Sreya Sinha October 12th, 2010

History Notes: Chapter Five – Roads to Revolution 1744 – 1776 Mr. DiGiovacchino

Lord North’s Partial Retreat

 North = shrewd politician = remain in office ‘til 1772.
 Favored eliminating most of Townshend duties  prevent American commercial boycott from widening.
 Insisted on retaining tax on tea to underscore British authority.
o Parliament agreed  April 1770: repealed most of Townshend duties.
 Parliament’s partial repeal = dilemma for American politicians  considered it intolerable that taxes on tea which = most profitable item for royal treasury.
 Colonial leaders = unsure to press on with non-importation agreement ‘til total victory achieved or sufficed to maintain selective boycott of tea.
 July 1770: when non-importation movement collapsed, colonists resisted external taxation by voluntary agreements not to drink British tea.
 Through non-consumption, they succeeded in limiting revenue from tea to about one-sixth the level originally expected.
 Tea duty remained as a galling reminder that Parliament refused to retreat from broadest possible interpretation of Declaratory Act.
 Smuggling charges against Hancock = dropped.
 Prosecution feared Hancock = appeal conviction to England = honest officials take action against persons responsible for violating his rights.

The Committees of Correspondence

 Fall of 1772: Lord North’s ministry = preparing to implement Townshend’s goal of paying the royal governors’ salaries out of customs revenue.
 Colonists always viewed intention to free governors from legislative domination as a fundamental threat to representative government.
 Samuel Adams persuaded Boston’s town meeting to request that every Massachusetts community appoint persons responsible for exchanging info/coordinating measures to
defend colonial rights.
 Of approx. 260 towns, half established “committees of correspondence,” + most others did so within a year.
 From Massachusetts, the idea spread throughout New England.
 CoC = colonists’ first attempt to maintain close and continuing political cooperation over a wide area.
 System allowed Adams to conduct campaign of political education for all of New England.
 Sent out messages for each town’s local committee to read at its own town meeting  then debate issues and adopt a formal resolution.
 June 1773: Adams’s most successful venture in public alarm = publicized certain letters of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson that Benjamin Franklin obtained.
 March 1773: Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee proposed that Virginia establish colony-level committees of correspondence.
 Within a year, every province but Pennsylvania had followed its example.
 Early 1774: Colonial leaders were linked by a communications web for the first time since 1766.
 1765: feelings of loyalty and affection toward Britain had remained strong in America and thus had helped disguise depth of division over constitutional issue of taxation.
 1733: colonial allegiance was becoming conditional and could no longer be assumed.

Frontier Tensions
 Land pressures and lack of adequate revenue from the colonies left the British government utterly helpless in enforcing the Proclamation of 1763.
 George Washington sought western land: “any person who . . . neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good Lands will never regain it.”
 Settlers, traders, hunters, and thieves also trespassed on Indian land, and a growing number of instances of violence by colonists toward Indians were going unpunished.
 British government unable to maintain garrisons at many of its forts, to enforce violations of laws and treaties, or to provide gifts to its native allies.
 Britain and its Iroquois allies agreed in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) to grant land along Ohio River that was occupied by Shawnees, Delawares, and Cherokees to
government of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
 1774: growing violence culminated in Kentucky (new colony) in the unprovoked slaughter by colonists of 13 Shawnees and Mingos, including 8 members of the family of Logan,
until then a moderate Mingo leader.
 The outraged Logan led a force of Shawnees and Mingos who retaliated by killing an equal number of white Virginians.
 The colony in turn opened a campaign against the Indians known as Lord Dunmore’s War (1774), for Virginia’s governor.
o Met at Point Pleasant on Virginia side of Ohio River  colonists defeated Indians.
o Virginians gained uncontested rights to lands south of Ohio in exchange for all claims on northern side during peace conference that followed.
 Early 1760s: settlers moving west in Massachusetts found their titles challenged by some of New York’s powerful landlords.
 1766: two landlords threatened to evict tenants  New Englanders joined tenants in armed uprising = called “Sons of Liberty” after the Stamp Act protesters.
 1769: in what is now Vermont, settlers from New Hampshire came into conflict with New York.
 After 4 years of guerrilla warfare, the New Hampshire settlers, calling themselves the Green Mountain Boys, established an independent government.
 Eventually became the government of Vermont.
 A third group of New England settlers (from Connecticut) settled in Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania  clashed in 1774 with Pennsylvanians claiming title to same land.
 In North Carolina, group called Regulators aimed to redress grievances of settlers living in colony’s western regions.
 Westerners, underrepresented in the colonial assembly, found themselves exploited by dishonest officeholders appointed by eastern politicians.
 May 16, 1771: Regulator movement climaxed at battle of Alamance Creek.
 North Carolina’s royal governor defeated about 2,500 Regulators in a clash that produced almost 300 casualties.
o Although Regulator uprising then disintegrated, it crippled the colony’s subsequent ability to resist British authority.
 Armed Regulator movement arose in South Carolina, but South Carolina government did not dispatch its militia to frontier for fear that colony’s restive slave population might
use occasion to revolt.
 Conceded to the principal demands of Regulators by establishing four new judicial circuits and allowing jury trials in newly settled areas.

Toward Independence
 Early 1733: British Empire remained superficially tranquil but resolved none of its underlying constitutional problems.
 Americans ignored continued taxation of tea because of a widespread expectation that Lord North would eventually have the duty repealed.
 1773: Parliament blasted unrealistic hope when it passed Tea Act.
 Measure set off chain reaction that started with Boston Tea Party in late 1773 and was followed by Parliament’s Coercive Acts in 1774, the First Continental Congress
in September 1774, the outbreak of fighting in April 1775, and the colonists’ declaration of their independence in July 1776.