American revolution

     Until the 1750’s people agreed with this system until the mother country began imposing new taxes. The Stamp Tax of 1765 and the Townsend Duties not only raised economic concerns among colonists but also political concerns. The Stamp Act in particular incited colonial suspicions and anger. “This single stroke,” stated Will Smith, Jr., “has lost Great Britain the affection of all her Colonies”. Many American colonists came to believe that these new policies were part of larger plan designed by conspirators within the English parliament to destroy the rights of people in America. These suspicions were furthered by the standing army lingering in the colony after the Seven Years War. The presence of the standing army caused friction between locals and Red coats, as colonists believed standing armies were a danger to one’s liberty.

     The colonists’ fears of a British conspiracy against their freedom were reinforced when parliament passed several acts. The Quebec Act, the Massachusetts Government Act and Boston Port Act only fuelled the belief that the shift in policy represented clear evidence of Britain tyranny. In the Quebec Act of 1774, the British government finally tried to organize its archaic land policy. However, this arbitrary change of boundaries frightened American Protestants into believing that the English government was trying to erect a hostile Catholic province in the Northwest. The Boston Port Act also did little quell the conspiracy theories as it was seen as an attempt to economically hinder the American colonies. Moreover, the Massachusetts Government Act was interpreted as a deliberate effort to abolish democratic law and trial by jury in preparation for complete despotic rule: “the propos’d new system of government, Virtually Annihilated our most Essential Charter Rights, added to the Boston Port Act, gives us such apprehensions of the designs of Administration against our Liberties, as we have never before allowed ourselves to entertain”

     However, the situation in the American colonies became particularly intense when the British Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in response to the Boston Tea Party. These measures were widely interpreted as a conspiracy to end complete political freedom in the American colony. The American revolutionaries claimed they declared independence because of a “long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them to absolute despotism”. As such, many historians such as Bernard Bailyn agree with John Adam’s distinction between the American Revolution and War of Independence. The American Revolution started fifteen years before any battles were fought. Rather the American Revolution was as an intellectual revolution “in the minds and hearts of the people”. Changes to colonial ideology were essentially the motor for revolution. ‘The steady assertion of ordinary men shedding traditional constraints of their political behaviour’ was clearly a result of teachings by French Enlightenment philosophers as well as the theories of John Locke.  Influenced by enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, colonists began to look critically at the British system and criticized what they saw as corruption. Additionally, John Locke’s theory of ‘natural rights’ is conspicuously evident in much of the colonist’s argument. People such as Landon Carter argued that taxation without representation was tyranny as parliament could only tax those who were actually represented. Moreover, Jean Jacques ’s social contract was a persuasive justification for the revolution as the British parliament had in the eyes of colonists essentially violated the contract. Nonetheless, the most revolutionary ideological change was when colonists began “thinking that rather than being Britons in America, they were not Britons at all”.

     As patriotic sympathies grew in the American colonies, a clear breakdown of deference was evident. The colonists’ once fervent belief in the British political system was shattered as they embraced the Great Awakening. Traveling preachers spread a message of hope whilst simultaneously challenging the established order. Born again Christianity was a clear rejection of Anglicanism. Moreover, this religious movement stirred anxiety within the colonists that they were embracing the decadence of the old war. Traditional values and customs were also brought into question. As a result of revolutionary changes ‘in the mind’, lower class colonists no longer saw the legitimacy ‘tipping his hat to anyone in authority’.

     However, none of these revolutionary changes in the mind would have being possible if there were no events to act as a catalyst. The Boston massacre was one such event as it politicized American colonists. The certain assumptions about liberty that were deeply entrenched in people’s psyches came to interact with their actual reality. Thus, whist ideas were fundamental; the American Revolution was not simply an affair of the mind as ideas had to resonate with the actual lives of the colonists. Whilst there was an ideological ferment in the colony, Bailyn’s students “have suggested that the increasing discontent among the poor was a major cause of the American Revolution”. With eight-five percent of the population dependent on agriculture for a living, the Proclamation line was an important concern in the American colonies. To independent, self-sufficient small farmers “to loose their farms was to lose their freedom, and this was their worst fear”.

     This process of revolutionary change in the American colonies was in no way hasty and impulsive. Rather, “slowly, unevenly, but relentlessly” people in colonial America saw the need for independence as they witnessed irrefutable evidence of a “wicked administration endeavoring to enslave America”. Colonial skeptics became increasingly certain that the successive economic crises were not the result of a normal political conflict, but were deliberately designed by an influential group in the English government, led by King himself, in order to quash freedom in the American colonies.

     The American Revolution started several years before the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought. Rather the American Revolution was as an intellectual revolution “in the minds and hearts of the people”. Enlightenment ideas played a pivotal role in the revolutionary changes in the mind of colonists. John Locke’s influential ideas of the ‘consent of the governed’ and the desire for a genuine democracy ‘ruled by the people and for the people’ transformed a deferential, structured society to a truly democratic country. The ideas that inspired the American Revolution were not empty phrases but acted as a compelling justification for shattering the link between Britain and the colonies. The revolution was not simply a hasty reaction to a few harsh laws imposed on the colonies by the British parliament; rather the roots of the revolution were deep seeded. According to Bernard Bailyn the motivation for the revolution was a belief that there was a conspiracy in Britain to infringe on the liberties of the American colonists. The Stamp Act, western land dispute and Coercive Act were seen as heavy-handed attempts to suppress liberty. Thus, the American Revolution was about defending liberty against a ‘constant, unmerited’ British conspiracy.