After independence, revolution only partly realized

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues., or Wed., July 2, 3 or 4


As Independence Day is celebrated, it’s wise to recall that regular people were vital to that victory, whether it’s recalled as the American Revolution, the War for Independence, or the Revolutionary War. Further, while independence was achieved, the promise of that revolution was only partly fulfilled.

At least 90 declarations of independence were issued by labor unions, communities and states before the summer of 1776, wrote the late historian Howard Zinn. New York drafted one document that stated, “We would rather choose to be separate from, than to continue any longer in connection with, such oppressors. We, the Committee of Mechanics in union, do … hereby publicly declare that [the] Continental Congress use their utmost endeavors … to cause these United Colonies to became independent of Great Britain.”

The French and Indian War had ended in 1763, a seven-year conflict with colonists fighting alongside colonizers against the French and Native Americans. Like most wars, it had many unintended consequences.

“The war had brought glory for the generals, death to the privates, wealth for the merchants, and unemployment for the poor,” Zinn wrote.

It also resulted in a colossal debt, so Great Britain tried to pay it off through new taxes such as the Stamp Act in 1765 (a new tax on newspapers and other printed material) and a 1773 tax on tea.

“Wars, mismanagement and greediness led the British to try to squeeze as much wealth as they could from the colonies,” wrote historians Jim O’Brien and Nick Thorkelson in “Underhanded History of the USA.” “When Britain tried to tax the colonies and regulate the colonial merchants, revolution broke out.”

Bob Simpson in “The Incredible Shrinking American Dream” wrote, “The American Revolution began as a tax revolt and escalated into a widespread protest over poor economic conditions. Working people organized secret revolutionary committees called the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. They boycotted, demonstrated, rioted and terrorized English authorities.”

Between the stamp and tea taxes (“without representation”), working people increasingly objected to Britain ordering colonists to house British soldiers in their homes and to even give up their jobs to accommodate those soldiers. In fact, American ropemakers were some of the instigators behind the Boston Massacre because soldiers had taken their work.

About 9 p.m. on March 5, 1770, some 200 angry Americans confronted 14 or so soldiers from Britain’s 29th Regiment, protesting British troops quartered in their homes and stealing their jobs. The mob had formed from nearby taverns, and they picked up rocks and sticks and joined a group of boys hurling snowballs and horse manure at the British outside England’s customhouse, where imports were brought for distribution throughout the country.

The rowdy protest – historian Edmund Morgan described the scene as “thick with epithets” – became bolder until one demonstrator clubbed a soldier. The troops fired and 11 protestors were shot, including former slave Crispus Attucks (often credited with striking the first blow). Five men died, including Attucks.

“They came from taverns, they were white and black, and they were not gentlemen,” wrote historian Thaddeus Russell.

Such regular Americans were the target audience of Founder Thomas Jefferson in his Declaration of Independence, which helped wealthy Americans attract ordinary colonists, who were necessary for independence to be feasible.

“The reality behind those inspiring words was that a rising class of important people needed to enlist on their side enough Americans to defeat England, without disturbing too much the relation of wealth and power that had developed over 150 years of colonial history,” Zinn wrote.

The grassroots were angry. The tea tax sparked a boycott on British tea, and a shoemaker, George Hewes, was a leader of a direct-action protest that came to be known as the Boston Tea Party, where protestors dressed as Native Americans dumped loads of tea into the sea.

But idealism existed, too.

“The American Revolution was built on principles,” O’Brien and Thorkelson wrote, “that people have the right to overthrow a government that has become oppressive. Stated in the Declaration of Independence, [it] was a new and startling notion in the 1770s.”

However, the results were different to different members of American society. Merchants benefited from taxes on imports, making their prices cheaper; plantation owners could sell cotton worldwide at prices they set; and indentured servitude faded. However, slavery ended only in the North, continuing elsewhere; Native Americans weren’t considered and continued to lose their lands to settlers; and women lost voting rights where they’d previously had them – and couldn’t own property, sign contracts or file lawsuits.

“The American war is over, but this is far from the case with the American Revolution,” wrote Founder Benjamin Rush in 1783. “On the contrary, only the first act of the great drama is at a close.”

Whether Act III or not, Americans still must act to continue the revolution started by working people.