SUMMARY

Georgia: James Oglethorpe, an 18th century British Member of Parliament, established Georgia Colony as a common solution of two problems. At that time, tension between Spain and Great Britain was high, and the British feared that Spanish Florida was threatening the British Carolinas. Oglethorpe decided to establish a colony in the contested border region of Georgia and populate it with debtors who were imprisoned in Great Britain. This plan helped both rid Great Britain of its undesirable elements and provide her 13 American colonies with a base from which to attack Florida. Georgia initially failed to prosper, but eventually the moralistic restrictions (like alcohol and other forms of supposed immorality) were lifted, slavery was allowed, and it became as prosperous as the Carolinas.

Carolinas: Carolina was not settled until 1670, and even then the first attempt failed because there was no incentive for emigration to the south. The cultivation of rice was introduced during the 1690’s by Africans from the rice-growing regions of West Africa and Carolinas became rich.

The South:The Southern Colonies are Georgia, the two Carolinas and Virginia, with the inclusion of Maryland (always a borderland), which is sometimes grouped with the Middle Colonies.

Life in the Southern Colonies centered around plantations which were cultivating rice, tobacco, and indigo (used for making a blue dye). There were few cities. Southern plantations depended on slavery. By 1750, there were more slaves than free people in the South.

British colonial government: The 3 forms of colonial government were provincial, proprietary, and charter. Under the feudal system of Great Britain, these were all subordinate to the monarch, with no explicit relationship with the British Parliament.

The colonies’ systems of governance was modeled after the British constitution of the time - with the king corresponding to the governor, the House of Commons to the colonial assembly, and the House of Lords to the Governor's council. The codes of law of the colonies were often drawn directly from British law; which survives even in the modern U.S.

By the 1720’s, most colonies had an elected assembly and an appointed governor. Governors technically had a great power. They were appointed by the king and represented him in the colonial government. Governors also had the power to make appointments. But the assemblies had the “power of the purse”. Only they could pass revenue bills. They often used their influence over finances to gain power in relation to governors and control over appointments. Colonists viewed their elected assemblies as defenders against the king, against Parliament, and against colonial governors.

In 1770, the 13 colonies had a population of 2.6 million, about one-third that of Britain; and nearly one in five Americans was a black slave. Though ‘subject to British taxation, the colonies had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain’.

Although each of the colonies was different from the others, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries several events and trends took place that brought them together in various ways and to various degrees and led to the Revolution.

The Great Awakening:This event was very important for the unification ofthe religious background of the colonies; it was a Protestant revival movement that took place between the 1730’s and 1740’s. The movement fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. It began with Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts preacher who sought to return to the Pilgrims' strict Calvinist roots and to reawaken the "Fear of God." Preachers traveled across the colonies and preached in a dramatic and emotional style, they shared with colonists their religious beliefs and views and even their every day concerns which were quite common for all colonists and in this way united the interests of scattered settlements across the colonies. This exchange of ideas was a small civic and democratic step towards the unification of the colonies.

The preachers called themselves the “New Lights”, as contrasted with the “Old Lights”, who disapproved of their movement. To promote their viewpoints, the two sides established academies and colleges, including Princeton and William and Mary College. The Great Awakening has been called the first truly American event. Methodism became the prevalent religion among colonial citizens after the First Great Awakening.

Another event in the long process of unification was the French and Indian Warorthe Seven Years’ War (1754–1763). This war was the American extension of the general European conflict known as the Seven Years' War. Increasing competition between Britain and France, especially in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, was one of the primary origins of the war. As the French were supported by Indians, the American colonists called the war the French and Indian War.

The French and Indian War was an important event in the political development of the colonies. The influence of the main rivals of the British Crown in the colonies and Canada - the French and North American Indians - was significantly reduced. Moreover, the war effort resulted in greater political integration of the colonies, as symbolized by Benjamin Franklin's call for the colonies to “Join or Die”.

During the war the colonies identified themselves as a part of the British Empire and British military and civilian officials increased their presence in the lives of Americans. The British soldiers sent by the British government, were joined by men from Virginia.

But the war also increased a sense of American unity. It caused American men to travel across the continent and fight alongside men from different, yet still American backgrounds. Throughout the war British officers trained American ones for battle (e.g., young Virginian colonel named George Washington), that fact would later benefit the Revolution to come.

The war resulted in vast territorial acquisitions (Fig.4). In the Treaty of Paris (1763), France surrendered its vast North American empire to Britain. Before the war, Britain held the 13 American colonies, most of present-day Nova Scotia, and most of the Hudson Bay watershed. After the war, Britain gained all French territory east of the Mississippi River, including Quebec, the Great Lakes, and the Ohio valley. Britain also gained the Spanish colonies of East and West Florida. The British victory over the French in 1763 guaranteed Britain political control over its 13 colonies. But in removing a major foreign threat to the 13 colonies, this war also largely removed the colonists' need of the British protection.

Fig. 5. Territorial acquisitions after the French and Indian War

From unity to revolution:What really united the colonies in their negative attitude to Britain was the booming import of British goods. Using the colonies of North America as a market for British goods, Britain increased exports to that region by 360% between 1740 and 1770. At the same time American rich manufacturers experienced difficulties in selling their American produce.

The general sentiment of inequity that arose soon after the Treaty of Paris was intensified by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited colonists’ settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains on the land which had been recently captured from France. The colonists resented the measure and regarded it as unnecessary and draconian. And the proclamation was never enforced. At the end of the 18^th century,a number of Parliament Acts aggravated the situation in the colonies to the extreme.

In fact, the cost of the Seven Years War for the British was a bad need of money, and consequently Parliament introduced new taxes in America. Parliament passed the Sugar and Currency Acts in 1764. The Sugar Act strengthened the customs service. The Currency Act forbade colonies to issue paper money. The Stamp Act of1765required all legal documents, licenses, commercial contracts, newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards to carry a tax stamp.

In 1767, Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend drew up new taxes on imports (tea, lead, paper, glass, etc.) that Americans could receive only from Britain; the document was called the Townshend Act. The revenue from these taxes went on the salaries of colonial governors and judges, making them independent of the colonial assemblies. Townshend moved many units of the British army to the centers of white population and dissolved the assemblies (First Quartering Act of 1765, Second Quartering Act of 1774).

Americans challenged the right of the British parliament to force taxes on them, using the slogan no taxation without representation.They were angry that the British prevented them from trading with other nations and taking land in the western part of America. Soon they started to protest openly and attack men who accepted appointments as Act commissioners, usually forcing them to resign. They boycotted all imported British goods — particularly tea. The British responded by landing troops at Boston in October 1768. Tensions between townspeople and soldiers were constant for the next year and a half.

On March 5, 1770, tensions exploded into the Boston Massacre, when British soldiers fired into a mob of Americans, killing 5 men.

In Boston, on December 16, 1773, some patriots dressed as Native Americans went on board ships used to transport tea. They threw the tea into the water, an incident that became known as the Boston Tea Party.

Britain responded to this Boston Tea Party with the Intolerable Acts of 1774, which closed the port of Boston until Bostonians paid for the tea. The Acts also permitted the British army to quarter its troops in civilian households.

Tensions between American colonists and the British during the period of the 1760’s and early 1770’s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775through1781.

Continental Congresses:In September 1774, the First Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Each colony sent its delegates (aka Founding Fathers). The Congress refused to recognize the authority of British Parliament, it decided to stop all trade with Britain, and to start collecting guns and practice using them. On June 14, 1775, the Congress established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington and dispatched it to Boston, where there were clashes between local militia and a British Army.

The Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 marked the beginning of the American Revolution.

On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, began to organize a federal government for the 13 colonies; taking over governmental functions previously exercised by the King and Parliament, and prepare state constitutions for their own governance.

Proclaiming that “all men are created equal” and endowed with “certain unalienable Rights,” the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. The drafting of the Declaration was the responsibility of a committee of five, which included, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, but the style of the document is attributed primarily to Thomas Jefferson. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day.

The Declaration said that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” In the Declaration, Jefferson explained why the colonies had decided to fight against British rule. The Declaration of Independence gave Americans an even stronger belief in their cause.

In August 1776, King George III proclaimed the colonies to be in rebellion. That year, the prospects for American victory seemed small. Britain had a population more than 3 times that of the colonies, and the British army was large, well-trained, and experienced. The Americans had undisciplined militia and only the beginnings of a regular army or even a government. But they fought on their own territory, and in order to win they did not have to defeat the British but only to convince the British that the colonists could not be defeated.

The turning point in the war came in 1777 when American soldiers defeated the British Army at Saratoga, New York. France had secretly been aiding the Americans. After the victory at Saratoga, France and America signed treaties of alliance, and France provided the Americans with troops and warships. Spain and Holland sent supplies and money. Polish soldiers also came to America to fight for the American cause.

The last major battle of the American Revolution took place at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. A combined force of American and French troops surrounded the British and forced their surrender.

Fighting continued in some areas for two more years, and the war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, by which England recognized American independence and abandoned the territory from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.

Interesting to know:Yankee Doodle is the song, which told the story of a poorly dressed Yankee simpleton, or “doodle.” It was popular with British troops; they played it as they marched to battle on the first days of the Revolutionary War. The rebels quickly claimed the song as their own and created dozens of new verses that mocked the British, praised the new Continental Army, and hailed its commander, George Washington.

By 1781, when the British surrendered at Yorktown, being called a “Yankee Doodle” had gone from being an insult to a point of pride, and the song had become the new republic’s unofficial national anthem.

During the war years, the Second Continental Congress acted as a central government, but it wasn’t a proper government after the war. In 1777, the members of Congress worked out a plan for a union of the states. The plan was called the Articles of Confederation. In 1781, the new national government started. The purpose of the government, as Thomas Jefferson said, was to protect the rights of the people. Those rights included "life, liber­ty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The Confederation was not a strong government as none of the states wanted to give up much of their own power - there were too many things the government of the Confederation could not do. E.g., the Confederation Congress could not raise money by taxes; it could only ask the states to raise money for the national government. In fact, the Articles of Confederation called the new nation a “league of friendship,” which showed that the states thought of themselves as friendly allies rather than as part of a strong single nation. Many Americans became worried about the future. How could they win the trust of other nations if they refused to pay their debts? How could the country prosper if the states continued to quarrel among themselves?

The Constitutional Convention:The need for a more powerful and complete federal government led, in 1787, to the calling of the Constitutional Convention. It met in Philadelphia through the summer of 1787 and wrote a Constitution. After much discussion and compromise, the convention approved a new constitution on September 17, 1787 and, by June of 1788 the Constitution had been ratifiedby 9 states and became official.

In 1789, the Constitution of the United States was put into operation, and George Washington was elected the first President of the United States.

The Constitution called for a federal government, limited in scope, but independent of and superior to the states. It was able to tax, and was equipped with a two house Legislature and Executive and Judicial branches.

The U.S. Constitution established the separation of powers between three different branches of government. The legislative branch or Congress consists of 2 parts: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Its function is to enact laws. The executive branch led by a President and Vice-President enforces laws. The judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court and a number of lower courts created by Congress which interpret and decide questions of federal and state law. So, each branch of government has its own responsibilities and cannot take action in areas assigned to the other branches.

Together with this separation of powers, the Constitution introduced a system of checks and balancesso that each branch had some power over the other two in order to stop them from becoming too powerful. In this way the Constitution prevents tyrannical abuses of authority through theseparation of powers:

The national legislature, or Congress, embodied the key compromise of the Convention, between the small states, which wanted to retain the power they had under the one state/one vote (i.e., equal representation of all states), and the large states, which wanted the weight of their larger populations and wealth to have a proportionate share of power (i.e., equal representation of all population of the states). So, the upper House, the Senate, represents the states equally, while the lower House, House of Representatives, is elected from districts called constituencies of approximately equal population. As a result states with bigger population have a bigger representation in it.

Thus, the Constitution went into effect in 1789 and has not changed ever since.

The Constitution spells out in its seven articles (sections) the powers of the federal government and the states. Later amendments expanded some of these powers and limited others.

Article I vests (places) the legislative power of the federal government in Congress. Only Congress can enact general laws applicable to all the people.

Article II vests the executive power in the president, including the authority to appoint federal officials and to prosecute federal crimes.

Article III vests the federal judicial power, including the power to conduct trials, in the Supreme Court and in other federal courts that Congress creates. Neither Congress nor the president or executive branch officials can declare a person guilty. Only a judge or jury can make these decisions.

Article IVdefines and delineates the rights of the states and of the federal government. States must accept most laws and legal decisions made in other states. The states must offer most fundamental legal rights to both residents and nonresidents of the state. People accused of serious crimes cannot take refuge in other states.

Congress controls the admission of new states. Congress and the legislatures of the states involved must approve the merger of two states or the creation of a new state within the boundaries of an existing state.

The government has the right to use federal buildings, lands, and property in almost any way it sees fit. The federal government has an obligation to protect the political and physical integrity of the states. The federal government must take responsibility for stopping invasions and, if the states ask, to squelch (suppress) domestic unrest.

Article V defines the ways to amend the Constitution. Both the states and Congress can propose amendments to the Constitution. I will speak about it later.

Article VI binds all government officials, including those at the state level, to support the Constitution and federal laws. All laws in the U.S.—federal, state, and local—must be consistent with the Constitution. All judges must hold the U.S. Constitution above all other law. Members of Congress, the state legislatures, state and federal judges, and state and federal executive officials must agree to support the Constitution.

Article VI leaves other powers to the states to exercise at their discretion, with two exceptions. First, the Constitution is the “supreme law,” so the states cannot make laws that conflict with federal laws. Second, the Constitution guarantees to the people certain civil liberties (the right to be free of government interference) and civil rights (the right to be treated as a free and equal member of the country).

Article VIIdefines the number of states needed for its ratification. Only 9 of the original 13 states were needed to approve the Constitution. This Article is obsolete.

Ways to amend the Constitution: 1) Congress can propose an amendment, provided that 2/3ds of the members of both the House and the Senate were in favor of it. 2) Or the legislatures of two of the states can call a convention to propose amendments. After the Conventional Congress proposes an amendment, it then requires approval by 2/3ds of the state legislatures, or 2/3ds of special state conventions, whichever Congress specifies. By the way, the second method, which allows states to propose an amendment, has never been used so far.

The Constitution took away many of the states’ powers and specified the powers held by the states and the people. This division of powers between the states and the national government was called federalism. Those, who advocated the Constitution, took the name Federalists, and quickly gained supporters throughout the nation. Opponents of the plan for stronger government took the name Anti-federalists. They feared that a government with the power to tax would soon become as despotic and corrupt as Great Britain had been only decades earlier. Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as Ambassador to France at that time, was neither a Federalist nor an Anti-federalist, but decided to remain neutral.

The original Constitution did not include a bill of rights because the delegates to the Constitutional Convention did not think it necessary to set down a list of rights.

When the Constitution went before the states for ratification, members of the Federalist Party, who favored the ratification, found out that the failure to include a bill of rights had been a strategic error and refused to ratify the Constitution until it was changed to give citizens more protection against the wrong use of power by the government. So, the Federalists were for a bill of rights, but the anti-Federalists were against. Even Jefferson sided with the advocates of a bill of rights. Human rights, he argued, were something “no just government should refuse, or rest on inference (here implication).”

The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791. It consisted of 10 amendments out of 12 proposed by the Congress. One was not ratified, and one was ratified as the 27th Amendment.

The First Amendment protected the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and religion from federal legislation. The Second and Third Amendments guaranteed the right to bear arms and made it difficult for the government to house soldiers in private homes — provisions favoring a citizen militia over a professional army. The Fourth through Eighth Amendments defined a citizen’s rights in court and when under arrest. The Ninth Amendment stated that the enumeration of these rights did not endanger other rights, and the Tenth Amendment said that powers not granted the national government by the Constitution remained with the states and citizens.

Thus, the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans freedom speech, religion, and the press. Americans have the right to assemble in public places, to protest government actions, and to demand change. There is a right to own firearms. Because of the Bill of Rights, neither police officers nor soldiers can stop and search a person without good reason. Nor can they search a person’s home without permission from a court to do so. The Bill of Rights guarantees a speedy trial to anyone accused of a crime. The trial must be by jury if requested, and the accused person must be allowed representation by a lawyer and to call witnesses to speak for him or her. Cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden.

Since 1791, 17 other amendments have been added to the Constitution. Perhaps most important of these are the Thirteenth and Fourteenth, which outlaw slavery and guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws, and the Nineteenth, which gives women the right to vote.

Federalists and Anti-federalists, the emerging Party system:The Constitution makes no mention of political parties, and the Founding Fathers regularly ridiculed political “factionalism.” As mentioned before, the struggle over the ratification of the Constitution, however, suggested the first outlines of the system of political parties, which was to later emerge.

The Federalists, who had advocated the Constitution, enjoyed the opportunity to put the new government into operation, while after the adoption of the Constitution, the Anti-federalists, never as well-organized, effectively ceased to exist.

However, the ideals of states’ rights and a weaker federal government were in many ways absorbed by the growth of a new party, the Republican, later Democratic-Republican Party or Democratic Party, which eventually assumed the role of loyal opposition to the Federalists, and finally took control of the federal government in 1800, with the election of Thomas Jefferson as President.

1. In the struggle for control of North America, the decisive factor was that only the English established colonies of agricultural settlers, their interests lay less in trade than in the acquisition of land.

2. English migrants came to America for two main reasons: religious and economic.

3. The colonists who came to the New World were not a homogeneous mix, but rather a variety of different social and religious groups, and they created colonies with very different social, religious, political, and economic structures.

4. By 1733 English settlers had founded 13 colonies along the Atlantic Coast, from New Hampshire in the North to Georgia in the South.

5. The 13 colonies were tied to the British Empire socially, politically and economically. Although each of them was different from the others, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries several events and trends took place and brought them together. The Royal Proclamation and a number of British Parliament Acts aggravated the situation in the colonies to the extreme and ignited the American Revolution.

6. The Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775 marked the beginning of the American Revolution. The last major battle of the American Revolution took place at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. The war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, by which England recognized American independence and relinquished its territory from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.

7. On July 4, 1776, the members of the Continental Congress agreed to issue the paper that is now called the Declaration of Independence.

8. During the war years, the Continental Congress acted as a cen­tral government, but few people thought of it as a government that would continue after the war. In 1777 the members of Con­gress worked out a plan for a union of the states. The plan was called the Articles of Confederation and it was approved by the state legislatures.

9. In 1781 the new national government started. In 1787, the Constitutional Convention, met in Philadelphia to revise the Articles but instead decided to write a Constitution, which was ratified by eleven states in 1788. In 1789, the Constitution of the United States was put into operation, and George Washington was elected the first President of the United States.