The American Revolution, or War of Independence

Colonization

Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. He mistook it for India. The misunderstanding was cleared up a few years later when the Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci, explored that that coast and found that it was not India.

Colonization of America on a large scale began in the 17^th century due to the changing conditions in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of poor peasants who had lost their land in Britain and Germany were forced to leave their native countries and search for new homes across the Atlantic.

Puritans

A group of Puritans set sail from Plymouth early in September 1620, in a ship called the Mayflower. After a long voyage across a stormy sea they dropped anchor at Cape Cod Bay on November 11. These Puritans are generally spoken of as the “Pilgrim fathers”.

The Puritans set up a more democratic form of government than that of the southern colonies, yet it was a bourgeois order with a theocracy at the top. At first the Pilgrims had a hard time cultivating the virgin land, but when they began to prosper, they expanded their holdings. They drove the Indians off their hunting-grounds and took the land for their own use. The Puritans who had come to America in search of freedom, believing that all men had a right to freedom; they themselves denied this freedom to the homeless immigrants and oppressed them.

Frontiersmen

Many people broke away from their masters and went into the wilderness. They were called frontiersmen. A frontiersman lived by himself. He was either a hunter, or boatman; or a wandering cowboy and mustang catcher; or a squatter who felled trees, built himself a log hut and cultivated land. The frontiersman obeyed no written laws. He obeyed only his own rules of behavior.

English Colonies

In the 18^th century a bitter struggle was fought between the ruling classes of England, France, Holland and Spain to determine to which country the American continent should belong. England took over the Spanish and Dutch settlements and changed the name of New Amsterdam to New York. The combat with France lasted much longer. The wars between France and the Indians were described by Fennimore Cooper in his “Leather-Stocking Tales”. They are called the Franco-Indian Wars, or the Seven-Year War. In the end England, then the richest and strongest maritime power, defeated her rivals and became supreme ruler of the North-American continent.

Indians

The Indians met the first Europeans with hospitality. But when the Indians were cheated and plundered and driven off their hunting-grounds, naturally they answered their enemy with blood and fire. The way the Indians were annihilated by the white race constitutes one of the darkest pages in the history of mankind.

Slavery

At first Europeans tried to capture and use Indians. But the American Indians never made good slaves: in captivity they died like flies.

So the colonists started bringing convicts from the prisons of Europe as labour, and also Negroes from Africa. Slavery was legal only in the Southern colonies. During the following decades the black population of America increased rapidly.

The shipping companies also organized the kidnapping of white children twelve and thirteen years of age. In 1627 ships arrived bringing 1.500 children kidnapped by “spirits” in European ports. They were sold as slaves to the planters.

Another type of white slaves imported to America was poor wretches from the cities and villages of Ireland, Scotland and other countries. They were poor artisans and peasants, unable to pay their passage to America, and ready to risk everything to save their families from starvation.

The American Revolution, or War of Independence

The development of industry in such of the English colonies as New York and Pennsylvania was constantly restricted by the ruling classes of the mother country. The British bourgeoisie did not want the colonies to have the economy of their own, fearing they would develop into a dangerous rival. But by the middle of the 18^th century a generation of the bourgeoisie had grown up in America who had lost any feeling of blood with the British and for whom America was their homeland. They had an enormous rebellious influence in the colonies that grew from year to year. In the second half of the century the colonial bourgeoisie became powerful enough to start armed struggle against Britain. In 1774 a Continental Congress in Philadelphia called together representatives from all the different colonies and unity of the thirteen colonies was established.

The first armed conflict between England and America occurred on April 19, 1775. The difficulty in the armed struggle against Britain was that the rebels did not have the support of all their fellow-countrymen. The number who remained loyal to the British king was large. They were the planters, the land speculators and rich citizens. They belong to the Loyalist Party. But the artisans and the laborers, and the small farmers were ready to give their all to the Revolution. They were the soldiers in George Washington’s army. Their party was the Republican Party.

During all the years of war the Republican army suffered a shortage of men and ammunition because many in America remained indifferent to the Revolution. Among them were immigrants from other parts of the world who did not understand the state of affairs. They thought that a “quarrel’ between the English colonies and Britain had nothing to do with them. It was not their business. Many of the frontiersmen, too, who formerly had been white slaves, were passive. They saw no difference between the manufacturers and landowners of Britain and those of the colonies. They trusted no one.

On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared themselves a Democratic Republic, issued a Declaration of Independence and later adopted a Constitution. (Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence). But the war with England dragged on till 1783.

In 1778 an alliance arranged with France brought a French fleet to the American shores and helped defeat the English on the sea. The French general Lafayette, later statesman in the French Revolution, helped the Americans against the English on the land. In a treaty signed on September 3, 1783, England officially declared that the war had ended. The American colonies became the United States.

The Republican Party fell apart after the Revolution. Those who defended the interests of the rich called themselves the FEDERALISTS. The left wing of what used to be the Republican Party formed the Democratic Party headed by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson and his party achieved such important reforms as the nationalization of north-western lands and the separation of the Church from the States, and started a long and serious campaign for the abolition of slavery.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31