American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. PikaЧитать онлайн книгу.
fixture there. One cold night in March 1770, a group of several hundred men and boys pelted a small band of nine Redcoats with rocks, snowballs, chunks of ice, and oyster shells. Alarmed, the soldiers fired back, killing five men. The British soldiers had been provoked, but the incident was quickly dubbed the “Boston Massacre” and used to rally opposition to the oppressive force of the British. Nonetheless, John Adams—a future president of the United States—defended the British soldiers when they were tried for murder. He secured a verdict of “innocent” for the captain, who was tried first. In a subsequent trial of the remaining eight soldiers, six were acquitted and two were found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.11
Is Revere’s depiction of the Boston Massacre—British soldiers firing point-blank into a small crowd of unarmed colonists and their dog—an accurate portrayal of the event? If not, what is inaccurate about it?
The Boston Tea Party
As it had done with the Stamp Act, Britain backed down in the face of the colonial reaction to the Revenue Act. The colonists boycotted the imported goods that were subject to duties, and in 1770, Britain rescinded the duties for all goods except tea. Colonists evaded the remaining tea tax by buying smuggled tea from Holland, but Parliament foreclosed that option in 1773 when it passed the Tea Act. The primary purpose of that act was to save the nearly bankrupt East India Company by giving it a monopoly to sell tea in the colonies. Parliament lowered the price of tea so much that the tea from the East India Company—even after the tea tax—was cheaper than smuggled tea. Parliament assumed that the colonists would welcome the inexpensive tea. Instead, the colonists viewed it as a trick to get them to accept British taxation and tried to block British ships bringing the tea from the East India Company. In many cases, this blockade worked, but in Boston, a British ship refused to leave the harbor without unloading its cargo of tea and collecting the duty on it. The showdown led, on December 16, 1773, to the Boston Tea Party, in which a group of colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the ship and dumped all 342 chests of tea into the harbor. This act of defiance marked an important step toward revolution.12
Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by passing a series of measures in 1774 known as the Coercive Acts (or, as the colonists liked to call them, the Intolerable Acts), designed to punish Massachusetts. Among other things, the Coercive Acts closed Boston Harbor to all commerce until Britain received payment for the destroyed tea, brought the Massachusetts government under full British control, forbade most town meetings, and allowed British troops to be quartered in private buildings and homes in Boston.
The First Continental Congress
Though aimed at Massachusetts, the Coercive Acts had potential ramifications for all of the colonies. As a result, representatives from all of the colonies except Georgia met in Philadelphia in September and October 1774 to decide how to respond. The delegates at these meetings of the First Continental Congress, in essence, represented twelve different nations. Although they came together in response to the common threat to their liberties posed by Great Britain, the colonies remained deeply divided on many issues. As historian Merrill Jensen put it, “The large colonies were pitted against small ones; colonies with many slaves were in opposition to those with fewer; colonies that had no western lines contended with those that did.”13 Despite these differences, the First Continental Congress resulted in an agreement by the colonies to engage in a total boycott of British goods.
The First Continental Congress also produced a declaration of rights and grievances. Among other things, the declaration—drawing on the language of the English philosopher John Locke—asserted the right to “life, liberty, and property”; denounced the keeping of British troops in the colonies in times of peace as “against law”; and reiterated that “the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council.”14 Since the colonists were not represented in Parliament, they claimed the right to a “free and exclusive power of legislation” in their own colonial assemblies, subject only to veto by the king.
The rallying cry of “no taxation without representation” had evolved into something far more significant: All legislation produced by a parliament in which the colonists were not represented was now considered suspect. And colonies with disparate interests and outlooks were uniting against Great Britain and around the cause of liberty. The liberty that the colonists sought was a direct outgrowth of rights espoused by the British tradition. England’s failure to enforce those rights precipitated revolution.
Revolution and Independence
Although some members of the First Continental Congress still hoped for reconciliation with Britain, war loomed. In anticipation of rebellion, British troops fortified Boston. Colonists also prepared for conflict by organizing small groups of armed militias known as minutemen. On April 19, 1775, fighting broke out in Massachusetts in the towns of Lexington and Concord.
The Second Continental Congress
After the violence in Lexington and Concord, the colonies quickly sent representatives to the Second Continental Congress to oversee steps toward independence and manage the impending war. By the time the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, full-fledged war had already erupted. The congress officially created the Continental Army and appointed George Washington to command it. But more than a year would pass before the Second Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence. The congress then turned to writing the first, ill-fated national constitution: the Articles of Confederation.
The delay in formally declaring independence occurred because many colonists, who came predominantly from Britain, remained reluctant to make a full break with their homeland. Breaking their allegiance to the king—a powerful symbolic figure—proved especially difficult. Then, in January 1776, Thomas Paine anonymously published his 48-page pamphlet, Common Sense. Saying, “I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense,” Paine provided a compelling justification for independence, and did so—as historian Joseph J. Ellis put it—“in language that was simultaneously simple and dazzling.”15 Paine took aim at King George III himself and sharply dismissed the institution of monarchy. The pamphlet’s timing could not have been better: Colonists had just learned that the king had rejected any effort to resolve the dispute with them diplomatically and would instead seek to smash the rebellion with military force.16 Breaking allegiance to the crown no longer seemed so difficult. And even though Parliament had been the source of the legislation that had prompted the dispute between Britain and the colonies, the king now became the symbolic enemy.
Common Sense was an instant best seller, with some 120,000 copies sold in the first three months alone and 500,000 copies sold within a year. This was at a time when the official population count of the colonies (excluding slaves and Native Americans) was only about 2.5 million.17 A work would need to sell nearly 62 million copies to reach a proportionate number of Americans today.18 Clearly, Paine’s rallying cry for independence had hit a nerve.
This British cartoon dismisses Thomas Paine as a radical revolutionary. His best-selling pamphlet Common Sense (skewered on the scroll he is holding as “Common Nonsense”), helped fuel the fight for revolution.
The Declaration of Independence
In May 1776, only four months after the publication of Common Sense, the Virginia House of Burgesses instructed its delegates to the Second Continental Congress