Exhibit Project
R & D Planning Page - Segment 1
1. Starting with the beginning of the war, only very general descriptions would
be used. (Slide 6  )
Summary: To pay for the costs incurred during the French and Indian War ending in 1763, England increased the taxes on the British colonies, precipitating the American Revolution. If taxes were necessary, then the Americans wanted their own assemblies to impose them. Further, the colonists wanted Parliamentary recognition of this perceived right. Essentially, "No taxation without representation" really meant, "No taxation by Parliament. No representation in Parliament. Let us run our own affairs." John Adams once wrote, "But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people." The British General Gage's duty was to enforce the Coercive Acts. News reached him that the Massachusetts patriots were collecting powder and military stores at the interior town of Concord, 32 kilometers from Boston. On the night of April 18, 1775, he sent a strong detail of his garrison to confiscate these munitions and to seize Samuel Adams and John Hancock, both of whom had been ordered sent to England to stand trial for their lives. But the whole countryside had been alerted by Paul Revere and two other messengers. When the British troops, after a night of marching, reached the village of Lexington, they saw through the early morning mist a grim band of 50 minutemen - armed colonists - lined up across the common. There was a moment of hesitation, cries and orders from both sides and, in the midst of the noise, a shot. Firing broke out along both lines, and the Americans dispersed, leaving eight of their dead upon the green. The first blood of the war for American independence had been shed. The first shot fired there has ever since been described as 'the shot heard round the world' 1775 Map |
1.0 In 1729, Benjamin Franklin bought a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin not only printed the paper, but often contributed pieces to the paper under aliases. His newspaper soon became the most successful in the colonies. On May 9, 1754, Ben Franklin sketched, carved, and published the first known political cartoon in an American newspaper. The cartoon appeared along with Franklin's editorial about the "disunited state" of the colonies, and helped make his point about the importance of colonial unity. This had nothing to do with independence from Britain. It was a plea for unity in defending the colonies during the French and Indian War. It played off a common superstition of the time: a snake that had been cut into pieces could come back to life if you joined the sections together before sunset.
1.1A In 1755, the French and their Indian allies went to war with England. This was the first European war where the bulk of the fighting took place outside of Europe. Future president George Washington led the early attacks against the French, but was defeated. The war ended in 1763 with the defeat of the French. The French ceded territory south of Canada to the English, including Natchez and Fort Rosalie (Natchez National Historical Park).
To pay for the costs incurred during the French and Indian War, England increased the taxes on the British colonies, precipitating the American Revolution. The French provided aid to the Colonials during the Revolution, which caused the French to increase the taxes on French citizens. This in turn help precipitate the French Revolution. The Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, formally declaring the revolution that had begun the year before.
Paul Revere first began selling his color prints of "The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street". Notice the absence of snow and ice on the street, while Crispus Attacks-- a black man lying on the ground closest to the British soldiers-- is shown to be white. As an aside, it should be noted that as a result of his death in the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attacks would emerge as the most famous of all the black men to fight in the cause of the Revolution, and become its first martyr.
The presence of British troops in Boston had long been a sore point among Boston's radical politicians. Paul Revere wasted no time in capitalizing on the Massacre to highlight British tyranny and stir up anti-British sentiment among his fellow colonists. As you will see, Revere's historic engraving is long on political propaganda and short on accuracy or aesthetics.
1.1 AA Skirmishes at Lexington and Concord
Boston and other large towns were under the direct control of sizable royal garrisons, but the countryside and its villages belonged to the revolutionists, so an "arms race" went on uninhibited. Seeing war as inevitable, farmers and tradesmen began to stockpile arms, ammunition, and matériel.
Realizing that the colonists' arms collecting must be stopped, the British ordered an expeditionary force to march secretly from Boston to Concord on the night of April 18, 1775, and to make surprise searches of suspected illegal arms caches at dawn the next day.
American spies learned of the plan and set up a system to warn their countrymen. If the redcoats departed Boston along the isthmus that linked it to the mainland, one lantern would be hung in the steeple of Boston's Old North Church. If the troops instead boarded boats to row across the water and march on a different route, two lanterns would be hung.
As the British filled the boats, two lanterns appeared in the steeple, easily visible from the far shore where Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott waited on horseback. These messengers rode into the dark hinterland, sounding the alarm in each village. The American intelligence network was so good that the citizens of Lexington and Concord leapt from their beds long before Major Pitcairn and his royal infantry were anywhere near.
We don't know what went through the minds of the Minutemen, the colonial militia, as they waited in the chilly dawn to hear the crunch of the redcoats' boots in the streets of Lexington and Concord. Whatever their thoughts, they had every right to be frightened, since they, small untrained bands of farmers and tradesmen, were about to face 700 of the world's best professional soldiers.
As dawn broke on April 19, 70 Lexington Minutemen faced Pitcairn's regiments on Lexington's town green.
The Minutemen were ordered by Major Pitcairn to disperse. They stood their ground. Taunts were exchanged. A shot was fired, and that triggered a battle. When the smoke cleared, eight Minutemen were dead, and the British troops went on a rampage that was stopped only with difficulty by their commanders, who immediately marched them in the direction of Concord.
Word of the Lexington engagement was rushed to Concord, where the local Minutemen retreated across the North Bridge over the Concord River in the face of the powerful British force.
The Battle of Concord started with the struggle for command of the bridge. The British forces were unable to take it, which was a victory for the much smaller colonial force. But the redcoats pursued their mission in town, discovering and burning some wooden gun carriages. The smoke rising from the town convinced the Minutemen, holding their position at North Bridge, that their homes were in flames, and they fought all the more fiercely.
The shot heard 'round the world was fired from a Minuteman's musket at Concord North Bridge, where this band of farmers held off professional soldiers. But this first battle of the American revolution was actually won by the colonists as the British retreated. Sniping from behind trees and stone walls along the road back to Boston, Minutemen brought the British casualty count up to 200, a grievous and embarrassing loss for the powerful forces of the Crown.
News of the events in Lexington and Concord spread like wildfire through the British colonies in America, forcing every American to choose sides: would one be loyal to the Crown, or committed to the revolutionary cause? There was no middle ground.
When the British troops, after a night of marching, reached the village of Lexington, they saw through the early morning mist a grim band of 50 minutemen - armed colonists - lined up across the common. There was a moment of hesitation, cries and orders from both sides and, in the midst of the noise, a shot. Firing broke out along both lines, and the Americans dispersed, leaving eight of their dead upon the green. The first blood of the war for American independence had been shed. The first shot fired there has ever since been described as 'the shot heard round the world'.
| 1.1B It is a difficult matter to assign a beginning to the Revolution. Mr. Mellen Chamberlain, in his chapter on "The Revolution Impending" (chap. I, Vol. VI, of Justin Winsor's '' Narrative and Critical History of America"), says "The year 1763 is usually regarded as the beginning of the American Revolution, because in that year the English ministry determined to raise a revenue from the colonies." Others take as a starting-point the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, and the consequent action of the colonies. But while there is much of interest to the student of Virginia history from the passage of Patrick Henry's celebrated resolutions to the actual outbreak of war, all tending to show the jealousy felt by the House of Burgesses of the rights and liberties of the colonies, the events to be considered in this paper concern chiefly the formation and work of the Committees of Correspondence, the first step looking toward united action on the part of the colonies, and in this step Virginia unquestion ably took the lead. It used to be said, even by Virginia writers, that Massachusetts was entitled to equal honor with Virginia in originating the Committees of Correspondence.3 |
1.2 The War for Independence
The War for Independence, more commonly referred to as the Revolutionary War, was not fought to obtain freedom, but was fought to preserve the liberties that Americans already had.
While Americans sought the self-government to which they believed they were constitutionally entitled, the colonists did not seek the total transformation of society that we associate with other revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution. They simply wished to go on enjoying self-rule when it came to their internal matters and living as they always had for so many decades before the British encroachment began. The American “revolutionaries” were conservative, in the very best sense of the word.
(From The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Ph.D. ISBN 0-89526-047-6)
1.3 Why an Old Soldier Fought
Many years after the bloodshed at Lexington, Mellen Chamberlain, a prominent Massachusetts lawyer-politican-historian-librarian, published the following account of an interview with a veteran participant, Levi Preston. Why did Preston fight? What did his reasons have to do with traditional historical accounts?
When I was about twenty-one and Captain Preston about ninety-one, I interviewed him as to what he did and thought sixty-seven years before, on April 19, 1775. And now, fifty-two years later, I make my report--a little belated perhaps, but not too late, I trust, for the morning papers!
With an assurance passing even that of the modern interviewer--if that were possible--I began: Captain Preston, why did you go to the Concord fight, the 19th of April, 1775?
The old man, bowed beneath the weight of years, raised himself upright, and turning to me said: Why did I go?
Yes, I replied; my histories tell me that you men of the Revolution took up arms against 'intolerable oppressions.' What were they?
Oppressions? I didn't feel them. .
"What, you were not oppressed by the Stamp Act?"
"I never saw one of those stamps. I certainly never paid a penny for one of them."
"Well, what about the tea tax?"
"I never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all overboard."
"Then I suppose you had been reading Harington or Sidney and Locke about the eternal principles of liberty?"
"Never heard of `em. We read only the Bible, the Catechism, Watt´s Psalms and Hymns, and the Almanac."
"Well, then, what was the matter? And what did you mean in going to the fight?"
"Young man, what we meant in going for those redcoats was this: we had always governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn´t mean we should."
1.4 During the early 1770s as England kept tightening screws and intensifying efforts to enforce its will, Americans on the whole were not concerned. It made Samuel Adams cry, "It is to be feared that the people will be so accustomed to bondage as to forget they were ever free."
The eventually rebellious Americans claimed all the rights for which Englishmen had fought since Magna Carta. They saw themselves as conservative, not radicals.
They sought to save the summed up past. "Make no mistake; the American Revolution was not fought to obtain freedom, but to preserve the liberties that Americans already had as colonials," and which they knew Englishmen enjoyed and believed all men deserved. It was a matter of principle. It was one of will, but, in the form of law, it was primarily one of reason, or right. `Who shall rule?´ was important, but primary was `what rule?´ The king had become arbitrary, imperious.
(My Daily Constitution - A Natural Law Perspective by Richard J. Rolwing ISBN: 0-7388-2527-1)
1.5 "Patrick Henry Before the Virginia House of Burgesses"
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This painting, by Peter Frederick Rothermel, is the best-known piece in the Red Hill Museum and one of America's most famous historical paintings. In the painting, Patrick Henry delivers his famous "If this be treason, make the most of it!" speech, declaring his opposition to King George III's Stamp Act of 1765. A decade later, as revolutionary sentiments surged in America, Henry declared "Give me liberty or give me death!" to the Virginia Convention gathered at St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia (Reference Red Hill) |
1.5B - March 23, 1775 - In the Second Virginia Convention, at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Patrick Henry gave his Liberty or Death Speech in support of his resolution to raise forces to defend Virginia against the British.
“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
1.6 - April 19, 1775 The War for Independence began between the British army and the Massachusetts militiamen at Lexington and Concord, outside Boston.
By Richard Holmes BBC Web Site
1.7 In April 1775 Gage sent a small force to seize patriot militia weapons and gunpowder at Concord, not far from Boston, but his soldiers became involved in a brief firefight on Lexington Green on their way there. This event was reported far and wide, and the first shot fired there has ever since been described as 'the shot heard round the world'.
Read about The shot heard round the world in The Great Republic by the Master Historians (Vol 2)
1.8 The War of Independence plays such an important part in American popular ideology that references to it are especially prone to exaggeration and oversimplification. And two uncomfortable truths about it - the fact that it was a civil war (perhaps 100,000 loyalists fled abroad at its end), and that it was also a world war (the Americans could scarcely have won without French help) - are often forgotten.
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