1754-1763.] Colonies during the War.

Colonial

trade.

39

As often happens during a war, some parts of the country prospered, notwithstanding the constant loss. The New England fisheries and trade were little affected except when, in 1758, Loudon shut up the ports by a brief embargo. As soon as Fort Duquesne was captured, settlers began to pass across the mountains into western Pennsylvania, and what is now Kentucky and eastern Tennessee. The Virginia troops received ample bounty lands; Washington was shrewd enough to buy up claims, and located about seventy thousand acres. The period of 1760 to 1763 was favorable to the colonies. Their trade with the West Indies was large. For their food products they got sugar and molasses; from the molasses they made rum; with the rum they bought slaves in Africa, aud brought them to the West Indies and to the continent. The New Englanders fitted out and provisioned the British fleets. They supplied the British armies in America. They did not hesitate to trade with the enemy's colonies, or with the enemy direct, if the opportunity offered. The conclusion of peace checked this brisk trade and commercial activity. When the war was ended the agreeable irregularities stood more clearly revealed.

Free from border wars.

20. Political Effects of the War (1763).

In government as well as in trade a new era came to the colonies in 1763. Nine years had brought about many changes in the social and political conditions of the people. In the first place, they no longer had any civilized enemies. The Canadians, to be sure, were still mistrusted as papists; but though the colonists had no love for them, they had no fear of them; and twelve years later, at the outbreak of the Revolution, they tried to establish political brotherhood with them. The colonies were now free to expand west

Pontiac's conspiracy.

ward, or would have been free, except for the resistance of the Western Indians gathered about the Upper Lakes. In 1763 Pontiac organized them in the most formidable Indian movement of American history. He had courage; he had statesmanship; he had large numbers. By this time the British had learned the border warfare, and Pontiac was with difficulty beaten. From that time until well into the Revolution Indian warfare meant only the resistance of scattered tribes to the steady westward advance of the English.

Military experience.

For the first time in their history the colonists had participated in large military operations. Abercrombie and Amherst each had commanded from twelve to fifteen thousand men. The colonists were expert in fortification. Many Provincials had seen fighting in line and in the woods. Israel Putnam had been captured, and the fires lighted to burn him; and Washington had learned in the hard school of frontier warfare both to fight, and to hold fast without fighting.

The war had further served to sharpen the political sense of the people. Year after year the assemblies had

United action.

been engaged in matters of serious moment. They laid heavy taxes and collected them; they discussed foreign policy and their own defence; they protested against acts of the British government which affected them. Although no union had been formed at Albany in 1754, the colonies had frequently acted together and fought together. New York had been in great part a community of Dutch people under English rule during the war; now, as most exposed to French attack, it became the central colony. Military men and civilians from the different colonies learned to know each other at Fort William Henry and at Crown Point.

This unwonted sense of power and of common interest was increased by the pressure of the British government.

1754-1763.] Political Effects of the War.

Scheme of
British

4I

Just before the war broke out, plans had been set on foot in England to curb the colonies; legislation was to be more carefully revised; governors were to be instructed to hold out against their assemcontrol. blies; the Navigation Acts were to be enforced. The scheme was dropped when the war began, because the aid of the colonies in troops and supplies was essential. Then arose two rival theories as to the nature of the war. The British took the ground that they were sending troops to protect the colonies from French invasion, and that all their expeditions were benefactions to the colonies. Theory of The colonists felt that they co-operation were co-operating with England in breaking down a national enemy, and that all their grants were bounties. The natural corollary of the first theory was that the colonies ought at least to support the troops thus generously sent them; and various suggestions looking to this end were made by royal governors. Thus Shirley in 1756 devised a general system of taxation, including import duties, an excise, and a polltax; delinquents to be brought to terms by "warrants of distress and imprisonment of persons." When, in 1762, Governor Bernard of Massachusetts promised £400 in bounties on the faith of the colony, James Otis protested that he had "involved their most darling privilege, the right of originating taxes." On the other Navigation hand, the colonies systematically broke the Navigation Acts, of which they had never denied the legality. To organize the control over the colonies more carefully, to provide a colonial revenue for general colonial purposes, to execute the Navigation Acts, and thus to confine the colonial trade to the mothercountry, these were the elements of the English colonial policy from 1763 to 1775. Before these ends were accomplished the colonies had revolted.

Proposed

taxes.

Acts.

CHAPTER III.

CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION (1763-1775)

21. References.

Bibliographies. Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vi. 62-112; Winsor's Handbook of the Revolution, pp. 1-25; Foster's Monthly Reference Lists, No. 79; A. B. Hart's Introduction to the Study of Federal Government, § 35.

Historical Maps. No. 2, this volume (Epoch Maps, No. 5); Labberton's Historical Atlas, No. lxiv.; Gardiner's School Atlas, No. 46; Parkman's Pontiac, frontispiece; Putzger's Atlas, No. 31; Hinsdale's Old Northwest, i. 68 (reprinted from MacCoun's Historical Geography).

General Accounts. - Frothingham's Rise of the Republic, pp. 158-401; Bancroft's History of the United States, vols. v.-vii. chaps. i.-xxvi. (last revision, vols. iii., iv., chaps. i.-viii.); Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. chap. xii.; Hildreth's History of the United States, ii. 514-577; iii. 25-56; Curtis's History of the Constitution, i. 3-28; Ludlow's War of American Independence, chap. iii.; Holmes's Annals of America, ii. 124-198; Bryant and Gay's Popular History of the United States, iii. 329-376; Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, vol. vi. chap. i.; Pitkin's Political and Civil History, i. 155-281; Lodge's Short History of the North American Colonies, chap. xxiii.; Green's History of the English People, iv. 218-254; Adolphus's History of England, ii. 134–332 passim; Grahame's History of the United States, vol. iv. book x1.; Biographies of John Adams, Samuel Adams, Otis, Pickering, Franklin, and Washington. Special Histories. Weeden's Economic and Social History of New England, vol. ii. chaps. xviii., xix.; Tudor's Life of James Otis ; Hosmer's Samuel Adams, pp. 21-312; Morse's Benjamin Franklin, pp. 99-201; Tyler's Patrick Henry, pp. 32-147.

Contemporary Accounts. Works of Washington, Franklin, Patrick Henry, and John Adams; James Otis's Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved; Examination of Franklin (Franklin's Works, iv. 161-195); Donne's Correspondence of George III. with Lord North [1768-1783]; Goodloe's Birth of the Republic, pp. 7-205 (reprints of contemporary acts, resolutions, etc.); John Dickinson's

1763.]

Condition of the British Empire.

43

Farmer's Letters; Jonathan Trumbull's McFingal (epic poem); Mercy Warren's History of the American Revolution; Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, vol. iii.; Hutchinson's Diary and Letters; Joseph Galloway's Candid Examination; Stephen Hopkins's Rights of the Colonies Examined.

22. The Condition of the British Empire (1763).

England's

IN 1763 the English were the most powerful nation in the world. The British islands, with a population of but 8,000,000, were the administrative centre of a greatness. vast colonial empire. Besides their American possessions, the English had a foothold in Africa through the possession of the former Dutch Cape Colony, and had laid the foundation of the present Indian Empire; small islands scattered through many seas furnished naval stations and points of defence. The situation of England bears a striking resemblance to the situation of Athens at the close of the Persian wars: a trading nation, a naval power, a governing race, a successful military people; the English completed the parallel by tightening the reins upon their colonies till they revolted. Of the other European powers, Portugal and Spain still preserved colonial empires in the West; but Spain was decaying. Great Britain had not only gained territory and prestige from the war, she had risen rich and prosperous, and a national debt of one hundred and forty million pounds was borne without serious difficulty.

It was a time of vigorous intellectual life, the period of Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, and Dr. Johnson. It was English also a period of political development. The government. conditions seemed favorable for internal peace and for easy relations with the colonies. The long Jacobite movement had come to an end; George the Third was accepted by all classes and all parties as the legitimate sovereign. The system of government worked out