General Thomas Gage

Unit 2 Notes

(p. 123-125, 128-131, 142-148, 151-158)

General Thomas Gage

· General Gage was told to arrest rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and he was hesitated until he heard that the minutemen had stored a large supply of gunpowder in Concord (18 miles from Boston), he decided to act. On the night of April 18th, 1775, he sent 1,000 soldiers from Boston to Lexington and Concord. He wanted to surprise the colonials and seize the illegal supplies without bloodshed.

· But Patriots were watching the British closely and the two night horsemen, William Dawes and Paul Revere, rode out to warn villages and farms. Dozens of minutemen awaited the British when they had arrived in Lexington, then shots were fired and minutemen had fallen; 8 were killed and 10 were wounded. While advancing to Concord, the British noticed the minutemen had removed most of the powder supply and burned whatever was left. When returning home, farmer’s hiding behind trees had shot at the British, resulting the British losing almost three times the Americans had lost.

· The first shots-the “shots heard round the world” as Americans had later called them-had been fired. According to one of the minutemen at Lexington, Major Pitcairn had shouted to the colonists on his arrival, “Disperse, ye rebels!” When Americans ignored the command, he had given the order to fire. British officers and soldiers told a different story. They had claimed that the minutemen had shot first, that only after seeing the flash of Americans gun had the British had begun to shoot. The Americans got their story out first, and used it to rally colonists from the north and south.

(p. 123-124)

The Revolution Begins

· The battles at Lexington and Concord were the first of the War of Independence.

(p. 124)

Conclusion

· French and Indian War had ended in 1763.

· In the 1760s to 1770s, the colonists developed ever more overt and effective forms of resistance. By the firsts shots were fired in the American Revolution in 1775, Britain and America viewed one another as two different societies.

(p.124-125)

Defining American War Aims

· Three weeks after the battles of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress met in the State House in Philadelphia, with delegates from each colony except Georgia, which sent no representative until autumn.

· One group was led by the Adams cousins (John and Samuel), Richard of Virginia, and others favored for independence from Great Britain. The other group were led by such moderators as John Dickinson of John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, who hoped for modest reforms in the imperial relationship that would permit and early reconciliation with Great Britain. Most delegates tried to find middle ground between both sides.

· On July 6th, 1775, they adopted a more antagonistic “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms”. It proclaimed that the British government had left the American people with two alternatives, “unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers or resistance by force”.

· At first, most Americans believed they were fighting not for independence but for a redress of grievances within the British Empire. During the first year of fighting, however, many of them began to change their minds because the costs of war were high, any affection for England the American Patriots had was gone, and Americans thought the British wanted American independence by rejecting the Olive Branch Petition and enacted the “Prohibitory Act” causing the colonies to close all oversea trade, while enforcing this with a naval blockade.

· In January 1776, a pamphlet appeared called Common Sense written by Thomas Paine. It helped change American outlook toward the war, while he wanted to turn the Americans to the source of the problem he thought was-the English Constitution. He said Americans should blame the king and his rules, which he told Americans it is better to a government who could create a monarch as George II and drag us into wars we didn’t want to participate in.

(p. 128-129)

The Decision for Independence

· Common Sense sold more than 100,000 copies in its first few months, support for the idea grew rapidly in the first few months of 1776.

· During this time, the Continental Congress was moving slowly toward a final break with England. It allowed American ports to the ships of any nation except Great Britain. They also made a committee to draft a formal declaration of independence.On July 4th, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, which was mostly written by Thomas Jefferson with the help of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Adams realized Jefferson wrote little that was new.

· The document was written in two parts.The first part restated the familiar contract theory of John Locke: that governments were formed to protect the rights of life, liberty, and property but replacing “property” with “a pursuit of happiness”. The second part, the declaration listed the alleged crimes, who had violated his “contract” with the colonists and thus had for forfeited all claim to their loyalty.

· The declaration's “all men are created equal” was borrowed by Jefferson’s fellow Virginian George Mason later helped movements of liberation and reform of many kinds in the United States and abroad.The Declaration- and its hold claim of the United States of America, which is a sovereign nation of all the American colonies-led to an increase of foreign aid for the struggling rebels and paved the way for French intervention on their side.

· The Declaration also helped the American Patriots, those who were against the British called themselves, to fight on and to reject the idea of peace and winning their independence.

(p. 129)

Responses to Independence

· Hearing the news of the Declaration of Independence, crowds in Philadelphia, Boston, and other places gathered to cheer, fire guns and cannons, and ring church bells. But there were Americans who did not want to celebrate because they disapproved the war or they found it conflicted with the loyalty to the king. These people were called Loyalties; supporters of independence called themselves Tories.

· After the Declaration of Independence, colonies started to call themselves states, but the colonies were already becoming operational independently of royal authority before the declaration because parliament suspended representative government in America. Colonies marked their independence by writing formal constitutions for themselves. By 1781, most of the new states had produced such constitutions.

· But building a national government was more halting and less successful. Americans were uncertain for a period of time whether they even wanted a national government. The Continental Congress had been nothing but a coordinating mechanism, while most Americans thought their state was the center of authority.

· In November 1777, Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation (which were not finally ratified until 1781). They did little more than confirm the weak, decentralized system already in operation. The Continental Congress would survive as the chief coordinating agency of the war effort. It had limited powers over individual states. The Articles did not make it entirely clear that the Congress was to be a real government.

(p. 129-131)

Winning the Peace

· Cornwallis’s defeat provoked outcries in England against continuing the war. Lord North resigned as the prime minister, while Lord Shelburne emerged to succeed him. British emissaries decided to speak with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay. The Americans were under instructions to cooperate fully with France in their negotiations with England. Vergennes insisted France did not agree to any deals of the war with England until its ally Spain had achieved its goal of winning back Gibraltar from the British.

· With no sight of this happening anytime soon, Americans were worried that the alliance with France might keep their war indefinitely. Franklin, Jay, and James signed a preliminary treaty with Great Britain on November 30, 1782, without telling Vergennes while Franklin pacified and avoided an immediate rift in the French-American alliance.

· The British and Americans reached a settlement-the Treaty of Paris-on September 3, 1783, when Spanish and France agree to end hostilities. It was more positive to the United States because it showed its independence and a lot of territory, like the southern boundary of Canada to the northern boundary Florida and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.

(p. 142-143)

Loyalists and Minorities

· The losers of the American Revolution were not only the British, but the American Loyalists .There was not a sure way to know how many Loyalists there were, but at a fifth of the white population. Many of the Loyalists were officeholders and merchants, but most merchants supported the revolution.

· Hounded by Patriots and harassed by legislative and judicial actions, up to 100,000 fled the country. An example was the hated Tory governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, moved to England where many lived in difficult and lonely exile. Some moved to Canada, establishing the first English-speaking community in the province of Quebec. Some moved back to the America after the war, while others stayed abroad for the rest of their lives.

· The war had negative effects on other groups. No sect suffered more than the Anglicans, many who were Loyalists. In Virginia and Maryland, where the colonial governments had recognized Anglicanism as the official religion, eliminated the subsidy and disestablished the church. After the war, there was not a lot of clergymen, for there were few ministers to take the place of the dead or who had already left the country. Anglicanism survived, it was permanently weakened, like in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

· While the war was weakening Anglicans and Quakers, it was improving the position of Roman Catholic Church. On the advice of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a Maryland statesman and Catholic lay leader, most Americans Catholics supported the Patriot cause during the war.The French alliance brought Catholic troops to the country, and the way Americans greeted them them did much to erode old and bitter hostilities toward Catholics.

· Not long after the war, the Vatican provided the United States with its own Catholic hierarchy. Father John Carroll was named head of the Catholic missions in America in America in 1784 and, in 1789, the first American bishop. In 1808 he became archbishop of Baltimore.

(p. 144)

The War and Slavery

· African Americans constituted as 60% of the population in 1770; by 1790, that figure had declined to about 44%.

· Most black Americans could not read, but few could avoid the new exciting through the town and cities, and even at times on the plantations. The results included in several communities where African Americans openly opposed to white control. An example could be Thomas Jeremiah from Charleston, South Carolina, was executed in 1775 after Patriots leaders accuse him of smuggling British guns to slaves.

· Slaveowners opposed British efforts to emancipate their slaves, but they also worried that the war itself would foment slave rebellions. The same fears helped prevent English colonists in the Caribbean Islands From joining with the continental Americans in the revolt against Britain.

· The revolution exposed the continuing tension between the nation’s commitment to liberty and its commitment to slavery. In the 18th century, white Americans, especially in the South, that slavery and liberty are not compatible. Many white southerners believed they were ensuring liberty by enslaving African Americans. They thought of the impact of working with black slaves and having a white workforce in the South.

(p, 144-145)

Native Americans and the Revolution

· Most Native American viewed the American Revolution with considerable uncertainty. The American Patriots tried to persuade them to remain neutral in the conflict, which they described as a “family quarrel” between the colonists and Britain had nothing to do with the tribes.

· The Native Americans thought the Revolution threatened to replace a ruling group in which they had developed at least some measure of trust (the British) with the one they considered generally hostile to them (the Patriots). Native Americans either decided to join the British or launch their own attacks.

· In the western Carolinas and Virginia, a Cherokee faction led by Dragging Canoe attacked outlying white settlements in the summer of 1776. With Patriot resistance, Dragging Canoe and his followers fled toward the Tennessee River. The remaining Native Americans made a treaty where they lost more land.

· The Revolution weakened the Native Americans in many ways, like the white demand for western land and the attitude change with the Patriots towards the Native Americans. Many Americans didn’t like Mohawk and other Native Americans nations helping the British.

· Among the tribes, the Revolution both revealed and increased the deep divisions that made it difficult for them to form a common form to resist the growing power of whites. In 1774, the Shawnee Native Americans had attempted to lead an uprising against white settlers moving into the land that would become Kentucky. They had no allies and were forced to give more land.

· The end of the war did not stop fighting white Americans and Native Americans. Native Americans continued raids against white settlers. The biggest massacre was 1782, after the British surrender, when white militias slaughtered a peaceful band in Delaware Indians at Gnadenhutten in Ohio. The militia killed 96 people, including women and children.

(p. 145-146)

Women’s Rights and Women’s Roles

· With the departure of men for the war, it left women in charge of farms and businesses. Some women had nothing to fall back on. Many towns and cities consisted of a significant population of impoverished women. On occasion, women rioted and looted for food. Women launched attacks on occupying British troops, whom they were required to house and feed at considerable expense.

· Not all women stayed behind when their men went off to war. Women usually went in big groups toward to Patriot armies to join their male relatives. George Washington called the female “camp followers” disruptive and distracting, even though his wife spent the winter of 1778-1779 at Valley Forge. More officers were more hostile and one man called them “their hair falling, their brows beady with the heat, their belongings slung over one shoulder, chattering and yelling in sluttish shrills as they went”. But women helped the army with morale, cooking, laundry, and nursing.

· Women helped in the war, like Molly Pitcher (named because she carried pitchers of water to soldiers in the battlefield) watched her husband fall during one encounter and immediately took his place in the field. A few women disguised themselves as men to be at the battle. The war did not help change female roles in society.