Revolution and the New Nation

Roots of resistance

A century of self-government convinced colonists they held the rights of Englishmen.

• Republicanism and Locke's social contract justified resisting a government that fails to protect natural rights.
• The Zenger case (1735) established that truth cannot be libel.
• After 1760 Britain enforced the Navigation Acts with writs of assistance.

A new direction, 1763–1766

• The Proclamation of 1763 barred settlement west of the Appalachians; colonists read it as permanent.
• The Sugar Act (1764) strengthened juryless vice-admiralty courts; the Currency Act banned colonial paper money.
• The Stamp Act (1765) taxed nearly every paper item and touched every colonist; the Quartering Act used barracks.

Protest, repeal, and the Declaratory Act

• Committees of Correspondence (1764) and the Sons of Liberty organized resistance.
• Patrick Henry's Virginia Resolves (1765) claimed colonists could be taxed only by consent.
• The Stamp Act Congress (1765) united nine colonies, and that unity forced repeal; the Declaratory Act (1766) kept Parliament's authority in all cases whatsoever.

Townshend, Boston, and the argument over taxation

• Colonists accepted external trade duties but not internal taxes.
• The Townshend Acts (1767) taxed glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea.
• Britain answered with virtual representation: every member speaks for every subject.
• The Boston Massacre (1770) killed five, including Crispus Attucks; Revere's engraving invented a volley on command.

Tea, the Coercive Acts, and the Continental Congress

• The Tea Act (1773) made taxed company tea cheapest, handing the East India Company a monopoly.
• Colonists destroyed the tea in Boston Harbor, December 1773.
• The Coercive Acts (1774) closed Boston Harbor, restructured Massachusetts government, and expanded quartering.
• The First Continental Congress (1774) adopted the Continental Association boycott.

From Lexington to independence

• Fighting began at Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775.
• The Second Continental Congress chose Washington to command the army.
• Dunmore's Proclamation (1775) offered freedom to enslaved people who joined Britain.
• Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776) argued independence in plain language.
• Congress voted independence July 2, 1776 and adopted the Declaration July 4.

States, society, and the critical period

• States wrote republican constitutions with strong legislatures and weak governors.
• Fundamental law meant writing rights down, ancestor of the Bill of Rights.
• Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) disestablished the state church.
• Abigail Adams asked to remember the ladies; women won republican motherhood and schooling, not rights.

The Articles of Confederation

• The Articles of Confederation (1777, effective 1781) left states sovereign and could not tax.
• Saratoga (1777) won the French alliance, Yorktown (1781) ended the war, and the Treaty of Paris (1783) brought recognition.
• The Northwest Ordinance (1787) created co-equal statehood and banned slavery there.
• Shays' Rebellion (1786–1787) showed the Confederation could neither tax nor raise troops.

Writing and ratifying the Constitution

• The Great Compromise split the large-state Virginia Plan and small-state New Jersey Plan into House and Senate.
• The Three-Fifths Compromise counted three-fifths of enslaved people for representation and taxation.
• Congress declares war, the House impeaches, and the Senate tries impeachments.
• Federalists backed ratification; Anti-Federalists won the Bill of Rights (1791).

Washington, Adams, and the first party system

• Hamilton's financial plan (1790) funded the debt, assumed state debts, and chartered a national bank.
• Loose construction justified the bank by implied powers; strict construction denied it, splitting the parties.
• The Whiskey Rebellion (1794) proved the government could collect taxes.
• The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) drew the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and their nullification doctrine.