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THE END OF COLONIZATION PERIOD ON THE AMERICAN CONTINENT IN THE XVIII CENTURY.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OR WAR OF INDEPENDENCE (1775-1783)
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. British bourgeoisie did not want the colonies to have an economy of their own, fearing they would develop into a dangerous rival. But by the middle of the 18th 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. The centre of culture moved from the Atlantic coast to the industrial colonies, and Philadelphia, the chief city of Pennsylvania became the cultural and political centre. 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 Congress organized what were to keep all good patriots informed of every act of the British Government.
The first armed conflict between England and America occurred on April 19, 1775. British troops attempted to capture military stores at Lexington and Concord but the American militia defended them and won their first victory.
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 British king was large. These were the planters, the land speculators and rich citizens, such as the professional money-lenders. They belonged to the Loyalist Party. But the artisans and the labors, and the small farmers who had hated the money-lenders since time immemorial, where ready to give their all to the Revolution. They were the soldiers who could be depended upon in George Washington’s army. Their party was the Republican Party.
On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared themselves a Democratic Republic, issued a Declaration of Independence and later adopted a Constitution. But the war with England dragged on till 1783. A decisive battle was famous battle of Saratoga when the Americans were victorious. But the British did not give up fighting and brought fresh troops to America while the Republican army lacked volunteers and had no military supplies. Starving and frozen, the army was compelled to retreat. The cold winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge was the turning- point in the American Revolution.
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 these 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, the mother country, 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: reduced to despair by the intolerable exploitation they had suffered, they trusted no one. To them any type of organization or authority was synonymous with oppression. An American historian characterizes the frontiersman follows as follows: he “was merchant and preacher, and soldier and king, and preacher, and soldier and king, and he ruled his realism as pleased him, and all others take warning “. The wilderness had given him his chance, the only chance that would ever come to him in all his life. And that chance he refused to surrender. All he wanted was to be let alone.
The problem that caused the greatest anxiety to the American leaders was not how to fight the professional British officers but how to keep the army and the population together until the common enemy was defeated. After two years of fighting, however, Washington did succeed in getting many of those frontiersmen to volunteer into the army. The Americans owed this to their revolutionary journalist, Thomas Paine.
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 land. On October 15, 1781, at Yorktown the English army surrendered to the Americans. 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. They changed many points in the Constitution. Now the poor farmers, the workers and artisans of the towns, who had done the actual fighting, had no lot in framing the laws under which they were to live. The left wing of what used to be the Republican Party formed the Democratic Party headed by Thomas Jefferson, who represented the common man and his agrarian interests. Jefferson and his party achieved such important reforms as the nationalization of north- western lands and the separation of the abolition of slavery. The writers and poets of the Revolution stood for this party in their struggle for the rights of man.
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