Internal
Links

Top
 Outline on the  US Revolution
External
Links
 
 See Also:   
 
 -  Revolutions
Link
 
 Relations between the American Colonies and the United Kingdom began to break down during the mid-1700's
 
  The British won the French & Indian War, and, under the Treaty of Paris of 1763 they ruled most of America east of the Mississippi River  
 
 Little by little, the United Kingdom (UK) tightened its control over the colonies in order to consolidate power over the vast wilderness of America & to increase taxes to pay off their war debt
 
 
 The UK's leaders passed laws that taxed the colonists and restricted their freedom
 
  The Stamp Act of 1765 extended to the colonies the traditional English tax on newspapers, legal documents, and various other written materials  
  The British established a standing army that was housed by the Am colonists  
 
 The Am colonists had become accustomed to governing themselves, and had developed a sense of unity & independence
 
  The Am colonists expressed their common interests in the slogan, "Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny"   
  Through the years, the Am people had developed attitudes that help explain their strong desire to gain freedom from the UK  
  The attitudes which aided in the Am rev included a deep belief in govt by the people, a sense of unity, an optimistic view of the future, & strong nationalistic feelings  
 
 The Am colonists deeply resented what they considered UK interference in their affairs
 
  In 1767, the UK Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which taxed lead, paint, paper, & tea imported into the Am colonies  
  On March 5, 1770, Boston civilians taunted a group of troops.  
  The troops fired on the civilians, killing three persons and wounding eight others, two of whom died later in what came to be known as the Boston Massacre, which shocked Americans and unnerved the British  
  On Dec. 16, 1773, a group of American colonists staged the Boston Tea Party to dramatize their opposition to the various taxes & trade restrictions enacted by the British  
  In 1774, the Intolerable Acts included provisions that closed the port of Boston, gave increased power to the British royal governor of the colony of Massachusetts, and required the colonists to house and feed British soldiers  
  In 1775, the Continental Congress tried to reconcile w/ King George, but to no avail  
 
 In 1775, the Revolutionary War broke out between the two sides when the British tried to seized military resources near Lexington & Concord
 
  In 1836, the American author Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to the first shot fired by the patriots at Concord as "the shot heard round the world."  
  Many people who had been unsure of whether to rebel or not were convinced by reading Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense  
  In Common Sense, Paine stated the simple alternatives open to the Americans: They must either accept the tyranny of the British Crown or throw off their shackles by proclaiming a republic  
  The colonists were  
  - wealthy merchants and planters formed a small upper class, known as the "better sort"  
  -  a large middle class, or "middling sort," consisted mainly of farmers who owned their land, shopkeepers, and craftworkers  
  -  skilled workers and farmers who rented their land ranked among the poor, or "lower sort"  
  The colonist groups of the better sort, the middling sort, & the lower sort had to find their common interest in revolution  
  The ruling merchants and landowners presented only half-hearted resistance to this widening of political power & thus they needed the aid of the lower classes to back their opposition to British policy  
  During the war, on July 4, 1776, the colonists boldly declared their independence from their mighty British rulers  
  The Second Continental Congress officially declared independence and formed the United States of America by adopting the Declaration of Independence  
  Written by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, the declaration was a sweeping indictment of the king, Parliament, and the British people  
  Thus the colonists were fighting for philosophical principles as well as specific objectives & the spirit aroused by the Declaration of Independence was an important factor in the ultimate American victory  
 
 The Revolutionary War raged on through the 1770's & then, on Oct. 19, 1781, the Americans won a decisive victory at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia where Thousands of British soldiers surrendered 
 
 
 Two years of peace negotiations and occasional fighting followed & finally, on Sept. 3, 1783, the Americans and the British signed the Treaty of Paris of 1783, officially ending the Revolutionary War
 
  Analysis of the US Rev:   
  The US rev can be seen as rebellion to the extent that England was democratic & capitalist  
  The US rev can be seen as a rev to the extent that the US radically enhanced democracy & free-mkt capitalism to such an extent that it did result in major changes in the social order  
  The US rev is seen as historically important because, as Tocqueville noted, the freedoms, etc. which the rev embraced were a historically new model for society  
  The US rev validates many of Farley's necessary conditions for rev in that  
  -  the people were dissatisfied given taxation w/o representation, tariffs, oppression of the populace by the military, etc.  
  -  while communications were difficult in colonial times, it was still possible given the mail, newspapers, etc.  
  -  the people & leaders had survived several attempts at repression by the British  
  -  while the people feared England because it was the greatest power in the world, they had strong leaders who inspired them  
  -  the people had barely adequate resources  
  The US rev validates many of Marx's factors affecting rev in that  
  -  the populace experienced the contradiction of democracy & capitalism in theory, but lack of it in practice  
  -  the populace had class consciousness in that they understood the contradiction & eventually several classes came together to oppose the English  
  -  the historical circumstances of colonialism, the dev of democracy & capitalism, the support of the French all supported the rev  
  -  the colonists had a strong political org in the form of the colonial govt  
  -  several colonial classes were repressed including the better sort, the middling sort, & the lower sort  
  The US rev validates Johnson's theory in that colonial America was in disequilibrium because of the contradiction btwn democratic & free-mkt values, & the econ system   
  Johnson notes that loss in a war sets the old regime up for rev, but in the case of the US rev, the English had won the French & Indian War of 1763, but in many ways this weakened the English in that they became over-extended in trying to rule their vastly expanded empire  

The End
 
Top