Transcript for:
Chapter 5 American Revolution Summary

hello again and welcome to chapter 5 in this chapter we're going to be discussing obviously the American Revolution from 1763 until about 1783 all right so to start off the British Empire's victory in the French and Indian Wars and Seven Years War overall started to create the impression worldwide that the British military was invincible and Britain did actually emerge out of the end of the Seven Years War as the number one most dominant European power in 1763 American colonists felt that they had Vindicated themselves and proven themselves to be a vital fighting part of the overall British Empire and a sense of Promise actually prevailed as colonists felt that they were proving themselves to be full-blown British citizens and they felt that they would start getting the rights that full-blown British citizens received but unfortunately for them that was not going to be the case Great Britain's worldwide Empire in the year 1763 was massive and its problems were also correspondingly large it faced constant threats from its traditional European based enemies both France and Spain as well as from new subjects in acquired lands that had no real reason to show any loyalty to their new monarch in in Great Britain a man named George III who had only just recently come to the throne of Great Britain but with the signing and cealing of the peace of Paris in 1763 Great Britain acquired tons and tons of new lands and thousands and thousands of new subjects thousands of French Canadians still remained in the area known as Canada and all throughout the Mississippi River Valley and even more Native American people populated all of this area that the British Empire had acquired in North America as well these French people living in Canada if another war was ever to happen again would probably end up automatically signing siding with France and the Native Americans who lived in those same areas would probably end up S siding with the French as well since they had aligned with the French during the French and Indian War SL Seven Years War the first time around so obviously concerns about Imperial Authority extended throughout North America at the at at this time and extended to the inhabitants of the existing British colonies themselves particularly concerning was American colonists who smuggled honestly and refused to pay their taxes during the Seven Years War and the fact that Colonial legislatures were starting to become rather obstructionist but seven years wartime expenses caused British debt overall to Skyrocket War if you don't know is is always incredibly costly to Any Nation that ends up partaking in a war British subjects living over in Great Britain itself were already very heavily taxed even more than colonists in other parts of the worlds were taxed and since American colonists were taxed relatively lightly in the runup to the Seven Years War and the government considered that America overall had benefited the most from the outcome of the Seven Years War British government officials thought that it was just fair for American colonists to be asked to shoulder more of the Empire's financial burden but these fights over taxes will become a catalyst for the American Revolutionary War the experience but also the costs of fighting the Seven Years War eventually LED Great Britain where young King George III had just assumed the throne back in the year 1760 he was only 24 25 years old at this point in 1763 to start working to consolidate the growing British Empire and to make all colonists all over the world start sharing in the overall cost of maintaining that Empire before the Seven Years War started the British had attempted to impose new trading regulations to reinforce the old Navigation Acts back from the 1750s which if you'll remember limited and controlled colonial trade in the British Empire but in the the 1740s the Board of Trade which was responsible for watching over Colonial Affairs did attempt to expand its influence and control over colonial governments trying for example to bring American Colonial laws into strict Conformity with royal instructions these new regulations overall though ended up failing in part because American colonists usually just simply ignored those regulations no government officials were really for ful enforcing the rules over in America too harshly and so it was easy for American colonists to bypass some of these laws or to skip paying taxes in certain situations um some colonists in America started to eventually take salutary neglect for granted they were so used to skipping the part in their lives where they had to pay taxes to the British Empire and not really getting into any trouble for it that once the British government did actually begin to insist that the American colonists at least start paying taxes like they should have been this whole entire time American colonist ultimately felt that they were being overtly oppressed by these taxes now during the Seven Years War the British had treated American colonists basically as equals recognizing their vast contributions to winning the conflict until the war came to an end once the war was over in the mid 1760s the British government went right back to their old position of trying to view and treat colonists in America as definitive subordinates whose role in the overall Empire was simply to do everything that they could to enrich the mother country overall and then without any kind of legal precedent British rulers at this point sought to create Imperial reforms to make its administration of the American colonies far more efficient and much more systematic and to raise funds to accomplish these things they wanted to increase taxes they wanted to increase American taxes overall to help pay off the looming cost of the Seven Years War the Seven Years War cost British taxpayers far more money than it ever did any of the British Empire's far-flung colonies uh and the British were intending on not just using this additional colonist taxation to pay for their old bills left over from the S Years War but also to fund the entire British empire into the future to British government officials it only seemed fair to force American colonists to start following the letter of the law in the Navigation Acts to help overall reduce the remaining War debt that Great Britain still had and it also made sense for American colonists to start paying for continued British military protection all over the world in the early 1760s British efforts to try to fight back against Colonial smuggling by issuing General search search warrants began and the British government's Proclamation of 1763 which if you'll remember barred any further settlement on lands to the west of the Appalachian Mountains started to spark some pretty imense protests in the American colonies but this colonial response this protesting was very very small to the overall outrage that American colonists felt starting in 1764 and 1765 when new laws known as the sugar revenue and currency Acts were imposed in the American colonies Now American colonists who had recently absorbed Republican ideals were especially concerned at this point about the implications of Taxation on their own independence and Liberty to many Americans that were influenced by Republican ideals paying taxes was ultimately problematic as long as a taxpayer consents to paying the taxes that the government wants them to pay it was relatively unlikely that the taxes the government was charging its people would become excessive enough to actually directly threaten the taxpayers freedom but eventually rumors started to come from England to America that a whole slew of new taxes like the Sugar Act were coming down the pike and at this point many American colonists began to consider whether or not they really supported and consented overall to paying these taxes in the first place remember all of these taxes were passed ultimately and approved ultimately by a parliament structure to which they were legally not allowed to elect any of their own Representatives many American colonists began to insist that they could and should only be taxed by their own elected representatives so obviously there are massive differences between British and American Colonial understandings of how representation and Taxation work but all of these misunderstandings were ultimately con connected to the more fundamental issue of sovereignty now sovereignty just uh to give you a definition so that we're all on the same page here sovereignty refers to the Supreme ultimate authority of a state including both the right to take life as in the case of executions for capital offenses and the right to tax its people if the state is ever deprived of its Authority it could no longer be considered sovereign and if the colonists in America ever reached a point where they no longer thought that British Parliament had the true right to tax them well then the American colonists would ultimately be denyed that the British government had any kind of sovereign control over the American colonies so obviously these misunderstandings are going to lead to some huge problems in the near future much to parliamentary leader shagrin the tax revenues that ultimately were brought in by laws like the Sugar Act did not ever end up providing Great Britain with nearly enough money to put a dent in their massive national debt problem so at this particular Moment In Time prime minister Grenville the leader of Parliament at the time proposed an entirely new tax called the Stamp Act which would be collected in the American colonies the Stamp Act law would effectively require that from this moment on every single piece of printed material that was produced in the American colonies and I mean every piece of printed material from court documents to land Deeds to marriage certificates to newspapers pamphlets books and even things like playing cards if you wanted to buy cards to play poker with your friends at night if you wanted to buy them in a store you had to buy an official government stamp to be a fixed to those printed items and those government stamps would cost money to obtain in this way the Stamp Act was kind of a bit of an indirect tax you couldn't buy printed materials if it didn't have that official government stamp on it the Stamp Act that was passed in 1765 however turned out to be a relatively unprecedented reform in taxation in the American colonies this was going to be the very first so-called internal tax this was not a tax on imported trade goods from outside of the colonies this was a tax that would be imposed directly on American colonists for activities that happened within the colonies and not in between various parts of the uh overall British Empire now up until this point most taxes that were collected from American colonists by the British government were from Import and Export taxes most taxes paid by American colonists overall usually involved some form of international trade Imports or exports not in the case of the Stamp Act this would tax activities that only happened explicitly within the colony writing a pamp splitter writing or publishing a a newspaper and wanting to sell it to other people that existed inside of the American colony and then if it as if that wasn't enough the money that would be collected from the stamp tax the British government said would then be used to pay for the continued stationing of British soldiers in the American colonies in the future so Colonial protests against the Stamp Act actually started to pop up in America months before the actual Stamp Act went into effect and the Stamp Act was openly condemned and opposed in public through various legislative social and economic means by American colonists Americans in particular opposed the Stamp Act calling it quote unquote taxation without representation and American colonists did everything that they could think of to try to prevent the Stamp Act from ever being collected or enforced and some of the protests in opposition against the Stamp Act eventually went well beyond the confines of the stamp act itself to address much larger issues between the British government and the people living in its far-flung colonies American colonists at this point in their protest claimed that they did not at all mind paying taxes on international trade as they had before but this particular tax the Stamp Act went way too far by taxing internal non-trade related activities while previous regulations and taxes affected mostly those American colonists who were directly involved in some form of international trade the Stamp Act in comparison affected virtually every single free colonist Living in America many of whom deeply resented having to pay a tax that now interfered with the free flow of information which was also imposed without the direct consent of colonial governments or legislator and which paid for very unpopular British troops continued presence that many American people deemed to be an unnecessary intrusion they didn't like anything about this tax they didn't like the way it was collected they didn't like how it was collected and they didn't like what the tax was being collected to pay for anyway colonists who opposed the stamp tax viewed it as a direct infringement upon their traditional English liberties essenti that the British government was taking their property taking their money in taxes without the people's consent now British Imperial rulers and the American colonists at this point obviously had some very different ideas and understandings about how the worldwide British Empire worked the British for example those living in the British Isles saw the British Empire overall as a system of very unequal pieces in which different principles governed different areas but that overall every single part of the British Empire was ultimately subject to parliament's Ultimate Authority but colonists living in North America and in India at this time in particular viewed the British Empire instead as an association of equal parts in which free colonists they felt should have all of the exact same rights as British people who were living at home in Great Britain in October of 1765 nine separate colonies ended up sending delegates to what was known as the Stamp Act Congress which met in New York City to discuss exactly what the organized American colonial response should be to the British Stamp Act this Stamp Act Congress ultimately decided that they would write and then send a letter to the British government in which these colonists said that the colonies were still overt loyal to the British crown and British government but later in the letter they asserted that things like the Stamp Act and other taxes imposed on American colonists were done without their consent and thus were unconstitutional the delegates of the Stamp Act Congress wrote that these kinds of taxes took away from their basic rights that were guaranteed to them as citizens of the British Empire they sealed up this letter every want to fix their names and then finally the letter was mailed over to Parliament but when the British government opened and read this letter members of parliament were shocked and horrified that the American po the American colonists were daring to be so in subordinate and from here on out Parliament publicly proclaimed that they would not receive any further or future Colonial petitions so at this particular point in history American colonists were beginning to view Parliament no longer as the protector or Safeguard of English Liberty but as the number one enemy to that same English Liberty the Stamp Act essentially required all Colonial newspapers to Bear a government issued stamp and this newspaper that's depicted uh on the slide here uh this newspaper in particular tried to protest the Stamp Act by placing this death heads image that skull and crossbone image where the T tax stamp would have gone on their newspapers but all sorts of ideas and icons surrounding the notion of Liberty were used to protest the Stamp Act in places like Boston Massachusetts in particular mock funerals that portrayed the death of Liberty in America started to be held and other symbols of Liberty began to proliferate in the American colonies such as hangings in effigy of tax collectors and stamp distributors open air meetings were sometimes held beneath the so-called Liberty Tree a space that came to eventually be called Liberty Hall in Boston a pine Mast was actually erected as a meeting place for stampa opponents that ultimately ended up being called The Liberty poll and different colonial leaders began to form committees that agreed that they would communicate with each other in the future and successfully Yul coordinate any future efforts to try to prevent the Stamp Act from ever being implemented in the American colonies in Boston Massachusetts in particular a group that called themselves the Sons of Liberty started to organize and the Sons of Liberty ended up launching a series of Fairly violent protests against the stamp back that quickly spread to other colonies in North America from the time of the year 1765 until the time of of American independence in 1783 the Sons of Liberty are going to be a constant presence they are going to speak write and demonstrate whenever they can against British measures and the Sons of Liberty at this point committed actions that often times intimidated tax collectors and stamp Distributors and also intimidated and frightened a lot of British government supporters who were living in the American colonies in August of 1765 several different groups who called themselves the Sons of Liberty rallied together so much popular support that rioter started to take to the streets in the city of Boston that forced nearly every single stamp distributor in that whole entire Massachusetts region to resign from their positions so in this way the Stamp Act ended up being basically nullified in places like Boston since there was no one left who who was willing to even distribute the stamps to stores and even sometimes shipments of the stamps from Great Britain themselves were seized and destroyed before they could ever be distributed now at this point with the protest against the Stamp Act raging across the Atlantic Ocean in the American colonies both King George III and Parliament started to think that it was ridiculous for the world's most powerful Empire to start bending to the wishes of a group of unruly American mobs if Parliament were to even give the impression that they even in the slightest way agreed that the Stamp Act might be unconstitutional then Parliament would ultimately be lending Credence to the idea that Parliament didn't really have the right to legislate for the entire Empire but it was pretty obvious at this point that the Stamp Act was not going to work in the way that it was supposed to in the American colonies but Parliament wanted to find a way to make the Stamp Act essentially go away without looking like they agreed with the protesting colonists about the unfairness of the Stamp Act in the first place so Parliament ultimately devised a solution that linked the repeal of the Stamp Act to an unequivocal undeniable assertion of ultimate parliamentary sovereignty so the first part of this solution was that the Stamp Act was eventually repealed Parliament though claimed that they only ended up repealing the Stamp Act because it was overall damaging British commercial interests but number two at the exact same time parliament passed through a document known as the declaratory act in the declaratory act of 1766 parliament's 100% complete authority to legislate for all of Great Britain's colonies all over the world was completely reaffirmed in quote all cases whatsoever so at the end of the day Parliament did manage to save face but the colonies they ultimately rejoiced both sides thought that they had overwhelmingly won this argument Parliament thought that they had appeased the Americans but still had shown the Americans who was ultimately boss but the American colonists thought woohoo our protest worked if we ever want to fight back against Parliament again let's just do the exact same thing again and from here tensions are just going to get started between American colonists and the British government things are going to get much worse from here on out but the 1760s also saw considerable internal social turmoil within some of the American colonies for example in the western Back Country Frontier areas of many colonies the conflicting land claims of individual settlers land speculators and investors colonial governments and Native American people started to spark recurrent disputes and in response to marauding gangs of Outlaws that were known to roam the backcountry areas of South Carolina in particular a group of grieved Farmers began to organize together into vigilante posies to quote keep the peace and they had been in place for years up until this point the colonial government in the minds of many of these Vigilantes didn't seem to care about the lack of any law and order out on their Frontiers and so rural settlers and poor Farmers had also for a very long time deeply resented the alleged power and influence of wealthy land owners and large Proprietors in terms of colonial politics so they were essentially angry at two groups in 1767 angry South Carolina that country Farmers started to call themselves The Regulators as part of this these vigilante groups The Regulators at first targeted the people who were members of those Outlaw gangs that were kind of causing a lot of Havoc out in the back country areas but once The Regulators had killed or run off the Outlaws that had previously been roaming through the back country of South Carolina's South Carolina The Regulators then decided that they would turn to a brand new new enemy and that enemy was their perceived lack of representation in the South Carolina legislative assembly The Outlaws threat to property and Order though was ultimately symptomatic of a much larger problem in many American colonies and that was the problem of political representation for people who didn't necessarily have very much money now many people who lived in South Carolina lived out on the frontier areas the colonial government simply could not keep up with the quickly growing population out on the very Frontier borders of the colony and the numerous people who lived in the back country did not have elected representatives in even colonial government for South Carolina in both of the Carolinas both North and South people who lived out on the frontier felt that they lacked sufficient representation in colonial legislature to obtain any kind of immediate redress of their grievances for example those who had been complaining to Colonial legislators about these roving gangs of Outlaws out in the countryside had seen years go by without the colonial government trying to do anything to bring any semblance of Law and Order out to the Frontiers The Regulators at this point though decided that they were going to create a Ruckus essentially by quote unquote regulating poor people living in their neighborhoods and essentially forcing the South Carolina government to take notice the South Carolina government eventually did end up making concessions to the regulators and ultimately violence did end up coming to an end in South Carolina but in North Carolina groups of farmers who took the who took the same name calling themselves Regulators they went a little bit further and in addition to regulating their neighbors out in the frontier areas they also refused to pay taxes actively disrupted Court sessions and even attacked local officials and the property of wealthy land owners merchants and lawyers these armed farmers in North Carolina though were only suppressed in the year 1771 after the North Carolina militia was called out to disperse them and just a little bit to the north of the Carolinas also in the time frame of the mid 1760s tenants or renters who were living on the large landed estate of massively wealthy land owners in New York's Colonial Hudson River Valley started to call themselves the Sons of Liberty and this group also stopped paying rent to land owners and began to seize land for themselves but these groups too this group known as the Sons of Liberty will also be eventually suppressed by combined forces of Colonial New York militia and British troops but unease was all over the American colonies at the time small farmers living in Vermont for example and other parts of New England started to take up arms to defend their land claims and resist Colonial authorities and it seemed like massive turmoil was starting to take shape in the American colonies in 1767 the British government decided that it was going to impose a whole new set of taxes on the American colonies which had been specifically designed by the chancellor of the ex cheer a man named Charles Townsen he was the government's Chief Financial Minister back in London Charles Townsen was also deeply convinced that the American colonies needed to be taught a lesson in government sovereignty so factiously taking the word of the American statements that had been made during the protests against the stamp act that the American colonists did not actually object to paying paying taxes on trade act trade activities ex Checker Townsen decided to pass a whole new series of brand new taxes for the American colonists to pay on all traded Goods that went back and forth between different parts of the British Empire and the American colony specifically collectively altogether all of these new trade taxes were called the towns and Duty acts of 7 1767 the towns and duties basically taxed all British goods that were imported into the American colonies it also created a brand new board of Customs Commissioners whose job it was to supervise the accurate collection of those new taxes suppress smuggling and also try to raise funds to pay the salaries of colonial Governors and judges at the same time when Americans heard about the Townsen Act colonists began to fear that this was just the first step towards greater British interference in colonial Affairs in the future and the towns and duties as I'm sure you might imagine eventually ended up provoking Massive Resistance throughout the American colonies Colonial protests actually happened very very quickly but they were largely unorganized if a boycott of British imported goods put in place by the Americans was ultimately to be successful as a protest movement it needed to be strong in all major American cities it would do absolutely no good if the city of Boston boycotted British import products but if British Imports were still pretty easy to find nearby and if people were still buying British made products just a few miles away in cities like New York or Philadelphia so here's how the boycott protest would work ultimately instead of buying in stores British made Goods American colonists were actually encouraged to start making their own Goods at home things like clothing shoes Furniture Etc and So eventually as part of this boycott on British made Goods wearing somewhat rustic and not so sophisticated clothing that someone obviously made at home that you didn't actually purchase pre-made in a store came to be seen as a bit of a badge of honor in the American colonies it essentially meant that if you were making your own clothing instead of going to a store and ostensibly paying taxes to the British government by buying pre-made clothing you were making a statement a protest statement by wearing less than perfect less than fashionable clothing that you or someone else in your family made instead of buying ready-made clothes from a British supplier essentially those who were seen in public wearing what were known as Homespun clothing were showing off their American patriotism and their anger at the British government for things like the Townsend duties and the American boycotters quickly got organized and created a very effective boycott movement on all British trade goods that were sold in America that eventually became so popular that it ended up forging a sense amongst American colonists of having a common purpose and of belonging to a larger American community for perhaps the first time in those colonies history the boycott movement also very quickly led to a sharp noticeable drop in British goods being sold in the American colonies and the group that felt the sting of the loss of the boycott uh was were British merchants back over in Great Britain who definitely noticed that their amount of income was taking a massive hit because of the boycott in America and so it was actually British merchants that began to actively pressure Parliament to resend the offending offending taxes that were being collected in America in addition to this British troops had essentially been consistently stationed in various American towns ever since the start of the French and Indian War ostensibly those troops were kept in the American colonies to protect colonists from any lingering Native American attacks out on the Frontiers but over time as years past most American colonists came to deeply resent the continued constant presence of British soldiers in their cities and towns because essentially when you step outside and you look to your left and look to your right and you see Soldiers with weapons in uniform stationed on every corner uh of your block you might feel like you were living in a police state so Boston Massachusetts ended up being the epicenter of colonial American resistance to the British government in Boston Royal British troops had been stationed there since the year 1768 to enforc trade regulations and over time the very unpopular troops started to compete directly for jobs out on the waterfront with the city's day laborers in Boston in particular tensions were already very very high between civilians and British soldiers who were constantly stationed there not only were the soldiers res for the regular reasons but often times off-duty soldiers when they had a little bit of time off would wander down to the docks in Boston and would take jobs offering to do those jobs for even lower wages that day laborers in Boston relied upon for their livelihood and the presence the mere presence of more soldiers in places like Boston ultimately translated into fewer and fewer job opportunities for average bostonians and things ultimately came to a head in an event that happened on March 5th 1770 on that day a rather rowdy crowd gathered outside of a tax collection house in Boston and a group of unemployed day laborers began taunting and throwing snowballs eventually at the soldiers who were stationed outside to guard the tax building those snowballs though eventually turned into straight up rocks being thrown at the British soldiers outside and and the soldiers prepared their weapons they fixed their bayonets in an attempt to try to push the growing crowd back from the steps of the tax house but at this point no one still to this day really knows exactly what happened maybe one of the solders slipped on the ice that day and his gun went off accidentally or maybe a British soldier actually ended up willingly firing in it into the crowd but shots were fired into the crowd of protesters and when the smoke smoke all finally cleared away five people were dead and six more were seriously injured in fact one of the first people who died in what ultimately came to be known later on as the Boston Massacre was a free black Sailor named Crispus addict who was later named as one of the very first so-called Martyrs of the American Revolution the Boston Massacre though seemed to fulfill some pretty terrifying Republican prophecies about an ultimately tyrannical British government using military force to strip the American colonists of their English style Liberties back over in Boston the commanding officer and eight soldiers were ultimately put on trial but an American named John Adams volunteered to be the defense attorney for that commanding officer and those eight soldiers John Adams was vehemently opposed not just to British governmental policies in colonial America he was even more upset by what he perceived as lower workingclass crowds taking physical action against British po policies and turning into violent melees like what happened in the Boston Massacre even though only two of the British soldiers were ultimately convicted of the much lower and less serious charge of manslaughter and the rest of the soldiers were ultimately found not guilty back on the streets of Boston Bostonian citizens were infuriated people like Paul River a Boston silver smith and other colonists helped to steer up massive amounts of indignation in Boston against the British government by publishing in inaccurate but widely circulated propaganda images which tried to depict the incident as a straight up cold-blooded Massacre of unarmed Bostonian citizens for no reason the picture on this slide actually comes directly from the hand of Paul River uh he was in his spare time a print maker he was a silver smith as a job but sometimes he would also create Prince and this is his depiction of the Boston Massacre uh as you can see Riv is depicting the events of that day as a vicious unprovoked attack on innocent Bostonian people by vicious British soldiers but even as the Boston Massacre came in went the boycott movement in America still held firmly together and the boycott movement temporarily cut British Imports that were being sold in the American colonies by over a third British merchants fear of future trade disruptions eventually led to the repeal of every single one of the towns and Duty taxes except for one Parliament wanted to keep one tax in place and that was the tax on any tea that would be sold in America Parliament the reason why they decided to keep the tax on te in place was that Parliament wanted to keep at least one symbolic tax in place to prove that the government wasn't completely bowing to American protest pressure the British also agreed after the Boston Massacre to start pulling troops out of the city of Boston Proper and at this point American Merchants began to abandon the boycott movement for the American colonist the partial repeal of the towns and duties remember the tax on te was not repealed was ultimately an incomplete Victory and recent events especially the Boston Massacre continued to seriously undermine American colonist trusts in British Authority overall also there was a controversy Brewing on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean over in Great Britain over the treatment of a man named John wils which reinforced American colonists since that political corruption and other problems were seriously eroding away traditional British Liberties now John wils was originally a pretty radical newspaper journalist who had recently scandalized parliamentary authorities by writing really serious rumors and gossip about the king and members of parliament but common people loved John wilks's they loved his articles whenever they came out they loved to read the gossip and Scandals about people who were rich and powerful and wils ultimately ended up being elected to Parliament for a seat representing the city of London but the people sitting in Parliament when they found out that John wils was about to sit amongst them refused to allow John wils to ever be sworn in and take his seat officially in Parliament cries in the streets of Wilks and Liberty began to R together not just British people who were living in the Home Country who were opposed to the aler of Wilks from Parliament but also in colonial America British American Protestants Living in America were also very very troubled by what they heard as rumors that the Church of England was planning to send Bishops to rule over church activities in the American colonies and worried that religious court systems might punish religious denters could be established in the future this further added to the pile of fear for traditionally established Liberties that many American colonists had come to basically take for granted and the next Colonial crisis that happened in the British Empire demonstrated just how much events happening all over the British Empire could directly reverberate in colonial America now just to give you a little bit of background on this story story there was a British company known as the East India company that was a massive trading Monopoly that existed in the British Empire the East India Company effectively ruled completely the recently acquired British possessions in India the East India Company and not necessarily the British government completely ran things on the ground in the British Indian colonies but the East India Company was also a trade company and it sold and transported Goods all over the British Empire in various far-flung pieces of that Empire and when an investment bubble essentially bottomed out the East India Company's stock valuation and keep in mind the East India Company was a company that many wealthy British merchants bankers and even members of parliament had a lot of money invested in the British government actually decided to step in and help rescue or bail out the e East India company with a number of different laws for example Parliament actually suggested that to start increasing company revenues overall and start making up and building back up that stock price valuation the British government suggested that maybe in the future for the next couple of years in the American colonies only tea transported and sold by the East India Company would allow would be allowed to be sold Now by this time in human history drinking tea was no longer seen as a thing that only rich people could afford to do tea was no longer considered a luxury good at this point tea had become a consumer necessity that was popular amongst all social classes in both Great Britain and the American colonies and quite honestly all throughout the British Empire and the British government which was now headed up by a new prime minister known as Lord North the British government decided to give the East India Company trading advantages that would allow the East India Company to exclusively market and sell lowprice tea on the colonial American market and the British government what worked for it here is that remember of all the towns in duties the only one that was still being collected was the tea on tax and the British government would would collect an immense amount of tax if that East India Company tea was sold in America and the government wanted to use those taxes on imported tea to help pay for the continued costs of colonial government in America and this was perceived as yet another move that threatened the colonial assembly's control over local financing now even though the tax was not new it had been in place for years at this point many American colonists began to argue that paying paying a tax on this new large body of tea that would be sold only in the American colonies would essentially acknowledge Britain's right to tax the colonies in whatever way the British government wanted to so mounting opposition to this plan to dump a lot of East India Company te in the American colonies ended up culminating in what much much later years later came to be called the Boston Tea Party in the event that eventually came to be known as the Boston Tea Party Boston colonists crudely disguised themselves as Native Americans and in the middle of the night they boarded ships that had cargo holds stacked with boxes and boxes of imported tea that would then be unloaded and sold in American shops and the TAA tax would be collected before that tea even had a chance to be unloaded and then sent to shops in America these men hopped on board the ships and then cracked open the crates of tea and dumped everything in those boxes into the harbor itself essentially turning Boston Harbor into a gigantic teacup overall though this event ended up causing a huge loss of Revenue to the East India Company now when the British government back in London heard about the events of the Boston Tea Party Lord North's government and Parliament overall responded Ed immediately with a series of punitive laws punitive meaning punishment that the American colonies started to call collectively the quote unquote Intolerable Acts as part of the Intolerable Acts as punishment for the Boston Tea Party Parliament officially shut down the entire Port of Boston until the East India Company had been completely compensated for all of the tea that had been destroyed in the Tea Party furthermore Parliament also went in and altered the original charter of the Massachusetts colony of 1691 and changed the charter specifically to cut down on the number of town meetings and then authorized the governor of Massachusetts to directly appoint council members in colonial legislatures that colonists had previously been able to vote for and elect and then finally the British government also began to allow British military Commanders to specifically house troops in the private homes of colonists all of this was wildly infuriating to the people who were affected by these Intolerable Acts but simultaneously elsewhere in the British Empire parliament passed another law called the Quebec Act which officially extended the boundaries of the new British territory in Canada and for the very first time in its history allowed for the legal Toler ation of Roman Catholic Church practices in that one new British province of Quebec which if you didn't know had a large population of Catholic adherence who suddenly found themselves living in Canada after France signed over control of Canada to the British now ultimately the Quebec Act was meant bottom line to secure the allegiance of thousands and thousands of new British subjects uh specifically those French people who who happened to be Catholic who were living in Canada when the end of the Seven Years War rolled around and all of Canada was handed over by France to Great Britain but the Quebec Act ended up causing many American colonists especially descendants of uh of pilgrims who lived in places like New England New England Protestants were terrified at this point and began to fear that the British government now not only threatened their political Liberties in the British Empire but that they might in the future start to infringe upon their religious freedoms in places like Boston Committees of correspondents came together and ultimately were very successful in cranking out and then spreading propaganda warning American colonists about all of these perceived threats to their Liberty that became more and more popular throughout the American colonies as time went on by the the time we get to the year 1774 British government actions had massively eroded the Imperial government's perceived legitimacy amongst many American colonists and direct opposition to the so-called Intolerable Acts had managed to spread to small towns and rural areas that up until this point in history might not have yet participated in resistance against the British government while colonists particularly in the New England region would intimidate harass sometimes even outright assault British officials and colonists who seem to support British policies a September 1774 Convention of delegates from from towns all across Massachusetts came together to meet when this group finally dispersed they issued a document known as the suffk resolves the suffk resolves were a document which ultimately urged the American colonists to refuse to obey any new British laws to stop stop paying their taxes but ultimately the suffk resolves warned American colonists to start preparing for war with Great Britain because in their minds at this point war was coming they just didn't know exactly when and to coordinate further resistance to the Intolerable Acts in September of 1774 a group known as the Continental Congress had their first meeting in Philadelphia Pennsylvania the Continental Congress was composed of political leaders from every single American colony except for Georgia I'll explain that in just a second the Continental Congress included men like John Adams and also his much more radical politically cousin Samuel Adams of Massachusetts from Virginia we had Representatives like George Washington and Patrick Henry the latter of whom very famously declared to his fellow Virginia to quote Give me liberty or give me death and all of the delegates agreed to a massive new boycott movement this time against every single piece of British but also other British imperially produced products so anything that came from Great Britain came from India came from British colonies in Africa if it came to American stores don't buy it so said members of the Continental Congress and Continental Congress ended their first series of meetings by composing and then issuing a document that came came to be known as the Declaration of Rights and grievances now ostensibly this was a letter that was addressed to King George III since the Continental Congress no longer considered Parliament to be a legitimate legislature over the American colonies and in this document Continental Congress asked the king to step in and save and protect his loyal subjects living in the American colonies from the evil actions of parliament if the king ended up protecting his Colonial subjects and their rights the document said well then King George III could always count on their undying loyalty to the king the Declaration then specified Colonial rights that should be protected by the government as three things life liberty and property and in the rest of the Declaration Continental Congress tried to specify the exact terms by which the American colonies would voluntarily choose to remain a part of the British Empire in the future the document then declared that the so-called Intolerable Acts were unconstitutional and then they criticized all kinds of other taxes and measures that had been passed in the American colonies since the end of the French and Indian War when the document was drafted and then edited and then finalized the Declaration was then sent to King George III and also simultaneously printed in newspapers all across the American colonies however at this particular time in colonial history Colonial Unity was actually pretty fragile and Congress needed an enforcement mechanism that would guarantee that its boycott measures would be followed so before they officially disbanded in their last meeting Continental Congress created a new group known as the Continental Association the Continental association's job was to stop virtually all trade being conducted with Great Britain and the West Indies Continental Congress by creating the Continental Association ended up authorizing the further creation of thousands of local Committees of safety groups all throughout the American colonies to enforce its recommendations and policies and to further act against the so-called quote enemies of Liberty end quote who tried to violate the boy cot or Merchants who might try to use this as an opportunity to price gouge their customers and then the very first Continental Continental Congress meeting officially adjourned in October of 1774 after all delegates agreed that they would meet up again in the following May of 1775 if all of its demands listed in that declaration were not met by that time now this is important because this was all the beginning of a process that will over time transfer effective political power in colonial America from the hands of colonial governments whose authority ultimately arrived from British Parliament to a group of extr legal meaning outside of the official structure extr legal bodies that directly reflected the popular will of the people in the American colonies by the time we get into early 1775 thousands of Americans many of whom were without a square inch of property to their name and who had never before considered themselves part of the so-called political Nation now found themselves serving on these local Committees of safety and those groups actually became little tiny Laboratories scattered all throughout the colonies for trying out and testing different styles of self-government and soon they became the Laboratories for trying out different styles of Revolution as well so far British attempts to tighten up their control over the American colonies have all ended up backfiring American colonists who were accustomed to local self-government during all of those years of salutary neglect had come to start seeing themselves as Imperial partners with the King and Parliament and not subordinates to King and Parliament after after years of sometimes violent political turmoil American colonists were starting to be inspired to think more and more systematically about their rights than they ever had really done before parliamentary elections though were held in Great Britain in the fall of 1774 and though they weren't allowed to vote for their own representatives in the American colonies the American colonists very much hoped that maybe there would be a new government elected in to power and that maybe this new government might be a little bit more helpful to the American colonies or at least a little bit more helpful than the previous government had been however much to the Chagrin of those American colonists when the election tallies were totaled the same old supporters and parliamentary members won reelection and the same prime minister Lord North remained in power and Lord North in particular is going to continue to aggravate the situation over in America so by the time we get to 1774 and 1775 the Notions of British Liberty that had previously infused British American political culture were starting to be invoked by very angry indignant American colonists from all kinds of different backgrounds and now their anger and ey was being directed against Great Britain itself so as this crisis intensified more and more Americans began to claim their base their claims of for Liberty not just on the historical rights of British men but on the much more abstract language of natural rights and Universal freedoms this language also frequently included a lot of John Lock's ideas that natural rights for example had always existed had existed way before the very first establishment of the very first man-made government and ultimately these ideas of natural rights that belong to all human beings ended up providing a very powerful justification for continued American resistance to Imperial British rule now remember when I said that the First Continental Congress agreed that they would meet up again if in a year if their demands had not been met well that's exactly what happened when the second meeting of the continental congress met in May of 1775 what we would consider part of the war for revolution had already kicked off between British soldiers and a group of armed Massachusetts citizens now one of the first things that Lord North did after his reelection was to immediately order that an arms stockpile that was being held in the town of conquered Massachusetts be collected and then destroyed and he also ordered that the radical American leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock were to be immediately arrested on charges of tax evasion and smuggling British troops that were stationed in Boston received their orders to seize the weapons cash and conquered and then to travel to the neighboring town of Lexington to then capture Adams and Hancock in the middle of the night about 700 British soldiers gathered together smack in the middle of the Heart of the City of Boston in an area known as Boston Common and they gathered together for a pre-dawn March from Boston Common to Lexington and Conquer but American colonists were watching these soldiers assemble in the middle of the night having about 700 plus soldiers Gather in the middle of the city of Boston where thousands of people lived wasn't exactly very inconspicuous a lot of people noticed that these soldiers were gathering even though it was literally the middle of the night and so a group of so-called Patriot Riders were then sent out as quickly as they could on horses to race to Lexington and conquered and then warn colonists that lived in the countryside that the British were coming if you've ever heard these stories before you've probably heard the story of Paul Rivier and his Infamous Midnight Ride well Paul Riv was just one of many riders who went out to give this warning when the British were gathering together in Boston but Paul River didn't actually make it to his destination uh he had fallen off of his horse so many times after drinking quite a bit and So eventually he was laid down across his horse and a friend sent him home so he didn't really actually make it to Lexington or conquered other writers did actually make it to Lexington and conquered and as a result John Hancock and Samuel Adams who were staying in Lexington at the time were able to just barely escape from being arrested and that cash of weapons that was being held and conquered was moved to a different location but while all of this was going on the British troops began to slowly approach the outskirts of the town of Lexington right as the sun was coming up and they were met by a group of about 70 American militia men on the road that went through the woods right outside of the town of Lexington the American militia group was immediately or ordered to disperse and since the militia men were actually outnumbered by British soldiers 10 to one many of those American militia men were starting to turn around and leave and go back home when all of the sudden unexpectedly a shot rang out from the American side immediately British troops fired back and a straightup firefight ensued these shots ended up being called the quote shots heard around the world that ended up sparking the American war of independence now these skirmishes in plac like Lexington and Concord actually ended up initiating the American Revolutionary War and also inspired other colonist living in New England and other colonial regions to start taking up arms themselves in fact during the winter of 1775 to 1776 American militia forces managed to drag about 60 massive heavy lead cannons through the mountains and over snow from Fort taond deroga down to the city of Boston General George Washington then ordered that those cannons be arranged all throughout the British Harbor or Boston Harbor to defend against British Invaders now at this point when British soldiers noticed that Washington and others were beginning to arrange these Cannons all around Boston Harbor in an effort to defend it from a British Invasion existing British troops in Boston evacuated the city and then officially moved all of their troop bases to Halifax Nova Scotia up in Canada and at this point the American Rebels now controlled most of New England starting in early 1776 because essentially British soldiers in places like Boston retreated back to Halifax now very soon after these first fights started to happen in places like Lexington and conquered that's when the Second Continental Congress was just beginning to meet and when one of the first things that the second meeting of the Continental Congress did was to authorize the immediate raising of an army for the American colonies they ordered the printing of paper money to pay for that Army and they also chose George Washington as the new commander of American forces Great Britain though responded Itself by declaring all of the American colonies to be in an open state of rebellion and it ordered closed every single Colonial port and furthermore the British government began to dispatch thousands of troops over to the American colonies but despite the fact that war had broken out many American colonists at this point were still incredibly reluctant to embrace the idea of complete independence from the British Empire many American colonists were still very proud of British political institutions and culture and tradition and the power and the glory of the British Empire and more than a few American political leaders worried that the Rebellion might end up actually kicking off massive internal social conflict particularly between wealthy Elites and the poor disenfranchised common American people leaders in places like Massachusetts and Virginia who were incensed by the Intolerable Acts and confident that they would be able to retain Authority in those specific colonies openly came out in support of American independence early on as did many Southern leaders who guarded their political Liberties and were enraged by a British Proclamation that was made in Virginia in the latter part of the Year 1775 which offered freedom to any Escape any escaped slave who managed to cross over to British side uh British lines and enlist in the Royal Army this actually triggered thousands of slaves to run away and try to make their way over to the British side at this point in places like New York and Pennsylvania though consensus amongst the people was much more difficult to establish opposition to British policies in the past had animated some small farmers and urban Artisans whose calls for a greater voice in their own political lives did prompt many leaders to hesitate for a moment to call for absolute Independence some people who lived in these colonies in particular urged for a compromise to be made and furthermore predicted that if America and Great Britain went to war with each other that that war would end up unleashing fighting between the separate colonies if the Americans ended up being successful and so oddly enough in the beginning of the year 1776 American colonists were strangely both engaged actively in a war against the British Empire but also still calling for more rights within the British Empire in July of 1775 in even as that second meeting of Continental Congress organized and brought together the Continental American Military they also at the exact same time sent one last letter to King George III which was known as the Olive Branch Petition the Olive Branch Petition was addressed directly to King George III and it reaffirmed the Loyalty of the American people to the crown and furthermore in its writing hoped for a quote more permanent reconciliation with the British government now most Americans at this particular early moment in the American Revolutionary War still felt that the relationship with Great Britain at this point could be salvaged and America could still continue to be a part of the British Empire overall though American colonists were massively divided over what the extent of parliament's authority should be and how far they could legitimately go when it came to challenging parliament's power many Americans might not have even agreed with the provisions called for by Congress at this point but even as early as 1774 it was starting to become less popular and actually more dangerous to openly Express opinions in America that cided with Parliament local Committees of safety that had been created by the Continental Association not only only very much enforced the massive boycott against British goods being sold in America but also would regularly intimidate and threaten their opponents in the American colonies into silence but increasingly American colonists were finding themselves having to choose sides and many Americans took a long time to make a decision in 1776 the overwhelming majority of American colonists were still on the the fence about which side to support Great Britain or American independence it's going to take over a year of constant sustained armed conflict for many of those colonists to accept the idea of American independence instead of trying to reconcile with the British government independence from Great Britain and not reconciliation with Great Britain was increasingly over time seen as the ultimate necessary outcome of any further American efforts and ironically it was not a longtime American colonist but actually a very recent immigrant to Philadelphia directly from England a man named Thomas Payne who made sure that American colonists were finally definitively pushed in the direction of supporting Independence now Thomas Payne was a printer and he was also a writer and Thomas Payne ended up writing and Publishing a pamphlet which was titled Common Sense which went out for sale in January of 1776 Common Sense was very quickly a bestseller in colonial America and the content of Common Sense helped finally sway American public opinion towards independence now common sense as a document caustically criticized the British constitution for its principles of hereditary aristocracy and monarchical government and it also argued that the so-called residue of tyranny still very much survived in Great Britain in the forms of the monarchy and the aristocratic House of Lords Payne further argued that only a truly democratic system that was based on frequently held elections with one single written document as its Constitution would ever be able to truly ensure Liberty and perhaps most importantly in common sense Thomas Payne argued that America's future prospects if it's should somehow choose to stay with the British Empire were very very limited but once America was free of things like the Navigation Acts and able to trade freely with the rest of the world then and only then would its future Prosperity be assured once America was free from Great Britain the colonies would also not find themselves constantly entangled in the British Empire's wars with other European powers against which the American colonists had never really had their own real grievances in some cases pay also argued that the American colony membership in the British Empire was more of a burden than it was a benefit and then Payne ended up wrapping up the pamphlet by guaranteeing his readers that American Independence was linked with the freedom of all people everywhere and even argued that the new American Nation would eventually become a Haven for freedom and a quote Asylum for mankind end quote although most of Payne's ideas were not his own original thoughts he actually addressed his writing to All American people and wrote in a very accessible Way by expressing himself in a very clear direct and plain style of language that was very unusual in most political writing at the time most political tracks and documents were actually at this time composed in very dense esoteric language meant for consumption only by Highly Educated Elites and as such they weren't really accessible to the common average person so Thomas Payne ended up taking a lot of much older Republican and liberal philosophical ideas from older philosophers like John lock for example and then he took those arguments and put them in easy to understand language to be read by the average regular American person and so this this amongst many different ways is why Common Sense very quickly became one of the most successful and most influential pamphlets in the history of all political writing so combined with the intensification of fighting in the war combined together with Payne's very stirring appeal for American independence this ended up sparking even more calls for Independence in more and more American communities and just FYI to tell you a little bit of a interesting story about Thomas Payne uh Thomas Payne goes on to be incredibly influential in yet another ma major worldwide revolution in the French Revolution too um after America gained its independence spoiler alert uh Thomas Payne is going to move to France after a revolution started in that country and while he's living in France he is going to publish a number of famous famous pamphlets over there including one called the Rights of Man Thomas Payne was also made an honor orary French Citizen and even served on government committees but when the event known as the reign of terror as part of the French Revolution began Thomas Payne was eventually condemned to execution by the guillotine but this is where the story gets a little interesting uh Thomas Payne ended up Surviving his execution sentence because the night before he was to be executed the Jailer went around marking with a piece of chalk a huge X on the outside of the doors of of prisoners who who were supposed to be collected and then executed the next morning at Daybreak but when the Jailer came around Thomas Payne's cell door which was a big wooden door was left open and so when he marked Thomas Payne's door with an X he actually drew the ex on the inside of his cell door by accident and so in the morning when the cell door was closed Thomas Payne was not actually collected together and taken out with others to the guillotine that day and by the time anyone noticed the mistake Hey Thomas Payne shouldn't he have been killed days ago by the time anyone realized that though the reign of terror had come to an end and good old Thomas Payne lived to fight another day and lived for several more years in June of 1776 members of the Second Continental Congress called out amongst its membership for someone to draw up a declaration of independence on July 2nd 1776 Congress formally declared that the United States of America from this point on was its own independent nation and then just two days later on July 4th Congress adopted the document known as the Declaration of Independence which had been originally written by Thomas Jefferson but then heavily edited and revised by the rest of the members of Congress before its final approval most of the document of the Declaration is actually a really long list of specific grievances directed specifically against King George the I thir protesting recent policies that threatened to impose on the American colonists what Jefferson called absolute tyranny but at this point it is interesting to note that originally a clause which condemned and outlawed the slave trade and criticize King George III for overturning laws that limited slave importation was ultimately eliminated from the finalized document of the Declaration of Independence because of protests by delegates from Georgia and South Carolina specifically but overall the impact and the legacy of the Declaration of Independence is contained in in its Preamble its first uh paragraph which was for the most part written by by Thomas Jefferson and which states that quote all men are created equal that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights and that amongst these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness end quote Jefferson Justified Independence in this document by arguing that all governments derive their powers from the quote consent of the Govern and that when a government threatens its subject's natural rights that the people then have the authority to quote alter or abolish it to get rid of that government and put in place a new one that will protect their rights so the Declaration of independent Independence ultimately asserts the right of Revolution if you think that your government is not behaving properly and once the Declaration of Independence was published it forever altered the meaning of Liberty in America this document completed the transformation of the object of American independence from the rights of common Englishmen to the rights of all mankind Jefferson argued that natural laws not the British constitution or the rights to Freeborn Englishmen were actually what Justified America's separation from Great Britain and the Declaration also made Freedom a universal entitlement for all people and not a special privilege that's meant to be enjoyed by a certain corporate body or people of a certain social class Thomas Jefferson Drew Upon A lot of the theories of people like John Lock in this document John Lock had proclaimed that government is always established by human beings to protect certain rights specifically John Lock wrote quite a bit about protect governments having to protect the rights of life liberty and property of its citizens and these rights are the people's by natural divinely sanctioned law and that when a government protects these rights does whatever it can to protect life liberty and property well then the people are are obl Ed to obey that government but by substituting the words the pursuit of happiness in place of the word property in the old Triad of rights that uh John Lock talked about Jefferson ended up establishing in America's political culture a much more open-ended Democratic process in which individual people are able to develop their own potential and could seek out and realize their own life goals whatever it is that made them happy if that was the accumulation of property so be it but if you had other ideas about what would make you happy in your life well then that's what the go government should ultimately protect Thomas Jefferson made individual self-fulfillment unimpeded by government structures a central element of American freedom from this point forward removing the idea of tradition as a basic obstacle to the American people's desire to shape society around them as they saw fit and then in the dramatic conclusion of the document Jefferson says that the American people can rightfully overthrow King George III's rule since in their opinion it was tyrannical and then replace it with something that would be much more agreeable and amenable to the American people however even though this document is massively important to American history we do need need to keep in mind that when Thomas Jefferson wrote in his declaration that quote all men are created equal he did not mean all people necessarily women Native Americans slaves and even free black people still fell well outside of the scope of what he intended in his original phrase and unfortunately it is going to take much longer for all of the people that I just listed before they will actually be considered equal in this country the American Revolution created a distinctive definition of national identity that ultimately rests on the concept of freedom from its very beginning the notion of what is known as American exceptionalism which is the belief that the United States is special and unique amongst all other nations and that America alone has this special mission to be a refuge from tyranny a symbol of freedom and a model for the rest of the world has been from that day July 4th onwards Central to ideas of American nationality and nationalism Thomas Payne and others believed that the American Revolution was a an event that could potentially have Global historical importance with the power to potentially reshape the rest of the world without the burden of a monarchy and aristocracy or any of the old hereditary privilege of the old world of Europe America it was thought could be a new nation governed by principles of universal Freedom while American colonists though at the time were much more interested in gaining International recognition and the military aid of other governments than they were in actually making sure to establish full human rights for all people everywhere the Declaration words and ideas have been a huge inspiration not just to Americans but to colonized peoples all throughout the the world who have sought their independence at various points for example Flemish rebels in part of what is today's nation of Belgium and then at that time part of the Austrian Empire directly echoed Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence when they declared their own rebellion in 1790 just a couple of years after America's Independence was declared and in fact by the time we get to the year 1826 the year that Thomas Jefferson himself died 20 other Declarations of Independence had been issued in places all over the world in Europe the Caribbean in Spanish America and in other spots and then even after that revolutionaries in China for example in the year 1911 and in Vietnam in 1945 issued their own Declarations of Independence that were very much influenced by the American predecessor although over time the natural writes that Thomas Jefferson asserted in his document became less and less part of the Declarations that he helped to inspire the idea ultimately that legitimate political Authority rests on the will of the people and that the idea of quote unquote the people whoever that might refer to should have rights has been adopted all around the world inspiring a very diverse array of groups including Caribbean slaves Colonial subjects in India and Indigenous peoples of Latin America to fight for their Liberties and for their own independence but not all American colonists actually supported American independence even at this particular point in history about half a million colonists that's about 20% of the free population living in the American colonies in the 1770s actually sided with Great Britain in this conflict these people actually came from all walks of life from independent Farmers to poor people and poor Frontier settlers to wealthy merchants living in cities and they were known as loyalists some of the so-called loyalists were actually fairly recent immigrants to America from Great Britain many loyalists actually came from Scots Irish backgrounds and they tended to trust the British Imperial government more than they trusted the rich Elite Class in America to protect them and their particular interests new treason laws were almost immediately enacted in America which required people to now swear oath Oaths of allegiance to the new United States even though at this point in time America had not yet defeated the British and secured their independence if a person refused to swear one of the new Oaths of loyalty to America it could mean criminal penalties in many now states that fought and people who were caught fighting alongside the British uh could end up being given a death sentence many loyalists though actually chose to flee North once the American war of independence were was over it's actually estimated that somewhere around 70,000 American loyalists chose to move to Canada and remain a part of the British Empire once fighting in America was over about 20,000 people living in America ended up specifically fighting on the side of the British during what came to be known as the Revolutionary War and because so many loyalists left America and chose to move to Canada once the Revolution was over the American Revolution is nowadays sometimes said to have created two entirely new nations number one the United States which ultimately fought for its independence from Great Britain and number two Canada which specifically chose to remain a part of the British Empire in the aftermath of the American Revolution for the new American people the challenges to obtaining real Independence as opposed to Simply declaring it in a document were enormous and Great Britain which saw the American colonists as rebellious traitors was ultimately determined to squash this Rebellion into the ground the new American Army is also going to have to face off against what was perceived at the time time to be the greatest military power in the world with a highly trained professional disciplined Army That Was Then augmented by hired soldiers from German Nations like Hessa and Britain also had the world's most powerful navy and very experienced military commanders The Americans on the other hand had only access to local militia groups and a very poorly equipped continental army many of whom were very undisciplined America also had absolutely no Navy to speak of although America will eventually end up hiring and chartering privateers or pirate ships um will be given government licenses to attack the British uh British ships out on the Open Seas and eventually that will become the basis of what will grow into the American Navy but it do things do not look good for America when balancing out and trying to figure out out at the start of the war who you might think has the advantages and might end up winning this war but many American individuals did have at least some military experience particularly those who had fought recently in the Seven Years War or who had militia training Americans were also fighting in their own backyards on their own soil for a revolutionary cause that tended to inspire sacrifice and devotion during the wars of ual 8 years of fighting it's thought that some 200,000 men ended up serving in the Continental Army as volunteers or in their local Colonial militias where sometimes military service was required of all able-bodied men by the time the Revolutionary War came to an end one in 20 of the free white male population in the American colonies between the ages of 16 to 45 was dead that's the equivalent nowadays of nearly 3 million soldiers dying in today's population numbers but the hope for American independence survived as long as any semblance of an American Army still existed and the British eventually came to learn that despite their military power that the conquest of 13 separate individual colonies on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean was an enormous and Incredibly expensive Endeavor which might eventually require higher taxes that British people in the mother country would very much resent having to pay and the British ended up making a series of mistakes throughout the war misjudging for example the degree of support for Independence amongst American colonists and the capacity of America's citizen soldiers and European Rivals particularly the nation of France very much welcomed any kind of British defeat anywhere in the world and if France decided to support America in this fight France might be able to equalize the balance of forces between American colonists and the British so at this very early point in the war America is very much hoping that some International cause might start taking it paying attention and will eventually back the Americans in their fight against the British Empire this is actually a clip from uh the movie Sleepy Hollow which was directed by Tim Burton um if you've ever heard the story before kabad crane played by Johnny Depp here um he goes up to uh New York in the very early years of um the independent American Nation and we find out that the legendary Headless Horseman was actually himself a Hessian Soldier or a German mercenary that fought in the revolution The Horseman was a Hessian mercenary sent to these Shores by German princes to give Americans under the Yoke of England but unlike his compatriots who came for money the horsemen came for Love Of Carnage when battle was joined there you'd find him he wrote a giant black Ste named Daredevil he was Infamous riding his horse hard into battle chopping off heads of full G he filed his teeth down to Sharp points to add for the ferocity this appearance this butcher didn't finally reach his end until the winter of 79 not far from here in our Western Woods [Music] gosh [Music] [Music] [Music] they chopped off his head with his own sword even today the Western Woods is a haunted place where brave men will not venture for what was planted in the ground that day was a seed of evil and so it has been for 20 years but now the Hessian wakes he's on the Rampage cutting off heads where he finds them are you saying is that what you believe see is believing so the point here obviously is that hestian mercenaries were very much feared by American fighters and people living in the colonies during the Revolutionary War and that clip was a little bit of schlocky somewhat gory campy fun uh to kind of uh just make a more recent pop culture reference to hesan mercenaries being used by the British in the Revolutionary War early on in the Revolutionary War British forces offered Promises of freedom to enslaved African people who could find their way to British military lines and then agree to fight for the British although George Washington on the American side at first refused to accept black recruits into the Continental Army he later ended up reversing this policy after the British began offering freedom to Slaves who escaped and served with the British military so ultimately both sides the American side and the British side ended up employing African-Americans to fight for them in areas that had large enslaved populations though like in South Carolina the white slave owners fear of arming slaves leading to slave revolts meant that enslaved people in those areas were generally not armed to fight in battle by either the Americans or the British and in fact instead of providing access to black troops who might fight on their behalf South Carolina's legislature at first preferred instead to offer enslaved human beings as rewards for military service by Otherwise white soldiers and over the course of the war it's estimated that about 5,000 black men ended up enlisting to fight and serve with the American Army and Colonial militias some of these black men were slaves and had been promised their freedom if in in particular they ended up serving in as substitutes um in the military draft for their owner or the son of their owner and black people fighting under the command of George Washington did actually serve in fully racially integrated units but unfortunately these would be the last black American soldiers to fight alongside white soldiers in integrated units until the 1950s and the start of the Korean War now most of the African American people who fought on the American side during the Revolutionary War were originally free black people who fought in and were from places like Massachusetts and Rhode Island further down to the south in places like South Carolina that that area continued to refuse to arm any black people even if it was to fight on the American side of the war so except for South Carolina and Georgia other sou Southern colonies did end up enrolling free black men and a handful of slaves to fight for their side now while these colonies did not explicitly promise these the enslaved people who volunteered access to Freedom many slaves did end up receiving Freedom individually once the war concluded at which time the state of Virginia decided to emancipate all slaves who had served in the American Army but many thousands and thousands of black people especially if they happened to be enslaved did end up finding freedom and opportunity for themselves by choosing to enlist in the British military even some of the 17 of George Washington slaves who fled over to the British side ended up joining in the fight against American colonists the sluggish prosecution of the war by British commanders and Washington's determination to avoid direct confrontation with the British for as long as he could in order to buy time to potentially gain International support and to prevent the destruction of the very small American Army made for a fairly inconclusive beginning to the Revolutionary War though the British did end up capturing New York in 1776 and then push the American forces back down through New Jersey General Washington ended up saving a vastly demoralized and shrinking by the day American Army in two successful surprise attacks against the British in that state at Trenton New Jersey in December of 1776 and then again at Princeton New Jersey in January of 1777 in October of 1777 a second British Army advancing South starting in Canada and down into New York which intended to separate New England from from the rest of the American colonies but the overall effort to split American forces ended up failing when American forces ended up defeating the British at the Battle of Saratoga in New York but soon afterwards there was an American defeat that led to the British capture of the city of Philadelphia Pennsylvania now the Continental Army of America had intended to set up their camp for the winter at Philadelphia where there were comfortable accommodations for the soldiers and adequate Provisions food and medication and things like that and it was normal at this time for in times of warfare for fighting to take a break during times of extreme weather like the very cold Winters that the east coast of America went through at this time but in this situation now that the British controlled the city of Philadelphia the American forces had to scramble to quickly set up a camp in the town of Valley Forge which was actually right outside of Philadelphia instead in Valley Forge with grossly inadequate supplies and a serious lack of shelter and medical assistance American soldiers ended up suffering through a terribly harsh winter at Valley Forge many soldiers ended up dying of starvation or exposure to the elements but those who survived ended up emerging from that winter at Valley Forge as a highly disciplined professional Army but the victory at Saratoga did also help to finally persuade the French starting in 1778 to officially recognize the independence of the United States of America and France also agreed to now start supplying America with military assistance and after Spain after France joined the site of the Americans Spain soon joined the war on the American side as well though these allies at first limited their assistance in actual direct battles and attacks the fact that France entered into the war in particular began to force Great Britain now not only to defend America but much of its worldwide Global Empire and it ended up significantly weakening the capacity of the British forces to wage war in North America now Great Britain at this point was almost completely isolated and it was even threatened with Invasion now from all of the enemies that it had made over the years over on the European continent it seemed like no European nation was siding with Great Britain in this fight British forces that had been fighting in America now found themselves being redeployed and sent down to the West Indian islands as the war of American Revolution started to widen now to protect the incredibly profitable British own sugar islands and to try to attack French sugar Islands in turn back up in Mainland America the now much more sparse and spread out British military forces had to evacuate Philadelphia and eventually Drew all the way back into New York in 1778 the center of fighting in the American Revolutionary War moved down to the southern colonies in the South the British hoped that they might be able to take advantage of social tensions there between poor Frontier farmers and Wealthy plantations owners they also hoped to enlist the many loyalists who lived in that region to fight for the British side and they also were trying to disrupt the Southern economy by encouraging slaves to escape and fight for the British by the time we get to 1780 British forces had managed to capture and occupy the cities of Savannah Georgia and Charleston South Carolina and the British actually seem to be in control of a vast majority of the South that year was perhaps the lowest point of the war for the American side Congress at this point was basically bankrupt and the Army which whose soldiers had gone for several months without paychecks began to experience several uprisings and mutinies more and more it seemed loyalists were now flocking to British lines along with tens of thousands of enslaved people but then irregular warfare launched by Colonial militia groups in the South and a brutal miniature Civil War that raged throughout most of of North and South Carolina and Georgia between Patriot Americans and Loyalist British militias with both sides ending up committing absolute atrocities against each other and destroying property did not finally crush the rebellion in the South and then finally in 1781 a series of defeats and costly campaigns ended up weakening British forces there who were now commanded by a man named Nam Lord corn Wallace in 1781 Lord corn Wallace chose to move the British army to a town known as Yorktown which was located on a Virginia Peninsula French spies though saw corn Wallace in his Retreat to Yorktown and immediately notified notified General George Washington that that the British were retreating to Yorktown hearing this information George Washington ended up rushing his American Force to immediately surround British forces at Yorktown and with French troops ended up laying a Siege to Yorktown and then the French navy came in and blocked any chance of escape from that Peninsula for the British forces now completely surrounded by enemy forces by Americans on land and then by the French navy by the three other sides on the peninsula this finally forced Lord Wallace to officially surrender his British Army at Yorktown in October of 1781 at this point imp Imperial rivalry between Europe's vast great Colonial Powers had ended up in the end creating the American colonies and now that same rivalry secured America's Independence as a new nation the British surrender at Yorktown marked the end of all major fighting in mainland Land North America but smaller fights and skirmishes did continue elsewhere around the globe for at least another year back in Great Britain the British people were starting to grow tired of paying incredibly high taxes to fund the continuing War for America they grew tired of hearing about constant problems for the British military in America as well and to many British people the sugar Islands down in the Caribbean those were actually the profitable colonies in the new world in the Western Hemisphere and most British people seem to have no problem just letting America go cutting it off and instead focusing on those lucrative sugar producing islands in the Caribbean popular British support for continuing the fight in America ended up dropping off precipitously and then a majority of parliament finally decided that enough time money and lives had been wasted in America and that it was finally time to cut their losses in the year 1782 fighting in the Caribbean Sea ended and at this point most military fighting in the American Revolutionary War was over peace treaty negotiations were then scheduled to be held in Paris France in 1783 at this peace treaty meeting representatives from Great Britain officially recognized America's Independence in what came to be known as the Treaty of Paris and Great Britain also decided at this point to give up the entire area between Canada in the north and Florida to the South to the east of the Mississippi River to the new American Nation the Americans in turn promised that promised that they would not persecute loyalists who chose to stick around in America and America also promised to restore to those loyalists any property that had been taken from them during the war but in reality the vast majority of loyalists who were in America chose in 1783 to leave America completely and instead mve to Great Britain Canada or other parts of the worldwide British Empire until Independence the 13 colonies in North America had been only one small part of Britain's overall Empire in the western hemisphere in Canada and the West Indies where plantation owners were very afraid of slave revolt s colonists there actually refused to join America's appeal to join the Revolutionary War against their mother country Great Britain but with the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 17 1783 the United States of America ended up becoming the first independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and reflected in its boundaries not necessarily the unity of a region but the specific circumstances of its birth so to wrap things up in conclusion the American Revolution ended up setting a huge precedent for future Revolutions in fact the French Revolution is going to break out just a few years down the road in 1789 and at this point the North American continent now became the site of a grand experiment in republicanism the challenge though remained for the American people to put their declared ideals into actual practice