Door24 History

Colonists dump British tea into Boston Harbor.

Copyright © 2021 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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Tobacco saves Jamestown by making it profitable.

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Delegates from the states meet in Philadelphia in 1787 to fix the Articles of Confederation.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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In July 1776, the representatives of the Continental Congress voted for independence from Great Britain. To win a war against the most powerful country on earth was going to take more than a simple vote. Congress immediately went to work to create a national government to oversee the war. After several drafts and debates, in 1777 Congress approved John Dickinson’s Articles of Confederation.

At this time, states thought of themselves as independent countries and many feared being tied to an all-powerful national government. Hence, it was not until 1781 that the last state ratified the Articles making it the official first government of the United States of America.

The government consisted of a one-house congress where every state had one vote on all matters. Yet, the new government had too many weaknesses to be effective. There was no Supreme Court to settle disputes or a president to enforce the laws. Congress lacked the power to tax or force the states to pay for national expenses. States often ignored foreign treaties and failed to provide Congress with troops when necessary. In the end, Congress could do little to make the country work.

When Massachusetts began seizing mortgaged farms to pay off state debts, former Revolutionary War soldier Daniel Shays started a rebellion. Congress had no ability to act so local authorities raised a militia and put down the rebellion. People like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington became alarmed at the weakness of the Confederation government. By summer of 1787, delegates from twelve states met in Philadelphia to discuss fixing the Articles of Confederation. Instead, they tossed them aside and create the Constitution—the second and current national government of the United States of America.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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The American colonies rebelled against the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. Colonial patriots opposed taxes passed by members of Parliament who lived an ocean away. In 1770, friction between colonists and British soldiers culminated in the deaths of five people in the Boston Massacre. Then Parliament passed the Tea Act designed to give special tax-exempt status to the British East India Company to sell tea in the colonies that threatened to put many colonial merchants out of business. On December 16, 1773, members of the political action group Sons of Liberty boarded British ships in Boston Harbor and dumped British tea into the water.

Parliament reacted swiftly by passing four acts or laws called the Coercive Acts designed to bring the colonies under control. The colonists referred to these acts as the Intolerable Acts. The Boston Port Act closed Boston Harbor permanently until Boston paid for the dumped tea. The Massachusetts Government Act increased the power of the new royal governor General Thomas Gage and reduced or eliminated elected offices. The Administration of Justice Act allowed British officials accused of murder to be tried in another colony or England. The Quartering Act allowed royal governors to use unoccupied buildings to house British soldiers. Parliament hoped this show of force would intimidate the colonies into obeying British authority.

As so often happened, Britain miscalculated. Instead of bringing the colonies into submission, the colonies banded together in defiance. Twelve of the thirteen colonies sent representatives to Philadelphia in 1774 to craft a colonial policy in reaction to the Coercive Acts. Congress drafted the Declaration of Rights stating their loyalty to the British government but denying the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. Furthermore, Congress called for a boycott on British goods until Parliament repealed the Coercive Acts. Both sides began to take positions from which compromise became impossible.

From this time forward, conflict between the colonies and the British government would grow until militia and British redcoats exchanged shots at Lexington in 1775.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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In March 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd of colonists on the streets of Boston. Tensions had been rising for months. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts that placed a duty on British imported glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea. Many colonists resented any tax passed by Parliament that circumvented the approval of the colonial legislatures. “No taxation without representation” became the rallying cry of Patriots who increasingly distanced themselves from British authority.

When customs officials complained to Parliament of disorder and harassment in Boston, Massachusetts, Parliament reacted by sending 2,000 British soldiers into Boston to keep the peace. Rather than create order, the presence of the troops inflamed the situation. Clashes between colonists and soldiers increased.

On March 5, 1770, soldier Hugh White stood guard at the Customs House on King Street. After White exchanged insults with teenager Edward Garrick, White hit Garrick with the butt of his musket. This incident attracted a crowd that harassed and threatened the soldier. Captain Thomas Preston happened by and saw the situation. He grabbed seven soldiers and marched to the side of soldier Hugh White. The crowd threw snowballs, chunks of ice, and stones at the soldiers. A club struck soldier Hugh Montgomery who went down. Accounts differ but Montgomery may or may not have fired his musket intentionally. Once his musket discharged, the other soldiers began firing. Three Bostonians died instantly, two more died later while six others suffered gunshot wounds.

Acting governor Thomas Hutchinson arrived on the scene and promised an investigation. The next day, colonial officials arrested all nine soldiers and charged them with murder. Patriot and future president John Adams agreed to defend the soldiers. Adams argued that the soldiers acted in self-defense against an unruly mob. The jury found seven of the nine soldiers not guilty. The jury found the last two soldiers guilty of manslaughter which amounted to nothing more than a branding on their thumbs.

After the Boston Massacre, Parliament removed the soldiers from Boston and things quieted down for a while. Yet, the point of contention remained, would Parliament control the colonies or the elected representatives of the colonial legislatures?

From this time forward, conflict between the colonies and the British government would grow until militia and British redcoats exchanged shots at Lexington in 1775.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

For comments, email: [email protected]

In 1763, the French and Indian War came to an end. A nine year war that became the first global conflict in human history. As part of the peace treaty, France gave its territorial holdings in North America to Great Britain. Although the victor, Britain had amassed a huge debt to finance the war. Now, to ease its financial burden, Britain turned to its American colonies to finance the peace.

In 1765, Parliament, the legislative body of the British Empire, passed the Stamp Act—a tax on most paper goods sold in the colonies. Newspapers, marriage licenses, playing cards, and anything else made of paper required a stamp be placed upon it showing that a tax had been paid to the British government. This was the first time that Britain had passed a tax directly on the colonies.

For 150 years, colonies had created their own democratic governments and elected citizens to legislative assemblies that passed laws and taxes. The Stamp Act went into effect without any colonial voting for it. Hence, some colonials began chanting the slogan: “No taxation with representation.” Colonies created a political group called the Sons of Liberty to harass tax officials and colonials who supported the Stamp Act and to enforce a colonial boycott of British goods. While the Stamp Act remained in place, colonials vowed not to buy anything from Great Britain.

The thirteen disunited colonies began to see a common threat: Britain. In October 1765, nine colonies sent delegates to New York City to discuss what actions to take against Britain’s tax. In what became known as the Stamp Act Congress, delegates approved the Declaration of Rights and Grievances. The Congress essentially declared that Parliament had no right to tax the colonists and that the Stamp Act was unconstitutional.

Not surprisingly, Parliament rejected the colonial document. However, British merchants complained to Parliament that the colonial boycott was hurting business and it needed to stop. In 1766, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. Yet, the British legislators needed to show the colonists who was in charge. On the same day Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, they passed the Declaratory Act that stated Parliament had the right to make laws for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.

From this time forward, conflict between the colonies and the British government would grow until militia and British redcoats exchanged shots at Lexington in 1775.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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Between 1754 and 1763, the world saw its first global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War. France and Britain, mortal enemies, began fighting over the Ohio Valley—a vast area of land between the Mississippi River and the British held American colonies on the East Coast. Soon, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia entered the conflict. Fighting took place in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. By 1763, after suffering numerous losses, France gave in. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France lost its North American possessions, including the Ohio Valley, to the British.

However, Britain came out of the conflict financially drained. To win the war, Britain had borrowed huge sums of money and now was on the verge of bankruptcy. So it turned to its American colonies to finance the peace. The British Parliament passed tax after tax only to see the colonies reject each one with growing determination. In 1775, British soldiers and American colonists exchanged gunfire at Lexington Green in Massachusetts sparking the American Revolution. The American Continental Congress raised an army and appointed George Washington to lead it. By 1778, France joined the Americans against the British. Three years later, French and American armies defeated the British at the Battle of Yorktown. At the surrender ceremony, the British, embarrassed by the defeat, tried to surrender to the French who refused to accept. So, reluctantly they surrendered to General George Washington and the American army. In 1783, Britain granted America its independence and all land from the East Coast to the Mississippi River including the Ohio Valley. Now both the French and the British had been deprived of this vast territory in North America.

Nearly thirty years earlier, in 1754, the French had been building forts in the Ohio Valley, land that the British also claimed for themselves. The governor of the colony of Virginia, ordered the Virginia militia into the Ohio Valley to tell the French they were trespassing on British land. Unexpectedly, the militia attacked the French starting the French and Indian War. The leader of the Virginia militia was a 22-year-old colonel who stood at 6’2” tall and weighed approximately 175 pounds. He had great ambitions and hoped to gain respect and social status by becoming an officer in the regular British army. Who was this person who started the first global war and would eventually cost both the French and British vast territories in North America? His name was George Washington.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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Witch hysteria began in Europe in the 1300s. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull or order that directly involved the Catholic Church in the hunt for witches to protect society and the Church. In 1487, two monks wrote a book called the Malleus Maleficarum (mal ee us | ma lef uh kair em) or the Hammer of Witches. The authors argued that witchcraft was real, not superstition. They gave details on how to identify, capture, and punish witches. Witch hunts led to the arrest, torture, and execution of tens of thousands of people until the end of the 17th century.

In 1692, the people of Salem, Massachusetts, were suffering. They had endured a smallpox epidemic, lived in constant fear of American Indian attacks, and were splitting apart over the proposed building of a new church. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, two Puritan girls played a forbidden fortune telling game. Perhaps afraid of what they saw or some other psychological ailment, the girls began displaying fits and convulsions and claimed the source of their agony came from three people practicing witchcraft. The accused, all women, went on trial.

In a witchcraft trial, the judges tried to get the accused to confess. Experts on witchcraft believed a person pleading guilty had been released from the devil’s power and was therefore no longer a threat. If the accused refused to admit being a witch, then they were found guilty and hanged. So, most people lied to save themselves but implicated others in the process leading to hundreds of new accusations.

The court denied people accused of witchcraft the right to a lawyer for defense. The courts also allowed spectral evidence—the charge that the spirit of an accused person tortured others in the name of the devil. Spectral evidence required no proof, only an accusation that made it difficult to debunk. Witnesses disrupted the proceedings with false accusations that made a fair trial impossible. The Salem court eventually executed twenty people. Without an unbiased jury, the right to a lawyer, and due process, innocent people got hurt. Today, whenever there is a fanatical desire to find wrongdoers that brings harm to innocent people, it is referred to as a witch hunt.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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How did democracy find its way to America?

In 48 BCE, Julius Caesar was the last Roman leader alive after a tumultuous civil war. For most historians, this was the end of the Roman Republic and democracy in the ancient world. For the next several hundred years, Rome would be ruled by a series of emperors before Rome too would collapse ushering in centuries of uncertainty as states rose and fell over the centuries across Europe.

On an island off the coast of France that the Romans called Britannia Maximus or Great Britain, a king was stirring up trouble among his people. King John Plantagenet took the English throne in the year 1199. Like the emperors of Rome, King John had absolute power. He did what he pleased, jailed people who disagreed with him, and raised taxes to fight a war against the French. After several years of fighting, France threw the English off the European continent.

The English landowning barons who saw most of their wealth taken and wasted by King John raised an army of two thousand in May 1215 and seized the city of London. This caught the king’s attention and forced him to negotiate for peace. In June both sides signed the Magna Carta. The document limited the power of the king, stated individuals had rights, and required a group of civilian leaders to approve all new taxes.

From Magna Carta, the English people over the centuries created Parliament—a government lawmaking body made up of appointed and elected officials that had more power than the monarchy. The idea that government power should be limited and people have individual rights crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the English settlers. As the thirteen colonies expanded, so too did their desire to be free from tyrannical government. Each colony elected its own legislature to pass laws, approve taxes, and limit the power of the English government.

Copyright © 2020 Mike Chisholm. All rights reserved.

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