Pre-Revolutionary Americans
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Pre-Revolutionary Americans
Historically, conflicts entail two defined sides; in the Seven Years’ War, started in the colonies, the English fought the French for the Ohio River Valley. The outcomes dealt personally with how the people of the English colonies defined their futures. A pioneering people, these colonists achieved a certain American identity and unity clearly represented in the years preceding the Revolution with which they further developed ideals of liberty, economic growth, and merited authority. Their diverse backgrounds aside, the colonists were hardy people making lives for themselves in the New World. More than survival, which they could have had in their own countries, this life offered space to change status. The possibilities created ambition, and these identifiably ambitious people eventually joined to achieve large-scale changes.
The Seven Year’s War showed the colonists new doors. Britain urged the colonies to bolster common defense. The held a meeting, the Albany Congress, to ensure the loyalty of the Iroquois to the British. For the future America, this purpose was secondary. The war had stirred awareness of a need for colonial unity. Demonstrating this, a few months before the Albany Congress, Ben Franklin published the political cartoon in which the colonies are part of a divided snake; it reads, “JOIN, or DIE” (Document A). Delegates from seven colonies attended, and in such instances, men who considered themselves Virginians could see the common ties between all the colonies. They spoke the same language and pursued similar goals. As early as the Albany Congress was, in the spring of 1754, the colonists appealed for new positions of government to better address their needs. Their plan, the Albany Plan of Union, never made it out of the colonies, but most likely the British would have resented the suggestion as they viewed the colonies as subservient. The colonists plan showed dissatisfaction, a split between the interests of the mother country and what they had come to see as their country; it was as much logical as cultural. Some in Britain found the governing of such a distant population to be impractical as they asked “Is there a single Trait of Resemblance between those few [English] Towns, and a great and growing people spread over a vast quarter of the globe”(Document B). However, Britain was a superpower, a force helpful in many ways to the colonists. This assurance kept the colonies satisfied while making profits for themselves and their mother country, until the war drew to a close and limitations arose.
The pre-revolutionary period gathered speed when the war died down and Britain could again impose on its colonies. France renounced all claims to land in the New World; the colonists were eager to expand. However, to avoid conflict with the Native Americans, the British drew a barrier across the Appalachian Mountains in the Proclamation of 1763. During the war, Braddock’s defeat had wiped away the image of an undefeatable Britain and the growing spirit of the colonials could not be held even at one of these early demands. Many people moved west secretly. The colonists ignored, in large part, the Navigation Laws as well. Many thought that prosperity could only be reached once Britain stopped forcing all trade through their ports for taxation. The colonists were not allowed to manufactures anything or charter banks; they felt held in a position of economic adolescence. These goals were unique for the time, as the average colonist had a higher living standard than any Englishman. They had behind them the protection of the best navy of the time and yet a few small taxes for defense, such as the Sugar and Stamp Acts, threw them into a state of open defiance. With the exception of a few New Englanders still able to make large profits, “all N. America is now firmly united and as firmly resolved to defend their liberties…against every power on Earth that may attempt to take them away,” said Richard Henry Lee, one of the firsts to call for independence (Document C). Nonimportation agreements, the Stamp Act Congress, and the Boston Massacre all displayed similar distrust of Britain. Colonists were from the outset wary of authority, and with small amounts of