The American Colonial Independence Revolution (1765-1783)
The American Colonial Independence Revolution (1765-1783) was a Colonial Independence Revolution for the United States of America.
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), Parliament of Great Britain, No Taxation Without Representation, Boston Tea Party, Intolerable Acts, American Revolutionary War.
References
2014
- (Wikipedia, 2014) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution Retrieved:2014-9-28.
- The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which the Thirteen American Colonies broke from the British Empire and formed an independent nation, the United States of America. The American Revolution was the result of a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations in American society, government and ways of thinking. Starting in 1765 the Americans rejected the authority of Parliament to tax them without elected representation; protests continued to escalate, as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and the British imposed punitive laws — the Intolerable Acts — on Massachusetts in 1774.
The Patriots fought the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Formal acts of rebellionagainst British authority began in 1774 when the Patriot Suffolk Resolves effectively abolished the legal government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and expelled all royal officials. The tensions caused by this would lead to the outbreak of fighting between Patriot militia and British regulars at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
Each colony now had a new government that took control. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-establish royal control and resistance was coordinated through the Second Continental Congress.
The British sent invasion armies and used their powerful navy to blockade the coast. Former Virginia militia officer George Washington became the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, working with Congress and the states to raise armies and neutralize the influence of Loyalists. While precise proportions are not known, about 40% of the colonists were Patriots, 20% were Loyalists and the rest were neutral or did not reveal loyalties. As the war continued some changed their loyalties. Claiming British rule was tyrannical and violated the rights of Englishmen, the Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and proclaimed that all men are created equal. The Continental Congress declared independence in July 1776, when Thomas Jefferson as the primary author, and the Congress unanimously approved an edited version, of the United States Declaration of Independence. Congress rejected British proposals for compromise that would keep them under the king. The British were forced out of Boston in 1776, but then captured and held New York City for the duration of the war, nearly capturing General Washington and his army. The British blockaded the ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but 90% of the inhabitants were in rural areas.
In early 1778, after an invading British army from Canada was captured by the Americans, the French entered the war as allies of the United States. The naval and military power of the two sides were about equal, and France had allies in the Netherlands and Spain, while Britain had no major allies in this large-scale war. The war later turned to the American South, where the British captured an army at South Carolina, but failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control. A combined American–French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in 1781, effectively ending the war in the United States. A peace treaty in 1783 confirmed the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada and Spain taking Florida. Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of a democratically-elected representative government responsible to the will of the people.
The period after the peace treaty came in 1783 involved debates between nationally-minded men like Washington who wanted a strong national government, and leaders who wanted strong states but a weak national government. The former group won out the ratification of a new United States Constitution in 1788. It replaced the weaker Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The new Constitution established a relatively strong federal national government that included a strong elected president, national courts, a bicameral Congress that represented both states in the Senate and population in the House of Representatives. Congress had powers of taxation that were lacking under the old Articles. The United States Bill of Rights of 1791 comprised the first ten amendments to the Constitution, guaranteeing many “natural rights” that were influential in justifying the revolution, and attempted to balance a strong national government with strong state governments and broad personal liberties. The American shift to liberal republicanism, and the gradually increasing democracy, caused an upheaval of traditional social hierarchy and gave birth to the ethic that has formed a core of political values in the United States.[1] [2]
- The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which the Thirteen American Colonies broke from the British Empire and formed an independent nation, the United States of America. The American Revolution was the result of a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations in American society, government and ways of thinking. Starting in 1765 the Americans rejected the authority of Parliament to tax them without elected representation; protests continued to escalate, as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and the British imposed punitive laws — the Intolerable Acts — on Massachusetts in 1774.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_wars_of_independence#American_Revolution
- The rebellion by the thirteen British colonies in North America from Great Britain was shifted by several factors, including a number of imposed taxes, repressive acts, and the lack of American representation in British government. This infuriated many colonists, and eventually became the spark that ignited the American Revolutionary War. Initial fighting began in 1775 and lasted until October 1781, when the British army, under the command of General Cornwallis, surrendered in Yorktown, Virginia. The American colonists subsequently,
coming after or later, founded a republican government grounded in Enlightenment thought. A wave of revolutions followed the conclusion of the American Revolution.