US Hist 4.pdf

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 4

Lecture Four

Revolution and the Creation of the Republic (1775-1788)

Scope: This lecture will explore the American revolutionary war and the forming of the American

Republic. It will discuss events that led to the outbreak of the revolution, and demonstrate how both

sides were mistaken in their assessment of the conflict. Revolutionary political thought will be

outlined, especially in how it led to declaring independence. The lecture will examine American and

British military strategies and campaigns, depicting how each side struggled to win allegiance of the

civilian population, and how the colonists won allies in France and Spain. The latter part of this

lecture will outline events following independence: the challenge of creating a national government,

and the debate between the Federalists and Antifederalists over the Constitution and its ratification.

Outline

I. By the end of 1774, conflict between the colonists and Britain seemed unavoidable. Despite signs

of impending confrontation, no one anticipated eight years of war or the creation of the United

States.

A. The new governor of Massachusetts, General Gage, sought to isolate and crush the colonial

revolutionary elite. In April 1775 Gage determined to seize the colonists’ military supplies,

stored at Concord. On their way to Concord, British regulars met and engaged local militias.

These scuffles, battles of Lexington and of Concord, were the first battles of the war for

independence.

B. Following Lexington and Concord, about 20,000 New England men converged on Boston and

fortified Breed’s Hill in Charlestown, a town across the Boston harbor. In June 1775 Gage sent

2,400 soldiers to take the hill and succeeded but at terrific cost. In a battle that ensued the

British casualties amounted to 1092, compared to 370 casualties among the colonists.

C. The Second Continent Congress, in session since May 1775, acknowledged that military

preparations were necessary and made four decisions:

1. It voted to create a Continental Army under the leadership of George Washington;

2. It decided to attack Canada and defeat the British there;

3. It adopted the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms” to justify its

actions;

4. It petitioned the king one more time by issuing the Olive Branch Petition.

II. The Declaration of Independence—voted by Congress on July 2 and approved in its final form for

distribution on July 4, 1776—was the product of a long process of negotiations in Congress, but

also of external factors.

A. In January 1776, Thomas Paine electrified the public with his pamphlet Common Sense . In this

brochure, Paine liberated Americans from their ties to the British past so that they could start

their government fresh.

D. In August the king declared the colonists to be in rebellion. Although Congress neither

declared war nor asserted independence, the Revolution had begun. The Continental Army

marched on Canada, hoping to seize it from the British. The assault was a disaster and the

remnants of the expedition retreated back to New York in the spring 1776.

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 4

B. Through the spring of 1776 the state delegations received instructions in favor of

independence, and then a committee of five—including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin,

and John Adams—was appointed to draft a declaration of independence.

C. The Declaration of Independence borrowed ideas from a number of British and European

sources, including constitutionalism, republicanism, Enlightenment thought, and millennial

Christian thought. When millennialism was fused with these other strands of revolutionary

thought, it gave Americans a sense of optimism and mission.

D. Although it drew from many sources, the Declaration of Independence was truly original. It set

out a clear vision not only of government but also of society, a vision based on three core

ideas: the principle of human equality, the belief in a universal human nature and human

rights, and the belief that government should represent the people and protect their rights.

III. Between 1775 and 1781 Congress and local assemblies worked on creating a national and state

governments.

A. The first proposal for a legitimate national government and a confederation of the states with a

written constitution was formulated in the Articles of Confederation. The Articles came into

effect in 1781 and served as the basis for the national government until the ratification of the

Constitution in 1787.

B. Between 1775 and 1780, each of the thirteen states adopted a new, written constitution and

created state governments, where the new ideas about liberty, equality, and government were

put into practice.

IV. The American Revolution was fought from 1775 to 1781, although the Peace of Paris that ended

the war was not signed until 1783. British political objectives shifted during the war. The first goal

was to punish and isolate Boston; later it was to secure the middle colonies, and lastly it was to

protect the “loyal” South. Each of those strategies failed. The war itself can be broken into two

phases: the British offensive (1776), and the war of attrition (1777-1781).

A. The British entered the war with clear advantages in population, wealth, and power, but with a

flawed premise about how the war could be won. British government believed that the

colonists could be broken by a swift application of force and that Americans loyal to the

Crown would rally around the British troops. The actions of British troops, however, only

alienated those Americans they encountered, turning them into reluctant patriots.

B. The Americans entered the war with a misplaced faith that their supposed moral superiority

was somehow relevant in military encounters.

C. Both sides tried to avoid decisive major engagements that might prove fatal and as a result the

two armies chased each other across the eastern seaboard for seven years.

1. Since there was no consensus in Britain about the strategic or economic value of the

colonies, British commitment to the war effort was limited. Desertions from the British

Army were high, and every battle presented a risk that lost troops could not be re-placed.

2. Manpower was also a serious problem for the Americans. The Continental Army was small

and militia strength rose and fell depending upon the prospects for success.

D. The British offensive of 1776 was an almost successful attempt of General William Howe to

crush the American army. His force of 32,000 soldiers chased Washington’s army of about

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 4

19,000 until the American army melted down to barely 3,000. In December the Americans

escaped across the Delaware River and the British were very close to winning the war. Then,

on Christmas night, Washington took his army across the ice-clogged Delaware, captured two

British garrisons at Trenton and Princeton. The British were held off and a major defeat was

avoided.

E. The period 1777-81 saw a war of attrition, as American commanders led British on chases

across American countryside, trying to wear them down.

F. Among a handful of foreign volunteers who fought for American independence were also two

Polish officers: Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko.

1. Pulaski—whose cavalry charge saved Washington’s army from being wiped out at the

battle of the Brandywine River in 1777—became the first “commander of the horse” in the

Continental Army but was killed in 1779, in Savannah, GA.

2. Kosciuszko was an engineer and tactician. He built West Point, planned and oversaw the

construction of forts and fortifications, and participated in several battles. Kosciszko’s

contribution to American independence is recounted in Alex Storozynski’s The Peasant

Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution (2009).

G. In 1777, after the American victory at Saratoga, the French entered into a formal alliance with

the American colonies. The entry of the French tied down the British in other parts of the

world and brought America more than $8 million in aid.

H. Shifting their focus away from the least loyal section of America, New England, to the most

loyal, the South, the British invaded first Georgia in 1778 and then South Carolina in 1780.

Again the Continental forces drew the British, led by Lord Cornwallis, on a wild chase.

Finally, with the British near exhaustion, the American commander General Nathaniel Greene

met the British at Guilford Court House in March 1781, inflicting heavy losses on them.

Although the battle was a draw, the British retreated to Virginia.

I. In the summer Washington’s forces, supported by the French fleet, trapped Cornwallis at

Yorktown and forced him to surrender in October 1781. The war was effectively over.

V. In order to win the war and establish a place for themselves in the new world political and

economic order, the Americans called upon Britain’s continental enemies for support. In order to

secure French support the Americans had to make several concessions: they had promised not to

negotiate separately with Britain and to remain France’s ally “forever.” The US broke both

promises: the first within a few years and the second in the 1790s.

A. France entered the war in 1778 as America’s ally in the hope of breaking up the British Empire

and reestablishing itself as the world’s most powerful nation. It wanted the US to be

independent but small and weak.

B. Spain entered the war in 1778 with a similar objective, to keep the US too weak to challenge it

in the Caribbean.

C. In 1782, after Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown but before France and Spain had gained their

military objectives, Franklin began peace negotiations with a British representative in Paris.

The agreement served British and American interests much more than those of France and

Spain.

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 4

D. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, Britain recognized American

independence, and the US acquired the territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi

and south of the Great Lakes.

1. America’s allies, France and Spain, were relative losers: although Spain won Florida,

neither country achieved its other territorial objectives.

2. The Americans failed to press for commercial concessions, and by the mid-1780s, the

British had forbidden them to trade directly with either Britain or the West Indies. These

restrictions seriously damaged the new nation’s economy.

3. A heavy price was also paid by Britain’s allies: the American Loyalists and Indians. The

Indian land—the territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi—was transferred

to the US. Almost as if to make certain that the Americans and the western Indians would

come into conflict, the British remained in their nine Great Lakes forts.

VI. The three most important consequences of the war were social and population changes resulting

from the departure of the Loyalists; changes in the colonies’ economy; and disputes over rights

and freedoms, which eventually let to the creation of the American Constitution, central

government, and its policy in the West.

A. The Departure of about 80,000 loyalists (from a group of about half a million) was perhaps the

most immediate consequence of the war. Since the loyalist exiles came disproportionately

from the top tier of American society, their departure enhanced democratizing tendencies of

the Revolution in two ways.

1. It removed the most conservative element in American society, as a result of which, all

subsequent discussions about American politics accepted the fundamental premises of the

Revolution.

2. It created an opportunity for many middle class Americans to rise to power.

B. The economic consequences of the war were highly disruptive. Trade with Britain and the

British West Indies was cut off and remained so after the war, ruining many merchants and

devastating commerce. The search for solutions to the postwar depression produced two

contrasting visions for the US political economy.

1. The economy based on a strong national government that would actively advance

commerce and protect private property; a vision advocated by commercial-minded

moderates in Congress

2. A political economy based on a weaker central government, a more localized democracy,

and a hands-off approach to the economy envisioned by republican radicals.

C. The dispute about how best to preserve the gains of the Revolution that developed between the

moderates and the radicals also involved social and political issues. It centered on three large

questions—about the rights of women, slaves, and Indians—each of which challenged the pre-

Revolutionary social order.

D. By the end of the war the disfranchisement of women seemed to many at odds with the

egalitarian ideals of the Revolution. Although Congress eventually denied vote to women, the

revolution expanded Americans’ views about women’s intellectual and political capabilities.

E. Even more at odds with the revolutionary ethos was slavery. A combination of revolutionary

ideals of freedom and African-American activism presented a significant challenge to white

Americans, and they were able to meet it in part. Slavery was eliminated in the North,

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 4

forbidden in the West, and questioned in the upper South. Yet, it survived in every state south

of New Jersey.

1. Every state north of Delaware eliminated slavery, either in their constitutions or through

gradual emancipation laws.

2. Soon after the war, in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, slavery was prohibited in the

Northwest Territory—the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

3. In the states of the upper South—Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware—legislatures passed

laws making it easier to emancipate slaves.

4. Revolutionary ideals of freedom made slaveholders uncomfortable with the institution, but

since the wealth of the South rested upon slavery, it remained central to the economy of the

lower South.

VII. Following 1783 the two key challenges facing the new nation were establishing effective

American government in the West, and establishing the national government over the 13 colonies.

The solution to the first issue was the Northwest Ordinance; to the second—the Constitution.

A. The Northwest Ordinance, ratified by Congress in 1787, resolved jurisdictional disputes

among the states and claims among speculators regarding the frontier lands.

1. It set out a system for surveying and selling the Northwest Territory.

2. It set out a model of government for the western territories and established a process for

the admission of new states into the nation on an equal footing with the original States:

territories would be eligible to apply for statehood once they had 60,000 free inhabitants.

3. It forbade slavery north of the Ohio River—the first time in America that a line had been

drawn saying that henceforth no slaves could be taken into a particular region.

4. It spelled out several important principles that would all appear again in the Constitution

and Bill of Rights.

VIII. The American Constitution was ratified by Congress in 1787, by the states in 1788, and came

into effect from 1789. It is the oldest and the shortest (4,400 words) written constitution of any

government in the world. It was forged in a debate between the nationalists who wanted to create a

stronger central government, and the localists who feared that it would subvert liberty.

A. The Constitution was written and ratified by an amazingly young group, with most delegates in

Congress in their thirties and forties. It was the creation of a small group of men who thought

nationally. Yet, it had to be ratified by a nation that still thought about government in wholly

local terms.

B. The Philadelphia Convention decided that the Constitution would go into effect once at least

nine states had ratified it.

C. As the Federalists had to explain the Constitution in terms that would make sense to skeptical

Americans, and as the Antifederalists tried to explain what they thought was wrong with it, a

new understanding of what American government should be was crafted.

F. The last big question that the new nation faced concerned its policy in the West. Since

throughout the war Indians all along the frontier had been drawn into the struggle, most often

on the British side, after the war American retaliation was horrifying. Settlers moved in and

Congress forced Indians to sign treaties ceding their land. Most Indians refused to honor these

agreements and years of struggle ensued.

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