American War of Independence

I

Introduction

American War of Independence (1775-1783), conflict between 13 British colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America and their parent country, Great Britain. France later intervened as an ally of the independent states, and the war resulted in the colonies becoming a separate nation, the United States of America. It is also known as the American Revolution.

II

Causes of the War

The end of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), which had its North American beginning in 1754 and was known in America as the French and Indian War, resulted in the final expulsion of France both from the continent of North America and from India. In both cases French power was replaced by that of Great Britain. As a result, Britain became the pre-eminent power in the western hemisphere and supreme on the high seas. It enjoyed an enormous and growing volume of maritime commerce. Britain's king, George III, who had succeeded to the throne in 1760, was determined to play an active role in governing the nation. Due to the king's ineptitude, however, the result was political instability and a lack of direction in national affairs at the same time that Britain's crisis with its American colonies developed.

A

The Stamp Act

The Seven Years' War revealed to British officials the Americans' disregard for the Navigation Acts and imperial authority. During the conflict, colonial merchants continued to trade with the enemy and smuggle goods, while colonial assemblies repeatedly refused to provide military officials with men and supplies. The war left Great Britain with a considerable debt and expensive responsibilities to administer newly acquired territory in North America. Believing that the Navigation Acts should be enforced strictly and that the lightly taxed colonists should pay a share of the empire's defence costs, Parliament in March 1765 passed the Stamp Act to raise revenue. This act required the colonists to purchase and use specially stamped (watermarked) paper for all official documents, deeds, mortgages, newspapers, and pamphlets. Violators would be prosecuted in vice-admiralty courts, without juries. Revenues derived from the act were intended to pay part of the cost of maintaining a permanent force of 10,000 British troops to prevent hostilities between the colonists and the Native Americans of the western frontiers.

The Stamp Act provoked almost unanimous opposition among the colonists, who regarded it as a violation of their rights. They believed in a federal theory of empire that divided authority between the colonies and Great Britain. From their beginnings, the colonial assemblies had modelled themselves on Parliament and had legislated internal matters, including raising taxes and armies, and overseeing the judiciary. In practice, Britain was responsible for external matters such as declaring war and peace, presiding over foreign affairs and regulating trade, Native American affairs, and the post office. To the colonists, the Stamp Act violated the right of British subjects not to be taxed without representation; it undermined the independence of their colonial assemblies; and it appeared to be one step in a plot to deprive them of their liberty.

On these grounds a storm of protest arose against the Stamp Act. In the months before November 1765, when the act was to go into effect, riots organized by a secret society called the Sons of Liberty broke out in colonial port cities and prevented British-appointed stamp distributors from assuming their posts. Colonial assemblies passed resolutions denouncing the Stamp Act and petitioned Parliament requesting its repeal. To add strength to the formal protest, American merchants banded together in nonimportation agreements, pledging not to buy British goods. This colonial boycott was so effective that commerce between Great Britain and America came to a standstill. In October 1765 delegates from nine colonies met in New York in the Stamp Act Congress and petitioned Parliament and the king concerning colonial grievances. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766, yielding not to the colonists' constitutional objections to taxation, but to the demands of economically depressed British merchants.

B

The Townshend Acts

Repeal of the Stamp Act left Britain's financial problems unresolved. Parliament had not given up the right to tax the colonies and in 1767, at the urging of Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, it passed the Townshend Acts, which imposed taxes on lead, glass, tea, paint, and paper that Americans imported from Britain. In an effort to strengthen its own authority and the power of royal colonial officials, Parliament, at Townshend's request, also created the American Board of Customs Commissioners whose members would strictly enforce the Navigation Acts. Revenue raised by the new tariffs would be used to free royal officials from financial dependence on colonial assemblies, thus further encroaching on colonial autonomy.

Once again the colonists protested vigorously. In December 1767, John Dickinson, a Philadelphia lawyer, published 12 popular essays that reiterated the colonists' denial of Parliament's right to tax them and warned of a conspiracy by a corrupt British ministry to enslave Americans. The Sons of Liberty organized protests against customs officials, merchants entered into nonimportation agreements, and the Daughters of Liberty advocated the nonconsumption of products, such as tea, taxed by the Townshend Acts. The Massachusetts legislature sent the other colonies a circular letter condemning the Townshend Acts and calling for a united American resistance. British officials then ordered the dissolution of the Massachusetts General Court if it failed to withdraw its circular letter; the court refused, by a vote of 92 to 17, and was dismissed. The other colonial assemblies, initially reluctant to protest against the acts, now defiantly signed the circular letter, outraged at British interference with a colonial legislature.

In other ways, British actions again united American protest. The Board of Customs Commissioners extorted money from colonial merchants and used flimsy excuses to justify seizing American vessels. These actions heightened tensions, which exploded on June 21, 1768, when customs officials seized Boston merchant John Hancock's sloop Liberty. Thousands of Bostonians rioted, threatening the customs commissioners' lives and forcing them to flee the city. When news of the Liberty riot reached London, four regiments of British army troops—some 4,000 soldiers—were ordered to Boston to protect the commissioners.

The contempt of British troops for the colonists, combined with the soldiers' moonlighting activities that deprived Boston labourers of jobs, inevitably led to violence. In March 1770 a riot occurred between British troops and Boston citizens, who jeered and taunted the soldiers. The troops fired, killing five people. The so-called Boston Massacre aroused great colonial resentment. This anger was soon increased by further parliamentary legislation.

Bowing to colonial economic boycotts, Parliament, guided by the new Prime Minister, Lord Frederick North, repealed the Townshend Acts in 1770 but retained the tax on tea to assert its right to tax the colonies. In order to rescue the British East India Company from bankruptcy, Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, reducing the tax on tea shipped to the colonies so that the company could sell it in America at a price lower than that of smuggled tea. The colonists, however, refused to buy the English tea. They viewed the Tea Act as another violation of their constitutional right not to be taxed without representation. Colonial merchants also feared that the act would allow the East India Company to monopolize the tea trade and put them out of business. In Philadelphia and New York the colonists would not permit British ships to unload tea. In Boston, in the so-called Boston Tea Party, a group of citizens, many disguised as Native Americans, swarmed over British ships in the harbour and dumped the cargoes of tea into the water.