A Brief History of the United States Part 18

2. It also decided that the colonies should bear a part of the cost of their defense, and for this purpose a stamp tax was levied.

3. The right of Parliament to levy such a tax was denied by the colonists on the ground that they were not represented in Parliament.

4. The attempt to enforce the tax led to resistance, and a congress of the colonies (1765) issued a declaration of rights and grievances.

5. The tax was repealed in 1766, but Parliament at the same time a.s.serted its right to tax.

6. The Townshend Acts (1767) tried to raise a revenue by import duties on goods brought into the colonies. At the same time the arrival of the troops for defense of the colonies caused new trouble; in Boston the people and the troops came to blows (1770).

7. The refusal of the colonists to buy the taxed articles led to the repeal of all the taxes except that on tea (1770).

8. The colonists still refused to buy taxed tea, whereupon Parliament enabled the East India Company to send over tea for sale at a lower price than before.

9. The tea was not allowed to be sold. In Boston it was destroyed.

10. As a punishment Parliament enacted the five Intolerable Acts.

11. The First Continental Congress (1774) thereupon pet.i.tioned for redress, and called a second Congress to meet the next year.

FOOTNOTES

[1] That is, compel the colonists to furnish quarters--rooms or houses-- for the troops to live in. Read Parkman's _Montcalm and Wolfe_, Vol. I, pp. 439-440.

[2] In order to detect and seize smugglers the crown had resorted to "writs of a.s.sistance." The law required that every ship bringing goods to America should come to some established port and that her cargo should be reported at the customhouse. Instead, the smugglers would secretly land goods elsewhere. If a customs officer suspected this, he could go to court and ask for a search warrant, stating the goods for which he was to seek and the place to be searched. But this would give the smugglers warning and they could remove the goods. What the officers wanted was a general warrant good for any goods in any place. This writ of a.s.sistance, as it was called, was common in England, and was issued in the colonies about 1754. In 1760 King George II died, and all writs issued in his name expired. In 1761, therefore, application was made to the Superior Court of Ma.s.sachusetts for a new writ of a.s.sistance to run in the name of King George III. Sixty merchants opposed the issue, and James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher appeared for the merchants. The speech of Otis was a famous plea, sometimes called the beginning of colonial resistance; but the court granted the writ.

[3] These acts are complained of in the Declaration of Independence. The king is blamed "For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world,"

that is, enforcing the trade laws; again, "He has erected a mult.i.tude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to hara.s.s our people,"

that is to say, the vice-admiralty judges and naval officers sworn to act as customhouse officers and seize smugglers. In doing this duty these officers did "hara.s.s our people."

[4] While the Stamp Act was under debate in Parliament, Colonel Barre, who fought under Wolfe at Louisburg, opposed it. A member had spoken of the colonists as "children planted by our care, nourished by our indulgence, and protected by our arms." "They planted by your care!" said Barre. "No, your oppression planted them in America. Nourished by your indulgence!

They grew up by your neglect of them. They protected by your arms! These Sons of Liberty have n.o.bly taken up arms in your defense." The words "Sons of Liberty" were at once seized on, and used in our country to designate the opponents of the stamp tax. Read "The Stamp Act" in Hawthorne's _Grandfather's Chair_.

[5] The colonists did not deny the right of Parliament to regulate the trade of the whole British Empire, and to lay "external taxes"--customs duties--for the purpose of regulating trade. But this stamp tax was an "internal tax" for the purpose of raising revenue.

[6] Parliament was divided then, as now, into two houses--the Lords, consisting of n.o.bles and clergy, and the Commons, consisting then of two members elected by each county and two elected by each of certain towns.

Some change was made in the list of towns thus represented in Parliament before the sixteenth century, but no change had been made since, though many of them had lost all or most of their population. Thus Old Sarum had become a green mound; its population had all drifted away to Salisbury. A member of the Commons, so the story runs, once said: "I am the member from Ludgesshall. I am also the population of Ludgesshall. When the sheriff's writ comes, I announce the election, attend the poll, deposit my vote for myself, sign the return, and here I am." When a town disappeared, the landowner of the soil on which it once stood appointed the two members.

Such towns were called "rotten boroughs," "pocket boroughs," "nomination boroughs."

[7] Patrick Henry was born in Virginia in 1736. As a youth he was dull and indolent and gave no sign of coming greatness. After two failures as a storekeeper and one as a farmer he turned in desperation to law, read a few books, and with difficulty pa.s.sed the examination necessary for admittance to the bar. Henry had now found his true vocation. Business came to him, and one day in 1763 he argued the weak (but popular) side of a case with such eloquence that he carried court and jury with him, and it is said was carried out of the courthouse on the shoulders of the people.

He was now famous, and in 1765 was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses to represent the county in which he had lived, just in time to take part in the proceedings on the Stamp Act. His part was to move the resolutions and support them in a fiery and eloquent speech, of which one pa.s.sage has been preserved. Recalling the fate of tyrants of other times, he exclaimed, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third--." "Treason! treason!" shouted the Speaker. "Treason!

treason!" shouted the members. To which Henry answered, "and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

[8] In Canada and the West Indies the stamp tax was not resisted, and there stamps were used.

[9] When Parliament was considering the repeal, Benjamin Franklin, then in London as agent for Pennsylvania and other colonies, was called before a committee and examined as to the state of colonial affairs; read his answers in Hart's _American History told by Contemporaries_, Vol. II, pp. 407-411. Pitt in a great speech declared, "The kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the colonies, because they are unrepresented in Parliament. I rejoice that America has resisted." Edmund Burke, one of the greatest of Irish orators, took the same view.

[10] In the Declaration of Independence the king is charged with giving his a.s.sent to acts of Parliament "For suspending our own legislatures,"

and "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us," and "For imposing taxes on us without our consent."

[11] For refusing to obey, the legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts was dissolved, as were the a.s.semblies of Maryland and Georgia for having approved it, and that of New York for refusing supplies to the royal troops, and that of Virginia for complaining of the treatment of New York. Read Fiske's _American Revolution_, Vol. I, pp. 28-36, 39-52.

[12] The two regiments of British troops in Boston were now removed, on demand of the people, to a fort in the harbor. The soldiers who fired the shots were tried for murder and acquitted, save two who received light sentences.

[13] One of the vessels sent to stop smuggling was the schooner _Gaspee_.

Having run aground in Narragansett Bay (June, 1772), she was boarded by a party of men in eight boats and burned. The Virginia legislature appointed a "committee of correspondence," to find out the facts regarding the destruction of the _Gaspee_ and "to maintain a correspondence with our sister colonies." This plan of a committee to inform the other colonies what was happening in Virginia, and obtain from them accurate information as to what they were doing, was at once taken up by Ma.s.sachusetts and other colonies, each of which appointed a similar committee. Such committees afterward proved to be the means of revolutionary organization.

Read Fiske's _American Revolution_, Vol. I, pp. 76-80.

[14] Parliament had given the company permission to do this. The company had long possessed the monopoly of trade with the East Indies, and the sole right to bring tea from China to Great Britain. Before 1773, however, it was obliged to sell the tea in Great Britain, and the business of exporting tea to the colonies had been carried on by merchants who bought from the company.

[15] Read "The Tea Party" in Hawthorne's _Grandfather's Chair_.

[16] All the Intolerable Acts are referred to in the Declaration of Independence. See if you can find the references.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE BEGUN

LEXINGTON, 1775.--When the second Continental Congress met (May 10, 1775), the mother country and her colonies had come to blows.

The people of Ma.s.sachusetts, fearing that this might happen, had begun to collect and hide arms, cannon, and powder. General Gage, the royal governor of Ma.s.sachusetts and commander of the British troops in Boston, was told that military supplies were concealed at Concord, a town some twenty miles from Boston (map, p. 168). Now it happened that in April, 1775, two active patriots, Samuel Adams [1] and John Hanc.o.c.k, were at Lexington, a town on the road from Boston to Concord. Gage determined to strike a double blow at the patriots by sending troops to arrest Adams and Hanc.o.c.k and destroy the military stores. On the evening of April 18, accordingly, eight hundred regulars left Boston as quietly as possible.

Gage hoped to keep the expedition a secret, but the patriots in Boston, suspecting where the troops were going, sent off Paul Revere [2] and William Dawes to ride by different routes to Lexington, rousing the countryside as they went. As the British advanced, alarm bells, signal guns, and lights in the villages gave proof that their secret was out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN HANc.o.c.k'S BIBLE. Now in the Old Statehouse, Boston.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE LANTERNS HUNG IN THE BELFRY. Now in the possession of the Concord Antiquarian Society.]

The sun was rising as the first of the British, under Major Pitcairn, entered Lexington and saw drawn up across the village green some fifty minutemen [3] under Captain John Parker. "Disperse, ye villains," cried Pitcairn; "ye rebels, disperse!" Not a man moved, whereupon the order to fire was given; the troops hesitated to obey; Pitcairn fired his pistol, and a moment later a volley from the British killed or wounded sixteen minutemen. [4] Parker then gave the order to retire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STONE ON VILLAGE GREEN AT LEXINGTON.]

THE CONCORD FIGHT.--From Lexington the British went on to Concord, set the courthouse on fire, spiked some cannon, cut down the liberty pole, and destroyed some flour. Meantime the minutemen, having a.s.sembled beyond the village, came toward the North Bridge, and the British who were guarding it fell back. Shots were exchanged, and six minutemen were killed. [5] But the Americans crossed the bridge, drove back the British, and then dispersed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOSTON, CHARLESTON, ETC.]

About noon the British started for Boston, with hundreds of minutemen, who had come from all quarters, hanging on their flanks and rear, pouring in a galling fire from behind trees and stone fences and every bit of rising ground. The retreat became a flight, and the flight would have become a rout had not reinforcements met them near Lexington. Protected by this force, the defeated British entered Boston by sundown. By morning the hills from Charlestown to Roxbury were black with minutemen, and Boston was in a state of siege.

When the Green Mountain Boys heard of the fight, they took arms, and under Ethan Allen [6] surprised and captured Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain (map, p. 168).

THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.--On the day that Fort Ticonderoga was captured (May 10, 1775), the Continental Congress met at Philadelphia. It had been created, not to govern the colonies, nor to conduct a war, but merely to consult concerning the public welfare, and advise what the colonies should do. But war had begun, Congress was forced to become a governing body, and after a month's delay it adopted the band of patriots gathered about Boston, made it the Continental army, and appointed George Washington (then a delegate to Congress from Virginia) commander in chief.

Washington accepted the trust, and left Philadelphia June 21, but had not gone twenty miles when he was met by news of the battle of Bunker Hill.

BUNKER HILL, JUNE 17,1775.--Since the fight at Lexington and Concord in April, troops under General Howe, Sir Henry Clinton, and General Burgoyne had arrived at Boston and raised the number there to ten thousand. Gage now felt strong enough to seize the hills near Boston, lest the Americans should occupy them and command the town. Learning of this, the patriots determined to forestall him, and on the night of June 16 twelve hundred men under Prescott were sent to fortify Bunker Hill in Charlestown.