I need help answering questions 1 & 2, thank you so much for your help!
Question 1: Watch video to identify three achievements of the American patriots during the American revolution. Explain the significance of these achievements for people and any other American. Give specific quotes from this video illustrating.
Question 2: Read Lecture 6 and Identify two heroes of the American Revolution by name and what they did that was inspiring. Identify at least two groups of people that were forgotten in the American Revolution and why. Please provide direct quotes from Lecture 6.
LECTURE 6: SEVERING THE BONDS OF EMPIRE—THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE COLONIAL CRISIS, 1754-1775
Core Concepts: 1) Seven Years War and its consequences: What are the dates of the Seven Years War and what is this war also called? Which measures did the British take after their victory in the Seven Years War? How did Native Americans react to the measures that the British took after their victory in the Seven Years War? 2) Mercantilism and the British management of their colonies in America: Why did King George III raise taxes on his subjects after the British victory in the French and Indian War? Did King George III have the right to raise taxes on his American subjects by mercantilist standards? What were the first measures passed by the British government to pay for the war debt? When were the Sugar and Currency Acts passed? When was the Stamp Act passed, and who was affected by it? After the repeal of the Stamp Act, which law asserted Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies in “all cases whatsoever”? Which tax laws were the Sons of Liberty and Daughters of Liberty protesting and when? 3) American reactions to the British mercantilist policies: What did the Sons of Liberty mean by “Hillsborough paint”? When was the Boston massacre? How many people did Captain Thomas Preston and his eight soldiers kill after firing at the taunting crowd of colonists in what became known as the Boston massacre? What is the name of the African-American man who died in the Boston massacre? Which tax law led to the Boston Tea Party? When was the Boston Tea Party? Which laws did the British pass in response to the Boston Tea Party? 4) Road to American Independence: In September 1774, every colony, except Georgia, sent delegates to Philadelphia to discuss the looming crisis between Americans and the British. What was it called?
America before the War of Independence
1-SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-1763: A TURNING POINT
Rome was not built in a day, and America was not built in a day either. Another commonality between America and the Roman Empire is Pyrrhus of Epirus. In 281, he went to Italy and defeated the Romans at Heraclea and Asculum, but suffered bitterly heavy losses. The devastation led to his famous statement, “One more such victory and I am lost” — hence the term “Pyrrhic victory” for any victory so costly as to be ruinous. The Pyrrhic victory for England happened in 1763 when England defeated France in what is known as the Seven Years War or the French and Indian War. France and England had clashed over the fur trade in the Ohio River Valley since 1752. In 1756 an all-out war broke out between these two countries. The war is known as the Seven Years War because it lasted 7 years from 1756 to 1763. The British are the ones who call this war the French and Indian War although Indians fought on both sides. Calling it this way helped the British prove to the world that they were stronger than the French and the Indians, but the name, “French and Indian War,” was obviously misleading since Indians fought on their side as well.
As we said earlier, the British won against France in the Seven Years War. As a result, the British took measures concerning the French and Native Americans: 1) they expelled the French from America and their settlers invaded the Ohio Country. With their competitors eliminated, the British saw the Americas as their booty of war; 2) the king of England, George III, raised the prices of British trade goods to Indians and lowered the prices he paid for Indian goods, while ending traditional gift-giving practices to Native Americans. The new British oppression of Indians led to the famous Pontiac War in 1763—the war is named after Pontiac, the leader of the Ottawa Indians near Detroit who was inspired by a Delaware Neolin Prophecy of resistance.
Pontiac War—Indian Defeat at the Battle of Bushy Run on August 5, 1763
2-BRITISH OPPRESSION OF ITS SUBJECTS IN AMERICA
King George III (r. 1760-1820)
After Indians, King George III turned his oppression to his subjects in America. He passed a series of taxes intended to bring in quick cash to pay off the debt of £123 million contracted during the Seven Years War. After all, by the standards of the mercantilist logic of the day, this was a right of the British Crown.
The first such measure was Sugar and Currency Acts in 1764. The Stamp Act followed in 1765 intended to require tax stamps on most printed materials. The stamp tax affected everyone who used paper in transactions, not just elite merchants. Rum traders were also affected and in turn passed the price to rum consumers. Resistance to these sugar, currency, and stamp taxes led to widespread confrontation because they disrupted the “good life” of British subjects living in America.
Opposition to the Stamp Act was particularly fierce. The first organized resistance to the Stamp Act began in Boston in 1765 with a group of rebels known as “Sons of Liberty.” The term, “Sons of Liberty,” was actually coined by a member of the British Parliament opposed to the Stamp Act. Members of the “Sons of Liberty” included Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Ebenezer Mackintosh. Charleston Blacks also paraded with shouts of “Liberty.” Under their pressure, the Stamp Act was repealed in 1776. Unfortunately, it was replaced with an even stricter law, the Declaratory Act, which asserted Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies in “all cases whatsoever.”
Between 1767 and 1770, Prime Minister William Pitt’s financial minister established a series of new taxes on tea, glass, paper, and other materials imported in the American colony. These measures became known as the Townshend Acts. They also removed royal governors from the payroll of local assemblies, thereby making the colonial staff directly dependent on London. This strategy was to ensure these governors would enforce orders coming from the king without fear of not being paid by the colonial assemblies in America.
Americans agreed on one thing: a non-importation agreement. With this gentleman’s agreement not to import goods under the severe tax laws of the Townshend Acts, Americans intended to boycott the Townshend duties. They were serious, especially because their household products like tea, textile, and tableware were threatened. Even women joined the protests. Between 1768 and 1769, they were known as “Daughters of Liberty.” Women in Massachusetts were in the lead. In Boston, more than 300 women signed a petition to abstain from tea in order to save their country from “slavery.”
Daughters of Liberty working to make supplies for the Sons of Liberty
Men increased their pressure. In January 1770, the Sons of Liberty threw “Hillsborough paint,” a potent mixture of human excrement and urine on the door of the Hutchinson brothers’ shop based on rumors that these two sons of Thomas Hutchinson, who were American importers, were planning to break the non-importation agreement.
3-HEIGHTENED PROTESTS IN THE COLONIES
The apex of the protest against British oppression came on a Monday evening on March 5, 1770. A riot broke out in Boston, MA. A crowd taunted eight British soldiers commanded by Captain Thomas Preston as they were guarding the customs house. They threw snowballs and rocks at the officers and dared them to “fire,” and they did. Five protesters died. The event took just a few minutes. But its effects echoed for eternity. It was known immediately after the killing as the Boston massacre thanks to the painting of Paul Revere. “One of the first partisan to die in the American Revolution” was Crispus Attucks, a sailor and rope maker and the son of an African-American man and a Natick Indian woman.
Boston Massacre, 1770
Captain Thomas Preston and his eight soldiers stood trial for five days after which he was acquitted and only two soldiers were convicted of manslaughter with a sentence that “branded them on the thumbs,” after which they were released. This sham trial was outrageous although the killing of protesters in Boston momentarily calmed things down. Americans resumed buying the taxed British tea. But soon, the British realized that Americans were in fact smuggling large quantities of Dutch tea into the colonies. They noticed that tea sales of the East India Company had suddenly dropped.
The British Parliament then tried to save the East India Company from bankruptcy. This company was the backbone of the English economy. Parliament bailed out the Company by giving it exclusive trading rights on tea (sold in America only by the company’s designated agents). Tea traders in America were outraged. To make matters worse, Parliament passed the Tea Act of 1773 to allow the British India Company to sell tea directly to government agents rather than through public auction to independent merchants.
This strategy was sure to bankrupt these independent merchants. One night of December 16, 1773, about 150 of these merchants, disguised as Indians, boarded ships of the East India Company loaded with tea. They dumped thousands of pounds of tea into the water while a crowd of 2,000 people watched. This act of defiance was celebrated in the colonies as the Boston Tea Party (1773). This “destruction of the tea in Boston,” as John Adams called it, was certainly intended to destroy the monopoly of the East India Company on tea trade in American colonies. But the British did not let this sabotage go unpunished. They decided to teach their unruly subject a much more severe lesson.
Boston Tea Party, 1773 (Portrayed by artists of the time)
In response to the Boston tea party, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774. 4 Coercive Acts and a Quebec Act were issued. Americans called them Intolerable Acts. They are:
1-The Boston Port Act: closed the Boston harbor until the destroyed tea was paid.
2-The Massachusetts Government Act: changed the colony’s charter enshrining the supremacy of the British Parliament over Massachusetts.
3-The Impartial Administration of Justice Act: stipulated that any royal official accused of capital crime would be tried in court in Britain
4-The Quartering Act: permitted military commanders to lodge British soldiers wherever necessary, even in private household.
5-The Quebec Act confirmed the continuation of French civil law and government form as well as Catholicism for Quebec. Protestant New Englanders, who were recently denied their own representative government, considered this Act an intolerable affront to them. The Act also gave Quebec control of the fur trade in the Ohio Valley and disputed land claimed by Virginia and Pennsylvania. American patriots had had enough.
In September 1774, every colony, except Georgia, sent delegates to Philadelphia to discuss the looming crisis in what was later called the First Continental Congress. Samuel Adams and John Adams from Massachusetts, George Washington and Patrick Henry from Virginia attended the First Continental Congress. The Congress met for seven weeks and produced a declaration of rights: “We ask only for peace, liberty and security. We wish no diminution of royal prerogatives, we demand no new rights.” The British government was not prepared to compromise. They rejected the American claim of abuse and the American slogan that they were victims of “Taxation without Representation” in the words of Patrick Henry.
A war became inevitable. What began in 1763 as a triumphal victory for England in the Seven Years War would end in tragedy with the American Revolution. King George III acting on the principles of mercantilism sent troops to America to crush the American rebellion. The rebels, on the other hand, resisted. Before brandishing any gun, they were armed with the Enlightenment, a tough frontier experience of America, a non-affinity with the British Crown, a new identity, and an American ambition for the riches. The result was a war for independence.
