The Individual in Revolutionary America
While America in the 17th century was best dissected by showcasing groups of people, one could very easily assert that America in the Revolutionary period should be described by the experiences of individuals. While the settlers of the 17th century established a society, the individual colonist of the 18th developed it. Each individual, whether Whig or Tory, Yankee or Loyalist, had an important part to play in what would eventually become the American Revolution. The following post will first set the stage for the Revolution and continue to detail the lives and ideas of some of the people who played a part in the struggle that would blossom into a war between a mother country and her children.
As we often forget, the development of America as a sovereign nation the notion of being American did not happen instantaneously. In the beginning of the 18th century, identifying yourself as an American simply did not exist. People that were born in a specific state may have referred to themselves using the state’s name (Virginian, Pennsylvanian, etc.) but the states, while certainly working in a sort of tandem, were not unified and therefore offered no reason to refer to oneself as American. It would eventually be British pressures that led to a unified country and the American name that we use today. It is this researcher’s opinion that if the British had not been so aggressive and careless with their colonies, we would likely still be a British territory.
As early as 1763, 13 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we begin to see the stage set for the Revolution. King George III signed into law the Royal Proclamation. This Proclamation, being issued after the British victory at the end of the French and Indian War, prevented settlers from settling past an arbitrary line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. The line was to be guarded by British posts, partly to keep Indians out and partly to keep colonists in. Many colonists believed that the British were overstepping their boundaries and using the line as an excuse to keep a military presence in America.
The next year, 1764, Britain attempted to both regulate trade and create revenue by enacting the Sugar Act. Perhaps it was Britain’s belief in mercantilism or an attempt to abolish the practice of salutary neglect that made them believe a tax on sugar and molasses was a good idea. The colonists, on the other hand were less than pleased. It was an unfair law in their eyes, but the last straw for many colonists would come next year.
The Stamp Act, enacted in 1765, posed a direct tax on virtually all paper products. Colonists harshly opposed this new tax; Benjamin Franklin, while being interviewed by the House of Commons in England said about the Stamp Act, “The authority of Parliament was allowed to be valid in all laws, except such as should lay internal taxes. It was never disputed in laying duties to regulate commerce.” By internal tax, he meant a tax which was meant only to raise revenue instead of regulating trade. Franklin would go on to argue that the colonists had no problem whatsoever abiding by taxes that were used to regulate trade, only those which were used to raise revenue. Most colonists shared these sentiments and believed that if a tax were to be imposed, it should be only by an authority in which they have legal representation and a legal voice. These ideas would blossom into the age-old saying “No Taxation without Representation”. While the tax was certainly used to raise revenue in Britain, John Adams argued that the true meaning behind the tax was to make paper pamphlets, and therefore information, more difficult to circulate amongst the colonists. Keeping the colonists from circulating information would prove to be an incredibly difficult task for the British all the way up to and through the Revolution.
With the amount of backlash from colonists and the boycott on British goods that was followed by a high percentage of colonists, the British could not possibly sustain a business relationship with America without trying to save face. This face-saving device came in the form of the Declaratory Act in 1766. The Declaratory Act completely repealed the Stamp Act and lessened the Sugar Act, which Britain believed would be better for business. Although the Declaratory Act seemed like a step back for the aggressive British policy, included within it was a far more nefarious clause; a line that allowed the British Parliament to make any decision whatsoever about the colonies. The British believed that the colonists had “virtual representation” or that they essentially were accurately represented by Parliament just by being a part of the British Empire; however, the colonists had different ideas.
Armed with the Declaratory Act as tool that allows them to pass any act or law they desire, the British Parliament enacted the Townshend Acts in 1767 at the request of Charles Townshend. The Townshend Acts were a collection of four separate acts: the Suspending Act, which suspended the New York Assembly’s right to convene until enough money was collected by colonists to pay for the housing of British troops in New York; the Townshend duties, which put a direct tax on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea for purely revenue-gaining reasons; the third act placed restrictions and a system of collections on customs in the colonies; the fourth act lifted duties levied on any tea coming from Britain to the colonies. The first three acts exerted British authority on the colonies, which colonists like Samuel Adams despised. Adams wrote his famous “Circular Letter” in protest to the acts and to enlighten the American public on the issues at hand. As colonists became more educated on the matters, they began to become more vocal in their protests and more strongly boycott British goods. Tensions would continue to rise for the next three years.
In 1770, British soldiers had been living in and around Boston for years. These soldiers whom stayed in Boston year in and year out would be come to known as “Regulars” by the locals. At their peak, there may have been about 1 British Regular per every 3 Bostonians. Some of these British Regulars felt that they could use some extra income and began to compete for general labor jobs around the city; this caused a strong hatred for the British in Boston (well, a stronger hatred than they already had). Then, on March 5th, 1770, tensions finally boiled over when a group of British soldiers fired into an angry mob of Bostonians. Details are somewhat hazy concerning the event, and historians still find themselves pondering such questions as: “were there nine, ten, or eleven soldiers?”, “were the colonists verbally and/or physically abusing the soldiers first?”, “did the British commanding officer actually order his troops to fire?”, among many others. One fact was certain though: five Bostonians were killed either immediately or from their wounds and another six were injured. This act of violence fueled what could be considered the first real push towards independence by the average colonist and the immediate pull of most British troops for Boston. Anti-British tempers would continue to flare for the next three years, when an act was passed that pushed the Sons of Liberty to make their first real strike against the British.
It was May of 1773 when the British Parliament passed the Tea Act. This act did not instate any new taxes, but perhaps did build on the taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts. According to the Tea Act, all tea being shipped to the colonies would have to be imported directly from Great Britain. Colonists were angered over this act because it undercut merchants and was to the benefit of only the British. When the Sons of Liberty found out that the British planned to ship all of the East India Company’s extra tea to Boston Harbor and keep it there until it was sold, they knew they had to act. Without hesitation, the Sons devised a plan to board the ships (some while being dressed as Mohawk Indians) and dump the tea into the Harbor. The plan went uninterrupted on December 16, 1773, leaving an astounding 342 chests worth of tea into the water. This act, later known as the Boston Tea Party, would be answered by the British with the harshest set of laws they could muster, The Coercive Acts.
The Coercive Acts, or the Intolerable Acts (as the colonists so aptly referred to them), were a group of 4 laws all designed with one idea in mind: to make the colonists pay for what they had done. The first part of the Acts was the Boston Port Act, which closed the Boston Port until the debt for the dumped tea had been repaid or the king saw it fit to reopen it. The colonists rejected this act because it was detrimental not only to those who participated in the Boston Tea Party, but to all people in the Northeastern colonies who relied on shipping of goods in any way. The second part of the Acts was the Massachusetts Government Act, which effectively replaced all positions of power in America with royally-appointed subjects. Colonists were quick to realize that self-governance under such a law would be nearly impossible. The third part of the Acts was the Administration of Justice Act, which allowed royal governors to order that accused British officials receive a trial in Britain, rather than the States. George Washington would go on file calling this the “Murder Act” because he believed it gave British officials a way to get away with any crime, including murder. The fourth part of the Acts, the Quartering Act, officially allowed British troops to be quartered in any abandoned building at the expense of the colonies. As a whole, the Coercive Acts were an attempt by the British government to usurp power from the thinkers and the doers in the colonies. The British surely expected the colonists to finally submit but instead they found, and perhaps even helped develop, a people that could finally find it in themselves to separate, to fight, and to call themselves Americans.
The injustices committed by the crown and his parliament for the last 13 years could no longer go excused. By early 1774, the people of Lexington, Massachusetts knew that war was inevitable. They began to prepare by taxing themselves 40 pounds for military equipment, even going as far as to prepare for burying of the dead by supplying a heavy carriage for transport. This would prove to be a wise idea when, on April 19th 1775, the British army set off on a mission from Boston to Concord in an attempt to capture ammunitions and military supplies from a storage in the town (and perhaps find and capture the elusive Whig leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams!). Between Boston and Concord lay the city of Lexington. Before we get into the detail of battle, we should first discuss some of the background of the situation at hand and of the colonists that would fight that day or during the Revolutionary War.
Whig leaders had been collecting and dispersing British military intelligence using a band of organized spies and messengers. Included among these messengers was the almost mystical Paul Revere. Paul Revere was somewhat of an enigma in his day; Revere was a thinker and a doer, a fighter and an artisan. Many people remember him as the man that yelled “the British are coming!” and hung lanterns in the steeple as a signal of British invasion. However, like many things in history, our memory has been deceived, for Revere actually said on that night “the Regulars are coming out!” and while he had a part in the lantern hanging, he was not the hanger of lanterns that night, but the messenger sent to orchestrate the hanging. While we keep this vision in our head of the lone Paul Revere riding through the night to warn American citizens of the forthcoming invasion, the true story is of a network of messengers that helped America rise on that day. Surely the vision of his ride is an important one and one that does help us understand the general happenings of the day, but as David Hackett Fisher stated in his book, Paul Revere’s Ride, “although it was the individual that shaped the early Revolution, it was political institutions that amplified each individual action.” In this case, it was the Whig leaders’ ability to organize and deploy the complex network of messengers that night that kept America in the fight for self-governance.
While Paul Revere was an enigmatic figure in his time, there were many others who more readily fit into two basic categories: thinkers and doers. For instance, John Adams could be considered a thinker, a man whose use came mostly in the courtroom and after great deliberation. John Adams was the quintessential thinking man who once said, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” At the other end of the street sit men like Samuel Thompson and Long Bill Scott, who are doers. Samuel Thompson was a doer with a reason to do, he knew that he disliked the British and their laws and fought to end their hold over the colonies. Long Bill Scott, on the other hand, while still a doer, may have fought the British for a completely different reason. It was not tyranny or injustice that Long Bill Scott had in mind whenever he entered the battlefield during the American Revolution; it was the possibility of gaining respect within his community. As important as freedom was to most thinkers, respect may have been an even more important driving force for many of the common men who made up America’s militia during the War. Other men like Robert Patterson, an intellectual who worked in academia, and Nathaniel Ames, who worked in medicine, were classic examples of men who served in the American militia because it was what the community asked of them, not because of their great political alliances.
However, there are accounts that resemble Samuel Thompson’s. For instance, many of the teenage militiamen understood what they were fighting for, as evidenced by the inscription on their powder horn. They shared the thinkers’ lust for liberty, perhaps because they had grown up in a country that was constantly bombarded with new British laws. These militiamen understood that fighting was not just a way to gain respect; it was something that had to be done to truly achieve a state of liberty. David Hackett Fisher said it best when he stated “many New Englanders viewed fighting as necessary to survive in an evil world rather than a noble profession. In fact, Whigs believed themselves the stewards of John Winthrop’s City on a Hill; that is to say, the moral example of their forefathers both haunted and inspired them.”
It may have been those feelings that the militiamen brought with them on the night of April 19th 1775. Hundreds of militiamen had been mustered by the network of messengers from towns all around Boston and Concord. The small portion of the militia that had already arrived in Lexington began to gather in Lexington Green and stand their ground as the British military approached. When a British officer rode towards the colonists and told them to diffuse, Captain Parker of the militia ordered his troops to leave, but perhaps because of his tuberculosis or because of confusion, many troops did not hear the order and continued to stand their ground. It was in this confusion that the first shot of war rang out, “the shot heard ‘round the world”. The skirmish was short lived, and left eight colonists dead and ten wounded. The British considered this a small victory and continued to march towards Concord.
Militiamen had already gathered in Concord and had heard of the shots being fired in Lexington. Rather than stay and fight in Concord, militia colonel James Barrett decided to retreat across the North Bridge. While stationed at North Bridge, the British began to search Concord for the supplies they came for. Little did the British know, the militia’s force would continue to build north of the North Bridge as troops poured in from all around. British troops were ordered to guard the bridge from the militia and to stop them from crossing. However, when British officers realized how outnumbered they were, they commanded their men to fall back from the bridge and take a defensive position. The militia began to advance and a shot rang out from a British rifle. A militia major yelled for his forces to fire back immediately. When they did, their fire took out four of the eight British officers and some of the privates on the other side of the bridge. Without any kind of leadership, British troops began to retreat. The colonists would not make it so easy for them to escape, as militiamen had grouped around areas which the retreat route ran through. The British troops were fired on during their retreat, killing and injuring many and breaking their spirits completely. American forces had won a battle and by the next morning had effectively amassed a force of more than 15,000 militiamen around Boston. The Revolution had come to blows and America had shown it was ready to defend itself from injustice and to fight for liberty and freedom.
In June of 1775, almost a year after the fighting in Lexington and Concord, a group of extraordinary men (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson) met to create a document. This document, which would later be known as the Declaration of Independence, would create a sovereign nation, free from the reign of Britain. Versions of the document were drafted and re-drafted over the following month until, on the 2nd of July, a final version was put forth to the committee. On July 4th, the wording of the document was perfected and the document accepted. A new nation was born; one that was tired of tyranny and one that believed it had relied on self-governance for the last hundred years and should continue to do so. It was this dedication to self-governance that led a 90-year old Captain Levi Preston to state, “What we meant in going for those Redcoats was this; we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”
Whether fighting for freedom or for respect, the move from a group of British colonies to the United States of America was an arduous task, undertaken by many individuals from many different backgrounds. When looking directly into the face of tyranny, Americans did not falter. From the lowest class to the highest class, almost every able-bodied male had some part in what would become our American Revolution. It may have been the individual that helped set the stage for the Revolution, but it was a group effort that won it.
American National Biography
Paul Revere's Ride by David Hackett Fisher
Primary Documents collected by Brown
