• Finish K. Hall’s comments from “Road to Revolution”
  • Part I—look at Period Standards: Read them all together.
  • Assignment—read only pages in Chapter 8 that you think you need to know—read only half by Tuesday and the other half by Thursday—or Wednesday and Friday.
  • Compare your notes to Crossen’s—share in groups and whole
  • Begin group discussions

Chapter 8, “America Secedes from the Empire, 1775- 1783”

Group Questions—Each group will be assigned a topic or two. Please prepare a discussion for the class. All groups and students are responsible for the content of all questions.

  1. Why have the Loyalists been largely forgotten in American historical memory? Do they deserve to be better known? Do you agree with the text that they were often tragic figures?
  1. Did the Loyalists act primarily out of conviction and feelings of patriotism toward Britain, or out of self-interest?
  1. If you had been an African American, free or slave, in 1776, would you have tried to back the Patriot cause or the Loyalist cause? Why?
  1. What was radical and new in the Declaration of Independence, and what was old and traditional? What did statements like all men are created equal mean in their historical context, and what did they come to mean later?
  1. Was military strategy or politics the key to American victory in the war? How did the two coincide?
  1. If the "Model Treaty" that John Adams authored had been the basis for the American alliance with France, would the results of the Revolution have been the same? Do you agree that Benjamin Franklin's French alliance is an example of "practical self-interest trumping idealism," as the authors state? In what other situations during the Revolutionary War does practical self-interest trump idealism?
  1. Did the Loyalists deserve to be persecuted and driven out of the country? What difference does it make to understand the Revolution as a civil war between Americans as well as a war against the British?
  1. How important were the diplomatic relations between European nations in determining the success of the American Revolution? How significant a role did the French play in securing American independence? How significant a role did the rest of Europe play? How did the American Revolution change diplomatic relations in Europe?
  1. What has the Revolution meant to later generations of Americans, including our own? Do we still think of the United States as a revolutionary nation? Why or why not?

Chapter 8, “America Secedes from the Empire, 1775- 1783,” Lecture Outline

  1. Second Continental Congress, May 1775
  2. all 13
  3. all did not want separation—wanted a redress of grievances
  4. appeals to the King
  5. raise cash & army—Continental Army
  6. George Washington—why? Why not? (Being a planter from the South helped too)—“Check the excess of the masses.” What’s that & how could GW do that?
  1. Let the Games Begin, Arnold, Bunker Hill and Hessians
  2. Colonists’ contradictions—“Olive Branch” and militias?
  3. Ethan Allen & Benedict Arnold at Ticonderoga
  4. New York
  5. Really a surprise?
  6. Valuable munitions
  7. Bunker Hill (Breed’s Hill)
  8. British didn’t flank retreat; used a frontal attack
  9. Entrenched Americans (1,500 v 3,000) shot but ran out of ammunitions
  10. French foreign minister, “With two more such victories, the British would have no army left in America.”
  11. Americans still professing loyalty—King claimed the colonies in formal rebellion, August 1775—TREASON
  12. Hesse—book says princes needed cash, I learned that they were in debt and paid back other kingdom/nations with their soldiers/subjects. “Hessian Flies?”
  1. Oh Canada!
  2. Rebels invade Canada—mistake Canadien François attitudes towards British—the Quebec Act of 1774 had much to do with this—
  3. Made Rebels look bad—why go on the offense when you’re claiming you’re fighting for fair treatment?
  4. Why do the Rebels want the land of the Blue?
  5. deprive British of base
  6. get a 14th colony/state (dream didn’t die then and probably hasn’t yet . . .)
  7. Hardships for Montgomery and Arnold
  1. Paine & Common Sense
  2. Know this forever
  3. “Transatlantic community.” Where is this? Show me on the map please.
  4. What does Ireland have to do with it?
  5. Urged on to separation by British burning of Falmouth, Norfolk and the hiring of Hessians
  6. Who is the “Royal Brute of Great Britain?”
  1. Paine and the Idea of ‘Republicanism’
  2. Treasonous and radical, why?
  3. Colonists’ years of salutary neglect prepared them well for becoming a republic. Why? Know this forever:
  4. lack of inherited nobility
  5. practice of voting & town meetings—especially New England
  6. ideas of “virtue” serving ones community
  7. ‘ultra democratic’ approach to republicanism—no, no, no!
  8. Some (most leaders) feared the masses and wished for a “natural aristocracy.”
  9. leveling? “tyranny of the masses,” ‘lower orders’ of society’ THIS GOES ALONG WITH THAT FEAR OF ‘DEMOCRACY!’
  1. Declaration of Independence, July 1776
  2. Lee’s Resolution, June 7—“These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” What did he mean, do you think, by states?
  3. Know forever and forever the 4 parts of the Declaration. Look at it NOW: Appendix page A29 (That’s at the back of the book)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

  1. “Mr. Jefferson’s explanation of Mr. Lee’s resolution.” Or “Jefferson’s editorial?”
  2. read inset page 146 Box—“The American signers
  3. Effects:
  4. foreign help (oui)
  5. hang together
  1. Patriots & Loyalists
  • Page 146: Period Standards 3.3 here—
  1. Be able to discuss the Patriots methods of ‘convincing’ the colonials that their way was indeed the correct way. Please keep this in mind all year—especially when we look at the American War in Vietnam.
  1. “The Americans would be less dangerous if they had a regular army.”
  2. Why would “People who knew which side their daily bread came from remain loyal to the crown?” 150
  3. Why would Anglican clergy remain Loyalists?
  4. Yankee churches as pigsties

Read page 147: Abigail Adams. This addresses some of Period 3.3

Complete together:

“ . . . The power of Parliament is uncontrollable, but by themselves, and we must obey. They only can repeal their own Acts. There would be an end of all government, if one or a numbers of subjects or [and] provinces should take upon them to judge the justice of an Act of Parliament, to refuse obedience to it . . . Reasons may be given, why an Act ought to be repeal’d, and yet obedience must be yielded to it till that repeal takes place.”

  1. The argument above statement reflects an opinion most likely held by a (an)
  2. English gentleman in 1773
  3. Frontier settler in 1763
  4. Boston merchant in 1773
  5. Moderate colonist in 1765
  6. Virginia planter in 1776
  1. Who wrote the argument below? How do we know? Make a guess at what it is saying to whom it is saying it to.

“You are to be diligent in the execution of the powers and authorities given you by several Acts of Parliament for . . . searching ships and for seizing, securing and bringing on shore any goods prohibited to be imported into, or exported out of said plantations; or for which any duties are payable, or ought to have been paid.”

  1. Whigs and Tories
  2. Why were the British inept at keeping fence sitters loyal?
  3. “The American would be less dangerous if they had a regular army.”
  4. Why would one remain loyal? (in any move for radical change, why would one want to remain static?)
  5. Anglican church, jobs, New York, Charleston
  6. New England resistant
  1. Loyalist Exodus
  2. some roughly treated—however, “no wholesale reign of terror comparable to that which later bloodied both French and Russia during their revolutions” (150).
  3. Estates sold to finance war—how else were it financed?
  4. Native allies
  1. Washington at Bay
  2. New York Loyalist and the big fleet
  3. Escaped to Manhattan from Long Island—decision before—guessing where the British would go
  4. Escaped finally to New Jersey
  5. Howe did not follow—was too busy with his mistress? Or too smart to play in the wintertime?
  6. On December 26, Washington surprised all by crossing the Delaware River and sneak attacking the Hessians at Trenton
  7. Later Princeton
  1. Burgoyne’s Blundering Invasion
  2. Winter, London came up with a second plan.
  3. Focus would be in New England and its goal would be to divide the colonies. The plan had 3 parts…
  4. Col. Barry St. Leger would move from Lake Erie eastward along the Mohawk River.
  5. Gen. Burgoyne would descend from Montreal southward on Lake Champlain.
  6. Gen. Howe would drive men northward from New York up the Albany River. They'd all 3 meet at Albany, NY
  7. On paper, it was a good plan. In reality, it had problems—didn’t work
  8. Howe did some moves to open up the way for Burgoyne who was encumbered with a huge baggage train
  9. Howe didn’t capture Philly, it capture him- left Burgoyne alone
  10. Meanwhile back at the ranch with G.W—
  11. defeated at Brandywine Creek and Germantown
  12. Continental Army finally retires to Valley Forge 1777—starving time—rabble was short of all but misery
  13. Prussian Von Steuben drilled them
  14. Trapped Burgoyne—forced to surrender at Saratoga on October 17, 1777 to Horatio Gates
  15. Know Saratoga forever—turning point—able to get French aid—from who? KING LOUIS 16? Does he want to lose his head?
  1. Revolution or Diplomacy?
  2. New thinkers wanted a new order based on laws, not inherited titles—or raw power.
  3. Wanted alliances of trade
  4. Military interests outmoded
  5. Commercial interests counted now
  6. Ben Franklin—the American in European courts
  7. Britain offers “home-rule” to colonists—who turn to Franklin—timing and diplomacy—gets French alliance
  8. Model of practical self-interest trumping abstract idealism in American’s foreign relations
  9. First foreign treaty—recognized as a nation—big deal
  10. Gave military might
  11. Allies—revolutionary war becomes a world war
  1. The Colonial War Becomes a Wider War
  2. Spain enters against Britain
  3. Dutch too
  4. Threatened the British Isles
  5. Russia and most of Europe in “Armed Neutrality” v Britain
  6. How did the French aid the Americans?
  7. Supplies, strength, funds, blockades against British in the islands.
  1. Rochambeau arrives in Newport
  1. hangs out with Puritans and angry former enemies
  2. Arnold turncoat in West Point.
  3. British in the South
  4. more loyalists
  5. General Greene, “Fighting Quaker”
  6. Joseph Brant, Mohawk Chief wants to kiss the queen’s hand
  1. The Land Frontier and the Sea Frontier
  1. British buying scalps from natives
  2. Most Mohawks with Britain, a couple with Americans
  3. Wanted to believe that a British victory would restrain American expansion
  4. 1784 pro-British Iroquois forced to sing the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, first one between natives and the US. The natives were forced to give up their land.
  5. Still—the Yankees went west . . .
  6. Audacious George Rogers Clark wanted to take Midwest scattered British forts by surprise
  7. Kakaskia
  8. Cahokia
  9. Vincennes Some say these victories forced Britain to give up area north of Ohio river at the treaty table
  1. Navy not much yet . . .
  1. Scottish born John Paul Jones—became hero/legend
  2. Mostly the force destroyed British merchant ships—keeping supplies out and forcing some of the war in the water
  3. Privateers—rankled trade—but brought speculation and graft with it.
  1. finally, it’s the economy stupid!
  2. inflation
  3. government bankrupt
  4. would only pay 2.5 cents on the dollar
  5. mutinous feelings around
  6. hardships for merchants, farmers and citizens
  1. Yorktown and Cornwallis and the gang is all here!
  2. Cornwallis waiting reinforcements and supplies
  3. French w/ Admiral de Grasse—could help
  4. Washington swift move from New York to Chesapeake area
  5. Rochambeau’s French army too
  6. “The World Turn’d Upside Down.”
  7. Not over til George III says it is! 43,000 troops still in America
  8. Lord North exclaimed "Oh God! It's all over! It's all over!" when he heard the news.
  9. But, fighting still trickled on for over a year

Peace at Paris

  1. The English had been fighting and taking losses in India, the West Indies, the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Rock of Gibraltar, and America, of course.
  2. They were tired of war.
  3. The Americans sent a peace-seeking delegation to Paris in Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay.
  4. The three were told to not make a separate peace with England but to always consult first with France. John Jay was suspicious of France however.
  5. France wanted America independent, but also weak, ideally cooped up east of the Allegheny Mountains.
  6. Jay secretly contacted London to seek peace. The British quickly worked out a deal behind France's back.
  1. The Treaty of Paris, 1783 ended the American Revolution. Its terms were…
  2. England recognized American independence all the way to the Mississippi River.
  3. America retained some fishing rights in