Period 3

• Pontiac’s Rebellion

  • British took Natives land without giving them any gifts. Unlike the French.
  • 1763 - Pontiac led 3000 Natives to attack Fort Detroit (British owned)
  • This showed that Natives can and would work together
• Seven Years War

  • CAUSES
  • Tobacco prices remain stagnant
  • Plantation owners want to move westward to produce more tobacco
  • France set up forts along the Ohio River Valley Territory to prevent expansion
  • Britain & France both claimed ownership of lands in the Ohio River Valley
• Albany Plan of Union (1754) - created by Ben Franklin during the seven years war to organize an intercolonial government - including a system to collect taxes & recruit troops. Didn’t work.
• Treaty of Paris (signed in 1973)

  • France surrendered nearly all of its claims 
• During the war,

  • British saw the colonists as a weak fighting force
  • Colonists saw British as under experienced (fighting in unknown territory of America)
• The war increased British debt - LED TO THE END OF SALUTARY NEGLECT - British needed money from the colonies to increase the nation’s revenue. So they started to tax, leading to disagreements which ruined the relationships.
• Royal Proclamation of 1763

  • Reaction to Pontiac’s rebellion by King George III
  • Drew a boundary line in the Appalachian Mountains & forbade colonists from settling the lands west of the line
  • British hoped to neutralize conflict between white settlers & Natives
  • Thousands of colonists defied the law, moving westward to claim land for themselves
• Townshend Acts (1767)

  • Taxes on imports of glass, tea, lead, and paint
  • Courts were created to prosecute violators
• Colonists argued that British Parliament did not have the right to tax them because they lacked representation in the legislative body
• • Stamp Act (1765) - levied taxes on all printed material
  • Affected those who were most politically active
  • Provoked so much unrest, Britain was forced to repeal it
• • Sugar Act (1764) - raised prices demanded for sweeteners like molasses and sugar 
• Quartering Act (1765) - required colonial citizens to provide room & board for British soldiers stationed in America
• Declaratory Act (1766) - replaced the Stamp Act - maintained the right of the crown to tax the colonies as Parliament’s authority was identical in North America and Britain
• Stamp Act Congress (1765) - colonial delegates drew up formal petition to repeal the act - FIRST UNIFIED COLONIAL RESPONSE TO BRITISH POLICY - Stamp Act repealed in 1766
• Colonists organized boycotts of British goods & violent demonstration of protest toward customs officials (tarring & feathering)
• • Nonimportation Agreement - suspended all imports of British goods
  • Purpose: to rally opposition to British policies, to educate townspeople about the Constitutional rights, & to encourage townspeople to become politically active
  • British response: sending naval & military officials to Boston to enforce acts
• Committee of Correspondence: A group of American colonists who wrote letters to each other to discuss how to deal with the British. Made by Samuel Adams. Vital to organizing the first continental congress.
• Sons & Daughters of Liberty - group of Patriot activists who intimidated tax collectors, burned warehouses holding British imports, & enforced boycotts of British goods
• Tea Act (1773) - lowered the tax on tea - since colonists were wary of Britain’s attempt to tax them, they refused to purchase the tea still
• • Boston Tea Party - Sons of Liberty destroyed 342 chests of tea imported from the British East India Company
  • Caused British to punish Boston & the colony of Massachusetts severely
  • British troops sent to occupy Boston
  • Shut down Boston’s port
  • Shut down Massachusetts’ legislative assembly 
  • Appointed General Thomas Gage as governor - broadly expanded his power 
• Boston Massacre (1770) - British soldiers killed 5 Bostonians. Caused by the Quartering Act since the British soldiers were stealing their jobs.
• Intolerable Acts

  • British troops sent to occupy Boston
  • Shut down Boston’s port
  • Shut down Massachusetts’ legislative assembly 
  • Appointed General Thomas Gage as governor - broadly expanded his power 
  • Quebec Act (1774) - allowed former French region to expand its borders taking away potential land from the colonists in the Ohio River Valley 
• First Continental Congress (1774)

  • Purpose: show support for Boston & work out a unified approach to Britain
  • Colonies argued about implementing a boycott of British imported goods 
  • Southern colonies were economically dependant on their exports to Britain
• Declaration of Rights & Grievances 

  • denied Parliament’s right to tax the colonies 
  • characterized the intolerable acts as an assault on colonial liberties
  • Requested that the colonies prepare their militias
  • Did not declare independence at the time
• Declaration of the Causes & Necessities for Taking Up Arms

  • Published by the Continental Congress in 1775
  • Justified the raising of a colonial military force & urged King George III to consider colonial grievances 
• Olive Branch Petition

  • 1775 statement by the Continental Congress
  • Reasserted colonial loyalty to King George III and asked him to intervene with Parliament on the colonies behalf
  • King refused to recognize the Congress’ legitimacy to make such a request
• Separation of powers - idea that the government should be divided into different branches that check & balance each other
• • Common Sense by Thomas Paine argued that it was contrary to common sense for the large land of America to be governed by the tiny England 
  • Frowned upon hereditary passing of power
• The Enlightenment

  • John Locke began to influence the ideas of Americans in republicanism, democracy, individual rights, the separation of powers, equality, a distrust of aristocracy, and science over religion 
• The Great Awakening

  • Emphasized individual salvation
  • Questioned the dependency on authority to connect to God - this reflected in a political sense
• The Declaration of Independence

  • Second Continental Congress - assembly of delegates from the 13 colonies that passed the Declaration of Independence & the Articles of Confederation 
  • Declaration contained a preamble that heavily reflected Enlightenment ideas about natural rights as well as 27 grievances and wrongdoings aimed at the Crown and English Parliament
• Republican Motherhood

  • Because a woman’s role in the household was to educate their sons to be politically active citizens, women needed increased education in order to do so
  • This created a shift in the social status of women
• Treaty of Paris (1783)

  • Ended the American Revolutionary War
  • America promised not to punish loyalists 
  • Geographic boundaries of the British Empire & the United States
  • Recognized the US as an independent state
  • US agreed to pay back debts to British merchants
• Articles of Confederation (1781)

  • No executive branch of government - didn’t want to create a “too centralized federal government”
  • Federal government did not have the power to regulate commerce or levy taxes, no judicial branch, all states had to agree upon amendments
  • This created competition & disagreements between states about tariffs & whether they should charge each other
  • WEAK
• Land Ordinance of 1785

  • Established the basis for the Public Land Survey System in which settlers could purchase land in the undeveloped west
  • Allowed government to sell land in the West in order to pay of national debt
  • Government could organize this land into townships & plots of land for public schools
• Northwest Ordinance of 1787

  • Established guidelines for statehood 
  • 60,000 people
  • Banned slavery to the North of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi
  • One successful act under the Articles of Confederation
• Shay’s Rebellion (1787)

  • Rebellion led by farmer Daniel Shay 
  • Uprising against tax and debt collection
  • Rebellion crushed by the state army
  • Showed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation & spurred the Constitutional Convention
• • Virginia plan - favored larger states - called for representation in both legislative bodies to be based on population
  • New Jersey plan - favored smaller states - called for equal representation in the legislative branch 
  • Connecticut Compromise - proposal that one legislative body would be based on population & the other would have equal representation
• • Electoral college - compromise at the Constitutional Convention regarding how to elect the president
  • electors cast votes as representatives of their states, which delegates believed would protect the election process from corruption and the influence of factions (political parties)
• Three-fifths Compromise - slave population would be counted as 3/5 of it’s actual population (Southern states had so many slaves that they wanted slave population to count toward total population)