REFERENCES AND QUESTIONS 119 - Mac Caruthers, Knights of 43, 46, 48; Source Readers, I. §§ 13-18, 50-54, II. §§ 12-36. Donald, Doc. Source Book, nos. 15, 19, 22, 25, 28. Side Lights and Stories. Burnaby, Travels. the Horseshoe. Fisher, True Benjamin Franklin. - Franklin, Autobiography. Harland, His Great Self (Byrd). - Harrower, Diary (Redemptioner, in Am. Hist. Rev., VI). — Stockton, Buccaneers and Pirates; Kate Bonnet. Stuart, Carried Off (Pirates). Woolman, Journal. Pictures. Avery, Un. States, III. Bogart, Economic Hist. Industrial Hist. Coman, QUESTIONS 2. (875) 1. Name the principal British colonies in North America. Name the colonies and describe the business and industries of New England. 3. Name the middle colonies and describe their business and industries. 4. Name the southern colonies and describe their business and industries. (§ 76) 5. How did rich southern planters such as Byrd live? (877) 6. How was the land prepared for tillage? 7. What were the white servants and how were they treated? 8. Who were the redemptioners? 9 (For an essay). Life of white servants. (§ 78) 10. Why did Indian slavery break down? II. How was the slave trade carried on? 12. Was slavery a good thing? (§ 79) 13. How were free negroes treated? counts of runaway slaves in colonial times. against slavery in the colonies? 14 (For an essay). Ac 15. Who first agitated (§ 80) 16. What was the Colonial System? 17. What were the principal provisions of the Acts of Trade? 18. What was the Molasses Act? (§ 81) 19. What were the principal colonial products? 20. How was the colonial internal trade carried on? (§ 82) 21. What were the principal colonial manufactures? sort of currency circulated in the colonies? 22. What (§ 83) 23. What were the principal exports? 24. What were the principal imports? 25. How was foreign trade carried on? 26 (For an essay). Accounts of colonial voyages across the ocean. (§ 84) 27. How did people travel within the colonies? 28 (For an essay). An account of a colonial journey. (§ 85) 29. What were the dangers in ocean travel? 30 (For an essay). Accounts of colonial pirates. 31. What were privateers? CHAPTER VIII WHY THERE WAS A REVOLUTION (1763-1774) 87. The British Empire (1763). After the end of the long colonial wars the English colonists were as well off as any other people in the world. They were proud of being Britons, as The colonists liked to think of themselves as part of the British Empire, which included Great Britain, Ireland, and three groups of distant colonies, as follows: used now. (1) The Asiatic possessions, of which the richest was a portion of India. THE BRITISH EMPIRE 121 (2) The British West Indies, which included Jamaica and some of the smaller islands, and the little settlement of Belize on the coast of Central America. (3) The continental colonies of North America. In the period from 1763 to 1775 this last group was divided into nineteen units as follows: (a) The thirteen colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia, which later became the thirteen original United States. (b) The four northern colonies: Hudson's Bay Company, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, which was extended (1774) to include the region between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. (c) The two little southern colonies of East Florida and West Florida. 88. How the British Empire was Ruled. Although the colonies had a rapidly growing population, profitable trade, low taxes, and an easy-going government, about 1763 trouble arose between Great Britain and the North American colonies. To understand it we must know a few details about the government of the British Empire. People talked about the "Constitution of the Empire," but there was no written document like the present Constitution of the United States. The British Constitution meant only the habits and customs which were usual in making laws and carrying on the home. government and the government of the colonies. The principal customs affecting the colonies were as follows: (1) Certain general laws for all parts of the empire were made by a Parliament composed of two bodies: a House of Lords who inherited their titles and their right to sit in Parliament, and a House of Commons elected from England and Scotland. The colonists had, therefore, no part in choosing the body that would make laws for them. (2) Each colony in America had its own government, with an elected assembly, and local governments in towns or counties; but the governors of nearly all the colonies were appointed by the home government; and the laws passed by the assemblies could be vetoed by the governors, or (if the governors signed them) by the home government. (3) The commerce of the colonies was regulated by the Acts of Trade (§ 80), which aimed to prevent direct trade with the neighboring Spanish and French colonies in the West Indies. (4) Most of the expenses, both of the colonies and of the mother country, were met by laying taxes, which required the owners of property to pay a percentage of its value every year into the public treasury. The English people had long enjoyed the privilege of "No taxation without representation"; Patrick Henry's fame as an eloquent speaker began in 1763 when he won a suit known as the "Parson's Cause" that is, taxes could be laid only by Parliament or by other selected bodies. That method was also usual in the thirteen colonies, where the assemblies voted the colonial taxes. (5) The colonists also shared in the great "inalienable rights" of Englishmen (87); that is, rights which neither king nor Parliament nor colonial governments could take away. Such rights the colonists claimed as a part of their birthright as Englishmen. As long as they had them, they felt well contented with their government, and with their place in the British Empire. 89. Efforts of the Home Country to Govern (1760-1767).— This content was disturbed when in 1760 George III came to the British throne. In one of his early speeches he said, "Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton." He was in many ways a good man, upright, truthful, and true to his friends; but he was a poor king, for he was narrow, stubborn, and determined to be stronger than Parliament. STAMP ACT CONTROVERSY 123 The British government soon began to put pressure on the colonists by enforcing the Acts of Trade. How could the colonists find a way of getting out from under the weight of this new interest in their affairs? James Otis of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia, and others declared that Americans were not bound to obey acts of Parliament or orders of the king unless they kept within the Constitution. But nobody was sure just what "the Constitution" meant. Probably their arguments never reached the king and his advisers, but they were widely read in America. 90. Stamp Act Controversy (1765-1767). — The colonists might have yielded to the Acts of Trade, but a new cause of trouble arose when the British government thought it was time for the American colonies to pay part of the expense of the army that was defending the whole empire. In 1765 a Stamp Act was passed by Parliament, requiring the use of British stamps on legal papers, on business documents, and on newspapers in the colonies. The British did not intend to send money away from America to support the home government; nevertheless the colonists at once objected. Benjamin Franklin, then in England, protested in advance, and throughout the colonies the Stamp Act was denounced in public meetings, speeches, and pamphlets. The favorite form of objection was, "Taxation without representation is tyranny." Since the colonists could not conveniently send men to represent them in London, they argued that they could never rightfully be taxed for any purpose by Parliament. From arguments the colonists soon passed to violence, to riots, and to mobs. The house of Governor Hutchinson in Boston was stormed and looted. Then a Stamp Act Congress was called to meet in New York in 1765. The delegates, representing nine of the colonies, drew up a Declaration of Rights which roundly declared that it was the natural privilege of the Americans to be free from such taxes. This unexpected storm caused Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act (1766), but the next year the Townshend Acts were passed, laying duties on paper, tea, and some other things imported into the colonies. |