Colonial Rebellion
“And what do we mean by the Revolution? The War? That was only an effect and consequence of it.” — John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 1815
1763 Map, New York Public Library
Any history of the American Revolution should begin with the French & Indian War (1754-63) we read about in Chapter 3, without which no rebellion would have taken place. Take a look at the map above. The British took over North America at the end of the war, ruling the region north of Florida and west to the Mississippi River. Colonists wouldn’t have broken from Britain if they still needed their protection from the French (green on the map), who’d blocked western expansion in the Ohio Valley. Americans and Redcoats fought together against the French but, as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt, and colonial militia resented the contempt of their superiors in the British military. Some colonists didn’t think that they needed the British anymore and the population inhabiting these growing, resource-rich colonies was virtually self-selected for rebellion against authority, many of its settlers having emigrated from the British Isles to seek greater freedom. They bristled under British attempts to keep them near the East Coast and quarreled over financial issues regarding taxes and trade. By 1763, it was time to dust off the Join or Die cartoon Ben Franklin had drawn up in 1755 to rally colonists on behalf of the British against the French; but, this time, they were rallying against their own rulers.
Join or Die Cartoon by Benjamin Franklin, 1755
After the French & Indian War, the British tried and failed to diffuse Indian conflict along the frontier by drawing a Proclamation Line down the spine of the Appalachian Range (red line above), barring settlement west of that boundary. The British were overextended financially and geographically after their win over France and they wanted to push more settlers along a north-south axis to Anglicize French Canada (make it more English) and establish a claim to Florida. The border wasn’t effective in keeping settlers like Daniel Boone from going west and caused resentment among those who thought the British were trying to hem them in so as to better control and tax them. Fighting Indians along this frontier during Pontiac’s War of 1763 galvanized settlers even more, forging unity they later employed against the British.
Artist John Mix Stanley’s Imaginary Rendering of Pontiac
For Indians in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, it’s no coincidence that they tried to unite at this point, primarily under the Odawa (or Ottawa) leader Pontiac. As we saw in Chapter 3, Indians in the French Pays d’en Haut(“upper country”) triangulated their relationship with Europeans by playing French and British off against each other — shifting alliances based on diplomatic and trade terms. Neither British nor French could afford to sever their alliance with all Indians out of fear that they would join the other side and gang up on them. Now, after 1763, the French were gone and it was basically expansion-minded Whites against Indians, a misnomer (based on Christopher Columbus’ original misunderstanding of his whereabouts in the Caribbean) that became increasingly common among British Americans instead of individual tribal names like Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Cherokee, etc. Indians, too, began to see themselves increasingly as one group but struggled to unify. Linguistic barriers and traditional rivalries made it difficult for tribes to communicate and cooperate with each other. Pontiac’s uprising was a brutal conflict that included treacheries on both sides and civilian casualties. Similar to what we saw with Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) on a smaller scale in Chapter 5, the British preferred to tamp down hostilities and maintain peace along the frontier, but settlers pushed for war and expansion. Pontiac’s War not only exacerbated Britain’s relationship with American colonists but also bound the colonists together in a shared experience, helping to lay the foundation for future cooperation against the British.
Geographic expansion and Indian conflict, then, complicated the relationship between Britain and their American colonists. Also, some masters feared Britain’s potential power to outlaw slavery in the colonies. Yet, as is often the case in human conflict, be it marital, political, or military, money was at the root of the problem. The British tried to crack down on smuggling, regulate currency, and collect import taxes, enforcing the Navigation Acts they’d passed in mid-century to enforce their mercantilist monopoly on American trade. American merchants protested against British officials being able to search their homes and warehouses for contraband. One of their lawyers in Boston, James Otis, Jr., wrote, “Taxation without representation was tyranny.” They’d been arguing the same since at least as far back as 1750
