American History: 1771-1776.

Plus a copy of the Declaration of Independence,a quote by John Adams,and information on 1768 from the previous page- US HISTORY-1763-1770.

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1771 In this year the following happened: colonists disliked the British more and more. When new trouble broke out about tea the colonists made it noticebly clear that they wanted independence. On the same day that the Boston Massacre of 1770 took place Parliament repealed all the Townnshed duties except the one on tea. As you can see tea is the next issue that will be brought up violently between the British and the colonists.
1772 Not much is known,in my research,about this year but if I find anything I will be sure to let you know as soon as possible. One obvious fact I can tell you, based on my research of 1771 and 1773 is that during 1772 the colonists were more more fierce against the British in terms of tea. They boycotted tea and even smuggled tea from the Netherlands. These events will lead to the Boston Tea Party which you will learn about next.
1773 In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act. This was designed to help the East India Company, one of the great British companies of trade. This laws purpose was to make British tea cheaper in the colonies than tea smuggled from the Netherlands. Colonists and patriots alike felt that this was just another tactic that the British used to trick them into paying more taxes. With this feeling in mind the patriots made sure that this tax did not take effect in the colonies. Unlike some other colonies, Boston was not able to get the British tea ships in Boston to go back to Britain. Noone dared to unload the tea though. After 20 days, if the tea was still unclaimed, the tea be locked away by Custom Agents. So on the 20th night, December 16, 1773, a group of Patriots dressed as Indians went onto this unclaimed ship and quietly dumped 342 chests of tea into the water.
1774 The Boston Tea Party outraged England and Parliament passed a series of acts against Boston as a way of punishing them for what they did to the tea. These acts were known as the Intolerable Acts. The Boston Port Act closed the Boston port until Boston agreed to pay for the damaged tea. The Massachusetts Government Act, gave Britain the right to appoint members of the Massachusetts Council. The king of England appointed a new governor for Mass.---he was General Thomas Gage who commanded the British army in North America. In May of 1774 Gage arrived in Boston with about 4,000 men. This meant that Boston and the rest of the colony were now under military rule. The Quatering Act allowed the British to house their soldiers in the homes of the people of the colonies. The Justice Act states that if royal men were accused of murder while fighting they could have a trial in England. The Quebec Act set up a government in England's new colony of Quebec. Under this rule Quebec would have no elected assembly and that Britain had the right to tax the colonists in Quebec. Because of the unrest from England colonists in the colonies called for a Continental Congress to be held in 1774. So in September and October of this year delegates from all the colonies but Georgia were sent to meet in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They were called the First Continental Congress. This congress passed the Suffolk Resolves which said that colonists should go against the Intolerable Acts that were forced upon them from Britain. War was extremely close.
1775 This was the year when the fighting began.Fighting started on April 19, 1775. It all started when General Gage had sent 700 English troops to take ammunition and guns stored by the colonists at Concord, Massachusetts on the night of April 18. While these soldiers were marching to do this task, they were ordered to stop in Lexington and arrest Samuel Adams, and John Hancock. Boston patriots sent William Dawes and his friend the engraver and silversmith Paul Revere.Their job was to warn the people in Concord. "The Redcoats are coming!!!, the Redcoats are coming!!" was the famous saying said by Revere. Adams and Hancock had managed to escape from the British troops that reached Lexington. But instead some 70 minutemen(men ready to fight with a minutes warning) and members of the local militia were waiting on the village green. The British told the minutemen to leave the green but all of a sudden a gun shot was fired ( no one knows exactly who fired it). The British figured that it was the militia who fired that shot and they opened fire. 8 militia men were killed and 10 wounded. This battle at Lexington was only 15 minutes and only 1 British soldier was wounded from the militia. Along there way to Concord to warn the colonists, Revere, Samuel Prescott, and Dawes were arrested by the British. But the British met with the local minutemen waiting at North Bridge as they were leaving Concord. Both sides fought and the Battle of Concord lasted only 5 minutes killing 2 patriots, 3 British men,and wounding 9 other British men. Patriots shot at the British soldiers all along the way to Boston and killed 70 British men and wounded 165. Only 3 days after these 2 battles Mass. called for a small army of 13,000 men and they camped at Cambridge in Boston. These men had no uniforms,few weapons and supplies, and were very disorganized. In May of 1776, the Second Continental Congress met and appointed George Washington(now 43 years old) as commander of the Continental Army. Another battle was fought before Washington could get to the camp in Cambridge on July 2. The British decided to sieze Charlestown but the Americans met the British there and on June 16, 1775 a redoubt ( dug-out fort) at the top of Breed's Hill. From this point the patriots could look down at the British men and attack. On June 17, a British officer who helped sieze Quebec in 1760, General William Howe, ordered his men to sieze this redoubt built by the patriots. The commander of the American troops on the redoubt was a farmer named William Prescott who told them to shoot at the British when they saw the whites of their eyes. When the time was right and Prescott gave the order the Americans shot down at the British and suprised them. The British then tried to attack again by climbing up the hill but failed. Then the British attacked a tird time but now Prescott and his army of patriots lost ammunition and drove down to nearby Bunker Hill and then went back to Cambridge. William Howe decided not to further attack Prescott because he himself had lost over a thousand men. 828 were wounded while 226 were killed. Techicnally the English won this battle but were suprised at how many men they lost fighting to a small group of poorly eequipped men. From this battle 30 Americans were captured, 140 died, and 271 were wounded. In August of 1775 King George III hired German soldiers, Hessians, to fight against the American people. In 1774 and 1775 the colonists wanted to give aid to Boston to elect delegates to the Second Continental Congress and to create an army. Becuase these goals could not be reached through colonial assemblies ( the British would dissolve any assemby with such ideas as these) the colonists set up provincial conventions also known as congresses. The people elected the members. These conventions took on more and more power and some royal governors that used to dissolve the old colonial assemblies left the colonies out of fear and moved to England.
1776----YAY! Some colonists Still didn't want to seperate from Britain. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published the pamphlet called Common Sense which strongly urged the colonists to announce their independence from England. Thomas Paine was a former customs agent and corset maker who had come to the colonies in 1774. Common Sense argues that the war ended all ties with the colonies and England in all ways and that no means of settlement or peace could ever exist. Thus, war was inevitable now. Paine urged the people to fight for their independence and then get help from Europeans in the war. Paine said that hereditary rule was dangerous and wrong--this is what the British used for their government as well as the House of Lords. This was one of his reasons why colonists should secede from the British Empire. Paine said that only the House of Commons was good because members were elected by the common people and not by inheritance. Thomas Paine wanted Americans to start a republic or government in which all power comes from the people. This way the people of the colonists would feel secure with their freedom. Paine's advice was used by the Second Continental Congress and on June 7, 1776, a descendant of one of Virginia's first families, Richard Henry Lee---Robert E.Lee of the civil war is related to Richard Henry Lee---- brought forth a resolution to the congress which he obtained from the House of Burgesses in Virginia. It states the following information: "Resolved that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that any political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be totally dissolved!" This proposal caused debate in Congress and later a declaration of independence was drafted.The main purpose of this declaration was to tell the world why Americans wanted independence form Britain. This declaration attacked the king directly and thats how a rebellion is properly conducted. Thomas Jefferson based some of his materials on the ideas of the famous English writer of the 1600's John Locke. Words from Locke's "Second Treatise of Government" of 1690 as well as other Greek and Roman ideas of government can be found in this declaration. This declaration is truly a great document that expresses our freedom.
The Declaration of Independence---July 4,1776----by our third President Thomas Jefferson and reprinted here by me. In CONGRESS July 4, 1776. The unanamious Declaration of the thirteen united States of America. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the seperate and equal stations to which the Laws of Nature and of Natures God entitile them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the seperation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism,it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having,in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; to whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners;refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstucted the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quatering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and delcaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondance. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therfore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation,and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war and , in peace friends. We,therefore,the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do,in the name,and by authority of the good of the people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States;that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved;and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war,conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. John Hancock New Hamshire Josiah Bartlett Wm.Whipple Matthew Thornton Massachusetts Bay Saml.Adams John Adams Robt.Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry Delaware Caesar Rodney Geo. Read Tho. M'Kean Maryland Samuel Chase Wm. Paca Thos. Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton New York Wm. Floyd Phil. Livingston Frans. Lewis Lewis Morris North Carolina Wm. Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn South Carolina Edward Rutledge Thos. Heyward, Junr. Thomas Lynch, Junr. Arthur Middleton New Jersey Richd. Stockton Jno. Witherspoon Fras. Hopkinson John Hart Abra. Clark Rhode Island Step. Hopkins William Ellery Connecticut Roger Sherman Sam'el Huntington Wm.Williams Oliver Wolcott Georgia Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall Geo.Walton Pennsylvania Robt. Morris Benjamin Rush Benja.Franklin John Morton Geo. Clymer Jas. Smith Geo. Taylor James Wilson Geo. Ross Virginia George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Th. Jefferson Benja. Harrison Ths. Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton. Here is a quote from John Adams which reflects the adoption of the Delcration of Independence. "Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America;and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that those United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States." -John Adams. Many replicas of the Declaration of Independence are made all over the United States and the world, but the ORIGINAL can be found in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.. Next to this original declaration are the ORIGINAL Constitution, and Bill of Rights. They are in green, glass, vacummed sealed cases and you can take pictures of them from a slight distance but not up close. The ORIGINAL copy of the Magna Carta can be found there as well. US HISTORY-1768 On October 1, 1768 English troops from arrived in Boston. Bostonians did not at all welcome nor like these troops in their city. Bostonians said that free people were not to be governed by military rule. While this was going on, colonists were petitioning to the king asking for relief. When this failed, they set up nonimportation associations or groups of merchants who promised to boycott certain British goods. These associations of 1768 and 1769 worked very well. Also groups of women met to spin thread or weave cloth so that they wouldnt have to but these goods from the British. These women called themselves the Daughters of Liberty.