Civil Disobedience: 1765-1776

1. Civil Disobedience: 1765-1776 What methods of resistance did “Americans” use, to repeatedly frustrate, Parliament in their attempt to assert Dominion and Sovereignty over their North American possessions?

2. Non-importation • Colonies consciously withdrew from the British Atlantic Market. • 1764, 1767, and 1773: “American” merchants vowed to halt importation of British goods. In protest of the American Duties, Townshend, and Tea Acts. • The boycott of imported British goods became the most important weapon in the colonial campaign to altar British policy. • During the second non-importation movement alone, the Crown lost £700,000 in revenue. • 1769: Colonial imports down by 40%. • This method of resistance forced Parliament to acquiesce to Colonial demands: The British repealed the hated stamp tax in 1765. • The second non-importation movement was unique, in that various layers of colonial society joined the movement, unlike the first protest, which primarily involved merchants.

3. Non-consumption • This form of protest is closely linked to the non-importation movement. • Essence of protest: “Buy American” no more West Indian sugar, tea, coffee, English fabrics, ornate furniture, fur wheeled carriages, expensive dinnerware, and fashionable clothing. • In an era before factories this could mean only one thing: homespun. • Spinning ones own clothes became a patriotic activity and a symbol of defiance against England. • Drinking rye coffee, milk, and cider were also deemed patriotic. • Significance: Common people could not write pamphlets or participate in legislative debates, but all of them could change their eating, drinking, and clothing choices and thus become part of a political campaign.

4. British Response • Declaratory Act 1766: A strong restatement of British sovereign power to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever. • October of 1768: 1,700 British regulars stationed in Boston. • Consequence: Further escalation of an already volatile situation.

5. Colonial Activism: Riot’s • Boston Riot’s August 14,1765: Burned effigies of Massachusetts Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and his brother-in-law, Andrew Oliver, who was recently appointed stamp distributor of Boston. • Crowds not led by John Adams or John Hancock: Poor shoemaker by the name of Ebenezer MacIntosh. • Mob paraded through town carrying the effigy of Andrew Oliver past the colonial legislature, towards the South End Wharfs, were they proceeded to tear Oliver’s brick office (distribution center for stamps) to pieces in just under 30 minutes. • Mob next moved to Oliver’s house were they burned his stable house and his horse drawn coach and chaise: prime emblems of upper class affluence. Used timbers from destroyed office to have a bonfire on his lawn, where they beheaded and burned his effigy. • Hutchinson and Sheriff Stephen tried to stop crowd but were driven away by a stone throwing mob. • “For another 4 hours the crowd tore through Oliver’s house, demolishing elegant furniture, emptying the contents of the well-stocked wine cellar, and tearing up the gardens. • Lt. Gov. Hutchinson’s house fell prey to the mob 12 days later (August 26). • Similar actions repeated themselves throughout the colonies: New York City, New Port: Rhode Island, Annapolis: Maryland, Wilmington: North Carolina, Portsmouth: New Hampshire, Charleston: South Carolina, and Philadelphia. American seaports ground to a halt.

6. Colonial Activism: Kent State? • March 5, 1770: Small mob began throwing rocks and snowballs at a British sentry outside the customs house (IRS Building). Mob quickly grew to a few hundred. • 20 British soldier’s of the 29th Worcester Regiment, under the command of Captain Thomas Preston, arrived on the seen. And the mob increased in ferocity. • Sentries opened fire killing 5 colonists. • Incident used as propaganda, by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, to fuel colonial resistance. • British 14th and 29th Regiments were pulled out of the city of Boston, to Castle William located in the city’s harbor.

7. Boston Tea Party: 1773 • December 16, 1773: Several hundred Bostonians wearing face paint and Indian headdresses boarded the Dartmouth and threw £10,000 worth of the East India Company’s property to the bottom of the harbor. • British reaction was severe: Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, and closed Boston’s Harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for. • Initiated Tea Party’s throughout other port cities including Annapolis, Perth Amboy: New Jersey, and New York City. • Further solidified colonial resistance to the Crown • Patrick Henry: “All government is dissolved and we are in a state of nature. The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.”

8. The First Continental Congress • September of 1774 the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. 55 selected delegates from the 12 colonies except Georgia, Florida, Quebec, and Nova Scotia met to discuss the Coercive Acts. • Met to formulate a common response to the “tyranny laid against our liberties.” Put aside their sectional differences: • Religious persuasion, territorial claims, professional training, sectional economic interests, and political beliefs. • First established “basic equality” between colonies, giving each, one vote. • “Suffolk Resolves”: declared colonial resistance to the Coercive Acts and announced military preparations for a military defense against British tyranny. • Delegates constructed the Declaration of Rights: “underscored that all colonists enjoyed certain rights, which were guaranteed in the English Constitution. Document still recognized King’s sovereignty, but denounced the utter corruption of Parliament. • If “Intolerable Acts” not rescinded by December 1, 1774, a unified colonial assembly, threatened to cut off all trade with Britain. (Buy American) • By early 1775 Congress created Committees of Observation and Safety, this legislative move, destroyed the power of Royal governors in America.

9. “Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world.” Ralf Waldo Emerson, Concord Hymn, 1837. • Concord and Lexington,April 19, 1775: Direct result of an intense ten year political feud. • April 18: General Thomas Gage ordered 840 British troops to seize a large colonial powder store in Concord and secondly to arrest subversives: John Hancock and Samuel Adams, who were reported to be in Lexington. • Early warning was given of British intentions, by a prearranged communication system, which included Paul Revere and William Dawes (Dozens of other riders and messengers made up the complex intelligence system).

10. Lexington & Concord: Timeline • British march out of Boston around 11pm April 18, 1775. • Reach Lexington around 4:30-5am, first shots exchanged, about 50 militia under the command of Captain John Parker make a stand but are quickly scattered by a superior British force. • March on towards Concord, reaching the town around 9am, • American militia make another stand, this time not on the village green, but at the North Bridge, where the British are pushed back after sustaining heavy casualties. • British begin the retreat back to Boston which will take another 12 hours before they reach the safety of the city limits.

11. Concord & Lexington: • 73 Redcoats were killed and 200 more were wounded along 16 miles of road leading back to Boston, Massachusetts. • Nearly 4,000 militiamen answered Paul Revere’s and William Dawes call to arms, 95 never returned home. • Demonstrated the will and adhesiveness of the colonists. • Over 20,000 militia from various colonies responded, imprisoning the British in Boston. • The men who responded to the Powder Alarm became the core of the newly formed “Continental Army.” • May 1775, Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys under the command of Ethan Allen and the Connecticut militia led by Captain Benedict Arnold, surprised and captured Fort Ticonderoga along Lake Champlain (New York). • Captured all of forts artillery which the Continentals used to lay siege to Boston.

12. Breed’s Hill: June 16, 1775 • General William Howe led his troops on a frontal assault at Breeds Hill. (3 reckless less charges left over 1,000 British soldiers killed or wounded, 42% of their force; 450 colonists were also killed or wounded. • Technically British victory, enabled English to hold Boston for an additional 9 months. • British force decimated, secondly convinced many northern farmers, that though untrained and poorly supplied, they could nevertheless stand up to the British Army in fortified positions.

13. Second Continental Congress • Philadelphia May 1775. • By September 1775, Georgia joined the rebellion. • Initial debate over whether to create a standing army or not. • Delegates voted unanimously to place 43 year old George Washington at the head of the new Continental Army. • Approved $ 2 million of paper currency to pay soldiers. • Did not yet create a central government, nor did it define all of the Colonies political goals. • Not united on the issue of independence: some believed we should continue to negotiate with Parliament: • Olive Branch Petition: written by John Dickenson of Pennsylvania. • Document designed to reaffirm Colonial loyalty to King George III, secondly, asks the British to cease hostilities in order to discuss differences. • The “Causes and Necessities for Taking up Arms.” Written by Thomas Jefferson. • Denounced the actions of Parliament since 1763, declared Congress’s intention to defend the colonist’s traditional English liberties with arms.

14. British Reaction to events surrounding 1775. • King George refused to even read the Olive Branch Petition: deemed the colonists traitors. • 1775: Southern support of war solidified when British began emancipating and arming American slaves, (slavery cornerstone of southern economic system). • “Any timidity that white South Carolinians felt about plunging into independence evaporated in an atmosphere of near panic caused by the fear that their slaves, 80,000 of them, who made up about 60% of the population, were poised to rise up and seize their freedom.” • Ethiopian Regiment: “Slaves of many of Virginia’s leading white revolutionary figures now became black revolutionary Virginians themselves.” • Emancipation: South Carolina’s Edward Rutledge wrote, “was more effectual in working an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies… than any other expedient.” • Philadelphian: “Hell itself, could not have vomited anything more black than his (Lord Dunmore) design of emancipating our slaves… The flame runs like wild fire through the slaves.” • Prohibitory Act, December 1775: Prevented British merchants from trading with the rebellious colonies.

15. Common Sense • Thomas Paine: Recent English immigrant arriving in Philadelphia in November 1774. • January 9, 1776: Common Sense first appeared in the Pennsylvania Magazine. • Railed against the institution of monarchy and proliferated the ideals of republican government, based on the natural laws of man. • “For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king.” This was a message every dockworker, shoemaker, and boatswain could understand. • 100,000 copies (equivalent to 21 million today) sold by June 1776: Became a call to arms for the colonists. (similar affect of 95 theses had on the reformation). • “If the crack of a rifle at Concord Bridge was the first shot heard round the world in April 1775, Paine’s Common Sense was the second shot heard round the world in January 1776.”

16. Independence Declared • Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, Author Thomas Jefferson: • Second Continental Congress: Ratified by all 13 Colonies in summer of 1776. • “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles and organizing its Powers in such Form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” • Document reiteration of Jefferson’s Causes and Necessities for taking up Arms. • What population segment’s of North America did the Declaration of Independence single out as “merciless savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” • Native Americans

17. Independence Declared • What about slaves? “All men created equal.” • Acts 17:26: “God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.” • Clause in Virginia State Constitution solved problem for many slave holding Americans. • Edmund Pendleton, Virginia lawyer, 1776: “All men are by nature equally free and independent, when they enter into the state of society.” • Catch: Slaves not considered in a state of society, therefore liberty not applicable. • Jefferson kept this phrase out of the Declaration of Independence. • 54 Congressional delegates signed document on August 2, 1776, including President John Hancock, who made especially sure his signature was distinguishable. The Revolution was official.