French and Indian War----
In the middle of the 18th century, France and England had competing claims for land in North America.
The English colonies were encroaching on French territory are the population grew.
The French set up forts along to protect their fur trading interests.
Some of these forts conflicted with English claims.
Virginia Governor Dinwiddie dispatched a young George Washington in 1753 to deliver a protest to the French. This protest was ignored.
The British sent a party to construct a fort on the site of modern Pittsburg.
The force was driven off by the French who, in turn, constructed Fort Duquesne on the site.
The next year, Dinwiddie turned to Washington to expel the French from the site. Washington was quickly overwhelmed by superior French and Native American numbers.
Washington had to retreat to the hastily constructed Fort Necessity, which he had to surrender shortly thereafter. This incident was a prelude to the French and Indian War.
In 1754, war was inevitable.
The colonies sent delegates to Albany to discuss strategy for common defense.
They approved a document written by Benjamin Franklin promoting a substructure of government below British authority to govern the colonies.
The council would be comprised of elected representatives from each colony and headed by a President-General appointed by the crown.
The colonies were not ready for political union and it is unlikely that the British government would have supported the plan.
In July 1755, the British sent a force from Virginia to attack Fort Duquesne.
The heavy force was defeated by the smaller French force and their Native American allies.
Both the British commander, Braddock, and the French commander Beaujeu, were killed.
23 year old George Washington won accolades for rallying the defeated British and preventing the battle from turning into a rout.
The first two years of fighting were characterized by humiliating defeats for the British.
The French and Indian War was essentially the North American theatre of a larger conflict, the Seven Years War, in Europe.
The 1763 Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War.
The French transferred its claims west of the Mississippi to Spain and ceded its territory east of the Mississippi to the British.
The Treaties of Easton and Paris limited colonization to the Eastern seaboard.
This war put Britain into a great dept, and the European British couldn’t understand why they were paying for a war on another continent. So…
England tries to take control---
For about 10 years before 1775 England was trying to gain more control of the colonies.
Colonies were NOT allowed to have representatives in the British Parliament. British Parliament was making laws for the colonies.
Trouble really began with the Stamp Act in 1765. The Stamp Act required colonists to buy official stamps to put on legal documents.
Committees of Correspondence were groups formed to keep in touch about protesting the new tax laws.
In Boston, the Sons of Liberty were formed to take protest actions against England in 1765.
One form of protesting the colonist used was boycotting. Boycotting is refusing to buy or use a product to get someone to do what you want.
The colonies agreed that since they had no representatives in Parliament, England had no right to tax them. The colonies’ motto became “No taxation without representation.”
Patrick Henry was a fiery young Virginian who made a famous speech to protest the Stamp Act. In his speech he said this famous line: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Parliament did not realize that the protest to the Stamp Act would be so violent, so they repealed it.
In 1767, Parliament passed laws that set taxes on glass, paint, lead, tea and other goods that the colonies imported. These laws were called the Townsend Acts.
Imports are goods brought into the country. Exports are sent out.
Smuggling is bringing goods into or out of a country illegally. Some colonial merchants avoided paying taxes by smuggling.
On March 5, 1770, in Boston, there was a clash between some colonist and British soldiers. Five Americans were killed. This skirmish became known as the Boston Massacre.
The first American to die in the struggle for independence from England was as African American who died in the Boston Massacre. His name was Crispus Attucks.
In December of 1773, to protest a tax on tea, the Sons of Liberty boarded British ships and dumped over 300 chests of tea into the harbor. We know this event as the Boston Tea Party.
To punish Boston for the Boston Tea Party, the English Parliament passed a set of harsh laws known as the Intolerable Acts.
Intolerable means unbearable.
One of the Intolerable acts was the Quartering Act. Quartering required colonists to keep British soldiers in their homes.
To stop the protests against taxes, England sent more soldiers to America. These soldiers were supposed to keep order and enforce the new taxes and laws the English had passed.
Start of American Government----
There were 13 colonies when the Revolution began.
New England Colonies, Middle Colonies, and Southern Colonies were the three groups of colonies according to region.
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire were the New England Colonies.
Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, and New Jersey were the middle colonies.
Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and North and South Carolina were the southern colonies.
In September, 1774, 12 colonies sent representatives to Philadelphia to discuss the problems with England. This meeting was the First Continental Congress.
Georgia was the only colony not to send a representative to the First Continental Congress.
Not all of the delegates at the First Continental Congress wanted the American colonies to break away from England and be independent. Some saw this as an act of treason.
A delegate is a representative for someone else.
Most colonists hoped that England and the colonies could reach a compromise. A compromise is where each side gives up something in order to reach an agreement.
Because war seemed near, Massachusetts began to hide stores or arms and ammunition. The most important store of military supplies was in Concord, a small town about 20 miles from Boston.
Minutemen were groups of men in Massachusetts that were ready to fight instantly.
Lord Frederick North, the Prime Minister of England, sent a message to General Thomas Gage in 1775. The message said “to crush the rebellion.”
The commander of the British troops in Boston when the war started was General Thomas Gage.
Paul Revere and William Dawes were the two American patriots who rode to Lexington and Concord to warn the colonists that the “British are coming.”
Paul Revere is better known because of a famous poem by William Wadsworth Longfellow.
Paul Revere was a silversmith.
A patriot is someone who loves, supports, and defends his country.
Revolutionary War------
On April 18, 1775, British soldiers marched to Lexington and Concord to seize colonial supplies and to capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams.
Captain John Parker led the colonists as they gathered at Lexington to stop the British Soldiers.
On April 19, 1775 in Lexington, Massachusetts the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.
No one knows who fired the first shot at Lexington.
It was a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson called “Concord Hymn” that call the first shot the “shot heard ‘round the world.”
The “shot heard ‘round the world” means that the shot changed the course of all history.
The first organized battle of the war was fought outside of Boston at Breed’s Hill, but the battle was named for Bunker Hill.
George Washington was appointed to be commander-in-chief of the American army at the Second Continental Congress.
Thomas Paine wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier…will shrink from the service of (his) country; but he that stands it now, deserves the low and thinks of man and woman,” to encourage American patriots.
Shortly after the battle at Lexington, Ethan Allen, a Vermont patriot, took his ‘Green Mountain Boys’ to capture the British Fort Ticonderoga in New York.
Benedict Arnold is remembered because he betrayed his country by agreeing to turn over the American fort at West Point to the British. Up until that point he had been a brilliant American general.
Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called “Common Sense” in which he said it only make sense for the colonies to separate from England and become independent.
In 1776, the Continental Congress named 5 men—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, and Thomas Jefferson—to write a document to declare the colonies independent from England and to give the reasons why the colonists wanted independence.
This document was called the Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson wrote almost the entire first draft of the Declaration of Independence.
July 4, 1776, Continental Congress approved and adopted the Declaration of Independence.
John Hancock was the first delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence because he was the president of the Continental Congress.
He signed his name really large because he wanted King George to be able to read it without his “spectacles,” glasses.
Today you can see the original Declaration of Independence at the National Archives Building in Washington DC.
About one-third of all Americans did to believe in the fight for independence. They remanded true to England. These people were called Loyalists or Tories.
Nathan Hale was hanged by the British for spying. His last words were “I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Early in the war American did not win many significant battles.
On Christmas Day in 1776, when the American cause seemed about to fail, George Washington’s troops scored an important victory by crossing the Delaware River and capturing three regiments of Hessian soldiers in Trenton, New Jersey.
Hessians were German soldiers who were hired to fight for England.
King George III was the King of England during the American Revolution.
The American Revolution was the first war where submarines were used. They were developed by David Bushnell.
John Paul Jones was a famous naval officer and commander of the Bonhomme Richard. He is famous for saying “I have not yet begun to fight.”
The last major battle of the war took place when the Americans defeated the British in Yorktown, Virginia.
On October 17, 1781, the war ended with the surrender of the British General Cornwallis to George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia.
There the British Band played “The World Turned Upside Down.”
The final peace treaty that officially ended the American Revolution was signed on September 3, 1783 in Paris, France.
Francis Marion, a famous American fighter in South Carolina, led troops in raids against British posts and was better known as “Swamp Fox.”
France was the most helpful European country in regards to helping the Americans defeat the British.
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