The Coming Revolution: Colonial Background
Copyright © 2005-6, Henry J. Sage
When John Adams said that the American Revolution had begun in the hearts and minds of the people long before the firing began at Lexington, he was referring to the era of the Stamp Act of 1765, the first piece of British legislation to get the colonials’ backs up. One can argue, however, that the revolution began when the first colonists left their homes to settle in America. Most of them were, in a sense, already rebelling against a life that offered them few opportunities.
A poor Englishman in 1650 or 1700 had little to no chance of becoming a landowner. He would often find himself the victim of chronic underemployment, when there was not enough work to go around. For a poor young woman, the only options for survival often seemed to be either begging or prostitution unless they were willing to turn to outright thievery. Country dwellers were beholden to the landowners, and city dwellers were lucky to find employment with merchants, blacksmiths, innkeepers or other tradesmen.
The trip to America was daunting; many did not survive the Atlantic voyage. Since large numbers of colonists came as indentured servants, their introduction to colonial America was often just as harsh and forbidding as life at home had been. The difference was that in America there was a light, however dim, at the end of the tunnel: if they could just hold out for the three to seven years of their indentures, they had an excellent chance of becoming landowners themselves, since cheap land in America was plentiful, especially on the frontiers.
By the mid-1700s thousands of colonists either born in America or having arrived from Europe themselves had begun to take advantage of America’s opportunities. Virtually all of them considered themselves British subjects, and few were unhappy with that notion. Indeed, many colonists had brought bits and pieces of English culture with them, as the names of colonial towns and villages make clear. As long as the British continued their policy of benign neglect of the colonies, everything was fine.
True, the navigation acts that placed costs and restrictions on trade could be cumbersome; the colonists, however, found that it was easy to skirt the navigation laws with little fear of being caught or punished. Merchants and farmers began to prosper, and while the large plantations in the South or the fine homes in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia could not rival those in London or the English countryside, they were by no means humble habitations.
Behind the growing contentment of the Americans was a readiness for rebellion based upon the notion that they had carved a new existence out of a demanding wilderness and would be ready to defend and protect their homeland against any intruders, even their British relations. At the conclusion of the long series of colonial wars that had begun before 1700 and continued until 1763, Great Britain found herself strapped financially. Suddenly the colonies were recognized as a source of revenue, and benign neglect ended; when that happened, the trouble began quickly.
The colonists were used to being left alone; when the British ceased leaving them to their own devices, revolution of one sort or another was all but inevitable.