The English in America

Written by Mark Summers

Part Three: America Leaves the Nest: The War of Independence

On April 19, 1775, two contingents of British Regulars marched from Boston Massachusetts to the village of Concord. Their mission was to seize arms and ammunition being held in the town. Boston, Massachusetts and environs had long been a tempest of American opposition to British colonial authority. The military governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, believed that the seizure of these weapons would prevent the political situation from escalating.

Instead, the leaders of the Massachusetts radicals dispatched two riders Paul Revere and William Dawes, to warn the colonial militias of Gage’s mission. By daybreak Gage’s troops stood before a few dozen of armed colonial militia blocking their route at Lexington. For awhile the two forces stood silently apart. A shot was fired. To this day, no one has been able to prove who fired first. This “shot heard round the world” was the beginning of the American War of Independence also known in the United States as the American Revolution.

Historians on both sides of the Atlantic have long viewed the War of Independence as a struggle between two nations. The author believes that this view is a distorted one based upon viewing the war from hindsight. For example in the popular William Wadsworth Longfellow 19th century poem “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”, the hero warns the colonists that the “British are coming!” Yet eyewitnesses of the time clearly remembered that what Revere actually said was the “Regulars are coming”. In April 1775 Paul Revere and his fellow “rebels” considered themselves to be “British”.

In reality the American War of Independence was a second English Civil War between two competing English views of government, the 17th century Whig idealism of John Locke and other philosophers, and the mercantilist 18th century realism of the British Ministry. The war would not only divide public opinion in the American Colonies (where 20 – 30% of the population remained loyal to Britain) but in England and the other British nations as well (where a strong and vocal Parliamentary opposition eventually brought down the North government). In the end what began in Virginia in 1607 would be ripped apart by a conflict that would lead to the creation of a new nation, the United States of America.

With the fall of the Jacobean monarchs in 1688 two political actions took place in England which would have unintended consequences across the Atlantic. The first significant action was the removal of a monarch (James II) by Parliament. To English Americans the concept of the supremacy of Parliament would translate into the concept that colonial assemblies were themselves supreme not only to the monarchy but to Westminster itself. The second action was the installment in 1701 of the Hanoverian monarchy. The first of the Hanover Kings George I, was a German prince who took little interest in English affairs and even less in America. George I and his son George II reigned for 59 years over the American Colonies. For these 59 years America and her assemblies were largely ignored in a period often referred to as the years of “salutary neglect”. The assemblies accustomed to self-rule had every intention of keeping it when George III (a thorough Englishman) came to the throne.

Yet in 1754 when a young Virginia militia colonel named George Washington handed a letter to the French commander of Ft. Duquesne (now the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) warning the French to remove themselves from British territory, he and his fellow colonials thought of themselves as subjects of the British king and transplanted Englishmen. Washington’s letter touched off a war (the 4th in 60 years) between France and Great Britain. This “French and Indian War” in America, escalated two years later as the Seven Years War (1756-1763). Colonials and British regulars fought side by side in the conflict against a common French enemy. Success came largely in 1763 with the ministry of William Pitt (the elder). American colonial assemblies cheered the military success but did little to pay for the war.

With the French threat removed the Americans were even less interested in paying for British regular troops. Added to this, the British exchequer was £122 million in debt in 1763. Parliament began a series of direct taxes upon the colonies in 1764 in order to raise revenue from America. In that year the average Englishman paid 26 shillings a year to the government while the average colonist paid just 1 shilling. Because the amount of revenue to be raised was quite small, Parliament was unprepared for the hostile reaction of its colonies to its taxes. The first great outburst of American protest came in 1765 with the Stamp Act. This law required all official documents in America to be affixed with an official government stamp. Since paper was a necessity it was believed that the Americans could not avoid taxation through economic boycotts (as with previous Parliamentary taxes).

At issue was the concept of representation. American colonial assemblies protested that since there were no Americans sitting in Parliament they could not be taxed directly by it. This argument was based upon the English tradition of localized taxation. The argument was taken up in Parliament. George Grenville defended the tax. He and others claimed that the Americans were “virtually represented” in Parliament as was the case with several English counties. He asked when the colonies “had been emancipated?” William Pitt (now Lord Chatham) defended America replying, “I desire to know, when were they made slaves?” Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, but added a declaration that they had the right to taxation.

Taxes and protests followed through the remainder of the 1760’s and into the 1770’s. The center of these two protests was the first two English American colonies Massachusetts and Virginia. By 1773 Massachusetts was placed under martial law. General Gage took over the reigns of government but matters quickly deteriorated. By 1774 the protests of the Massachusetts Sons of Liberty escalated with the Boston Tea Party. Parliament in response to the destruction of the tea closed the port of Boston. Virginians became increasingly radical when Parliament blocked the planters attempts to settle Western Indian Territory. In 1775, radical Virginian Patrick Henry called for revolution when he exclaimed “Give me liberty of give me death”. In many of these cases the American radicals drew inspiration from and the support of English radicals. The Americans who took up the cry of “Wilkes and liberty” cheered John Wilkes’ arrest for libel for slandering the king and subsequent election to mayor of London. Another English radical, Thomas Paine, immigrated to Philadelphia jobless and penniless. He would later become the pen that would inspire total separation from the crown.

As War began in 1775, the colonies were thirteen separate bodies fighting against Parliament. George Washington was named to lead the rag tag army. At first there was no intention of forming a united government or disavowing the monarchy. The Americans won some respect for actions at the Battle of Bunker Hill but were still heavily outgunned and outmanned by the British regulars. The seizure of New York City in 1776 was a tremendous blow to the rebellion. In order to secure a French Alliance and to inspire Washington’s troops, the American Continental Congress drafted a Declaration of Independence. It was formerly adopted on July 4, 1776. It was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson drew inspiration from the English Whigs including the philosopher John Locke (who inspired America’s most famous phrase: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). The document declared total separation from England and its monarchy. In order to secure independence the colonies would have to secure the aid of Britain’s long time enemy France.

The very popular inventor, philosopher, and printer Benjamin Franklin was sent to Versailles to secure French assistance. With the victory at Saratoga, New York in 1778, the colonies secured the aid of France, which included money, weapons, and uniforms. After 1779, the war between Britain and her colonies shifted to the South. Britain’s generals hoped to capitalise on a strong loyalist presence in the region. American loyalism never materialized in a cohesive manner. While Lord Cornwallis won victories in the South, his damaged army headed to Virginia. By 1781, the French Navy blockaded Chesapeake Bay. Washington’s Americans and Rochambeau’s French Army surrounded Cornwallis. Cornwallis’ surrender in October 1781 was the beginning of the end of the war, and the end of the North ministry.

The final treaty was signed in 1783 at Paris. Relations between the Mother Country and the former colonies were at their worst. Americans who had supported the war harassed the loyalist minority. Many Loyalists fled to England or emigrated to Canada (which had remained loyal throughout the war) Some in England, and Government in particular resented the former colonies. Throughout the remainder of the century a British military presence was maintained on the periphery of the new nation. Many in Britain wondered if the former colonies could sustain a government.

At first it seemed that independence was a failure. Only the emergence of a conservative (as in political philosophy not political party) counter-revolution in America, which created the Federal Constitution in 1787, secured the existence of the new nation. The document, still in use today, was the written form of the democratic principles and traditions long held in England. Its greatest advocate and first U.S. president under it was George Washington. While America articulated its English political heritage on paper, it would take nearly a century before the relations between England and its colonies would change from one of enemies to allies. The United States would see itself as the defender of liberty and revolution. Great Britain reformed its monarchy and its colonial policies. A new Great Britain would see a more radical revolution threaten it from across the Channel. With the rise of Napoleon Britain would also see itself as the defender of liberty. At the dawn of the 19th century these competing views of liberty once again created misunderstanding and war (the last) between Britain and her former colonies.

The English in America Part 4.....