America A Concise History Volume 1, 6Th Edition – Test Bank

–    Summary of the Great War: The Great War for Empire exposed rifts and tensions in the relationship between England and its American colonies. Economic, political, and military factors caused increasing conflict and confrontations between the two groups, which ultimately led to rebellion.

–    Economic Factors: The war imposed enormous costs on Great Britain, which it aimed to recoup through increased taxation once the war was over. The British Parliament levied taxes on all kinds of consumables and doubled the size of its tax bureaucracy. Colonists resented British taxation and employed constitutional arguments and boycotts to oppose them.

–    Political Factors: After a lengthy period of salutary neglect, the war brought increased government intervention and intrusion to the colonies, and the colonists learned just how little control they had actually had. In theory, royal governors had extensive political powers but, in reality, they shared power with the colonial assemblies. The new British bureaucracy worked to increase its political authority and to enforce the collection of taxes and trade duties. Parliament also instructed the Royal Navy to seize American vessels smuggling shipments to the French West Indies, angering the colonists.  

–    Military Factors: The war brought the British military to North America in 1756 and, after 1763, Britain maintained a peacetime deployment of 7,500 troops in North America to protect the colonies against possible rebellions from French Canadians or Native Americans. The military presence also deterred land-hungry whites from defying the Proclamation of 1763 and settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. Americans resented the presence of the troops, their effective deterrence of western settlement, and the high cost of maintaining them in North America.

–    Reformers’ Goals: Initially, the goals of the British reformers were to increase tax revenues to pay for defense of the empire, expand the tax and military bureaucracy, and increase the flow of trade from the colonies to England to provide raw materials for the Industrial Revolution and a market for British manufactured goods. In response to colonial challenges, the reformers sought to fashion a centralized imperial system in America much like that already in place in Ireland. British officials hoped to govern the colonies with little regard for the colonial assemblies.

–    Economic Objections: Publicly, colonists objected to the Sugar Act by claiming that it would ruin the distilling industry in North America. In fact, wealthy merchants like John Hancock had made their fortunes smuggling French molasses, and they resisted the policy because it would make such smuggling and trade more difficult.  

–    Constitutional Objections: Colonists made constitutional objections to both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act. In Massachusetts, the colonial assembly argued that the tax legislation was “contrary to a fundamental Principall of our Constitution: That all Taxes ought to originate with the people.”  In other colonies they claimed that new taxes violated the constitutional liberties of British people in the form of trial without juries and taxation without representation. The Sugar Act stipulated that merchants prosecuted under the act would be tried in vice-admiralty courts, not local common-law courts, which also sparked colonial arguments that the British administration was violating its own constitutional laws. They objected to the British reformers’ views that Americans were second-class subjects of the king, with rights limited by the Navigation Acts, parliamentary laws, and British interests.

–         Economic Motives: Economic motives were more important than ideological reasons for resistance. The increase of taxation (Stamp Act, Sugar Act, Townshend Duties, etc.) affected a larger portion of American colonists than did more abstract political ideas about popular sovereignty and virtual representation. A broad-based movement of resistance was maintained primarily through the effectiveness of boycott and nonimportation movements.

–    Ideological Motives: Ideological motives for colonial resistance began with lawyers and well-educated planters and merchants, but they successfully disseminated their points of view using pamphlets and newspapers, and provided a rationale and political agenda for the resistance movement. These elites also served as leaders of the resistance movement and became the political leaders who would guide the colonies through the American Revolution. Economic motives were more important for creating the resistance movement, but ideological motives were probably more important for sustaining it over the long term.

–    Colonists’ Rights as British Subjects Under English Common Law: After decades of salutary neglect, Americans recognized that Britain’s new approach to colonial administration would deprive them of some of their rights as British subjects. British administrators believed that only British subjects in Britain had such rights, and that Americans were second-class subjects of the king subject to different laws.

–    Direct Versus Virtual Representation: In response to taxation, radical colonists such as Benjamin Franklin argued that they should not be subject to British taxes unless they also had representation in the British Parliament. Most British politicians rejected this idea, suggesting that colonists already had virtual representation in Parliament because some of its members were transatlantic merchants and West Indian sugar planters. 

–    “Natural Rights”: Drawing on Enlightenment rationalism, Patriots argued that all individuals possessed certain “natural rights” to life, liberty, and property, and that governments were bound to protect those rights. They also argued that a “separation of powers” among government branches prevented arbitrary rule.

–    Political/Constitutional Changes: Britain’s leaders planned to fashion a centralized imperial system in America similar to the one they had put in place in Ireland. They envisioned a powerful fiscal-military state and assumed the absolute supremacy of Parliament. They planned to administer the colonies for the benefit of Great Britain, with little regard for the desires of the colonists or their local assemblies.

–    Economic Changes: Under the political regime envisioned by the British leaders, Parliament would have exercised much tighter fiscal control over the colonies. They aimed to achieve increased tax revenues sent from the colonies to England and an increase in British-manufactured goods purchased by the colonists. Under this system, the colonists would have had little economic autonomy, and a much larger percentage of colonial revenue and colonial products would have made their way to Britain.

–    Impact of Colonial Resistance: In response to the implementation of the 1767 Townshend duties, which imposed duties on colonial imports of paper, paint, glass, and tea, the colonists revived the constitutional debate over taxation and organized a boycott of British goods to resist the new taxes. The colonists were upset, not only about the taxes themselves, but also about Britain’s plan to use the revenue to pay the salaries of royal governors, judges, and other imperial assemblies who had previously been paid by the colonial assemblies. The boycott mobilized a great deal of colonial support, and by 1769, the boycott took a significant toll on Britain. 

–    British Concessions:      Hard-hit by these developments, British merchants petitioned Parliament to repeal the Townshend duties, which they did in 1770. The repeal of the Townshend duties in 1770 restored harmony, but strong feelings of distrust persisted on both sides of the conflict. The lull in the Patriots organizing and resistance would not last long.

–    Colonial Grievances: The Tea Act actually made the tea imported by the British cheaper than the smuggled Dutch tea, so the colonists’ grievances were not economic. Rather, they believed the British intended to bribe them with cheap tea to encourage their abandonment of principled opposition to the tea tax. Merchants joined the protest because the East Indian Company planned to distribute the tea directly to them, excluding American wholesalers from the trade’s profits.  The Tea Act offended colonists and reignited colonial resistance based on simmering anger against increased taxation by Parliament.

     –    Urban Patriots: The Patriot movement initially gained support from those Americans directly affected by British colonial policy—urban residents, artisans, merchants, and lawyers played an active role in the resistance. This group also included many of the educated elite, including ministers who supported the nonimportation movement and had been affected by both the Great Awakening and Enlightenment philosophy. Participants in urban mobs and riots and the most radical elements of the movement drew support from the middling and lower ranks of society, including artisans, skilled workers, laborers, sailors, and the unemployed.

–    Rural Patriots: By the late 1760s, British imperial policies increasingly intruded into the lives of farm families by sending their sons to war and raising their taxes. They feared that British measures threatened the yeoman tradition of land ownership and felt personally threatened by British policies. The rebellion also gained broad-based support from rural laborers, and small-town artisans, merchants, and professionals, especially in New England and other parts of the Northeast.

–    Slave Owners: Southern slave owners—especially wealthy planters—supported the rebellion as well. They were frequently in debt to British merchants and, accustomed to controlling their slave laborers and seeing themselves as guardians of English liberties, resented their financial dependence on British creditors. They dreaded the prospect of political subservience to British officials.

–    Women Patriots: Religious women from both rural and urban areas, as Daughters of Liberty, also supported the rebellion by organizing and sustaining the nonimportation boycotts and producing homespun cloth in place of British cloth.

–    Britain’s Role: The British were responsible because they refused to back off and kept pushing the Americans to respond.

–    Americans’ Role:      The Americans were responsible because they formed a radical group that disseminated revolutionary ideology among a broad segment of the population, which was already imbued with Whig ideology, and escalated events even when the political climate seemed calm.

–    Dual Responsibility: Each side bore equal responsibility. The Americans did not, after all, pay as much tax as did people in Britain. The British did not have to stand so steadfastly for the policy of taxation. They could have come up with a system of representation for Americans in the House of Commons or established a colonial parliament and averted the crisis. But they chose not to, preferring to treat the Americans as second-class citizens. The Americans chose to interpret British actions in the most extreme manner, exaggerating their intent.

Choose the letter of the best answer.

Answer Key