.

…I have tried to convey a sense of the remarkable diversity represented in [the founding of the principal colonies]. A number of human varieties and social forms, some as old as England itself, others as new as the new commercial and mercantile spirit of the age, were planted in the virgin soil of the New World. There they would grow luxuriantly, each in its particular way, in a vegetative mold made up of new ideas and opportunities. …Perhaps it was this vision of a new world and a new opportunity that ran as a common theme through all the colonies. North or south, all reverberated to that grand chord, a silken thread that tied them all together and that, in time, would become a mighty rope. [p.27]

Who Came / 2

And then there were the Irish. They were a special case. They fled famine and rent-wracking landlords. … [p.29]

Hugh Jones, in The Present State of Virginia, published in 1724, put the matter succinctly: …America had received, for the most part, "the servants and inferior sort of people, who have either been sent over to Virginia, or have transported themselves thither, have been, and are, the poorest, idlest, and worst of mankind, the refuse of Great Britain and Ireland, and the outcast of the people." [p. 33]

Whether wickedly abused or treasured and rewarded - and certainly they experienced both cruelty and kindness - indentured servants made up more than half the immigrants to the middle and southern colonies. During the twenty-five-year period between 1750 and 1775, some 25,000 servants and convicts entered Maryland, and a comparable number arrived in Virginia. P.[p. 36]

A total of thirty thousand convicted felons were shipped from England in the fifty-year period prior to the Revolution, of whom the greater number apparently went to Maryland and Virginia. [p. 38]

Hardy, enterprising Calvinists, they made their way in large numbers westward, where land was plentiful and cheap. There, serving as "the guardians of the frontier," they were constantly embroiled with eastern land speculators or various Indian tribes over ownership of land. [p.44]

Legacy of Liberty / 3

If he did not thereby lay the foundations for English America … [James] for a certainty provided the colonies with a company of settlers who, by transplanting that Puritanism that so enraged the kind to the New World, determined the character, temper, consciousness - call it what you will - of that New World more conclusively than any other body of people who came to the English colonies. [p. 49]

The historian George Trevelyan calls the lengthy session that followed "the true turning-point in the political history of the English-speaking races. It not only prevented the English monarchy from hardening into an absolutism of the type then becoming general in Europe, but it made a great experiment in direct rule of the country and of the Empire by the House of Commons." [p. 53]

Charles was captured once more, tried before a high court of sixty-seven members appointed by an abbreviated Parliament, sentenced to death, and beheaded at Whitehall on January 30, 1649. for the next eleven years England lived under the Commonwealth, a nominally republican form of government that was actually largely under the control of Cromwell, who in 1653 took effective power as lord protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland under a written constitution called the "Instrument of Government," which gave Cromwell essentially dictatorial powers. [p. 55]

The leader of the Diggers, Gerrard Winstanley, challenged the parliamentary leaders and roundheads with doctrines too radical for them to consider. "What stock," he asked, "is provided for the poor, fatherless, widows, and impoverished people? And what advancement of encouragement for the laboring and industrious, as to take off their burthens, is there?" Another Digger wrote, "England is not a Free People, till the Poor that have no Land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the Commons." …Winstanley went to far as to argue that the earth should be made a "common Treasury of livelihood to whole mankind, without respect to persons." [p. 55]

Inevitably, many of the Leveler pamphlets and the ideas they espoused found their way to America, where they fell like seeds in a welcoming soil. Milton's works, which relentlessly championed freedom in every area of man's social and political life, became as familiar as the Bible and John Bunyan to colonists of the Protestant persuasion - Congregationists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Baptists alike. It is difficult to convey the intensity of attention with which the colonists attempted to follow the bewildering course of events in the mother country. [p. 56]

Moreover, with the Restoration a spirit developed in England quite hostile to the colonies. In the mother country Anglicanism and aristocracy once more suppressed Puritanism and incipient democracy. Correspondingly, the colonies, so far as they manifested a leveling and democratic temper, served to remind Englishmen of events they would have preferred to forget. There was widespread disquiet among dissenters in the colonies as well as in England over the severity of the Cavalier Parliament's Clarendon Code, four statutes directed against religious nonconformists. [p. 57]

All the democratic ferment that seemed to fade so rapidly in England persisted in America and entered into the consciousness of many of those colonists who would have been called dissenters had they remained in England. [p. 59]

Moreover, the political instability of the mother country was a powerful incentive to emigration in the days when being out of power often meant losing one's head in the bargain. So the English colonies grew greatly in numbers during that tumultuous century, and they learned, perhaps better than the British themselves, whatever lessons the events of that era were capable of teaching to attentive students on the other side of the Atlantic. [p. 59]

New England and the Middle Colonies / 4

In that attentiveness to the worth and quality of things, and to the relation between things and services … was to be found the secret of the community that became an essential building block of the nation. [p. 64]

Dr. Alexander Hamilton also noted the "democratick" nature of the government, adding, "They have but little regard to the laws of England, their mother country, tho they pretend to take that constitution for a precedent." The customs officials and royal officers in Rhode Island were "ciphers." "They dare not exercise their office for fear of the fury and unruliness of the people. …" On the other hand they profited from generous bribes for looking the other way when illicit cargoes entered their ports. [p. 71]

The community supported and sustained the family, verified and reinforced its values, provided the essential context in which this new breed, so strangely compounded of fanaticism (or perhaps, more gently, zeal) and democracy, grew and flourished. The Puritan made the town, and the town made the Puritan. The Puritan was, at one and the same time, the most sturdily independent of characters and the most profoundly oriented toward the community. There was no tyrant like the community, and yet, paradoxically (that word so necessary to the historian), the community, so demanding in its orthodoxy, produced that classic figure of independent individualism, the New England Yankee. Individual and community: community and individual - in that mysterious balance, that alteration, lay the answer to the riddle of the Puritan character. [pp. 74-75]

Rensselaerwyck had several thousand tenants, and the patron, like a feudal baron, told Hamilton "he could muster 600 men fit to bear arms." The patrons had their own courts, in which they dispensed justice for minor infractions; they collected a series of feudal dues and rents from tenants who were more like medieval serfs than free men. The patroonships were an anomaly in eighteenth-century colonial America, where the citizens of Massachusetts and Rhode Island enjoyed more extensive political rights than any citizens in the world. The patroonship was certainly an anachronism in the colony of New York, with its enterprising merchant class that so well represented the commercial spirit of the new age. The tenants of the patrons had risen up in rebellion on several occasions, but without materially improving their situation. [p. 76]

…it could be said that if the Quakers took in their charge the keeping of the consciences of their fellow citizens, the keeper of the Quakers' conscience was John Woolman, …Woolman's compassion and sympathy were directed toward the freeing of black men and women held as slaves by his fellow members of the Society of Friends. Conquering his coreligionists, he made many of them, in turn, advocates of the antislavery cause. [p.81]

The Southern Colonies / 5

…few if any members of the British aristocracy came to Virginia or any other colony. Prosperous and ambitious tradesmen and craftsmen like the original William Byrd came, as did some substantial immigrants of the middle rank who wished to improve their situation in life or ape the manners of the upper classes. A few of the minor gentry also came, looking for greener pastures and cheap land. [p. 85]

The Virginians engaged in no manufacturing of any kind, although raw materials were plentiful. All they did … was raise tobacco, and "as they can get anything they need for this commodity they become so lazy that they send to England for clothes, linen, hats, women's dresses, shoes, iron tools, nails, and even wooden furniture, (although their own wood is very fine to work on and they have loads of it) such as tables, chairs, bedsteads, chests, wardrobes." [p. 86]

Not a tenth of the land was cultivated, "and that which is cultivated," [Reverend Andrew Burnaby] wrote, "is far from being so in the most advantageous manner." [p. 89]

In the old country, a man's life and labor were spent on land that was not his own, and therein lay the basis of all his various dependences. He was dependent for his bread and for that of his wife and children on the good will of the landlord. If he grew restive or openly rebellious, if he stepped out of line, he was stigmatized as "a rude, rough fellow" with ideas above his station, and the society mustered all its agents and agencies to put him down again. [p. 92]

So to "live independent" was to live transformed from an underling to someone who could stand on his own two fee and insist on a proper regard for his rights, who owned the land he farmed, made the bread that fed his own, and owed no one for the livelihood. Secure in his modest holdings, aware of his rights as an Englishman, hardy and self-reliant, this independent farmer was the sort of citizen of which a free and independent nation might in time be built. [p. 92]

"The public or political character of the Virginians corresponds," he wrote, "with their private one; they are haughty and jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint, and can scarcely bear the thought of being controlled by any superior power [italics mine]. Many of them consider the colonies as independent states, not connected with Great Britain, otherwise than by having the same common king, and being bound to her by natural affection." [p. 93]

Aristocracy, whether in ancient Greece or Renaissance Florence, England or Virginia, seems to be the form of social organization that is most fecund for men of unusual gifts. Along with a large number of amiable fools and effete snobs, an aristocracy can also produce a significant proportion of men of the highest capacity; equally important, it is quick to patronize the unusually gifted in lower social orders and give them scope and encouragement for the exercise of their special talents. The democratic spirit, on the other hand, is commonly, as Alexis de Tocqueville and others have noticed, jealous of excellence and assiduous in trying to reduce everyone to a common level. [p. 94]

From the frontier counties of the more settled colonies - Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia - families moved south looking for cheaper land and more fertile soil. Those who were restless, discontented, dissenting, or simply adventurous made their way in substantial numbers to North Carolina, where the absence of a great landed aristocracy or an established commercial class produced a liberal and democratic atmosphere much to these restless settlers' taste. [p. 94]

North Carolina is hard to characterize. Yet it was by no means a nonentity. Without great figures or brilliant leaders, it represented, better in fact than Virginia, the ideal of the yeoman farmer: the small, independent landowner who tended his acres and was jealous of his rights. North Carolinians would have doubtless been more at home in New England than sandwiched between Virginia and South Carolina. [p. 95]

In the backcountry, alienated white settlers had the same grievances against the colonial rulers as the residents of Charles Town had, in turn, against Great Britain: taxation without representation, manipulation of the law, selfishness, and callous disregard of the rights and needs of the frontier. The Revolution, when it came, seemed less a fight for freedom than an effort of the seacoast aristocracy to protect its own narrow interests, interests that frequently were quite at odds with the interests of the inhabitants of the interior country. [pp. 97-98]

Precisely those qualities that made it virtually impossible for the black slave to accommodate himself to white society made him most valuable doing the simple if arduous work of a field hand. His distinctive appearance made him easy to identify; his inability to shift for himself in the world beyond the plantation bound him to his master, who provided food, clothing, and even, in a degree, protection. [p. 103]

For a people who were engaged in a struggle not only for their own liberties and rights as Englishmen but for, as they so often said, the universal rights of man, the anomaly of black servitude in their own household was a grim reminder of the compromised nature of all human aspirations. [p. 105]

Indians and Settlers / 6

The Reformation, which made its adherents into "individuals," also made them hopelessly alien to a people who still lived in a tribal consciousness. [p. 113]

Observing the Indians, who "have few but natural wants and those easily supplied," Benjamin Franklin was inclined to propose a whole new theory of human development. If man could be so content in a state of nature, he asked himself, how had civilization ever arisen? It must have been as a consequence of a condition of scarcity, where some peoples, driven from lands that afforded an easy living, were forced to create a more complex and varied economic and social life. Franklin wrote to a friend: "They are not deficient in natural understanding and yet they have never shown any inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts." [pp. 113-114]

"They think," [Reverend John Heckewelder] wrote, "that [God] made the earth and all it contains for the common good of mankind … it was not for the benefit of a few, but of all. Every thing was given in common to the sons of man. Whatever liveth on the land, whatsoever groweth out of the earth, and all that is in the rivers and waters flowing through the same, was given jointly to all, and every one is entitled to his share. From this principle, hospitality flows as from its source. …They give and are hospitable to all, without exception, and will always share with each other and often with a stranger, even to their last morsel."

"Yours" and "mine," "ours," "his," "hers," were not the determinative words for the Indians that they were for the white man. The Indian did not think that the land was "his" in the sense that the white man insisted that it was his property. The whole notion of buying and selling land was so alien to the Indian that while he could understand driving an enemy off a hunting range or general territory, he had no notion of marking off a specific area as belonging in perpetuity to some individual tribe, and certainly not to an individual Indian. [p. 116]

Common Grievances and Common Dangers / 7

Diversity in unity is one of the major themes in American history; certainly it is the essence of the idea of a federal union. [p. 120]

It was doubtless Washington's thoroughness and attention to detail that assured his scouts of a few moments' advantage in spotting the enemy. [p. 124]

Some historians have agreed with Bedford and Choiseul that the British retention of Canada was the key factor in bringing on the American Revolution. In the absence of the threat from the French and their Indian allies, so the argument goes, the colonies were emboldened to resist unpopular measures of the British ministry. [p. 129]

The perpetual menace of Catholic New France was removed. For frontiersmen, the Indian problem was reduced to manageable proportions. And once the common dangers were removed, common grievances could assert their primacy. Further, the colonists, as a consequence of their contributions to the victory, modest as these were in British eyes, felt a greatly increased boldness and self-confidence. [p. 130]

…John Adams … wrote to a friend in 1756 reflecting on the rise and fall of civilizations. History recorded a number of nations that had risen "from contemptible beginnings" to spread their influence "till the whole globe is subjected to their sway." "When," he continued, "they have reached the summit of grandeur, some minute and unsuspected cause commonly effects their run, and the empire of the world is transferred to some other place." So it had been with Rome, and so in time it might well be with England, presently "the greatest nation upon the globe." Some years back England had lost a small and, for the most part, inconspicuous number of its citizens, for reasons of conscience, to an untamed wilderness. "This apparently trivial incident," Adams wrote, "may transfer the great seat of [power] into America." With the threat of French Canada removed, the colonies within one hundred years would have a greater population than the mother country, Adams pointed out. The only way for Great Britain "to keep up from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us. Divide et imipera. Keep us in distinct colonies, and, then, some great men in each colony, desiring the monarchy of the whole, they will destroy each other's influence and keep the country in equilibrio. [p. 131]

Mercantilism / 8

In essence, mercantilist theory held that the interests of any colony should be entirely subordinated to those of the mother country. Colonies were weapons in the continuing trade warfare between nations. As England applied the principles of mercantilism to her colonies, they were designed to give her a favorable balance of trade (thus insuring an inflow of gold), and to develop her merchant marine as the primary means of commercial supremacy and as the foundation of a strengthened navy. [p. 134]

The colonials remained unimpressed. They saw plainly enough that their interests were invariably subordinated to those of English merchants who, form the American perspective, seemed greedy and rapacious. [p. 136]

Smuggling was endemic - and quite easy, because law enforcement was lax. Parliament wished to squeeze maximum profit from colonial trade but did not bother to see that its statutes were obeyed. Since trade profits went largely into private hands and the return to the royal exchequer was relatively modest, it seemed dubious policy to expend large sums to employ sufficient customs officials to prevent smuggling and other infractions on the Navigation Acts. [p. 136]

The board [of Trade] was so inefficient and so clogged with work through much of its existence that important correspondence sometimes lay unread for a year or so; it might take several years for a colonial governor or assembly to receive an answer to a query or a request. As a result of this inefficiency, the board's existence encouraged the growth of an independent spirit in the colonies. [p. 138]

Mercantilist policy can be summed up as a patchwork of restrictive laws conceived in a spirit of arrogance and administered with an inefficiency that invited evasion. One example perhaps best indicates the effect of this highhanded bungling: the chaotic state of the currency. All trade in the colonies was hampered by the lack of a reliable medium of exchange. In the absence of minted coins of established value, the estimation of the worth of the jumble of currencies that circulated was an art in itself, and one that added a good deal to the economic instability of the colonies. [pp. 140-141]

The most popular scheme was that of a land bank that would issue currency upon land as security. But seacoast merchants and Crown officials were generally united in opposition to all land-bank proposals, and the currency problem persisted as a symbol of British indifference to colonial needs and a constant if minor source of irritation to most Americans. [p. 141]

The Delights of the Homeland / 9

As the center of a Scottish renaissance, Edinburgh had a faculty that, in the opinion of Benjamin Franklin, was "a set of as truly great Professors of the several branches of knowledge, as have ever appeared in any age or County. [p. 144]

As Presbyterianism grew stronger in the colonies, Scotland came to be regarded by many colonists as their true homeland. [p. 144]

"What then is the American, this New Man?" / 10

"…Luther and Calvin invented the individual, and it was just such individuals - secure in their relationship to God and confident of their own powers - who dared to stand up for their rights as Americans when they felt that the mother country was infringing on those rights. Further, this new individual in turn could establish not only new religious sects and new congregations, but also new businesses, new financial enterprises, entire new communities, and even new ways of conceiving of the relation of individuals to one another - new ways, that is, of designing political and constitutional arrangements. [p. 154]

The Reformation left its mark on every aspect of the personal and social life of the faithful. In the family, in education, in business activity, in work, in the community, and ultimately in politics, the consequences of the Reformation were determinative for American history. [p. 157]

PART II The Revenue Act / 1

George Washington's comments on the Proclamation Line are revealing. He wrote to a fellow land speculator, William Crawford: "I can never look upon that Proclamation in any other light (but this I say between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the Minds of the Indians and must fail of course in a few years especially when those Indians are consenting to our Occupying the Lands. Any person who therefore neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good Lands and in some measure marking and distinguishing them for his own … will never regain it. …" [p. 167]

…a number of great land ventures were undertaken in the years prior to the outbreak of the Revolution; not a few men of wealth and substance on both sides of the Atlantic were engaged in American land speculation. [p. 168]

Speculators (including Washington) formed companies to buy tracts of land numbering in the millions of acres, undertaking at the same time to extinguish the Indians' claims by treaty purchase. [p. 168]

For Rhode Island, considered a next of smugglers by the British, the Sugar Act was especially severe. A resident of Providence pointed out the implications for that colony. Rhode Island imported well over a million gallons of molasses a year. A duty of three pence a gallon would produce a revenue in excess of fourteen thousand pounds a year. This was more hard money, one pamphleteer wrote, " that was ever in [the colony] at one time: this money is to be sent away, and never to return; yet the payment is to be repeated every year. …Can this possibly be done? …There is surely no man in his right mind believes this possible." [p. 174]

James Otis and the Beginnings of Resistance / 2

…when word of the Sugar Act reached the colonies, Otis was already armed with legal and constitutional arguments against it. A town meeting was called in Boston, and there James Otis presented his Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. His speech was an extension of his earlier objections to the writs of assistance, but here Otis mustered most of the arguments that were to be used by colonial publicists and pamphleteers in the decade prior to the outbreak of the Revolution. [p. 180]

The principle that Otis enunciated was so powerful an idea that it came, eventually, to be embodied in the Supreme Court of the United States, which was specifically charged with checking Congress when that body should pass legislation that contravened, primarily, the natural law as incorporated in the first ten amendments to the Federal Constitution. [p. 182]

To some Englishmen the Americans wee "scum or off scourings of all the nations," a "hotch potch medley of foreign enthusiastic madmen," "a mongrel breed of Irish, Scotch and Germans leavened with convicts and outcasts. [p. 186]

The Stamp Act / 3

Colonel Isaac Barre was a veteran of the French and Indian War who had fought under General Wolfe and had been with him at the time of his death on the Plains of Abraham. …Barre was a fearless and effective spokesman for the colonial cause and a bete noire to George III. He immediately rose to challenge Townshend's description of the colonies. "They planted by your care?" he said scornfully. "No, your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then incultivated and unhospitable country - where they exosed themselves to almost all the hardships of which human nature is liable, and maong others to the cruelty of a save foe. …And yet actuated by principles of true English liberty, they met all hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country, from the hands of those who should have been their friends.

"They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of em: as soon as you began to care about em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this House - sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon em; men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil with them. …

"They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valor amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood. Its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And believe me, remember I this day told you so, that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still - But prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat; what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart." [p. 192]

In Boston, the Sons of Liberty (formerly the Loyal Nine) began to lay plans for organized protest. The group was originally made up of substantial craftsmen, artisans, and small businessmen. So far as it is possible to tell, it grew up quite spontaneously, and there is no evidence that it was a tool of radical patriots like James Otis and Samuel Adams, or, conversely, of merchants still smarting from the Sugar Act and alarmed by a measure with dangerous implications for all colonial trade. [p. 195]

The Riots / 4

In all of the colonies, a particular resentment was directed against those Americans, who … had been appointed or were rumored to have been appointed as stamp distributors. Some of the new appointees, like Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin and Virginia's Henry Lee, were good patriots and enemies of Parliamentary taxation. They had opposed the Stamp Act, but when its passage appeared inevitable they had applied for distributorships, doubtless on the ground that if profits were to be made from the sale of the stamps, it was better for them to be made by good patriots. [p. 208]

If it is clear that from the beginning some leading citizens joined in with the mass of demonstrators, most often they were the voices of moderation who interceded at some critical moment to try to prevent the more destructive acts of the mob. It may well have been that on occasion they tried to direct the anger of the demonstrators toward targets that were of special interest to them. It seems clear that, on the whole, their influence was on the side of discouraging the worst sorts of violence whenever possible, and it may have been due largely to their presence and periodic intervention that no royal official, however abused and reviled, lost his life. [p. 213]

…the colonial riots that may be said to have begun with the Stamp Act marked a new era in this familiar form of social protest. They were, at least retrospectively, revolutionary and ideological. They were more often planned than spontaneous; they were, to be sure, directed to the redress of particular grievances but they frequently looked beyond that to a radical alteration in the relationship between the mother country and her colonies. If the change seemed to the colonists simply a matter of preserving existing liberties from encroachment, to the British it seemed genuinely revolutionary. The relationship that the colonists wished was, to most Englishmen, unimaginable, unconstitutional, and, in that fine, eighteenth-century word, chimerical. [p. 213]

In an essay called "Considerations on the Propriety of imposing Taxes in the British Colonies, for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue," [Maryland planter and lawyer, Daniel] Dulany attacked the concept of virtual representation as "a mere cobweb, spread to catch the unwary, and intangible the weak." [p. 215]

In effect, Dulany and other colonial writers were saying to Parliament: "Having placed limits on the powers of the Crown in order to free yourselves, and by proxy every Englishman, from the exercise of arbitrary power, you must now do the same for us. You must voluntarily forego some of those absolute powers that you hold, and agree to limit yourselves to actions consistent with the tradition of English rights and liberties, of which you have been, in better times, the champions and defenders. We must know where we stand. What is intolerable to us is just this feeling that was once intolerable to you; a feeling that there is no check or limit on the actions that you can take that will affect our lives and property." [pp. 215-216]

To a James Otis or a Daniel Dulany, England was a second home, the most powerful and enlightened nation in the world, enhanced by fond memories of their visits. But to a Philadelphia wheelwright or cordwainer, Great Britain undoubtedly seemed an infinitely dim and remote reality to which it was difficult to relate. [p. 217]

Studies of the nature of political protest have by now made clear what thoughtful observers of history have known for a long time - that public opinion cannot be manipulated unless it exists. And this is as true of the Revolution as of any other event in American History. [p. 218]

The Stamp Act Congress / 5

The convening of the Stamp Act Congress was certainly one of the most significant episodes in the history of the colonial resistance to the authority of Parliament and the Crown. That fact, in turn, makes the Congress one of the most important bodies in the development of modern political institutions. [p. 219]

There is a good deal of evidence that most patriot leaders - almost all substantial members of the upper and middle classes - were dismayed at the destructiveness of the populace or, more plainly, the lower classes. [p. 221]

America In Rebellion / 6

Revolutions are not usually remarkable for their tolerance of dissent, and the American Revolution was in this regard, no different from others. [p. 231]

…those merchants whose ships, without stamps, lay idle in port, or sailed with unstamped cargoes on uncertain voyages, stood to lose large sums, or indeed their entire fortunes; the greater part of their wealth, in the absence of banks of deposit, was tied up in ships and cargoes, so that even very rich merchants had little liquid capital except that which floated or the molasses or rum that lay in the holds of their vessels. [p. 232]

What the Stamp Act doubtless would have done was, by draining off a good part of the precious specie or hard money that circulated in the colonies, to make trade and commerce even more difficult and awkward than it had been prior to the act, but it is hard to believe that colonial ingenuity would not have found a way to cope with this problem, as it had with all others that imposed constraints on colonial commercial activity. [p. 233]

Parliament's Battle Over Repeal / 7

William Pitt, responding to Grenville: "The gentlemen [Grenville] tells us America is obstinate; America is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three million of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest." [p. 241]

Of all those in England who were unmoved by the appeal for colonial liberties, there were few, ironically, less sympathetic than the king. All the autocratic tendencies of this ambitious and headstrong monarch, frustrated by the protections surrounding Parliament, came to focus on the colonies. [p. 247]

The Stamp Act In Retrospect / 8

If there is one immutable law of history, it is this: when the response is out of all proportion to the provocation, look further for the causes than the apparent facts of the matter. The response of the colonists to the Stamp Act was out of all proportion to the provocation - or so it certainly seemed to virtually all Englishmen, and to many startled colonists as well. The Stamp Act was, therefore, not so much the cause as the occasion of the riots. The cause was to be found in the fact that the colonists were no longer willing to accept a completely subordinate and dependent relationship to the mother country. [p. 253]

Perhaps the most dramatic effect of the Stamp Act crisis on the patriot leaders was to impel them to sharpen and refine their own notions about the nature of constitutional government. In the decade between the Stamp Act and the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the patriot leaders went to school with the greatest ancient and modern philosophers who considered the nature of the universe and the proper forms of government. They ransacked all the leading authorities on natural law, constitutional government, and individual rights. They read vast amounts of history and pondered its lessons. [p. 253]

…Frances Hutcheson, whose Moral Philosophy had this to say about the relations between the colonies and Great Britain: "If the plan of the mother country is changed by force or degeneration by degree from a safe, mild, and gentle limited power to a severe and absolute one … or if any colony is so increased in numbers and strength that they are sufficient by themselves for all good ends of a political union; they are not bound to continue in their subjection when it is grown so much more burdensome than was expected. …There is something … immaterial in supposing a large society sufficient for lal the good purposes of an independent union, remaining subject to the direction and government of a distant body of men who know not sufficiently the circumstances and exigencies of this society. …" [p. 255]

Henry Home, Lord Kames, … held that there was nothing in the nature of man "that subjects him to the power of any, his Creator and his parents excepted. …Hence it is a principle embraced by the most solid writers that all men are born free and independent of one another." [p. 255]

The generation of revolutionary lawyers read with a special intensity; they searched through all the wisdom of the past to find a formula n the name of which the liberties of all Englishmen might be preserved. [p. 256]

The American Revolution thus is distinguished from other revolutions in that its most radical popular phase came first, its moderate phase last. [p. 257]

The people did not need to be taught revolutionary principles - they had given evidence enough of these - they needed to be instructed in the principles of free government. [p. 259]

PART III The British Blunder Again / 1

The new kind of consciousness produced by the Protestant Reformation and planted in the fertile soil of America had resulted in an individual who drew his strength from his membership in a faithful community, and whose values were so internalized that he moved, however modest his condition of life and his antecedents, with confidence and a sense of assurance into quite novel situations. Such individuals were able to form, in an astonishingly brief time, fresh combinations, communities, or organizations. [p. 270]

That England should have repeatedly emphasized the ingratitude of the colonies is significant. The call for gratitude is the unmistakable signal that all moral authority has been dissipated; nothing is left but a generally fruitless appeal to gratitude. [p. 271]

[John] Dickinson [of Philadelphia] began his third "letter" [from a farmer in Pennsylvania] with an admonition to his readers to avoid any violent or unlawful action; "The cause of liberty," he wrote, "is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult. It ought to be maintained in a manner suitable to her nature. Those who engage in it should breathe a sedate, yet fervent spirit, animating them to actions of prudence, justice, modesty, bravery, humanity, and magnaminity." P.278 Finally, in the twelfth and last letter, Dickinson summed up his position: "let these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds - that we cannot be happy without being free - that we cannot be free without being secure in our property - that we cannot be secure in our property if without our consent others may as by right take it away - that taxes imposed on us by Parliament do thus take it away - that duties laid for the sole purpose of raising money are taxes - that attempts to lay such duties should be instantly and firmly opposed - that this opposition can never be effectual unless it is the united effort of these Provinces - that therefore benevolence of temper towards each other and unanimity of councils are essential to the welfare of the whole - and lastly, that for this reason, every man amongst us who in any manner would encourage either dissension, diffidence, or indifference between these colonies is an enemy to himself and to his country." [p. 279]

The Case of the Liberty / 2

Hancock, only thirty-one years old in 1768, was already one of the most prosperous merchants in Boston. It was often Hancock who paid the bill when the Sons of Liberty bought banners, or needed handbills printed... He was a marked man, a dangerous one in British eyes, and the customs officers kept a close watch to see if they could catch him violating any of the regulations governing imports and exports. [pp. 281-282]

The episode of the Liberty seems, quite clearly, to have forced the hands of the patriot leaders. …Both sides, as we would say today, overreacted, and events spiraled closer and closer toward a showdown. [p. 286]

The ultimate effect, then, of the Liberty incident - in itself neither very important nor unusual - was the dispatch of armed forced in the form of two regiments of redcoats that would (the British cabinet hoped) cow the people of Boston into submission. … [pp. 291-292]

The Repeal of the Townshend Duties / 3

The Townshend Duties were turning out to be difficult to enforce and were not producing anything like a substantial revenue. Meanwhile the nonimportation agreements were so successful that English exports to America, which had come to 2,378,000 pounds in 1768, dropped to 1,634,000 pounds n 1769. [p.295]

The repeal of the Townshend Acts meant, in practical fact, that Parliament could not tax the colonies without the armed occupation of the colonies, and doubtfully even then. [p. 295]

To admit a mistake is, unfortunately, a most difficult step for most human beings. And it seems even more difficult when they are in power as a government. Their own private vanities and ambitions compound an already difficult task. They seem to prefer any other course, including complete defeat and, on occasion, the destruction of the nation whose best interests they sincerely intend to serve. At the bottom of all this lies that strange human emotion that we call pride. [p. 296]

David Ramsay in his History of the American Revolution, published a few years after the end of the war, gave a succinct analysis of the problem. "Great and flourishing colonies … already grown to the magnitude of a nation, planted at an immense distance, and governed by constitutions resembling that of the country from which they sprung, were novelties in the history of the world. To combine Colonies so circumstanced, in one uniform system of government with the Parent State, required a great knowledge of mankind, and an extensive comprehension of things. It was an arduous business, far beyond the grasp of ordinary … [men], whose minds were narrowed by the formalities of laws, or the trammels of office. An original genius, unfettered with precedents, and exalted with just ideas of the rights of human nature, and the obligations of universal benevolence, might have struck out a middle line, which would have secured as much liberty to the Colonies, and as great a degree of supremacy to the Parent State, as their common good required: But the helm of Great Britain was not in such hands." P.297

Soon after New York and Philadelphia capitulated, other major port cities also gave in and resumed trade with Britain. Except in intransigent Boston, the embargo was effectively broken. [p. 299]

Redcoats in Boston / 4

The dispatch of redcoats to Boston at the very moment when feelings had been inflamed by the Townshend Duties was perhaps the most ill-advised of all the unwise moves made by the British government during the period from 1765 to 1770. …Sending troops was inviting catastrophe. [p. 300]

There was indeed, among the more militant, open discussion of revolution and independence. [p. 303]

Within two weeks of the occupation of Boston, seventy soldiers had deserted and taken refuge in the interior of the colony. …They had hardly arrived before the attractions of colonial life proved so compelling that they began to join the ranks of the colonists they had been sent to police. [p. 306]

The patriot leaders most feared and resented the soldiers' presence because, by inciting numerous incidents that threatened to flame into major riots, they undermined the control of these leaders over the more volatile elements in the population. [p. 309]

The Battle of Golden Hill / 5

In New York, as in Boston, the Sons of Liberty entertained bitter feelings toward the governor and his supporters and the more conservative merchants. But the hostility was most intense between the city's sailors and artisans on the one hand and the British soldiers on the other. One source of friction was the fact that the troops, to supplement their miserable wages, were hiring out as cut-rate laborers, thus taking jobs away from members of the city's labor force. [pp. 315-316]

… the Battle of Golden Hill, so called because the major fighting took place on a promontory near the center of the city … had been ferocious, a measure of the hatred that had been sown between the people and those symbols of British power, the redcoats. Most important, a man had been killed - the first colonial killed by British soldiers. [p. 317]

The New York patriot intelligentsia did not lead and control the populace. As a result, the New York mob was in fact, much more of a riotous and ill-disciplined rabble than the people who poured into Boston's streets to protest. Nor did the New Yorkers have any long-term object in view, such as the repeal of the Townshend Duties or the removal of all troops from the colony. …The Battle of Golden Hill, then, despite the two deaths, was not as politically important as, for example, the Stamp Act riot in Boston. [p. 318]

More Trouble In Boston / 6

Each side was devoted to its own particular conspiracy theory, seeing a plot in every chance happening, a design in the most coincidental combination of events. So it is in all times of revolution. That indeed is why they are revolutionary. Attitudes and beliefs become so polarized that words cease to bear the same meaning for those on different sides of a widening abyss. The revolutionaries must use old words in such a way as to illuminate new realities; the representatives of the existing order are equally insistent on using old words to obscure the existence of those same new realities. Hence, suspicion and distrust - and eventually violence - became inevitable. [p. 330]

The Boston Massacre / 7

Although two regiments of the troops that had garrisoned Boston had been removed in the fall of 1769-70, two regiments still remained. And baiting these remaining "lobsterbacks" continued to be a favored occupation of the town's rougher elements. Both sides hurled violent and obscene epithets; …It was an explosive situation, … [p. 331]

Though a writer must, almost of necessity, impose some order on the scene simply by describing it, the scene itself was, in essence, indescribable. The noise, the shouting and clatter, the ringing of bells, the throbbing movement of the crowd as those in back pressed forward and those in front tried to prevent themselves from being pressed against the points of the soldiers' bayonets, the efforts of bolder spirits to gain a place in the front ranks and of the more prudent to withdraw - all this presented a picture of hopeless confusion. It must also be remembered that this took place with no more illumination than the moon and such fitful light as might be provided by torches and lamps. None of those present were later able to given a very coherent picture of what had happened, and among the many different versions there were innumerable discrepancies or outright contradictions. [pp. 337-338]

That is was no worse is a tribute to British military discipline and the coolness of Captain Preston. It is also a tribute to the patriot leaders, who kept the mob from exploding into greater violence. Finally, it is a tribute to Thomas Hutchinson, who acted with great decision and courage. But last of all, it is a testament to the folly of the English government in adopting policies that could make the colonists so hate the mother country that such violence was inevitable. [p. 342]

The Aftermath of the Massacre and the Trial / 8

The funeral of the slain men took place on March 8. …An enormous crowed of some twelve thousand men and women marched in the cortege. Watching with contempt, the Reverend Mather Byles turned to an acquaintance and said, "They call me a brainless Tory. But tell me, my young friend, which is better - to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not one mile away." It was a witty comment, but it suggested a serious truth. Many of those colonists who aligned themselves with the Tories did so less out of love for their distant monarch than out of distaste for "popular government" or, as they would have put it, mob rule. [p. 345]

The generation of men who fashioned the revolution had a veneration for the law that in most ages has been reserved for the deity. [p. 351]

When the court reconvened, Josiah Quincy spoke first for the defense… [John] Adams spoke next. Here was an ideal opportunity for him to place the massacre and the tangled congeries of events and emotions that preceded and surrounded it in the larger framework of history, and in doing so, to instruct the people of Boston about the nature of revolutionary upheavals and the dangers they posed to the fabric of society, to humane and civil existence. "In the continual vicissitudes of human things," he declared amidst the shocks of fortune and the whirls of passion that take place at certain critical seasons, even in the mildest governments, the people are liable to run into riots and tumults. There are church quakes and state quakes in the moral and political world, as well as earthquakes, storms and tempests in the physical. …We have been entertained with a great variety of names to avoid calling the persons who gathered at the custom-house a mob. Some have called them shavers, some call them geniuses. The plain English is, gentlemen, a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars. And why should we scruple to call such a set of people a mob? I cannot conceive unless the name is too respectable for them. The sun is not about to stand still or go out, nor the river to dry up, because there was a mob in Boston on the fifth of March that attacked a party of soldiers. Such things are not new in the world, nor in the British dominions, though they are, comparatively, rarities and novelties in this town." [p. 355]

And then Adams directed a special word at the citizens of Boston, represented by the twelve jurors who sat listening to the small, florid man who was addressing them. "The law, in all vicissitudes of government, fluctuations of the passions, or flights of enthusiasm, will preserve a steady undeviating course; it will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations and wanton tempers of men. …It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low - 'tis deaf, inexorable, inflexible.' On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder, to the clamors of the populace." [p. 356]

One important by-product of the massacre was that the control of affairs passed more securely than every into the hands of the patriots. [pp. 362-363]

The Gaspee Affair / 9

The Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, with its headquarters in Boston and operating under the direction of Adams, became a model of revolutionary organization, circulating a stream of information to Sons of Liberty in every community, and binding leaders together with ties of unusual strength and durability. [p. 368]

Perhaps it is not too much to say that it was the British attitude toward their country cousins in America more than British policy that made the Revolution inevitable. There was soon to be evidence of the disastrous effects of such an attitude. [p. 372]

The Boston Tea Party / 10

What disturbed the patriot leaders was the strong sense that British policy remained substantially unchanged, and whatever relief the colonists enjoyed was due to indecision or inattention and was thus temporary. …They knew it was only a matter of time before Lord North and his cabinet proposed some new law that would once again stir up trouble. [p. 373]

What was novel about the activities of the East India Company was that it set about to conquer, govern, and exploit not a wilderness but a series of ancient and wealthy cultures extending over the entire subcontinent of India. [p. 374]

The nineteenth-century British historian, William Lecky, wrote a vivid description of the activities of the East India Company's agents: "They defied, displaced or intimidated all native functionaries who attempted to resist them. They refused to permit nay other traders to sell the goods in which they dealt. They even descended upon villages, and forced the inhabitants, by flogging and confinement, to purchase their goods at exorbitant prices, or to sell what they desired to purchase, at prices far below the market value. …Monopolizing the trade in some of the first necessaries of life, to the utter ruin of thousands of native traders, and selling those necessaries at famine prices to a half-starving population, they reduced those who came under their influence to a wretchedness they had never known before." [p. 374]

Doubtless more disasters have overtaken mankind as a consequence of not taking seriously the claims of the "other side" than from any other single cause. [p. 375]

The Boston Tea Party was what we today would call guerrilla theater, a striking and dramatic enactment of an ideological position, an episode, as John Adams at once discerned, that would capture the popular imagination as few acts in history have. …[T]he Tea Party showed more clearly than volumes of exposition how far the patriot cause had come from its tumultuous beginnings some eight years before. By now the patriot leaders had established firm control. There were no rioters among the carefully drilled Mohawks who dumped the tea in Boston Harbor; they were rather a corps of irregulars who might, on the next occasion, carry loaded muskets. [p. 384]

The Boston Port Bill / 11

Nobody is more apt to be mortally offended than someone who has done something venal and stupid and in consequence suffers rebuff and humiliation. [p. 385]

In virtually every historical crisis, there are men who see quite clearly, as Burke did, what needs to be done, and, what is more difficult, how to do it. The problem is that, with tragic frequency, the people and their rulers will not listen. It proved impossible even for Burke to penetrate the mass of prejudices, misconceptions, and bitter animosities held by the generality of the British people and their leaders. However wisely and eloquently Pitt and Burke spoke, they did not speak for any substantial portion of the English ruling class, and certainly not for the North ministry. [p. 386]

In the ranks of ordinary Englishmen, there were strong indications of sympathy and support for the Americans. Much emphasis, of course, was placed on the value of the colonies to the mother country: "America is a Hen that lays her Golden Eggs for Britain; and … she must be cherished and supported as part of the great family of Britain." British merchants were owed some four million pounds by their American customers, and any action by the ministry that put this debt in hazard was a disservice to the nation. [pp. 388-389]

…the other colonies must be persuaded to give some substantial evidence of support for the beleaguered Bostonians. …The Boston Port Bill was thus for Massachusetts certainly, and doubtless for the patriot cause as a whole, the moment of truth. Was there a solid foundation of sentiment in every colony that would be evoked by such an appeal? The answer was a ringing affirmative. [pp. 390-391]

It is difficult for people living in a relatively stable society to imagine the anxieties that must be aroused when that order is imperiled. What is to happen to one's children? Will the sons march off to war to be maimed or killed? Will daughters be raped by licentious soldiers? How will one's family be fed and clothed? And all one's cherished personal possessions - how will they fare in civil disorder and war? Would patriot leaders be taken to England and tried and hanged as traitors, their families and their fortunes proscribed? [pp. 395-396]

Today revolutions are old hat. In many countries revolutions are an almost yearly occurrence; we use the word "revolution" as casually as we pick up a spoon. …But in the eighteenth century, the word as we most commonly use it today had hardly been discovered. …Today there are only a few "colonies" left. Nearly every colony has thrown off, by one means or another, at least the direct control of the nation that held it as a colony. In the eighteenth century no such thing had happened, nor was it imagined by most people that it could happen. [p. 398]

The notion of revolution against the mother country - had the colonists been forced to confront the true nature of their acts and the consequences that must inevitably follow - might well have been too formidable for the great majority of patriots; their devotion to their liberties would perhaps have melted away in the merciless light of the true situation. It was much better, certainly much easier, to go step by step, eyes fixed on the path ahead, placing one's faith in the ultimate benevolence of the King-Father. The strange nature of the English kingship in the middle years of the eighteenth century allowed them to continue to live a kind of double life - loyal revolutionaries of His Majesty, George III. [p. 400]

The Massachusetts Government Act and the Quebec Act / 12

The ... Quebec Act ... extended the province of Quebec from Canada down the eastern bank of the Connecticut River to 45 degrees of latitude, through Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, thence to Lake Erie and the western boundaries of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi and then northward to Hudson Bay. The act had the effect of sealing off most of the western lands from colonial land speculators and emigrants. [p. 402]

The Americans, of course, wre not without their advocates. Stephen Fox, the huge and cumbersome brother of Charles James Fox, a leader of the Whigs, stoutly opposed the measure. "I rise sir," he said, "with an utter detestation and abhorrence of the present measures. We are either to treat the Americans as subjects or as rebels. If we treat them as subjects, the will godes too far; if as rebels, it does not go far enough. We have refused to hear the parties in their defence and we are going to destroy their charter without knowing the constitution of their Government." [p. 402]

Jonathan Shipley, the pro-American Bishop of Asaph, supported Fox: "My Lords, I look upon North America as the only great nursery of freemen now left upon the face of the earth." As for the colonies "whom we are now so eager to butcher," the bishop believed that all Englishmen should "cherish them as the immortal monuments of our public justice and wisdom; as the heir of our better days, of our old arts and manners, and of our expiring national virtues. What work of art, or power, or public utility, has ever equalled the glory of having peopled a continent without guilt or bloodshed, with a multitude of fee and happy commonwealths: to have given them the best arts of life and government, and to have suffered them under the shelter of our authority, to acquire in peace the skill to use them." But, the bishop continued, "by enslaving the Colonies you not only ruin the peace, the commerce and the fortunes of both countries, but you extinguish the fairest hopes, shut up the last asylum of mankind. I think, my Lords ... that a good man may hope that heaven wil take part against the execution of a plan that seems big not only with mischief but impeity." [pp. 402-403]


There was thus, by the late summer of 1774, a rising tide of sympathy for the beleaguered Americans. England's Bill of Rights Society sent five hundred pounds to the Boston patriots, and the Common Council of the City of London held a meeting in which much indignation was expressed at the Coercive Acts.[p.406]

To imagine the frame of mind of most Bostonians, it is necessary to recall that Boston was almost an island in the eighteenth century, virtually surrounded by water and connected to the mainland only by a narrow spit of land known as Boston Neck. Thus wherever Bostonians looked, they could see British warships, a silent and perpetual menace. [p. 410]

The plans of the ministry, the fate of Boston and of the colonies, the fate of America, and possibly the fate of the world rested on one simple question: Were the ordinary people of America, 90 per cent of them farmers in modest circumstances, distributed over a vast extent of land - of forest and mountain and field and farm - were they free born "Americans"? Did they care about the principles of abstract justice? Was freedom a word that evoked for them a powerful reality, or was it a cant word of philosophers and political theorists? [p. 412]

Historians have … given comparatively little attention to the most important phenomenon of all: the formation of a national consciousness between 1765 and 1774. The new breed of man - the American - responded with determination and courage to all threats to what he understood to be his freedom. [p. 412]

Charles Lee -- formerly an English officer, now living in America -- hearing of Gage's prediction that the colonists could be readily subdued, wrote from Pennsylvania to a wig friend in England: "What devil of a nonsense can instigate any man of General Gage's understanding to concur in bringing about this delusion? I have lately, my Lord, run through almost the whole colonies from the North to the South. I should not be guilty of an exaggeration in asserting that there are 200,000 strong-bodied active yeomanry, ready to encounter all hazards. They are not like the yeomanry of other countries, unarmed and unused to arms. They want nothing but some arrangement, and this they are now bent on establishing. [p. 413]

PART IV The Continental Congress: Nursery of American Statesmen / 1

New York conservatives had proposed an intercolonial congress modeled on the one occasioned by the Stamp Act. …A plan for constitutional union should also be framed that would include an American Bill of Rights guaranteeing American liberties. The congress should then frame "a Message of Peace unmixt with Threats or threatening Behavior." [p. 417]

The congress of committees or delegates from the various colonies was to meet in Philadelphia on the fifth of September, 1774. [p. 419]

Pennsylvania, like every other colony, had its quota (and indeed more than its quota, if one counted the Quakers, as one surely must) of "trimmers" of those who professed "to be against the Parliament-army claims of Right to tax Americans, to be Friends of our Constitutions, our charter, etc." These men only bided their time to try to frustrate the plans of the patriots for resistance. [p. 426]

In order for a great conflagration to be ignited in human society, it is usually necessary that each party to the dispute make miscalculations concerning the intent and the courage of its adversary sufficiently profound to allow it to proceed on a course that will inevitably bring disaster. [p. 428]

Down to Business / 2

The first issue to perplex the delegates was whether they should vote as individuals or by colony. … John Adams listed some of the problems involved in his diary. "If We vote by Colonies, the Method will be liable to great inequality and injustice, for 5 small Colonies with 100,000 People each may out-vote 4 large ones, each of which has 500,000 inhabitants. If We vote by the Poll [that is simply as individuals], some Colonies have more than their Proportion of [Delegates], and others have less. If we vote by interests, it will be attended by insuperable difficulties, to ascertain the true importance of each Colony - is the Weight of a Colony to be ascertained by the number of inhabitants merely - or by the Amount of their Trade, the Quantity of their Exports and Imports, or by any compound Ratio of both. This will lead us into such a Field of Controversy as will greatly perplex us." It was not even possible to obtain a true count of the population of each individual colony. [p. 431]

Henry repeated his view that "the Government is at an End. All distinctions are thrown down. All America is thrown into one Mass." John Jay was uneasy at such talk. One might suppose that the delegates had been assembled for the purpose of framing an American constitution instead of endeavoring to correct the faults in an old one. The Measure of arbitrary Power is not full, and I think it must run over, before we can undertake to frame a new Constitution." [p. 432]

On the third day of the discussions, Joseph Galloway, the most formidable of the conservative faction, rose to speak. …He was skeptical of the argument based on natural rights or on the laws of nature; they were too abstract and theoretical to be of much use in the present crisis. The issue was, in essence, one of the distribution of power. Power resulted from the landed property of a society. A review of British history illustrated how the owners of landed property had fought for and won protections for their estates against rapacious monarchs. [p. 433]

The colonial upper classes considered the securing, preparing, and eating of food a central aspect of their lives. More than that, they treasured the company and the conversation occasioned by such repasts, the flow of good humor, the witty sallies, the skillfully presented arguments, the learned allusions, the precise steps in a logical analysis, the net turns of phrase that might support a delicately balanced proposition. In short, they relished that noble and proper accompaniment of good food, good talk. And that good food and wine and talk wove a subtle but powerful web among their affections, binding them into a unity of spirit and a bond of concord, in which agreeable harmony lay the seeds of a nation. [p. 437]

Democratic politics rest, in considerable part, on trust, and trust quite clearly rests on the mutual confidence that comes most commonly out of knowing the people that one trusts. [p. 437]

Men faced with taking difficult and costly actions are prone to grasp at straws. Most men prefer to avoid or delay hard decisions. [p. 440]

It was odd also that no one picked up Galloway's warning, i.e., that if war was to come, nonimportation and nonexportation, far from being the means by which the British government was to be brought to terms, might be the means of fatally weakening the colonies and leaving them an easy prey to the armed might of the mother country. [p. 441]

The clearest division among the delegates was over the issue of whether or not Parliament had the right to regulate trade. …It might be assumed that these patriots were, as a logical consequence of their position, in favor of immediate independence for the American colonies. But to presume that would be to assume that men are ruled by logic, and history gives no support to that assumption. The fact was that many of those who rejected the authority of Parliament over the colonies in all cases whatsoever rejected the idea of independence, wished to remain within the British Empire, and somehow believed that they could. [p. 441]

Perhaps the only substantial achievement of the Congress was to have come together, to have established a basis, at least among the bolder delegates, of mutual understanding and trust. The British would be much more impressed (though still insufficiently) by the demonstration of colonial unity offered by the fact that the Congress had convened, and that it had drawn together many of the ablest men in the various colonies, than by anything that happened. [p. 445]

As with all deliberative bodies, the discussions of the delegates to the First Continental Congress were extensive and at times tedious. The delegates were, as time would prove, a remarkably able group of men; it has been common to call them the ablest in history who have gathered together to contemplate some form of political action. They were, on the whole, remarkably learned. They had read most of the great classical authors - Vergil and Cicero especially, but the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Tacitus and Livy as well. They knew modern writers on law and government - Locke, of course, and Harrington, and the authorities on jurisprudence that Galloway had referred to in introducing his plan of union. [p. 446]

…Adams replied to a pamphlet by Daniel Leonard, a Tory spokesman. Leonard had attacked the committees of correspondence as "the foulest, subtlest, and most venomous serpent that ever issued from the eggs of sedition." Adams defended them warmly. "Almost all mankind," he wrote, "have lost their liberties through ignorance, inattention, and disunion. These committees are admirably calculated to diffuse knowledge, to communicate intelligence, and promote unanimity. …The patriots of this Province desire nothing new: they wish only to keep their old privileges. For one hundred and fifty years they had been allowed to tax themselves and govern their internal concerns as they thought best. Parliament governed their trade as they thought fit. This plan they wish may continue forever." [p. 448]

Then Adams came to the heart of the matter. The "noblemen and ignoblemen [of England]," he declared, "ought to have considered that Americans understand the laws and politics as well as themselves, and that there are six hundred thousand men in it, between sixteen and sixty years of age; and therefore it will be very difficult to chicane them out of their liberties by 'fiction of law' … no matter upon what foundation." [p. 449]

England / 3

When Parliament convened in January 1775, the first subject for debate was American affairs. Pitt appeared dramatically in defense of the colonies. …Edmund Burke joined his own voice in the plea for conciliation. "The use of Force alone," he reminded the members, "is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. …" [pp. 452-453]

Truth and justice were with Chatham and Burke, but the votes were with North. Parliament gave solid support to that minister's determination to bring the rebellious colonies to heel. [p. 454]

The Lull Before the Storm / 4

To the British and the Tories, the fact that patriots were quite evidently busy preparing for war - while at the same time still declaring their undying allegiance to George III - was prima facie evidence of a quality that had been attributed to the New Englanders since the Puritans first landed in the Bay: hypocrisy. [p.460]

Those colonials who had fought beside British soldiers in the French and Indian War came forward with reassuring tales of ineptness, cowardice, and stupidity, all adding up to the fact that the English "knew not how to fight." [p. 461]

Of course, the British were, if anything, even more contemptuous of the colonials than the colonials were of them. Their experience in the French and Indian War was that the colonials were poorly trained and unreliable. [p. 461]

Lexington / 5

The atmosphere had so far changed that Galloway dared to speak out boldly in the Pennsylvania assembly, censuring "the measures of the Congress in every thing" and declaring that the actions of the delegates "all tended to incite America to sedition, and terminate in Independence." [pp. 470-471]

The committees of correspondence and those numerous committees appointed to enforce nonimportation did not always find easy sailing. Their authority, after all, rested on very precarious grounds. Government, to be accepted, must be legitimated, otherwise it is simply a mater of your neighbor trying to tell you what to do - in which case all kinds of awkward personal matters enter the picture. [p. 471]

…it might be said as a rule of political life that the less legitimate the authority, the more brutal the exercise of it is apt to be. If you are without the support of courts and magistrates, sheriffs and jailers, you are very apt to resort to direct force and intimidation to achieve your ends. [p. 471]

Gage and his staff, preserving the strictest secrecy, proceeded to make careful plans for a raid on Concord. …The patriots, of course, were well aware as the British of the egresses from the city, either across Boston Neck or by boat. Patriot spies kept close watch on both avenues - the narrow corridor over the Neck and the much broader area of the harbor and river. [pp. 472-473]

At Lexington, the militiamen had been mustered on the common in the early morning hours to the number of perhaps a hundred or so, … A beating of drums would summon them when they were needed. [p.478]

…As the advance guard of British soldiers approached within one hundred yards of the common, the Minutemen began to file off to the cover of a stone wall that ran along the right margin of the green. …Five or six shots were fired by the Minutemen, wounding a soldier and Major Pitcairn's horse in two places. At this point the light infantry fired a deadly volley that killed ten of the militiamen, four of them members of two families, and wounded nine others, among them Prince, a black man. [p. 479]

The British soldiers had opened a heavy fire without orders. As for the Minutemen, it is clear that there was no order for them to fire and no general firing on their part. …By their undisciplined actions, the [British] soldiers provoked that nightmare of death and suffering that they and their companions were to live through that day. [p. 480]

Concord / 6

…By the time the British had taken up the march to Concord, the militia of that town had been augmented by contingents from a half-dozen communities, to the number of two battalions, which stationed themselves on a small hill just east of the town. [p. 482]

…The British, as one officer reported, received "heavy fire form all sides, from Walls, Fences, Houses, Trees, Barns, etc." The retreat, orderly at first, soon approached a rout. [p. 485]

Probably the most effective work was done by those militia who depended on stone walls and tree trunks for cover. They fought like the Indians, firing and then withdrawing to load their cumbersome pieces with nervous, fumbling fingers, find a new position, and fire again. What was disheartening of all to the British was the accuracy with which these farmers fired their muskets. As the effective British force dwindled away through casualties and exhaustion, the number of colonists, fresh and eager to have a shot at last at the hated redcoats, swelled by the hundreds. [p. 487]

…the very style of fighting adopted by the Americans doubtless made it impossible for them to take advantage of the demoralization of the British troops. They did not constitute an army, but rather a horde or a swarm of individuals who stung and flew on to sting again. At Bunker Hill they would fight much in the same fashion. Indeed it would be Washington's principal task to make these individuals cohere into an army capable of carrying on sustained campaigns, pursuing an advantage, or extricating itself from a defeat. [p. 488]

It is instructive to place the American reaction beside that of the British general. …What to the British was simply an unfortunate skirmish involving the death of a few soldiers, was to the colonists the most piercing and agonizing assault upon their homes, families, and friends. …To the [British] it meant a setback, an inconvenience, more trouble and expense, explanations, and the usual embarrassing problem of fixing blame. To the colonist it seemed as though the whole order of the universe had been disturbed; he felt imperiled in the most sacred recesses of his personal life - the safety of his wife and children, of a son or a brother. [pp. 490-491]

Boston Besieged / 7

Nathanael Greene was purely a texbook soldier. …Greene had educated himself in military history, in mathematics, and in political theory. …When he went to Boston in 1773 to buy himself a gun, he also purchased a work on the life of the great French general Henri Turenne, and he brought back with him a British deserter to instruct his company in drill. …Apparently his beng chosen as general of the Rhode Island militia was the consequence of his intelligence, his quiet authority, and his confidence in himself and in his ability to lead others. It was a confidence by no means misplaced. Greene was to become Washington's most brilliant general. [pp. 497-498]

The besieging colonials around Boston and the besieged British waited uneasily day after day for the other side to take the initiative. Having underestimated the determination of the colonists and the degree of their solidarity, Gage now overestimated their numbers and their ability to mount an attack. For their part, the colonists daily anticipated a massive assault by the British, supported by the guns of the naval vessels in the harbor. [p. 506]

Bunker Hill / 8

Perhaps the most gifted of the senior officers assigned to occupy and fortify the high ground above Charlestown was Colonel Richard Gridley, a brilliant engineer who, in the French and Indian War, had performed the heroic task of getting two cannon up the sheer cliffs that rose to the plains of Abraham… It was his job to direct the fortifications on the top of Bunker Hill once that promontory had been occupied by the Americans. [p. 511]

As the war progressed, it came to be a truism that the colonial farmer-soldier was not only a fast digger, but also that he would fight stoutly if his legs were protected. A farmer with one leg or a mangled foot was of little use, and the great majority of the American soldiers were farmers first and soldiers second. [pp. 512-513]

When the British staff … gathered early on the morning of June 17 for a council of war, there was unanimous agreement that the Americans must be driven off the high ground in Charlestown; otherwise their guns would command most of the city. …It was simply inconceivable to the British generals that the untrained rebels would stand in the face of a vastly superior force of British soldiers supported by artillery and by the guns of the entire fleet. Howe may have welcomed the opportunity to teach the colonials the crushing lesson that he had planned for a few days later. … [p. 515]

Gage and his generals were proud of their troops. They liked to play "soldiers," almost as though the brightly colored figures … were toy counters in a splendid game. …One of the basic principles of military action is speed. But the British generals thought otherwise. Things had to be done with "decency and order" - virtues that ranked high in the eighteenth century, certainly higher than speed. [p. 516]

[Colonel William] Prescott [of Massachusetts] was the crucial figure in the unfolding drama. It had frequently been observed during the French and Indian War that Americans would fight well if they were well led. They would be well led on this day. [p. 518]

Howe … watched the scene with horror. He saw the careful order, on which the success of any such operation rested, broken as the first and second lines of the light infantry "fell into disorder" and became hopelessly entangled and confused. …That moment must rank in military history with the battle of Agincourt in 1415, where heavily armored French knights were cut down by English bowmen. The misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill was the symbolic military enactment of a profound change in Western history. [p. 524]

…as at the retreat from Lexington, the militia were able during the course of an engagement to take an initiative without formal orders from above when they saw an opportunity to play an effective part in the unfolding of the action. This is the most desirable quality in a soldier - the ability to see where some pressure, however slight, if skillfully applied can change the whole course of battle. Such action, because it must be improvised on the spot, is seldom the result of a command decision. [p. 525]

With the British at last in possession of the crude and simple fort and the Americans in retreat, it was time for an accounting. Howe had lost all his aides and most of his officers. [p. 531]

[Boston] was filled with the agony of war. It became a vast hospital and mortuary for the injured and the dead. …A Tory lady wrote bitterly that there were many in the British army who fell that day who were "of noble family, many very respectable, virtuous and amiable characters, and it grieves me that gentlemen, brave British soldiers, should fall by the hands of such despicable wretches as compose the banditti of the country, amongst whom there is not one that has the least pretension to be called a gentlemen. They are the most rude, depraved, degenerate race, and it is a mortification to us that they speak English and can trace themselves from that stock." [p. 532]

A British officer put the mater most acutely: "From an absurd and destructive confidence, carelessness, or ignorance, we have lost a thousand of our best men and officers and have given the rebels great matter of triumph by showing them what mischief they can do us." [pp. 532-533]

It fell to Gage … to write the official dispatches to Lord Barrington, Secretary of State for War. "These people," the chastened general wrote, "shew a spirit and conduct against us they never shewed against the French, and every body has judged of them from their former appearance and behaviour when joined with the Kings forces in the last war, which has led many into great mistakes. They were now spirited up by a rage and enthusiasm as great as ever people were possessed of, and you must proceed in earnest or give the business up. …The loss we have sustained is greater than we can bear. …I have before wrote your Lordship my opinion that a large army must at length be employed to reduce these people, and mentioned the hiring of foreign troops. I fear it must come to that. …" [p. 533]

On the American side, the principal achievements of the defenders of Bunker Hill … flowed from the inability of the colonists to fight as the rules of eighteenth-century warfare indicated they should, holding their formations at all costs, loading and firing "by the numbers" and on command. [p. 534]


CONTINUED