Economical Constraints Of The American Colonies example essay topic

It is easy to interpret the American Revolution simply as a struggle for equality. The magnanimous phrases of the Declaration of Independence have embedded in our hearts and minds glorious images of the Founding Fathers fighting for the natural rights of man. The American Revolution, however, also had a darker side to it, the side of self-interest and profit. The signers of the Declaration represented various classes - the working class, the wealthy land owners and merchants, the intellectuals, and the social elite. Each of these strata had its own set of expectations and fears, which lent a new dimension to the cause of the Revolution. The pressure of these internal, and often overlapping groups, combined with the oppressive external tyranny of the British Parliament gave momentum to the already snowballing revolt.

My goal in this paper is not to diminish the cause or tenets on which this country was founded, nor to mar the character of those Founding Fathers, but rather to illustrate some of the political, social, and especially economical constraints of the American colonies that surrounded the events leading to the signing of the Declaration. The Founding Fathers were also business men, and their revolutionary attitude wavered with economic irregularity. The series of taxation acts Parliament levied upon America to recoup its wartime debt took a serious toll on colonial businesses, increasing their debt and frustration with England. At the same time, colonial merchants also wanted to maintain ties with their primary consumer, England. After the French and Indian War, wealthy merchants had stock piles of inventory which had primarily been sold to British regiments that had been encamped throughout the colonies.

With their primary consumers gone, colonial merchants eagerly jumped on the bandwagon to boycott British goods, a way to maintain the sell of backlogged inventory to local colonies. After the Townshend Acts were repealed, however, these merchants were eager to continue their importation of British goods, in addition to selling their goods back out to the motherland. For the wealthy colonial merchants, the disruption of profit from the backlogged inventory led them to appear revolutionary as they boycotted British goods. Once the economic tide turned, they were back to building good relations with Britain (many becoming British loyalists).

The revolutionary spirit fluctuated with the prospects of profit. For the revolutionaries coming from lower social classes, economic factors would also influence their decisions. Local artisans, laborers, and small merchants who traded outside of the British Empire, embraced the boycott of British goods and severance with England entirely because it afforded them economic opportunities that made the risk of revolution worthwhile (p. 145, Berkin). These groups had been living under the yoke of unfair taxation and an inexhaustible source of British competition in labor and goods. Revolution, for them, meant "a release from Britain's mercantile policies, which restricted colonial trade with other nations, held out the promise of expanded trade and an end to the risks of smuggling (p. 145, Berkin)". Another large group, the Southern planters (of which Thomas Jefferson belonged), also had economic motives to end ties with England.

These elite Southern planters were land owners who had cornered the world market on tobacco. The only problem was, they were not the ones who marketed it. As it stood, pre-Revolution, the South planted and harvested the cash crop, while the British hauled it away and sold it. They did not haul it for free, either. "By 1760 [English duties on tobacco] had risen as high as 15 times the value of the tobacco (Fourth International, Frankel)". Jefferson, himself said The advantages made by the British merchants on the tobacco consigned to them were so enormous, that they spared no means of increasing those consignments.

A powerful engine for this purpose, was the giving good prices and credit, till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay, without selling his lands or slaves. Then they reduced the prices given him for his tobacco, so that let his shipments be ever so great, and his demand of necessaries ever so economical, they never permitted him to clear off his debt. These debts had become hereditary from father to son, for many generations, so that the planters were a species of property, annexed to certain mercantile houses in London (Fourth International, Frankel). Southern planters, therefore, aimed to free themselves of their escalating debt to the British through revolution, lest they remained, ironically, indentured servants in their own right. Other groups lacked the luxury of being so flippant with their loyalty. The social elite who occupied royal offices and who were paid by the crown owed their livelihood to the motherland.

Small farmers also pledged their allegiance to the king in hopes that they would be protected from their neighbors, the Southern planters, who had also gone the way of the patriot. Eventually, their pledges would not save them. Zealous patriots would use coercion or threat of violence to cast these "traitors" out. While economics was a major factor determining the loyalty of the revolutionaries, the spirit and idealism of men such as Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson gave purpose and direction to the frustration of the colonists. These men hailed from two different backgrounds, but managed to bridge the gap between the educated elite and the middle class.

Samuel Adams, came from a prosperous Boston family and was well-educated at Harvard. His Calvinistic upbringing had imbibed in him a keen sense of good and evil, a light in which he cast the American colonies versus England. He had also a strong sense of "colonial liberty (based on the charter, British law, and finally, natural right (p. 96, Oates)". With his flair for propaganda and tireless conviction that the British were violating the rights of his fellow men, his campaign for liberty quickly gained momentum. His public petitions to Parliament quoting the British constitution, dealt Britain a death blow - "No taxation without representation" became the war cry of the American revolutionaries.

Before long, Sam Adams had painted a picture of England as an antagonistic tyrant, an image that was easy for the angry and forlorn citizens of Boston to embrace. He was tireless, and most importantly mobilized in his systematic deconstruction of Parliamentary power. His actions and words were incendiary and they spread with ease like wildfire to the rest of the colonies. At another point in the spectrum, there was Thomas Jefferson. A Southern plantation owner, and student of the Enlightenment, he represented the educated elite.

He infiltrated the mind set of the time through eloquence, and by appealing to every man's sense of his own god-given rights. Jefferson stressed "natural law, human progress, and government as a rational institution (p. 101, Oates) in his pleas to the public. When Britain was exercising her rights upon the colonies through heavy taxation and the curbing of even day to day activities, such as the right to assembly, American colonists must have felt helpless. The realization that they did not own the lands they worked, or that they could keep the profits they reaped through their labor, must have given way to a larger fear - that one by one, their rights were being eked away with no end in sight.

The ingenuity of Jefferson's strategy was that he endowed his fellow citizens with rights that they knew they were entitled to. The pursuit of these unalienable rights - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - cut across all social, economic, and political divisions to unite the common man. It is clear that there were many strata that were represented in the struggle for American independence. These strata were never united along the same lines, which is why it is remarkable that the American Revolution took flight in the first place. Were it not for trailblazers such as Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence, who strive d for an ideal greater than economics, we may not have had the war that we did, or won the war like we did. Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams harnessed the frustration of the revolutionaries and rallied the colonies to transcend economic, social, and political dogma of the time and toward a single cause.

Bibliography

Berkin, C., Miller, Christopher., Cherry, Robert., Gorily, James., (2003).
Making America: A History of the United States Vol. 1: to 1877.
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company Frankel, Harry. (1946).
Class Forces in the American Revolution, Fourth International, Vol. 6 No. 3. Retrieved on July 7, 2005.
Oates, Stephen., Enrico, Charles., (2003).
Portrait of America Vol. 1 to 1877.