The American Revolution was fought on battlefields during 1775-1783, but it began in 1760, when colonists began to question the motives and authority of Great Britain, and it continued until 1800, when it became clear that the republic would survive.
The Revolution generated many ideas. The most convincing were organized and spread through specific media, especially pamphlets, that created a new ideology—a way to understand and ultimately shape events in the messy, real world.
Elizabethan England had much to do with setting the future direction of the colonies. It saw America as a resource for raw materials, a market for British manufactured goods, and a place to challenge the spread of Catholicism. By 1700, Germans and Scots-Irish made up a significant portion of the population.
The natives succumbed to disease and warfare, plunging to only one-tenth of the number living in 1492. Meanwhile, colonial land ownership, and participation in self-government, was spread more widely in New England than in the Mid-Atlantic; conversely, slavery was most economically feasible in the labor-intensive plantations of the Chesapeake Bay region and points farther south.
By 1750, the colonists had created a successful economy and could do as they pleased as long as they remained loyal to their king. They sent raw materials to Great Britain and the West Indies and lived under light taxation in the form of levies on transatlantic shipping. The population grew, a fact noted with satisfaction by Benjamin Franklin.
The expanding colonies came into armed conflict with the French to the north and west. Britain and France fought into the 1760s; as a result Britain won Canada and territory stretching to the Mississippi River. But the tremendous war debt was one that Britons could not pay alone, and by war's end there were thousands of British soldiers in the colonies. Irritations festered.
The "unwritten" British Constitution, much cherished by Britons and colonists, was thought to balance three "natural" orders of society: king, aristocracy, and people. Each checked the potential abuses of the others. Important political writers of the period—most famously, Locke and Montesquieu, but also Trenchard and Gordon—examined natural rights and how people related to their rulers.
George III, who ascended the throne in 1760, believed that the king's place in the British constitution had diminished over time. Moreover, he was facing crises: both political challenges at home by John Wilkes and the great debt from the Seven Years' War. He felt he had to steer the ship of state with a firm hand.
From 1750 to 1763, colonists had become used to self-rule, particularly to petitioning. If they wanted change, they would petition their legislative bodies. These bodies, made up of colonial freeholders, were generally obliging. Britain did not mind this degree of self-rule; it concentrated on the revenues of transoceanic trade.
Colonists were used to bribing officials to avoid taxes on imports. A law called the Writs of Assistance allowed government agents to board ships they suspected of harboring contraband. Boston merchants hired James Otis to argue that the Writs law violated the British constitution because it wrested a property right from property owners. He lost the case, but stirred colonists to consider the reach of the British government in North America.
In the mid-1760s Parliament passed a series of acts intended to raise revenues and keep order in the colonies. One act prevented colonists from living west of the Appalachian Ridge. Another quashed paper currency in the colonies, and another taxed transoceanic trade goods. Americans saw them as intrusions on their rights and liberties and objected to being treated differently from the king's subjects in Britain.
In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which would have imposed significant taxes on Americans. Enraged by its provisions, colonists protested in the streets and threatened violence against Stamp Act agents. They organized bands of resistors called Sons of Liberty.
Parliament repealed the Stamp Act to show it was responsive to the colonists' complaints and that the colonists had "virtual representation" in Parliament. But they followed with the Declaratory Act, saying Parliament had firm jurisdiction over the colonies and, in 1767, the Townshend Acts, which taxed consumer goods. Colonists saw the second as more of a threat than the first because it hurt their economic well-being.
Americans scrutinized British actions and rethought their relationship with Britain. They questioned whether the process of petitioning they were used to in the colonies could work with a government across an ocean.
Americans protested "taxation without representation," but they continued to petition the king for change, showing no interest in independence. They were interested in a more responsive government and supported the views of John Wilkes who urged Parliament to publish its debates and make other changes. Many American colonists gravitated toward the resistance movement in the hope that it would convince the British to abandon their recent policies.
Benjamin Franklin moved to London to help smooth relations between the colonies and the Crown. Many of his sympathies lay with the British government, but he was also a sort of "man of the people." As tensions rose, Franklin incurred the wrath of the British ministry.
The Boston Massacre of 1770 was tragic and unpremeditated. It inflamed the colonists' anxieties about standing armies, which some political theorists asserted were agents of potential tyrants. Boston silversmith Paul Revere made an engraving that, widely circulated, helped fan the flames. Speeches reinforced the notion that the British were committed to wresting liberties from Americans.
The British repealed many taxes but kept one on tea in hopes of raising revenues for the East India Company. Again colonists saw the move as imposed without their consent. Many colonists became increasingly suspicious of the British government.
A crowd of Bostonians destroyed a shipment of tea in December 1773. Parliament passed legislation Americans called the Intolerable Acts, which closed the port of Boston until the tea damage was paid for, suspended the colony's regular government, reorganized much of the American interior, and allowed British soldiers to quarter themselves in Boston.
Colonists organized an extra-legal Continental Congress in 1774 to discuss common problems and to stimulate sympathy for occupied Bostonians. They urged the king to return to the familiar system of rule in effect before 1760.
Fearful of a standing army in Boston, Massachusetts farmers armed themselves. British soldiers, threatened, marched from Boston to Lexington and Concord to seize a store of gunpowder. Armed Minutemen refused to disband, and the British responded with gunfire. By the end of the day more than 300 men had fallen in battle.
The fever of rebellion ran high. A band of colonists seized Fort Ticonderoga from the British. The colonists called for another Continental Congress to meet in Philadelphia. Men flocked to Boston and fortified Breed's Hill. The British prevailed in the Battle of Bunker Hill, but only after they suffered a large number of casualties.
King George believed that Americans had been misled by evil men. Then early in 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense. It presented logical arguments why the colonies should be independent of Great Britain, and it became wildly successful. Read in every colony, perhaps in every household, its arguments resonated deeply with and inspired the Americans.
The British came to believe that the occupation of Boston was counterproductive and relocated their armed forces to New York where they thought they would receive a better reception—and did. They were right. But the move signaled an expansion of the war and their exodus from Boston suggested that the British were already conceding defeat in the war of words.
During the troubled occupation of Boston and then of New York, Congress debated and voted for independence. Thomas Jefferson articulated the reasons why.
British General William Howe defeated the Americans outside New York, occupied the city, then pursued the Americans through New Jersey. But the Americans won decisive battles at Trenton and Princeton, boosting their cause. British and Hessian soldiers pillaged and raped during the campaign.
The Continental Army defeated the British at Saratoga. But the British took Philadelphia, and at Valley Forge the American army was sorely tried. Many Americans nonetheless embraced the cause of the rebellion, cherishing their fight for liberties, and held hope for independence.
In one of the most creative acts of the revolutionary times, the Continental Congress called on the states to write constitutions. Americans thus set out on an uncharted exercise in self-government, writing constitutions based on the notion that government exists to serve the people's interests.
Jefferson crafted a law for Virginia, especially radical at the time, in support of freedom of thought, not only in religion, but also in a more general sense. It was perhaps the greatest state government document of the 18th century.
Franklin used his celebrity with the French and hints of reconciliation with Britain to move the French into commercial and military treaties with the United States. Once these treaties were signed, printers in America gave them wide circulation.
The Continental Congress adopted a frame of government drafted by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania. Under the Articles of Confederation, a government came into being with representatives from 13 sovereign states, each state having an equal vote in the national government. Ratified in 1781, the Articles were a success, but the central government eventually proved ineffective after the war ended.
The British moved into the South, hoping to pick up support of slaveholders troubled by the language of the Declaration. But although the British could win military victories, they could not pacify the South or win the hearts and minds of the people. Their army surrendered at Yorktown.
The British declined to continue the war. The Treaty of Paris defined the boundaries of the new country and banned reprisals on Tories. By surrendering his commission, George Washington demonstrated that the people would rule the military in the new nation.
The new nation had problems. Its central government was not strong enough to tackle piracy and foreign trade, or deal well with a tax revolt in western Massachusetts called Shays' Rebellion, or raise funds to pay off the debt from the war. By 1786, many Americans realized they needed to meet to revise the Articles of Confederation.
After the rebels signed the Declaration of Independence, many came to realize that the continued existence of slavery was a contradiction to the principles of universal human equality defined in it. Residents of northern states soon abolished the institution, but it clung to life in the Chesapeake states; only in the Deep South did some offer spirited defenses of slavery.
Leaders from the states gathered in Philadelphia to craft a new government in 1787. They had learned much during the process of writing state constitutions and hoped to establish a more effective central government. They struggled with the notion of how to represent the states as well as the people and how state governments could coexist with a powerful national government.
The framers of the Constitution outlined a government deriving its power from the people. The Constitution created a powerful executive branch and laid out the operations of the two branches of the national legislature. The founders hoped that this new government could handle the kinds of problems that had been so vexing during the middle of the 1780s.
Antifederalists, those opposed to the Constitution as it emerged from the Philadelphia convention, worried about the new government's extensive powers and potential for abuse. They bemoaned the lack of a bill of rights. They thought the executive might be too strong to be kept in check. They published their arguments in hopes of thwarting ratification.
In response, the Federalists, particularly James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, argued powerfully in print that the proposed government had enough checks and balances to preserve liberty and avert abuse. Nevertheless, they agreed that the Constitution should be amended with a bill of rights.
Many in the states called for a bill of rights as a quid pro quo for approving the Constitution. James Madison drafted such a bill, and 10 of its items were adopted by 1791. They explicitly stated the rights of the people that could not be limited by the judiciary or the federal government.
The 1790s were a Federalist era, with the first president, Washington, vowing to work for all the people and not factions. But a growing Republican group led by Jefferson touted agrarianism and independent farmers, while a Federalist faction led by Hamilton promoted manufacturing and efforts to develop the nation's economy.
By the middle of the 1790s, many Americans were concerned about the French Revolution, which had spun in unpredictable directions after its start in 1789. Republicans saw much of value in France, while the Federalists found allies in Britain. John Adams, the second president, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, calling for the arrest of some critics of the government. Republicans, following the lead of Jefferson and Madison, protested these statutes as infringements on the right of free speech.
In 1800 President Jefferson had the opportunity to take political revenge but instead used his inaugural to confirm his faith in the Constitution. The country would not descend to such divisiveness as the French Revolution produced. In 1803 the Supreme Court asserted itself as the final arbiter of law and defender of the people's interests.
The liberties and equalities in the Revolution's documents remained distant dreams for women. Women could aspire to the position of "republican mother," educating their husbands and sons in the virtues needed for the self-governing nation. Yet women lost some of their rights under common law and did not gain appreciable political or divorce rights.
Some Native Americans supported the rebellion, but more believed that an alliance with the British was in their best interests. By war's end, many victorious Americans believed that all Natives had supported the British and such views supported the exclusion of Natives from the United States.
Despite bearing the brunt of the fighting, lower-income men typically did not benefit financially. Tens of thousands of loyalists emigrated, sometimes to England, often to Canada. Notions of deference declined, and many had expanded opportunities after the war.
Those who experienced the Revolution differed over what it meant: a world gone mad; a success story for the ages; the crucible for creating a new type of person; a movement for liberty that had been partially repudiated.
Some of the Revolution's ramifications took decades to materialize—the end of slavery, rights for women—and some continue work themselves out. But the Revolution left posterity with the transforming idea that the people are the sovereigns, at least in America, and as sovereigns, each has the responsibility to participate in and shape public life in the United States.