L.B. Joramo's Blog, page 8

What Led Up to the American Revolution?

When I first started researching the American Revolution for my Master’s Degree I had probably what most people had under their belts as far as understanding the revolution. I knew Paul Revere, George Washington, a little about John Adams, thanks to the BRILLIANT David McCullough, and a few other key players. I’d actually read the Declaration of Independence and a little of the Constitution. I even had an immense crush on one of the forefathers, and what girl can’t help herself but love men who talk of freedom and liberty, am I right?

Okay, I’m a bit of a nut, and I know it. But I thought I was an educated nut at least.

In short this is what I thought:

After the French and Indian War–or what the majority of the world calls the Seven Years’ War, which is also considered the first World War–Britain needed more money to reimburse itself after winning that giant of a war. (That part is true.) I thought that Britain unfairly taxed the American Colonies as a way to gain financial stability. By unfairly taxed I had been told a line that you all might have heard before, something a little like, “No taxation without representation.” (This is still something that is debatable, believe it or not.) Up until then the colonies were supposed to pay custom duties, and whatever else their respective colony decreed. (A lot of people paid neither. Do you know which of the founding fathers was the biggest smuggler of all time because he never paid his custom duty?) Even before the debatable taxation, Britain tried looking for ways to help itself financially, so they tried to enforce the custom duty a little better. This is known as the Sugar Act, because they were mainly targeting ships that held rum, molasses, and sugar. The Massachusetts’ colonists tarred and feathered their custom duty collector, nearly killing him. In other colonies they burned or hung effigies of custom duty collectors. Message sent: Um, no thank you to the new rules.

So then we come to the Stamp Act, which I knew nothing about other than I was told it was unfair. So here’s a bit about the Stamp Act though . . . it’s a tax on letters, wills, contracts, bills of sale and other mailed or legal documents, namely newspapers. Granted, a lot of people were truly pissed about this tax in America, but who among all those people could speak the loudest, get the most attention? Why, the newspapermen and a few women. (Yep, there were not only women who wrote articles in newspapers in America, but there were a couple women who owned the newspapers themselves.) After a few months of reading how “tyrannical, unreligious (this was quite a slap in the face to be called), and barbaric” the nature of this tax was, Parliament amended the tax. A little. The colonists would get taxed on playing cards, dice, and tavern licenses. Well, you can make our newspaper people pay a little extra, and we won’t like it. But when the taverns were taxed, then drink prices increased, and when the price of a good grog goes up, there’ll be hell to pay, sir! The Stamp Act was such abuzz that one “country gentleman whose servant was afraid to go out to the barn on a dark night asked, ‘Afraid of what?’ ‘Of the Stamp Act,’ the servant replied.”(THE MARCH OF FOLLY, 155)

Then the American Colonies really fought back. We developed a Non-Importation Act of our own, where we no longer accepted or bought anything from Britain. Women had home-spun contests to see who could make the most fabric; men and woman stopped drinking tea, unless smuggled in by an American merchant (do you know which one yet?); and the American colonies very effectively boycotted all British trade.

The British were forced to repeal the law, but put in its place the Declaratory Act. More on this Act next time . . .

But first, have any questions? Want to know more? Ask anything you want, and I’ll try to find the answer. Or do you have anything you want to share in your own research about the American Revolution? Do you have family members that served in the American Revolutionary War? I do. Let’s chat! Oh! Last thing, do you know which of the founding fathers I was alluding to throughout this blog?

What the American Colonies might have felt April 1775

Romantic Excerpts for my Birthday!

Today is my birthday! In lieu of that, as well as I have a cold from hell, and I’m just plain tired of the American Revolution, I am not going to blog today. You are. Thanks to the ever so brilliant Ella Quinn, I’m borrowing her idea and would like you genius writers to give me an excerpt of your work. Only, it’s my birthday, so I’m asking that you write to me your most romantic lines, please. Today, I want to filled with love, love, love! I want to laugh and cry and feel my heart pound against my breastbone. I want it wrapped up in sparkling prose and gorgeous bows of poetry. So here are the guidelines:

Feel free to write as long as you wish to set-up the romantic scene, then give me up to 10 of your most beautiful, profound, and romantic sentences. Sweep me off my feet!

Lastly, since it is my birthday (did I mention that already? Hee-hee!) I am going to be giving one of you lovely writers a $10 Amazon gift card or if you’re a chocolate lover, like me, then I’ll send you one of the world’s best brownies ever from a little confection shop in Quincy, Massachusetts called Purefections. Here is a little more info about them Purefections Shop

When you register your post it will ask for your email address, which is not published, except I can see it. So there is no need to enter your email address again, unless you really want to. I’m so excited to get to reading! And thank you for participating in my birthday wish!

America’s First Favorite Past-Time: Mobs

Of course we well know about protesting. We’ve seen the people Occupy Wall Street, and the movement continues today. More about Occupy Wall Street Protesting

But did you know that WAY before American colonists began the rebellion that would end in our independence, we were protesting for all sorts of reasons? We mobbed for better pay, our religions, or even just for the heck of it! Sometimes mobbing could be fun, like in a flash mob.Flash Mob in Denver Airport

But closer to April 19, 1775, the beginning of the American Revolution, the mobbing was rather grim. Find out more from historian Anne Midgley . . .

Mobs and Civil Unrest in Colonial America

By Anne Midgley

Rebellions and armed unrest did not so much punctuate as define the history of colonial British America.

Edward Countryman

As unlikely as it may seem to twenty-first century Americans, mobs in colonial America were an accepted part of the political landscape. This essay will explore how mobs and rioting fit into the social and political background of several northern colonial cities and the role mobs played in developing popular support for independence.

Colonial mobs have been a source of interest for historians from the beginning of the professionalism of history in America. George Bancroft studied colonial mob behavior in the late nineteenth century. Carl Becker, of the Progressive generation, explored the motivations of mobs with his doctoral dissertation, The history of political parties in the province of New York, 1760-1776. Like many of his generation, he tied the motivating forces behind mobs to the struggle for political advantage between the “privileged and the unprivileged.” Numerous works of social, political, and cultural history explored the roots of the Revolutionary war during the latter part of the twentieth century. During this period, a number of studies focused on the actions and impacts of mobs and rioting in colonial America, including Pauline Maier’s landmark essay “Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America,” published in 1970. Other prominent historians who have explored mobbing as social and political acts include Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, and Robert Middlekauff. Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution ties mobbing to his argument for the conservative nature of American culture during the mid-eighteenth century, contending that mobs and rioting “were in fact the ultimate testimonies to the paternalism and personal organization of that society.”

Maier finds the roots of colonial American mobs in England, and compares colonial mob actions against customs officials to the actions of seventeenth- and eighteenth- century English mobs and the “Englishman’s traditional loathing of excise men.” While Becker theorized that the actions of the colonial mobs were “altogether unwelcome to the land-owning and merchant aristocracy” later historians have placed colonial mob actions within an accepted set of extra-legal practices used to protest activities that appeared to threaten the livelihood or welfare of the community and found numerous instances where the “better sort” participated in or encouraged the mob activities.

Colonial America, particularly in the north, was a combustible setting in the mid-eighteenth century, rocked by rapidly changing social, political and cultural forces. Descending from hierarchical and patriarchal roots, its evolution was spurred by high literacy rates, religious diversity, and extraordinary population growth resulting from both high birth rates and high immigration rates. Among northern colonial cities, Boston and New York were growing rapidly, becoming more commercial, and losing some of the societal “glue” which had defined them during the earlier colonial period. Their populations were fluid; as earlier residents moved on for greener pastures, recent immigrants flooded into these port cities. On the eve of the struggle for independence, Boston and New York were already volatile places, grown far beyond the capacity of local political leaders and institutions to successfully govern them and maintain order.

Boston, in particular, became the site of numerous mob actions and riots. Founded in 1620, Massachusetts Bay had, by the close of the French and Indian war, largely governed itself independently of Britain for almost one hundred and fifty years. Having developed self-sufficiency, yet with strong traditions of British liberties, it is no surprise that the people of the Bay Colony in general, and Boston in particular, reacted forcefully to real and perceived threats to their rights when Britain tightened the reins. A number of Britain’s ill-advised decisions following 1760 combined to particularly affect the northern port cities, including Boston and New York. These included the decision to allow a standing army to remain in the colonies, the determination to tightly enforce the trade and navigation acts, and the enactment of the infamous Sugar and Stamp Acts. While initially impacting the elite, these choices were soon felt among the whole of society.

As protests from colonial assemblies became widely circulated in the colonies and essentially unheeded in Britain, colonists began to take more direct action through a traditional British and colonial extra-legal tactic; mob action. Unlike the riots which convulsed American cities two hundred years later, mob actions and riots during this period largely tended to follow a traditional framework; they were politically motivated, tightly controlled, and laser-focused on their targets. Composed largely of those without political voice, “mobbing was a means by which ordinary people, usually those most dependent – women, servants, free blacks, sailors, and young men – made their power felt temporarily in a political system otherwise largely immune to their influence.”

While historian Benson Bobrick briefly mentions the Stamp Act protests in Boston during August 1765, others have analyzed them extensively, drawing on sources such as the Governor Francis Bernard’s description of some of the riot’s participants,

I sent a written order to the Colonel of the Regiment of Militia, to beat an Alarm; he answered, that it would signify nothing, for as soon as the drum was heard, the drummer would be knocked down, and the drum broke; he added, that probably all the drummers of the Regiment were in the Mob.

It is a testament to the unwritten rules of mob action that two Boston Stamp Act riots, literally days apart, were seen quite differently by the people of the day. The first action, described in part by Governor Bernard above, targeted the stamp distributor, Peter Oliver, and appeared threatening but followed the “rules” with its participants “held in rein by a leadership of socially prominent men.” The second riot, which occurred August 26, 1765, was much more violent, destroying the residence of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and shocking the community “precisely because it ignored prescribed rituals.”

Certainly two of the most famous Boston pre-war incidents involved “the mob;” the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea-Party. The after-effects of the Boston Massacre rallied Americans against the British while the Boston Tea-Party likely brought together both members of the “rabble” and the “better sort” to destroy the hated tea and send a strong message to Britain. In a very real sense, the passions of the people had been inflamed, and they were slipping out from the bonds which had earlier constrained their thought and behavior, exceeding the bounds of British tradition in both their popular uprisings and in their declarations of rights. The American Revolution was born in popular uprisings as much as it was in colonial legislatures and provincial assemblies.

Notes:

Edward Countryman, “Colonial Rebellions and Armed Civil Unrest (1607 – 1775),” in The Oxford companion to American military history, ed. John Whiteclay Chambers II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 157.

Pauline Maier, “Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 27, no. 1 (Jan., 1970): 3-5. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1923837. (Accessed August 17, 2011).

Paul A. Gilje, “The crowd in American history,” American Transcendental Quarterly, 17, no. 3 (Sep 2003): 136-137. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy2.a... (Accessed August 19, 2011).

Carl Lotus Becker, The history of political parties in the province of New York, 1760-1776 (1907, repr., Madison: Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin History Series, Vol., 2, 1909), 22.

Maier, “Popular Uprisings,” 3; Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991; repr., New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., 1993), 89.

Maier, “Popular Uprisings,” 15-16.

Becker, Political parties, 22; J. Michael Hogan and L. Glen Williams, “Defining ‘the Enemy’ in Revolutionary America: From the Rhetoric of Protest to the Rhetoric of War,” The Southern Communications Journal, 61, no. 4 (Summer 1996): 277. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy2.a... (Accessed August 17, 2011).

Wood, Radicalism, 124-130.

Benson Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 67.

Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789, Rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 63-73.

Wood, Radicalism, 90.

Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind, 75.

“Governor Francis Bernard Describes the Boston Riot, August 15, 1765.” http://www.nvcc.edu/home/dporter/his1.... (Accessed August 20, 2011).

J. R. Pole, Reviewed work: From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 by Pauline Maier, The Historical Journal, 17, no. 1 (Mar., 1974): 218.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638347. (Accessed August 16, 2011).

Wood, Radicalism, 91.

Middlekauff, Glorious Cause, 209-213, 230-233.

Bibliography

Becker, Carl Lotus. The history of political parties in the province of New York, 1760-1776. 1907. Reprint. Madison: Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin History Series, Vol., 2, 1909.

Bobrick, Benson. Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Countryman, Edward. “Colonial Rebellions and Armed Civil Unrest (1607 – 1775),” in The Oxford companion to American military history, ed. John Whiteclay Chambers II, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Gilje, Paul A. “The crowd in American history,” American Transcendental Quarterly, 17, no. 3 (Sep 2003): 136-137. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy2.a... (Accessed August 19, 2011).

Hogan, J. Michael and L. Glen Williams, “Defining ‘the Enemy’ in Revolutionary America: From the Rhetoric of Protest to the Rhetoric of War,” The Southern Communications Journal, 61, no. 4 (Summer 1996): 277-288. http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy2.a... (Accessed August 17, 2011).

Maier, Pauline. “Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 27, no. 1 (Jan., 1970): 3-35.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1923837. (Accessed August 17, 2011).

Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789. Revised ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Pole, J. R. Reviewed work: From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 by Pauline Maier, The Historical Journal, 17, no. 1 (Mar., 1974): 218-221.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2638347. (Accessed August 16, 2011).

Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 1991. Reprint, New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., 1993.

Snap! The PoPo Coming! Or, the Policing Force of the Eighteenth Century in America

To relate more about how the militias worked in the eighteenth century Dr. Barry Stentiford, historian extraordinaire, has given me a wonderful paper to help illuminate. Please help me welcome Dr. Stentiford and his research of American militias!

American Militias

The militia companies of Massachusetts Bay that responded to the British raid on Concord in April 1775 had deep route in the colonial social and political structures. Colonial New England was a collective society—the individualistic streak so prevalent in later Americans had not yet developed. Ideally, communities worshipped together, governed themselves together, farmed together, and defended their communities together. The homogeneity and collective nature of communities began to break down within a few generations of settlement, but a sense of collective obligations remained until after the Revolutionary era.

The Separatists and Puritans who established colonies in New England during the early seventeenth century brought with them three obligations for free men to render service—jury, posse, and militia. To be “free” in eighteenth century English culture referred to the legal status of an adult male who was not an apprentice, a slave, a soldier, a prisoner, or a indentured servant. Militia evolved over the centuries from earlier Germanic and Celtic tribal warrior traditions into a feudal duty, and still later into an obligation to bear arms for the defense of the community when required to do so by local authorities. In colonial New England was organized by each town and answerable to the colonial government, and ultimately to the crown. In the first decades after settlement, the militia served as a bulwark against threat of Spanish or French raids, but the immediate threat came from conflict with some of the Native tribes.

The militia obligation remained general for several decades, with almost all men expected to provide service when needed. King Phillip’s War, 1675-76, was in retrospect the turning point both in the nature of wars fought and the method of raising forces. Prior to King Phillip’s War, actual militia service tended to be relatively close to the hometown, usually within a day’s march. Most able men of a town served actively during times of strife. During King Philip’s War, service became more expeditionary, and the general militia became a manpower pool from which expeditions were raised. The population and complexity of many towns had reached a point where many men could avoid active service. King Phillip’s War was also the last of the purely Indian wars the colonists would fight. Later colonial wars were directed primarily against the French in the Saint Lawrence Valley and Acadia, and their Native allies.

In 1689, following the assumption of the throne of England by King William and Queen Mary, England and France began a series of wars that lasted until 1815. (Together these wars are sometimes referred to as the Second Hundred Years War.) In New England the first four wars were known as King William’s War (1689-1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), King George’s War (1744-1748), and the French and Indian War (1754-1763). (In England, the wars were known as the War of the League of Augsburg, the War of Spanish Succession, the War of Jenkin’s Ear or War of Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years’ War. New England also fought Dummers War in 1722-1725 against the French-allied Wabanaki Confederacy of Indian tribes in Maine and Acadia.)

From settlement, militia companies elected their own officers until 1668 when the Massachusetts Bay General Court assumed the right to appoint officers in the name of the crown. In practice this meant that governors appointed prominent local men as officers in a system of patronage. Company commanders, who were usually captains, had the authority to appoint sergeants. Captains were required to form their companies twice a year for a day of training, although depending on the danger the colony faced, this requirement would be increased to as often as weekly. The Massachusetts Bay government also required that “children, Negros, Scotsmen, and Indians” be trained, although the requirement, and permission, to train Indians and blacks was soon eliminated. Massachusetts Bay required that a militia officer from each town train boys between ten and sixteen years of age–those too young to serve in the militia–in the use of firearms, half-pikes, and bows and arrows, during muster days. Most towns maintained, at least in theory, a general militia company consisting of almost all able-bodied free men. As populations expanded, some towns began to maintain multiple companies. The colonial government assigned each company to a regiment.

Following the end of the last French and Indian War, or Seven Years’ War in 1763, militia in New England again lapsed into disuse. However by 1774, as tensions with British authorities were on the rise, towns in Massachusetts Bay and other New England colonies again began holding more frequent training days. The assumption of the governorship by British General Thomas Gage led to the creation of a rival government in Concord. Towns throughout the Bay Colony, which included Maine since 1652 and Plymouth since 1691, began sending their representatives to the Concord government rather than to Boston. That October, the Concord government instructed the committees of public safety in each town to assume control over militia companies, and usurped the royal prerogative to appoint militia officers. Instead, the enlisted men of militia companies were to once again elect their company officers, with company officers electing regimental officers, and the government in Concord appointing general officers. By these actions, the rebel government in gained Concord control of all the militia in the colony, outside of those from towns literally within range of the British guns in Boston.

Towns also began creating bands of self-selected men who wanted to train more and be the first to respond to an attack. These bands soon became known as “minutemen,” and contained about one-quarter of all men with a militia obligation. Members of minutemen companies obligated themselves to respond to a call to arms within thirty minutes of receiving word. When news of the British raid on Concord came on 19 April 1775, minutemen companies responded first, followed by regular militia companies. The Continental Congress passed legislation on July 18, 1775, for one-fourth of all militia to be enrolled in minutemen companies, but as a practical matter, minutemen companies disappeared shortly after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, mainly because militiamen so inclined for more active service tended to enlist in provisional regiments or the Continental Army. The Massachusetts Bay militia continued to perform service throughout the war, with detachments serving to augment the Continental Line, watch the coast for British raiders, keep an eye on the British in Rhode Island, and in general keeping any potential Loyalists suppressed.

Barry M. Stentiford

Further reading:

Books

Anderson, Fred. A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldier and Society in the Seven Years’ War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.

Breen, T.H. American Insurgents, American Patriots. New York: Hill and Wang, 2010.

Cooper, Jerry M. The Militia and National Guard in America Since Colonial Times: A Research Guide. Westport Conn: Greenwood Press, 1993.

Cress, Lawrence Delbert. Citizens in Arms: The Army and Militia in Americans Society to the War of 1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1982.

Doubler, Michael D. I Am the Guard: A History of the Army National Guard, 1636-2000. Washington: GPO, 2001.

Eames, Steven C. Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on the New England Frontier, 1689-1747. New York: New York University Press, 2011.

Gross, Robert A. Minutemen and Their World. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

Hill, Jim Dan. The Minute Man in War and Peace: A History of the National Guard. Harrisburg: The Stackpole Company, 1964.

Higginbotham, Don. The American War of Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practices, 1763-1789. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971.

Leach, Douglas Edward. Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1958.

Mahon, John K. History of the Militia and the National Guard. New York: Macmillan Publishing

Perhaps what the Massachusetts Militias thought on April 19, 1775. Mama Said Knock You Out

The Birth of a Revolution

Did you know that February 27 marks the beginning of the American Revolution? It did!

If you’re anything like me, then you’ve heard about Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride on April 19, 1775. You might have watched the School House Rocks cartoon sing about the Shot Heard Round the World when you were a kid, and thought, yeah, that Revere is amazing for singing all of that song while riding his horse so fast. As I grew up I still had a strange notion that Revere sang, “The British are coming!” Click the text below to get a reminder of this fun cartoon!

Paul Revere, The Shot Heard Round the World

When I began researching for my book iThe Immortal Amercan I was utterly amazed at how much American history I had just taken for granted. I mean, I’m AMERICAN for crying out loud. Why didn’t I know more about my own heritage, my own history?

These past few years have been a whirlwind of constant information. Sometimes I’m shocked to tears, to tell the truth, at just how hard some Americans fought for our Independence. Sometimes the tears were from learning about men I’d put on a very high pedestal, only to be swept down by becoming very human.

And that is what I’ve learned while researching my American history, that underneath all of my patriotism there were just human beings who helped make my country what it is today. Some of those people made huge mistakes, but some performed such outrageous acts of bravery that I can only become inspired to crave more courage in my own life.

On the night of February 26, 1775 the British that occupied Boston secretly traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, where the local militia, it was rumored, stored ammunition, cannon, and muskets. The rumors were right. By the 27th, the 300 redcoats, led by Lieutenant Colonel Leslie, landed outside of Salem and were beginning their march toward the town, when the local militia members drew up their drawbridge. Talk about moxie!

Leslie, being the gentleman that he was, knocked on the bridge and asked for admittance into the town. The town’s people refused. After a few rounds of “Can I come in, please,” being met with “nah-uh”s, Leslie had had enough. He threatened to turn his men on the militia.

The Salem militia then anted up, and informed Leslie that if the lobsterbacks shot even one townsperson, then the lot of them would be dead men. They bickered for a while more, and in the end a compromise was agreed upon: Leslie and his men were allowed into Salem to walk 30 rods (about 165 yards) then return back to Boston unscathed. Leslie got to tell his commander in chief, General Governor Thomas Gage, that he did go to Salem, marched in, but did not see any arms. And the people of Salem, particularly the militia, got to carry out their own news to all of Massachusetts that the redcoats were looking for caches of arms, but more than that, the mighty British soldiers took orders from Massachusetts men.

What happens now? Will the redcoats come out of Boston again? Of course they do! So you’ll have to come back and check out the blog between now and April to find out why the British soldiers were in Boston in the first place? What’s the big deal with the Stamp Act and taxes? What’s up with all the militias? What if what you think you know, is really a myth?

Just for the fun of it, here’s Beastie Boys with their own rendition of “Paul Revere.” Bestie Boys, “Paul Revere”