Abolitionism

"Am I Not A Man And A Brother? " Medallion created as part of anti-slavery campaign by Josiah Wedgwood, 1787 Abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves in western Europe and the Americas. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical religious groups condemned it as un-Christian. Though antislavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, they had little immediate effect on the centers of slavery themselves the West Indies, South America, and the Southern United States. The importation of African slaves was banned in the British colonies in 1807, and in the United States in 1808. In the British West Indies, slavery was abolished in 1827 and in the French possessions 15 years later. In Britain, William Wilberforce had taken on the cause of abolition in 1787 after the formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in which he led the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire with the Slave Trade Act 1807, also campaigned for the abolition of slavery in British Empire, which he lived to see in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 In eleven States constituting the American South, however, slavery was a social and economic institution, and in the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million. [1]. American abolitionism labored under the handicap that it was accused of threatening the harmony of North and South in the Union. The abolitionist movement in the North was led by social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society; writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe; former slaves such as Frederick Douglass; and free blacks such as brothers Charles Henry Langston and John Mercer Langston, who helped found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. [2] The 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the spread of slavery to the Western United States, as President of the United States marked a turning point in the movement. Convinced that their way of life was threatened, the Southern states seceded from the Union, which led to the American Civil War. In 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves held in the Confederate States; the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1865) prohibited slavery throughout the country. Slavery was first abolished in Latin

America during the Independence Wars (18101822), but slavery remained a practice in the region up to 1888 (Brazil), particularly in the remaining Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico. In some parts of Africa and in much of the Islamic world, it persisted as a legal institution well into the 20th century. Abolitionism was preceded by the New Laws of the Indies in 1542, in which Emperor Charles V declared free all native American slaves, abolishing slavery of these races, and declaring them citizens of the Empire with full rights. The move was prompted by the thoughts of the Spanish monk Bartolome de las Casas and the School of Salamanca. However, it was not a true abolition of slavery, as Spain replaced the Native American slaves with African ones. Today, child and adult slavery and forced labour are illegal in most countries, as well as being against international law. Because slavery still exists, however, with an estimated 27 million people enslaved worldwide, a new international abolitionist movement has recently emerged. Gradual emancipation The first American movement to abolish slavery came in the spring of 1688 when German and Dutch Quakers of Mennonite descent in Germantown, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia) wrote a two-page condemnation of the practice and sent it to the governing bodies of their Quaker church, the Society of Friends. Though the Quaker establishment took no immediate action, the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, was an unusually early, clear and forceful argument against slavery and initiated the process of banning slavery in the Society of Friends (1776) and Pennsylvania(1780). Thomas Paine (17371805), whose 1775 article "African Slavery in America" was the first article published in what would become the United States which advocated abolishing slavery and freeing the slaves. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first American abolition society, formed 14 April 1775, in Philadelphia, primarily by Quakers who had strong religious objections to slavery. Rhode Island Quakers, associated with Moses Brown, co-founder of Brown University [1], and who also settled at Uxbridge, Massachusetts prior to 1770, were among the first in America to free slaves. The society ceased to operate during the Revolution and the British occupation of Philadelphia. After the Revolution, it was reorganized in 1784, with Benjamin Franklin as its first president.[12] Benjamin Rush was another leader, as were many Quakers. John Woolman gave up most of his business in 1756 to devote himself to campaigning against slavery along with other Quakers. [13] The first article published in what later became the United States advocating the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery was allegedly written by Thomas Paine. Titled "African Slavery in America", it appeared on 8 March 1775 in the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser , more popularly known as The Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Museum.[14]

New Deal
The New Deal was the name that United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to a complex package of economic programs he effected between 1937 and

1949 with the goals of what historians call the 3 Rs, of giving Relief to the unemployed and badly hurt farmers, Reform of business and financial practices, and promoting Recovery of the economy during the Great Depression. When Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, the nation was deeply troubled. Every bank in the nation had closed its doors and no one could cash a check or get at their savings.[1] The unemployment rate was 25% and higher in major industrial and mining centers. Farm prices had fallen by 50%. Mortgages were being foreclosed by tens of thousands.[2] Historians distinguish a "First New Deal" (1933) and a "Second New Deal" (193436). Some programs were declared unconstitutional, and others were repealed during World War II; in early 1937 almost no new programs were initiated because of the opposition of the new Conservative Coalition.[3] The "First New Deal" (March 4, 1933) focused on a variety of different groups; from banking and railroads to industry and farming. The New Deal instituted banking reform laws, work relief programs, agricultural programs, and industrial reform (the National Recovery Administration, NRA), and the end of the gold standard.[4] A "Second New Deal" in 1934-35 included the Wagner Act to promote labor unions, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program, the Social Security Act, and new programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. The Supreme Court ruled several programs unconstitutional; however, most were soon replaced, with the exception of the NRA. After 1936, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was the only major legislation; it set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers. [5] The WPA, CCC and other relief programs were shut down during World War II by the Conservative Coalition (i.e., the opponents of the New Deal in Congress); they argued the return of full employment made them superfluous. Many regulations were ended during the wave of deregulation from 1975 to 1989. Several New Deal programs remain active, with some still operating under the original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Fannie Mae.

American Revolution
This article is about political and social developments, and the origins and aftermath of the war. For military actions, see American Revolutionary War. For other uses, see American Revolution (disambiguation).

In this article, inhabitants of the thirteen colonies that supported the American Revolution are primarily referred to as "Americans," with occasional references to "Patriots," "Whigs," "Rebels" or "Revolutionaries." Colonists who supported the British in opposing the Revolution are usually referred to as "Loyalists" or "Tories." The geographical area of the thirteen colonies is often referred to simply as "America." John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, showing the five-man committee in charge of drafting the Declaration in 1776 as it presents its work to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia The American Revolution is the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America at first rejected the governance of the Parliament of Great Britain, and later the British monarchy itself, to become the sovereign United States of America. In this period the colonies first rejected the authority of the Parliament to govern them without representation, expelling all royal officials and setting up thirteen Provincial Congresses or equivalent to form individual self-governing states. Through representatives sent to the Second Continental Congress, they originally joined together to defend their respective self-governance and manage the armed conflict against the British known as the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783, also American War of Independence). Ultimately, the states collectively determined that the monarchy, by acts of tyranny, could no longer legitimately claim their allegiance. They then united to form one nation, breaking away from the British Empire in July 1776 when the Congress issued the Declaration of Independence rejecting the monarchy on behalf of the United States of America. The war ended with effective American victory in October 1781, followed by formal British abandonment of any claims to the United States with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The American Revolution commenced a series of intellectual, political, and social shifts in early American society and government. The development of republicanism in the United States was particularly significant, including installation of a representative government responsible to the will of the people, thus rejecting the prevalent plutocracies of the inherited aristocracies in Europe at the time. However, sharp political debates broke out over the level of democracy desirable in the new government, with a number of Founders fearing mob rule. The basic issues of national governance were settled with the unanimous ratification in 1788 of the Constitution of the United States (written in 1787), which replaced the relatively weak Articles of Confederation (ratified 1781) that framed the first attempt at a national government. In contrast to the loose confederation, the Constitution established a relatively powerful federated government. The United States Bill of Rights (1791), comprising the first 10 constitutional amendments, quickly followed. It guaranteed many natural rights that were so influential in justifying the revolution, attempting to balance a strong national government with relatively broad personal liberties. The American shift to republicanism, and the gradually increasing democracy, caused an

upheaval of the traditional social hierarchy, and created the ethic that has formed a core of political values in the US.[1]

Origins
The American Revolution was predicated by a number of ideas and events that, combined, led to a political and social separation of colonial possessions from the home nation and a coalescing of those former individual colonies into an independent nation.

Summary
The revolutionary era began in 1763, when the French military threat to British North American colonies ended. Adopting the policy that the colonies should pay an increased proportion of the costs associated with keeping them in the Empire, Britain imposed a series of taxes followed by other laws intended to demonstrate British authority that proved extremely unpopular. Because the colonies lacked elected representation in the governing British Parliament many colonists considered the laws to be illegitimate and a violation of their rights as Englishmen. Additionally, British mercantilist policies benefiting the home country resulted in trade restrictions, which limited the growth of the American economy and artificially constrained colonial merchants' earning potential. In 1772, groups began to create committees of correspondence, which would lead to their own Provincial Congress in most of the colonies. In the course of two years, the Provincial Congresses or their equivalents rejected the Parliament and effectively replaced the British ruling apparatus in the former colonies, culminating in 1774 with the coordinating First Continental Congress. In response to protests in Boston over Parliament's attempts to assert authority, the British sent combat troops. Consequently, the colonies mobilized their militias, and fighting broke out in 1775. First ostensibly loyal to King George III, Congress' repeated pleas for royal intervention with Parliament on their behalf only resulted in the states being declared "in rebellion", and Congress traitors. In 1776, representatives from each of the original thirteen states voted unanimously in the Second Continental Congress to adopt a Declaration of Independence, which now rejected the British monarchy in addition to its Parliament. The Declaration established the United States, which was originally governed as a loose confederation through a representative government selected by state legislatures (see Second Continental Congress and Congress of the Confederation). The French signed an alliance with the United States government in 1778 that evened the military and naval strengths, later bringing Spain and the Dutch Republic into the conflict by their own alliance with France. Although Loyalists were estimated to comprise 15-20% of the population, [2] throughout the war the Patriots generally controlled 80-90% of the territory; the British could hold only a few coastal cities for any extended period of time. Two main British armies surrendered to the Continental Army, at Saratoga in 1777 and Yorktown in 1781, amounting to victory in the war for the United States. The Second Continental Congress transitioned to the Congress of the Confederation with the ratification of the Articles of Confederation earlier in 1781. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 was

ratified by this new national government, and ended British claims to any of the thirteen states.

Liberalism, republicanism, and religion

Main articles: Republicanism in the United States and Liberalism in the United States Further information: A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, and Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms John Locke's ideas on liberalism greatly influenced the political minds behind the revolution; for instance, his theory of the "social contract" implied that among humanity's natural rights was the right of the people to overthrow their leaders, should those leaders betray the historic rights of Englishmen.[3][4] In terms of writing state and national constitutions, the Americans used Montesquieu's analysis of the ideally "balanced" British Constitution. A motivating force behind the revolution was the American embrace of a political ideology called "republicanism", which was dominant in the colonies by 1775. The "country party" in Britain, whose critique of British government emphasized that corruption was to be feared, influenced American politicians. The commitment of most Americans to republican values and to their rights, helped bring about the American Revolution, as Britain was increasingly seen as hopelessly corrupt and hostile to American interests; it seemed to threaten the established liberties that Americans enjoyed.[5] The greatest threat to liberty was depicted as corruptionnot just in London but at home as well. [6] The colonists associated it with luxury and, especially, inherited aristocracy, which they condemned.[7] The Founding Fathers were strong advocates of republican values, particularly Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. [8] which required men to put civic duty ahead of their personal desires. Men had a civic duty to be prepared and willing to fight for the rights and liberties of their countrymen and countrywomen. John Adams, writing to Mercy Otis Warren in 1776, agreed with the Greeks and the Romans in that "Public Virtue cannot exist without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." He continued: "There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superior to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society." [9] For women, "republican motherhood" became the ideal, exemplified by Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren; the first duty of the republican woman was to instil republican values in her children and to avoid luxury and ostentation. In 1776, after the Revolution had started, Tom Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense was published and became a best-seller, often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly in maintaining popular support for the revolution, advocacy for separation from Britain, and recruitment for the Continental Army. Historians point to the enormous popularity of Thomas Paine's Common Sense in 1776,

which expounded republicanism to audiences that apparently comprised most male citizens.[10] Dissenting (i.e. Protestant, non-Church of England) churches of the day were the school of democracy[11] President John Witherspoon of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) wrote widely circulated sermons linking the American Revolution to the teachings of the Hebrew Bible. Throughout the colonies, the majority of ministers preached Revolutionary themes in their sermons, while others, especially Church of England members, supported the King.[12] Dissenting Protestant congregations (Puritan, Congregationalist, Baptist, and Presbyterian) preached Revolutionary themes in their sermons, and organized their congregations as the basic unit of Revolutionary War politics. Religious motivation for fighting tyranny reached across the board to rich and poor, men and women, frontiersmen and townsmen, farmers and merchants. [13] The classical authors read in the Enlightenment period taught an abstract ideal of republican government that included hierarchical social orders of king, aristocracy and commoners. It was widely believed that English liberties relied on the balance of power between these three social orders, maintaining the hierarchal deference to the privileged class. [14] Historian Bernard Bailyn notes, "Puritanism and the epidemic evangelism of the mid-eighteenth century, had created challenges to the traditional notions of social stratification by preaching that the Bible taught all men are equal, that the true value of a man lies in his moral behavior, not his class, and that all men can be saved." [15]

Incendiary British legislation

The Revolution was predicated by a number of pieces of legislation originating from the British Parliament that, for Americans, were illegitimate acts of a government that had no right to pass laws on Englishmen in the Americas who did not have elected representation in that government. For the British, policy makers saw these laws as necessary to rein-in colonial subjects who, in the name of economic development that was designed to benefit the home nation, had been allowed near-autonomy for too long.

Navigation Acts
Main article: Navigation Acts Further information: Mercantilism and Writs of Assistance The British Empire at the time operated under the mercantile system, where economic assets, or capital, are represented by bullion (gold, silver, and trade value) held by the state, which is best increased through a positive balance of trade with other nations (exports minus imports). Mercantilism suggests that the ruling government should advance these goals through playing a protectionist role in the economy, by encouraging exports and discouraging imports, especially through the use of tariffs. Great Britain regulated the economies of the colonies through the Navigation Acts according to the doctrines of mercantilism. Widespread evasion of these laws had long been tolerated. Eventually, through the use of open-ended search warrants (Writs of Assistance), strict enforcement of these Acts became the practice. In 1761, Massachusetts lawyer James Otis argued that the writs violated the constitutional rights of the colonists. He lost

the case, but John Adams later wrote, "American independence was then and there born". In 1762, Patrick Henry argued the Parson's Cause in Virginia, where the legislature had passed a law and it was vetoed by the King. Henry argued, "that a King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant and forfeits all right to his subjects' obedience".[16]

Western Frontier
Main articles: British Royal Proclamation of 1763 and Quebec Act The Proclamation of 1763 restricted colonization across the Appalachian Mountains as this was designated an Indian Reserve. Regardless, groups of settlers continued to move west and lay claim to these lands. The proclamation was soon modified and was no longer a hindrance to settlement, but its promulgation and the fact that it had been written without consulting colonists angered them. The Quebec Act of 1774 extended Quebec's boundaries to the Ohio River, shutting out the claims of the thirteen colonies. By then, however, the settler Americans had little regard for new laws from London; they were drilling militia and organizing for war. [17]

Taxation without representation

Main article: No taxation without representation Further information: Massachusetts Circular Letter By 1763, Great Britain possessed vast holdings in North America. In addition to the thirteen colonies, twenty-two smaller colonies were ruled directly by royal governors. Victory in the Seven Years' War had given Great Britain New France (Canada), Spanish Florida, and the Native American lands east of the Mississippi River. In 1765 however, the colonists still considered themselves loyal subjects of the British Crown, with the same historic rights and obligations as subjects in Britain.[18] The British did not expect the colonies to contribute to the interest or the retirement of debt incurred during the French and Indian War, but they did expect a portion of the expenses for colonial defense to be paid by the Americans. Estimating the expenses of defending the continental colonies and the West Indies to be approximately 200,000 annually, the British goal after the end of this war was that the colonies would be taxed for 78,000 of this amount. [19] The issues with the colonists were both that the taxes were high and that the colonies had no representation in the Parliament which passed the taxes. Lord North in 1775 argued for the British position that Englishmen paid on average twenty-five shillings annually in taxes whereas Americans paid only sixpence (the average Englishman, however, also earned quite a bit more while receiving more services directly from the government). [20] Colonists, however, as early as 1764, with respect to the Sugar Act, indicated that the margin of profit in rum was so small that molasses could bear no duty whatever. [21] The phrase "No taxation without representation" became popular in many American circles. London argued that the colonists were "virtually represented"; but most Americans rejected this. [22]

1764 - new taxes

Main articles: Sugar Act, Currency Act, and Quartering Act In 1764, Parliament enacted the Sugar Act and the Currency Act, further vexing the colonists. Protests led to a powerful new weapon, the systematic boycott of British goods. The British pushed the colonists even further that same year by also enacting the Quartering Act, which stated that British soldiers were to be quartered at the expense of residents in certain areas.

Stamp Act 1765

Main article: Stamp Act 1765

Burning of the Gaspe In 1765 the Stamp Act was the first direct tax ever levied by Parliament on the colonies. All newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, and official documentseven decks of playing cardswere required to have the stamps. All 13 colonies protested vehemently, as popular leaders such as Patrick Henry in Virginia and James Otis in Massachusetts, rallied the people in opposition. A secret group, the "Sons of Liberty" formed in many towns and threatened violence if anyone sold the stamps, and no one did.[23] In Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of the vice-admiralty court and looted the elegant home of the chief justice, Thomas Hutchinson. Several legislatures called for united action, and nine colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City in October 1765. Moderates led by John Dickinson drew up a "Declaration of Rights and Grievances" stating that taxes passed without representation violated their Rights of Englishmen. Lending weight to the argument was an economic boycott of British merchandise, as imports into the colonies fell from 2,250,000 in 1764 to 1,944,000 in 1765. In London, the Rockingham government came to power and Parliament debated whether to repeal the stamp tax or send an army to enforce it. Benjamin Franklin made the case for the boycotters, explaining the colonies had spent heavily in manpower, money, and blood in defense of the empire in a series of wars against the French and Native Americans, and that further taxes to pay for those wars were unjust and might bring about a rebellion. Parliament agreed and repealed the tax, but in a "Declaratory Act" of March 1766 insisted that parliament retained full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever".[16]

Townshend Act 1767 and Boston Massacre 1770

In 1767, the Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which placed a tax on a number of essential goods including paper, glass, and tea. Angered at the tax increases, colonists organized a boycott of British goods. In Boston on March 5, 1770, a large mob gathered around a group of British soldiers. The mob grew more and more threatening, throwing snowballs, rocks and debris at the soldiers. One soldier was clubbed and fell. All but one of the soldiers fired into the crowd. Eleven people were hit; three civilians were killed at the scene of the shooting, and two died after the incident. The event quickly came to be called the Boston Massacre. Although the soldiers were tried and acquitted (defended by John Adams), the widespread descriptions soon became propaganda to turn colonial sentiment against the British. This in turn began a downward spiral in the relationship between Britain and the Province of Massachusetts. Tea Act 1773

This 1846 lithograph has become a classic image of the Boston Tea Party Main article: Tea Act Further information: Boston Tea Party In June 1772, in what became known as the Gaspe Affair, a British warship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations was burned by American patriots. Soon afterwards, Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts reported that he and the royal judges would be paid directly from London, thus bypassing the colonial legislature. On December 16, 1773, a group of men, led by Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke American Indians, boarded the ships of the government-favored British East India Company and dumped an estimated 10,000 worth of tea on board (approximately 636,000 in 2008) into the harbor. This event became known as the Boston Tea Party and remains a significant part of American patriotic lore. Intolerable Acts 1774

An American version of London cartoon that denounces the "rape" of Boston in 1774 by the Intolerable Acts Main article: Intolerable Acts

The British government responded by passing several Acts which came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, which further darkened colonial opinion towards the British. They consisted of four laws enacted by the British parliament. [24] The first was the Massachusetts Government Act, which altered the Massachusetts charter and restricted town meetings. The second Act, the Administration of Justice Act, ordered that all British soldiers to be tried were to be arraigned in Britain, not in the colonies. The third Act was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the British had been compensated for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party (the British never received such a payment). The fourth Act was the Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring permission of the owner. American political opposition See also: Suffolk Resolves, Declaration of Rights and Grievances, Continental Association, Petition to the King (1774), Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, Conciliatory Resolution, Olive Branch Petition, and Hutchinson Letters Affair American political opposition was initially through the colonial assemblies such as the Stamp Act Congress, which included representatives from across the colonies. In 1765, the Sons of Liberty were formed which used public demonstrations, violence and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable. While openly hostile to what they considered an oppressive Parliament acting illegally, colonists persisted in numerous petitions and pleas for intervention from a monarch to whom they still claimed loyalty. In late 1772, after the Gaspe Affair, Samuel Adams set about creating new Committees of Correspondence, which linked Patriots in all thirteen colonies and eventually provided the framework for a rebel government. In early 1773 Virginia, the largest colony, set up its Committee of Correspondence, on which Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served.[25] In response to the Massachusetts Government Act, Massachusetts Bay and then other colonies formed provisional governments called Provincial Congresses. In 1774, the Continental Congress was formed, made up of representatives from each of the Provincial Congresses or their equivalents, to serve as a provisional government. Standing Committees of Safety were created in each colony for the enforcement of the resolutions by the Committee of Correspondence, Provincial Congress, and the Continental Congress. In North America British colonies that did not have responsible government did not join the Continental Congress, but remained loyal to the Crown; they included Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Bermuda, West Florida and East Florida. Factions: Patriots, Loyalists and Neutrals The population of the Thirteen Colonies was far from homogeneous, particularly in their political views and attitudes. Loyalties and allegiances varied widely not only within regions and communities, but also within families and sometimes shifted during the course of the Revolution. Patriots - The Revolutionaries Main article: Patriot (American Revolution)

See also: Sons of Liberty At the time, revolutionaries were called 'Patriots', 'Whigs', 'Congress-men', or 'Americans'. They included a full range of social and economic classes, but a unanimity regarding the need to defend the rights of Americans. After the war, Patriots such as George Washington, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay were deeply devoted to republicanism while also eager to build a rich and powerful nation, while Patriots such as Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson represented democratic impulses and the agrarian plantation element that wanted a localized society with greater political equality. The word "patriot" refers to a person in the colonies who sided with the American Revolution. Calling the revolutionaries "patriots" is a long-standing historical convention, which began by 1773. Class differences among the Patriots Historians, such as J. Franklin Jameson in the early 20th century, examined the class composition of the Patriot cause, looking for evidence that there was a class war inside the revolution. In the last 50 years, historians have largely abandoned that interpretation, emphasizing instead the high level of ideological unity. Just as there were rich and poor Loyalists, the Patriots were a 'mixed lot', with the richer and better educated more likely to become officers in the Army. Ideological demands always came first: the Patriots viewed independence as a means of freeing themselves from British oppression and taxation and, above all, reasserting what they considered to be their rights. Most yeomen farmers, craftsmen, and small merchants joined the patriot cause as well, demanding more political equality. They were especially successful in Pennsylvania and less so in New England, where John Adams attacked Thomas Paine's Common Sense for the "absurd democratical notions" it proposed. [26] Loyalists and neutrals Main article: Loyalist (American Revolution) While there is no way of knowing the actual numbers, historians have estimated that about 15-20% of the population remained loyal to the British Crown; these were known at the time as "Loyalists", "Tories", or "King's men". [27][28] They were outnumbered by perhaps 2-1 by the patriots; the Loyalists never controlled territory unless the British Army occupied it. [2] Loyalists were typically older, less willing to break with old loyalties, often connected to the Church of England, and included many established merchants with business connections across the Empire, as well as royal officials such as Thomas Hutchinson of Boston. The revolution sometimes divided families; for example, the Franklins. William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin and Governor of New Jersey remained Loyal to the Crown throughout the war and never spoke to his father again. Recent immigrants who had not been fully Americanized were also inclined to support the King, such as recent Scottish settlers in the back country; among the more striking examples of this, see Flora MacDonald.[29] Most Native Americans rejected pleas that they remain neutral and supported the king. The tribes that depended most heavily upon colonial trade tended to side

with the revolutionaries, though political factors were important as well. The most prominent Native American leader siding with the king was Joseph Brant of the Mohawk nation, who led frontier raids on isolated settlements in Pennsylvania and New York until an American army under John Sullivan secured New York in 1779, forcing the Loyalist Indians permanently into Canada. [30] Some African-American slaves became politically active and supported the king, especially in Virginia where the royal governor actively recruited black men into the British forces in return for manumission, protection for their families, and the promise of land grants. Following the war, many of these "Black Loyalists" settled in Nova Scotia, Upper and Lower Canada, and other parts of the British Empire, where the descendants of some remain today. [31] A minority of uncertain size tried to stay neutral in the war. Most kept a low profile. However, the Quakers, especially in Pennsylvania, were the most important group that was outspoken for neutrality. As patriots declared independence, the Quakers, who continued to do business with the British, were attacked as supporters of British rule, "contrivers and authors of seditious publications" critical of the revolutionary cause.[32] After the war, the great majority of the 450,000-500,000 Loyalists remained in America and resumed normal lives. Some, such as Samuel Seabury, became prominent American leaders. Estimates vary, but about 62,000 Loyalists relocated to Canada (46,000 according to the Canadian book on Loyalists, True Blue), Britain (7,000) or to Florida or the West Indies (9,000). This made up approximately 2% of the total population of the colonies. When the Loyalists left the South in 1783, they took thousands of blacks with them as slaves to the British West Indies.[33]

Women
Abigail Adams Main article: Women in the American Revolution Several types of women contributed to the American Revolution in multiple ways. Like men, women participated on both sides of the war. Among women, European Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans also divided between the Patriot and Loyalist causes. While formal Revolutionary politics did not include women, ordinary domestic behaviors became charged with political significance as patriot women confronted a war that permeated all aspects of political, civil, and domestic life. They participated by boycotting British goods, spying on the British, following armies as they marched, washing, cooking, and tending for soldiers, delivering secret messages, and in a few cases like Deborah Samson fighting disguised as men. Above all, they continued the agricultural work at home to feed the armies and their families. [34]

The boycott of British goods required the willing participation of American women; the boycotted items were largely household items such as tea and cloth. Women had to return to spinning and weavingskills that had fallen into disuse. In 1769, the women of Boston produced 40,000 skeins of yarn, and 180 women in Middletown, Massachusetts, wove 20,522 yards (18,765 m) of cloth.[35] A crisis of political loyalties could also disrupt the fabric of colonial America womens social worlds: whether a man did or did not renounce his allegiance to the king could dissolve ties of class, family, and friendship, isolating women from former connections. A womans loyalty to her husband, once a private commitment, could become a political act, especially for women in America committed to men who remained loyal to the king. Legal divorce, usually rare, was granted to patriot women whose husbands supported the king. [36] Other participants France and Spain Spain and France were traditional enemies of Britain and looked for revenge. In early 1776, France set up a major program of aid to the Americans, and the Spanish secretly added funds. Each country spent 1 million "livres tournaises" to buy munitions. A dummy corporation run by Pierre Beaumarchais concealed their activities. Americans obtained some munitions through Holland as well as French and Spanish ports in the West Indies.[37] Native Americans The great majority of the 200,000 Native Americans east of the Mississippi distrusted the colonists and supported the British cause. [38] The British provided funding and guns to attack American outposts. Some Indians tried to remain neutral, seeing little value in participating yet again in a European conflict. A few supported the American cause.[39] The British provided arms for the Indians, under Loyalist leadership, to raid frontier settlements from the Carolinas to New York, threatening to massacre the settlers, especially in Pennsylvania. The most prominent was Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, who led a band of 300 Indian warriors and 100 white loyalists in 1778 and 1780 multiple attacks on small settlements in New York and Pennsylvania.[40] In 1776 Cherokee war parties attacked all along the southern frontier.[41] While the Indians could launch raids with up to 100 warriors, they could not mobilize enough forces to fight a major invasion of thousands of soldiers, so the Americans sent invasion armies against the Cherokees in 1776 and 1780. In 1779 Washington sent General John Sullivan with four brigades of Continental soldiers to drive the Iroquois out of upstate western New York. There was little combat but Sullivan systematically burned 40 (empty) Indian villages and, most important, destroyed about 160,000 bushels of corn that comprised the winter food supply. Facing starvation the Iroquois permanently fled to the Niagara Falls area and to Canada, where the British fed them. [42] At the peace conference the British ignored their allies, who now came under American control.

At the peace conference the British abandoned their Indian allies, and the Americans took possession of all the land west of the Mississippi and north of Florida. Calloway concludes: Burned villages and crops, murdered chiefs, divided councils and civil wars, migrations, towns and forts choked with refugees, economic disruption, breaking of ancient traditions, losses in battle and to disease and hunger, betrayal to their enemies, all made the American Revolution one of the darkest periods in American Indian history. [43] The British, however, did not give up their forts in the west until 1796 and kept alive the dream of one day forming a satellite Indian nation in what is now the Ohio to Wisconsin part of the Midwest. That hostile goal was one of the causes of the War of 1812.[44][45] Slaves African Americans, both men and women, understood Revolutionary rhetoric as promising freedom and equality. These hopes were not realized. Both British and American governments made promises of freedom for service and some slaves attempted to better their lives by fighting in or assisting one or the other armies. Starting in 1777 abolition occurred in the North, usually on a gradual schedule with no payments to the owners, but slavery persisted in the South and took on new life after the cotton gin lowered prices, increasing demand, expanding the plantation system to grow it, and requiring exponentially larger numbers of workers to pick it.[46] During the Revolution, efforts were made by the British to turn slavery against the Americans,[28] but historian David Brion Davis explains the difficulties with a policy of wholesale arming of the slaves: But England greatly feared the effects of any such move on its own West Indies, where Americans had already aroused alarm over a possible threat to incite slave insurrections. The British elites also understood that an all-out attack on one form of property could easily lead to an assault on all boundaries of privilege and social order, as envisioned by radical religious sects in Britains seventeenthcentury civil wars.[47] Davis underscored the British dilemma: "Britain, when confronted by the rebellious American colonists, hoped to exploit their fear of slave revolts while also reassuring the large number of slave-holding Loyalists and wealthy Caribbean planters and merchants that their slave property would be secure". [48] The colonists accused the British of encouraging slave revolts. [49] American advocates of independence were commonly lampooned in Britain for their hypocritical calls for freedom, while many of their leaders were slaveholders. Samuel Johnson observed "how is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the [slave] drivers of the Negroes?" [50] Benjamin Franklin countered by criticizing the British self-congratulation about "the freeing of one Negro" (Somersett) while they continued to permit the Slave Trade.[51][52] In the North, slavery was first abolished in the state constitution of Vermont in 1777, in Massachusetts in 1780, and New Hampshire in 1784. Pennsylvania,

Connecticut, and Rhode Island adopted systems of gradual emancipation during these years, freeing the children of slaves at birth. All the northern states passed laws to end slavery, the last being New Jersey in 1804. Slavery was banned in the Northwest Territories, but no southern state abolished it. During the Revolution, some African American writers rose to prominence, notable Phyllis Wheatley, who came to public attention when her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in London in 1773, while she was still a domestic slave in Boston. Kidnapped in Africa as young girl and converted to Christianity during the Great Awakening, Wheatley wrote poems combining piety and a concern for African Americans. [52] Military hostilities begin Further information: Shot heard round the world, Boston campaign, Invasion of Canada (1775)

Join, or Die by Benjamin Franklin was recycled to encourage the former colonies to unite against British rule. The Battle of Lexington and Concord took place April 19, 1775, when the British sent a force of roughly 1000 troops to confiscate arms and arrest revolutionaries in Concord.[53] They clashed with the local militia, marking the first fighting of the American Revolutionary War. The news aroused the 13 colonies to call out their militias and send troops to besiege Boston. The Battle of Bunker Hill followed on June 17, 1775. While a British victory, it was made a victory by heavy losses on the British side; about 1,000 British casualties from a garrison of about 6,000, as compared to 500 American casualties from a much larger force. [54][55] The Second Continental Congress convened in 1775, after the war had started. The Congress created the Continental Army and extended the Olive Branch Petition to the crown as an attempt at reconciliation. King George III refused to receive it, issuing instead the Proclamation of Rebellion, requiring action against the "traitors". In the winter of 1775, the Americans invaded Canada. Richard Montgomery captured Montreal but a joint attack on Quebec with the help of Benedict Arnold failed. In March 1776, with George Washington as commander, the Continental Army forced the British to evacuate Boston, withdrawing their garrison to Halifax, Nova Scotia. The revolutionaries were in control of governments throughout the 13 colonies and were ready to declare independence. While there still were many Loyalists, they were no longer in control anywhere by July 1776, and all of the Royal officials had fled.[56] Prisoners

Main article: Prisoners in the American Revolutionary War In August 1775, the King declared Americans in arms against royal authority to be traitors to the Crown. The British government at first started treating captured rebel combatants as common criminals and preparations were made to bring them to trial for treason. American Secretary Lord Germain and First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Sandwich were especially eager to do so, with a particular emphasis on those who had previously served in British units (and thereby sworn an oath of allegiance to the crown). Many of the prisoners taken by the British at Bunker Hill apparently expected to be hanged, but British authorities declined to take the next step: treason trials and executions. There were tens of thousands of Loyalists under American control who would have been at risk for treason trials of their own (by the Americans)[clarification needed], and the British built much of their strategy around using these Loyalists. After the surrender at Saratoga in 1777, there were thousands of British prisoners in American hands who were effectively hostages. Therefore no American prisoners were put on trial for treason, although most were badly treated and many died nonetheless, resulting in more deaths than every American battlefield and naval action fatality, combined. [57][58] Eventually they were technically accorded the rights of belligerents in 1782, by act of Parliament, when they were officially recognized as prisoners of war rather than traitors. At the end of the war, both sides released their surviving prisoners. [59] Creating new state constitutions Following the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, the Patriots had control of most of the territory and population; the Loyalists were powerless. [dubious discuss] In all thirteen colonies, Patriots had overthrown their existing governments, closing courts and driving British governors, agents and supporters from their homes. They had elected conventions and "legislatures" that existed outside of any legal framework; new constitutions were used in each state to supersede royal charters. They declared they were states now, not colonies. [60] On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire ratified the first state constitution, six months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Then, in May 1776, Congress voted to suppress all forms of crown authority, to be replaced by locally created authority. Virginia, South Carolina, and New Jersey created their constitutions before July 4. Rhode Island and Connecticut simply took their existing royal charters and deleted all references to the crown. [61] The new states had to decide not only what form of government to create, they first had to decide how to select those who would craft the constitutions and how the resulting document would be ratified. In states where the wealthy exerted firm control over the process, such as Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New York and Massachusetts, the results were constitutions that featured:

Substantial property qualifications for voting and even more substantial requirements for elected positions (though New York and Maryland lowered property qualifications);[60] Bicameral legislatures, with the upper house as a check on the lower;

Strong governors, with veto power over the legislature and substantial appointment authority; Few or no restraints on individuals holding multiple positions in government; The continuation of state-established religion.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, 1783 In states where the less affluent had organized sufficiently to have significant powerespecially Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New Hampshirethe resulting constitutions embodied

universal white manhood suffrage, or minimal property requirements for voting or holding office (New Jersey enfranchised some property owning widows, a step that it retracted 25 years later); strong, unicameral legislatures; relatively weak governors, without veto powers, and little appointing authority; prohibition against individuals holding multiple government posts;

Whether conservatives or radicals held sway in a state did not mean that the side with less power accepted the result quietly. The radical provisions of Pennsylvania's constitution lasted only fourteen years. In 1790, conservatives gained power in the state legislature, called a new constitutional convention, and rewrote the constitution. The new constitution substantially reduced universal white-male suffrage, gave the governor veto power and patronage appointment authority, and added an upper house with substantial wealth qualifications to the unicameral legislature. Thomas Paine called it a constitution unworthy of America.[62] Independence and Union Further information: United States Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

On January 10, 1776, Thomas Paine published a political pamphlet entitled Common Sense arguing that the only solution to the problems with Britain was republicanism and independence. [63] In the ensuing months, before the allied states declared independence in unison in the name of the United States, the colonies had begun the process of creating their own constitutions to form sovereign states and some of them individually took the step to declare independence. Virginia, for instance, declared its independence from Great Britain on May 15, 1776. The war had been underway since April 1775, and until this point, the states had sought favorable peace terms; compromise was no longer a possibility, despite belated British efforts to come to a political resolution.[64] On June 11, 1776, the Second Continental Congress appointed a committee to prepare a draft declaration of independence. Thomas Jefferson, with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, brought the draft before Congress on June 28. On July 2, 1776, Congress voted the independence of the United States; two days later, on July 4, it adopted the Declaration of Independence, which date is now celebrated as Independence Day in the United States. On June 12, 1776, the Second Continental Congress resolved to appoint a committee of thirteen to prepare a draft agreement on a governing constitution and a perpetual union of the states. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, commonly known as the Articles of Confederation or simply the Articles, formed the first governing document of the United States of America, based on a confederation type government. Of equal importance is the fact that the Articles combined the sovereign states into a perpetual Union. The Second Continental Congress approved the Articles for ratification by the States on November 15, 1777, and began operating under their terms. The Articles were formally ratified when the representatives of Maryland became the last to apply their signatures to the document on March 1, 1781. At that point, the Continental Congress was dissolved and on the following day a new government of the United States in Congress Assembled took its place, with Samuel Huntington as President.[65][66] Defending the Revolution Main article: American Revolutionary War

George Washington rallying his troops at the Battle of Princeton British return: 1776-1777 Further information: New York and New Jersey campaign, Staten Island Peace Conference, Saratoga campaign, Philadelphia campaign After Washington forced the British out of Boston in spring, 1776, neither the British nor the Loyalists controlled any significant areas. The British, however,

were massing forces at their great naval base at Halifax, Nova Scotia. They returned in force in July 1776, landing in New York and defeating Washington's Continental Army in August at the Battle of Brooklyn in one of the largest engagements of the war. The British requested a meeting with representatives from Congress to negotiate an end to hostilities, and a delegation including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin met Howe on Staten Island in New York Harbor on September 11. Howe demanded a retraction of the Declaration of Independence, which was refused, and negotiations ended until 1781. The British then quickly seized New York City and nearly captured Washington. They made the city their main political and military base of operations in North America, holding it until November 1783. New York City consequently became the destination for Loyalist refugees, and a focal point of Washington's intelligence network.[67] The British also took New Jersey, but in a surprise attack in late December, 1776, Washington crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey and defeated Hessian and British armies at Trenton and Princeton, thereby regaining New Jersey. The victories gave an important boost to pro-independence supporters at a time when morale was flagging, and have become iconic images of the war. In 1777, as part of a grand strategy to end the war, the British sent an invasion force from Canada to seal off New England, which the British perceived as the primary source of agitators. In a major case of mis-coordination, the British army in New York City went to Philadelphia which it captured from Washington. The invasion army under Burgoyne waited in vain for reinforcements from New York, and became trapped upstate. It surrendered after the Battle of Saratoga, New York, in October 1777. From early October 1777 until November 15 a pivotal siege at Fort Mifflin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania distracted British troops and allowed Washington time to preserve the Continental Army by safely leading his troops to harsh winter quarters at Valley Forge. American alliances after 1778 Further information: France in the American Revolutionary War, Spain in the American Revolutionary War The capture of a British army at Saratoga encouraged the French to formally enter the war in support of Congress, as Benjamin Franklin negotiated a permanent military alliance in early 1778, significantly becoming the first country to officially recognize the Declaration of Independence. William Pitt spoke out in parliament urging Britain to make peace in America, and unite with America against France,[68] while other British politicians who had previously supported independence now turned against the American rebels for allying with a formerly mutual enemy. Later Spain (in 1779) and the Dutch (1780) became allies of the French, leaving the British Empire to fight a global war alone without major allies, and requiring it to slip through a combined blockade of the Atlantic. The American theater thus became only one front in Britain's war. [69] The British were forced to withdraw troops from continental America to reinforce the sugar-producing Caribbean islands, which were considered more valuable. Because of the alliance with France and the deteriorating military situation, Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander, evacuated Philadelphia to reinforce New York City. General Washington attempted to intercept the retreating column, resulting in the Battle of Monmouth Court House, the last major battle fought in

the north. After an inconclusive engagement, the British successfully retreated to New York City. The northern war subsequently became a stalemate, as the focus of attention shifted to the smaller southern theater. [69] The British move South, 1778-1783 Further information: Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War, Naval operations in the American Revolutionary War The British strategy in America now concentrated on a campaign in the southern colonies. With fewer regular troops at their disposal, the British commanders saw the Southern Strategy as a more viable plan, as the south was perceived as being more strongly Loyalist, with a large population of recent immigrants as well as large numbers of African Americans expected to be at best actively pro-British, and at worst indifferent.[70] Beginning in late December 1778, the British captured Savannah and controlled the coastline. In 1780 they launched a fresh invasion and took Charleston as well. A significant victory at the Battle of Camden meant that royal forces soon controlled most of Georgia and South Carolina. The British set up a network of forts inland, hoping the Loyalists would rally to the flag. Not enough Loyalists turned out, however, and the British had to fight their way north into North Carolina and Virginia, with a severely weakened army. Behind them much of the territory they had already captured dissolved into a chaotic guerrilla war, fought predominantly between bands of Loyalist and American militia, which negated many of the gains the British had previously made. [71] Yorktown 1781 Main article: Siege of Yorktown

The siege of Yorktown ended with the surrender of a second British army, paving the way for the end of the American Revolutionary War The southern British army marched to Yorktown, Virginia where they expected to be rescued by a British fleet which would take them back to New York. [72] When that fleet was defeated by a French fleet, however, they became trapped in Yorktown.[73] In October 1781 under a combined siege by the French and Continental armies, the British, under the command of General Cornwallis, surrendered. However, Cornwallis was so embarrassed at his defeat that he had to send his second in command to surrender for him. [74]

News of the defeat effectively ended major offensive operations in America. Support for the conflict had never been strong in Britain, where many sympathised with the rebels, but now it reached a new low. [75] Although King George III personally wanted to fight on, his supporters lost control of Parliament, and no further major land offensives were launched in the American Theatre.[69] A final naval battle was fought on March 10, 1783 off the coast of Cape Canaveral by Captain John Barry and his crew of the USS Alliance with three British warships led by HMS Sybil, who were trying to take the payroll of the Continental Army. Peace treaty Main article: Treaty of Paris (1783) The peace treaty with Britain, known as the Treaty of Paris, gave the U.S. all land east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, though not including Florida (On September 3, 1783, Britain entered into a separate agreement with Spain under which Britain ceded Florida back to Spain.). The Native American nations actually living in this region were not a party to this treaty and did not recognize it until they were defeated militarily by the United States. Issues regarding boundaries and debts were not resolved until the Jay Treaty of 1795.[76] Immediate aftermath See also: Annapolis Convention (1786), Philadelphia Convention, Constitution of the United States of America, and United States Bill of Rights Interpretations Interpretations about the effect of the Revolution vary. Though contemporary participants referred to the events as "the revolution", [77] at one end of the spectrum is the view that the American Revolution was not "revolutionary" at all, contending that it did not radically transform colonial society but simply replaced a distant government with a local one.[78] More recent scholarship pioneered by historians such as Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and Edmund Morgan accepts the contemporary view of the participants that the American Revolution was a unique and radical event that produced deep changes and had a profound impact on world affairs, based on an increasing belief in the principles of republicanism, such as peoples' natural rights, and a system of laws chosen by the people. [79] Some historians, such as Daniel Boorstin, see the motivation for the revolution as primarily legal.[80] The adherence of the colonists to the British constitution and what they viewed to be the tyrannical deprivation of English rights by the English Parliament, in concert with the failure of King George III to protect his subjects from such abuses, are what he sees as compelling the colonists to sever political ties with Great Britain.[80] Loyalist expatriation For roughly five percent of the inhabitants of the United States, defeat was followed by self-exile. Approximately 62,000 United Empire Loyalists left the newly founded republic, most settling in the remaining British colonies in North America, such as the Province of Quebec (concentrating in the Eastern Townships), Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The new colonies of Upper

Canada (now Ontario) and New Brunswick were created by Britain for their benefit.[81] Worldwide influence See also: Atlantic Revolutions After the Revolution, genuinely democratic politics, became possible. [82] The rights of the people were incorporated into state constitutions. Thus came the widespread assertion of liberty, individual rights, equality and hostility toward corruption which would prove core values of republicanism to Americans. The greatest challenge to the old order in Europe was the challenge to inherited political power and the democratic idea that government rests on the consent of the governed. The example of the first successful revolution against a European empire, and the first successful establishment of a republican form of democratically elected government, provided a model for many other colonial peoples who realized that they too could break away and become self-governing nations with directly elected representative government.[83] In 1777, Morocco was the first state to recognize the independence of the United States of America. The two countries signed the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship ten years later. Friesland, one of the seven United Provinces of the Dutch Republic, was the next to recognize American independence (February 26, 1782), followed by the Staten-Generaal of the Dutch Republic on April 19, 1782). John Adams became the first US Ambassador in The Hague.[84]. Since the Dutch Republic was at war with the United Kingdom at the signing of the treaty in 1782, it is often considered that Sweden was the first neutral sovereign power that recognized the United States of America. On April 3, 1783, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Count Gustaf Philip Creutz, representing the King of Sweden, and Benjamin Franklin, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America, signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce in Paris, France. In the Treaty, they pledged, firm, inviolable and universal peace and a true and sincere friendship between the King, his heirs and successors, and the United States of America.[85]. The American Revolution was the first wave of the Atlantic Revolutions that took hold in the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American wars of independence. Aftershocks reached Ireland in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and in the Netherlands.[86] The Revolution had a strong, immediate impact in Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France. Many British and Irish Whigs spoke in favor of the American cause. The Revolution, along with the Dutch Revolt (end of the 16th century) and the English Civil War (in the 17th century), was one of the first lessons in overthrowing an old regime for many Europeans who later were active during the era of the French Revolution, such as Marquis de Lafayette. The American Declaration of Independence had some impact on the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789.[87][88] The North American states' newly-won independence from the British Empire resulted in the abolition of slavery in some Northern states 51 years before it

would be banned in the British colonies, and allowed slavery to continue in the Southern states until 1865, 32 years after it was banned in all British colonies.

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives, commonly referred to as the "House," is the lower house of the bicameral United States Congress, the upper house being the United States Senate. The composition and powers of the House and the Senate are established in Article One of the Constitution (which does not use the terms "upper" and "lower"). Each state receives representation in the House in proportion to its population but is entitled to at least one Representative. The most populous state, California, currently has 53 representatives. The total number of voting representatives is currently fixed at 435.[1] Each representative serves for a two-year term. The presiding officer of the House is the speaker, and is elected by the members of the House. The House was granted its own exclusive powers: the power to initiate revenue bills, impeach officials, and elect the president in electoral college deadlocks.
[citation needed]

The House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress was a unicameral body in which each state held one vote. The ineffectiveness of the federal government under the Articles led Congress to summon a Constitutional Convention in 1787; all states except Rhode Island agreed to send delegates. The issue of how Congress was to be structured was one of the most divisive among the founders during the Convention. James Madison's Virginia Plan called for a bicameral Congress: the lower house would be "of the people," elected directly by the people of the United States and representing public opinion, and a more deliberative upper house that would represent the individual states, and would be less susceptible to variations of mass sentiment, would be elected by the lower house. The House is often considered to be the "lower house," with the Senate as the "upper house," although the United States Constitution does not use such language. Both houses' approval is necessary for the passage of legislation. The Virginia Plan drew the support of delegates from large states such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, as it called for representation based on population. The smaller states, however, favored the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral Congress with equal representation for the states. Eventually, the Convention reached the Connecticut Compromise, or the Great Compromise, under which one house of Congress (the House of Representatives) would provide representation proportional to each state's population, whereas the other (the Senate) would provide equal representation amongst the states. The Constitution was ratified by the requisite number of states (nine out of the 13) in 1788, but its implementation was set for March 4, 1789. The House began work on April 1, 1789, when it achieved a quorum for the first time.

During the first half of the 19th Century, the House was frequently in conflict with the Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed. Regional conflict was most pronounced over the issue of slavery. One example of a provision repeatedly supported by the House but blocked by the Senate was the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to ban slavery in the land gained during the Mexican-American War. Conflict over slavery and other issues persisted until the Civil War (18611865), which began soon after several southern states attempted to secede from the Union. The war culminated in the South's defeat and in the abolition of slavery. Because all southern senators except Andrew Johnson resigned their seats at the beginning of the war, the Senate did not have the balance of power between North and South during the war. The years of Reconstruction that followed witnessed large majorities for the Republican Party, which many Americans associated with the Union's victory in the Civil War. The Reconstruction period ended in about 1877; the ensuing era, known as the Gilded Age, was marked by sharp political divisions in the electorate. Both the Democratic and the Republican Party held majorities in the House at various times.

Republican Thomas Brackett Reed, occasionally ridiculed as "Czar Reed," was a U.S. Representative from Maine, and Speaker of the House from 18891891 and from 18951899. The late 19th and early 20th Centuries also saw a dramatic increase in the power of the Speaker of the House. The rise of the Speaker's influence began in the 1890s, during tenure of Republican Thomas Brackett Reed. "Czar Reed," as he was nicknamed, attempted to put into effect his view that "The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch." The leadership structure of the House also developed during approximately the same period, with the positions of Majority Leader and Minority Leader being created in 1899. While the Minority Leader was the head of the minority party, the Majority Leader remained subordinate to the Speaker. The Speakership reached its zenith during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon, 1903 to 1911. The powers of the Speaker included chairmanship of the influential Rules Committee and the ability to appoint members of other House committees. These powers, however, were curtailed in the "Revolution of 1910" because of the efforts of Democrats and dissatisfied Republicans who opposed Cannon's arguably heavy-handed tactics. The Democratic Party dominated the House of Representatives during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (19331945), often winning over two-thirds of the seats. Both Democrats and Republicans were in power at various times during the next decade. The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1954 until 1995. In the mid-1970s, there were major reforms of the House, strengthening the power of sub-committees at the expense of

committee chairmen and allowing party leaders to nominate committee chairs. These actions were taken to undermine the seniority system, and to reduce the ability of a small number of senior members to obstruct legislation they did not favor. There was also a shift from the 1970s to greater control of the legislative program by the majority party; in particular, the power of party leaders (especially the Speaker) grew considerably. The Republicans took control of the House in 1995, under the leadership of Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich attempted to pass a major legislative program, the Contract with America on which the House Republicans had been elected, and made major reforms of the House, notably reducing the tenure of committee chairs to three two-year terms. Many elements of the Contract did not pass Congress, were vetoed by President Bill Clinton, or were substantially altered in negotiations with Clinton. The Republicans held on to the House until the United States Congressional elections, 2006, during which the Democrats won back control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Nancy Pelosi was subsequently elected by the House as the first female Speaker.

American Civil War

The American Civil War (18611865), also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy). Led by Jefferson Davis, they fought against the United States (the Union), which was supported by all the free states and the five border slave states. Union states were loosely referred to as "the North". In the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, had campaigned against the expansion of slavery beyond the states in which it already existed. The Republican victory in that election resulted in seven Southern states declaring their secession from the Union even before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Both the outgoing and incoming US administrations rejected the legality of secession, considering it rebellion. Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a US military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state, leading to declarations of secession by four more Southern slave states. Both sides raised armies as the Union assumed control of the border states early in the war and established a naval blockade. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal, and dissuaded the British from intervening. [1] Confederate commander Robert E. Lee won battles in the east, but in 1863 his northward advance was turned back after the Battle of Gettysburg and, in the west, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River at the Battle of Vicksburg, thereby splitting the Confederacy. Long-term Union advantages in men and material were realized in 1864 when Ulysses S. Grant fought battles of attrition against Lee, while Union general William Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia, and marched to the sea. Confederate resistance collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

The American Civil War was the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. Its legacy includes ending slavery in the United States, restoring the Union, and strengthening the role of the federal government. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the war decisively shaped the reconstruction era that lasted to 1877, and brought changes that helped make the country a united superpower.
Causes of secession Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War and Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War The coexistence of a slave-owning South with an increasingly anti-slavery North made conflict likely, if not inevitable. Abraham Lincoln did not propose federal laws against slavery where it already existed, but he had, in his 1858 House Divided Speech, expressed a desire to "arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction."[2] Much of the political battle in the 1850s focused on the expansion of slavery into the newly created territories. [3][4][5] All of the organized territories were likely to become free-soil states, which increased the Southern movement toward secession. Both North and South assumed that if slavery could not expand it would wither and die.[6][7][8] Southern fears of losing control of the federal government to antislavery forces, and Northern resentment of the influence that the Slave Power already wielded in government, brought the crisis to a head in the late 1850s. Sectional disagreements over the morality of slavery, the scope of democracy and the economic merits of free labor versus slave plantations caused the Whig and "Know-Nothing" parties to collapse, and new ones to arise (the Free Soil Party in 1848, the Republicans in 1854, the Constitutional Union in 1860). In 1860, the last remaining national political party, the Democratic Party, split along sectional lines. Both North and South were influenced by the ideas of Thomas Jefferson. Southerners used the states' rights[9][10][11] ideas mentioned in Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions to defend slavery. Northerners ranging from the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to the moderate Republican leader Lincoln [12] emphasized Jefferson's declaration that all men are created equal. Lincoln mentioned this proposition in his Gettysburg Address. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said[13] that slavery was the chief cause of secession[14] in his Cornerstone Speech shortly before the war. After Confederate defeat, Stephens became one of the most ardent defenders of the Lost Cause.[15] There was a striking contrast[14][16] between Stephens' post-war states' rights assertion that slavery did not cause secession[15] and his pre-war Cornerstone Speech. Confederate President Jefferson Davis also switched from saying the war was caused by slavery to saying that states' rights was the cause. While Southerners often used states' rights arguments to defend slavery, sometimes roles were reversed, as when Southerners demanded national laws to defend their interests with the Gag Rule and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. On these issues, it was Northerners who wanted to defend the rights of their states.
[17]

Almost all the inter-regional crises involved slavery, starting with debates on the three-fifths clause and a twenty year extension of the African slave trade in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. There was controversy over adding the slave state of Missouri to the Union that led to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff of 1828 (although the tariff was low after 1846, [18] and even the tariff issue was related to slavery), [19][20][21] the gag rule that prevented discussion in Congress of petitions for ending slavery from 18351844, the acquisition of Texas as a slave state in 1845 and Manifest Destiny as an argument for gaining new territories where slavery would become an issue after the MexicanAmerican War (18461848), which resulted in the Compromise of 1850.[22] The Wilmot Proviso was an attempt by Northern politicians to exclude slavery from the territories conquered from Mexico. The extremely popular antislavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe greatly increased Northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. [23][24] The 1854 Ostend Manifesto was an unsuccessful Southern attempt to annex Cuba as a slave state. The Second Party System broke down after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which replaced the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery with popular sovereignty, allowing the people of a territory to vote for or against slavery. The Bleeding Kansas controversy over the status of slavery in the Kansas Territory included massive vote fraud perpetrated by Missouri proslavery Border Ruffians. Vote fraud led pro-South Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan to make attempts (including support for the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution) to admit Kansas as a slave state.[25] Violence over the status of slavery in Kansas erupted with the Wakarusa War,[26] the Sacking of Lawrence,[27] the caning of Republican Charles Sumner by the Southerner Preston Brooks,[28][29] the Pottawatomie Massacre,[30] the Battle of Black Jack, the Battle of Osawatomie and the Marais des Cygnes massacre. The 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision allowed slavery in the territories even where the majority opposed slavery, including Kansas. The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 included Northern Democratic leader Stephen A. Douglas' Freeport Doctrine. This doctrine was an argument for thwarting the Dred Scott decision which, along with Douglas' defeat of the Lecompton Constitution, divided the Democratic Party between North and South. Northern abolitionist John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry Armory was an attempt to incite slave insurrections in 1859.[31] The NorthSouth split in the Democratic Party in 1860 due to the Southern demand for a slave code for the territories completed polarization of the nation between North and South. Other factors include sectionalism (caused by the growth of slavery in the lower South while slavery was gradually phased out in Northern states) and economic differences between North and South, although most modern historians disagree with the extreme economic determinism of historian Charles Beard and argue that Northern and Southern economies were largely complementary. [32] There was the polarizing effect of slavery that split the largest religious denominations (the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches)[33] and controversy caused by the worst cruelties of slavery (whippings, mutilations and families split apart). The fact that seven immigrants out of eight settled in the North, plus the fact that twice as many whites left the South for the North as vice versa, contributed to the South's defensive-aggressive political behavior. [34] The election of Lincoln in 1860 was the final trigger for secession. [35] Efforts at compromise, including the "Corwin Amendment" and the "Crittenden Compromise", failed.

Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives, were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and Electoral College against an increasingly powerful North.

Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln

16th President of the United States In office March 4, 1861 April 15, 1865 Hannibal Hamlin (1861 Vice President 1865) Andrew Johnson (1865) Preceded by James Buchanan Succeeded by Andrew Johnson Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 7th district In office March 4, 1847 March 3, 1849 Preceded by John Henry Succeeded by Thomas L. Harris Born Died February 12, 1809 Hardin County, Kentucky April 15, 1865 (aged 56) Washington, D.C. Oak Ridge Cemetery Springfield, Illinois 394924N 893921W / 39.82333N 89.65583W American

Resting place Nationality

Political party Spouse(s) Children Occupation Religion Signature

Whig (18321854), Republican (18541864), National Union (18641865) Mary Todd Lincoln Robert Todd Lincoln, Edward Lincoln, Willie Lincoln, Tad Lincoln Lawyer See: Abraham Lincoln and religion

Military service Service/branc Illinois Militia h Years of 1832 service Battles/wars Black Hawk War Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery. Before his election in 1860 as the first Republican president, Lincoln had been a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, a member of the United States House of Representatives, and twice an unsuccessful candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States,[1][2] Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination in 1860 and was elected president later that year. His tenure in office was occupied primarily with the defeat of the secessionist Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. He introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and promoting the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. As the Civil War was ending, Lincoln became the first American president to be assassinated. Lincoln closely supervised the victorious war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including Ulysses S. Grant. Historians have concluded that he handled the factions of the Republican Party well, bringing leaders of each faction into his cabinet and forcing them to cooperate. Lincoln successfully defused the Trent affair, a war scare with Britain late in 1861. Under his leadership, the Union took control of the border slave states at the start of the war. Additionally, he managed his own reelection in the 1864 presidential election. Copperheads and other opponents of the war criticized Lincoln for refusing to compromise on the slavery issue. Conversely, the Radical Republicans, an abolitionist faction of the Republican Party, criticized him for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery. Even with these opponents, Lincoln successfully rallied public opinion through his rhetoric and speeches; his Gettysburg Address (1863) became an iconic symbol of the nation's duty. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to speedily reunite the nation through a policy of generous reconciliation. Lincoln has consistently been ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

African-American Civil Rights Movement (18961954)

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The movement has had a lasting impact on United States society, in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism. The American Civil Rights movement has been made up of many movements. The term usually refers to the political struggles and reform movements between 1945 and 1970 to end discrimination against African Americans and to end legal racial segregation, especially in the U.S. South. This article focuses on an earlier phase of the struggle. Two United States Supreme Court decisionsPlessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which upheld "separate but equal" racial segregation as constitutional doctrine, and Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) which overturned Plessy serve as milestones. This was an era of stops and starts, in which some movements, such as Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, were very successful but left little lasting legacy, while others, such as the NAACP's painstaking legal assault on state-sponsored segregation, achieved modest results in its early years but made steady progress on voter rights and gradually built to a key victory in Brown v. Board of Education. After the Civil War, the U. S. expanded the legal rights of African Americans. Congress passed, and enough states ratified, an amendment ending slavery in 1865the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment only outlawed slavery; it did not provide equal rights, nor citizenship. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified by the states, granting African Americans citizenship. Black persons born in the U. S. were extended equal protection under the laws of the Constitution. The 15th Amendment (ratified in 1870) stated that race could not be used as a condition to deprive men of the ability to vote. During Reconstruction (1865-1877), Northern troops occupied the South. Together with the Freedmen's Bureau, they tried to administer and enforce the new constitutional amendments. Many black leaders were elected to local and state offices, and others organized community groups. Reconstruction ended following the Compromise of 1877 between Northern and Southern white elites. In exchange for deciding the contentious Presidential election in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes, supported by Northern states, over his opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, the compromise called for the withdrawal of Northern troops from the South. This followed violence and fraud in southern elections in 1876, which had reduced black voter turnout and enabled Southern white Democrats to regain power in state legislatures across the South. The compromise and withdrawal of Federal troops meant that white Democrats had more freedom to impose and enforce discriminatory practices. Many African Americans responded to the withdrawal of federal troops by leaving the South in what is known as the Kansas Exodus of 1879.

The Radical Republicans, who spearheaded Reconstruction, had attempted to eliminate both governmental and private discrimination by legislation. That effort was largely ended by the Supreme Court's decision in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), in which the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give Congress power to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals or businesses.

United States Bill of Rights

United States Bill of Rights Create d Ratifie d Locatio n Author s Purpos e 1789 December 15, 1791 National Archives James Madison To set limits on what the government can and cannot do in regards to personal liberties

In the United States, the Bill of Rights is the name by which the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known.[1] They were introduced by James Madison to the First United States Congress in 1789 as a series of articles, and came into effect on December 15, 1791, when they had been ratified by three-fourths of the States. Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of the Bill of Rights.[2] The Bill of Rights prohibits Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, forbids infringement of "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms...", and prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. In federal criminal cases, it requires indictment by grand jury for any capital or "infamous crime", guarantees a speedy public trial with an impartial jury composed of members of the state or judicial district in which the crime occurred, and prohibits double jeopardy. In addition, the Bill of Rights states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," [3] and reserves all powers not granted to the federal government to the citizenry or States. Most of these restrictions were later applied to the states by a series of decisions applying the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, after the American Civil War. Madison proposed the Bill of Rights while ideological conflict between Federalists and anti-Federalists, dating from the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, threatened the overall ratification of the new national Constitution. It largely responded to the Constitution's influential opponents, including prominent Founding Fathers,

who argued that the Constitution should not be ratified because it failed to protect the basic principles of human liberty. The Bill was influenced by George Mason's 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, works of the Age of Enlightenment pertaining to natural rights, and earlier English political documents such as Magna Carta (1215). Two additional articles were proposed to the States; only the final ten articles were ratified quickly and correspond to the First through Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. The first Article, dealing with the number and apportionment of U.S. Representatives, never became part of the Constitution. The second Article, limiting the ability of Congress to increase the salaries of its members, was ratified two centuries later as the 27th Amendment. Though they are incorporated into the document known as the "Bill of Rights", neither article establishes a right as that term is used today. For that reason, and also because the term had been applied to the first ten amendments long before the 27th Amendment was ratified, the term "Bill of Rights" in modern U.S. usage means only the ten amendments ratified in 1791. The Bill of Rights plays a central role in American law and government, and remains a fundamental symbol of the freedoms and culture of the nation. One of the original fourteen copies of the Bill of Rights is on public display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

Colonial America, 1630 The 1620s were a time of political and religious turmoil in England. The protracted struggle for supremacy between monarch and Parliament reached new heights in 1629, when Charles I disbanded the rival body and ruled alone for 11 years. Official pressure was also applied on religious dissenters, notably the Pilgrims and the Puritans. Some were imprisoned for their nonconformist views and others lost lucrative official positions. In 1628, a group of distinguished Puritan businessmen formed a venture named the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, which was initially conceived as a profit-making endeavor in the New World. A land grant was received from the Council of New England, the successor to the ineffective Virginia Company of Plymouth, providing rights to the area between the Charles and Merrimack rivers and westward to the Pacific Ocean. Preliminary voyages were made in 1628 and 1629, and resulted in the establishment of a small colony on Cape Ann and later at Salem. The careful Puritan businessmen sought additional protection for their scheme by requesting and receiving a charter from the king, who had apparently been misinformed about their religious views. While still in England, the company members signed the Cambridge Agreement (1629), in which they agreed to undertake the rigors of the Atlantic voyage if full authority over the charter and colony would be vested in the members themselves. Those stockholders who did not wish to migrate sold their shares to emigrants.

Through this action the Massachusetts Bay venture was transformed from a trading company into an organization dominated by staunch Puritans with a religious agenda. Political power in the new colony was limited to fellow believers, effectively creating a theocracy (a government run by religious officials who would enforce religious principles). The Great Migration Beginning in 1630, Governor John Winthrop, with the company charter tightly in hand, guided the arrival of nearly 1000 colonists to the New World. The initial parties stopped first at Salem, but soon established a permanent settlement on the Shawmut Peninsula of Massachusetts Bay (later to be called Boston). Initially, circumstances were extremely difficult - approximately 200 settlers died the first year and a similar number returned to England in the spring of 1631. Gradual improvements in living conditions led to an influx of new colonists, mainly English Puritans, that totaled more than 20,000 over the next decade. New settlements soon fanned out from Boston Newtown (later Cambridge), Lexington, Concord, Watertown, Charlestown, Dorchester, and others dotted the map. Massachusetts differed markedly from Plymouth, its neighbor 40 miles to the south. The Puritan immigrants, as a whole, had been more prominent in England and were more highly educated. All classes, from gentleman to common laborer, were represented. The stamp of Puritanism was felt throughout the entire community. In the political realm, the requirement for becoming a freeman (meaning a stockholder in the company and a voter) was membership in the church, not land ownership as was the case in other colonies. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay were Calvinists, but with their own points of emphasis. They held the traditional belief that all mankind merited eternal damnation, but a merciful God had graciously granted salvation to a few, the Elect. However, they believed that salvation came at a price Gods chosen people were bound by a covenant (contract) to see to the enforcement of Gods laws in society. Failure to do so would result in stern punishment, much as the Biblical Hebrews, an earlier chosen people, had been disciplined. Good behavior would not win salvation for the Massachusetts Puritans, but it would help them in their current lives to avoid wars, famines, and other forms of divine wrath. This concern about proper behavior resulted in an abiding interest in the activities of one's neighbors. Religious orthodoxy was challenged from time to time by various members of the community. Thomas Morton provided what appears to today's observer as an almost comic alternative to the stern Puritan society. More thoughtful challenges came from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. As time passed, church membership declined as fewer people were able to offer proof of a conversion experience, which would convince themselves and others of their inclusion among the elect. This troublesome situation was remedied by the adoption of the Half-Way Covenant by many New England congregations.

The Massachusetts Bay Company and the colony were one and the same until 1684, when the charter was taken away. Later, in 1691, a new royal charter was granted to Massachusetts; the Plymouth Colony and Maine were absorbed. The word Massachusetts is taken from a Native American word for "great hills," referring to the Blue Hills near Boston.