Charter Oak & Colonial Governance

• In 1687, Governor Edmund Andros of the Dominion of New England attempted to seize Connecticut's charter to consolidate New England colonies under King James II.
• Colonists hid the Connecticut charter in an oak tree to prevent Andros from seizing it and dissolving their self-governance, which the charter, granted in 1662, provided.
• The Charter Oak symbolized resistance to tyranny until it fell in 1856.
• The Glorious Revolution in England (1688) led to the collapse of the Dominion of New England and the restoration of Connecticut’s charter by William and Mary.
• The colonies experimented with self-governance before the Constitution was written in 1787, fighting for personal freedoms.

Types of Colonial Government

• Queen Elizabeth I authorized Sir Walter Raleigh to establish a colony in America, driven by mercantilism (the economic theory that European nations prospered with full treasuries and exporting more than importing).
• Colonies were to supply inexpensive raw materials to the home country and buy expensive goods in return.
• Roanoke, England’s first North American colony failed due to its location and lack of treasure.
• In 1607, the Virginia Company of London established Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement, on a peninsula on Virginia’s James River.

Charter Colonies

• Settlers in Jamestown had a royal grant from King James I, making it a charter colony with rights to colonize, govern, and trade with England.
• In 1619, Jamestown colonists formed the House of Burgesses, their own legislature, prior to the Pilgrims arrival in Massachusetts.
• By 1732, Britain had 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast, each with a governor and a two-house legislature.
• Governors in charter colonies were elected by popular vote or chosen by the founding company; the upper house (Council) was made up of leading citizens, and the lower house (Assembly) was elected by popular vote.
• Voting was limited to adult males who owned property and belonged to a particular religious group; women, Africans, Native Americans, Catholics, Jews, and the poor were excluded.
• Political and economic troubles caused charter colonies to fail; activities of self-government, such as the printing of paper money, were forbidden.
• By the mid-1700s, only Connecticut and Rhode Island remained as charter colonies.

Royal Colonies

• Royal Colonies were under the direct control of the British monarchy, each ruled by a governor, council, and assembly.
• The king appointed the governor and council to collect revenues, while the assembly was popularly elected.
• All laws passed by a crown colony's legislature were reviewed by the king and his ministers and could be rejected if they violated mercantile theory.
• By the 1770s, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were all royal colonies.

Proprietary Colonies

• Proprietary colonies were owned by a person or group; Roanoke was a proprietary colony.
• The Penn family once owned Pennsylvania and Delaware; Lord Baltimore was given Maryland by the king like a medieval lord.
• Proprietary colonies often failed and were taken over by the crown; by the time of the Declaration of Independence, only Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania remained in private hands.
• In proprietary colonies, the governor and council were chosen by the proprietor, while the people elected members of the lower house.
• Disagreements often arose between the governor and the assembly, with the assembly using its power to tax to influence legislation.

Institutions Within Colonial Government

• Colonial governments administered country business, enforced laws, and managed local courts.
• Colonists considered themselves British subjects with rights and privileges enjoyed in Britain, but were not represented in Parliament.
• Each colony’s political institutions included a charter/constitution-limited government, a governor, a governor’s council, a popularly elected assembly, courts, and local governments.

Government Limited by Agreements

• The Mayflower Compact was the first colonial statement about the rights of the governed and expressed a belief in limited government.
• Colonial constitutions in proprietary and royal colonies restricted the powers of the king and proprietor, continuing with the Magna Carta in 1215.

Colonial Governor

• The governor had the power to enforce laws, administer laws passed by the assembly, and oversee colonial defense.
• Royal Governors were instructed to send detailed reports, make a profit for the crown, maintain the colony’s defenses, and keep legislatures/courts loyal to the crown.
• Governors focused on making the colony profitable for the crown; colonists focused on making a living, and governors earned incomes well above the local level.

Council

• The colonial council was one of the two houses of the colonial legislature.
• Only in charter colonies were council members elected; in others, they were appointed by the king or proprietor.
• Acts required council approval before the governor could sign them into law, but the council often withheld approval.

Assembly

• Members of the assembly were elected by popular vote in every colony except Georgia, and had power to raise money.
• The constitution states that all bills relating to raising money for the US government must begin in the House of Representatives, the modern equivalent of the colonial assemblies.
• Assemblies were responsible for raising local defense forces, maintaining law and order, regulating trade, writing land ownership laws, and dealing with Native American problems.

English Common Law

• The colonies based their systems of local government and courts on English common law, which is a body of written and unwritten rights and legal practices.
• The right to a jury trial was safeguarded, and colonists prized freedom of speech and the holding of elections.
• Colonists believed they were exercising the rights that belonged to all British citizens.

Relationships Between the Monarch and the Colonies

• Three factors including salutary neglect, lack of communication, and growing anger from the monarch dominated the relationship.

Salutary Neglect

• This was a British policy where laws controlling colonial trade were written but not enforced, allowing colonists to develop in their own ways.
• From the 1600s to the early 1700s, Britain faced constant turmoil, so colonists learned to take responsibility for their own economic and military security.

Lack of Communication

• Distance made communication slow and unreliable; as a result, the British monarchs had no real feeling for what was happening in the colonies and didn’t realize colonists were developing new ideas about government.

Growing Royal Anger

• The monarch was unaware of the colonists’ new attitudes.
• The colonies were not fulfilling their original purpose bc the budget for colonial administration and defense exceeded the income generated by the colonies
• The costs of collecting taxes often exceeded the amount of money collected and so in 1760s, King George III looked for new ways to end period of neglect since colonies were not paying.

British Legislative Acts that Led to the Revolution

• A long series of wars between Great Britain and France ended in 1763.

Proclamation of 1763

• Saw the Appalachian Mountains as a natural barrier between the American colonies and Native American territory to prevent war by keeping them separate.
• By limiting the colonists to the Atlantic seaboard, policymakers could reserve the Ohio Valley for London-based land speculators.
• Parliament closed the western lands to further settlement by issuing the Proclamation of 1763, guaranteeing that the colonies’ own land speculators would lose their investments in the West.

Sugar Act of 1764

• The Molasses Act of 1733 put a high tax on non-British sugar and molasses but was never strictly enforced.
• The Sugar Act of 1764 reduced the tax, but the British were determined to enforce it. It had the dual purpose of raising revenue and ending trade with French colonies.
• Colonies resisted by smuggling foreign sugar and molasses since the important triangular trade would have become less profitable without cheap sugar and molasses.
• One leg of the trade began in New England, where molasses was turned into rum, which was then traded in Africa for slaves, later sold in the West Indies for more sugar, molasses, and cash profit.
• Colonists couldn’t afford as many factory-made goods from GB without the profits from the rum-slaves-molasses exchange.

Stamp Act of 1765

• Placed taxes on newspapers, licenses, legal documents, playing cards, and other printed material; items had to have a stamp placed on them or be printed on stamped paper.
• Colonists refused to buy the stamps and paper and started riots that frightened stamp distributors into resigning.
• Committees of Correspondence circulated pamphlets that attacked the Stamp Act + pointed that Americans were not represented in Parliament with the slogan of "No taxation without representation".
• Lawmakers reacted by repealing the act in 1766.

Townshend Acts of 1767

• Intended to raise additional revenues by taxing imports of items like glass, paper, paint, lead, and tea.
• New officials were appointed to enforce the duties, and royal governors would be paid from this source.
• Colonial leaders realized they would not longer be able to use control of governors’ salaries as a weapon to influence policies.
• Another boycott of British goods was organized, leading to the repeal of every duty except for the tax on tea.

Other Acts

• The Quartering Act forced townspeople to house British troops in their homes.
• Writs of Assistance allowed law officers to enter any home, building, or ship in search of smuggled goods.
• In protest of the tax, a group of colonists threw a cargo of tea into Boston harbor in December 1773, and Parliament retaliated in 1774 by closing Boston harbor under the Boston Port Act until the city paid for the tea.
• The Boston Port Act, designed to punish Massachusetts, were called the Intolerable Acts
• By 1775, many conservative Americans had joined their liberal friends in thinking about independence.

Early Efforts to Unify the American Colonies

• The colonies were slow to coordinate their resistance to the Intolerable Acts
• New Haven colony became part of Connecticut, and Plymouth colony was absorbed by Massachusetts.
• Differences in attitudes, lifestyles, and economic conditions, plus a lack of communication, isolated one colony from another.
• In London, colonial agents competed with one another in their efforts to protect the interests of individual colonies.
• Some colonies felt that they had more in common with Great Britain than with other colonies.
• Two major efforts were the Albany Plan of Union of 1754 in the Stamp Act Congress of 1765.

Albany Plan of Union

• Due to the threat of attack by the French and their NA allies, colonial representatives met in Albany, NY.
• Benjamin Franklin proposed the Albany Plan, where the colonies would unite in defense of any member threatened with raids or invasion.
• Delegates agreed to a plan with a grand council with powers to levy troops, negotiate treaties, declare war, and administer western lands.
• No colonial assembly could be convinced to approve the plan, and most colonial assemblies refused to yield any part of their power to act independently.

Stamp Act Congress

• Delegates from nine colonies met in NYC in in 1765 to petition the king for repeal of the Stamp Act, inspiring action in all 13 colonies
• Marches were made to the docks to prevent the unloading of the tax stamps.
• This was enforced in the streets by groups of young Americans called the “Sons of Liberty'.
• Showed the advantage of working together.

Other Unified Actions

• The Sons of Liberty remained in existence and organized violent street protests against British laws.
• Committees of Correspondence reported to each other from different colonies.
• Nonimportation Agreements called for all Americans to boycott British products, which struck against the mercantile theory and encouraged the manufacture of American-made products.
• By 1774, colonies replaced their individuals self-interest with cooperative efforts, leading to the organization of the First Continental Congress

Accomplishments of the First Continental Congress

• The colonists reacted angrily to the British reprisals that followed the Boston Tea Party.
• A number of colonial governments called for a meeting of all the colonies (except for Georgia) to discuss the Intolerable Acts.
• The meeting took place on Sept 5, 1774

Discussions and Declaration

• The meetings of the First Continental Congress lasted nearly 2 months with figures such as George Washington, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and John Adams attending.
• Most delegates were anxious to find a peaceful solution with Britain despite some radical speeches.
• The First Continental Congress drafted a petition to the king, called the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which was meant as the basis of a peaceful relationship between the colonies and the home country.
• Included in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances was the belief that the inhabitants of the English colonies were entitled to life, liberty, and property, and they have seated to any sovereign power to take this without their consent.
• The Congress planned a boycott that would halt all trade with Great Britain until the Intolerable Acts were repealed.

Importance of the Congress

• It proved that the colonies could forget their differences and work together
• The delegates voted to meet again in May 1775 if the British government didn’t make a positive response to their petition.
• Very few Americans were thinking about independence.
• Armed militiamen known as Minutemen stepped up their training and stockpiled guns and ammunition to protect their rights as British citizens.

Government Under the Second Continental Congress

• At the Second Continental Congress, neither the British nor the Americans were in a mood for compromise.
• The Congress organized a Continental Army under George Washington, enforcing the belief that the Massachusetts war concerned them all.
• The Second Continental Congress served as the colonies' government for six years from 1775 to 1781.

Declaration of Independence

• The war was a year old when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed that Congress issue a Declaration of Independence.
• A five-member committee led by Thomas Jefferson worked on the early craft, and two days later on July 4, 1776 the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted.
• It had 3 major sections:
  • Introduction explains the necessity to declare independence with the laws of nature.
  • The middle section lists the wrong suffered by the colonies at the hands of the king
  • The third section calls for the creation of a new government
• 4 ideals emerged:
  • All people are created equal and have certain basic rights
  • The government's purpose is to safeguard these rights
  • The right of a government to rule comes from the people
  • The people have the right to change their government
• The four principles reflected important ideas of the Enlightenment, and Enlightenment thinkers believed in natural rights that were independent of any government
• The government derives its power from the governed, therefore the people should have the right to change their government.
• This Declaration raised morale when Washington was losing battles in and around New York City

Foreign Relations

• Congress spoke for all 13 of the new states and aided by Ben Franklin signed an allegiance with France in 1778 and negotiated agreements with the Netherlands.

Domestic Affairs

• The new states were jealous of one another, and the country did not have a chief executive to lead it or a national court system.
• Congress lacked an effective system for collecting taxes, and so they ordered the printing of over $240 million in paper money known as continentals, backed only by the new republic's credit.

Designing a New Government

• A committee first proposed a new government in 1776, but it dragged on for over a year.
• In 1777, Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, which required the approval of all 13 states before it could go into effect.

Strength and Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation

• States agreed to a number of cooperating measures, including:
  • The creation of a national legislative body scheduled to meet annually and authorize to conduct the nation’s business.
  • One vote per state to be casted as instructed by the various state legislators.
  • Proclamation of a league of friendship amongst the states.
• The government was empowered to provide for the common defense, safeguard individual liberties, and maintain the general welfare, but the states did not give up much of their independence.

Strengths of the Articles

1. The central government showed that the states were willing to cooperate in the conduct of the war
2. By forming a loose union, the states became less open to take over by stronger European nations
3. Confederacy helped Americans think of themselves as citizens
4. Confederacy dealt wisely with the vast territories acquired in 1783 that lay between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

• The Land Ordinance of 1785 set up a system of surveying the territories establishing
• The NW Ordinance of 1787 encouraged settlement and provided away for new states to join the union as equals

Weaknesses of the Articles

1. No solution was found for the financial problems that plagued the Continental Congress
2. Since the government didn't regulate interstate commerce, the states were free to set up tariffs on each other.
3. The central government was given only limited military authority.
4. No provision was made for a chief executive or for a national bureaucracy.
5. The government of the Common Federation lacked police authority.
6. Each state was given one vote, magnifying the issues
7. Amendments to the Articles of Confederation required a US vote by all 13 states meaning bad changes were hard to achieve

• Great Britain recognized the new nation in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.

Events Leading to the Constitution

• One major problem was finding a way to regulate interstate commerce but state delegates didn't make much progress.
• In 1786, Shays Rebellion broke out, led by Daniel Shays with debt-ridden farmers marching on a courthouse/arsenal in Springfield demanding lower tax.
• The Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation.
• When the convention didn't begin, the 55 delegates included many of the new nation's leaders, such as George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton (known as farmers of the constitution).
• The convention pledged itself to secrecy

Decision to Create a New Government

• The delegates agreed to create a new strong federal government
• The Virginia Plan called for a strong central government composed of three branches:
  • A legislative branch to make the laws
  • An executive branch to administer the laws
  • A judicial branch to interpret the laws and to administer the court systems
• The convention's first controversy arose over representation in the federal legislator in regard to smaller states not having as much pull.
• New Jersey countered with a proposal for a unicameral legislator where every state would have equal representation; similar to the Articles of Confederation.
• Issues of slavery and the regulation of interstate commerce caused additional controversy.

Major Compromises

Bicameral Legislature

• The issue of representation was resolved by the Connecticut Compromise, where all states would be equally represented in the Senate, and each state's population would determine its representation in the House.

Slavery

• The compromise on slavery prohibited interference with the slave trade until 1808.
• In counting states' population for representation in the House each slave counted as 3/5 of a person (modified by the 13th amend. in 1865).

Interstate Commerce

• Southern states feared the North would cut off their cotton trade with great Britain,
• The government was allowed to regulate interstate commerce but forbid taxing exports

Other Decisions

• Article one described how the powers and limitations of Congress took up much of the convention’s time.
• Long arguments took place over article two which laid out the system of electing the pre.
  • Direct election would favor populous states.
  • To compromise, the election of the president was placed in the hands of the Electoral college.
• The farmers signed off the Constitution on September 17, 1787

Ratification of the Constitution

• Article 7 stated that It would not go into effect until it was approved by 2/3 of the states or nine of 13

Struggled for Ratification

• Split the nation into two political factions:
  • Federalist (favored government)
  • Anti-Federalist (opposed the constitution)
• Patrick Henry said "I look upon that paper as the most fatal plan that could possibly conceived to enslave a free people"
• Farmers who need credit also opposed because interests rates would be driven up by the constitution' banned.
• Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay argued to support the constitution, which were later published together as the federalist papers.
• Feds ensured a bill of rights to the constitution and to the people worried about being too controlled.

Constitution Ratified

• Constitution balances a federal identity with a national identity.

• The support of Washington, Franklin, and other leaders tipped the balance in favor and three states ratified before the end of 1787.

• Virginia, New York ratified in the summer of 1788

• North Carolina and Rhode Island followed

• The electoral college voted for George Washington as the first president and the first congress ran in 1789