Revolution

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Revolution

ing ideas as to the extent and character of a
local self-government. To these opposing
political beliefs was added a long nurtured re-
sentment on the part of the colonies against
England's economic policy with her subjects
across the seas. Accepting the mercantile
theory of colonial regulation—the dominant
theory in Europe of that age—England had
adopted a restrictive system which found ex-
pression in three kinds of laws: (i) Acts of
Navigation, which protected English ship-
ping agents against foreign competitors; (2)
Acts of Trade, to secure monopoly for Eng-
lish merchants of the colonial commerce; (3)
Acts giving to English manufacturers a mon-
opoly of the colonial markets. As these laws
tfere administered, they do not seem to have
been actually disadvantageous to the colonies,
but they necessarily established a real oppo-
sition of interest between America and Eng-
land.

The ministry proposed to rid the colonial
governors of dictation by the colonial as-
semblies, to enforce the trade laws, and to
establish an effective defensive system for the
colonies, supporting this system by taxes
raised in America. The Stamp Act of 1765,
enacted for this purpose, aroused the colon-
ists to wrath. Colonial delegates assembled in
a Stamp Act Congress, which asserted the
right of Americans to tax themselves, and
the episode ended with the repeal of the ob-
noxious act in 1766. The series of measures
known as the Townshend Acts, passed by
Parliament in 1767, and similar in their pur-
pose to the Stamp Act, also aroused a storm
of indignation in America, which resulted in
the repeal of all their provisions but the tax
on tea. Following these errors of statesman-
ship came the Boston Massacre of 1770, the
Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Boston Port
Bill of 1774, and the attempted punishment
of Boston by British soldiers under General
Gage—resulting in the flame of rebellion
which, after the Battles of Concord and
Lexington (April 19, 1775), spread along the
whole Atlantic seaboard. At last, on July 2,
1776, after fierce debate in the Continental
Congress, a resolution of independence was
agreed upon; and on July 4 the Declaration
of Independence, substantially as draughted
by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted.

The American fundamental idea was that
the power is the people's, and that the mag-
istrates invested with legislative, executive,
and judicial functions are trustees and ser-
vants, and accountable always. The state did

not, as the great English charters presumed,
give or yield rights to the individual, but by
his own nature he had them. In America,
therefore, 'bills of rights' summed up the
rights which the sovereign people withheld
from their agents, the government. With the
desire for independence came a proposition
for articles of confederation. For eighteen
months Congress labored with that difficult
problem; and even after it had devised and
.dopted such articles (November, 1777), near-
ly four years passed before all the States
could be gotten to adhere to what at best was
a league of friendship. On June 15 the sec-
ond Continental Congress appointed, as com-
mander-in-chief of the American forces,
George Washington. Before his arrival hi
Massachusetts occurred (June 17) the Battle
of Bunker Hill, in which the British after ter-
rible losses, dislodged the Americans from
their fortifications on Charlestown peninsula,
immediately north of Boston. By Washing-
ton's sudden occupation (March 4, 1776) and
fortification of Dorchester Heights (on a pen-
insula south of Boston), General Howe was
outmanoeuvred, and on March 17 he evacu-
ated the city.

Washington hurried part of his army to
New York, since that was the most likely
point of the British attack. The city of
New York was the key to the Hudson valley,
which, if the British could control it, would
separate rebellious New England from the
less radical middle colonies, and enable Howe
to crush the head of the rebellion. New York
was very hard to defend with Washington's
meagre resources, and when Howe came, as
expected, he easily drove the American army
from Long Island (August, 1776), and later
from the city, compelling Washington to re-
treat up the Hudson and then across New
Jersey. For the next year (1777) the British
plan of campaign again centered about the
Hudson valley. Gen. Burgoyne was to come
down from Canada by way of Lake Cham-
plain, and was to be met by Howe coming
up the Hudson, while St. Leger was to leave
from another point in Canada, come down
the Mohawk valley, and join the other two.
Burgoyne fought desperate engagements
which failed, and at last, baffled and beset,
and with no word from Howe, lie surrendered
(Oct., 1777) at Saratoga. The effect of Bur-
goyne's surrender, together with the influ-
ence of Benjamin Franklin, the American
representative at Paris, was to decide the
king of France to enter into an open alliance