The Revolutionary Republic

welcome to lesson 2c the revolutionary republic major questions we're going to answer in this lecture we're going to talk about the significance of the battle of saratoga i'm talking about the different factors that allowed americans to achieve victory we'll talk about the key provisions of the 1783 treaty of paris different than the 1763 treaty of paris we talked about after the seven years war and then finally we're going to talk about the articles of confederation and how they were inadequate for self-governance after the revolutionary war okay so in the last lecture we discussed the composition of the american army during the fight for independence as well as some of the other reasons that the colonists chose to fight for one side or the other in this lecture we will talk about several factors that enable the americans to win the war against such long odds we will also examine some of the challenges faced by america immediately after the war was over but before we do any of that it's important to understand that victory in independence was not a foregone conclusion the colonists faced very long odds as i had mentioned before the colonists were fighting against the best trained and equipped army and navy in the world as mentioned england had been at war almost constantly since the 11th century right so they were very good at waging war in subjugating rebellions in their colonial possessions but one thing to keep in mind is that british forces had a very difficult task ahead of them they were fighting thousands of miles from home which created enormous logistical problems it could take months to get supplies and troops from england to the america to america the colonies were essentially hostile territory so they needed to conquer areas in order to establish safe bases for supplying their forces and essentially they needed to take back the entire country as well as reinstitute colonial government meaning as i mentioned before they couldn't fight an all-out war against the population and against the infrastructure because if the war was too hard on the civilian population how would they accept british rule afterward so a big turning point in the american revolution was the battle of saratoga in upstate new york in october of 1777. during this battle americans captured basically england's entire northern army under the direction of general john burgoyne this forced england to abandon plans to seize and hold new england to cut it off from the rest of the colonies and it forced england to shift their focus on pacifying the southern colonies hoping to break them off from the northern colonies it's also important to understand that this american victory changed the perception of the war globally it showed other european powers that the americans actually had a chance to win the war and this led in some of england's rival european powers to pledge their support for the american war effort and we'll get to why that was important here in a second all right so eventually americans win the war right and i'm not going to belabor the point the book does a good job of talking about how uh the specifics and how that all came about but we will talk about the reasons various reasons why americans were able to win the war against such long odds the first factor that played into this was foreign assistance the dutch as well as french government loaned money when the continental congress was unable to do so congress essentially as we'll explain had no power to levy taxes couldn't force individual colonies to contribute soldiers and materiel or money uh they could only ask right so what these uh foreign governments provided a lot of money france for example took out 1.3 billion levers in debt which was the french currency at the time spain spent 700 million reals the dutch sent supplies throughout the conflict you also have foreign military and naval assistance as well as the money that i had explained earlier the continental navy at the beginning of the war was very small having only 65 ships compared to 90 for england but throughout the course of the war france contributed 51 ships and spain added another 19. and that brought the advantage of the americans up to 135 ships versus only 90 for england you also have soldiers that were sent by foreign powers particularly france france sent 10 000 soldiers as well as 20 000 sailors to man all those ships so that's the first factor is foreign assistance another factor that helped the americans win the war was american resolve this belief that they were fighting for a higher cause that god sanctioned the revolution and supported it right they also believed that they were fighting for a just cause that they were defending the true constitutional rights of english citizens state militias were another factor that helped the americans win the war and the state militias were much maligned by american commanders including george washington for their various faults sometimes they refused to obey orders they rejected the strict military discipline when they were working with continental army units often thought of as cowardly for retreating when facing oncoming british troops in close combat but there were a number of benefits that the state militias provided they often established law and order in areas the continental army couldn't occupy and they would also harass british troops the english strategy essentially was to establish bases near the coast and then use those as launch pads for tax attacks into the interior so when they were away from their base the british army had to rely on supply lines often times long supply trains that would follow their lines so the militia would use guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks against england they would use these guerrilla-style attacks as they moved through the back country meaning that they would attack and then when the english soldiers would counter-attack they would disappear into the woods and retreat so basically they would attack these extended supply lines of the british soldiers because they were vulnerable and stretched so long away from their bases near the coast where they had more power so these attacks would prevent england from moving very far england because they couldn't establish a secure line of supply worrying that their forces would be cut off or surrounded these surprises attacks against british advancing columns also slowed them down the melissa also were used to intimidate the loyalist population who lived in the back country essentially they were trying to win the battle of the hearts and minds of citizens to prevent them from helping england so as you see the militia provided a number of different advantages for the americans another factor that played into this was george washington's conservative and measured approach washington won few battles um but he never positioned his army to get wiped out right so basically what he did was he used uh the resources he had to the fullest extent he only fought battles when the odds were in his favor and essentially what this did was it frustrated england and allowed washington to conserve his numbers right so he lost almost every major battle that he fought in but he forced england to expend valuable resources in order to gain small victories as well as prolong the war which led to increasing costs and dissatisfaction in england um some examples of this measured approach uh would be uh during the new york campaign facing superior numbers of british troops um george washington would fight inflict as many losses as he could and then retreat to safety to prevent his force from being captured uh also in the southern theater george washington appointed this guy general nathaniel greene who led the southern army and greene employed the same strategy that washington did the strategy of what was known as strategic retreat so because green and the continental army forces in the south were drastically outnumbered he essentially divided his forces to make england do the same to chase after these different small parts of the british army or the continental army he also retreated to the interior and envoy avoided large battles against english forces he would use local militia and guerrilla forces for what they were good for to harass british columns and supply lines as they were advancing through the back country and perhaps the biggest example of this strategy in action was at the battle of cowpens in south carolina in 1781 in january essentially what he did is he set up the militia at the front of his line and as british troops advanced he just told them to fire one volley of shots at the british and then they would be allowed to retreat behind the continental army forces and essentially what this did is it allowed the americans to win the battle at cowpens so by the end of the war because of the actions of people like green and the way they used um you know the combination of the continental army and uh the militia forces is that by the end of the war the continental army and the militia controlled everything in the south with the exception of coastal areas and those major port cities another factor that helped the americans to win the war was british command and supply um england didn't have enough soldiers to be an occupying force their supply lines as we had mentioned several times were spread too thin being hassed by harassed by the militia and the fact is is that fighting an overseas war was very expensive especially when england was fighting other wars at the same time and british officers were also very cautious they couldn't fight an unlimited war because they wanted to reassert british rule after the war so those are the different factors that help the americans to win the war right so let's talk about the peace that followed right the treaty of paris so the treaty of paris uh was signed in uh 1783 right and that brought an end to the revolutionary war so some of the main provisions of the treaty of paris it recognized american independence it established the western boundary of u.s territory as the mississippi river you see here the division right the brown is spanish territory spanish louisiana spanish florida and everything in orange and yellow is that which is represented was seeded by england to the united states as a result of the treaty of paris america gained fishing rights off the coast of newfoundland in canada british troops were removed promptly and permanently from american soil loyalists their their rights as citizens as well as their property was supposed to be restored and all pre-war debts owed to british merchants were remained in place meaning if people had borrowed money from british merchants before the war they would be valid and they would be obligated to pay those back after the war so that brings us to self-governance right self-governance under the articles of confederation so it's important to understand that the articles of confederation were created with one purpose to create unity among the colonies enough to be able to fight the war against england and as time would prove they were wholly inadequate for anything else right and i'll explain this in a second so the biggest issue was when creating the article articles of confederation was this need to balance the creation of a central government while protecting the sovereignty of the states so this led to a number of different compromises for example sovereignty was divided between congress and the states and to do that they created a unicameral legislature right one in other words not a house and senate which would be a bicameral legislature but they created the confederation congress which was a unicameral legislature in order to protect states rights where every state had one vote so essentially what the articles of confederation did is it created a firm league what it referred to as a firm league of friendship so this is different than creating a national identity right and essentially what this led to was a coalition of what were essentially 13 small independent countries so some of the key provisions um each state were they were all equal regardless of size they had one vote each in the confederation congress in order to pass a law the consent was needed between nine of 13 states and to pass an amendment right you needed unanimous consent right because what do amendments do essentially an amendment grants new powers to the central government to the national government so in order to make that happen they needed unanimous consent of all 13 states so let's talk about some of the boundaries of congressional power in this articles of confederation here are some things that congress could do and this is not a comprehensive list congress could regulate foreign affairs this would involve things like signing treaties negotiating alliances with foreign powers creating international trade agreements so but if to exercise anything related to foreign affairs to sign a treaty or whatever um congress had to have the approval of 9 out of 13 states congress could also declare war this required also required the approval of nine of 13 states so individual states could declare war if they were quote invaded or under imminent attack in an imminent attack on the frontier end quote essentially what that meant is that states could declare war against indian tribes if they were invaded in their frontier areas the national government could also mediate disputes between the different states when it came to issues like trade or uh the western land claims and you see that down there in the bottom picture right the different land claims or that were made by each state especially when you look at connecticut that long swath of green right here virginia the state of virginia usually occupied here but they claim land all the way to the mississippi and so on and so forth including georgia you see the state of georgia down here it claimed land all the way up to the mississippi so um interstate commerce was also something that could be mediated by the national government and it also had the power to manage indian relations but the government only had power to to manage or to engage with native americans living outside of the boundaries of individual states and as you see here there was very little land that was unoccupied right so this created a lot of conflict after the war when it came to negotiating with indian tribes some of the things congress could not do right they could not levy direct taxes they were not allowed to raise a large army the confederation could set quotas in a poor senior officers for the army but the states were responsible for meeting those quotas and the federal government had no compulsory authority over the states meaning if they requested money if they requested soldiers it was just a request they couldn't force the individual states to contribute and in fact there was a large struggle to ratify the articles of confederation during the war the articles were finalized on november 15 1777 and submitted to the states for ratification the articles were not considered binding until all of the different states ratified them by november of 1778 11 out of 13 states had ratified within 14 months 12 out of 13 had agreed maryland throughout the war had refused to sign until the landed states agreed to give up their western holdings especially the state of virginia right as we saw in this image here so the articles of confederation were finally ratified in february of 1781. 1781 essentially eight months before the battle of yorktown which marked the american victory in the conflict so after the revolutionary war congress faced a number of uh problems right um and this these were problems that affected the nation as a whole you have a large national as well as state debt these are both talked about extensively in the textbook so i won't belabor those points one thing i do want to focus on was the problems the government had enforcing the treaty of paris for example england withdrew it was supposed to withdraw its forces after the war and when they did they began to take slaves that they had freed with them during the war per dunmore's proclamation the phillipsburg declaration etc but remember that the treaty of paris said that all property belonging to people had to be returned after the war so essentially because the slaves were considered property americans stopped paying back the debt that they had incurred to british merchants before the war that was again another provision of the treaty of paris and as a result of that england refused to evacuate its troops from forts on the northern frontier of american territory bordering canada um and this land had been seeded to america in the treaty of paris another problem was that congress couldn't force states to pass laws forcing citizens to repay their debts so congress also had no money or authority to raise a large army that could forcibly evict england from those forts you also have a problem of financial instability after the war so after the war you have a deep economic depression sets in uh 75 of the american population at this time were farmers so food production decreased during the war farm families whose when their husbands were away fighting had no surplus to sell so they began to take on debt in order to make ends meet compound that with the fact that the war destroyed a lot of infrastructure it destroyed boats and ships and homes and farms and all this did was hurt economic production during the post-war period until the infrastructure was repaired you also have a problem the problems created by money debt and taxes so continental script was printed by congress during the war and it was essentially worthless because it had nothing to back it up so the only universally accepted medium of exchange was specie in other words gold and silver coins but this was in short supply after the war because nobody in america was printing specie or minting it all of the species came from foreign sources but you have a net outflow of species after the war because domestic production was down so there was no international trade and as i had mentioned before many people took on a lot of debt to make ends meet during the war but they can't pay taxes uh on that debt because there was no specie and specie again was the only acceptable form of currency when paying taxes and to make matters worse the states began to raise taxes on their citizens after the conflict they did this to meet the confederation congress's requisitions as well as to pay state debt so taxes in the colonies were actually wound up being four times higher after the war than before the revolution right 32 percent in some cases and this is the big irony of course of the american revolution is that they fought a war because of high taxes only to pay four times as much in taxes after the war and the problem here is that congress was so weak and it had little power to intervene on the national level or state level really the only thing that congress could do at this time was sell public land but in order to do that they needed to take it away from the indians first so after the war you have the onset of a number of different foreign and domestic conflicts right you have a number of rebellions and mutinies the book talks about shay's rebellion but the one that i want to focus on uh here before we end is the northwest indian war which went from 1784 through 1785 or 1795. so the federal government forced indian tribes to sell or give away land because they supported great britain during the american revolution so you see here a series of treaties were signed but not all indians agreed to give away land and as a result of this they vowed to fight back and this leads to a resurgent pan-indian movement similar to the one that pontiac had started after the seven years war the groups who were a part of this were the algonquians who lived in the what is now the midwest great lakes ohio valley region as well as the six nations the iroquois who lived mainly in upstate new york so the leaders of this movement were joseph brandt seen on the left chief little turtle of the miami in the middle and blue jacket who you see there on the right and they drew their inspiration from pontiac right and they founded this um this confederation this pan indian movement on the ideology that all indians belong to one race so a common racial identity another part is that they believe that all native lands were owned by all indians in common right so any indian land belong to all indians and third and finally they demanded that the ohio river be established as the boundary between whites and indians now they were helped in their efforts by an alliance with the british the british indian department officials at those forts that i had mentioned places like detroit which should have been turned over to the americans but wasn't after the war as well as other british officials in canada encouraged the indians to stand their ground right saying that they could establish what became known as the ohio country as an independent sovereign indian state so british indian department provided weapons as well as other supplies to the unions to help them continue the fight and these uh goods were distributed by british traders at these disputed posts they also gave the indians vague promises of military assistance saying that at some point in the future they would help them in their war against the americans so this inspired a number of native american attacks against white frontier settlements right and then whites of course white settlers would retaliate neither side really paying much attention to who they were attacking whether or not they were friendly or hostile and the u.s government at this time was powerless to stop it again the united states had a very small army um only 700 men um and they were tasked with this daunting task of patrolling thousands of square miles of frontier territory the individual states would wage their own war against indians and this would undermine u.s attempts to negotiate peace with the indians of course the confederation congress having no compulsory power over the states was really powerless to stop these attacks so over a thousand uh white settlers were killed between 1783 and 1790 on the frontier and at least the same number if not more indians so that's all we have for this lecture we will talk to you soon

welcome to lesson 2c the revolutionary republic major questions we&#39;re going to answer in this lecture we&#39;re going to talk about the significance of the battle of saratoga i&#39;m talking about the different factors that allowed americans to achieve victory we&#39;ll talk about the key provisions of the 1783 treaty of paris different than the 1763 treaty of paris we talked about after the seven years war and then finally we&#39;re going to talk about the articles of confederation and how they were inadequate for self-governance after the revolutionary war okay so in the last lecture we discussed the composition of the american army during the fight for independence as well as some of the other reasons that the colonists chose to fight for one side or the other in this lecture we will talk about several factors that enable the americans to win the war against such long odds we will also examine some of the challenges faced by america immediately after the war was over but before we do any of that it&#39;s important to understand that victory in independence was not a foregone conclusion the colonists faced very long odds as i had mentioned before the colonists were fighting against the best trained and equipped army and navy in the world as mentioned england had been at war almost constantly since the 11th century right so they were very good at waging war in subjugating rebellions in their colonial possessions but one thing to keep in mind is that british forces had a very difficult task ahead of them they were fighting thousands of miles from home which created enormous logistical problems it could take months to get supplies and troops from england to the america to america the colonies were essentially hostile territory so they needed to conquer areas in order to establish safe bases for supplying their forces and essentially they needed to take back the entire country as well as reinstitute colonial government meaning as i mentioned before they couldn&#39;t fight an all-out war against the population and against the infrastructure because if the war was too hard on the civilian population how would they accept british rule afterward so a big turning point in the american revolution was the battle of saratoga in upstate new york in october of 1777. during this battle americans captured basically england&#39;s entire northern army under the direction of general john burgoyne this forced england to abandon plans to seize and hold new england to cut it off from the rest of the colonies and it forced england to shift their focus on pacifying the southern colonies hoping to break them off from the northern colonies it&#39;s also important to understand that this american victory changed the perception of the war globally it showed other european powers that the americans actually had a chance to win the war and this led in some of england&#39;s rival european powers to pledge their support for the american war effort and we&#39;ll get to why that was important here in a second all right so eventually americans win the war right and i&#39;m not going to belabor the point the book does a good job of talking about how uh the specifics and how that all came about but we will talk about the reasons various reasons why americans were able to win the war against such long odds the first factor that played into this was foreign assistance the dutch as well as french government loaned money when the continental congress was unable to do so congress essentially as we&#39;ll explain had no power to levy taxes couldn&#39;t force individual colonies to contribute soldiers and materiel or money uh they could only ask right so what these uh foreign governments provided a lot of money france for example took out 1.3 billion levers in debt which was the french currency at the time spain spent 700 million reals the dutch sent supplies throughout the conflict you also have foreign military and naval assistance as well as the money that i had explained earlier the continental navy at the beginning of the war was very small having only 65 ships compared to 90 for england but throughout the course of the war france contributed 51 ships and spain added another 19. and that brought the advantage of the americans up to 135 ships versus only 90 for england you also have soldiers that were sent by foreign powers particularly france france sent 10 000 soldiers as well as 20 000 sailors to man all those ships so that&#39;s the first factor is foreign assistance another factor that helped the americans win the war was american resolve this belief that they were fighting for a higher cause that god sanctioned the revolution and supported it right they also believed that they were fighting for a just cause that they were defending the true constitutional rights of english citizens state militias were another factor that helped the americans win the war and the state militias were much maligned by american commanders including george washington for their various faults sometimes they refused to obey orders they rejected the strict military discipline when they were working with continental army units often thought of as cowardly for retreating when facing oncoming british troops in close combat but there were a number of benefits that the state militias provided they often established law and order in areas the continental army couldn&#39;t occupy and they would also harass british troops the english strategy essentially was to establish bases near the coast and then use those as launch pads for tax attacks into the interior so when they were away from their base the british army had to rely on supply lines often times long supply trains that would follow their lines so the militia would use guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks against england they would use these guerrilla-style attacks as they moved through the back country meaning that they would attack and then when the english soldiers would counter-attack they would disappear into the woods and retreat so basically they would attack these extended supply lines of the british soldiers because they were vulnerable and stretched so long away from their bases near the coast where they had more power so these attacks would prevent england from moving very far england because they couldn&#39;t establish a secure line of supply worrying that their forces would be cut off or surrounded these surprises attacks against british advancing columns also slowed them down the melissa also were used to intimidate the loyalist population who lived in the back country essentially they were trying to win the battle of the hearts and minds of citizens to prevent them from helping england so as you see the militia provided a number of different advantages for the americans another factor that played into this was george washington&#39;s conservative and measured approach washington won few battles um but he never positioned his army to get wiped out right so basically what he did was he used uh the resources he had to the fullest extent he only fought battles when the odds were in his favor and essentially what this did was it frustrated england and allowed washington to conserve his numbers right so he lost almost every major battle that he fought in but he forced england to expend valuable resources in order to gain small victories as well as prolong the war which led to increasing costs and dissatisfaction in england um some examples of this measured approach uh would be uh during the new york campaign facing superior numbers of british troops um george washington would fight inflict as many losses as he could and then retreat to safety to prevent his force from being captured uh also in the southern theater george washington appointed this guy general nathaniel greene who led the southern army and greene employed the same strategy that washington did the strategy of what was known as strategic retreat so because green and the continental army forces in the south were drastically outnumbered he essentially divided his forces to make england do the same to chase after these different small parts of the british army or the continental army he also retreated to the interior and envoy avoided large battles against english forces he would use local militia and guerrilla forces for what they were good for to harass british columns and supply lines as they were advancing through the back country and perhaps the biggest example of this strategy in action was at the battle of cowpens in south carolina in 1781 in january essentially what he did is he set up the militia at the front of his line and as british troops advanced he just told them to fire one volley of shots at the british and then they would be allowed to retreat behind the continental army forces and essentially what this did is it allowed the americans to win the battle at cowpens so by the end of the war because of the actions of people like green and the way they used um you know the combination of the continental army and uh the militia forces is that by the end of the war the continental army and the militia controlled everything in the south with the exception of coastal areas and those major port cities another factor that helped the americans to win the war was british command and supply um england didn&#39;t have enough soldiers to be an occupying force their supply lines as we had mentioned several times were spread too thin being hassed by harassed by the militia and the fact is is that fighting an overseas war was very expensive especially when england was fighting other wars at the same time and british officers were also very cautious they couldn&#39;t fight an unlimited war because they wanted to reassert british rule after the war so those are the different factors that help the americans to win the war right so let&#39;s talk about the peace that followed right the treaty of paris so the treaty of paris uh was signed in uh 1783 right and that brought an end to the revolutionary war so some of the main provisions of the treaty of paris it recognized american independence it established the western boundary of u.s territory as the mississippi river you see here the division right the brown is spanish territory spanish louisiana spanish florida and everything in orange and yellow is that which is represented was seeded by england to the united states as a result of the treaty of paris america gained fishing rights off the coast of newfoundland in canada british troops were removed promptly and permanently from american soil loyalists their their rights as citizens as well as their property was supposed to be restored and all pre-war debts owed to british merchants were remained in place meaning if people had borrowed money from british merchants before the war they would be valid and they would be obligated to pay those back after the war so that brings us to self-governance right self-governance under the articles of confederation so it&#39;s important to understand that the articles of confederation were created with one purpose to create unity among the colonies enough to be able to fight the war against england and as time would prove they were wholly inadequate for anything else right and i&#39;ll explain this in a second so the biggest issue was when creating the article articles of confederation was this need to balance the creation of a central government while protecting the sovereignty of the states so this led to a number of different compromises for example sovereignty was divided between congress and the states and to do that they created a unicameral legislature right one in other words not a house and senate which would be a bicameral legislature but they created the confederation congress which was a unicameral legislature in order to protect states rights where every state had one vote so essentially what the articles of confederation did is it created a firm league what it referred to as a firm league of friendship so this is different than creating a national identity right and essentially what this led to was a coalition of what were essentially 13 small independent countries so some of the key provisions um each state were they were all equal regardless of size they had one vote each in the confederation congress in order to pass a law the consent was needed between nine of 13 states and to pass an amendment right you needed unanimous consent right because what do amendments do essentially an amendment grants new powers to the central government to the national government so in order to make that happen they needed unanimous consent of all 13 states so let&#39;s talk about some of the boundaries of congressional power in this articles of confederation here are some things that congress could do and this is not a comprehensive list congress could regulate foreign affairs this would involve things like signing treaties negotiating alliances with foreign powers creating international trade agreements so but if to exercise anything related to foreign affairs to sign a treaty or whatever um congress had to have the approval of 9 out of 13 states congress could also declare war this required also required the approval of nine of 13 states so individual states could declare war if they were quote invaded or under imminent attack in an imminent attack on the frontier end quote essentially what that meant is that states could declare war against indian tribes if they were invaded in their frontier areas the national government could also mediate disputes between the different states when it came to issues like trade or uh the western land claims and you see that down there in the bottom picture right the different land claims or that were made by each state especially when you look at connecticut that long swath of green right here virginia the state of virginia usually occupied here but they claim land all the way to the mississippi and so on and so forth including georgia you see the state of georgia down here it claimed land all the way up to the mississippi so um interstate commerce was also something that could be mediated by the national government and it also had the power to manage indian relations but the government only had power to to manage or to engage with native americans living outside of the boundaries of individual states and as you see here there was very little land that was unoccupied right so this created a lot of conflict after the war when it came to negotiating with indian tribes some of the things congress could not do right they could not levy direct taxes they were not allowed to raise a large army the confederation could set quotas in a poor senior officers for the army but the states were responsible for meeting those quotas and the federal government had no compulsory authority over the states meaning if they requested money if they requested soldiers it was just a request they couldn&#39;t force the individual states to contribute and in fact there was a large struggle to ratify the articles of confederation during the war the articles were finalized on november 15 1777 and submitted to the states for ratification the articles were not considered binding until all of the different states ratified them by november of 1778 11 out of 13 states had ratified within 14 months 12 out of 13 had agreed maryland throughout the war had refused to sign until the landed states agreed to give up their western holdings especially the state of virginia right as we saw in this image here so the articles of confederation were finally ratified in february of 1781. 1781 essentially eight months before the battle of yorktown which marked the american victory in the conflict so after the revolutionary war congress faced a number of uh problems right um and this these were problems that affected the nation as a whole you have a large national as well as state debt these are both talked about extensively in the textbook so i won&#39;t belabor those points one thing i do want to focus on was the problems the government had enforcing the treaty of paris for example england withdrew it was supposed to withdraw its forces after the war and when they did they began to take slaves that they had freed with them during the war per dunmore&#39;s proclamation the phillipsburg declaration etc but remember that the treaty of paris said that all property belonging to people had to be returned after the war so essentially because the slaves were considered property americans stopped paying back the debt that they had incurred to british merchants before the war that was again another provision of the treaty of paris and as a result of that england refused to evacuate its troops from forts on the northern frontier of american territory bordering canada um and this land had been seeded to america in the treaty of paris another problem was that congress couldn&#39;t force states to pass laws forcing citizens to repay their debts so congress also had no money or authority to raise a large army that could forcibly evict england from those forts you also have a problem of financial instability after the war so after the war you have a deep economic depression sets in uh 75 of the american population at this time were farmers so food production decreased during the war farm families whose when their husbands were away fighting had no surplus to sell so they began to take on debt in order to make ends meet compound that with the fact that the war destroyed a lot of infrastructure it destroyed boats and ships and homes and farms and all this did was hurt economic production during the post-war period until the infrastructure was repaired you also have a problem the problems created by money debt and taxes so continental script was printed by congress during the war and it was essentially worthless because it had nothing to back it up so the only universally accepted medium of exchange was specie in other words gold and silver coins but this was in short supply after the war because nobody in america was printing specie or minting it all of the species came from foreign sources but you have a net outflow of species after the war because domestic production was down so there was no international trade and as i had mentioned before many people took on a lot of debt to make ends meet during the war but they can&#39;t pay taxes uh on that debt because there was no specie and specie again was the only acceptable form of currency when paying taxes and to make matters worse the states began to raise taxes on their citizens after the conflict they did this to meet the confederation congress&#39;s requisitions as well as to pay state debt so taxes in the colonies were actually wound up being four times higher after the war than before the revolution right 32 percent in some cases and this is the big irony of course of the american revolution is that they fought a war because of high taxes only to pay four times as much in taxes after the war and the problem here is that congress was so weak and it had little power to intervene on the national level or state level really the only thing that congress could do at this time was sell public land but in order to do that they needed to take it away from the indians first so after the war you have the onset of a number of different foreign and domestic conflicts right you have a number of rebellions and mutinies the book talks about shay&#39;s rebellion but the one that i want to focus on uh here before we end is the northwest indian war which went from 1784 through 1785 or 1795. so the federal government forced indian tribes to sell or give away land because they supported great britain during the american revolution so you see here a series of treaties were signed but not all indians agreed to give away land and as a result of this they vowed to fight back and this leads to a resurgent pan-indian movement similar to the one that pontiac had started after the seven years war the groups who were a part of this were the algonquians who lived in the what is now the midwest great lakes ohio valley region as well as the six nations the iroquois who lived mainly in upstate new york so the leaders of this movement were joseph brandt seen on the left chief little turtle of the miami in the middle and blue jacket who you see there on the right and they drew their inspiration from pontiac right and they founded this um this confederation this pan indian movement on the ideology that all indians belong to one race so a common racial identity another part is that they believe that all native lands were owned by all indians in common right so any indian land belong to all indians and third and finally they demanded that the ohio river be established as the boundary between whites and indians now they were helped in their efforts by an alliance with the british the british indian department officials at those forts that i had mentioned places like detroit which should have been turned over to the americans but wasn&#39;t after the war as well as other british officials in canada encouraged the indians to stand their ground right saying that they could establish what became known as the ohio country as an independent sovereign indian state so british indian department provided weapons as well as other supplies to the unions to help them continue the fight and these uh goods were distributed by british traders at these disputed posts they also gave the indians vague promises of military assistance saying that at some point in the future they would help them in their war against the americans so this inspired a number of native american attacks against white frontier settlements right and then whites of course white settlers would retaliate neither side really paying much attention to who they were attacking whether or not they were friendly or hostile and the u.s government at this time was powerless to stop it again the united states had a very small army um only 700 men um and they were tasked with this daunting task of patrolling thousands of square miles of frontier territory the individual states would wage their own war against indians and this would undermine u.s attempts to negotiate peace with the indians of course the confederation congress having no compulsory power over the states was really powerless to stop these attacks so over a thousand uh white settlers were killed between 1783 and 1790 on the frontier and at least the same number if not more indians so that&#39;s all we have for this lecture we will talk to you soon

Transcript for:The Revolutionary Republic

Transcript for:
The Revolutionary Republic