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In this lecture, Professor Freeman discusses four difficulties that the Continental Congress faced in organizing the colonial war effort: regionalism, localism, the supply shortage that the Continental Army faced in providing for its troops, and the Continental Congress’s inexperience in organizing an army. The lecture concludes with a discussion of a Connecticut newspaper from July 1776.
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Professor Freeman concludes the discussion of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration was widely circulated and read aloud throughout the colonies. Professor Freeman argues that by 1775-1776, British and American citizens were operating under different assumptions about how the conflict between them could be resolved. The American colonists began to organize themselves for defensive measures against an aggressive British state. Meanwhile, the British assumed that the rebels were a minority group, and if they could suppress this radical minority through an impressive display of force, the rest of the colonists would submit to their governance again. Spring of 1775 saw the beginnings of military conflict between the British army and colonial militias, with fighting at Lexington, Concord, and Breed’s Hill. As a result, the colonists began to seriously consider the need for independence, and the Continental Congress began the process of organizing a war.
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In this lecture, Professor Freeman discusses the Declaration of Independence and sets the document in its historical context. The Declaration was not the main focus of the Second Continental Congress, which was largely concerned with organizing the defensive war effort. The Congress had sent King George III the Olive Branch Petition in a last attempt at reconciliation in August 1775, but the King ignored the petition and declared the colonies to be in rebellion. Throughout the colonies, local communities began debating the issue of independence on their own, often at the instruction of their colonial legislatures, and these local declarations of independence contributed to the formal declaration of independence by the Continental Congress in July 1776. Professor Freeman concludes the lecture by describing the decision to have Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration.
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This lecture focuses on the best-selling pamphlet of the American Revolution: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, discussing Paine’s life and the events that led him to write his pamphlet. Published in January of 1776, it condemned monarchy as a bad form of government, and urged the colonies to declare independence and establish their own form of republican government. Its incendiary language and simple format made it popular throughout the colonies, helping to radicalize many Americans and pushing them to seriously consider the idea of declaring independence from Britain.
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The lecture first concludes the discussion of the First Continental Congress, which met in 1774. Ultimately, although its delegates represented a range of opinions, the voices of the political radicals in the Congress were the loudest. In October 1774, the Continental Congress passed both the radical Suffolk Resolves and the Declaration and Resolves, which laid out the colonists’ grievances with Parliament. The Congress also sent a petition to the King which warned him that the British Parliament was stripping the American colonists of their rights as English citizens. Given such radical measures, by early 1775, many American colonists were choosing sides in the growing conflict, and many chose to be Loyalists. Professor Freeman concludes her lecture with a discussion of the varied reasons why different Loyalists chose to support the British Crown, and what kinds of people tended to be Loyalists in the American Revolution.
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Professor Freeman lays out the logic of American resistance to British imperial policy during the 1770s. Prime Minister Lord North imposed the Intolerable Acts on Massachusetts to punish the radicals for the Boston Tea Party, and hoped that the act would divide the colonies. Instead, the colonies rallied around Massachusetts because they were worried that the Intolerable Acts set a new threatening precedent in the imperial relationship. In response to this seeming threat, the colonists formed the First Continental Congress in 1774 to determine a joint course of action. The meeting of the First Continental Congress is important for four reasons: it forced the colonists to clarify and define their grievances with Britain; it helped to form ties between the colonies; it served as a training ground for young colonial politicians; and in British eyes, it symbolized a step towards rebellion. The lecture concludes with a look at the importance of historical lessons for the colonists, and how these lessons helped form a “logic of resistance” against the new measures that Parliament was imposing upon the colonies.
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Professor Freeman continues her discussion of the Boston Massacre and how it represented a growing sense of alienation between the American colonists and the British authorities. The Americans and British both felt that the colonies were subordinate to Parliament in some way, but differed in their ideas of the exact nature of the imperial relationship. This period saw the formation of non-importation associations to discourage merchants from importing British goods, as well as committees of correspondence to coordinate resistance. One instance of such resistance occurred in December 1773, when Boston radicals who were frustrated with the Tea Act threw shipments of tea into Boston Harbor.