Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776 Fr...

Multinational, profit-driven, materialistic, politically self-conscious, power-hungry, religiously plural: America three hundred years ago - and today. Here are Britain's mainland American colonies after 1680, in the process of becoming the first modern society - a society the earliest colonists never imagined, a "new order of the ages" that anticipated the American revolution, Jon Butler's panoramic view of the colonies in this epoch transforms our customary picture of pre-Revolutionary America. it reveals a strikingly "modern" character that belies the 18th century quaintness fixed in history. Stressing the middle and late decades (the hitherto "dark ages") of the American colonial experience, and emphasising the importance of the middle and southern colonies as well as New England, this book shows us vast revolutionary changes before 1776 among a fantastically diverse assortment of peoples. here are polyglot populations of English, Indians, Africans, Scots, Germans, Swiss, and French; a society of small colonial cities with enormous urban complexities; an economy of prosperous farmers thrust into international market economies; peoples of immense wealth, a burgeoning middle class, and incredible poverty. Butler depicts settlers pursuing sophisticated provincial politics that ultimately sparked revolution and a new nation; developing new patterns in production, consumption, crafts, and trades that remade commerce at home and abroad; and fashioning a society remarkably pluralistic in religion, whose tolerance nonetheless did not extend to African or Indians. Here was a society that turned protest into revolution and made itself many times during the next centuries - a society that, for 90 years before 1776, was already becoming America.

Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776 fr...

In the years before the Revolution, anti-British feelings spread throughout the state. About one-third of the people living here supported the rebels, one-third supported England, and one-third remained neutral. In 1776 New Jersey declared itself an independent state and joined the colonial side in the Revolutionary War. New Jersey was an important state during the Revolutionary War because of its location near the center of the thirteen colonies and between New York City and Philadelphia. Because of this, more battles were fought in New Jersey than in any other state. The Americans and British fought 100 battles, both large and small, here. Many people consider the Battle of Trenton to be the turning point of the Revolution. Immediately after winning Trenton, General George Washington won the battle of Princeton. Having lost two battles in a matter of hours, the British fled New Jersey for New York. Washington and his troops spent the rest of the winter in Morristown, and the United States was well on its way to victory.

After the Civil War, the industrial revolution was under way, and New Jersey continued to grow. More factories opened, and cities like Trenton, Newark, Paterson, and Camden got bigger as immigrants from Europe came to work in them. Railroads were laid to connect the cities and to transport materials. At first, most immigrants came from Ireland and Germany. Later, people came from Italy and from countries throughout Eastern Europe. In 1910 half the state's population was born or had parents who were born outside the United States. As city populations grew, farm populations shrank. With so many people working in factories, issues like child labor and protection for workers became important. The popularity of these reforms brought Woodrow Wilson to power as governor in 1910. He left office in 1913 to become President of the United States and is the only New Jersey governor to become president. As both governor and president Wilson supported welfare reforms to protect workers and to keep companies from becoming too big. The state's economic expansion had a lot to do with the genius of its inventors. Thomas Edison is probably most famous. Among his thousands of inventions, including the light bulb, Edison helped develop the motion picture while working in New Jersey. Fort Lee became the motion picture capital of the world in the early 1900s. There, Fatty Arbuckle, Mary Pickford, Pearl White, and other stars revolutionized entertainment with their movies.

In April 1776, Adams's extraordinarily influential pamphlet, Thoughts on Government, was published. He set forth a new framework for government - one that included three separate branches: an executive, a bicameral (two house) legislature, and an independent judiciary. In May 1776, two months before the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, Adams spearheaded passage of a Resolution requesting each of the thirteen "United Colonies" to adopt its own new form of government.

The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies,[2] the Thirteen American Colonies,[3] were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th centuries, the American Enlightenment led these colonies to revolution, and declaring full independence in July 1776. With victory over Britain in the American Revolutionary War the former colonies were confirmed as the new United States of America. Just prior to declaring independence, the Thirteen Colonies in their traditional groupings were: New England (New Hampshire; Massachusetts; Rhode Island; Connecticut); Middle (New York; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Delaware); Southern (Maryland; Virginia; North Carolina; South Carolina; and Georgia).[4] The Thirteen Colonies came to have very similar political, constitutional, and legal systems, dominated by Protestant English-speakers. The first of these colonies was Virginia Colony in 1607, a Southern colony. While all these colonies needed to become economically viable, the founding of the New England colonies, as well as the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania, were substantially motivated by their founders' concerns related to the practice of religion. The other colonies were founded for business and economic expansion. The Middle Colonies were established on an earlier Dutch colony, New Netherland. All the Thirteen Colonies were part of Britain's possessions in the New World, which also included territory in Canada, Florida, and the Caribbean.[5]

Pennsylvania's political history ran a rocky course during the provincial era. There was a natural conflict between the proprietary and popular elements in the government which began under Penn and grew stronger under his successors. As a result of the English Revolution of 1688 which overthrew King James II, Penn was deprived of his province from 1692 until 1694. A popular party led by David Lloyd demanded greater powers for the Assembly, and in 1696 "Markham's Frame of Government" granted some of these. In December 1699, the Proprietor again visited Pennsylvania and, just before his return to England in 1701, agreed with the Assembly on a revised constitution, the "Charter of Privileges," which remained in effect until 1776. This guaranteed the Assembly full legislative powers and permitted the three Delaware counties to have a separate legislature. It made Penn's earlier assurances of religious liberty absolute and irrevocable.

By 1776, the Province of Pennsylvania had become the third largest English colony in America, though next to the last to be founded. Philadelphia had become the largest English-speaking city in the world next to London. There were originally only three counties: Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks, but by 1773 there were eleven. Westmoreland, the last new county created before the Revolution, was the first county located entirely west of the Allegheny Mountains.

Smallpox greatly affected many people in Boston, including prominent figures of the colonial Boston community. During the 1764 outbreak, one of Paul Revere's children was infected with the disease. This forced the family to quarantine in their North End home until the child recovered.[7] During the 1760s, Dr. Joseph Warren operated a smallpox inoculation clinic on Castle Island in Boston Harbor. In 1764, Warren inoculated John Adams, the future second President of the United States.[8] In fact, Warren inoculated much of Boston against smallpox, until his death at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. Later, in 1776, Abigail Adams inoculated herself and her children against the disease. In a letter to her husband John, Abigail recounts the experience and the atmosphere around inoculations in Boston: "Such a Spirit of inoculation [sic] never before took place; the Town and every House in it, are as full as they can hold....God Grant that we may all go comfortably thro [sic] the Distemper."[9]

The Declaration of IndependenceAs war broke out, the governments of each colony formally declared their independence. On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee made a motion for independence before the Second Continental Congress. Four days later, a committee was selected to write a document explaining the reasons for separating from Britain. Congress voted to ratify the Declaration of Independence that was drafted primarily by Thomas Jefferson and prominently signed by John Hancock on July 4, 1776. The new country was called the United States of America.

Even before the United States was founded in 1776, debt existed. Paying for the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783) was the start of the country's debt. Some of the founding fathers formed a group and borrowed money from France and the Netherlands to pay for the war.

Despite the American rebels' failed efforts to bring their revolution to Nova Scotia and Canada, they did win their war against Britain in the 13 colonies. Prominent American colonists signed the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. After a protractedstruggle, British forces surrendered in October 1781. Two years later the Treaty of Paris formally recognized the United States of America. 041b061a72