What's up history people? Today we're taking a look at a very important topic, the road to the American Revolution. What really happened between 1763 and 1775 when fighting breaks out. Now keep in mind 1763 is a huge turning point. England gets a major expansion of its territory by defeating France.
but it comes at a great cost. Quick rundown, remember the end of the Seven Years War, the French and Indian War, England's in debt, solitary neglect comes to an end, they're not going to have a hands-off approach to the colonies, they need to deal with that debt. Pontiac's rebellion causes a lot of concern for England because they have to use their military to crush that native resistance, and they want to prevent colonists from moving west, so they issue the Proclamation Act of 1763, really the first of a series of acts that England's going to. impose on the colonies.
All sorts of things are happening following the end of the French and Indian War. In fact you get the two Georges, King George the third and his prime minister George Grenville over there on the right advocated for acts to increase revenue and to consolidate colonial control. No more solitary neglect.
So what do we mean by consolidating imperial control? Well you get the Sugar Act in 1764 it's passed on sugar to raise revenue. This is the first act intended to raise revenue.
And remember, there were other acts previously, like the Molasses Act of 1733, which the colonists oftentimes ignored or evaded. So along with the Sugar Act, you get the British stricter enforcement of the Navigation Acts, which were being completely ignored, and there's a crackdown on the colonies. You're not going to be smuggling like you were. In fact, violators would be tried in vice-admiralty courts. And these courts really caused a lot of anger in the colonies because the crown appointed the judges and there was no juries.
So you get a lot of colonial opposition early on, not only to the Proclamation of 1763, but to the Sugar Act and to old acts being more strictly enforced. You also get the Quartering Act in 1765, which colonists... were required to provide food and housing for British soldiers.
In the minds of England, you know this was only fair. These soldiers are over in North America protecting these colonies and so therefore they're gonna have to pay their fair share. This also causes anger in the colonies but the big one, the one you better know about is the Stamp Act in 1765. This placed a tax. It's the first direct tax meaning the taxes collected from those who use the good. and it placed a tax on a variety of legal documents and items.
Everything from newspapers to advertisements to pamphlets to legal documents, anybody using any of those items had to pay this Stamp Tax. This really angered the colonial elite, the wealthy especially, and the middle class and the commercial class because they're the ones producing these items, and so you get a lot of opposition from the Stamp Act. And one of the big arguments from the colonists was this was passed without consent of the colonial legislators.
Remember different colonies like Virginia have the House of Burgess. They say, the colonies say, we didn't vote for these taxes, therefore we're being taxed without proper representation. And you get a whole bunch of colonial responses to the Stamp Act. For example, in the House of Burgess, Patrick Henry, a very kind of influential colonial leader, issues something called the Virginia Resolves. And in it, He reiterates the no taxation without representation.
He talks about only the colonial legislator could tax the colonies. He's heavily influenced by Enlightenment ideas coming over from Europe, and they're accustomed to a tradition of self-rule. The colonies have been kind of doing their own thing for a very long time. Now, England responds to these charges with something very important called virtual representation, and they basically say you are British citizens, colonists, therefore you are represented by Parliament and the colonists don't. buy it.
You have other responses. You have the Stamp Act Congress. This meets in New York, and representatives from nine colonies meet to oppose British policies, especially the Stamp Act. This is a move towards intercolonial unity. The colonies are meeting, they're working together, and this is the first organized resistance amongst the colonies to British policy.
Now, it's important to keep in mind, intercolonial disunity remained. Organizations, secret societies like the Sons of Liberty and also the Daughters of Liberty formed. The Sons of Liberty were a more radical group because of their attacks on royal officials, their tarring. and feathering that was used to harass tax collectors, but they were very influential in organizing the boycotts.
Various colonists were issuing non-importation agreements. You could see a list of people who violated those agreements against British imports, and this was the most effective form of resistance to British policies. There's a huge drop in trade.
In fact, many British merchants over in England are demanding... parliament repeal the Stamp Act because they were losing tons of money as a result of these boycotts. This is a grassroots movement.
You have a variety of people in colonial society taking part in it. It's not just the colonial elite. And as a result of this failure to actually generate revenue for the crown, parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act. It wasn't raising the money, so you might as well repeal the darn thing.
But you still have that dilemma. you still need to pay off the debt from the French and Indian or the Seven Years War. After the Stamp Act was repealed, Parliament does pass something called the Declaratory Act in 1766, and it basically is saying to the colonies, we still have the power, we still have the authority over you, we could still tax you, so don't get all giddy and happy and things of that nature.
They still need to raise revenue, they still need to find a way to get that coin, get that money, and Charles Townsend becomes the new Chancellor of the... exchequer, basically the money guy, and he proposed his own revenue plan. This is, of course, named after him, the Townshend Act, which puts a tax on imports such as paper, tea, glass, and other items.
This created a lot of controversy because the money raised by the acts would be used to pay royal officials in the colonies. Previously, their salaries were paid by the colonial assemblies. And if you're a colonist, you feel like if they're getting paid, by officials in England, they're going to rule in favor of the English versus the colonists'interests. You have, once again, tension mounting. Another part that really angered people, did this kind of shock to a lot of colonists, the British could search private homes for goods by getting a writ of assistance.
Rather than having to get a warrant, they could search for smuggled or illegal goods with just a simple writ of assistance. As you could see, shock. spread amongst the colonists.
There was resistance to the Townshend Acts, not to the same degree as the Stamp Act since this was an indirect tax paid by merchants. There's not a huge widespread resistance, but there is still some. Really important to know is John Dickinson writes letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania.
In his writing he talks about that these taxes are against English law and that colonists as British subjects have rights as individuals. It uses a lot of the ideas coming over from the Enlightenment to once again denounce the taxes imposed by Parliament. Of course, England argues that the colonists are represented with virtual representation, but this does not quiet the anger amongst many colonists. Colonists once again created non-importation.
We're not going to buy any British goods and non-consumption agreements, and it really has a huge blow on British trade. Colonists are boycotting British goods. You have the Daughters of Liberty, a group made up of colonial women, organizing spinning bees where they would rather make their own clothes than purchase those sold by British merchants. And you have a whole variety of groups mobilizing, including women, artisans, laborers, and so on. Unfortunately for the British, England was losing more money than it was generating by these taxes because of all the colonial resistance.
And as a result... Rather than continue to lose money, the Townshend Duties are repealed in 1770. England backs down again. Now around this same time, tensions are really high.
There's a lot of troops in the Boston area. An incident occurs in early 1770, and that is, of course, the Boston Massacre. What happens is British troops open fire near the Customs House on a group of colonists.
Some would call it a mob. And this event leads to the death of five colonists. Paul Revere uses this engraving you see right there as pro-colonial propaganda, kind of showing the British soldiers gunning down these innocent colonists. The reality was much more complicated.
In fact, John Adams, one of the preeminent colonists at the time, second president of the United States, he actually defends the British soldiers against murder charges because he feels it's the right thing to do. In this massacre. There is kind of a chill moment. No one wants people to die.
You know, there's no calls for independence at this point. So keep that in mind. You do have the colonists once again meeting again.
the committees of correspondence. They're led by Samuel Adams, another prominent colonist, and they're used to keep up communication and resistance amongst the colonists to British policies. This is another example, another movement towards intercolonial unity.
They're exchanging letters, they're talking, but once again, no independence. From around 1770 to 1773, there's no real big protest going on, but that all changes. with tea time.
The Tea Act was passed in 1773 once again by Parliament and it gave a monopoly to a British company, the British East India Company. The company was near bankruptcy and Parliament kind of wanted to bail them out. In spite of the fact that the British tea was still cheaper than smuggled tea, the colonists were still opposed to it because the principle, they have not consented to be taxed. They still oppose the Tea Act and And once again, that idea that Parliament could tax the colonies was unfathomable for them.
We all know how this story ends because in 1773 you have the event known famously as the Boston Tea Party. Members of the Sons of Liberty, some of them loosely dressed up as Native Americans, board some ships and dump tea into Boston Harbor. This event was not without controversy.
It only was The British East India Company, Parliament, and England, and the Crown, mad. But also some colonists resisted the action because this was a destruction of private property. And no, no, no, you don't do that.
That was considered too radical by some, even in the colonies. As a result of the Boston Tea Party, England, Parliament passes the Coercive Acts in 1774. And these acts are really intended to be punitive. They're intended to...
punish the colonies. We're going to spank their butts. And they do a variety of things to accomplish this goal.
Boston Port was closed until the property was paid for. In fact, you could see by 1775 where the British troops are being sent, and a huge amount of them are in the Boston area. That's where a lot of this early protest was taking place.
It drastically reduced the power of the Massachusetts legislator, and it banned the town hall meetings, that kind of big democratic institution in the New England colonies, they are banned. The Quartering Act was expanded so once again more British troops are being sent over the colonies. The colonists were expected to provide for them.
Royal officials accused of a crime would be put on trial in England rather than the colonies and the colonists were outraged by this because they felt this would not ensure justice would be served. The colonists were outraged and called the Coercive Acts the Intolerable Acts. So if you see Intolerable Acts, Coercive Acts, they're the same thing.
The colonists respond to the Intolerable Acts by a declaration known as the Suffolk Resolves. This was made by a county in Boston, and it called on the colonies to boycott British goods until the Intolerable Acts were repealed. So tensions are mounting again between England and the colonies. Now something that has nothing at all to do with the colonies but yet stirs up trouble nonetheless is the Quebec Act in 1774. It's England trying to figure out what to do with the Canadian lands they acquired from France as a result of the Seven Years'War. There's something like 60,000 French subjects in Canada and England needs to figure out what to do with them in the territory that they got.
So here's what they do under the Quebec Act. It extended the boundary of Quebec. into the Ohio Valley, so you could see the before and the after.
Roman Catholicism was established as the official religion, and the government was allowed to operate without representative assemblies, no colonial legislators, or trial by jury. Now, all of these things were kind of the way France ran its colony anyhow, and England continues to allow it to occur. From the colonists'perspective, they are pissed off.
The colonists claim the land in the Ohio Valley was for them. Remember, that kind of sparked the war. How dare they allow these French Catholic Canadians to have that land?
Protestant colonists are not happy about Catholicism being kind of granted free reign in this territory. Remember, there was a lot of anti-Catholic feelings in the colonies. And they're worried that England will try to take away representative government in the colonies. They already saw their town hall meetings and their legislators being shut down. is this what's going to happen permanently?
Many colonists view the Quebec Act as a direct attack on them, and once again, it's another thing that adds to the pressure and the tension between the two sides. And as a result of all this tension, and really as a result of the intolerable acts, you get the first... Continental Congress meeting in 1774. All colonies except Georgia, they're too far, they're not interested, send representatives to meet in Philadelphia in September of 1774. You get a diverse group of people coming together. You got Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, John Adams, George Washington, and this is another example of colonial unity. This is largely made up of the colonial elites.
They disagreed about things, but for the most part, They wanted to repair the relationship with England. They wanted to figure out how to respond to their perceived violations of their liberties, but they wanted to bring the relationship between the English and the colonies back to the way it was pre-1763. It's important to note they're not calling for independence. This was not a movement towards independence, not yet. They adopted the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, in which, once again, they talk about...
taxation without representation. They said, Parliament, you have the right to regulate commerce, but you can't be doing these other things. But King George dismisses these grievances. They endorsed the Suffolk Resolves. They created the Association, which sounds really official, to coordinate an economic boycott amongst the colonies.
And they also start making military preparations. Remember, there's a lot of British soldiers, especially in the Boston area. So they're getting ready to defend themselves in case things get even worse. Finally, they plan to meet again in May of 1775. So what's the response of England? King George III dismisses their grievances, he declares Massachusetts in rebellion, and more troops are sent to North America to try to get these colonists in check.
And that leads us to the opening shots of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord. The first fights of the American Revolution actually occur well over a year before independence is even declared. And here's the background. British troops led by General Gage leave Boston to seize colonial weapons and to try to arrest rebel leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock. As they're heading out of Boston, they head to a place called Lexington.
And the Minutemen, which is what the colonial militia were called, they're warned by two individuals, Paul Reb... fear in William Dawes that the British are coming and at Lexington the shot heard round the world takes place as British soldiers kill eight colonists in April of 1775. Now once again just like the Boston Massacre no one really knows kind of all the details. There's the British side, there's the colonist side, and there's probably somewhere in the middle some truth there, but nonetheless eight colonists are killed. Once again Notice the date, April 1775. We will not declare independence until July of 1776. No one anticipated this fighting to occur at this moment, but it does. In fact, another battle took place at Concord as the British troops are marching back to Boston.
They're attacked by a colonial militia. They're shot at, and they're shocked because the colonial militia are fighting them, and they're holding their ground, and we have the start of fighting of the American. Revolution.
In our next video we'll take a look at how we actually end up declaring independence, but until next time make sure if the video helped you out you click like if you haven't already done so, subscribe if you have any questions, post them in the comments, and have a beautiful day. Peace.