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When Great Britain emerged victorious from the Seven Years War in 1763, most of its American colonists celebrated the event as ardent British patriots. They were proud to belong to the Protestant commercial empire and they honoured their king and queen. But the end of the war with France also exposed problems in North America that proved difficult to resolve. Amid a postwar economic depression, the continents settlers, enslaved labourers and indigenous peoples faced an uncertain new world.

For decades, many indigenous Americans had been able to play British and French interests against one another, but the departure of the French had changed the equation. The British empire no longer depended as heavily on its Native allies and the ministry hoped to reduce its expenses. After General Jeffrey Amherst scaled down the gifts that were a crucial ingredient of frontier diplomacy, a confederation of northern Native peoples attacked several British forts, from Fort Michilimackinac on the Great Lakes to Fort Pitt on the Ohio River. Amherst retaliated with biological warfare, distributing smallpox blankets among Native Americans around Fort Pitt.The American colonists, meanwhile, eagerly schemed to seize the land beyond the Appalachian Mountains for themselves. The ministry knew that further settlement would continue to provoke warfare with indigenous people, and the country could afford neither the blood nor treasure that such conflicts would entail. The king issued the Proclamation of 1763, which prevented the colonists from claiming western lands. This arrangement left squatters to themselves and frustrated the speculative land schemes of men like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

The colonists frustrated ambitions contributed to their sense of grievance. Great Britain had also incurred massive debts from its war for empire, and the Treasury shouldered further expenses by stationing troops in the North American interior. Rather than place the entire tax burden on subjects in Britain, parliament hoped to derive some revenue from its colonies, particularly in South Asia and North America. They passed a series of laws for the American colonies, including the Sugar Act of 1764, to discourage the act of smuggling molasses from foreign Caribbean islands; the Stamp Act of 1765, which raised the costs of newspapers, playing cards and legal documents; and the Revenue Act of 1767, which taxed imports of items such as glass, lead, paper, paint and tea.

A fierce clash between colonists and British troops in Boston on 5 March 1770 resulted in the deaths of five people, including black protester Crispus Attucks. (Image by Getty Images)

The colonists raised a constitutional objection to being taxed without their consent, and they responded with petitions, printed screeds, street protests and boycotts of overseas goods. Leaders such as Samuel Adams, John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson emerged to articulate colonial grievances. Men gathered in taverns and called themselves Sons of Liberty, while women participated by joining in efforts to limit consumption of overseas goods.

Colonists wanted to be able to trade freely, which would enable them to pay low prices for imports and fetch high prices for their produce. They wanted the British to respect them as fellow subjects, but instead found that many people in the mother country disdained them for their provinciality, their dissenting religious views, their military performance and their historic association with slavery, transported convicts and ethnic pluralism.

Black people in the Atlantic world heard these cries for liberty. Some joined local protests against parliament, such as Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Wampanoag (indigenous) descent, who was slain along with four other men in a fracas between Bostonians and British soldiers on 5 March 1770. Some, like Felix Holbrook, began to point out the discrepancy between the American spirit of freedom and the oppressions of slavery.

Black activists forged alliances with small numbers of Quakers and evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic. James Somerset, who had been enslaved in Virginia and Massachusetts and brought to England, sued for his freedom and won in 1772; the Lord Chief Justice ruled that slavery had no legal foundation in England. Phillis Wheatley, brought to Boston as a girl, published poems that raised consciousness about the injustice of slavery.

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 and most of the Revenue Act duties in 1770, but it kept the tax on tea in place, and it insisted on its right to make laws for the colonies in all cases whatsoever. In 1773, the ministry followed up with the Tea Act, allowing the East India Company to sell directly to the colonies. The colonists worried that parliament was trying to entice them into paying taxes without their consent, for the benefit of a favoured charter company. On 16 December, a group of Bostonians protested by dressing as Native Americans and dumping 46 tonnes of the companys tea in the harbour.

On 16 December, a group of Bostonians protested by dumping 46 tonnes of tea in the harbour

By this time, parliament was so angry with protest actions in Boston that they passed a series of laws known as the Coercive Acts in 1774. They closed the port of Boston until it repaid the East India Company for its losses. They restricted Massachusetts town meetings and deprived the assembly of its voice in choosing provincial councillors. They protected British officials who were accused of capital crimes.

Meanwhile, the Quebec Act granted religious freedoms and western jurisdiction to Quebec, which struck the land-hungry Protestant colonists as a betrayal. Over the summer, local committees in 12 mainland colonies resolved to send delegates to a Continental Congress in September.

The resistance movement was particularly popular among the Congregationalists of New England, southern Anglicans and Scots-Irish Presbyterians in the backcountry. Dissenters and low church Anglicans both feared the appointment of a bishop in America and called for civil and religious liberty.

The Boston Tea Party of 1773 sparked an angry reaction from the British government, which passed a series of restrictive laws known to colonists as the Coercive Acts. (Image by Getty Images)

Other Americans distinguished themselves as friends of government throughout the years of political resistance and would support the Crown during the war. Many colonists didnt trust the leading patriots for political, economic or religious reasons, or they predicted that violence would be ruinous. Many had benefited from their economic connections to the British empire and believed in the superiority of English liberty. British officials and many Church of England ministers were, of course, vocal loyalists. A number of minority groups were cool to the revolution, such as Highland Scots, French Canadians and non-evangelical Dutch and German Protestants who owed their privileges to the Crown. Pacifist sects such as the Quakers and Moravians also argued against violent rebellion.

Many enslaved black people took advantage of political unrest and fled from their American owners. Although some black men, particularly in New England, would eventually enlist with the Continental Army as a path toward emancipation, many more, particularly in the South, would join the British Army in exchange for freedom (so long as they fled from masters who were rebelling against the Crown). Most Native American groups feared the land hunger of the white settlers: some, such as the Stockbridge or Catawba, made alliances with the colonists, but many more confederacies, such as the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami and Wyandot, aligned themselveswith the British.

To calm the rebellion in New England, the ministry sent General Thomas Gage to serve as governor of Massachusetts in 1774, along with 3,000 soldiers. (Bostononly had a population of about 16,000 people at the time.)

General Thomas Gage was tasked with calming the rebellion in New England, but his efforts to seize patriot weapons ended up sparking the battles of Lexington and Concord. (Image by Getty Images)

As early as 11 September, George III wrote, the dye is now cast, the Colonies must either submit or triumph. Parliament prohibited arms shipments to Americaon 19 October. Finally, the king declared New England in a state of rebellion on 18 November, concluding blows must decide whether the colonists would choose obedience or independence.

From his headquarters in Boston, Gage quickly realised he had to keep gunpowder out of the hands of the New Englanders. His preventative measures almost touched off a revolt on 1 September, with thousands gathering in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believing that the rebellion had begun, until cooler heads prevailed. On 26 February 1775, the people of Salem, Massachusetts, forced the 64th Regiment to retreat empty-handed.

Gages spies told him that the rebels were storing weapons in Concord, where an illegal provincial congress had previously met.

After receiving orders from the ministry to confiscate the rebels weapons and arrest their leaders, Gage sent 700 grenadiers and light infantry under Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith to Concord on 18 April.

The British expedition encountered resistance at Lexington in the early morning hours of 19 April. No one knows who fired the first shot, but the gunfire left eight colonists dead and wounded other men on both sides. After the British detachment pressed onward to Concord, another battle at North Bridge led to three British soldiers killed and two colonists.

New Englanders rose up en masse. Militiamen fired on the British column during the retreat to Boston. In the coming weeks, both sides blamed one another for committing acts of butchery, and 20,000 New Englanders surrounded the British garrison at Boston. The war had begun. Within months, Washington would take his place at the head of a Continental Army in rebellion. A year later, 13 colonies formally declared their independence from the Crown.

Benjamin Carp is associate professor and Daniel M Lyons chair of history at Brooklyn College, and an expert on the American Revolutionary War. His books include Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (Yale University Press, 2010)

This article first appeared in the May 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed

Excerpt from:
How Did The American Revolution Begin? | HistoryExtra - BBC History Magazine

David Wolfford| Opinion contributor

The Declaration of Independence makes for a glorious story. A united front of downtrodden colonists, through Thomas Jeffersons quill, challenged tyrannical King George III. When commemorating the United States birth, we may revel too much in a patriotic, School House Rock tale of good and evil. This story is more nuanced.

Public opinion on separating from Britain was divided throughout the crisis and as late as July 1776. The American-British relationship had declined, and Parliaments Coercive Acts of 1774 to punish Boston for the Tea Party brought about the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Delegates included radicals leaning toward separation, moderates, and conservatives loyal to the Crown; the latter two wanted a peaceful political solution without separation. On the ground in revolution-prone Boston, one historians measure reveals a divided merchant class. Of 318 merchants, 118 became committed loyalists, 37 remained neutraland 163 actively sided with the patriots. In New York, merchants overall favored loyalty.

British soldiers, hostilitiesand essayists changed minds. The king sent more troops to enforce new law. The armies faced off in nine battles or skirmishes with over 1,000 American casualties. Common Sense persuaded. In Congress, in a preliminary tally on the day before the vote to declare independence, Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted "No,"Delawares delegation was split and New York abstained. The next day, the late arrival of a key Delaware radical, the conspicuous absence of a conservative Pennsylvanian, and a shift by South Carolina resulted in a 12-0 vote. New York still abstained.

Thomas Jefferson was not the sole author, and his draft was not the final draft. It began as a three-sentence resolution introduced on June 7, 1776. Congress still debated and created a committee to explain the possible separation. Jefferson, a published critic of Britain, became the obvious draftsman. Ben Franklin and John Adams made 26 alterations to Jeffersons work before submitting it to Congress. Most were simple changes in phrasing. They added to Jeffersons list of accusations three new paragraphs accusing the king of dissolving colonial legislatures, pushing oppressive trade lawsand impressing sailors into the British navy.

Jefferson included a paragraph-long critique of slavery and blamed King George. He has violated "the persons of a distant people …captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere." He also commented on the deadly Middle Passage and on the hypocrisy of George only granting slaves their freedom to win a war. How the slave-owning Jefferson writing in Philadelphia could criticize slavery while over 100 slaves labored back at Monticello is a question suitable for another day. Other southerners wouldnt have it, others thought it went too far to pin slavery on George. Congress deleted the passage.

Conditions in the colonies werent that bad, and the king takes a disproportionate brunt of the blame. The average citizen residing in Britain paid 26 shillings per year in taxes to the Crown, the average New Englander one shilling. The colonists enjoyed a higher standard of living with larger incomes and more purchasing power than fellow Britons. The economic and trade regulations the Parliament put on the Americans were rather mild.

Unpopular British policy inevitably originated in Parliament or in the kings council. Through most of the conflict, the Americans viewed him as their protector, a taming check on Parliament and his scheming counselors. There was little direct personal criticism of George between the 1766 Stamp Act repeal and the Coercive Acts. Even the Congress referred to him politely in debate and in the pre-Declaration documents. But published pamphlets and discourse moved from explicit expressions of loyalty to suggestions of rebellion.

Some argue the king is a bit of a fall guy. Though the Tea Act, the Townsend Acts, and the Coercive Acts so riled the revolutionaries, "Parliament"is nowhere directly named in the Declaration. "What they needed was a fundamental presupposition against kings in general," wrote historian Carl Becker a century ago. Andrew Roberts, Georges biographer from across the pond, more recently accuses Jefferson of "padding the brief," with exaggerations, overgeneralizationsand complaints of a British law-and-order response to colonial violations. I guess its all a matter of perspective.

So when you celebrate the Red, Whiteand Blue this Fourth of July, cherish the natural rights, representation and liberty that conceived the United States, but remember our countrys birth wasnt that black and white.

David Wolfford teachers at Mariemont High School and is author of "Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics" (AMSCO/Perfection Learning).

Continued here:
Opinion: Story of America's birth is more nuanced than usually told - The Cincinnati Enquirer

If voter turnout for Tuesdays election indicates the health of our democracy this Fourth of July holiday, the patient may well be on life support.

A dismal 19.2% of suburban Cook County voters cast ballots in this years belated gubernatorial primary, the county clerks office reported. A pathetic 18.7% of registered voters turned out in Will County. In Chicago, 300,000 of the citys 1.5 million registered voters bothered to show up.

Our democracy and the principle of majority rule are in peril, and only one in five voters seems to care.

Illinois voters seemed unfazed that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled four days before the election that women did not have a constitutional right to abortion, after all. The court overturned the nearly 50-year-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, but the decision did not seem to motivate more people to vote Tuesday.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol convened a hastily scheduled hearing Tuesday to hear blockbuster testimony from White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

The committee is establishing with increasing certainty that Republican lawmakers and operatives participated in a plot to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election by using violence to stop the process of certifying Joe Biden as winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Yet turnout would seem to indicate most people in Oak Lawn, Orland Park, Tinley Park and other communities in the south and southwest suburbs treat the revelations with a collective yawn.

Gas prices and inflation, thats what seems to matter most to many at the moment.

America seems largely unaware of the effort to chip away at rights, freedoms and protections. Most adults are busy with work, family and other matters. Many prefer to escape the nastiness of politics with entertainment.

The Jan. 6 committee seems to grasp the urgent need to grab peoples attention. What President Donald Trump and Republican co-conspirators did in their failed attempt to keep Trump in power went far beyond politics as usual.

They schemed to have state legislatures instead of voters decide which candidate should be awarded a states Electoral College votes. Republicans control legislatures in 30 states, thanks to gerrymandering.

In Illinois, Democrats have used the same tactics that Republicans have used in other states to create districts that are rarely competitive. Illinois Republicans should be outraged by how Democrats have created supermajorities by gerrymandering the GOP into irrelevance.

The current 18-member Illinois congressional delegation consists of 13 Democrats and five Republicans. There are 73 Democrats and 45 Republicans in the Illinois House. The Illinois Senate has 40 Democrats and 18 Republicans.

Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in Illinois, but the margin is not greater than two to one, as party representation numbers would indicate. In a fair system, there would be more balance.

Most districts are stacked so heavily to favor one party that the other party doesnt even bother expending resources to field an opposing candidate. The vast majority of Illinois lawmakers in Tuesdays election and in every election are uncontested.

Illinois Republicans, however, make little noise about the need to fix the broken system of creating districts after the census every 10 years. Criticizing Illinois Democrats too loudly might force them to admit Republicans in Ohio, Florida, Texas and other states use the same tactics to create unfair advantages.

Congress ought to fix the problem at the federal level and create a fair set of rules that could be applied in every state. Courts have shown they have no interest in correcting the inequity.

Weve evolved from dirty tricks of President Richard Nixons Watergate scandal to one party willing to resort to violence to prevent the other party from taking office.

Some will ignore the facts and believe the lies, so long as people like Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Georgia, are willing to describe the Capitol riot as a normal tourist visit.

Too many other decent people are content to sit on the sidelines. They may not like the direction the country is headed, but they probably figure they cant do much about it.

People could make a difference, though, if they would vote in every election. Turnout is always robust for presidential elections every four years, typically around 75%. Americans like a binary choice. Yea or nay, up or down, red or blue.

Its harder to choose from among six Republicans running for governor, or to pick three names from a list of eight candidates for school board.

But state and local elections are just as important as the presidential contest. Republicans targeted down ballot races after President Barack Obama took office in 2008. The Tea Party scored huge gains in 2010, and what we are experiencing today is a result of efforts to win elections at every level.

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One way people could overcome negative effects of gerrymandering would be if greater numbers unexpectedly voted. When turnout is only 20%, a few thousand people could make a huge impact.

Young people, in particular, ought to feel the need to pay attention and get involved. Tuesdays election was consistent with all other elections in that turnout was greater among older voters.

Those who care about democracy, freedom and independence need to figure out a way to increase turnout. Maybe some of the tens of millions of dollars spent attacking opponents in the Illinois gubernatorial primary could have been put to better use in a voter participation effort.

In the 1990s, MTV partnered with the Rock the Vote organization to encourage young people to vote. Madonna and other celebrities appeared in public service announcements that sought to engage 20-somethings in politics.

A similar effort is needed today to underscore the threats to our free and fair elections. The only foreseeable solution is to increase voter participation. If turnout remains a paltry 20%, we will only have ourselves to blame if we lose personal freedoms.

Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.

tslowik@tribpub.com

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Column: Personal freedom was on the ballot Tuesday. Only 20% of voters bothered to show up. - Chicago Tribune

FOURTH of July is a popular American holiday that is often celebrated with fireworks and cookouts.

Among the places Americans buy their cookout food is Target, which means they want to know if the doors will be open for last-minute essentials.

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Target locations across the country are expected to be open on the Fourth of July.

However, hours may vary based on location, so it is always recommended to check with local stores for accurate times.

To find the closest Target near you and check their hours, you can go to the store locator.

Independence Day is celebrated annually on July 4th in the United States.

The national holiday commemorates the passage of the Declaration of Independence by Congress on July 4, 1776.

In 1775, the 13 colonies that made up America declared a war of independence against Britain.

more from the fourth of july

The British had inhabited America since 1587 and exploited their resources, such as tobacco and tea.

Tensions began to rise between the British and Americans as the British Government pushed for their own financial gain and continued to exploit American goods through taxation.

Founding Father and head of the Sons of Liberty organization Samuel Adams, and his men, boarded three ships in Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard.

This became known as the Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Other violent acts also arose from the tension over the taxation of tea and other products.

The Boston Tea Party was one of the main events that started theAmerican Revolutionary War.

In 1775, the 13 colonies that made up America declared a war of independence against Britain and on July 4, 1776, Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence.

It is one of 11 federal holidays, meaning that it is recognized nationwide by the government.

The Fourth of July became a federal holiday in 1870.

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Fourth of July celebrations have taken various forms across the centuries.

In Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1777, there was a salute with 13 shotguns in the morning and evening of July 4.

And in 1778, then general of the revolutionary army, George Washington, doubled his troops' rum ration for the festivities.

Nowadays, fireworks are one of the most common ways to celebrate Independence Day.

Displays are held in every major city and the White House also puts on its own show on the South Lawn.

Generally, the 4th of July is a time to spend with family and friends, having BBQs, watching firework displays and parades while surrounded by a large quantity of red, white, and blue, stars and stripes themed paraphernalia.

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Is Target open on July 4th, 2022?... - The US Sun

Borgman

I witnessed the Boston Tea Party, the Battle at Concord and Paul Reveres Ride.

You didnt think I was that old, did you?

I was a kid at the time, living in a Kansas City, Missouri neighborhood that went all out for the Fourth of July.

Old, fuzzy black and white snapshots of the Battle at Concord sharpen the memories. Red Coats are lined up in costumes that arent half bad if you can overlook the tie dress-shoes and long white socks pulled up over pant legs. They are wielding guns (not loaded) and a British flag. Kids, more kids, tricycles, bicycles, baby strollers and women wearing Bermuda shorts line both sides of the street.

Lest you become confused, there is signage. Magic marker on a posterboard reads Battle at Concord, April 19, 1775.

A small bridge sits in the middle of the street. The Red Coats approach from one direction and the Minutemen from the other. The Minutemen fire and the British run like scared rabbits. Neither side suffers a single casualty a slightly different outcome from the original Battle at Concord, but revisionist history had to start somewhere.

All that really mattered was that we whupped em again.

A neighbor man, who had a horse pastured in the country, was the main act the year Paul Reveres Midnight Ride was the featured attraction. Down the street he flew on his horse, tacatac, tacatac, past the letter drop mailbox, tacatac, tacatac, past a Plymouth Fury Suburban station wagon and a Corvair convertible, past kids waving flags, all the while shouting, The British are Coming! The British are Coming!

No one was overly concerned that the British were coming because wed seen how they scattered like chickens year before.

The most memorable of these gatherings was the year of the Boston Tea Party. Grown-ups worked hours in a neighbors garage building a ship on a platform on wheels. There was even a party table onboard the ship with a punch bowl and cups, courtesy of my mother. The crowd roared as crates of tea were heaved onto the blacktop. Our dad was onboard, heaving tea and celebrating with punch.

He took a nap in the front yard beneath the shade of an elm tree that afternoon. My mother mentioned that she had spiked the punch onboard the ship. Yes, she had taken liberties.

I have often wondered if the Fourth of July in our old neighborhood was over the top because so many in our neighborhood had served in World War II. Military service had been borne by the many in those days, not just a few.

They had seen the horrors of fascism with their own eyes, just as they had witnessed the bloody cost of freedom. Many bore some of those costs for a lifetime. Shared sacrificed yielded a strong pulsebeat of patriotism.

There were democrats, republicans, non-voters, white-collar and blue-collar workers among those staging those Fourth of July celebrations but the differences among them were superseded by a love of country and deep respect and appreciation for freedom.

There is no perfect nation. There never has been and never will be. That said, we have always been a city shining on hill, a nation of possibilities, hopes and dreams. Maybe its possible that a respect for freedom and love of liberty will unite us again.

Read the original here:
Lori Borgman: The Boston Tea Party you never read about in books - Daily Journal