The Beginning of Our United States
The British government had enormous problems after the enduring victory over France in the Seven Years War. The Seven Years War had virtually doubled the national public debt, and the attainment of half the territory in North America had vastly compounded the problems of controlling the empire. These circumstances required new revenues for the empire, and the ruling circles in Great Britain believed that the colonists were best able to provide the necessary funds to re-pay the national public debt (American History [Vol. 1] p.123). Accordingly, measures to secure enforcement of the Navigation Acts, which excluded all non-British ships from the colonial carrying trade, were adopted by the British Parliament in 1764. In order to obtain additional revenue, Parliament in 1765 replaced the Molasses Act with a Stamp Act, requiring Americans to validate various documents, transactions, and purchases by buying and applying stamps issued by the royal government (Encarta: Sugar & Molasses Act, 1999). There was a widespread anger among the American colonists with the passage of the Stamp Act, especially in states such a
Primarily due to changed political circumstances in Great Britain, Parliament in 1770 repealed all the Townshend Act duties except the tax on tea, which was retained to uphold Great Britain's right to levy taxes on its subjects. On April 13, 1789, George Washington, who had been unanimously elected the first president of the United States, was inaugurated in New York City (Grolier: Constitution, 1993). The Confederation Congress was capable of governing within the sphere it had been permitted as demonstrated by the Ordinance of 1787, which organized the national domain, known as the Northwest Territory, between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes (Encarta: Articles of Confederation, 1999). The Constitution became the law of the land in 1788, after the required nine states had ratified it. More than a year later, on July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independence, and two days afterward adopted a formal statement of principle written by Thomas Jefferson justifying that action (Encarta: American Revolution, 1999). Less than four months after the news was received in America, armed conflict broke out in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts state government put down the uprising, but Shay's Rebellion convinced many nationalists that there could be no security for people or property without a central government to exert authority over, and within, the states (Encarta: Shays' Rebellion, 1999). These powers in effect made the Congress a replacement for the king. Nearly all officials responsible for execution of the Stamp Act were forced to resign, and many of the stamps were seized and destroyed. The articles were approved by the Congress in 1777 and were ratified successfully by the various states, ending with Maryland in 1781 (Grolier: Articles of Confederation, 1993). In the unstable financial climate of the post-revolutionary America, these limitations on its power prevented the Congress from keeping domestic peace (Encarta: Articles of Confederation, 1999). It functioned as a large plural executive, not as a legislature (Grolier: Articles of Confederation, 1993). The Congress sent a petition to the British sovereign, George III, which called for intensification of the boycott on trade with Great Britain, and completed plans for a new Congress to assemble in May 1775, in the event of British refusal to grant its demands (Encarta: American Revolution, 1999).
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