Description
Question:
” The American Revolution can be divided into two phases. The first of these phases lasted from roughly 1763-1776. During that period the American colonists began realizing what their “inherent rights and privileges” as Englishmen were and began protesting what they felt were the violations of these “rights and privileges.” The second phase lasted from roughly 1776 to 1789. During this period the actual war was fought with the British and the above “inherent rights and privileges” were reexamined and redefined.” Discuss. You would do well to include in your discussion a judgment as to whether the American Revolution was conservative, preservative or radical in nature. Do NOT go beyond 1783 in this essay. Do NOT discuss the several issues leading to the drafting and ratification of the United States Constitution.
The essay should contain
1) statement-what do you think the quote mean
2) Do you agree or disagree
3) Why do you agree or disagree.
-Please write this in essay format with introduction, body paragraph and conclusion
I attached reading materials which have answers in it. please actually read though the question (the purpose of this essay) and readings to answer.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AN AFTERMATH OF THE GREAT WAR FOR THE EMPIRE, 1754-1763
G REAT wars in modern times have too frequently been the breeders of revolution. The exhausting armed struggles in which France became engaged in the latter half of the eighteenth century led as directly to the French Revolution as did the First World War to the Russian Revolu- tion; it may be said as truly that the American Revolution was an aftermath of the Anglo-French conflict in the New World carried on between 1754 and 1763. This is by no means to deny that other factors were involved in the launching of these revolutionary movements. Before proceeding with an analysis of the theme of this paper, however, it would be well to consider the wording of the title given to it.* Words may be used either to disguise or to distort facts as well as to clarify them, but the chief task of the historian is to illuminate the past. He is faced, therefore, with the responsi- bility of using only such words as will achieve this broad ob- jective of his calling and to reject those that obscure or defeat it. For this reason ” the French and Indian War “, as a term descriptive of the conflict to which we have just referred, has been avoided in this essay as well as in the writer’s series on the British Empire before the American Revolution. This has been done in spite of the fact that it has been employed by most Americans ever since the early days of our Republic and there- fore has the sanction of long usage as well as the sanction of American national tradition assigning, as does the latter, to the Revolutionary War a position of such commanding importance as to make all other events in American history, preceding as well as following it, quite subordinate to it. In contrast to this traditional interpretation of our history one may affirm that the Anglo-French conflict settled nothing less than the incom-
[86]
* This paper was read before the colonial history section of the American His- torical Association in December 1948 at the Annual Meeting held in Washington.
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 87
parably vital question as to what civilization-what complex cultural patterns, what political institutions-would arise in the great Mississippi basin and the valleys of the rivers draining it, a civilization, whatever it might be, surely destined to expand to the Pacific seaboard and finally to dominate the North Amer- ican continent. The determination of this crucial issue is per- haps the most momentous event in the life of the English- speaking people in the New World and quite overshadows in importance both the Revolutionary War and the later Civil War, events which, it is quite clear, were each contingent upon the outcome of the earlier crisis. A struggle of such proportions, involving tremendous stakes, deserves a name accurately descriptive of its place in the history of the English-speaking people, and the title ” the French and Indian War “, as suggested, in no way fulfills this need. For the war was not, as the name would seem to imply, a conflict largely between English and French New World colonials and their Indian allies, nor was it localized in North America to the extent that the name would appear to indicate. In contrast, it was waged both before and after an open declaration of war by the British and French nations with all their resourcesf or nine years on three oceans, and much of the land washed by the waters of them, and it ultimately brought in both Spain, allied to France, and Portugal, allied to Great Britain. While it in- volved, it is true, as the name would connote, wilderness fight- ing, yet of equal, if not of greater, importance in assessing its final outcome was the pouring forth of Britain’s financial re- sources in a vast program of shipbuilding, in the equipment and support of the British and colonial armies and the royal navy, and in the subsidization both of allies on the European conti- nent and of the colonies in America. If it also involved the reduction of the fortress of Louisbourg, Fort Niagara, Fort Du- quesne, Quebec and Montreal in North America, each in turn to fall to British regulars aided by American provincial troops, these successes, of great significance, were, in fact, really con- tingent upon the resounding British naval victories in the Medi- terranean, off the Strait of Gibraltar, in the Bay of Biscay, and elsewhere, that brought about the virtual extinction of the French navy and merchant marine and thereby presented to
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
88 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV
France-seeking to supply her forces in Canada and elsewhere with adequate reinforcements and materiel-a logistical problem so insoluble as to spell the doom of her North American empire and of her possessions in India and elsewhere. If the term ” the French and Indian Wars” meets none of the requirements of accurate historical nomenclature, neither does the term ” the Seven Years’ War “-a name appropriately enough employed by historians to designate the mighty conflict that raged for seven years in Germany before its conclusion in the Treaty of Hubertusburg in 1763. The principals in this war were Prussia, allied with Great Britain, Hanover, Brunswick and Hesse, facing Austria, most of the Holy Roman Empire, Russia and Sweden, all allied with France and receiving sub- sidies from her. Although George II, as King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover, in the treaty of 1758 with Frederick of Prussia, promised not to conclude peace without mutual agreement with the latter, and although large subsidies were annually paid to Prussia as well as to the other continental allies out of the British treasury and troops were also sent to Germany, it must be emphasized that these aids were designed primarily for the protection of the King’s German Electorate. In other words, the British alliance in no way supported the objectives of the Prussian King, when he suddenly began the German war in 1756 by invading Saxony-two years after the beginning of the Anglo-French war. In this connection it should be borne in mind that throughout the Seven Years’ War in Germany Great Britain remained at peace with both Russia and Sweden and refused therefore to send a fleet into the Baltic in spite of the demands of Frederick that this be done; nor were British land troops permitted to assist him against Austria, but only to help form a protective shield for Hanover against the thrusts of the French armies. For the latter were determinedn ot only. to overrun the Electorate-something that they succeededi n doing -but to hold it as a bargainingp oint to be used at the conclu- sion of hostilities with Great Britain, a feat, however, beyond their power of accomplishment. Closely related and intertwined as were the two wars, they were, nevertheless, distinct in their beginning and distinct in ther termination.
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. I] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 89
Indeed, while British historians at length were led to adopt the nomenclature applied by German and other continental historians to all hostilities that took place between 1754 and 1763 in both the Old and New Worlds, American historians,b y and large in the past, have rejected, and rightly so, it seems,t he name ” the Seven Years’ War ” to designate specifically the struggle during these years in North America with the fate of that continent at stake; so likewise many of them have rejected, as equally inadmissible, the name ” the French and Indian War “. Instead, the late Professor Osgood employed the title ” the Fourth Intercolonial War “, surely not a good one; George Bancroft called the war ” the American Revolution: First Phase “, still more inaccurate in some respects than the names he sought to avoid; Francis Parkman, with the flare of a romanti- cist, was at first inclined to call it “the Old French War” but finally, under the influence of the great-man-in-history thesis, gave to his two remarkable volumes concerned with it the totally misleading name, Montcalm and Wolfe; finally, John Fiske, the philosopher-historian, as luminous in his views as he was apt to be careless in the details of historical scholarship, happily fastened upon the name ” the Great War”. In the series on the British Empire before the American Revolution the writer has built upon Fiske’s title and has called it ” the Great War for the Empire” in order to emphasize not only the fact that the war was a very great conflict both in its scope and in its lasting effects, as Fiske saw it with clearness, but also, as a war entered into specifically for the defense of the British Em- pire, that it was by far the most important ever waged by Great Britain to this end. It may be pointed out that later charges,e specially by Amer- ican writers, that the war was begun by Great Britain with less worthy motives in mind, are not supported by the great mass of state papers and the private correspondence of British states- men responsible for making the weighty decisions at the time- materials now available to the student which the writer has attempted to analyze in detail in the two volumes of his series that appeared under the title of Zones of International Friction, 1748-1754. In other words, the idea that the war was started
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
90 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV
as the result of European balance-of-power politics or by British mercantilists for the purpose of destroying a commercial rival and for conquering Canada and the French West Indies, and for expelling the French from India, rather than for the much more limited and legitimate objective of affording the colonies and particularly the new province of Nova Scotia and the Old Dominion of Virginia protection against the aggressive aims of France, must be dismissed by students brought face to face with impressive evidence to the contrary. The development of the war into one for the military mas- tery of the North American continent came with the growing conviction on the part of the British ministers that nothing short of this drastic step would realize the primary aims of the government in arriving at the determination, as the result of appeals from the colonies for assistance, to challenge the right of French troops to be planted well within the borders of the Nova Scotia peninsula and at the forks of the Ohio. One may go as far as to state that the acquisition of Canada-as an ob- jective sought by mercantilists to contribute to the wealth of Great Britain-would have seemed fantastic to any contempo- rary who had the slightest knowledge of the tremendous financial drain that that great possession had been on the treasury of the French King for over a century before 1754. Moreover, the motives that ultimately led, after much searching of heart, to its retention after its conquest by Great Britain were not commercial but strategic and had primarily in view the security and welfare generally of the older American colonies. In view of these facts, not to be confused with surmises, the name ” the Great War for the Empire ” seems to the writer not only not inappropriate but among all the names heretofore ap- plied to the war in question by far the most suitable that can be used by one concerned with the history of the old British Empire, who seeks earnestly to maintain that standard of exact- ness in terminology, as well as in other respects, which the public has a right to demand of him. The description just given of the motives that led to the Great War for the Empire, nevertheless, runs counter, as sug- gested, to American national tradition and most history that has
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 91
been written by American historians in harmony with it. This tradition had a curious beginning. It arose partly out of Pitt’s zealous efforts to energize the colonies to prosecute the war most actively; but there also was another potent factor involved in its creation. Before the conclusion of hostilities in 1763 certain powerful commercial interests-centered particularly at New- port, Rhode Island, Boston, New York City, and to a less extent in Philadelphia-in a desire to continue an enormously lucrative trade with the French West Indies, and therefore with the enemy, all in the face of Pitt’s determination to keep supplies from the French armed forces operating in the New World, began to express themselves in terms that implied that the war was peculiarly Great Britain’s war and only incidentally one that concerned her colonies and that the French, really friendly to the aspirations of British colonials, were opposed only to the mercantilistic ambitions of the mother country. By 1766-just twelve years after the beginning of the war and three years after its termination-this extraordinary tradition had become so well established that Benjamin Franklin, astonishingly enough, could actually assert in his examination before a committee of the House of Commons:
I know the last war is commonly spoke of here as entered into for the defence, or for the sake of the people of America; I think it is quite misunderstood. It began about the limits between Canada and Nova Scotia, about territories to which the crown indeed laid claim, but were not claimed by any British colony …. We had therefore no particularc oncern or interest in that dispute. As to the Ohio, the contest there began about your right of trading in the Indian country, a right you had by the Treaty of Utrecht, which the French infringed … they took a fort which a company of your merchants, and their factors and correspond- ents, had erected there to secure that trade. Braddockw as sent with an army to retake that fort . . . and to protect your trade. It was not until after his defeat that the colonies were attacked. They were before in perfect peace with both French and Indians..
By the beginning of 1768 the tradition had been so extended that John Dickinson-voicing the popular American view in
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
92 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXY
his highly important Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, No. VIII-felt that he not only could affirm, as did Franklin, that the war was strictly Britain’s war and fought for selfish purposes, but could even insist that the acquisition of territory in North America as the result of it ” is greatly injurious to these colonies” and that they therefore were not under the slightest obligation to the mother country. But to return to the last phases of the Great War for the Em- pire. The British customs officials-spurred into unusual activ- ity in the face of Pitt’s demand for the strict enforcement of the Trade and Navigation Acts in order to break up the perni- cious practice of bringing aid and comfort to the enemy-were led to employ writs of assistance for the purpose of laying their hands upon goods landed in American ports and secured in ex- change for American provisions sent for the most part either directly or indirectly to the French West Indies. Although in the midst of hostilities, most of the merchants in Boston showed bitter opposition to the writs and equally ardent support of James Otis’ declaration made in open court in 1761 that Parlia- ment, acting within the limits of the constitution, was powerless to extend the use of these writs to America, whatever its au- thority might be in Great Britain. The importance of this dec- laration lies not so much in its immediate effect but rather in the fact that it was indicative of the line of attack that not only Otis would subsequently follow but also the Adamses, Hawley, Hancock, and other popular leaders in the Bay colony during the developing crisis, in the laying down of constitutional re- strictions upon the power of Parliament to legislate for America. Further, it is clear that, even before the Great War for the Em- pire had been terminated, there were those in the province who had begun to view Great Britain as the real enemy rather than France. Just as definitely as was the issue over writs of assistance re- lated to the war under consideration was that growing out of the twopenny acts of the Virginia Assembly. In search of funds for maintaining the frontier defensive forces under the com- mand of Colonel George Washington, the Assembly was led to pass in 1755 and 1758 those highly questionable laws as favor-
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 93
able to the tobacco planters as they were indefensively unjust to the clergy. Even assuming the fact that these laws were war measures, and therefore in a sense emergency measures, it was inconceivable that the Privy Council would permit so palpable a violation of contractual relations as they involved. The royal disallowance of the laws in question opened the way for Patrick Henry, the year that hostilities were terminated by the Peace of Paris, not only to challenge in the Louisa County courthouse the right of the King in Council to refuse to approve any law that a colony might pass that in its judgment was a good law, but to affirmt hat such refusal was nothing less than an act of tyranny on the part of the King. It was thus resentment at- the overturning of Virginia war legislation that led to this attack upon the judicial authority of review by the Crown-an au- thority exercised previously without serious protest for over a century. It should also be noted that the Henry thesis helped to lay the foundation for the theory of the equality of colonial laws with those passed by Parliament, a theory of the constitu- tion of the empire that most Americanl eaders in 1774 had come to accept in arguing that if the King could no longer exercise a veto over the acts of the legislature of Great Britain, it was unjust that he should do so over those of the colonial assemblies. But the most fateful aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, with respect to the maintenanceo f the historic connec- tion between the mother country and the colonies, grew out of the problem of the control and support not only of the vast trans-Appalachian interior, the right to which was now con- firmed by treaty to Great Britain, but of the new acquisitions in North America secured from France and Spain. Under the terms of the royal Proclamationo f 1763, French Canada to the east of the Great Lakes was organized as the Province of Que- bec; most of old Spanish Florida became the Province of East Florida; and those areas, previously held by Spain as well as by France to the west of the Apalachicola and to the east of New Orleans and its immediate environs, became the Province of West Florida. The Proclamation indicated that proper induce- ments would be offered British and other Protestants to estab- lish themselves in these new provinces. With respect to the
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
94 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV
trans-Appalachian region, however, it created there a temporary but vast Indian reserve by laying down as a barrier the crest of the mountains beyond which there should be no white settle- ment except by specific permission of the Crown. The Proclamation has been represented not only as a blunder, the result largely of carelessness and ignorance on the part of those responsible for it, but also as a cynical attempt by the British ministry to embody mercantilistic principles in an Amer- ican land policy that in itself ran counter to the charter limits of many of the colonies and the interests in general of the colo- nials. Nevertheless, this view of the Proclamation fails to take into account the fact that it was the offspring of the war and that the trans-Appalachian aspects of it were an almost inevi- table result of promises made during the progress of hostilities. For both in the Treaty of Easton in 1758 with the Ohio Valley Indians, a treaty ratified by the Crown, and in the asseverations of such military leaders as Colonel Bouquet, these Indians were assured that they would be secure in their trans-Appalachian lands as a reward for deserting their allies, the French. As a sign of good faith, the lands lying within the bounds of Penn- sylvania to the west of the mountains, purchased by the Proprie- tors from the Six Nations in 1754, were solemnly released. Thus committed in honor in the course of the war, what could the Cabinet Council at its termination do other than it finally did in the Proclamation of 1763? But this step not only was in opposition to the interests of such groups of land speculators as, for example, the Patrick Henry group in Virginia and the Richard Henderson group in North Carolina, both of whom boldly ignored the Proclamation in negotiating with the Cher- okee Indians for land grants, but also led to open defiance of this imperial regulation by frontiersmen who, moving beyond the mountains by the thousands, proceeded to settle within the Indian reserve-some on lands previously occupied before the beginning of the late war or before the great Indian revolt in 1763, and others on new lands. The Proclamation line of 1763 might have become an issue, indeed a most formidable one, between the government of Great Britain and the colonials, had not the former acquiesced in the
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1I] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 9 5
inevitable and confirmed certain Indian treaties that provided for the transfer of much of the land which had been the par- ticular object of quest on the part of speculators and of those moving westward from the settled areas to establish new homes. Such were the treaties of Hard Labor, Fort Stanwix, Lochaber, and the modification of the last-named by the Donelson agree- ment with the Cherokees in 1771. Nor did the regulation of the trans-Appalachian Indian trade create serious colonial irri- tation, especially in view of the failure of the government to implement the elaborate Board of Trade plan drawn up in 1764. The same, however, cannot be said of the program put forward by the ministry and accepted by Parliament for securing the means to maintain order and provide protection for this vast area and the new acquisitions to the north and south of it. Theoretically, it would have been possible for the government of Great Britain to have dropped onto the lap of the old conti- nental colonies the entire responsibility for maintaining garrisons at various strategic points in North America-in Canada, about the Great Lakes, in tlhe Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and in East and West Florida. In spite, however, of assertions made by some prominent colonials, such as Franklin, in 1765 and 1766, that the colonies would be able and were willing to take up the burden of providing for the defense of America, this, under the circumstances, was utterly chimerical, involving, as it would have, not only a vast expenditure of funds but highly compli- cated inter-colonial arrangements, even in the face of the m-ost serious inter-colonial rivalry such as that between Pennsylvania and Virginia respecting the control of the upper Ohio Valley. The very proportions of the task were an insuperable obstacle to leaving it to the colonies; and the colonies, moreover, would have been faced by another impediment almost as difficult to surmount-the utter aversion of Americans of the eighteenth century, by and large, to the dull routine of garrison duty. This was emphasized by the Massachusetts Bay Assembly in 1755 in its appeal to the government of Great Britain after Braddock’s defeat to send regulars to man the frontier forts of that province; the dispatches of Colonel George Washington in 1756 and in 1757 respecting the shameful desertion of militia-
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
96 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV
men, ordered to hold the chain of posts on the western frontier of Virginia in order to check the frightful French and Indian raids, support this position, as does the testimony in 1757 of Governor Lyttelton of South Carolina, who made clear that the inhabitants of that colony were not at all adapted to this type of work. The post-war task of garrison duty was clearly one to be assumed by regulars held to their duty under firm disci- pline and capable of being shifted from one strategic point to another as circumstances might require. Further, to be effec- tive, any plan for the defense of the new possessions and the trans-Appalachian region demanded unity of command, some- thing the colonies could not provide. Manifestly this could be done only through the instrumentalities of the mother country. The British ministry, thus confronted with the problem of guaranteeing the necessary security for the extended empire in North America, which it was estimated would involve the an- nual expenditure of from three to four hundred thousand pounds for the maintenance of ten thousand troops-according to various estimates made by General Amherst and others in 1764 and to be found among the Shelburne Papers-was im- pelled to raise the question: Should not the colonials be expected to assume some definite part of the cost of this? In view of the fact that it was felt not only that they were in a position to do so but that the stability of these outlying possessions wa a matter of greater concern and importance generally to them, by reason of their proximity, than to the people of the mother country three thousand miles away, the answer was in the affirmative. The reason for this is not hard to fathom. The nine years of war had involved Britons in tremendous expenditures. In spite of very heavy taxation during these years, the people were left saddled at the termination of hostilities with a national debt of unprecedented proportions for that day and age of over one hundred and forty million pounds. It was necessary not only to service and to retire this debt, in so far as was possible, but also to meet the ordinary demands of the civil government and to maintain the navy at a point of strength that would offer some assurance that France and Spain would have no desire in the future to plan a war to recover their territorial losses. In
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 97
addition to all this, there was now the problem of meeting the charges necessary for keeping the new possessions in North America under firm military control for their internal good order and for protection from outside interference. It may be noted that before the war the British budget had called for average annual expenditures of six and a half million pounds; between the years 1756 and 1766 these expenditures mounted to fourteen and a half million pounds a year on the average and from the latter date to 1775 ranged close to ten million pounds. As a result, the annual per capita tax in Great Britain, from 1763 to 1775, without considering local rates, was many times the average annual per capita tax in even those American colonies that made the greatest contribution to the Great War for the Empire, such as MassachusettsB ay and Con- necticut-without reference to those colonies that had done little or nothing in this conflict, and therefore had accumulated little in the way of a war debt, such as Maryland and Georgia. The student of the history of the old British Empire, in fact, should accept with great reserve statements to the contrary- some of them quite irresponsible in nature-made by Americans during the heat of the controversy, with respect to the nature of the public burdens they were obliged to carry in the years pre- ceding the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. In this connec- tion a study of parliamentary reimbursement of colonial war expenses from 1756 to 1763 in its relation to public debts in America between the years 1763 and 1775 is most revealing. As to American public finance, all that space will here permit is to state that there is abundant evidence to indicate that, during the five-year period preceding the outbreak of the Revolution- ary War, had the inhabitants of any of the thirteen colonies, which therefore included those of Massachusetts Bay and Vir- ginia, been taxed in one of these years at the average high per capita rate that the British people were taxed from 1760 to 1775, the proceeds of that one year’s tax not only would have taken care of the ordinary expenditures of the colony in question for that year but also would have quite liquidated its war debt, so little of which remained in any of the colonies by 1770. Well may John Adams have admitted in 1780 what was equally true
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
98 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV
in 1770: “America is not used to great taxes, and the people there are not yet disciplined to such enormous taxation as in England.” Assuming, as did the Grenville ministry in 1764, the justice of expecting the Americans to share in the cost of policing the new possessions in North America, the simplest and most ob- vious way, it might appear, to secure this contribution to a com- mon end so important to both Americans and Britons was to request the colonial governments to make definite grants of funds. This was the requisition or quota system that had been employed in the course of the recent war. But the most obvious objections to it were voiced that same year by Benjamin Frank- lin, who, incidentally, was to reverse himself the following year in conferring with Grenville as the Pennsylvania London agent. In expressing confidentially his personal, rather than any official, views to his friend Richard Jackson on June 25, 1764 he declared: “Quota’s would be difficult to settle at first with Equality, and would, if they could be made equal at first, soon become unequal, and never would be satisfactory.” Indeed, ex- perience with this system in practice, as a settled method of guaranteeing even the minimum essential resources for the end in view, had shown its weakness and utter unfairness. If it could not work equitably even in war time, could it be expected to work in peace? It is, therefore, not surprising that this method of securing even a portion of the funds required for North American security should have been rejected in favor of some plan that presented better prospects of a definite American revenue. The plan of last resort to the ministry was therefore to ask Parliament to act. That Grenville, however, was aware that serious objections might be raised against any direct taxation of the colonials by the government of Great Britain is indicated by the caution with which he approached the solution of the problem of securing from America about a third of the total cost of its defense. The so-called Sugar Act first of all was passed at his request. This provided for import duties on cer- tain West Indian and other products. Colonial import duties imposed by Parliament, at least since 1733, were no innovation.
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 99
But the anticipated yield of these duties fell far short of the de- sired one hundred thousand pounds. He therefore, in intro- ducing the bill for the above Act, raisedt he question of a stamp duty but requested postponement of parliamentary action until the colonial governments had been consulted. The latter were thereupon requested to make any suggestions for ways of rais- ing an American fund that might seem more proper to the people than such a tax. Further, it would appear-at least, according to various London advices published in Franklin and Hall’s Pennsylvania Gazette-that proposals were seriously considered by the Cabinet Council during the fall of 1764 for extending to the colonies representation in Parliament through the election of members to the House of Commons by various colonial assemblies. However, it is quite clear that by the beginning of 1765 any such proposals, as seem to have been under deliberation by the ministry, had been put aside when Grenville at length had become convinced that representation in Parliament was neither actively sought nor even desired by Americans. For the South Carolina Commons House of As- sembly went strongly on record against this idea in September 1764 and was followed by the Virginia House of Burgesses in December. In fact, when in the presence of the London colonial agents the minister had outlined the objections raised by Amer- icans to the idea of such representation, no one of them, includ- ing Franklin, was prepared to deny the validity of these objec- tions. That he was not mistaken in the opposition of Americans at large to sending members to Parliament, in spite of the advo- cacy of this by James Otis, is clear in the resolutions passed both by other colonial assemblies than the ones to which reference has been made and by the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. Indeed, in 1768 the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay went so far in its famous Circular Letter framed in opposition to the Townshend duties as to make clear that the people of that col- ony actually preferred taxation by Parliament without represen- tation to such taxation with representation. When-in view of the failure of the colonial governments to suggest any practicable, alternate plan for making some contri- bution to the post-war defensive program in North America-
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
100 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV
Grenville finally urged in Parliament the passage of an Amer- ican stamp bill, he acted on an unwarranted assumption. This assumption was-in paraphrasing the minister’s remarks to the colonial agents in 1765-that opposition to stamp taxes, for the specific purpose in mind, would disappear in America both in light of the benefits such provision would bring to colonials in general and by reason of the plain justice of the measure itself; and that, in place of opposition, an atmosphere of mutual good- will would be generated by a growing recognition on the part of Americans that they could trust the benevolence of the mother country to act with fairness to all within the empire. Instead, with the news of the passage of the act, cries of British tyranny and impending slavery soon resounded throughout the entire eastern Atlantic American seaboard. What would have been the fate of the empire had Grenville remained in office to attempt to enforce the act, no one can say. But as members of the opposition to the Rockingham ministry, he and his brother, Earl Temple, raised their voices-one as a commoner, the other as a peer-in warning that the American colonies would inevi- tably be lost to the empire should Parliament be led to repeal the act in the face of colonial resistance and the pressure of British merchants. Had Parliament determined, in spite of violence and threats of violence, to enforce the act, it might have meant open rebellion and civil war, ten years before it actually oc- curred. Instead, this body decided to yield and, in spite of the passing of the so-called Declaratory Act setting forth its funda- mental powers to legislate on all matters relating to the empire, suffered a loss of prestige in the New World that was never to be regained. But the Stamp Act was not the sole object of attack by colo- nials. To many of them not only the Sugar Act of 1764 but the whole English pre-war trade and navigation system was equally, if not actually more, obnoxious. Indeed, the unusual energy displayed by the navy and the customs officials, spurred into action by Pitt during the latter years of the war-bringing with it the condemnation in courts of vice-admiralty of many American vessels whose owners were guilty of serious trade violations, if not greater crimes-generated a degree of antago- nism against the whole body of late seventeenth- and early
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 101
eighteenth-century restrictions on commercial intercourse such as never had previously existed. It is not without significance that the greatest acts of terrorism and destruction during the great riot of August 1765 in Boston were directed not against the Massachusetts Bay stamp distributor but against those officials responsible for encouraging and supporting the en- forcement, during the late war, of the various trade acts passed long before its beginning in 1754. The hatred also of the Rhode Island merchants, as a group, against the restrictions of the navigation system as well as against the Sugar Act of 1764, remained constant. Moreover, in December 1766 most of the New York merchants, over two hundred in number, showed their repugnance to the way that this system was functioning by a strongly worded petition to the House of Commons in which they enumerated an impressive list of grievances that they asked to be redressed. Even Chatham, the great friend of America, regarded their petition ” highly improper: in point of time most absurd, in the extent of their pretensions, most ex- cessive; and in the reasoning, most grossly fallacious and offen- sive.” In fact, all the leading men in Great Britain supported the system of trade restrictions. Nevertheless, the determinationo f the government-in view especially of the great financial burdens that the late war had placed upon the mother country-to enforce it now much more effectively than had been done before 1754, and to that end in 1767 to pass appropriate legislation in order to secure funds from the colonies by way of import duties so that public officials in America might be held to greater accountability when paid their salaries by the Crown, could have only one result: the com- bined resistance of those, on the one hand, opposed to any type of taxation that Parliament might apply to America and of those, on the other, desiring to free the colonies of hampering trade restrictions. The suggestion on the part of the Continental Congress in 1774 that Americans would uphold the British navigation sys- tem, if exempted from parliamentary taxation, while a shrewd gesture to win support in England, had really, it would seem, no other significance. For it is utterly inconceivable that the Con- gress itself, or the individual colonial governments, could have
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
102 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV set up machinery capable of preventing violations of the system at will on the part of those whose financial interests were ad- versely affected by its operation. Moreover, it is obvious that, by the time the news had reached America that Lord North’s ministry had secured the passage of the coercive acts-for the most part directed against Massachusetts Bay for the defiant de- struction of the East India Company’s tea-leading colonials, among them Franklin, had arrived at the conclusion that Parlia- ment possessed powers so very limited with respect to the empire that without the consent of the local assemblies it could pass neither constitutional nor fiscal legislation that affected Amer- icans and the framework of their governments. It is equally obvious that this represented a most revolutionary position when contrasted with that held by Franklin and the other delegates to the Albany Congress twenty years earlier. For it was in 1754 that the famous Plan of Union was drawn up there and ap- proved by the Congress-a plan based upon the view that Par- liament, and not the Crown, had supreme authority within the empire, an authority that alone was adequate in view of framers of the Plan to bring about fundamental changes in the consti- tutions of the colonies in order legally to clothe the proposed union government with adequate fiscal as well as other powers. In accounting for the radical change in attitude of many leading colonials between the years 1754 and 1774 respecting the nature of the constitution of the empire, surely among the factors that must be weighed was the truly overwhelming vic- tory achieved in the Great War for the Empire. This victory not only freed colonials for the first time in the history of the English-speaking people in the New World from dread of the French, their Indian allies, and the Spaniards, but, what is of equal significance, opened up to them the prospect, if given freedom of action, of a vast growth of power and wealth with an amazing westward expansion. Indeed, it is abundantly clear that a continued subordination of the colonies to the govern- ment of Great Britain was no longer considered an asset in the eyes of many Americans by 1774, as it had been so judged by them to be in 1754, but rather an onerous liability. What, pray tell, had the debt-ridden mother country to offer in 1774 to the now geographically secure, politically mature, prosperous,
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
No. 1] AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS AFTERMATH 103
dynamic, and self-reliant offspring along the Atlantic seaboard, except the dubious opportunity of accepting new, as well as retaining old, burdens? And these burdens would have to be borne in order to lighten somewhat the great financial load that the taxpayers of Great Britain were forced to carry by reason of obligations the nation had assumedb oth in the course of the late war and at its termination. If many Americans thought they had a perfect right to profit personally by trading with the enemy in time of war, how much more deeply must they have resented in time of peace the seriouse fforts made by the home government to enforce the elaborate restrictions on commercial intercourse? Again, if, even after the defeat of Colonel Washington at Great Meadowsi n 1754, colonials such as Franklin were opposed to paying any tax levied by Parliament for establishing a fund for the defense of North America, how much more must they have been inclined to oppose such taxa- tion to that end with the passing in 1763 of the great interna- tional crisis? At this point the question must be frankly faced: If France had won the war decisively and thereby consolidated her position and perfected her claims in Nova Scotia, as well as to the south- ward of the St. Lawrence, in the Great Lakes region, and in the Ohio and Mississippiv alleys, is it at all likely that colonials would have made so fundamental a constitutional issue of the extension to them of the principle of the British stamp tax? Would they have resisted such a tax had Parliament imposed it in order to provide on an equitableb asis the maximum resources for guaranteeing their safety, at a time when they were faced on their highly restricted borders by a militant, victorious en- emy having at its command thousands of ferocious redskins? Again, accepting the fact of Britain’s victory, is it not reason- able to believe that, had Great Britain at the close of the tri- umphant war left Canada to France and carefully limited her territorial demands in North America to those comparatively modest objectives that she had in mind at its beginning, there would have been no very powerful movement within the fore- seeable future toward complete colonial autonomy-not to mention American independence? Would not Americans have continued to feel the need as in the past to rely for their safety
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
104 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY [VOL. LXV
and welfare upon British sea power and British land power, as well as upon British resources generally? In other words, was Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts Bay far mis- taken when, in analyzing the American situation late in 1773, he affirmed in writing to the Earl of Dartmouth:
Before the peace [of 17631 I thought nothing so much to be desireda s the cession of Canada. I am now convinced that if it had remainedt o the French none of the spirit of oppositiont o the Mother Country would have yet appeared& I think the effects of it [that is, the cession of Canada] worse than all we had to fear from the French or Indians.
In conclusion, it may be said that it would be idle to deny that most colonials in the eighteenth century at one time or an- other felt strongly the desire for freedom of action in a wider variety of ways than was legally permitted before 1754. In- deed, one can readily uncover these strong impulses even in the early part of the seventeenth century. Yet Americans were, by and large, realists, as were the British, and under the functioning of the imperial system from, let us say, 1650 to 1750 great mu- tual advantages were enjoyed, with a fair division, taking every- thing into consideration, of the financial burdens necessary to support the system. However, the mounting Anglo-French rivalry in North America from 1750 onward, the outbreak of hostilities in 1754, and the subsequent nine years of fighting destroyed the old equilibrium, leaving the colonials after 1760 in a highly favored position in comparison with the taxpayers of Great Britain. Attempts on the part of the Crown and Par- liament to restore by statute the old balance led directly to the American constitutional crisis, out of which came the Revolu- tionary War and the establishment of American independence. Such, ironically, was the aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, a war that Britons believed, as the Earl of Shelburne affirmed in 1762 in Parliament, was begun for the ” security of the British colonies in N. America….
LAWRENCE HENRY GrPSON
LEHIGH UNIVERSITY
This content downloaded from 129.120.46.33 on Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:13:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
