THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
In the year 1763, Great Britain stood victorious in North Americaafter sweeping France from the continent with the assistance of theAmerican colonists, and few would have predicted the end of the long tiesbetween the English Crown and the American colonies. Yet by the last monthsof 1774, "only those with closed eyes and minds could avoid the conclusionthat the Americans were headed toward open and armed rebellion againstGreat Britain and the powers of the English monarchy" (McDowell, 45). The Americans, however, did not rush into a revolution, for beforethe final breach England and the colonies suffered under a long series ofconflicts that steadily grew in strength and importance, and "during thetwelve years of disagreements preceding the engagement of arms at Lexingtonand Concord, the clashes between the mother country of England and theAmerican colonies waxed and waned in intensity" (Reeder, 56). The thirteen American colonies, with over two million citizens whichincluded some 500,000 black African slaves, formed a diverse group ofpolitical, cultural, economic and religious entities grouped together in arelatively narrow band of farms, cities and plantations that stretched
Whether held in Britain bypolitical ties, patriotism or economic interests, many Loyalists were tosuffer irreparable losses as a result of the revolution. In Pennsylvania, the Pennfamily was still the major power, but in order to deal with difficult landdisputes and the interests of merchants, the English Crown was often thereal authority. InVirginia, the House of Burgesses had long served as a focus for thepolitical life of the colony; similar assemblies in the Carolinas, Marylandand Georgia were less developed as a result of their longer histories asproprietary colonies with England. These colonies "had grown from a variety of enterprisesand had developed political and economic cultures based on staple crops"(Carter, 178). The middlecolonies "were destined to play crucial roles in the revolution, especiallyduring the first years when most of the battles between the Americans andthe British forces took place between the Canadian border and Delaware Bay"(Higginbotham, 78). These colonies were characterized mostly by farmingand to some degree were organized around small villages that producedfoodstuffs and other commodities. Not all colonists became revolutionaries and very large numbers ofLoyalists remained devoted to the Crown. By thelatter half of the 1700's, the colonies displayed distinctive regional andindividual differences based on topography, economics, politics and socialcustoms. As was the case with nearly all of the colonies, New England hadpassed through a long series of changes in the form of government duringthe 17th century and first decades of the 18th century, but by the time ofthe French and Indian Wars (1754-1763), all four New England provinces hadestablished firm traditions of popular assemblies that served at least insome sense as counterpoints to royal governors and their Englishadministrations. The economic, political and socialstructures would also be different, for there would be no President,Congress or Supreme Court. Southward lay the great agrarian colonies of Virginia, Maryland, NorthCarolina, South Carolina and Georgia which were characterized by fertilecoastal regions. Despite a generallessening of tensions by 1770, conflicts persisted and eventually, Bostonbecame the turning point. To the north lay the four colonies of New England-Massachusetts,Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island-"which had been foundedprimarily by groups of religious dissenters, such as the Puritans whosought to establish a theocracy free of the burdens of the decadent Englishchurch" (Bicheno, 156). The four middle colonies-Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey andDelaware-"had emerged from a long history of imperial rivalries andproprietary grants to form a prosperous region by the eve of therevolution" (Penner, 123). In the Carolinas, rice culture had grown rapidly after theintroduction of slaves; in Virginia and Maryland, tobacco was king.
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