1770. “Boston Massacre”—British soldiers, provoked by citizens, kill three and wound several.
1772. First partition of Poland between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Samuel Adams actively advocates independence in Boston. British ship, the Gaspee, burned by Rhode Islanders. Virginia Assembly appoints Committee of Correspondence to keep in touch with other colonies.
1773. “Boston Tea-party”—taxed tea from England thrown overboard in Boston harbor by disguised Americans.
1774. Five oppressive Acts, including Boston Port Bill, passed by British Parliament. General Gage, commissioned as Governor, comes to Boston with additional British troops. A Congress meets in Philadelphia, with delegates from all colonies except Georgia, and issues a “Declaration of Rights,” frames Articles of Association, and indorses opposition of Massachusetts to the Oppressive Acts of Parliament.
1775. General Gage sends troops to destroy supplies gathered at Concord. Battles of Lexington and Concord. North Carolina the first to instruct delegates to Congress for independence. Battle of Bunker Hill. Seizure of Ticonderoga and occupation of Crown Point by Americans. Washington takes command of the army at Cambridge. The Americans capture Montreal. Arnold repulsed at Quebec and Montgomery killed.
VI
CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
I
Not a clause in the Declaration of Independence sets forth the real and underlying cause of the American Revolution. The attention of its writer was bent upon recent events, and he dwelt only upon the immediate reasons for throwing off allegiance to the British government. In the dark of the storm already upon them, the men of the time could hardly look with clear vision back to ultimate causes. They could not see that the English kings had planted the seeds of the Revolution when, in their zeal to get America colonized, they had granted such political and religious privileges as tempted the radicals and dissenters of the time to migrate to America. Only historical research could reveal the fact that from the year 1620 the English government had been systematically stocking the colonies with dissenters and retaining in England the conformers. The tendency of colonization was to leave the conservatives in England, thus relatively increasing the conservative force at home, while the radicals went to America to fortify the radical political philosophy there. Thus England lost part of her potentiality for political development.
Not only were radicals constantly settling in the colonies, because of the privileges granted them there, but the Crown neglected to enforce in the colonies the same regulations that it enforced at home. The Act of Uniformity was not extended to the colonies, though rigidly enforced in England; the viceregal officers, the governors, permitted themselves again and again to be browbeaten and disobeyed by the colonial legislatures;[42] and even the king himself had allowed Massachusetts (1635) to overreach him by not giving up her charter.[43]