing five people one of whom was a former slave uh named crispus addicts you also have the burning of the gatsby in 1772 the gatsby was a british ship that enforced smuggling laws and it ran aground in rhode island and local residents came out to the shore they burnt the ship they shot the captain in the groin and they stole his beaver hat so you kind of see that these actions right the mob is taking these protests to another level right and this at times is going to be a concern to the real wigs who feel that this is a sign that the order in american society is breaking down okay so we&#39;re going to fast forward and we&#39;re going to talk about the composition of the american army right the american honor army and who was fighting um on each side either for the colonies or fighting on behalf of england so not all americans are fighting for the same reasons right when you look at the common soldiers the people who were uh fighting in the war um when you look at their adversary they&#39;re fighting against the best trained and best equipped navy army and navy in the world and british soldiers had a hard job essentially they were charged with taking back the entire country and reinstituting colonial government and this meant that they couldn&#39;t fight an all-out war because they&#39;re trying to bring the colonies back into the fold if they fought an all-out war you know destroying farms um you know wreaking havoc on the citizen population really all that would do would just make everybody angry um and ensure that there was going to be a continued resistance uh if england did win the war so the makeup of the american army um really before 1775 when the continental army was created the only kind of national defense was colonial militias the militia soldiers raised up by each colony so uh the people who fought in the militia as well as the people who fought or enlisted as regular soldiers in the continental army um were the middling sort right they were commoners farmers people who were artisans blacksmiths gunsmiths etc and a lot of these people were inspired by common sense common sense was a pamphlet written by thomas paine published in january of 1776. and common sense was heavily influenced by enlightenment ideology it was written in very blunt terms written in the language of the common man it spoke out against the divine right of kings it advocated for a moral economy and it was very widely read and the fact that so many people read it was an indication of the level of education among the colonial population and essentially what common sense did is it helped to articulate the ideological basis for the revolution but not everyone supported thomas payne&#39;s ideas john adams who eventually became the second president of the united states and was george washington&#39;s vice president thought it was too democratic throughout the war uh you had about a 20 to 25 desertion rate among the continental army and the militia um and the greatest burden for fighting fell upon unmarried men um people who were day laborers as well as slaves and this is because wealthy people could afford to buy a substitute the people who fought were mostly poor whites people who didn&#39;t own land as well as immigrants and because of the makeup of the army and the conditions that they suffered under um there were a number of mutinies throughout the war where the men rose up against their officers and they did this for a number of reasons sometimes they would rise up refuse to obey the orders of an officer known for high living and there are also a couple of incidents where they rose up against state governments when the soldiers weren&#39;t being paid when they weren&#39;t being fed or properly clothed so that is the common soldiers on the other side you have officers officers came from the educated class they were mostly the colonial elite people like george washington it was a wealthy planter uh prior to the war and they were also very politically moderate right because they&#39;re at the top of the social hierarchy they enjoy their elevated position and they don&#39;t really want or favor a lot of changes that might upend that social order they were worried however that continued british wool was a threat to their freedom right and you can kind of see this picture on the right here um that they you know lived in a very different way than the soldiers sometimes soldiers didn&#39;t have tents or warm clothes but officers had these big what were known as marquis tents right and had all of the comforts of home brought along with them sometimes you know large wardrobes um for them as well as their family members who came along a lot of times their wives accompanied them out into the field and dueling was actually very common right a common uh way of resolving conflict between gentlemen in order to defend their honor right so when they had a problem with each other they would duel in order to resolve resolve disputes promotion among the officer corps was often based on seniority not on merit so it didn&#39;t matter what they did when in control of a army out in the field really had to depend on who was uh who had the most seniority well what about african americans so remember that if you go back to the declaration of independence slavery was not mentioned it was originally mentioned in thomas jefferson&#39;s initial draft but was taken out due to opposition by southern plantation owners because essentially it posed a contradiction to the ideals of the american revolution and so most african-americans who fought in the american revolution fought for the british army in fact ten times more african-americans fought for the british than for the americans because of the promise of freedom for slaves one example of this was dunmore&#39;s proclamation in 1775. so lord dunmore was a loyalist royal governor of virginia and basically he issued this proclamation that said any slaves who escaped the british lines and fought for england would be emancipated after the war this was followed by the phillipsburg declaration in 1779 which basically said that all slaves of the american rebels were free if they managed to escape back to english lines regardless of whether they agreed to fight for england or not so both of these proclamations and declarations were done out of military necessity by england they felt that creating you know this enticement of freedom would create a slave rebellion in the south and give them a military advantage because the continental army and local militias would be forced to suppress a slave rebellion instead of being able to fight english troops but as i mentioned before some african americans did in fact fight for the united states some did so unwillingly some were sent by their masters as a substitute when their masters had been drafted into the service some were impressed into service meaning that as the army went through an area they might commandeer slaves and force them to fight in the army when they were short on manpower and others were just drafted right so they fought unwillingly because they were drafted some also fought willingly for the united states some volunteered because they supported the cause or hoped that by serving on behalf of the americans that after the war they would be granted their freedom native americans also uh fought on behalf of the british as well as the americans the vast majority of native tribes sided with england um because they felt that the americans posed a bigger threat to their homeland remember going all the way back to pontiac&#39;s war the indians were worried about colonial expansion but remember it wasn&#39;t the british government doing the expanding it was these disaffected frontier colonists who were pushing and encroaching westward onto indian lands so many native americans sided with england because they felt that the american colonists posed a bigger threat to their homelands all but one of the six nations tribes aligned with england a lot of the algonquian indians that lived here in the midwest sided with england some tribes were divided straight down the middle divided some members of the tribe supported england while others supported the movement for independence so that&#39;s all we have for lesson 2b thanks for listening and we&#39;ll speak to you soon

Transcript for:Reform, Resistance, and Revolution

Transcript for:
Reform, Resistance, and Revolution