Class outlines
This page contains helpful background information, some useful links in addition to those on the syllabus, and outlines for key issues discussed in class. It does not include either lecture notes or detailed outlines of lectures.
Week 1
Historiography of the Revolution:
1. 19th century Whigs ultrapatriotic, filiopietistic,George Bancroft
2. Imperial School
Anglophiles, Americans seen as spoiled children with no consistent principles
Lawrence Gipson, George Beer, Charles Andrews
3. Progressives
Internal revolution and class conflict
Carl Becker "the revolution was not so much a question of home rule but a question of who should rule at home."
Charles Beard--constitution as an economic document
Arthur Schlesinger, J. Franklin Jameson, Merrill Jenson
4. New conservatives
Revolution to preserve the status quo, no class conflict, America a middle class democracy. America in 1750 a middle class democratic society
Robert e. Brown, Middle Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691-1780
Richard Hofstadter, America in 1750
Daniel Boorstin,
5. New Whigs or consensus
Emphasis on ideas, the Revolution as a constitutional and ideological revolution with a consistency of principles.
Edmund Morgan, Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, Pauline Maier
6. Neo Progressives
Renewed emphasis on the internal component and on the Atlantic economy.
Gary Nash, Marc Egnal, Jesse Lemish, Edward Countryman
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
Alfred Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party.
Helpful Maps
You can find maps on Colonial Land Claims, Colonial Wars including the French and Indian War, and Colonial Demographics at this site.
Week 2
The French and Indian War:
1748 -- George Montagu Dunk, the 2nd Earl of Halifax appointed head of Board of TradeColonial Wars
War of the League of Augsburg - King William's War -- 1688-97
War of Spanish Succession - Queen Anne's War -- 1702-13
War of Austrian Succession - King George's War -- 1740-48
The French -- Quebec and Newfoundland
The British -- Nova Scotia and Maine in the North to Georgia in the south
To the West, the land controlled by the native peoples with a particularly strong alliance of Iroquoian tribes in the North and the Cherokees, Choctaws and others in the South
The Iroquois: the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora
In 1744 -- Treaty of Lancaster
Ohio Company
The Susquehanna Land Co
The Delaware Company
The Miami Company
The Indiana Company
George Washington -- Fort Necessity
The Albany Congress in June 19-July 11, 1754
General Braddock
The French and Indian War (1754-63)
William Pitt
Molasses Act 1733
Writs of Assistance
James Otis
Benjamin West's Death of Wolfe
Week 3
The Stamp Act Crisis:
Wm. Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle 1754-1761
Earl of Bute 1761-1763
George Grenville 1763-1765
Marquis of Rockingham 1765-1766
Wm. Pitt (Earl of Chatham) 1766-1768
Duke of Grafton 1768-1770
Lord North 1770-1782
John Wilkes
1763 No. 45 of the North Briton
1764 fled to France
1768 Elected MP for Middlesex
Wilkes and Liberty
Website
Issues Left by French and Indian War
Native Americans and the frontier
Debt and cost of maintaining new empire
Currency shortage
Colonial violations of imperial regulations
Proclamation of 1763
Sugar Act 1764
Currency Act 1764
James Otis, "The Rights of British America Asserted and Proved."
Stamp Act 1765
Quartering Act 1765
Isaac Barre:
"They planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted 'em in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God's earth."
Thomas Whately:
"for the Fact is, that the Inhabitants of the Colonies are represented in Parliament: they do not indeed chuse the Members of that Assembly; neither are Nine Tenths of the People of Britain Electors; ÉAll British Subjects are really in the same; none are actually, all are virtually represented in Parliament; for every Member of Parliament sits in the House, not as Representative of his own Constituents, but as one of that august Assembly by which all the Commons of Great Britain are represented."
American Reaction
Daniel Dulany
Patrick Henry and Virginia Resolves
Massachusetts Circular Letter
Stamp Act Congress
Stamp Act Riots
Non importation movement
Repeal of the Stamp Act
William Pitt:
"If the gentleman does not understand the difference between internal and external taxes, I cannot help it, but there is a plain distinction between taxes levied for the purposes of raising a revenue, and duties imposed for the regulation of tradeÉ.The gentleman asks when were the colonies emancipated? But I desire to know, when they were made slaves?"
Ben Franklin:
"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."
Declaratory Act 1766
Week 4
The Townshend Crisis:
William Pitt, Prime Minister 1766-68
Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1766-67
Townshend Duties
Board of Customs
New York Restraining Act
Vice Admiralty Courts
Order to Colonial Governors
Duke of Grafton, Prime Minister, 1767-70
Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for America, 1767-72
Lord North, Prime Minister 1770-1782
Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for America, 1772-82
Opposition to the Townshend Duties in America
John Dickinson, "Letters from an American Farmer"
Internal Politics of Pennsylvania
Proprietary Party Ñ John Dickinson
Assembly Party - Benjamin Franklin in London and Joseph Galloway
Massachusetts Circular Letter
Sam Adams and James Otis
Boston Groups: Workers' Clubs (Ebenezer McIntosh
The Loyal Nine
the Boston Caucus
The Boston Massacre or The Riot on King Street
Death of Christopher Seider
Robert Middlekauff: the Massacre 'was not the result of a plot or plan on either side, but rather the consequences of deep hatreds and bad luck."
See Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic for more on the multi-ethnic mob and its role in the Atlantic world.
Virginia
Continuation of Proclamation Line
Falling tobacco prices
Increasing indebtedness
South Carolina
John Wilkes
Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights
Rhode Island
The Gaspee
Lt. William Dudingston
John Brown
Governor Wanton
Week 5
The Final Crisis:
The Hutchinson-Whately Letters
"government has been too long in the hands of the people of Massachusetts."
"There must be an abridgement of what are called English liberties."
The Tea Act
The British East India Company
The Tea Ships:
The London - Charleston
The Nancy - New York
The Polly - Philadelphia
The Dartmouth - Boston
The Eleanor - Boston
The Beaver - Boston
The Tea Party
John Adams: 'there is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots that I greatly admire. É this Destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible and it must have important Consequences."
Coercive or Intolerable Acts
Boston Port Act
Massachusetts Government Act
Administration of Justice Act
Quartering Act
Quebec Act
Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America
"That thus have we hastened through the reigns which preceded his majesty's, during which the violations of our right were less alarming, because repeated at more distant intervals than that rapid and bold succession of injuries which is likely to distinguish the present from all other periods of American story. Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder has involved us, before another more heavy, and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery."
"Open your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the third be a blot in the page of history. You are surrounded by British counsellors, but remember that they are parties. You have no ministers for American affairs, because you have none taken from among us, nor amenable to the laws on which they are to give you advice. It behoves you, therefore, to think and to act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counsellors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the inordinate desires of another; but deal out to all equal and impartial right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature which may infringe on the rights and liberties of another."
First Continental Congress
Week 6
Revolution:
Lexington and Concord
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Revere's Ride
The Second Continental Congress
A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Declaration of Independence
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