Profiles
* Political Thought * Colonial Government * Revolution * Constitution * Birth of Party Politics * War of 1812 * James Monroe: "Era of Good Feeling" and Monroe Doctrine * Jacksonian Democracy * Regional Conflict and Compromise * 1860 Election of Abraham Lincoln * Civil War 1861-62 * Civil War 1863-65 * Reconstruction and Impeachment of President Johnson * Gilded Age and Progressive Era * 1912 Election of Woodrow Wilson * 1916 Election and World War I * Women's Suffrage * Depression and 1932 Election of Franklin D. Roosevelt * Prelude to World War II * Pearl Harbor and Mobilization * World War II: European Theater * World War II: Pacific Theater * Atomic Bomb and End of World War II * 1948 Truman-Dewey Election * 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Election * 1964 Johnson-Goldwater Election * Civil Rights Movement * Vietnam: Evolution of the American Role * Vietnam: Kennedy Administration and Intervention * Vietnam: Johnson Administration and Escalation * Vietnam: Nixon, Ford and Fall of South Vietnam * 1968 Humphrey-Nixon Election * Watergate Scandal and Resignation of President Nixon * 1976 Carter-Ford Election * 1980 & 1984 Reagan Elections * Clinton Impeachment * 2000 Bush-Gore Election * War in Iraq * 2008 Obama-McCain Election * 2012 Obama-Romney Election * 2016 Election |
Colonial Government and the Path to Revolution
"The repeal, or the funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp" cartoon published in 1766 depicts a mock funeral procession along the Thames River in London for the American Stamp Act. Bowing to protests from the colonies, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766. In this cartoon, a funeral procession to the tomb of the Stamp Act includes its principal proponent, Treasury Secretary George Grenville (1712–1770), carrying a child's coffin, marked "Miss Ame-Stamp born 1765, died 1766." Image: Library of Congress
The Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party
In 1768, after the British sent two regiments of soldiers to Boston, they were greeted by protests from the colonists over the existence of a "standing army." The soldiers were frequently harassed, indicted by local courts for minor violations and heckled on the street by citizens. On March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered at the Customs house and began throwing snowballs and taunting the soldiers. One soldier was knocked down and fired into the crowd, later resulting in further shots which killed five and wounded eight persons. The soldiers involved in the massacre were charged with murder and represented by lawyer John Adams, who argued at their trial that the soldiers were provoked by a "motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes, mullatoes, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack tars." All were acquitted except two, who were convicted of manslaughter, and escaped execution by invoking a medieval benefit for those who had some biblical knowledge and were sentenced to being branded on their thumbs. The Tea Act passed by the House of Commons on April 27, 1773, was regarded in America as a strategy to induce the colonists, by lowering the price of tea, to consume more of it and therefore acknowledge the principle of British taxation. On December 16, 1773, a group of Bostonians disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the tea ships docked in Boston Harbor and dumped all 342 chests into the water, provoking Parliament to enact harsh retaliatory legislation, known as The Intolerable Acts. First Continental Congress 1774 Twelve of the thirteen colonies, with only Georgia absent, sent a total of fifty-six delegates to the First Continental Congress which met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia from September 5 to October 26, 1774. One accomplishment of the Congress was the Association of 1774, which urged all colonists to avoid using British goods, and to form committees to enforce this ban. Declarations and Resolves of the First Continental Congress ....Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented in the British parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed.... Declarations and Resolves of the First Continental Congress Avalon Project, Yale Law School Resources
* Creating the United States >> Library of Congress * The Coming of the American Revolution 1764-1776 >> Massachusetts Historical Society * American Revolution History >> History.com * The Founders Constitution >> University of Chicago Press/Liberty Fund Education * Teaching Resources, Colonial Williamsburg * The American Revolution 1763-1783 (AP US History Study Guide) >> Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History * Documents about the Boston Massacre and the Biases of their Creators (lesson plan) >> Massachusetts Historical Society * Teacher and student resources >> Archiving Early America Books * The Creation of the American Republic by Gordon S. Wood * From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 by Pauline Maier * The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood |