The years 1763-1774 saw the rise of colonial opposition to British claims, marked by a series of laws of a fiscal nature, quickly repealed by the central power. American resistance to London's mercantilism and fiscal policy sometimes degenerated into episodic, yet unthreatening, riots and revolts.
Consequences of the Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) opposed the European powers and emptied the coffers of the British Crown. By the end of the conflict, Britain's war-related debt stood at £317,000,000. Lord Jeffery Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Forces in North America, estimated that 10,000 troops would be needed to keep the peace in the newly acquired territories. The government therefore decided to keep an army of several thousand men in the colonies, the cost of which was around £300,000 a year. While the Thirteen Colonies were prosperous, Britain was undergoing an economic crisis. London decided that part of the war costs and the maintenance of the troops would be borne by the American colonists.
The royal proclamation of 1763 had three main objectives:to organize the British colonial empire in North America and to pacify relations with the Amerindians, especially after the revolt of Pontiac in order to avoid land speculation. The Proclamation was intended to allay Indian fears of a massive influx of white peasants into their territories. “La Frontière” attracted migrants in search of land like the Scots followed by the Germans. Soil depletion east of the Appalachian Mountains and population pressure accentuated the colonists' hunger for land.
The Proclamation of George III prohibited residents of the Thirteen Colonies from settling and buying land west of the Appalachians. The Crown reserved part of the American timber as well as the monopoly in the acquisition of Indian lands; it guaranteed the protection of the Indian peoples. London had planned the construction of British forts along the colonization boundary; this device was to allow the respect of the Proclamation but also to promote the trade of furs with the Indians. The British government believed that these outposts provided defense for the Thirteen Colonies and therefore funded by the colonists.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 aroused the discontent of American settlers who had already settled in these Indian territories. They were to surrender the land and return to the Thirteen Colonies. Some were convinced that the king was trying to confine them to the coastal strip in order to better control them. The colonists refused to finance the construction and maintenance of the royal outposts on the line defined by the Proclamation. The eviction of the French from Canada in 1763 ensured the security of the thirteen colonies which no longer felt they needed British military protection. The Americans found it difficult to support the British standing armies in the colonies, when peace had returned; the presence of troops was seen as an instrument of British tyranny.
Laws
On April 5, 1764, the British Parliament passed the Sugar Act:this law maintained the imposition of taxes on sugar and molasses imported from abroad, while extending them to other products (wood and iron). It caused a crisis in the production of rum and aroused the discontent of American merchants. A few days later, the Currency Act prohibited the issue of banknotes in the Thirteen Colonies and allowed the metropolis to control their monetary system. The colonial assemblies strongly protested against this measure intended to reinforce the primacy of the pound sterling.
The Stamp Act (1765), instituted a mandatory revenue stamp for all official documents, newspapers and other items. This law affected all settlers and not just merchants and was hardly applied due to American resistance and pressure.
The Virginia House of Burgesses passed Patrick Henry's Stamp Act Resolves. They declared that Americans had the same rights as British subjects, in particular that of not being taxed without the consent of their representatives. Those who supported the British claim to tax Virginians would be considered enemies of the colony. Governor Fauquier preferred to dissolve the Chamber of Bourgeois in reaction to these radical proposals. On March 24, 1765, Parliament enacted a first Quartering Act which required colonial assemblies to provide for the needs of British armed troops. The decision provoked a series of riots in American cities such as Boston and Newport (Rhode Island). Resistance was strongest in New York:the assembly refused to fund the troops and was suspended in retaliation in December 1766.
Twenty-seven delegates from nine colonies met in New York from October 7 to 25, 1765, to establish a common position:the Stamp Act Congress adopted a Declaration of Rights and Grievances and sent letters and petitions to London. These documents asserted the power of the colonial assemblies in matters of taxation, but also the right of the colonists to be represented in the Parliament of London. Under the effect of the boycott and the demonstrations, the Stamp Act was finally repealed on March 18, 1766, without settling the question of the political representation of the Americans. It was replaced by the Declaratory Act which marked a strengthening of central authority to the detriment of the colonial assemblies.
The crisis between the colonies and Parliament continued in 1767 with the Townshend Acts, which created a tax on raw materials imported into the thirteen colonies. They aimed to finance the colonial administration and reduce the budget deficit. They also provided for a strengthening of customs controls. In June 1768, the governor of Massachusetts declared the assembly dissolved:the other colonies affirmed their solidarity with the representatives. On September 22, a hundred delegates from Massachusetts gathered in convention. London sent additional troops to maintain calm in Boston. In May 1769, before the Virginia House of Burgesses, George Washington read George Mason's proposal to boycott British goods until the repeal of the Townshend Acts. The Governor of Virginia then banned the assembly.
On March 5, 1770, during a violent demonstration in downtown Boston, British soldiers fired into the crowd. Five people were killed in the “Boston Massacre”. The city newspapers made the event a symbol of British oppression. Britain repealed the Townshend Acts in March 1770, although the tea tax remained.
The Tea Act was passed in May 1773 to allow the English East India Company to sell its tea to the Thirteen Colonies without paying taxes. This law was intended to restore the company's finances by strengthening its monopoly, but it ruined the independent merchants.
On December 16, 1773, during the "Boston Tea Party", settlers disguised as Native Americans threw more than 300 crates of tea over the docks. In retaliation, Britain took a series of drastic measures intended to restore order:the Massachusetts council would henceforth be chosen by the king and the officers would be appointed by the governor. Boston Harbor was closed, unoccupied houses were requisitioned to house British soldiers, and legal procedure was reformed. These new laws, called the Intolerable Acts by the Americans and the Coercive Acts or Punitive Acts by the British, mark a decisive step in the outbreak of the American Revolution.
American Opposition
Throughout the 1760s-1770s, American settlers organized resistance and protest to British policy. They carried out violent actions and set up networks of solidarity, despite the diversity and extent of the colonies. The main centers of unrest were Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Virginia.
More and more radical actions
The actions taken against the British power took increasingly radical and organized forms. The use of boycotts and petitions from 1764 in Boston was one of the most effective solutions against British power. Many journalists and lawyers put their pen to the service of the American cause:the lawyer James (1725 – 1783), to whom the famous formula "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny" is generally attributed, wrote several pamphlets against the colonial policy from London. In 1764, he published Defense and demonstration of the rights of the British colonies in which he defended the imprescriptible and universal rights of the colonists by invoking the British philosopher John Locke. In 1767, another lawyer, John Dickinson, published Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies in which he presented the reasons for American discontent and which had a great impact. In 1770, Paul Revere made propaganda prints of the Boston Massacre (“King Street Bloody Massacre”). In 1770, in New York, Alexander McDougall published an anti-British libel and was imprisoned. The period was also marked by heated debates in the colonial assemblies:in May 1765, Patrick Henry gave a vehement speech before the House of Burgesses of Virginia which demanded the death of the king of Great Britain.
During the years 1764-1774, demonstrations followed one another to demand the repeal of the acts. The violence, initially sporadic and limited, multiplied against the representatives of the British authority. The urban riots most often attacked governors, but also customs and tax officials, some of whom preferred to resign. The crowd could use the torture of tar and feathers. In 1765 mobs hanged and burned an effigy of Andrew Oliver, a Boston stamp agent. His office was burned down and his house looted, as was that of Governor Thomas Hutchinson. The violence touched the loyalists:in 1768-1770, opponents stuck insulting posters bearing the accusation of "importer" on the shops of those who refused to boycott British products. In 1772, a British schooner in charge of controlling merchant ships was set on fire by patriots off Rhode Island:this was the Gaspée affair. In January 1774, John Malcom, a Boston customs officer, was forced to swallow boiling, whipped, tarred and feathered tea.
Better and better organized settlers
The Sons of Liberty, a secret organization of American opponents formed in 1765, carried out various activities ranging from the writing of pamphlets to the erection of Liberty posts. The sociological profile of the Sons of Liberty was not uniform:there were both lawyers and workers. The most important representatives of this movement were Paul Revere, Thomas Young, Joseph Warren, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, James Otis, John Adams and his cousin, Samuel Adams, who was the leader of the rebellion in New England.
Gradually, the actors of the political protest sought to coordinate their actions. At the end of 1772, after the Gaspée affair, Samuel Adams considered setting up Committees of Correspondence. They would make it possible to establish a network between the associations of American patriots and to relay calls for a boycott of British goods. At the beginning of the following year, Virginia set up the first committee, in which Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson took part. Safety Committees (Committee of Safety) were created thereafter in order to ensure the execution of the resolutions taken by the committees of correspondence and by the Continental Congress.
The First Continental Congress (September-October 1774)
In the early fall of 1774, the Thirteen Colonies sent deputies to form inter-colonial assemblies:first the Stamp Act Congress, then the Provincial Congresses. In 1774, following the Intolerable Acts, Bostonians appealed for solidarity from other colonies. In June the assemblies of Massachusetts and Virginia were dissolved by the governors. Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania proposed the creation of a bicameral house composed of the Parliament of London and an American national assembly. Budgetary decisions could only be approved with the latter's approval. Five States voted in favor of this proposal, six against and the idea of a compromise was abandoned.
The final stage, which marked the passage from contestation to revolution66, was that of the First Continental Congress, an eminently illegal act from the point of view of the metropolis:it created an independent political assembly, the first aim of which was to coordinate the action of the colonies against the metropolis, before being transformed into a real instrument of government67. As early as September 1774, the Americans used the word "states" to designate the thirteen colonies of America.
In October 1774, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia demanded recognition of American freedoms:it set up a Continental Association responsible for organizing surveillance committees as well as the boycott of British products until the repeal of the Intolerable Acts. Congress wrote an Address to the People of Great Britain and sent a petition to the King. The assembly called on Canadians to join the insurgents in the rebellion, but to no avail:Canada remained loyal to London and even welcomed American loyalists into what would later become Upper Canada. Alexander Hamilton called on the British West Indies to revolt. Finally, the delegates of the Continental Congress decided to hold a Second Continental Congress for May 10, 1775.