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The Sons of Liberty was an organization born out of rebellion to the Stamp Act.

Following the French and Indian War, England sought to alleviate war debts by establishing a tax on the colonies. The colonists were angry, asserting that, as they had no representation in Parliament when the Act was passed, it violated their rights as English citizens.

The 1765 Stamp Act inflamed colonial opposition. People began protesting, both with legislative outlets in colonial government, and with public demonstrations.

The Bostonians Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring and Feathering, by Philip Dawes | Public domain image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
One such group of protesters was founded in Boston. Made up of shopkeepers, tradesmen, and artisans, they called themselves "the Loyal Nine." Little is known about them because their illegal operations were carried out in absolute secrecy. The nine men were close friends, therefore the group didn't operate like an official organization; they left almost no paper trail, though it's a generally accepted fact that they met at the "Liberty Tree" in Hanover Square where they planned their exploits.

The nearby tavern owners were sympathetic to the Sons of Liberty and their cause, and they met often at the Green Dragon Tavern. The Loyal Nine consisted of club secretary John Avery (a distiller); Henry Bass (a cousin of Samuel Adams); Thomas Chase (also a distiller); Stephen Cleverly and John Smith (both braziers); Thomas Crafts (a painter); Benjamin Edes (printer of the Boston Gazette); Joseph Field (a ship captain); and George Trott (a jeweler).

These nine men banded together to protest the Stamp Act and prevent its taking effect, by violence if necessary. They incited a mob to use fear, force, and intimidation to frighten government officials and pro-Act supporters. They distributed anti-Act literature, hung effigies of public officials, and set the targets the mobs would attack.

In 1765, the Loyal Nine merged with the emerging Sons of Liberty, whose origins are mostly unknown. They burst on the public scene in August 1765 when they hung the effigy of one commissioned Distributor of Stamps for Massachusetts, drawn with a large boot with a devil climbing out of it. (The boot was a play on the name of the Earl of Bute, designed to establish a connection between the Distributor and the Stamp Act.)

They collected a mob in the streets, and the sheriffs were to afraid to take the effigy down. The mob burned Oliver's property, then moved to his home and beheaded the effigy in front of his home. Then they took it to a nearby hilltop and burned it. Later, under the cover of darkness, they gathered in his home and ransacked it. The British militia nearby supposed to be enforcing the Act did nothing. Oliver resigned shortly afterward.

The name "Sons of Liberty" was given to to the group during a Parliamentary debate. When a Supporter of the Stamp Act criticized the colonists and their reaction to the Act, Isaac fooré, an Irish-born Colonel veteran of the French and Indian War, stood and defended them, calling them "these Sons of Liberty." He was sympathetic to their views and advocated for them. The name made its way back to the colonies and was adopted.

The Sons' main objective was to make the stamp distributors in the colonies resign. They did not yet consider independence or separation. some people acted under the name of the sons of liberty to carry out personal vendettas and revenge. members of the sons of liberty worked at newspapers and printed inflammatory articles about the stamp act and glorified the acts of the sons of liberty, obviously, without the required stamp.

Following the incident with Andrew Oliver, the mob attacked Oliver's brother-in-law, Thomas Hutchison, the Chief Justice and Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and a known Loyalist. The Sons of Liberty demanded Hutchinson denounce the Stamp Act in his letters back to Parliament, but he refused. His home got the same treatment as Oliver's and he, too, resigned. Meanwhile, the Sons of Liberty designed a flag and formed new chapters all over the colonies.

The Sons adopted a flag called the rebellious stripes flag with nine uneven vertical stripes (five red and four white). It is supposed that nine represented the Loyal Nine. Public domain image
One of the most charismatic leaders of the Sons of Liberty was Samuel Adams, cousin of John Adams. Through his compatriot Benjamin Edes and his Boston Gazette, Samuel Adams wrote a continuous stream of articles, speaking out against the British government, though still claiming loyalty to the King. Like many other colonists, they blamed Parliament for the unfair taxes.<

Over time, the mobs became more violent and less picky about the victims of their crimes. As is the nature of mobs, it became less controlled. Several skirmishes broke out between the British militia and the New York City chapter.

They openly opposed the Tea Act, which gave the East India Company a monopoly on tea import, declaring supporters of the Act to be enemies of liberty. They actively challenged it by sneaking on board a British ship dressed as Native Americans and throwing several tons of tea into the harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.

After the Revolution, the organization was reestablished and its members infiltrated the New York Assembly, gaining enough seats to vote for the confiscation of Loyalist homes and property.

Aside from Samuel Adams, other notable members of the Sons were John Adams, Benedict Arnold, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, Benjamin Rush, Joseph Warren, and Oliver Wolcott.

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Sons of Liberty | Revolutionary War Sons of Liberty

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The Sons of Liberty was an organization born out of rebellion to the Stamp Act. Following the French and Indian War, England sought to alleviate war debts by establishing a tax on the colonies. The colonists were angry, asserting that, as they had no representation in Parliament when the Act was passed, it violated their rights as English citizens.

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"Punch, Wine, Pipes and Tobacco..."

John Adams attended a Sons of Liberty Meeting in 1766 where all members of the Loyal Nine were present along with Patriot Henry Wells. Adams offers us a rare glimpse into these gatherings: "Jany. 15, 1766 - I spent the evening with the Sons of Liberty at their own appointment, in Hanover Square, near the 'Tree of Liberty.' It is a counting-room in Chase and Speakman's distillery. A very small room it is. There were present Jon Avery a distiller, of liberal education, John Smith the brazier, Thomas Crafts the painter, Benjamin Edes the printer, Stephen Cleverly brazier, Thomas Chase distiller, Joseph Field master of a vessel, Henry Bass, Geo. Trott jeweler, and Henry Wells. I was very cordially and respectfully treated by all present. We had punch, wine, pipes and tobacco, biscuit and cheese, etc. they chose a committee to make preparation for a grand rejoicing upon the arrival of the news of the repeal of the stamp act."
I was very cordially and respectfully treated by all present. We had punch, wine, pipes and tobacco, biscuit and cheese, etc... ~John Adams
The Sons of Liberty were influential in organizing and carrying out the Boston Tea Party. Six of the Loyal Nine are documented to have been involved in the Boston Tea Party in one capacity or another. John Avery, Thomas Chase, Stephen Cleverly, and Thomas Crafts were present at the first planning meeting of the Boston Tea Party held in a small counting room above Chase and Speakman's distillery. Henry Bass, Thomas Chase, Thomas Crafts, and Benjamin Edes were present on the night of December 16, 1773, and actively participated in the boarding of the ships and destruction of the British East India Company Tea. New research may eventually reveal Joseph Field, John Smith, and George Trott were involved in the Boston Tea Party. Not all of the participants of the Boston Tea Party are known; many carried the secret of their participation to their graves. It is estimated hundreds took part in the destruction of the tea.

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Loyal Nine | History of American Revolution 1765

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The pro colonial rights leaders planned and acted in protests before joining the Sons of Liberty.

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History: American Revolutionary War Timeline

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The First Continental Congress convened in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between September 5 and October 26, 1774. Delegates from twelve of Britain's thirteen American colonies met to discuss America's future under growing British aggression. The list of delegates included many prominent colonial leaders, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, and two future presidents of the United States, George Washington and John Adams. Delegates discussed boycotting British goods to establish the rights of Americans and planned for a Second Continental Congress.

The First Continental Congress was prompted by the Coercive Acts, known in America as the Intolerable Acts, which Parliament passed in early 1774 to reassert its dominance over the American colonies following the Boston Tea Party. The Intolerable Acts, among other changes, closed off the Boston Port and rescinded the Massachusetts Charter, bringing the colony under more direct British control.

Across North America, colonists rose in solidarity with the people of Massachusetts. Goods arrived in Massachusetts from as far south as Georgia, and by late spring 1774, nine of the colonies called for a continental congress. Virginia's Committee of Correspondence is largely credited with originating the invitation.

The colonies elected delegates to the First Continental Congress in various ways. Some delegates were elected through their respective colonial legislatures or committees of correspondence. As for Washington, he was elected with the other Virginia delegates at the First Virginia Convention, which was called in support of Massachusetts following the passage of the Intolerable Acts. Georgia was the only colony that did not send any delegates to the First Continental Congress. Facing a war with neighboring Native American tribes, the colony did not want to jeopardize British assistance.

When Congress convened on September 5, 1774, Peyton Randolph of Virginia was named President of the First Continental Congress. One of the Congress's first decisions was to endorse the Suffolk Resolves passed in Suffolk County, Massachusetts. The Suffolk Resolves ordered citizens to not obey the Intolerable Acts, to refuse imported British goods, and to raise a militia. Congress's early endorsement of the Suffolk Resolves was a clear indication of the mood and spirit in Carpenters' Hall.

Furthermore, the delegates promptly began drafting and discussing the Continental Association. This would become their most important policy outcome. The Association called for an end to British imports starting in December 1774 and an end to exporting goods to Britain in September 1775. This policy would be enforced by local and colony-wide committees of inspection. These committees would check ships that arrived in ports, force colonists to sign documents pledging loyalty to the Continental Association, and suppress mob violence. The committees of inspection even enforced frugality, going so far as to end lavish funeral services and parties. Many colonial leaders hoped these efforts would bond the colonies together economically.

Virginia secured the Continental Association's delay in ending exports to Britain. Before the Continental Congress, Virginia had passed its own association that delayed ending exports to avoid hurting farmers with a sudden change in policy. The delegates from Virginia showed up to the Continental Congress united, and refused to waiver on the issue of delaying the ban on exports to Britain.

The idea of using non-importation as leverage was neither new nor unexpected. Prior to the Continental Congress, eight colonies had already endorsed the measure and merchants had been warned against placing any orders with Britain, as a ban on importation was likely to pass. Some colonies had already created their own associations to ban importation and, in some cases, exportation. The Virginia Association had passed at the Virginia Convention with George Washington in attendance.

Washington's support of using non-importation as leverage against the British can be traced back as far as 1769 in letters between him and George Mason. When the colonies first started publicly supporting non-importation, Bryan Fairfax, a longtime friend of Washington's, wrote to him urging him to not support the Continental Association and to instead petition Parliament. Washington dismissed this suggestion, writing "we have already Petitiond his Majesty in as humble, & dutiful a manner as Subjects could do." ¹ Washington, like many delegates at the First Continental Congress, no longer saw petitioning as a useful tool in changing Parliament's ways.

Many delegates felt that using the Continental Association as leverage would be impractical without explicit demands and a plan of redress. However, Congress struggled to come up with a list of rights, grievances, and demands. Furthermore, to only repeal laws that were unfavorable to the delegates without a list of rights would be a temporary fix to the larger issue of continued British abuse. To address these issues, Congress formed a Grand Committee.

All debate was stalled for weeks while a statement of American rights was debated at length. Producing this statement required answering constitutional questions that had been asked for over a century. The hardest constitutional question surrounded Britain's right to regulate trade. Joseph Galloway, a conservative delegate from Pennsylvania, insisted on releasing a statement clarifying Britain's right to regulate trade in the American colonies. However, other delegates were opposed to giving Britain explicit rights to colonial trade.

During this debate, Galloway introduced A Plan of Union between the American Colonies and Britain. The Plan of Union called for the creation of a Colonial Parliament that would work hand-in-hand with the British Parliament. The British monarch would appoint a President General and the colonial assemblies would appoint delegates for a three-year term. Galloway's plan was defeated in a 6-5 vote. Congress put aside the debate over Britain's right to regulate trade and focused on the Continental Association.

Congress later returned to the discussion of Congress's right to regulate trade and settled on the original suggested text by the Grand Committee and included it as Section 4 in the body's Declaration of Rights and Grievances. Section four states the "the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council." ² This allowed for Congress to move forward in their discussion and assert their right to participation in their government, but did not explicitly place limits on Parliament's regulation of colonial trade.

The First Continental Congress's most fateful decision was to call for a Second Continental Congress to meet the following spring. Congress intended to give Britain time to respond to the Continental Association and discuss any developments at the Second Continental Congress. Washington went shopping for muskets and military apparel before leaving Philadelphia for Mount Vernon. Furthermore, he placed an order for a book on military discipline. Though war had not been declared and many delegates were still hoping for redress, there was no doubt that the American colonies and Britain were on the brink of conflict. Many delegates learned of the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775), in route to Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress.

Katherine Horan
George Washington University
Notes:
1. "From George Washington to Bryan Fairfax, 20 July 1774," Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-10-02-0081. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 10, 21 March 1774?-?15 June 1775, ed. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, pp. 128-131.]

2. United States Library of Congress, "Declaration of Rights and Grievances," - The American Revolution, accessed October 29, 2018, http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/amrev/rebelln/rights.html.
Bibliography:
Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. New York: Norton, 1975.

Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency: George Washington. New York: First Vintage Books, 2004.

Irwin, Benjamin. Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors. New York: Oxford, 2011.

Middlekauff, Robert. Washington's Revolution: The Making of America's First Leader. New York: Random House, 2015.

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The First Continental Congress convened in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between September 5 and October 26, 1774. Delegates from twelve of Britain's thirteen American colonies met to discuss America's future under growing British aggression.

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The First Continental Congress: The Patriots React To The Intolerable Acts

September to October 1774
As the name suggests, the Intolerable Acts were not received well amongst the colonies. Before the shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, the colonies made an attempt to settle the concerns and frustrations raised with the Intolerable Acts through debate and discussion. Thus, the First Continental Congress was called to order on September 5th, 1774. 55 colonial representatives, including famous Patriots like John Adams, Samuel Adams, George Washington, and Patrick Henry, from twelve colonies met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to formulate a plan of action. Georgia was the only colony that did not send representatives. Virginia's representative, Peyton Randolph, was elected president of the First Continental Congress. It was decided that each colony would be allotted one secret ballot.

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Continental Congress | First Continental Congress 1774

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The Continental Congress was a result of the Patriots' frustration with the Intolerable Acts; they included Sam Adams, George Washington & John Adams.

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Learn about the Crossing the Delaware major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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History >> American Revolution

The Battle of Bunker Hill took place on June 17, 1775, just a few months after the start of the American Revolutionary War.

Battle of Bunker Hill by Pyle

Boston was being besieged by thousands of American militia. The British were trying to keep control of the city and control its valuable seaport. The British decided to take two hills, Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill, in order to gain a tactical advantage. The American forces heard about it and went to defend the hills.

Where did the battle take place?

This seems like the easiest question ever, doesn't it? Well, not really. There were two hills that the British wanted to take in order to be able to bombard the Americans from a distance. These were Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill. The Battle of Bunker Hill actually took place mostly on Breed's Hill. It's only called the Battle of Bunker Hill because the army thought they were on Bunker Hill. Sort of a funny mistake and it makes for a good trick question.

Bunker Hill Monument by Ducksters
You can visit Bunker Hill and climb to the top of
the monument for a view of the city of Boston

The Leaders

The British were led up the hill by General William Howe. The Americans were led by Colonel William Prescott. Maybe this should have been called the Battle of the Williams! Major John Pitcairn was also one of the British leaders. He was in command of the troops that started the fighting at Lexington that began the Revolutionary War. From the American side, Israel Putnam was the General in charge. Also, leading patriot Dr. Joseph Warren was part of the battle. He was killed during the fighting.

What happened at the battle?

The American forces learned that the British were planning on taking over the hills around Boston in order to gain a tactical advantage. As a result of this information, the Americans secretly moved their troops onto Bunker and Breed's Hill, two unoccupied hills just outside of Boston in Charlestown, Massachusetts. They built up fortifications during the night and prepared for battle.

The next day, when the British realized what had happened, the British attacked. Their commander William Howe led three charges up Breed's Hill. The Americans fought back the first two charges, but started to run out of ammunition and had to retreat at the third charge. The British gained the hill, but their costs were great. Around 226 British were killed and 800 wounded while the Americans did not suffer nearly as many casualties.

Battle Map - Click to see larger picture

Result of the Battle

Although the British won the battle and gained control of the hills, they paid a heavy price. They lost hundreds of soldiers including several officers. This gave the Americans the courage and confidence that they could stand up to the British in battle. Many more colonists joined the army after this battle and the revolution continued to grow in strength.

Bunker Hill Cannon Ball by Ducksters
A cannon ball dug up from Bunker Hill

Interesting Facts about The Battle of Bunker Hill

Because the Americans were low on ammunition, they were told "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes."

The American troops worked hard during the night building up the defenses. Much of the wall they built, called a redoubt, was nearly 6 feet high.

Future President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, watched the battle from a nearby hill with his mother Abigail Adams. He was seven years old at the time.

The British suffered the most casualties of any single fight during the American Revolutionary War.

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Kids learn about the Battle of Bunker Hill major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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Learn about the Battle of Lexington and Concord major event in the American Revolutionary War. The first battles of the war.

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Table of Contents

1. History of Independence Day

2. Early Fourth of July Celebrations and Traditions&nbsp;&nbsp;

3. Fourth of July Fireworks

4. Fourth of July Becomes a Federal Holiday

5. Photo Gallery: The Founding Fathers

The Fourth of July-also known as Independence Day or July 4th-has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1941, but the tradition of Independence Day celebrations goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution. On July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later delegates from the 13 colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson. From 1776 to the present day, July 4th has been celebrated as the birth of American independence, with festivities ranging from fireworks, parades and concerts to more casual family gatherings and barbecues. The Fourth of July 2023 is on Tuesday, July 4.

History of Independence Day

When the initial battles in the Revolutionary War broke out in April 1775, few colonists desired complete independence from Great Britain, and those who did were considered radical.

By the middle of the following year, however, many more colonists had come to favor independence, thanks to growing hostility against Britain and the spread of revolutionary sentiments such as those expressed in the bestselling pamphlet " Common Sense," published by Thomas Paine in early 1776.

On June 7, when the Continental Congress met at the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, the Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies' independence.

Amid heated debate, Congress postponed the vote on Lee's resolution, but appointed a five-man committee-including Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R. Livingston of New York-to draft a formal statement justifying the break with Great Britain.

Did you know? John Adams believed that July 2nd was the correct date on which to celebrate the birth of American independence, and would reportedly turn down invitations to appear at July 4th events in protest. Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826-the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

On July 2nd, the Continental Congress voted in favor of Lee's resolution for independence in a near-unanimous vote (the New York delegation abstained, but later voted affirmatively). On that day, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that July 2 "will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival" and that the celebration should include "Pomp and Parade...Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other."

On July 4th, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, which had been written largely by Jefferson. Though the vote for actual independence took place on July 2nd, from then on the 4th became the day that was celebrated as the birth of American independence.

Early Fourth of July Celebrations and Traditions

In the pre-Revolutionary years, colonists had held annual celebrations of the king's birthday, which traditionally included the ringing of bells, bonfires, processions and speechmaking. By contrast, during the summer of 1776 some colonists celebrated the birth of independence by holding mock funerals for King George III as a way of symbolizing the end of the monarchy's hold on America and the triumph of liberty.

Festivities including concerts, bonfires, parades and the firing of cannons and muskets usually accompanied the first public readings of the Declaration of Independence, beginning immediately after its adoption. Philadelphia held the first annual commemoration of independence on July 4, 1777, while Congress was still occupied with the ongoing war.

George Washington issued double rations of rum to all his soldiers to mark the anniversary of independence in 1778, and in 1781, several months before the key American victory at the Battle of Yorktown, Massachusetts became the first state to make July 4th an official state holiday.

After the Revolutionary War, Americans continued to commemorate Independence Day every year, in celebrations that allowed the new nation's emerging political leaders to address citizens and create a feeling of unity. By the last decade of the 18th century, the two major political parties-the Federalist Party and Democratic-Republicans-that had arisen began holding separate Fourth of July celebrations in many large cities.

Fourth of July Fireworks

The first fireworks were used as early as 200 BC. The tradition of setting off fireworks on the 4 of July began in Philadelphia on July 4, 1777, during the first organized celebration of Independence Day. Ship's cannon fired a 13-gun salute in honor of the 13 colonies. The Pennsylvania Evening Post reported: "at night there was a grand exhibition of fireworks (which began and concluded with thirteen rockets) on the Commons, and the city was beautifully illuminated." That same night, the Sons of Liberty set off fireworks over Boston Common.

Fourth of July Becomes a Federal Holiday

The tradition of patriotic celebration became even more widespread after the War of 1812, in which the United States again faced Great Britain. In 1870, the U.S. Congress made July 4th a federal holiday; in 1941, the provision was expanded to grant a paid holiday to all federal employees.

Over the years, the political importance of the holiday would decline, but Independence Day remained an important national holiday and a symbol of patriotism.

Falling in mid-summer, the Fourth of July has since the late 19th century become a major focus of leisure activities and a common occasion for family get-togethers, often involving fireworks and outdoor barbecues. The most common symbol of the holiday is the American flag, and a common musical accompaniment is " The Star-Spangled Banner," the national anthem of the United States.

HISTORY Vault: The Revolution

Photo Gallery: The Founding Fathers

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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History of the Fourth of July - Brief History, Early Celebrations & Traditions

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The Fourth of July-also known as Independence Day or July 4th-has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1941. The tradition of Independence Day celebrations goes back to the 18th century and the American Revolution.

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The American Revolution for Kids: King George III

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The American Revolution for Kids: King George III

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The American Revolution for Kids - King George III - American Revolution for Kids

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For Kids: George III was the king of Great Britain during the American Revolution. King George did not understand the colonial situation, and many of the acts that led to the American Revolution stemmed from that misunderstanding.

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King George III was one of the longest-serving monarchs in the history of Great Britain and the United Kingdom. He ruled over two well-known successes, defeating France in both North America and Europe, but he also became known as the king who "lost North America" when his forces surrendered to George Washington and the Colonial Army in the Revolutionary War. A shy, retiring child, he pursued a strong interest in science and remained curious about the world around him and the heavens above for the rest of his life. He is also known for his increasingly erratic behavior, which may or may not have been caused by mental illness.

He was born George William Frederick on June 4, 1738 at Norfolk House in London. His father was Frederick, who was then Prince of Wales, the heir apparent to King George II, the second Hanoverian king. George I had succeeded Queen Anne on the throne in 1714.

Young George enjoyed a solid private education and could, from an early age, read and write in both English and German. He had a keen scientific mind and studied astronomy, chemistry, and physics in particular but also enjoyed a wider repertoire of knowledge, on subject such as agriculture, constitutional law, geography, history, mathematics, and music. He had a good understanding of two other languages, French and Latin. Not only an academic child, George was an active one, excelling in fencing and riding and even dancing.

His father died in 1751, and young George became Duke of Edinburgh; his grandfather took a liking to him and named him the Prince of Wales, making him the heir to the throne. Nine years later, when young George was just 22, his grandfather died. Thus was crowned King George III in 1760. The next year, he married Charlotte, Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They encountered each other for the first time when they married, but they remained so for 57 years and had 16 children together. In 1762, George III bought Buckingham House for his family to use. (This became Buckingham Palace. The king and his family became known several years later for taking family holidays in Weymouth, in Dorset; this became one of England's first seaside resorts.

George was quite happily married and didn't understand why others found the need to stray outside their marriages. He was deeply pious, a result of his many early years at home with his devout mother. He held himself and his subjects to high moral standards and in 1772 proclaimed the Royal Marriage Act, which required members of the royal family to get the king's consent before getting married.

For his first Prime Minister, the new king selected one of his tutors, John Stuart, the 3rd Earl of Bute. They both believed in the divine right of kings, an idea that had found favor in earlier centuries but, in the late 18th Century, stood in stark contrast to the ideas of equality and social contract being advanced by John Locke and other philosophers in the Enlightenment, a period of intense introspection and cultural awakening in Great Britain and across Europe. The king also had a preference for thrift that extended not only to the royal family's expenses but also the country's expenses. The need to pursue both of those royal prerogatives would lead to conflict not only within the country but without, in the colonies, most notably North America.

It was there that the British Army won a resounding victory over French and Native American forces in what the American colonists called the French and Indian War. This conflict raged in 1754-1763 and roughly coincided with the Seven Years War, a wider conflict that took place from 1756 to 1763 in Continental Europe.

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King George III was one of the longest-serving monarchs in the history of Great Britain and the United Kingdom. He ruled over two well-known successes, defeating France in both North America and Europe, but he also became known as the king who "lost North America" when his forces surrendered to George Washington and the Colonial Army in the Revolutionary War.

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George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 - 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. Both kingdoms were in a personal union under him until the Acts of Union 1800 merged them on 1 January 1801. He then became King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was concurrently Duke and Prince-elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg ("Hanover") in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was a monarch of the House of Hanover who-unlike his two predecessors-was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.

George's life and reign were marked by a series of military conflicts involving his kingdoms, much of the rest of Europe, and places farther afield in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Early in his reign, Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War, becoming the dominant European power in North America and India. However, many of Britain's American colonies were soon lost in the American War of Independence. Further wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France from 1793 concluded in the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. In 1807, the transatlantic slave trade was banned from the British Empire.

In the later part of his life, George had recurrent-and eventually permanent- mental illness. Although it has since been suggested that he had bipolar disorder or the blood disease porphyria, the cause of his illness remains unknown. George suffered a final relapse in 1810, and his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, became Prince Regent the following year. When the King died in 1820, the Regent succeeded him as George IV. At the time of his death, George III was the longest-lived and longest-reigning British monarch; he remains the longest-lived and longest-reigning male monarch. Historical analysis of his life has gone through a " kaleidoscope of changing views" that have depended heavily on the prejudices of his biographers and the sources available to them.

George was born on 4 June 1738 at Norfolk House in St James's Square, London. He was a grandson of King George II and the eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. As he was born two months prematurely and thought unlikely to survive, he was baptised the same day by Thomas Secker, who was both Rector of St James's Church, Piccadilly, and Bishop of Oxford. One month later he was publicly baptised at Norfolk House, again by Secker. His godparents were King Frederick I of Sweden (for whom Lord Baltimore stood proxy), his uncle Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha (for whom Lord Carnarvon stood proxy), and his great-aunt Sophia Dorothea, Queen in Prussia (for whom Lady Charlotte Edwin stood proxy).

Apart from chemistry and physics, his lessons included astronomy, mathematics, French, Latin, history, music, geography, commerce, agriculture and constitutional law, along with sporting and social accomplishments such as dancing, fencing and riding. His religious education was wholly Anglican. At the age of 10, George took part in a family production of Joseph Addison's play Cato and said in the new prologue: "What, tho' a boy! It may with truth be said, A boy in England born, in England bred." Historian Romney Sedgwick argued that these lines appear "to be the source of the only historical phrase with which he is associated".

Accession and marriage

In 1759, George was smitten with Lady Sarah Lennox, sister of Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, but Lord Bute advised against the match and George abandoned his thoughts of marriage. "I am born for the happiness or misery of a great nation," he wrote, "and consequently must often act contrary to my passions." Nevertheless, George and his mother resisted attempts by the King to marry George to Princess Sophie Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Sophie married Frederick, Margrave of Bayreuth, instead.

Early reign

On his accession, the Crown lands produced relatively little income; most revenue was generated through taxes and excise duties. George surrendered the Crown Estate to Parliamentary control in return for a civil list annuity for the support of his household and the expenses of civil government. Claims that he used the income to reward supporters with bribes and gifts are disputed by historians who say such claims "rest on nothing but falsehoods put out by disgruntled opposition". Debts amounting to over £3 million over the course of George's reign were paid by Parliament, and the civil list annuity was increased from time to time. He aided the Royal Academy of Arts with large grants from his private funds, and may have donated more than half of his personal income to charity. Of his art collection, the two most notable purchases are Johannes Vermeer's Lady at the Virginals and a set of Canalettos, but it is as a collector of books that he is best remembered. The King's Library was open and available to scholars and was the foundation of a new national library.

In May 1762, the incumbent Whig government of Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, was replaced with one led by Lord Bute, a Scottish Tory. John Wilkes, a member of parliament, published The North Briton, which was both inflammatory and defamatory in its condemnation of Bute and the government. Wilkes was eventually arrested for seditious libel but he fled to France to escape punishment; he was expelled from the House of Commons and found guilty in absentia of blasphemy and libel. In 1763, after concluding the Peace of Paris which ended the war, Lord Bute resigned, allowing the Whigs under George Grenville to return to power. Britain received enormous concessions, including West Florida. Britain restored to France lucrative slave-sugar islands in the West Indies, including Guadeloupe and Martinique. France ceded Canada to Britain, in addition to all land between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mississippi River, except New Orleans, which was ceded to Spain.

The central issue for the colonists was not the amount of taxes but whether Parliament could levy a tax without American approval, for there were no American seats in Parliament. The Americans protested that like all Englishmen they had rights to " no taxation without representation". In 1765, Grenville introduced the Stamp Act, which levied a stamp duty on every document in the British colonies in North America. Since newspapers were printed on stamped paper, those most affected by the introduction of the duty were the most effective at producing propaganda opposing the tax.

Meanwhile, George had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the king's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of prime minister. After a brief illness, which may have presaged his illnesses to come, George settled on Lord Rockingham to form a ministry, and dismissed Grenville.

Lord Rockingham, with the support of Pitt and the King, repealed Grenville's unpopular Stamp Act. Rockingham's government was weak, and he was replaced as prime minister in 1766 by Pitt, whom George created Earl of Chatham. The actions of Lord Chatham and George III in repealing the Act were so popular in America that statues of them both were erected in New York City. Lord Chatham fell ill in 1767, and Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, took over the government. Grafton did not formally become prime minister until 1768. That year, John Wilkes returned to England, stood as a candidate in the general election, and came top of the poll in the Middlesex constituency. Wilkes was again expelled from Parliament. He was re-elected and expelled twice more, before the House of Commons resolved that his candidature was invalid and declared the runner-up as the victor. Grafton's government disintegrated in 1770, allowing the Tories led by Lord North to return to power.

George was deeply devout and spent hours in prayer, but his piety was not shared by his brothers. George was appalled by what he saw as their loose morals. In 1771, Cumberland married a young widow, Anne Horton. The King considered her inappropriate as a royal bride: she was from a lower social class and German law barred any children of the couple from the Hanoverian succession.

George insisted on a new law that essentially forbade members of the royal family from legally marrying without the consent of the sovereign. The subsequent bill was unpopular in Parliament, including among George's own ministers, but passed as the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Shortly afterwards, another of George's brothers, Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, revealed he had been secretly married to Maria, Countess Waldegrave, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Walpole. The news confirmed George's opinion that he had been right to introduce the law: Maria was related to his political opponents. Neither lady was ever received at court.

Lord North's government was chiefly concerned with discontent in America. To assuage American opinion most of the custom duties were withdrawn, except for the tea duty, which in George's words was "one tax to keep up the right [to levy taxes]". In 1773, the tea ships moored in Boston Harbor were boarded by colonists and the tea was thrown overboard, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party. In Britain, opinion hardened against the colonists, with Chatham now agreeing with North that the destruction of the tea was "certainly criminal".

With the clear support of Parliament, Lord North introduced measures, which were called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists: the Port of Boston was shut down and the charter of Massachusetts was altered so that the upper house of the legislature was appointed by the Crown instead of elected by the lower house. Up to this point, in the words of Professor Peter Thomas, George's "hopes were centred on a political solution, and he always bowed to his cabinet's opinions even when sceptical of their success. The detailed evidence of the years from 1763 to 1775 tends to exonerate George III from any real responsibility for the American Revolution." Though both the Americans and older British historians characterised George as a tyrant, in these years he acted as a constitutional monarch supporting the initiatives of his ministers.

American War of Independence

The American War of Independence was the culmination of the civil and political American Revolution resulting from the American Enlightenment. In the 1760s, a series of acts by Parliament was met with resistance in thirteen of Britain's American colonies. In particular they rejected new taxes levied by Parliament, a body in which they had no direct representation. Locally governed by colonial legislatures, the colonies had previously enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs and viewed Parliament's acts as a denial of their rights as Englishmen. Armed conflict between British regulars and colonial militiamen broke out at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. After petitions to the Crown for intervention with Parliament were ignored, the rebel leaders were declared traitors by the Crown and a year of fighting ensued. Thomas Paine's published work Common Sense abrasively referred to George III as "the Royal Brute of Great Britain".

Although Prime Minister Lord North was not an ideal war leader, George III managed to give Parliament a sense of purpose to fight, and Lord North was able to keep his cabinet together. Lord North's cabinet ministers, the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, however, proved to lack leadership skills suited for their positions, which in turn, aided the American war effort.

George III is often accused of obstinately trying to keep Great Britain at war with the revolutionaries in America, despite the opinions of his own ministers. In the words of the British historian George Otto Trevelyan, the King was determined "never to acknowledge the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal." The King wanted to "keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse". Later historians defend George by saying in the context of the times no king would willingly surrender such a large territory, and his conduct was far less ruthless than contemporary monarchs in Europe. After Saratoga, both Parliament and the British people were in favour of the war; recruitment ran at high levels and although political opponents were vocal, they remained a small minority.

With the setbacks in America, Lord North asked to transfer power to Lord Chatham, whom he thought more capable, but George refused to do so; he suggested instead that Chatham serve as a subordinate minister in North's administration, but Chatham refused; he died later in the same year. Lord North was allied to the "King's Friends" in Parliament and believed George III had the right to exercise powers. In early 1778, Louis XVI of France (Britain's chief rival) signed a treaty of alliance with the United States and the confrontation soon escalated from "civil war" to something that has been characterized as "world war". The French fleet was able to outrun the British naval blockade of the Mediterranean and sailed to North America. The conflict now affected North America, Europe, and India. Charles III of Spain had misgivings because of his own colonies but decided to side with France in the war in limited fashion in 1779. One faction of the Dutch Republic aided the Americans whereas another aided Britain, whose allies included Loyalists and German auxiliaries. Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth both resigned from the government. Lord North again requested that he also be allowed to resign, but he stayed in office at George III's insistence.

During the summer of 1779, a combined French-Spanish naval fleet threatened to invade England and transport 31,000 French troops across the English Channel. George III said that Britain was confronted by the "most serious crisis the nation ever knew". In August, sixty-six warships entered the English channel, but due to sickness, hunger, and adverse winds, the French-Spanish armada lost its nerve, and withdrew, ending the invasion threat.

In late 1779, George III advocated sending more British warships and troops, guarding the English Channel, across the Atlantic, to the West Indies. He boldly said: "We must risk something, otherwise we will only vegetate in this war. I own I wish either with spirit to get through it, or with a crash be ruined." In January 1780, 7,000 British troops, under General Sir John Vaughan, were transported to the West Indies. Nonetheless, opposition to the costly war was increasing, and in June 1780 contributed to disturbances in London known as the Gordon riots.

As late as the siege of Charleston in 1780, Loyalists could still believe in their eventual victory, as British troops inflicted defeats on the Continental forces at the Battle of Camden and the Battle of Guilford Court House. In late 1781, the news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at the siege of Yorktown reached London; Lord North's parliamentary support ebbed away and he resigned the following year. The King drafted an abdication notice, which was never delivered. He finally accepted the defeat in North America and authorized peace negotiations. The Treaties of Paris, by which Britain recognized the independence of the American states and returned Florida to Spain, were signed in 1782 and 1783. In early 1783, George III privately conceded "America is lost!" He reflected that the Northern colonies had developed into Britain's "successful rivals" in commercial trade and fishing. Up to 70,000 Loyalists fled to Canada, the Caribbean, or England after their homes and businesses were looted and destroyed by hostile Americans.

When John Adams was appointed American minister to London in 1785, George had become resigned to the new relationship between his country and the former colonies. He told Adams, "I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power."

William Pitt

With the collapse of Lord North's ministry in 1782, the Whig Lord Rockingham became prime minister for the second time, but died within months. The King then appointed Lord Shelburne to replace him. Charles James Fox, however, refused to serve under Shelburne, and demanded the appointment of William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland. In 1783, the House of Commons forced Shelburne from office and his government was replaced by the Fox-North Coalition. Portland became prime minister, with Fox and Lord North, as foreign secretary and home secretary respectively.

Signs of illness

Pitt's appointment was a great victory for George. It proved that the king could appoint prime ministers on the basis of his own interpretation of the public mood without having to follow the choice of the current majority in the House of Commons. Throughout Pitt's ministry, George supported many of Pitt's political aims and created new peers at an unprecedented rate to increase the number of Pitt's supporters in the House of Lords. During and after Pitt's ministry, George was extremely popular in Britain. The British people admired him for his piety and for remaining faithful to his wife. He was fond of his children and was devastated at the death of two of his sons in infancy, in 1782 and 1783 respectively. Nevertheless, he set his children a strict regimen. They were expected to attend rigorous lessons from seven in the morning and to lead lives of religious observance and virtue. When his children strayed from George's principles of righteousness, as his sons did as young adults, he was dismayed and disappointed.

By this time, George's health was deteriorating. He had a mental illness characterised by acute mania, which was possibly a symptom of the genetic disease porphyria, although this has been questioned: the original authors of the theory, Ida Macalpine and her son Richard Hunter, were "highly selective" in choosing evidence to support their claim. The most likely diagnosis, using more recent techniques, is bipolar disorder. However, a study of samples of the King's hair published in 2005 revealed high levels of arsenic, a cause of metabolic blood disorders and thus a possible trigger for porphyria. The source of the arsenic is not known, but it could have been a component of medicines or cosmetics.

The King may have had a brief episode of disease in 1765, and a longer episode began in the summer of 1788. At the end of the parliamentary session, he went to Cheltenham Spa to recuperate. It was the furthest he had ever been from London-just short of 100 miles (160 km)-but his condition worsened. In November of that year, he became seriously deranged, sometimes speaking for many hours without pause, causing him to foam at the mouth and his voice to become hoarse. George would frequently repeat himself and write sentences with over 400 words at a time, and his vocabulary became "more complex, creative and colourful", possible symptoms of bipolar disorder. His doctors were largely at a loss to explain his illness, and spurious stories about his condition spread, such as the claim that he shook hands with a tree in the mistaken belief that it was the King of Prussia. Treatment for mental illness was primitive by modern standards; the King's doctors, who included Francis Willis, treated the King by forcibly restraining him until he was calm, or applying caustic poultices to draw out "evil humours".

In the reconvened Parliament, Fox and Pitt wrangled over the terms of a regency during the King's incapacity. While both agreed that it would be most reasonable for the Prince of Wales to act as regent, Fox suggested, to Pitt's consternation, that it was the Prince's absolute right to act on his ill father's behalf with full powers. Pitt, fearing he would be removed from office if the Prince of Wales were empowered, argued that it was for Parliament to nominate a regent, and wanted to restrict the regent's authority. In February 1789, the Regency Bill, authorising the Prince of Wales to act as regent, was introduced and passed in the House of Commons, but before the House of Lords could pass the bill, George III recovered.

Over the course of George's reign, a coalition of abolitionists and Atlantic slave uprisings caused the British public to spurn slavery. According to the historian Andrew Roberts, "George never bought or sold a slave in his life. He never invested in any of the companies that did such a thing. He signed legislation to abolish slavery." George wrote a document in the 1750s "denouncing all of the arguments for slavery, and calling them an execration and ridiculous and 'absurd'," but the King and his son, the Duke of Clarence, supported the efforts of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants to delay the abolition of the British slave trade for almost 20 years. Pitt conversely wished to see slavery abolished but, because the cabinet was divided and the King was in the pro-slavery camp, Pitt decided to refrain from making abolition official government policy. Instead, he worked toward abolition in an individual capacity.

On 7 November 1775, during the American War of Independence, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation that freed slaves of Rebel masters who would enlist to put down the colonial rebellion. Dunmore was the last Royal Governor of Virginia, appointed by King George III in July 1771. Dunmore's Proclamation inspired slaves to escape from captivity and fight for the British. On 30 June 1779, George III's Commanding General Henry Clinton broadened Dunmore's proclamation with his Philipsburg Proclamation. For all colonial slaves who fled their Rebel masters, Clinton forbade their recapture and resale, giving them protection by the British military. Approximately 20,000 freed slaves joined the British, fighting for George III. In 1783, given British certificates of freedom, 3,000 former slaves, including their families, settled in Nova Scotia.

Between 1791 and 1800, almost 400,000 Africans were shipped to the Americas, by 1,340 slaving voyages, mounted from British ports, including Liverpool and Bristol. On 25 March 1807 George III signed into law An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, under which the transatlantic slave trade was banned in the British Empire.

French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

After George's recovery, his popularity, and that of Pitt, continued to increase at the expense of Fox and the Prince of Wales. His humane and understanding treatment of two insane assailants, Margaret Nicholson in 1786 and John Frith in 1790, contributed to his popularity. James Hadfield's failed attempt to shoot the King in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 15 May 1800 was not political in origin but motivated by the apocalyptic delusions of Hadfield and Bannister Truelock. George seemed unperturbed by the incident, so much so that he fell asleep in the interval.

The French Revolution of 1789, in which the French monarchy had been overthrown, worried many British landowners. France declared war on Great Britain in 1793; in response to the crisis, George allowed Pitt to increase taxes, raise armies, and suspend the right of habeas corpus. The First Coalition to oppose revolutionary France, which included Austria, Prussia, and Spain, broke up in 1795 when Prussia and Spain made separate peace with France. The Second Coalition, which included Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, was defeated in 1800. Only Great Britain was left fighting Napoleon Bonaparte, the First Consul of the French Republic.

George did not consider the peace with France as real; in his view it was an "experiment". The war resumed in 1803, but public opinion distrusted Addington to lead the nation in war, and instead favoured Pitt. An invasion of England by Napoleon seemed imminent, and a massive volunteer movement arose to defend England against the French. George's review of 27,000 volunteers in Hyde Park, London, on 26 and 28 October 1803 and at the height of the invasion scare, attracted an estimated 500,000 spectators on each day. said: "The enthusiasm of the multitude was beyond all expression." A courtier wrote on 13 November that "The King is really prepared to take the field in case of attack, his beds are ready and he can move at half an hour's warning." George wrote to his friend Bishop Hurd, "We are here in daily expectation that Bonaparte will attempt his threatened invasion ... Should his troops effect a landing, I shall certainly put myself at the head of mine, and my other armed subjects, to repel them." After Admiral Lord Nelson's famous naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, the possibility of invasion was extinguished.

Final years, illnesses and death

In late 1810, at the height of his popularity, King George, already virtually blind with cataracts and in pain from rheumatism, suffered a relapse into his mental disorder and became dangerously ill. In his view the malady had been triggered by stress over the death of his youngest and favourite daughter, Princess Amelia. The princess's nurse reported that "the scenes of distress and crying every day... were melancholy beyond description." George accepted the need for the Regency Act 1811, and the Prince of Wales (later George IV) acted as regent for the remainder of the King's life. Despite signs of a recovery in May 1811, by the end of the year George III had become permanently insane, and lived in seclusion at Windsor Castle until his death.

Meanwhile, George's health deteriorated. He developed dementia, and became completely blind and increasingly deaf. He was incapable of knowing or understanding that he was declared King of Hanover in 1814, or that his wife died in 1818. At Christmas 1819, he spoke nonsense for 58 hours, and for the last few weeks of his life was unable to walk. He died of pneumonia, at Windsor Castle at 8:38 pm on 29 January 1820, six days after the death of his fourth son Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. His favourite son, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, was with him. George III lay in state for two days, and his funeral and interment took place on 16 February in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

George was succeeded in turn by two of his sons, George IV and William IV, who both died without surviving legitimate children, leaving the throne to Victoria, the only legitimate child of his fourth son Prince Edward.

George III lived for 81 years and 239 days and reigned for 59 years and 96 days: both his life and his reign were longer than those of any of his predecessors and subsequent kings; only queens Victoria and Elizabeth II lived and reigned longer.

George III was dubbed "Farmer George" by satirists, at first to mock his interest in mundane matters rather than politics, but later to portray him as a man of the people, contrasting his homely thrift with his son's grandiosity. Under George III, the British Agricultural Revolution reached its peak and great advances were made in fields such as science and industry. There was unprecedented growth in the rural population, which in turn provided much of the workforce for the concurrent Industrial Revolution. George's collection of mathematical and scientific instruments is now owned by King's College London but housed in the Science Museum, London, to which it has been on long-term loan since 1927. He had the King's Observatory built in Richmond-upon-Thames for his own observations of the 1769 transit of Venus. When William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, he at first named it Georgium Sidus (George's Star) after the King, who later funded the construction and maintenance of Herschel's 1785 40-foot telescope, which at the time was the biggest ever built.

George III hoped that "the tongue of malice may not paint my intentions in those colours she admires, nor the sycophant extoll me beyond what I deserve" but, in the popular mind, George III has been both demonised and praised. While very popular at the start of his reign, by the mid-1770s George had lost the loyalty of revolutionary American colonists, though it has been estimated that as many as half of the colonists remained loyal. The grievances in the United States Declaration of Independence were presented as "repeated injuries and usurpations" that he had committed to establish an "absolute Tyranny" over the colonies. The declaration's wording has contributed to the American public's perception of George as a tyrant. Contemporary accounts of George III's life fall into two camps: one demonstrating "attitudes dominant in the latter part of the reign, when the King had become a revered symbol of national resistance to French ideas and French power", while the other "derived their views of the King from the bitter partisan strife of the first two decades of the reign, and they expressed in their works the views of the opposition".

Building on the latter of these two assessments, British historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Trevelyan and Erskine May, promoted hostile interpretations of George III's life. However, in the mid-twentieth century the work of Lewis Namier, who thought George was "much maligned", started a re-evaluation of the man and his reign. Scholars of the later twentieth century, such as Butterfield and Pares, and Macalpine and Hunter, are inclined to treat George sympathetically, seeing him as a victim of circumstance and illness. Butterfield rejected the arguments of his Victorian predecessors with withering disdain: "Erskine May must be a good example of the way in which an historian may fall into error through an excess of brilliance. His capacity for synthesis, and his ability to dovetail the various parts of the evidence ... carried him into a more profound and complicated elaboration of error than some of his more pedestrian predecessors ... he inserted a doctrinal element into his history which, granted his original aberrations, was calculated to project the lines of his error, carrying his work still further from centrality or truth." In pursuing war with the American colonists, George III believed he was defending the right of an elected Parliament to levy taxes, rather than seeking to expand his own power or prerogatives. In the opinion of modern scholars, during the long reign of George III, the monarchy continued to lose its political power and grew as the embodiment of national morality.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

4 June 1738 - 31 March 1751: His Royal Highness Prince George

31 March 1751 - 20 April 1751: His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh

20 April 1751 - 25 October 1760: His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales

25 October 1760 - 29 January 1820: His Majesty The King

In Germany, he was "Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg, Arch-Treasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire" ( Herzog von Braunschweig und Lüneburg, Erzschatzmeister und Kurfürst des Heiligen Römischen Reiches) until the end of the empire in 1806. He then continued as duke until the Congress of Vienna declared him "King of Hanover" in 1814.

Before his succession, George was granted the royal arms differenced by a label of five points Azure, the centre point bearing a fleur-de-lis Or on 27 July 1749. Upon his father's death, and along with the dukedom of Edinburgh and the position of heir-apparent, he inherited his difference of a plain label of three points Argent. In an additional difference, the crown of Charlemagne was not usually depicted on the arms of the heir, only on the Sovereign's.

From his succession until 1800, George bore the royal arms: Quarterly, I Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or ( for England) impaling Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); II Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent ( for Ireland); IV tierced per pale and per chevron (for Hanover), I Gules two lions passant guardant Or (for Brunswick), II Or a semy of hearts Gules a lion rampant Azure (for Lüneburg), III Gules a horse courant Argent (for Saxony), overall an escutcheon Gules charged with the crown of Charlemagne Or (for the dignity of Archtreasurer of the Holy Roman Empire).

Following the Acts of Union 1800, the royal arms were amended, dropping the French quartering. They became: Quarterly, I and IV England; II Scotland; III Ireland; overall an escutcheon of Hanover surmounted by an electoral bonnet. In 1816, after the Electorate of Hanover became a kingdom, the electoral bonnet was changed to a crown.

12 August 1762

26 June 1830

Prince of Wales 1762-1820; married 1795, Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel; had one daughter: Princess Charlotte

21 August 1765

20 June 1837

Duke of Clarence and St Andrews; married 1818, Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen; no surviving legitimate issue, but had illegitimate children with Dorothea Jordan

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn
2 November 1767

23 January 1820

Married 1818, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld; Queen Victoria was their daughter; descendants include Charles III, Felipe VI of Spain, Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Harald V of Norway and Margrethe II of Denmark.

Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover
5 June 1771

18 November 1851

Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale 1799-1851; married 1815, Princess Friederike of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; had issue; descendants include Prince Ernst August of Hanover, Constantine II of Greece and Felipe VI of Spain.

Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex
27 January 1773

21 April 1843

(1) Married 1793, in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act 1772, Lady Augusta Murray; had issue; marriage annulled 1794
(2) Married 1831, Lady Cecilia Buggin (later Duchess of Inverness in her own right); no issue

In Spanish: Jorge III del Reino Unido para niños

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George III of Great Britain and Ireland Facts for Kids

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Learn George III of Great Britain and Ireland facts for kids

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King George III is most well known for being the King of England during the American Revolutionary War. Throughout his life he suffered from temporary lapses in judgment and episodes of insanity. He had a very loving and devoted wife who would stand by his side through it all. However, the constant warring began to grate on him, and finally, after losing the American Colonies and the respect of not only the foreign nations but also his own, even his wonderful wife was not enough to keep him from going insane before his death.

King George III was born on June 4, 1738. He was the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales and the grandson of King George II of England. While he was still a boy, his father died. This caused him to inherit the throne from his grandfather at age 23, making him one of the youngest kings of his time.

While he was growing up, George had a learning disability. This made it extremely hard for him to do his studies and he did not even learn to read until he was 11. His tutors, however, were always extremely pleased with how hard he was willing to work.

When he was a teenager, he met a young woman by the name of Lady Sarah Lenox. They fell in love and swore they would be married one day, but when George suggested the match, many of the people close to him disapproved. He then wrote to Sarah and told her "I am born for the happiness or misery of a great nation, and consequently must often act contrary to my passions."

By the time George became king in 1760, Britain had been in the " Seven Years War" with France for four years. At this time, they were still fighting over who the leading colonial power of that day and age was. Britain had a large advantage, because its royal navy could not be matched.

During all of this, George continued to search for a wife of whom everyone would approve. His mother suggested that he marry Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. He agreed and was married on September 8, 1761. Although he did not meet her until his wedding day, he vowed to love her and be good to her for the rest of his life, and he did. He was completely devoted to her and their fifteen children who would come later.

By 1763 Britain had emerged from the turmoil of war on top as the highest colonial power. Although this victory was great, George's government wasn't very stable and it was in major debt. As a result of this, he decided to raise the taxes on his American colonies. He also began taxing things such as tea, stamps, and papers.

This outraged the colonies. They began writing letters to him, expressing their disapproval of being taxed without their consent. Most of these letters were simply tossed aside, or sent to the waste bin. Almost none of them were actually read.

Soon after, the colonies began to boycott British goods and buy only from other countries. The King wouldn't stand for this, so he ordered his sales men that were bound for America to make sure all the tea was unloaded and sold on American ground. When a young ship merchant tried to follow these orders, a group of colonists dressed as American Indians ran on board and dumped all the tea in the water, turning this scene from a simple sales interaction into the famous Boston Tea Party .

This drove the king half mad and brought on one of his episodes of insanity. He then imposed the intolerable acts on the people, and it didn't take long for this to turn into the start of the American Revolutionary War.

King George really couldn't afford another war, but, even more, he couldn't afford to lose the colonies. By 1776, The Americans declared themselves free, but George kept the war going until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

The loss of the American Colonies was tremendous, and it not only took its toll on England, but on George himself. His episodes became more frequent, and the doctors didn't know how to help him. It was commonly known that George had a learning disability and he was not bright. On top of this, he failed to intimidate people. When foreign ambassadors came to speak with him, they left unimpressed. People thought of him as unfit for his position.

Soon after his loss in power and stature, the French rebelled again, and this time it was not as easy to overtake them. In the end, Britain once again established rule, but they had then sunk too far into debt. All the wars had taken their toll, and George was only barely sane at this time. His wife and children stood by his side through everything, but when he died in January of 1820, he died angry, bitter, and half mad.

Some researchers in modern times have suggested his insanity was brought on by Porphyria, a kidney disease, but other evidence contradicts this, and states his illness was indeed psychological.

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King George III is most well known for being the King of England during the American Revolutionary War. Throughout his life he suffered from temporary lapses in judgment and episodes of insanity. He had a very loving and devoted wife who would stand by his side through it all.

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The American Revolution

King George was now facing the threat of widespread rebellion in the North American colonies. The Continental Congress, which had been meeting since September of 1774, was debating how to supply this new provincial army and who should lead it. On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington to assume command of the disorganized militias that had surrounded Boston a month prior. But it was not in time. On June 17, 1775, General William Howe launched an assault on Charlestown and Breed's Hill just north of Boston. The battle opened with a barrage from British warships stationed around the colonial entrenchments at Breed's Hill. Taking command of the Continental Army was Israel Putnam, who ordered the militiamen to stand their ground against the assault. It would take the British regulars three frontal assaults to secure a victory at Bunker Hill.

Now, it was apparent to all that this would be a long and costly war. Following the appointment of George Washington to lead the Continental Army, the Second Continental Congress drafted a Declaration of Causes stating why it was necessary to take up armed resistance against the British Army. In addition, they assumed the role of government by issuing paper money to pay for the troops, and even assigned a committee to negotiate with foreign powers. While doing so, members of the Continental Congress still clung to the hope that there could be reconciliation between the thirteen colonies and the mother country.

In May of 1775, only weeks after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, members of the Continental Congress debated sending King George an Olive Branch Petition. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania believed that the opening of hostilities was due to a misunderstanding. Dickinson, like many of his eighteenth century contemporaries, believed that a group of wicked ministers clouded the King's judgment, and if the colonies wrote to him directly, he might understand that it was not the fault of the North American colonists, but the English Parliament. John Adams on the other hand believed that war was inevitable, and the petition would not be well received.

Richard Penn and Arthur Lee left for England with the petition in hand, and arrived on August 21, 1775. They first met with Lord Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for the North American colonies. But their real objective was to bring the petition to King George so they could state their case. The king rejected them on the grounds that the Continental Congress was an unlawful assembly, and their dealings up to that point had been illegal.

By now, King George and Parliament had learned of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the continued encirclement of Boston by the nascent Continental Army. But the King was more concerned with the mixed messages he was receiving from the Continental Congress. While delegates to the Continental Congress were debating the Olive Branch Petition in May, John Adams wrote a letter to a friend expressing the inevitability of war. In this letter, he suggested that the colonists should capture royal officials, and build a navy to protect the eastern seaboard. This letter was in the hands of King George only days before Arthur Lee and Richard Penn arrived in England. John Adams' belligerent tone undermined all efforts by patriots to reach a peaceful accord with Parliament and King George III. By the time Lee and Penn were received, King George understood that all of the colonists were taking up arms against the Crown.

In response to the petition, on August 23 the king issued A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition. The royal proclamation declared that the colonies were in a state of rebellion, and that the Crown would do its utmost to bring an end to hostilities. King George blamed the delegates of the Continental Congress stating the colonists were "misled by dangerous and ill-designing men." Further, the king announced that the Crown will "accordingly strictly charge and command all of Our Officers as well Civil as Military; and all Our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost Endeavors to withstand and suppress such rebellion." The British government and the North American colonies were now at war.

In the early days of the conflict, the colonists struggled to wage war effectively. But in May 1775, Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold seized a retinue of canons from Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point. By March of 1776, these canons were in the hands of George Washington, who took them to Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston, and aimed them at the British force occupying the town. General Howe planned to lead a force to retake the heights, but due to bad weather, he was forced to reconsider. On March 17, General Howe and the British Army evacuated the Shawmut Peninsula, leaving Boston in the hands of the Continental Army.

In August of 1776, Howe and his force reappeared off the coast of New York. Howe planned to seize New York from the Continental Army, where he would be able to regroup, and then march his army north to meet General Burgoyne who was leading a sizeable force down from Quebec. As Burgoyne moved south through the thick brush of the countryside, he was intercepted at Saratoga, where he was decisively defeated on October 7, 1777. This victory gave the Continental Army hope, as France now joined the Americans in the War of Independence. Shortly after, Spain and the Dutch Republic joined the United States and France in their fight against the British Empire.

In spite of this King George was encouraged by Howe's success in New York. George Washington and the Continental Army were on the retreat, and Howe's force was numerically superior. In the winter of 1777-78, George Washington hunkered down at Valley Forge, his army on the brink of collapse. Although the British Army was vastly superior in numbers as in martial talent, Howe did not follow up his victories. In June of 1778, Washington's Army emerged from the cold and sickness that characterized Valley Forge with a reinvigorated fighting spirit. On October 19, 1781, a Franco-American forced surrounded the British Army by land and sea at Yorktown, effectively ending any chances for a British victory in North America. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris secured a victory for the United States.

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King George III Biography | King George III Facts

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King George was now facing the threat of widespread rebellion in the North American colonies. The Continental Congress, which had been meeting since September of 1774, was debating how to supply this new provincial army and who should lead it.

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American Revolution: The Continental Congress

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Kids learn about The Continental Congress meetings; major events in the American Revolutionary War.

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Learn about Patriots and Loyalists during the Revolutionary War. One side wanted independence while the other wanted to remain part of Britain.

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Revolution was in the air in early 1775. Only a few months earlier, delegates from the American colonies had held the first Continental Congress and sent Britain's King George III a petition for redress of grievances, among them the repeal of the so-called "Intolerable Acts." A mass boycott of British goods was underway, and Boston Harbor still languished under a British blockade as punishment for 1773's Boston Tea Party. In a speech to Parliament in late-1774, King George had denounced the "daring spirit of resistance and disobedience to the law" which seemed to be spreading like wildfire across the American continent.

Amid these mounting tensions, the Second Virginia Convention convened to discuss the Old Dominion's strategy in negotiating with the Crown. The roughly 120 delegates who filed into Richmond's St. John's Church were a veritable "who's who" of Virginia's colonial leaders. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both in attendance, as were five of the six other Virginians who would later sign the Declaration of Independence. Prominent among the bewigged statesmen was Patrick Henry, a well-respected lawyer from Hanover County. Blessed with an unfailing wit and mellifluous speaking voice, Henry had long held a reputation as one of Virginia's most vociferous opponents of British taxation schemes. During the Stamp Act controversy in 1765, he had even flirted with treason in a speech in which he hinted that King George risked suffering the same fate as Julius Caesar if he maintained his oppressive policies. As a recent delegate to the Continental Congress, he had sounded the call for colonial solidarity by proclaiming, "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian; I am an American."

Henry giving his "Liberty or Death" speech.[/caption]

Henry was convinced that war was around the corner, and he arrived at the Virginia Convention determined to persuade his fellow delegates to adopt a defensive stance against Great Britain. On March 23, he put forward a resolution proposing that Virginia's counties raise militiamen "to secure our inestimable rights and liberties, from those further violations with which they are threatened." The suggestion of forming a militia was not shocking in itself. Other colonies had passed similar resolutions, and Henry had already taken it upon himself to raise a volunteer outfit in Hanover County. Nevertheless, many in the audience balked at approving any measure that might be viewed as combative. Word that King George had rejected the Continental Congress's petition for redress of grievances was yet to reach the colonies, and some still held out hope for a peaceful reconciliation with Britain.

After several delegates had spoken on the issue, Patrick Henry rose from his seat in the third pew and took the floor. A Baptist minister who was watching the proceedings would later describe him as having "an unearthly fire burning in his eye." Just what happened next has long been a subject of debate. Henry spoke without notes, and no transcripts of his exact words have survived to today. The only known version of his remarks was reconstructed in the early 1800s by William Wirt, a biographer who corresponded with several men that attended the Convention. According to this version, Henry began by stating his intention to "speak forth my sentiments freely" before launching into an eloquent warning against appeasing the Crown.

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided," he said, "and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves, and the House?"

Henry then turned his attention to the British troops mobilizing across the colonies. "Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation?" he asked. "Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? ...Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other."

As he continued speaking, Henry's dulcet tones began to darken with anger. "Excitement began to play more and more upon his features," the minister later said. "The tendons of his neck stood out white and rigid like whipcords."

"Our petitions have been slighted," Henry said, "our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne...we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!"

Henry stood silent for a moment, letting his defiant words hang in the air. When he finally began speaking again, it was in a thunderous bellow that seemed to shake "the walls of the building and all within them." His fellow delegates leaned forward in their seats as he reached his crescendo.

"The war is actually begun!" Henry cried. "The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" As he spoke, Henry held his wrists together as though they were manacled and raised them toward the heavens. "Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty"-Henry burst from his imaginary chains and grasped an ivory letter opener-"or give me death!" As he uttered these final words, he plunged the letter opener toward his chest, mimicking a knife blow to the heart.

For several moments after Henry sat back down, the assembled delegates seemed at a loss for words. "No other member...was yet adventurous enough to interfere with that voice which had so recently subdued and captivated," delegate Edmund Randolph later said. A hushed silence descended on the room. "Every eye yet gazed entranced on Henry," said the Baptist minister. "Men were beside themselves." Colonel Edward Carrington, one of the many people watching the proceedings through the church windows, was so moved that he stood and proclaimed to his fellow spectators, "Let me be buried at this spot!" When he died decades later, his widow honored his request.

While some of the Convention's delegates clung to their loyalist stance-one even called Henry's words "infamously insolent"-the "Liberty or Death" speech tipped the scales in favor of defensive action. After Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson both lent their support, the resolution passed by only a few votes. Henry was appointed the head of a new committee charged with readying the Virginia militia for combat.

Henry's call to arms came at a pivotal moment. Less than a month later, skirmishes between British troops and colonial minutemen at Lexington and Concord resulted in "the shot heard round the world" and the first casualties of the Revolutionary War. In Virginia, scores of colonials-many of whom had embroidered the words "Liberty or Death" onto their shirts-flocked to join local militias. "The sword is now drawn," wrote the Virginia Gazette, "and God knows when it will be sheathed."

Patrick Henry would go on to serve as both a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and as Virginia's governor. He played a crucial role in securing men and arms for George Washington's Continental Army, but many would credit his silver tongue as having been his most indispensable contribution to American independence. "It is not now easy to say what we should have done without Patrick Henry," Thomas Jefferson later wrote. "He was before us all in maintaining the spirit of the Revolution."

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Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" Speech

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Revolution was in the air in early 1775. Only a few months earlier, delegates from the American colonies had held the first Continental Congress and sent Britain's King George III a petition for redress of grievances, among them the repeal of the so-called "Intolerable Acts."

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Causes of the Revolutionary War

For more than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities.

The French and Indian War, or Seven Years' War (1756-1763), brought new territories under the power of the crown, but the expensive conflict lead to new and unpopular taxes. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects.

Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five men in what was known as the Boston Massacre. After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians altered their appearance to hide their identity boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party, an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures (known as the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts) designed to reassert imperial authority in Massachusetts.

Did you know? Now most famous as a traitor to the American cause, General Benedict Arnold began the Revolutionary War as one of its earliest heroes, helping lead rebel forces in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775.

In response, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of Virginia, John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and John Jay of New York) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give voice to their grievances against the British crown. This First Continental Congress did not go so far as to demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the colonies without their consent. It issued a declaration of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, property, assembly and trial by jury. The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider further action, but by that time violence had already broken out.

On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord, Massachusetts in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoats. On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the "shot heard round the world" that signified the start of the Revolutionary War.

HISTORY Vault: The Revolution

Declaring Independence (1775-76)

When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates-including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson-voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June 17, in the Revolution's first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed's Hill in Boston. The engagement, known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, ended in British victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause.

Throughout that fall and winter, Washington's forces struggled to keep the British contained in Boston, but artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New York helped shift the balance of that struggle in late winter. The British evacuated the city in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to prepare a major invasion of New York.

By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4, the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson. That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe's Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September. Pushed across the Delaware River, Washington fought back with a surprise attack in Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas night and won another victory at Princeton to revive the rebels' flagging hopes before making winter quarters at Morristown.

Saratoga: Revolutionary War Turning Point (1777-78)

British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne's army marched south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe's forces on the Hudson River. Burgoyne's men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York to confront Washington's army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge.

Howe's move had left Burgoyne's army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman's Farm in the first Battle of Saratoga. After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17. The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.

Stalemate in the North, Battle in the South (1778-81)

During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington's troops benefited from the training and discipline of the Prussian military officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette. On June 28, 1778, as British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who had replaced Howe as supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York, Washington's army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a French fleet commanded by the Comte d'Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast, ready to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island, in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North.

The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from 1779 to 1781, including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army. In the South, the British occupied Georgia by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region, crushing Gates' American troops at Camden in mid-August, though the Americans scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King's Mountain in early October. Nathanael Green replaced Gates as the American commander in the South that December. Under Green's command, General Daniel Morgan scored a victory against a British force led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781.

Revolutionary War Draws to a Close (1781-83)

By the fall of 1781, Greene's American forces had managed to force Cornwallis and his men to withdraw to Virginia's Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River empties into Chesapeake Bay. Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October 19. Claiming illness, the British general sent his deputy, Charles O'Hara, to surrender; after O'Hara approached Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his own deputy, Benjamin Lincoln, who accepted it.

Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown, contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York. Though neither side would take decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782 finally pointed to the end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris. At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years.

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Revolutionary War - Timeline, Facts & Battles | HISTORY

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The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain's 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown.

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Henry was born in Hanover County, Virginia on May 29, 1736. His father was a Scottish immigrant originally from Aberdeenshire, while his mother was a member of a prominent Virginia family. Very little in Henry's early life indicated that he was destined to become a revolutionary icon. Though academics were encouraged by his parents, for years he neglected his studies, and as a young man failed at various business ventures.

Henry eventually found his calling as a lawyer, and in 1760 successfully completed his bar exam before notable Virginia attorneys Robert Carter Nicholas, Edmund Pendleton, John Randolph, and George Wythe. He started a law practice and soon became involved in Virginia politics. Henry moved to Louisa County in 1764, where he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses. A firebrand from the outset, he quickly established himself as one of Virginia's most radical politicians.

Not long after entering the legislature, Henry authored the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions in response to the Stamp Act of 1765, a controversial and, to many colonists, oppressive tax measure passed by the British parliament. Henry argued against parliament's right to directly tax the colonies in language so passionately pointed that some accused him of promoting treason.

As the American Revolution approached, Henry became one of Virginia's leading advocates for independence. He helped create the First Continental Congress, and in 1774 won election to that body representing Virginia. On March 23, 1775 Henry made what would become his most famous speech before a gathering of Virginia legislators at St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. There he urged his fellow Virginians to arm themselves and reportedly underscored his remarks with a statement that would resonate for generations, "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."

When the Revolution began in earnest, Henry briefly led the Virginia militia before winning the first of his five terms as Virginia's governor in 1776. After the war Henry championed the cause of states' rights and lobbied unsuccessfully against the ratification of the United States Constitution. A staunch Anti-Federalist, he turned down George Washington's offer to become Secretary of State because of the President's strong Federalist leanings. Henry eventually reversed his position and supported American efforts to develop a strong central government. Due to ill health, Henry turned down an appointment by President John Adams to become special envoy to France in 1798. On June 6, 1799, Patrick Henry died at his family's large Virginia plantation, Red Hill. During his lifetime Henry was married twice and fathered a total of seventeen children.

Ben Wynne, Ph.D.
Gainesville State College

Bibliography:
Beeman, Richard R. Patrick Henry: A Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974.

Mayer, Henry. Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic. New York: Grove Press, 2001.

Meade, Robert D. Patrick Henry. Philadelphia: Lippencott, 1957-1969. Two volumes.

Unger, Harlow G. Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation. New York: Da Capo Press, 2011.

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Henry was born in Hanover County, Virginia on May 29, 1736. His father was a Scottish immigrant originally from Aberdeenshire, while his mother was a member of a prominent Virginia family. Very little in Henry's early life indicated that he was destined to become a revolutionary icon.

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Learn about the biography of Patrick Henry, a Founding Father during the Revolutionary War.

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Early Years

Patrick Henry was born in 1736 to John and Sarah Winston Henry on his family's farm in Hanover County, Virginia. He was educated mostly at home by his father, a Scottish-born planter who had attended college in Scotland.

Henry struggled to find a profession as a young adult. He failed in several attempts as a storeowner and a planter. He taught himself law while working as a tavern keeper at his father-in-law's inn and opened a law practice in Hanover County in 1760.

As a lawyer and politician, Patrick Henry was known for his persuasive and passionate speeches, which appealed as much to emotion as to reason. Many of Henry's contemporaries likened his rhetorical style to the evangelical preachers of the Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s.

Parson's Cause

Henry's first major legal case was known as the Parson's Cause in 1763, a dispute involving Anglican clergy in colonial Virginia. The case - one of the first legal attempts to challenge the limits of England's power over the American colonies - is often viewed as an important event leading up to the American Revolution.

Ministers of the Church of England in Virginia were paid their annual salaries in tobacco. A tobacco shortage caused by drought led to price increases in the late 1750s.

In response, the Virginia legislature passed the Two-Penny Act, which set the value of the Anglican ministers' annual salaries at two pennies per pound of tobacco, rather than the inflated price, which was closer to six pennies per pound. The Anglican clergy appealed to Britain's King George III, who overturned the law and encouraged ministers to sue for back pay.

The Parson's Cause established Patrick Henry as a leader in the emerging movement for American independence. During the case, Henry, then a relatively unknown attorney, delivered an impassioned speech against British overreach into colonial affairs, arguing "that a King by annulling or disallowing acts of so salutary a nature, from being Father of his people degenerated into a Tyrant, and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience."

Stamp Act

costs of defending the American colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765 required American colonists to pay a small tax on every piece of paper they used.

Colonists viewed the Stamp Act-an attempt by England to raise money in the colonies without approval from colonial legislatures-as a troublesome precedent.

Patrick Henry responded to the Stamp Act with a series of resolutions introduced to the Virginia legislature in a speech. The resolves, adopted by the Virginia legislature, were soon published in other colonies, and helped to articulate America's stance against taxation without representation under the British Crown.

Henry's resolves declared that Americans should be taxed only by their own representatives and that Virginians should pay no taxes except those voted on by the Virginia legislature.

Later in the speech, Henry flirted with treason when he hinted that the King risked suffering the same fate as Julius Caesar -assassination-if he maintained his oppressive policies.

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death

In March of 1775, the Second Virginia Convention met at St. John's Church in Richmond to discuss the state's strategy against the British. It was here that Patrick Henry delivered his most famous speech.

"Gentlemen may cry, 'Peace, Peace,' but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and five of the six other Virginians who would later sign the Declaration of Independence were in attendance that day. Historians say that Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech helped convince those in attendance to begin preparing Virginia troops for war against Great Britain.

Royal Governor Lord Dunmore responded to the speech by removing gunpowder from the magazine. That November, he would issue Dunmore's Proclamation declaring martial law in Virginia and promising freedom to enslaved people who joined the King's cause.

Henry spoke without notes, and no transcripts exist from his famous address. The only known version of the speech was reconstructed in an 1817 biography of Henry by author William Wirt, leading some historians to speculate that the famous Patrick Henry quote may have been fabricated by Wirt to sell copies of his book.

Henry and Slavery

Patrick Henry married his first wife, Sarah Shelton, in 1754, and the couple went on to have six children together. Her dowry included a 600-acre farm, a house, and six enslaved people.

After Sarah died in 1775, he married Dorothea Dandridge of Tidewater, Virginia, and their union produced eleven children.

Despite the size of his family, Henry and his family lived in a small farmhouse on a Piedmont-area plantation known as Red Hill. Henry once referred to slavery as a "lamentable evil," but throughout his adult life Henry owned dozens of enslaved persons, some of whom worked the fields at Red Hill.

Anti-Federalism and the Bill of Rights

Patrick Henry served as Virginia's first governor (1776-1779) and sixth governor (1784-1786).

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, Henry became an outspoken Anti-Federalist. Henry and other Anti-Federalists opposed the ratification of the 1787 United States Constitution, which created a strong federal government.

Patrick Henry worried that a federal government that was too powerful and too centralized could evolve into a monarchy. He was the author of several Anti- Federalist Papers -written arguments by Founding Father's who opposed the U.S. Constitution.

While the Anti-Federalists were unable to stop the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Anti-Federalist Papers were influential in helping to shape the Bill of Rights. The first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, protected individual liberties and placed limits on the powers of the federal government.

Besides a brief stint as a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress -the United States government during the American Revolution-Patrick Henry never held national public office.

He died on June 6, 1799 at the age of 63 from stomach cancer. His Southern Virginia plantation is now the Red Hill Patrick Henry National Memorial.

Sources

Henry's Full Biography; Red Hill Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation.

Patrick Henry Arguing the Parson's Cause; Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

A Summary of the 1765 Stamp Act; Colonial Williamsburg.

Patrick Henry, Orator of Liberty; U.S. Library of Congress.

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Patrick Henry: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death Speech | HISTORY

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Patrick Henry, a Founding Father and a leader of the American Revolution, is famous for a 1775 speech in which he declared, "Give me liberty or give me death."

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The Winter Patriots: A Revolutionary War Tale

Explore one of the darkest moments of the American Revolution and how the Continental Army, under the command of General George Washington, was able to save the cause of independence through one brilliant military campaign.

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Explore one of the darkest moments of the American Revolution and how the Continental Army, under the command of General George Washington, was able to save the cause of independence through one brilliant military campaign.

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The American victory at the Battle of Princeton (January 3, 1777) was one of the most consequential of the American Revolution. George Washington and his soldiers marched north from Trenton and attacked a British force south of the town. Washington's victory bolstered American morale and provided great confidence to his soldiers.

1.Washington escaped from one enemy to attack another at Princeton

Despite their success in repulsing several frontal attacks at the Battle of Assunpink Creek (Battle of Second Trenton) on January 2, 1777, Gen. George Washington and his senior officers were filled with a sense of dread.Gen. Charles Cornwallis' army of 8,000 veteran soldiers were poised to deliver a punishing blow the following morning. The fact that the British had discovered a ford that led to the vulnerable American right flank made the American position on the Assunpink Creek near Trenton all the more dangerous.

Rather than risk defeat in Trenton, Washington, in collaboration with his senior officers, agreed upon a bold and dangerous plan.That very night the Continental army would quietly leave its positions along the creek and march east, then north towards Princeton.With deceptive campfires still burning along the creek, Washington's intrepid soldiers began their 18-mile march through the dark and bitterly cold night. By stealing a march on Cornwallis, Washington retained the all-important initiative and avoided any movement that smacked of retreat.Washington's successful night march on January 2 and 3, 1777 is remembered as one of the great flank marches in American history.

2. "A very intelligent young gentleman" provided Washington with valuable intelligence

Ever-hungry for good intelligence on British positions north of the Delaware, Washington had ordered militia Colonel John Cadwalader on December 12, 1776 to obtain information on British forces and intentions."Spare no pains or expense to get intelligence of the enemy's motions and intentions... Every piece of intelligence you obtain worthy of notice, send it forward by express..."

Cadwalader's intelligence efforts bore fruit in the form of a detailed, handwritten map of the British positions around Princeton, New Jersey.Cadwalader had received this detailed information from "a very intelligent young gentleman" who had just returned from the area.Cadwalader's map included detailed information on British works, cannon, and force dispositions.The map also included valuable information on the road network around Princeton - all information that Washington put to great use on January 3, 1777.

3. The Opposing Forces Almost Missed One Another

Lt. Col. Charles Mawhood, the British officer in command at Princeton, had been ordered by Cornwallis to bring reinforcements down to his position at Trenton.Leaving a small garrison in Princeton, Mawhood began his march down the Post Road towards Trenton just after dawn. Washington's northward marching army was primarily traveling on a parallel and lesser known road that crossed the Thomas Clark Farm - a road that was largely out of view from the Post Road.Behind schedule Washington sent a small detachment under the command of Hugh Mercer to seize and destroy the Stony Brook bridge along the Post Road.It was this detachment that was viewed by scouts attached to Mawhood's column.Mawhood, now aware of a new threat near Princeton, wheeled his force about and approached Mercer on the Clarke Farm.

One might imagine what would have occurred if this chance meeting had not occurred.Mawhood would have been well on his way to Trenton and Washington would have found but a small, vulnerable garrison at Princeton.

Battle Map: Opening Phases of the Battle of Princeton

4. Lt. Col. Charles Mawhood rode into battle with springer spaniels at his side

Mercer's American force soon beheld the advance of soldiers from two British regiments - the 17 and 55 Foot.Mawhood himself could soon be seen atop his "brown pony" and with a pair of his favorite spaniels bounding at his side.As David Hackett Fischer writes, "[Mawhood] delighted in the display of a highly developed air of nonchalance, especially on the field of battle."Despite this strangely casual display, Mawhood was a veteran and highly capable officer who would more than prove his mettle on the fields at Princeton.

5. Many British soldiers believed they had killed Gen. Washington during the battle

During the opening phases of the battle, a bayonet charge by the British forces broke Hugh Mercer's American line near an orchard fence line on the Clarke Farm. Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer, a friend of the Washingtons and a resident of Fredericksburg, Virginia, attempted to reform his command, but was soon surrounded by angry British regulars shouting "Surrender you damn rebel!" Mercer, a veteran of European wars and a fierce patriot, refused to lay down his arms. After a brief struggle Mercer was bayonetted repeatedly and left for dead.Given that Mercer was well-attired (as opposed to the rags worn by most American soldiers), a high-ranking officer, and refused to surrender, many British soldiers believed they had killed Washington himself.

The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton by John Trumbull captures the demise of this great patriot, but also includes, incorrectly, Washington looming over Mercer's end. Learn more about the origins of this famous painting.

6. At one point, Washington was just 30 yards from the British line

Moving to reinforce Mercer's broken line Cadwalader's brigade of Pennsylvania militia, Delaware and Philadelphia light infantry, and a small unit of marines - all told about 1,500 men - moved towards the British.Despite their numerical superiority, the inexperienced Americans began to fall back under the steady fire from the British regulars.As Cadwalader reformed his line, up rode Washington astride a magnificent white horse.Amidst the flying musket balls Washington coolly assured his soldiers, "Parade with us my brave fellows! There is but a handful of the enemy and we shall have them directly!" Washington then proceeded to lead the militiamen forward from the front.He at one point was only 30 yards from the British line - easy musket range.John Fitzgerald, one of Washington's officers, reportedly pulled his hat over his eyes, expecting to see the General shot from the saddle at any moment. Despite his proximity, Washington remained uninjured and his galvanizing presence stabilized the American line at a critical moment in the battle.Soon Washington, along with fresh reinforcements, were chasing the remnants of Mawhood's broken force through the fields and woods.
Painting by Don Troiani of Washington at the Battle of Princeton, 1777 (Source: Don Troiani, WBritain.com)
Battle Map: Battle of Princeton, 8:20am to 8:45am

7. US Marines fought alongside Washington at Princeton

After his arrival upon the Pennsylvania shore of the Delaware River, Washington sent out an urgent plea for reinforcement.One of the first contingents of soldiers to respond to this request were roughly 600 Marines from the Philadelphia area.This force of Marines had been recruited for duty aboard the various Continental warships now anchored near Philadelphia and were generally considered to be excellent fighters. All of the Marine officers had seen active duty against the British onboard various vessels and their men had been occupied in daily drill and frequent skirmishes with British forces operating in the area.

Three companies of United States Marines accompanied Washington's army on its nighttime march to Princeton. Moving with Cadwalader's Brigade into the fight, a few marines under the command of Major Samuel Nicholas, engaged Manhood's troops on the Clarke Farm. During the fierce fighting the Regulars several of the marines were killed in battle, including Captain William Shippin.These casualties were some of the first to be suffered by US Marines on any battlefield.

8. The final actions of the battle occurred on the Princeton campus

After the American victory on the Clarke Farm, the final military actions of the Battle of Princeton shifted towards the town itself.Roughly 200 British Regulars had fortified Nassau Hall at the center of what is Princeton University today.From this stout building the British intended to use firing positions to hold off the Americans until a relief party arrived.The Americans positioned cannon around the building and soon began firing on the building and its occupants.Legend has it that one of the American cannonballs decapitated the portrait of King George II hanging inside the building - a fearful omen that further spurred the British garrison to surrender.

Nassau Hall still stands at the center of Princeton University and one can still see upon its surface damage caused by the American fire.As for the portrait of King George? Well the original portrait was destroyed, but a different painting of King George II now hangs in the historic building opposite Peale's portrait of George Washington at Princeton.

Washington's World: Locate Nassau Hall and other Washington related sites in our Washington's World Interactive Map

9. The victory at Princeton rescued the Patriot cause from one of its darkest hours

The disastrous defeats in the 1776 New York Campaign and the precipitous retreat across the Delaware had left the prospects for American independence in tatters.Rather than retreat to winter quarters as most on both sides of the Delaware River expected, Washington chose to attack in the dead of winter.Washington's victories at Trenton, the Assunpink Creek, and at Princeton completely reversed the fortunes of the Continental Army and the prospects for the young United States.Washington's victories and the effective guerrilla war waged in the New Jersey countryside forced Sir William Howe to retract the British lines back towards New York City - giving up much of the Jersey countryside that had been captured earlier.

Many look at the battles of Trenton and Princeton as small affairs, but these battles, combined with the tough winter campaigning sliced Howe's once mighty army in half.Howe's further requests for reinforcement left many in London aghast.

Washington's bold gambles and effective leadership had delivered the very sort of public confidence that Washington was keen to produce.Not only were the British and the Loyalists discouraged, but his own soldiers found newfound confidence that they could beat the very best that the British could put into the field.

Video Presentation: Watch the battles of Trenton and Princeton unfold in The Winter Patriots

Video: Rick Atkinson discusses the historical significance of the Battles of Second Trenton and Princeton (2:48)

10. George Washington at Princeton was wildly popular after its debut

Given how the news of Washington's victory at Princeton had electrified the nation, it's not surprising that the leading artists of the day hoped to capture Gen. Washington on canvas. Charles Willson Peale, Washington's most frequent portraitist and a Continental Army veteran who was at Princeton, finished his George Washington at Princeton painting in early 1779.The painting had been commissioned by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania for its council chambers in Independence Hall, Philadelphia.After the painting's debut there was a great clamor for replicas.It is estimated that Peale created 18 or more different replicas of the painting for clients as varied as King Louis XVI, the Spanish Court, and the island of Cuba.Today replicas can be found at Princeton University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Colonial Williamsburg, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the US Senate.Each of these copies employ different sized canvases, updated uniforms, varied backgrounds, and other modifications.

In the original painting, now a part of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts collection, Washington leans upon the barrel of a captured cannon while Hessian and British flags lie at his feet.Washington is his blue and buff uniform with commander's sash looks confidently at the viewer while in the background one can make out Nassau Hall - scene of the final moments of the battle.

Learn More: Peale's portrait of Washington at Princeton

Other Facts:

Weather: 21 degrees at 8am - "Fair & frosty." Some reported "shin deep snow" on the Clarke Farm battlefield.

Troop Strengths: American - 4,500 est. with 35 artillery pieces. British - 1,200 est. with 6 to 9 artillery pieces.

Casualties: Exact numbers are not known and estimates vary. Fischer reports 232 killed and wounded for the British with maybe another 200 to 300 captured. American losses were likely 31-37 killed, upwards of 37 wounded, and 1 captured.

At the time of the battle, Princeton University was known as the College of New Jersey. The name was changed to Princeton University in 1896.

The Continental Congress convened in Nassau Hall from June 30, 1783, to November 4, 1783. Congress moved here from Philadelphia to avoid the risk of mutinous Continental army officers in and near Philadelphia.

Sources:
Fischer, David Hackett. Washington's Crossing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Lengel, Edward G. General George Washington: A Military Life. New York: Random House, 2005.

Edwin N. McClellan and John H. Craige. Marines in the Battles of Trenton and Princeton, 1921.

United States Senate, George Washington at Princeton.

Saint Peter's Church, What the Walls Can Tell Us.

Library of Congress, Map Division, Plan of Princeton, Dec. 31, 1776.
The Princeton Battlefield Society
Campaign 1776, Battle Map of Princeton.

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The American victory at the Battle of Princeton (January 3, 1777) was one of the most consequential of the American Revolution. George Washington and his soldiers marched north from Trenton and attacked a British force south of the town. Washington's victory bolstered American morale and provided great confidence to his soldiers.

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Table of Contents

1. Before the Battles of Trenton and Princeton

2. Washington Crosses the Delaware

3. The Battle of Trenton

4. Between Trenton and Princeton

5. The Battle of Princeton

6. Importance of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton

General George Washington's army crossed the icy Delaware on Christmas Day 1776 and, over the course of the next 10 days, won two crucial battles of the American Revolution. In the Battle of Trenton (December 26), Washington defeated a formidable garrison of Hessian mercenaries before withdrawing. A week later he returned to Trenton to lure British forces south, then executed a daring night march to capture Princeton on January 3. The victories reasserted American control of much of New Jersey and greatly improved the morale and unity of the colonial army and militias.

Before the Battles of Trenton and Princeton

Since August 1776, British forces under General William Howe had been driving the Continental Army south out of New York. On November 16 the British overran Fort Washington in Manhattan, taking 2,000 Americans prisoner.

Did you know? During the Battle of Princeton, Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, fired cannons at British troops blockaded in Nassau Hall, the main building of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Three years earlier, Hamilton had applied to the college but been rejected when he asked for permission to take courses at his own pace.

The British then pursued the Americans across New Jersey. In mid-December Washington led his army south across the Delaware River. They camped on the Pennsylvania side, short of food, ammunition and supplies.

Washington Crosses the Delaware

Washington realized that without a decisive action, the Continental Army was likely doomed, so he planned a daring assault on the Hessian garrison at Trenton. He envisioned a three-pronged attack, with his army of 2,400 flanked by a 1,900-man diversionary force under Colonel John Cadwalader and a blocking move by General James Ewing's 700 men.

Washington's men and cannons crossed the icy river in boats and began the 19-mile march towards Trenton in a freezing storm. In the end, neither Cadwalader nor Ewing were able to carry out their parts of the plan.

The Battle of Trenton

The Hessian force at Trenton numbered 1,400 under the leadership of Colonel Johann Rall. Although Rall had received warnings of colonial movements, his men were exhausted and unprepared for Washington's attack-though rumors that they were drunk from Christmas celebrations are unfounded.

As he approached the town, Washington divided his men, sending flanking columns under General Nathaniel Greene and General John Sullivan. Meanwhile, Colonel Henry Knox's cannons fired on the garrison. Rall attempted to rally his troops but was never able to establish a defensive perimeter, and was shot from his horse and fatally wounded. The Hessians quickly surrendered. All told, 22 were killed, 92 wounded, 918 captured and 400 escaped in the Battle of Trenton. The Americans suffered two frozen to death and five wounded.

Between Trenton and Princeton

Realizing his men could not hold Trenton against British reinforcements, Washington withdrew across the Delaware. However, on December 30 he crossed back into New Jersey with an army of 2,000. Informed that 8,000 British troops under Generals Charles Cornwallis and James Grant were marching south from Princeton, Washington worked quickly to supplement his numbers, urging militiamen whose terms had expired to stay on for six weeks.

On New Year's Day, Washington's force of 5,000 poorly trained men massed in Trenton. The next day Cornwallis arrived with an army 5,500. After skirmishes at the American lines and three attempts to cross the bridge at Assunpink Creek, Cornwallis relented for the day, assuming he had Washington trapped.

That night, Washington deployed 500 men to keep the campfires going while the rest of his troops made a nighttime march north to Princeton. To keep their movement secret, torches were extinguished and wagon wheels muffled in heavy cloth.

Battles of Trenton and Princeton

The Battle of Princeton

At dawn on January 3, 1777, Cornwallis woke to find that his opponent had disappeared, while Washington's men were nearing the end of their 12-mile march to Princeton.

Washington sent a small force under General Hugh Mercer to destroy a bridge. Mercer's men encountered Redcoats under Lt. Col. Charles Mawhood and Mercer was killed in the fighting. Arriving militiamen under Col. Cadwalader had little effect. Then Washington arrived, riding between the firing lines until his terrified horse refused to go on. The Americans rallied and broke through Mawhood's lines.

Importance of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton

As at Trenton, the Americans took prisoners, arms and supplies but quickly withdrew after winning the Battle of Princeton. Washington had wanted to advance to New Brunswick, but was fortuitously overruled by his officers (at the time, Cornwallis' men were en route to New Brunswick).

Washington's men marched to Morristown, in northern New Jersey, where they established winter quarters, safe from British incursions. The Continental Army basked in its achievements-at Princeton they had defeated a regular British army in the field. Moreover, Washington had shown that he could unite soldiers from all the colonies into an effective national force.

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Battles of Trenton and Princeton - Facts, Location & Importance | HISTORY

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The Revolutionary War battles of Trenton and Princeton turned the tide for the colonies and sealed George Washington's fate as an American hero.

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Learn more about General George Washington and the Continental Army's famous crossing of the Delaware River on December 25-26, 1776.

1. Washington crossed the Delaware River so that his army could attack an isolated garrison of Hessian troops located at Trenton, New Jersey

So why were Washington and his bedraggled Continental Army trying to cross an ice-choked Delaware River on a cold winter's night? It wasn't just to get to the other side. Washington's aim was to conduct a surprise attack upon a Hessian garrison of roughly 1,400 soldiers located in and around Trenton, New Jersey. Washington hoped that a quick victory at Trenton would bolster sagging morale in his army and encourage more men to join the ranks of the Continentals come the new year. After several councils of war, General George Washington set the date for the river crossing for Christmas night 1776.

2. Washington's attack plan included three separate river crossings, but only one made it across

George Washington's plan of attack included three different crossings of the Delaware River on Christmas night. Col. Cadwalader was to lead his force of 1,200 Philadelphia militia and 600 Continentals across the river near Burlington, New Jersey. His role was to harass and prevent the British and Hessian units near the town from racing north to support the Hessians at Trenton. Gen. James Ewing's force of 800 Pennsylvania militia was to cross the river at Trenton and take up defensive positions along the Assunpink River and bridge. Ewing's soldiers would work to prevent the Hessians from retreating from Trenton. And Washington and his 2,400 soldiers would cross at McConkey's and Johnson's ferries, roughly 10 miles north of Trenton and would then march down to Trenton to surprise the garrison at dawn. This was an ambitious plan, one that even well rested and experienced troops would have had difficulty in executing. Both Cadwalader and Ewing's forces were unable to cross the ice-choked river. And Washington's main force managed a crossing, but was more than three hours delayed.

3. Spies and deserters had informed the British and Hessians that Trenton was likely to be attacked.

Lurking within Washington's headquarters was a British spy who has never been identified. This spy was privy to the early deliberations of Washington's war council and correctly passed along to British Major General James Grant that Washington's army was looking to attack north of the river. Grant passed along this information to General Leslie and Col. Von Donop who then passed it along to Col. Johann Rall at Trenton. And while Grant stated that he did not think Washington would attack, he did command Rall to be vigilant. Rall acknowledged receipt of this important intelligence at about the same time that Washington was beginning his crossing. With typical Hessian bravado, Rall dismissed or even welcomed the threat stating "Let them come... Why defenses? We will go at them with the bayonet."

The day before, Rall had received two American deserters who had crossed the river and told the Hessians that the American army was ready to move. Other loyalists informed the Hessians that an attack was imminent. So why wasn't Rall more active in opposing the crossing or better prepared to defend the town? History records that a series of false alarms and the growing storm had given the Hessian defenders a sense that no attack was likely this night. How might history have changed if the Hessians responded differently to all this intelligence?

Learn More: Spying and Espionage in the American Revolution

4. Washington's force used a collection of cargo boats and ferries to transport his men across the Delaware

Thanks to the foresight of General Washington and the actions of the New Jersey militia, the American forces had brought all available watercraft on the Delaware to the southern bank, thus denying the British the use of these crafts, while making them available for an American recrossing. Much of Washington's force crossed the river in shallow draft Durham boats - strongly built cargo vessels, most between 40 and 60 feet in length, designed to move iron ore and bulk goods down the river to markets in and around Philadelphia. These stout craft with their high side walls were robust enough to survive the ice-choked Delaware. Heavy artillery pieces and horses were transported on large flat-bottomed ferries and other watercraft more suited to carrying that type of difficult cargo. It shouldn't be surprising that most of Washington's soldiers stood during the crossing since the bottoms of Durham boats were neither comfortable nor dry.

5. Experienced watermen from New England and the Philadelphia area ably guided the boats across the challenging river.

One factor in Washington's favor was the large number of experienced watermen to be found at the crossing site. Col. John Glover's Marblehead regiment was filled with New Englanders who had extensive experience as seamen. Glover's men were all quite identifiable with their short blue seaman's jackets, tarred pants, and woolen caps. Other experienced watermen from the Philadelphia area, many familiar with this exact stretch of river, had also congregated in the area and were able to provide the muscle and skill needed to make the perilous nighttime crossing.

6. The crossing was made worse by the arrival of a strong storm that brought freezing rain, snow, and terrifying winds.

By the time that most of the soldiers had reached the launching point for the boats, the drizzle had turned into a driving rain. And by 11 o'clock that evening, while the boats were crossing the river, a howling nor'easter made the miserable crossing even worse. One soldier recorded that "it blew a perfect hurricane" as snow and sleet lashed Washington's army.

7. Washington's carefully planned timetable was woefully behind schedule and Washington contemplated canceling the attack.

It shouldn't be all that surprising that Washington's carefully choreographed attack plan should have fallen so far behind schedule. His men were tired, hungry, and ill-clothed. They had to march many miles through the dark and snow to even reach the river crossing site. From there, they needed to board boats at night, during a frightening nor'easter. Finally, across the river, Washington was dismayed to discover that he was a full three hours behind his schedule. His plan had called for another march of 10 miles to the outskirts of Trenton on roads that were now slick with ice and snow. With every delay Washington's fears that his army would be caught in the open magnified. What to do? Contemplating his choices Washington was seen brooding on a crate near a fire. Washington later wrote, when remembering this fateful moment, "...As I was certain there was no making a retreat without being discovered and harassed on repassing the River, I determined to push on at all Events."

Map: The Battle of Trenton

8. The Continentals brought a great quantity of artillery across the river.

One would think that crossing an icy river at night was hard enough without also bringing a great contingent of heavy artillery pieces with them. Despite the trouble, Washington and the Continental army wanted the extra firepower that the artillery could produce. Under the overall command of Col. Henry Knox, the Continentals brought 18 cannons over the river - 3-Pounders, 4-Pounders, some 6-Pounders, horses to pull the carriages, and enough ammunition for the coming battle. The 6-Pounders, weighing as much as 1,750 pounds were the most difficult to transport to the far side of the river. But in the end, all the trouble of moving this large artillery train to Trenton proved its worth. Knox would place the bulk of his artillery at the top of the town where its fire commanded the center of Trenton.

9. The Delaware River is less than 300 yards wide at the point where the army crossed.

Despite how the Delaware River is commonly portrayed in works of art, the site where General Washington and his army crossed was rather narrow. Durham boats and flat ferries were used to cross. They were probably fixed to a wire strung across the river.

10. One of the most famous American paintings shows Washington and his army crossing the Delaware River.

Painted in 1851 by German artist Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware became a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. Painted in Dusseldorf Germany, Washington Crossing the Delaware shows a bold General Washington navigating through the frozen river with his compatriots braving the elements on their way to victory at Trenton. While the painting was in Germany, Leutze hoped that this brave episode in pursuit of American independence and republican rule would stir his fellow countrymen to more liberal reforms. In the fall of 1851, the painting was shipped to the United States where it wowed audiences in New York City and the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC. The New York Evening Mirror boldly called it "the grandest, most majestic, and most effective painting ever exhibited in America."

Leutze went to great lengths to make his portrait accurate, but even his efforts still left many inaccuracies in place. Nevertheless, the 12' 5" by 21' 3" (3.8m x 6.5m) painting stirred the patriotic emotions of countless Americans who have seen the painting which now is on display in the American Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Other Facts

Col. Henry Knox was given command of the river crossing operation.

It took the American army roughly 4 hours to march from the river crossing site to the outskirts of Trenton

Temperatures for the crossing ranged from 29 degrees to 33 degrees, with brisk winds coming out of the northeast.

Future US President James Monroe crossed with the American forces and was wounded at the Battle of Trenton.

Washington chose the challenge or counter-sign of "Victory or Death" for his forces who crossed the river.

George Washington was 44 years old at the time of the Delaware River crossing.

There were roughly 1,380 Hessian soldiers in and around Trenton at the start of the battle.

Sources:

Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer. Oxford and New York, 2004.

General George Washington: A Military Life by Edward Lengel. Random House, 2005.

Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence by John Ferling. Oxford, 2007.

Washington Crossing Historic Park, Pennsylvania Trail of History Guide. Stackpole Books, 2004.

Washington Crossing the Delaware: Restoring an American Masterpiece. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.

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10 Facts about Washington's Crossing of the Delaware River

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Learn more about General George Washington and the Continental Army's famous crossing of the Delaware River on December 25-26, 1776. So why were Washington and his bedraggled Continental Army trying to cross an ice-choked Delaware River on a cold winter's night? It wasn't just to get to the other side.

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George Washington was the 1st president of the United States. Learn about his biography and life story.

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Siege of Yorktown
September 14 - October 19, 1781
result: american victory

Between 1778 and 1781, after the British withdrawal from Philadelphia, George Washington placed his army outside of New York and waited for an opportunity to attack the forces of General Sir Henry Clinton while the British waged a largely successful campaign across the south.

Late in the summer of 1781, the British, specifically Lord Cornwallis, finally made the mistake Washington had been waiting for. Cornwallis entrenched his army around Yorktown, Virginia, where he waited for either reinforcement from Clinton or evacuation to New York. Washington quickly moved south with his French allies and coordinated with the Marquis de Lafayette to keep Cornwallis in place. At the same time, French naval forces maintained control over access to the Chesapeake Bay, which prevented naval assistance and reinforcements from reaching Yorktown.

Washington fired the first American cannon of the siege. The capture of key portions of the British entrenchments, and the opening of a second allied siege line signalled the end for Cornwallis, who formally surrendered on October 19, 1781.

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Congress created the Continental Army on June 14, 1775, and John Adams nominated George Washington to serve as the army's Commander-in- Chief. While there were over 230 skirmishes and battles fought during the American Revolution, below are the battles General Washington was present for.

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General Washington in the Revolutionary War

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General Washington in the Revolutionary War

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Mount Vernon had the opportunity to speak with Michael Harris, author of the new book, Brandywine: A Military History of the Battle that Lost Philadelphia but Saved America, September 11, 1777. Michael shares his views about the Brandywine Campaign and its importance to the American Revolution.

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General Washington in the American Revolution

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George Washington was appointed commander of the Continental Army in 1775. Despite having little experience in commanding large, conventional military forces, his leadership presence and fortitude held the American military together long enough to secure victory at Yorktown and independence for his new nation in 1781.

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by Bob Blythe

George Washington was perhaps the one indispensable man among the founders. It is hard to imagine any of the others commanding the respect needed to lead the Continental Army to victory over Great Britain, preside over the Constitutional Convention, and serve the United States as its first president. Little in Washington's early life gave a hint of the great achievements to come. Born into the plantation elite of Virginia, he received a limited education. When he was eleven, Washington's father died, and his half-brother Lawrence took him under his wing.

While still in his teens, Washington became a land surveyor, which gave him a solid grounding in mathematics and the evaluation of topography. This would later serve him well as a military commander. As a lieutenant colonel of the Virginia militia, Washington led a force into the Ohio Valley to contest French domination of that region. He was in command of the British forces at the Battle of Fort Necessity (1754), helping to bring on the French and Indian War. Washington gained valuable military experience in that conflict.

Washington married a wealthy widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, in January 1759. The couple had no children of their own, but raised Martha's together. Inheriting Mt. Vernon, a family plantation on the Potomac River, in 1761, Washington spent the next 15 years as a planter, also serving in the House of Burgesses (the colonial legislature in Virginia). He took the patriot side in the disputes with Great Britain in the 1760s and 1770s, and was elected to the first Continental Congress in 1774. With the coming of open war with Britain in 1775, the congress decided to make Washington commander in chief of the new Continental Army. Washington had as much military experience as anyone in the colonies, and his selection helped gain the allegiance of Virginia, by far the most populous of the 13 colonies.

Experts hold widely differing views of Washington's abilities as a general. Most would agree, though, that he performed a vital service merely by keeping a fighting force in the field through the difficult early years of the war. His greatest strokes as a commander were the surprise attacks on the garrisons at Trenton (December 26, 1776) and Princeton (January 3, 1777). These victories restored patriot morale in one of the war's darkest periods.

After accepting the British surrender at Yorktown in October 1781, Washington retired to Mt. Vernon to revive his plantation and financial position. He was elected to the Constitutional Convention (1787) and reluctantly served as its presiding officer. Washington's support of the Constitution was critical in its acceptance by the states. He was a virtually unanimous choice for the nation's first president. Washington served two terms (1789-1797) and could easily have gained a third had he wished to. Instead, he established the precedent of a two-term maximum, which remained unchallenged until 1940. Washington died in 1799, as much from incompetent medical treatment as the underlying disease. A slaveholder throughout his life, Washington freed his bondspeople at his death.
< back to biography listing
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The American Revolution: George Washington

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by Bob Blythe George Washington was perhaps the one indispensable man among the founders. It is hard to imagine any of the others commanding the respect needed to lead the Continental Army to victory over Great Britain, preside over the Constitutional Convention, and serve the United States as its first president.

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General George Washington led the American army to victory during the Revolutionary War.

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Despite having little experience in commanding large, conventional military forces, Washington's strong leadership presence and fortitude held the American military together long enough to secure victory at Yorktown and independence for his new nation.

1. Washington was appointed commander of the Continental Army on June 14, 1775

On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, responding to the growing crisis near Boston, directed that one of its own constituents - George Washington - take command of the newly designated Continental Army. Not only did Washington have the most military experience amongst the Congressional delegates, but as John Adams pointed out there were also great political advantages in having a someone outside of New England take command of a military force that was congregated around Boston and largely made up of New Englanders.

Arriving shortly after the conclusion of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Washington moved swiftly to assume command of the ragtag forces surrounding besieging the British garrison within the city of Boston. What Washington did not realize at the time was that it would be six long years of battle, marching, siege, crises, and winter encampments before Washington had an opportunity to return to his beloved Mount Vernon. In September 1781, as the combined American and French forces made their way down to Yorktown, Virginia, Washington was able to make a brief visit to his home along the Potomac River. During this visit, Washington and Rochambeau refined their plan for defeating Charles Cornwallis' forces trapped on the York Peninsula.

2. Prior to his appointment as head of the Continental Army, Washington had never commanded a large army in the field

George Washington was but one of only a handful of candidates considered by the Second Continental Congress who possessed any significant military experience. But by European standards Washington's experience in commanding large conventional armies was non-existent. Leading up to the French & Indian War, Washington had ably commanded the Virginia Regiment, but this provincial military unit never had more than 2,000 men in its ranks. In 1754 Washington commanded roughly 100 regulars and 300 militia at the ill-fated Battle of Fort Necessity.

Despite this seeming lack of experience in managing large army formations, Washington brought a number of strengths to his new position as commander of the Continental Army. Washington had learned many important command principles from the British regular officers that he marched with during the French & Indian War and British army manuals that he studied. He also witnessed, firsthand, how vulnerable British formations could be in the rough, timbered frontier land that predominated in North America. His verve, impressive physical presence, and command instincts helped to hold together an ill-equipped force that outlasted his more experienced opponents. And as Benjamin Franklin would famously state, "[a]n American planter, who had never seen Europe, was chosen by us to Command our Troops, and continued during the whole War. This man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best generals, baffled, their Heads bare of Laurels, disgraced even in the Opinion of their Employers."

So much for conventional experience.

3. Washington and the Continental army narrowly escaped total destruction in the New York campaign of 1776

Unlike the successful Siege of Boston, the efforts to defend the city of New York ended in near disaster for the Continental Army and the cause of independence. In what proved to be the largest battle of the Revolutionary War in terms of total combatants, Washington's forces on August 22, 1776, were flanked out of their positions atop the Gowanus Heights (part of today's modern Brooklyn) and soundly defeated by William Howe's roughly 20,000 man force on Long Island.

Confronted by a powerful British army to his front and the East River to his back, Washington rapidly formulated a risky plan to save his threatened army atop Brooklyn Heights. With the constant threat that the Royal Navy would enter the East River and block his avenue of retreat, Washington ordered that all available flatboats be brought down to his position so that the army could be moved to nearby Manhattan on the night of August 29-30, 1776. Aided by a providential fog that hid the evacuation, Washington was able to successfully move all 9,000 of his troops to Manhattan without losing a man - a remarkable military feat that astounded his British enemy.

As the New York campaign progressed, Washington's forces were subsequently defeated at the Battle of White Plains on October 28, 1776, and later at Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The debacle at Fort Washington cost the Americans 59 killed and another 2,837 captured. Chased from New York, Washington's fractured and demoralized army retreated all the way across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania.

It was during these dark days at the close of 1776 that Thomas Paine's words from the recently published American Crisis rang most true - "These are the times that try men's souls...the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

4. Washington crossed the Delaware River twice in December 1776

Washington's great triumph against the Hessian forces at Trenton on December 26, 1776, is one of the best-known episodes of the Revolutionary War. ( Map: Battle of Trenton) Fearing a counterattack by British regulars, Washington hustled his tired warriors and frozen Hessian captives back to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River.

Would this single victory over a Hessian garrison be enough to sustain the morale and inspiration of the beleaguered Patriot cause? Encouraged by reports of the enemies' general confusion in New Jersey and a successful campaign to extend the enlistments of many soldiers ready in his ranks, Washington decided to seize the initiative once more. Determined to expand upon his initial success Washington shuttled his army and artillery back across the frozen Delaware on December 30, 1776, and into a strong position along the Assunpink Creek outside of Trenton. It was here that Washington awaited the arrival of Gen. Charles Cornwallis' force of 8,000 Redcoats and Hessians.

Disdaining any complicated maneuvers, a confident Cornwallis ordered three successive frontal assaults on January 2, 1777, by his Hessian grenadiers and British Regulars. Each attack across the narrow Assunpink bridges and fords was driven back with heavy loss of life. The casualties were so heavy that one soldier remarked that the bridge to his front "looked red as blood, with their killed and wounded and their red coats." ( Map: Battle of Second Trenton)

With the rapid onset of an early winter's eve, Cornwallis ordered a cessation of offensive actions. Certain of a victory the following day, the British general boasted that "we've got the old fox safe now. We'll go over and bag him in the morning." Unfortunately for Cornwallis, the morning sun that illuminated the empty American camps proved that the "old fox" was gone. Washington during the night had stolen a march and had marched his army north to Princeton where the Americans proved victorious once more on January 3, 1777 ( Map: Battle of Princeton).

The victories at Trenton and Princeton, not only helped to bolster the morale of the American army and encourage recruitment, but these bold actions also greatly impressed the French who were actively weighing their involvement in the war.

Learn More: 10 Facts About Washington's Crossing of the Delaware

5. Washington's smallpox inoculation program was one of his best decisions of the war

Up until modern times, disease, not bullets, bayonets, or cannon fire, had been the great killer of soldiers in all armies. In 1775, smallpox had so devastated the American army in Canada that John Adams bemoaned that "...smallpox is ten times more terrible than the British, Canadians and Indians together."

Having survived his own bout with smallpox in 1751, Washington was altogether familiar with how disease could rob the cause of a viable army. Not only would smallpox kill off soldiers in the ranks, but the threat of infection also scared away many of the recruits that Washington's army depended upon.

Starting during the winter of 1777 in Morristown, New Jersey, Washington took the bold and controversial move to have soldiers in his army inoculated against smallpox infection using a technique called variolation. Later during the winter encampment at Valley Forge, Washington went even further, demanding that his entire army be inoculated - an action that required great secrecy since inoculated soldiers were incapacitated for a period of time. By some reports, death by smallpox in the ranks dropped from 17% of all deaths to a low of 1% of all reported deaths - a tremendous reduction.

Historian Elizabeth Fenn, author of Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782, claims that "Washington's unheralded and little-recognized resolution to inoculate the Continental forces must surely rank with the most important decisions of the war..."

Learn More: George Washington and the Inoculation of the Continental Army

6. Supply issues became one of Washington's greatest challenges

One of the oldest of military adages is that amateurs study tactics while professional warriors study logistics. As with all military campaigns, providing for the vast material needs of an army in the field requires a focus on organization and effective supply management. Unfortunately for Washington and the Continental Army, a poor supply chain became a chronic issue that negatively impacted combat effectiveness. Biographer Ron Chernow states that "[s]eldom in history has a general been handicapped by such constantly crippling conditions...He repeatedly had to exhort Congress and the thirteen states to remedy desperate shortages of men, shoes, shirts, blankets, and gunpowder. This meant dealing with selfish, apathetic states and bureaucratic incompetence in Congress. He labored under a terrible strain that would have destroyed a lesser man."

Nowhere were supply troubles more evident and onerous than during the Valley Forge winter encampment of 1777-1778. Rather than snow and frigid temperatures, it was actually the rainy, temperate weather at Valley Forge that turned the surrounding roads to mud, further hindering an already tenuous supply network.

Local farmers were more likely to send their foodstuffs and supplies to the nearby British who had hard currency to offer in return. The Continental Army, by comparison, could only offer payment in greatly devalued paper currency or through IOUs. Washington became so concerned over the poor state of supply that he appointed Gen. Nathanael Greene as his new quartermaster. Greene, who was initially concerned about taking this thankless job, overhauled the inefficient supply system and greatly improved the state of the Continental Army through his efforts.

Video: Valley Forge in the American Revolution

7. Mount Vernon escaped destruction in 1781, but the method used to gain its security alarmed Washington

In April of 1781, the British sloop of war HMS Savage anchored menacingly in the Potomac River near George Washington's plantation home at Mount Vernon. The Savage, under the command of Captain Thomas Graves, had been raiding up and down the Potomac and now demanded that the General's estate provide the sloop with "a large supply of provisions." If the order to provide supplies was actively resisted, Mount Vernon was likely to have been put to the torch as other nearby plantation homes had been.

While the Savage was anchored close to shore, seventeen intrepid Mount Vernon slaves made their way down to the ship and gained their freedom as they arrived on the warship's deck. Lund Washington, George Washington's distant cousin and estate manager, first thought to resist this ultimatum per his master's instruction, but later agreed to provide sheep, hogs, and "an abundant supply of other articles" to the Savage, partially in an attempt to win back the escaped slaves. Captain Graves gladly accepted the supplies, spared the plantation, and refused to return the slaves.

Washington, once he learned of Lund's decision to provide supplies to the enemy, was incensed. From his headquarters in New Windsor, New York, he wrote Lund and dismissed any significant concern over the escaped slaves, but noted that "It would have been a less painful circumstance to me, to have heard, that in consequence of your non-compliance with [the HMS Savage's request], they had burnt my House, and laid the Plantation in ruins."

Learn More: The HMS Savage at Mount Vernon

8. Prior to its decisive victory at Yorktown, the American military teetered upon total collapse

Years of rampant military spending, economic mismanagement, and hyperinflation fueled by a successful British campaign to flood the colonies with counterfeit paper money had left the American financial coffers bare. Washington, in a letter to John Laurens in France, declared in January 1781 that he could not even pay the teamsters that were required to bring supplies to his troops. A gloomy and frustrated Washington admitted that "we are at the end of our tether, and that now or never our deliverance must come." French setbacks in Rhode Island, news of British successes in the Southern theater, and intelligence reports indicating a possible French exit in 1781 all added to the sense of impending defeat.

In late May 1781 Washington's situation and the fate of the American cause began to rapidly improve. Comte de Rochambeau, the commander of the French troops in America, informed Washington that France had made a 6,000,000 livre gift to the Continental Army. But it was the news that Rochambeau did not initially share with Washington that made an even bigger impact. The French fleet, now operating in strength in North American waters, had been secretly directed to the Chesapeake and a real opportunity to defeat Cornwallis' force now existed. Washington, who had been stubbornly fixated on attacking the British base at New York City, rallied to Rochambeau's plan and moved his army south to Virginia. On September 5, 1781, the French fleet under the command of Admiral de Grasse drove off the British fleet sent to relieve Cornwallis. The trap was now set. The siege of Yorktown began on September 28, 1781, and ended with a Franco-American victory on October 19, 1781 - the decisive battle of the Revolutionary War.

Learn More: The Yorktown Campaign | Watch "Now or Never: The Yorktown Campaign of 1781"

9. Washington deftly put down a growing military rebellion

Despite having achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Yorktown in October of 1781, threats to the Patriotic cause continued. In March of 1783, a growing number of American military officers, discouraged by lack of regular pay and ongoing financial support, began to openly discuss options that included a wanton disbandment of the army or possibly even a military show of force pointed directly at Congress.

Washington, who learned of the "Newburgh Conspiracy" through a printed camp circular, appeared at a March 15, 1783 meeting and challenged the gathered group of officers. "My God! What can this writer have in view, by recommending such measures! Can he be a friend to the army? Can he be a friend to this country? Rather is he not an insidious foe?" Towards the end of his address, Washington reached into his pocket to retrieve a pair of spectacles and in a theatrical gesture remarked that "...I have not only grown gray, but almost blind in service to my country." This display of self-sacrifice from their longstanding leader deeply affected many of the officers who in turn abandoned their treasonous thoughts and returned the obvious affection of their leader.

Videos: Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy

10. Washington's greatest display of power was his surrender of power

On December 23, 1783, Washington strode into the statehouse at Annapolis, Maryland and surrendered his military commission to a grateful Congress. In front of the gathered congressmen, Washington declared, "Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action-and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life."

History is filled with example after example of military commanders seizing political power during times of revolution - Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mao Zedong, and Muammar Gaddaffi are just some of the better-known examples. We take it for granted today that the United States Armed Forces are subordinated to civilian rule, but in the 18th century, it was far from certain that any general would simply surrender power to a civilian authority. But for George Washington, civilian control of the military was a core part of his beliefs. Washington's resignation signaled to the world and the American people that this new nation would be founded on different principles.

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Ten Facts About George Washington and the Revolutionary War

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Despite having little experience in commanding large, conventional military forces, Washington's strong leadership presence and fortitude held the American military together long enough to secure victory at Yorktown and independence for his new nation.

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George Washington's Early Years

George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at his family's plantation on Pope's Creek in Westmoreland County, in the British colony of Virginia, to Augustine Washington (1694-1743) and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington (1708-89). George, the eldest of Augustine and Mary Washington's six children, spent much of his childhood at Ferry Farm, a plantation near Fredericksburg, Virginia. After Washington's father died when he was 11, it's likely he helped his mother manage the plantation.

Did you know? At the time of his death in 1799, George Washington owned some 300 enslaved people. However, before his passing, he had become opposed to slavery, and in his will, he ordered that his enslaved workers be freed after his wife's death.

Few details about Washington's early education are known, although children of prosperous families like his typically were taught at home by private tutors or attended private schools. It's believed he finished his formal schooling at around age 15.

As a teenager, Washington, who had shown an aptitude for mathematics, became a successful surveyor. His surveying expeditions into the Virginia wilderness earned him enough money to begin acquiring land of his own.

In 1751, Washington made his only trip outside of America, when he traveled to Barbados with his older half-brother Lawrence Washington (1718-52), who was suffering from tuberculosis and hoped the warm climate would help him recuperate. Shortly after their arrival, George contracted smallpox. He survived, although the illness left him with permanent facial scars. In 1752, Lawrence, who had been educated in England and served as Washington's mentor, died. Washington eventually inherited Lawrence's estate, Mount Vernon, on the Potomac River near Alexandria, Virginia.

An Officer and Gentleman Farmer

In December 1752, Washington, who had no previous military experience, was made a commander of the Virginia militia. He saw action in the French and Indian War and was eventually put in charge of all of Virginia's militia forces. By 1759, Washington had resigned his commission, returned to Mount Vernon and was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he served until 1774. In January 1759, he married Martha Dandridge Custis (1731-1802), a wealthy widow with two children. Washington became a devoted stepfather to her children; he and Martha Washington never had any offspring of their own.

In the ensuing years, Washington expanded Mount Vernon from 2,000 acres into an 8,000-acre property with five farms. He grew a variety of crops, including wheat and corn, bred mules and maintained fruit orchards and a successful fishery. He was deeply interested in farming and continually experimented with new crops and methods of land conservation.

George Washington During the American Revolution

Washington proved to be a better general than military strategist. His strength lay not in his genius on the battlefield but in his ability to keep the struggling colonial army together. His troops were poorly trained and lacked food, ammunition and other supplies (soldiers sometimes even went without shoes in winter). However, Washington was able to give them direction and motivation. His leadership during the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge was a testament to his power to inspire his men to keep going.

By the late 1760s, Washington had experienced firsthand the effects of rising taxes imposed on American colonists by the British and came to believe that it was in the best interests of the colonists to declare independence from England. Washington served as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774 in Philadelphia. By the time the Second Continental Congress convened a year later, the American Revolution had begun in earnest, and Washington was named commander in chief of the Continental Army.

Over the course of the grueling eight-year war, the colonial forces won few battles but consistently held their own against the British. In October 1781, with the aid of the French (who allied themselves with the colonists over their rivals the British), the Continental forces were able to capture British troops under General Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805) in the Battle of Yorktown. This action effectively ended the Revolutionary War and Washington was declared a national hero.

America's First President

In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and the U.S., Washington, believing he had done his duty, gave up his command of the army and returned to Mount Vernon, intent on resuming his life as a gentleman farmer and family man. However, in 1787, he was asked to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and head the committee to draft the new constitution. His impressive leadership there convinced the delegates that he was by far the most qualified man to become the nation's first president.

At first, Washington balked. He wanted to, at last, return to a quiet life at home and leave governing the new nation to others. But public opinion was so strong that eventually he gave in. The first presidential election was held on January 7, 1789, and Washington won handily. John Adams (1735-1826), who received the second-largest number of votes, became the nation's first vice president. The 57-year-old Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, in New York City. Because Washington, D.C., America's future capital city wasn't yet built, he lived in New York and Philadelphia. While in office, he signed a bill establishing a future, permanent U.S. capital along the Potomac River-the city later named Washington, D.C., in his honor.

George Washington's Accomplishments

The United States was a small nation when Washington took office, consisting of 11 states and approximately 4 million people, and there was no precedent for how the new president should conduct domestic or foreign business. Mindful that his actions would likely determine how future presidents were expected to govern, Washington worked hard to set an example of fairness, prudence and integrity. In foreign matters, he supported cordial relations with other countries but also favored a position of neutrality in foreign conflicts. Domestically, he nominated the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay (1745-1829), signed a bill establishing the first national bank, the Bank of the United States, and set up his own presidential cabinet.

His two most prominent cabinet appointees were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), two men who disagreed strongly on the role of the federal government. Hamilton favored a strong central government and was part of the Federalist Party, while Jefferson favored stronger states' rights as part of the Democratic-Republican Party, the forerunner to the Democratic Party. Washington believed that divergent views were critical for the health of the new government, but he was distressed at what he saw as an emerging partisanship.

George Washington's presidency was marked by a series of firsts. He signed the first United States copyright law, protecting the copyrights of authors. He also signed the first Thanksgiving proclamation, making November 26 a national day of Thanksgiving for the end of the war for American independence and the successful ratification of the Constitution.

During Washington's presidency, Congress passed the first federal revenue law, a tax on distilled spirits. In July 1794, farmers in Western Pennsylvania rebelled over the so-called "whiskey tax." Washington called in over 12,000 militiamen to Pennsylvania to dissolve the Whiskey Rebellion in one of the first major tests of the authority of the national government.

Under Washington's leadership, the states ratified the Bill of Rights, and five new states entered the union: North Carolina (1789), Rhode Island (1790), Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796).

In his second term, Washington issued the proclamation of neutrality to avoid entering the 1793 war between Great Britain and France. But when French minister to the United States Edmond Charles Genet-known to history as "Citizen Genet"-toured the United States, he boldly flaunted the proclamation, attempting to set up American ports as French military bases and gain support for his cause in the Western United States. His meddling caused a stir between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, widening the rift between parties and making consensus-building more difficult.

In 1795, Washington signed the "Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation, between His Britannic Majesty; and The United States of America," or Jay's Treaty, so-named for John Jay, who had negotiated it with the government of King George III. It helped the U.S. avoid war with Great Britain, but also rankled certain members of Congress back home and was fiercely opposed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Internationally, it caused a stir among the French, who believed it violated previous treaties between the United States and France.

Washington's administration signed two other influential international treaties. Pinckney's Treaty of 1795, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo, established friendly relations between the United States and Spain, firming up borders between the U.S. and Spanish territories in North America and opening up the Mississippi to American traders. The Treaty of Tripoli, signed the following year, gave American ships access to Mediterranean shipping lanes in exchange for a yearly tribute to the Pasha of Tripoli.

George Washington's Retirement to Mount Vernon and Death

In 1796, after two terms as president and declining to serve a third term, Washington finally retired. In Washington's farewell address, he urged the new nation to maintain the highest standards domestically and to keep involvement with foreign powers to a minimum. The address is still read each February in the U.S. Senate to commemorate Washington's birthday.

Washington returned to Mount Vernon and devoted his attentions to making the plantation as productive as it had been before he became president. More than four decades of public service had aged him, but he was still a commanding figure. In December 1799, he caught a cold after inspecting his properties in the rain. The cold developed into a throat infection and Washington died on the night of December 14, 1799, at the age of 67. He was entombed at Mount Vernon, which in 1960 was designated a national historic landmark.

Washington left one of the most enduring legacies of any American in history. Known as the "Father of His Country," his face appears on the U.S. dollar bill and quarter, and dozens of U.S. schools, towns and counties, as well as the state of Washington and the nation's capital city, are named for him.

George Washington: An Interactive Timeline of His Life

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George Washington: Facts, Revolution & Presidency

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George Washington (1732-99) was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) and served two terms as the first U.S. president, from 1789 to 1797.

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For Kids: John Adams was the second president of the United States of America. He was one of the leaders of the American Revolution. He had planned to retire from public service after the American Revolution was concluded. But George Washington was elected president. He had selected John Adams as his vice president. John Adams went on after that to be elected elected president as well, the 2nd second president of the United States.

John Adams served only one term as president. John Adams was a Federalist. He believed in a strong Federal government. He passed some laws that he felt would strengthen the Federal government. These laws were in conflict with the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Thomas Jefferson at the time, was the vice president of the United States, serving under Adams. Thomas Jefferson found Adams new laws to be totally unacceptable. (So did the majority of the American public.) Thomas Jefferson believed in the importance of protecting the Bill of Rights and protecting the Constitution. He also believed in strong state goverments.Thomas Jefferson was the vice president at the time, serving under John Adams. Still, when election time rolled around, instead of running for a second term as vice president, Thomas Jefferson decided to run against Adams for president, and he won

John Adams was a very important man during his time. He was one of the founding fathers of the United States. Yet today, most people don't know much about him. They don't know he was cranky and stubborn, and honest and wise. He was a lawyer, a very good lawyer. He successfully defended the British soldiers who had shot into the crowd during the Boston Massacre from the serious charge of murder. He had eight kids and an incredible wife in Abigail Adams.

Abigail Adams, his wife, was the first second lady, and the second first lady. From History Happens: "Abigail Adams was a strong capable woman raising a family in uncertain times. She believed in education and rights for women, opposed slavery, and left her own separate will, even though the law at that time did not allow for such a thing." History Happens (short video)

Learn more about John Adams in the links below.

John Quincy Adams was John and Abigail's son. He was elected as the 6th president of the United States.

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The American Revolution for Kids - John Adams

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For Kids: John Adams was the second president of the United States of America. He was one of the leaders of the American Revolution. He had planned to retire from public service after the American Revolution was concluded. But George Washington was elected president. He had selected John Adams as his vice president.

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John Quincy Adams Biography - Adams National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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Britain and the Imperial Crises

Throughout most of colonial history, the British Crown was the only political institution that united the American colonies. The Imperial Crises of the 1760s and 1770s, found England saddled with crippling debt, incurred in large part by wars such as the French and Indian War.

The British government responded by increasing taxes on the American colonists, which drove the colonies toward greater unity. Americans throughout the 13 colonies united in opposition to the new system of imperial taxation initiated by the British government in 1765.

The Stamp Act of that year-the first direct, internal tax imposed on the colonists by the British Parliament-inspired concerted resistance within the colonies. Nine colonial assemblies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress, an extralegal convention that met to coordinate the colonies' response to the new tax. Although the Stamp Act Congress was short-lived, it hinted at the enhanced unity among the colonies that would soon follow.

Did you know? Almost every significant political figure of the American Revolution served in the Continental Congress, including Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry and George Washington.

Colonial opposition effectively killed the Stamp Act and brought about its repeal in 1766. The British government did not abandon its claim to the authority to pass laws for the colonies, however, and would make repeated attempts to exert its power over them in the years to follow.

Taxation Without Representation

In response to the violence of the Boston Massacre of 1770 and new taxes like the Tea Act of 1773, a group of frustrated colonists protested taxation without representation by dumping 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773 - an event known to history as Boston Tea Party.

Colonists continued to coordinate their resistance to new imperial measures, but between 1766 and 1774, they did so primarily through committees of correspondence, which exchanged ideas and information, rather than through a united political body.

The First Continental Congress

On September 5, 1774, delegates from each of the 13 colonies-except Georgia, which was fighting a Native American uprising and was dependent on the British for military supplies-met at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia as the First Continental Congress to organize colonial resistance to the Intolerable Acts (or Coercive Acts) recently passed by the British Parliament.

The delegates included a number of future luminaries, such as future presidents John Adams of Massachusetts and George Washington of Virginia, and future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and diplomat John Jay of New York. The Congress was structured with emphasis on the equality of participants, and to promote free debate.

After much discussion, the Congress issued a Declaration of Rights, affirming its loyalty to the British Crown but disputing the British Parliament's right to tax it without representation in the parliament. The Congress also passed the Articles of Association, which called on the colonies to stop importing goods from the British Isles beginning on December 1, 1774, if the Intolerable Acts were not repealed.

Should Britain fail to redress the colonists' grievances in a timely manner, the Congress declared, then it would reconvene on May 10, 1775, and the colonies would cease to export goods to Britain on September 10, 1775. After proclaiming these measures, the First Continental Congress disbanded on October 26, 1774.

Second Continental Congress

As promised, Congress reconvened at Independence Hall in Philadelphia as the Second Continental Congress on May 10, 1775-and by then the American Revolution had already begun.

The British army in Boston had met with armed resistance on the morning of April 19, 1775, when it marched out to the towns of Lexington and Concord to seize a cache of weapons held by colonial Patriots who had ceased to recognize the authority of the royal government of Massachusetts.

The colonists drove the British expedition back to Boston and laid siege to the town. The Revolutionary War had begun.

Fighting for Reconciliation

Although the Congress professed its abiding loyalty to the British Crown, it also took steps to preserve its rights by dint of arms. On June 14, 1775, a month after it reconvened, it created a united colonial fighting force, the Continental Army. The next day, it named George Washington as the new army's commander-in-chief.

The following month, the Continental Congress issued its "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms," penned by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, a veteran of the First Congress whose "Letters from a Farmer of Pennsylvania" (1767) had helped arouse opposition to earlier imperial measures, and by a newcomer from Virginia, Thomas Jefferson.

In an effort to avoid a full-scale war, Congress coupled this declaration with the Olive Branch Petition, a personal appeal to Britain's King George III, asking him to help the colonists resolve their differences with Britain. The king dismissed the petition out of hand.

Common Sense, Divided Loyalties

For over a year, the Continental Congress supervised a war against a country to which it proclaimed its loyalty. In fact, both the Congress and the people it represented were divided on the question of independence even after a year of open warfare against Great Britain.

Early in 1776, a number of factors began to strengthen the call for separation. In his stirring pamphlet " Common Sense," published in January of that year, the British immigrant Thomas Paine laid out a convincing argument in favor of independence.

At the same time, many Americans came to realize that their military might not be capable of defeating the British Empire on its own. Independence would allow it to form alliances with Britain's powerful rivals-and France was at the forefront of everyone's mind. Meanwhile, the war itself evoked hostility toward Britain among the citizenry, paving the way for independence.

Declaration of Independence

In the spring of 1776, the provisional colonial governments began to send new instructions to their congressional delegates, obliquely or directly allowing them to vote for independence. The provisional government of Virginia went further: It instructed its delegation to submit a proposal for independence before Congress.

On June 7, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee complied with his instructions. Congress postponed a final vote on the proposal until July 1, but appointed a committee to draft a provisional declaration of independence for use should the proposal pass.

The committee consisted of five men, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. But the declaration was primarily the work of one man, Thomas Jefferson, who penned an eloquent defense of the natural rights of all people, of which, he charged, Parliament and the king had tried to deprive the American nation.

The Continental Congress made several revisions to Jefferson's draft, removing, among other things, an attack on the institution of slavery; but on July 4, 1776, the Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence.

Waging the War

The Declaration of Independence allowed Congress to seek alliances with foreign countries, and the fledgling U.S. formed its most important alliance early in 1778 with France, without the support of which America might well have lost the Revolutionary War.

If the Franco-American alliance was one of Congress's greatest successes, funding and supplying the war were among its worst failures. Lacking a pre-existing infrastructure, Congress struggled throughout the war to provide the Continental Army with adequate supplies and provisions.

Exacerbating the problem, Congress had no mechanism to collect taxes to pay for the war; instead, it relied on contributions from the states, which generally directed whatever revenue they raised toward their own needs. As a result, the paper money issued by Congress quickly came to be regarded as worthless.

The Articles of Confederation

Congress's inability to raise revenue would bedevil it for its entire existence, even after it created a constitution, known as the Articles of Confederation, to define its powers. Drafted and adopted by the Congress in 1777 but not ratified until 1781, it effectively established the United States as a collection of 13 sovereign states, each of which had an equal voice in Congress (which became officially known as the Congress of the Confederation) regardless of population.

Under the Articles, congressional decisions were made based on a state-by-state vote, and the Congress had little ability to enforce its decisions. The Articles of Confederation would prove incapable of governing the new nation in a time of peace, but they did not seriously undermine the war effort, both because the war was effectively winding down before the Articles took effect, and because Congress ceded many executive war powers to General Washington.

Treaty of Paris

Congress's final triumph came in 1783 when it negotiated the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the Revolutionary War. The Congressional delegates Franklin, Jay and Adams secured a favorable peace for the U.S. that included not only the recognition of independence but also claim to almost all of the territory south of Canada and east of the Mississippi River.

On November 25, 1783, the last British troops evacuated New York City. The Revolutionary War was over and Congress had helped to see the country through.

However, the Articles of Confederation proved an imperfect instrument for a nation at peace with the world. The years immediately following the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 presented the young American nation with a series of difficulties that Congress could not adequately remedy: dire financial straits, interstate rivalries and domestic insurrection.

Legacy of the Continental Congress

A movement developed for constitutional reform, culminating in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787. The delegates at the convention decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation completely and create a new system of government.

In 1789, the new U.S. Constitution went into effect and the Continental Congress adjourned forever and was replaced by the U.S. Congress. Although the Continental Congress did not function well in a time of peace, it had steered the nation through one of its worst crises, declared its independence and helped to win a war to secure that independence.

Sources

Continental Congress, 1774-1781. U.S. Department of State. Office of the Historian.
First Continental Congress. George Washington's Mount Vernon.
The Continental Congress. PBS: American Experience.
Continental and Confederation Congresses. U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives.
The Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence. National Park Service.

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Continental Congress: First, Second & Definition - HISTORY

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The Continental Congress was the first governing body of America. It led the Revolutionary War effort and ratified the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

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Without them, there would be no United States of America: The Founding Fathers, a group of predominantly wealthy plantation owners and businessmen, united 13 disparate colonies, fought for independence from Britain and penned a series of influential governing documents that steer the country to this day. All the Founding Fathers, including the first four U.S. presidents, at one point considered themselves British subjects. But they revolted against the restrictive rule of King George III-outlining their grievances in the Declaration of Independence, a powerful ( albeit incomplete) call for freedom and equality-and won a stunning military victory over what was then the world's preeminent superpower.

The Founders proved equally adept later on in peacetime. When the federal government tottered under the Articles of Confederation, prominent citizens met again to hammer out the U.S. Constitution, overcoming major areas of disagreement between large and small states and Southern and Northern ones to form a stable political system. Showing foresight, they included a Bill of Rights, which enshrined many civil liberties into law and provided a blueprint for other emerging democracies.

There's no official consensus on who should be considered a Founding Father, and some historians object to the term altogether. On the whole, though, it's applied to those leaders who initiated the Revolutionary War and framed the Constitution. Here are eight of the most influential characters in America's origin story.
WATCH: Secrets of the Founding Fathers on HISTORY Vault
George Washington

Before he fought against the British, George Washington fought for the British, serving as a commander in the French and Indian War. A prosperous Virginia farmer who owned hundreds of enslaved people, he came to resent the various taxes and restrictions being imposed on the colonies by the British crown.

Once the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, he was placed in charge of the Continental Army and soon suffered a near-disastrous defeat at the Battle of Brooklyn. More defeats followed-all in all, Washington lost more battles than he won. Nonetheless, he kept his ragtag troops together even through a freezing winter at Valley Forge and, with the help of his French allies, was able to expel the British by 1783.

Washington then returned to Virginia intent on resuming his career as a farmer. But he was persuaded to re-enter politics as head of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, believing that a stronger federal government was needed to preserve the nation. In 1789, Washington was overwhelmingly elected the first president of the United States. He is aptly known as the "Father of His Country."

Alexander Hamilton

A poor orphan born out of wedlock, Alexander Hamilton emigrated as a teenager from the British West Indies to New York. Rising to prominence as an aide-de-camp to Washington during the Revolutionary War, he became an impassioned supporter of a strong central government.

After attending the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he wrote the majority of the highly persuasive Federalist Papers, which argued for the Constitution's ratification. Washington then tapped him to serve as the first U.S. treasury secretary, a position he used to push for the creation of a national bank. Later immortalized on the $10 bill, Hamilton was killed in an 1804 duel with his bitter rival Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president.

Benjamin Franklin

Early America's foremost Renaissance man, Benjamin Franklin was a skilled author, printer, scientist, inventor and diplomat, despite a formal education that ended at age 10. When not designing bifocals, harnessing electricity, playing music or publishing Poor Richard's Almanack, he worked constantly on civic projects to improve his adopted city of Philadelphia.

In the beginning of the American Revolution, Franklin was appointed to the five-member committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He then traveled to France, where he secured French assistance for the war effort and helped negotiate the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the official end to the conflict. Just prior to his death, Franklin served as a sort of elder statesman at the Constitutional Convention.

John Adams

A distinguished Massachusetts lawyer, John Adams became a relatively early proponent of the revolutionary cause. Just like Franklin, he served on the committee that wrote the Declaration of Independence, journeyed overseas to secure French military aid and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris. He chaired other key committees as well, and even found time to draft the Massachusetts Constitution (which is still in use).

After about 10 years of diplomatic service abroad, Adams returned home in 1788 and subsequently became vice president under Washington. Following Washington's two terms, he was then elected president, serving from 1797 to 1801. In a striking coincidence, Adams and his friend-turned-rival-turned-friend Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Samuel Adams

The second cousin of John Adams, Samuel Adams was a political firebrand who drummed up immense opposition to British policies in Boston, a hotbed of the resistance. Believing that the colonists were subject to "taxation without representation," he joined the Sons of Liberty, an underground dissident group that at times resorted to tarring and feathering British loyalists.

Adams likely planned the 1773 Boston Tea Party, and in 1775 his attempted arrest helped spark the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first skirmish of the Revolutionary War. Unlike many of the Founders, Adams was staunchly anti-slavery. He signed the Declaration of Independence and went on to serve as governor of Massachusetts.

Thomas Jefferson

Well educated and prosperous, Thomas Jefferson was a Virginia lawyer and politician who came to believe the British Parliament held no authority over the 13 colonies. In 1776, he was given the immense task of writing the Declaration of Independence, in which he famously declared that "all men are created equal" and "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," such as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." (A lifelong owner of enslaved people, he did not extend these concepts to Black Americans.)

As secretary of state under Washington, Jefferson clashed constantly with Alexander Hamilton over foreign policy and the role of government. He later served as vice president to John Adams prior to becoming president, himself, in 1801.

James Madison

A close friend of Jefferson's, James Madison likewise grew up on a Virginia plantation and served in the state legislature. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, he proved to be perhaps the most influential delegate, developing a plan to divide the federal government into three branches- legislative, executive and judicial-each with checks and balances on its power. This plan, which was largely adopted, earned him the moniker "Father of the Constitution."

Madison next co-authored the Federalist Papers and, as a U.S. congressman, became the driving force behind the Bill of Rights. He was elected president in 1808 after serving as Jefferson's secretary of state.

John Jay

Not nearly as recognized as his Founder cohorts, John Jay nonetheless played a pivotal role in the creation of the United States. A lawyer, he originally preferred reconciling with Britain rather than fighting for independence. Once war broke out, however, he wholeheartedly joined the side of the colonists, serving, among other roles, as a diplomat to Spain and linking up with Franklin and Adams to negotiate the Treaty of Paris.

Upon returning to the United States, Jay served as secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation and authored a few of the Federalist Papers. In 1789, he became the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and six years later he was elected governor of New York.

Additional Founders

Many other figures have also been cited as Founding Fathers (or Mothers). These include John Hancock, best known for his flashy signature on the Declaration of Independence; Gouverneur Morris, who wrote much of the Constitution; Thomas Paine, the British-born author of Common Sense; Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith whose "midnight ride" warned of approaching redcoats; George Mason, who helped craft the Constitution but ultimately refused to sign it; Charles Carroll, the lone Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence; Patrick Henry, who famously declared "Give me liberty, or give me death!"; John Marshall, a Revolutionary War veteran and longtime chief justice of the Supreme Court; and Abigail Adams, who implored her husband, John, to "remember the ladies" while shaping the new country.
READ MORE: 6 Unsung Heroes of the American Revolution
Sources

The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription. National Archives.
The Bill of Rights: A Transcription. National Archives.
For Black Americans, Independence Day Is Complicated. Elizabeth Flock. US News & World Report.
10 Facts: The Founding Fathers. American Battlefield Trust.
Founding Fathers. National Constitution Center.
Founding Fathers and Slaveholders. Smithsonian Magazine.

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8 Founding Fathers and How They Helped Shape the Nation

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Without them, there would be no United States of America: The Founding Fathers, a group of predominantly wealthy plantation owners and businessmen, united 13 disparate colonies, fought for independence from Britain and penned a series of influential governing documents that steer the country to this day.

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John Adams was the 2nd president of the United States. Learn about his biography and life story including his wife Abigail, the Revolutionary War, and his time as president.

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While George Washington led the American colonists to victory in the Revolutionary War, there might not have been a revolution at all if it weren't for provocateurs such as Samuel Adams.

Adams and other firebrands helped push moderate colonial leaders into joining in the resistance against the British, which eventually led to the war. But Adams wasn't just a rabble-rouser. He also was a serious political theorist who championed the notion of individual rights, which became a core American value. During the Revolutionary War, Adams served in the Continental Congress and helped draft the Articles of Confederation, the document that was the predecessor to the U.S. Constitution.

Samuel Adams' Background and Early Life

Adams was born in Boston on September 27, 1722, to an affluent Puritan family. His father, Samuel Adams Sr., was a prominent local merchant and religious deacon who was also active in local politics. His mother, Mary Adams, was the daughter of a local businessman.

Adams attended Boston Latin School and then went to Harvard College. It was there that Adams was introduced to the writings of John Locke, a philosopher in the Enlightenment, who argued that all people were born with certain rights that could not be taken away and that governments exist by the consent of the people. That idea made a powerful impression on Adams, who wrote his 1743 master's degree thesis at Harvard on the legality of resisting British authority.

When Adams' father died in 1748, he inherited the family business of making malted barley and supplying it to brewers. He also may have tried his hand at brewing, judging from a 1751 newspaper advertisement in which he offered "strong beer, or malt for those who incline to brew it themselves; to be sold by Samuel Adams, at a reasonable rate."

But Adams wasn't very good at running the business and eventually went bankrupt. He was similarly unsuccessful as a city tax collector, performing his duties so ineptly that his ledgers came up short by thousands of pounds.

Sons of Liberty

Though Adams wasn't very good with money, he was a good writer. He and some friends started their own short-lived newspaper, The Public Advertiser, which published Adams' opinion pieces. He used that opportunity to exhort other Bostonians to cherish and protect their personal freedom.

Adams' voice became more prominent in the mid-1760s when the British government tried to pay off debt from the Seven Years War by imposing new taxes upon the American colonists. While others merely grumbled about the economic harm, Adams argued in print that the British were violating the colonists' rights, because they were being taxed without representation in Parliament. He denounced the Stamp Act, a 1765 tax law, as an attempt "to destroy the liberties of America as with one blow."

That same year, Adams was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, an office he would hold for nine years. Around that time, he also joined a secretive group of activists called the Loyal Nine, which eventually evolved into a more radical organization called the Sons of Liberty.

When British troops arrived in Boston in 1768, Adams became more heavily involved in organizing resistance against the Crown. He wrote scores of newspaper articles under pen names, attacking the British. He also pressured Boston merchants to boycott British goods.

Role in the Boston Tea Party

After the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, which sought to force the colonists to buy their tea from the British East India Company, Adams helped organize Bostonians to hinder the tea shipments. One group of resisters took matters even further, dressing up as Indian warriors and boarding several British ships to dump their tea, in what became known as the Boston Tea Party. Adams, who may have played a role in planning the event, afterward praised it publicly, writing that the protesters "have acted upon pure and upright principle."

Eventually, British authorities had enough of Adams and his agitation. In 1775, British General Thomas Gage led a force of soldiers from Boston to Lexington, on a mission to arrest Adams and fellow colonial radical John Hancock. But American spies got wind of the plan, and American militiamen confronted the British on Lexington Common. The ensuing Battles of Lexington and Concord were the opening armed confrontations that sparked the Revolutionary War.

As a delegate to the Continental Congress, Adams signed the Declaration of Independence and continued his inflammatory rhetoric. In a 1776 speech in Philadelphia, he castigated Americans who sided with the Crown. "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom-go from us in peace," Adams said. "We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you."

As a member of the Continental Congress, Adams also helped draft the Articles of Confederation, the predecessor to the U.S. Constitution.

Samuel Adams' Later Years

After leaving the Continental Congress in 1781, Adams went back to Boston and eventually got back into state politics. He served for a time as president of the Massachusetts Senate and as Lieutenant Governor under Governor John Hancock, his former fellow radical. When Hancock died in office, Adams took over for him and subsequently was elected to three one-year terms before retiring.

Adams died at the age of 81 on October 2, 1803.

Samuel Adams Quotes

"Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature."

"Some of our politicians would have the people believe that the administration are disposed or determined to have all the grievances which we complain of redressed, if we will only be quiet. But apprehend this would be a fatal delusion."

"There can be no property in that which another can of right take from us without our consent."

"If the British administration and government do not return to the principles of moderation and equity, the evil which they profess to aim at preventing by their own rigorous measures, will the sooner be brought to pass-the entire separation and independence of the colonies."

"We cannot make events. Our business is to wisely improve them."

"Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!"

"How strangely will the tools of a tyrant perve the plain meaning of words!"

Sources

Rights of the Colonists, by Samuel Adams.
The Writings of Samuel Adams, Vol. III (1773-1777) by Samuel Adams.
Biographical sketch of Samuel Adams, American Battlefield Trust.
Desperate Sons: Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and the Secret Bands of Radicals Who Led the Colonies to War, by Lee Standiford
Biographical sketch of Samuel Adams, National Park Service.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Samuel Adams: The Life of an American Revolutionary, by John K. Alexander.

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Samuel Adams - Quotes, Definition & Facts

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Samuel Adams was a political leader and activist who played a vital role in urging colonial America to break with Britain during the American Revolution.

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Adams made uniquely important contributions during his term as president (1797-1801). He managed orderly transitions of power at both the beginning and the end of his administration, and he gave the government stability by continuing most of the practices established under Washington. The major crisis he faced, however, arose from strained relations with revolutionary France.

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Early Years

Born in Braintree (present-day Quincy), Massachusetts, on October 30, 1735, to the descendants of Mayflower Pilgrims, John Adams was the oldest of John and Susanna Boylston Adams' three sons. The elder Adams was a farmer and shoemaker who also served as a Congregationalist deacon and an official in local government.

Did you know? In November 1800, John Adams became the first president to reside in the White House. Construction of the presidential home, which was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban, began in 1792. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) officially named it the White House in 1901.

A strong student, Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755. He then taught school for several years and studied law with an attorney in Worcester, Massachusetts. Adams began his law career in 1758 and eventually became one of Boston's most prominent attorneys.

In 1764, he married Abigail Smith (1744-1818), a minister's daughter from Weymouth, Massachusetts, with whom he went on to have six children, four of whom survived into adulthood: Abigail Amelia Adams, known as "Nabby"; Charles Adams; Thomas Boylston Adams and future president John Quincy Adams.

Abigail Adams would prove to be her husband's trusted confidant. Well-read and possessed of her own intellectual gifts, she corresponded regularly with Adams, especially when he was away in Europe for long periods of time. Surviving letters show her to be a pragmatic thinker and influential in her husband's career.

John Adams and The American Revolution

During the 1760s, Adams began challenging Great Britain's authority in colonial America. He came to view the British imposition of high taxes and tariffs as a tool of oppression, and he no longer believed that the government in England had the colonists' best interests in mind. He was a critic of the Stamp Act of 1765, in which the British levied a tax on legal documents, newspapers and playing cards in the North American colonies. Adams also spoke out against the Townshend Acts of 1767, which levied tariffs on goods such as paper, glass and tea that were imported to America.

Despite his objection to what he thought was unfair taxation by the British, Adams, a principled man, represented the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre of March 1770. Adams wanted to ensure that the soldiers-who were charged with firing into an unruly crowd of civilians in Boston and killing five people-received a fair trial.

In 1774, Adams attended the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia as a Massachusetts delegate. (The Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States, from 1774 to 1789.) In 1775, as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, Adams nominated George Washington (1732-99) to serve as commander of the colonial forces in the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), which had just begun. As a congressional delegate, Adams would later nominate Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence (which Adams went on to sign alongside his second cousin, Samuel Adams).

Diplomatic Missions to Europe

In 1778, Adams was sent to Paris, France, to secure aid for the colonists' cause. The following year, he returned to America and worked as the principal framer of the Massachusetts Constitution (the world's oldest surviving written constitution). By the early 1780s, Adams was in Europe again, serving in a diplomatic capacity.

In 1783, he, along with John Jay (1745-1829) and Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended hostilities between America and Britain. Franklin had served as the American minister to France since 1776, and while Adams often felt that he worked harder than Franklin, it was the older man's charm that opened diplomatic doors for his blunter, more combative colleague.

Adams remained in Europe after the war and served as the United States' first ambassador to Britain from 1785 to 1788. After returning to America, he was a participant in the Constitutional Convention that nominated Washington to serve as the nation's first president. Adams lobbied for the vice presidency and won. (In early elections, the president and vice president were elected separately.)

John Adams: America's First Vice President

Although Washington and Adams shared many political views, the vice president's role seemed primarily ceremonial, and Adams spent the next eight years, from 1789 to 1797, in frustration. Adams once remarked: "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." When Washington retired in 1796, Adams ran for the presidency and won over Thomas Jefferson, who became vice president.

John Adams, Second President of the United States

Adams took office in March 1797, and his presidency was quickly taken up with foreign affairs. Britain and France were at war, which directly affected American trade. During his tenure, Washington had managed to maintain neutrality, but tensions had escalated by the time Adams became president.

In 1797, he sent a delegation to France to negotiate a treaty but the French refused to meet with the delegates, and the French foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (1754-1838), demanded a large bribe. Adams refused to deal with the French on these terms, and the bribery scandal, which became known as the XYZ Affair, boosted Adams' popularity immensely. An undeclared naval war broke out between the U.S. and France in 1798 and lasted until 1800 when a peace treaty was signed.

Adams squandered his popularity by signing the Alien and Sedition Acts into law in 1798. Ostensibly written to protect American interests, the acts gave the government broad powers to deport "enemy" aliens and arrest anyone who strongly disagreed with the government. Jefferson and his allies, who called themselves the Democratic-Republicans, assailed these laws, declaring them unconstitutional. Many Americans, having shed one oppressive government, feared that their new government might resort to similar tactics. Although the laws were never abused and, in fact, had built-in expirations, they hurt Adams and helped cost him the election in 1800.

John Adam's Writing

After his presidency, Adams had a long and productive retirement. He and his wife lived in Quincy, Massachusetts, and the former president spent the next quarter-century writing columns, books and letters. In 1812, he was encouraged to begin exchanging letters with his old rival Thomas Jefferson, and their voluminous correspondence lasted the rest of their lives.

Abigail Adams died in 1818 but John Adams lived long enough to see his son John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) become America's sixth president in 1824. By that point, the elder Adams and Jefferson were among the last living signers of the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1826 (the Declaration's 50th anniversary), the 90-year-old Founding Father uttered his last words: "Thomas Jefferson still survives." He died later that day. What he did not know was that earlier that morning Jefferson, too, had passed away.

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John Adams - Presidency, Facts & Children

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John Adams (1735-1826) was a leader of the American Revolution, and served as the second U.S. president from 1797 to 1801. Read facts about his diplomacy and leadership as well as about his wife, Abigail, and their son who became the nation's sixth president.

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The Sons of Liberty were a group of people in Boston at the time of the American Revolution. They were led by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere. Other well-known members included Benedict Arnold and Patrick Henry. They were in favor of rights of colonial Americans, which meant they often did not like the British. Some people thought the Sons of Liberty were a mob. The Sons of Liberty were the main group involved in the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

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The Sons of Liberty were a group of people in Boston at the time of the American Revolution. They were led by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Paul Revere. Other well-known members included Benedict Arnold and Patrick Henry. They were in favor of rights of colonial Americans, which meant they often did not like the British.

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The Sons of Liberty was an unofficial, often underground protest group in colonial America. Begun in New England, the group soon had members in all 13 Colonies. Its most famous act was the Boston Tea Party.

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The Sons of Liberty played a critical role in inspiring and organizing the revolution.

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How did George Washington feel about the Sons of Liberty?

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How did George Washington feel about the Sons of Liberty?

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How Did George Washington Feel About the Sons of Liberty?

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The Sons of Liberty was a secret group that vocally opposed the taxation by British Government onto the 13 American colonies. While this was a precursor to the American Revolution, did George Washington agree with the rebellious nature of the Sons of Liberty?

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The Radicals Who Made a Revolution

A few years back, somewhere near the beginning of the lingering housing crisis, I ran across an article talking about parallels between our own present financial woes and those of the American colonists struggling with the collapse of their economy after the high-flying days of the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763. Benjamin Franklin, just returned after considerable time as envoy to London, lamented that rents and land values had "trebled in the past six years," due to the British practice of quartering troops and supplies in private buildings and on lands for which no rent or price seemed too high. When the troops were sent home, however, the artificial juggernaut of prosperity fell apart. Rented properties were suddenly vacant; overvalued lands and homes were seized. Trouble that sounds familiar to all of us today soon began. Reading of all this provided the first tug of personal connection with events that I knew about vaguely but had never felt, a moment of the sort in which all my histories have been born.

As I continued to pull on that thread of history's sleeve, and as I came to realize that there had never been a book about the secret, radical group of men in the colonies who were responsible for leading us from those first stirrings of discontent into a revolution a decade later, I became hooked. We might have heard bits and pieces of the story, but the entire saga, I saw, had never been told from beginning through middle to end. This has always been my interest in writing history: to tell a fascinating, little-known story "behind the story."

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Who Were The Sons of Liberty | Radicals Who Made A Revolution

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A few years back, somewhere near the beginning of the lingering housing crisis, I ran across an article talking about parallels between our own present financial woes and those of the American colonists struggling with the collapse of their economy after the high-flying days of the French and Indian War, which ended in 1763.

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Boycott: While the colonists waited for an answer to their petition to Parliament, requesting the Stamp Act be repealed, colonial merchants encouraged people to boycott (refuse to buy) English goods.

Secret Societies: Some colonists were not content with mere boycotts. They began to form secret societies to protest British policies. The most famous of these secret societies was the Sons of Liberty.

The Sons of Liberty were people who were fed up with being treated unfairly by the British Government; they were so angry they were willing to break the law, because it was against the law back then to criticize the British government. Their most famous action was the Boston Tea Party.

Some famous members of the Sons of Liberty include Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and John Hancock.

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The American Revolution for Kids and Teachers - Sons of Liberty, Boycott - American Revolution for Kids

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Boycott: While the colonists waited for an answer to their petition to Parliament, requesting the Stamp Act be repealed, colonial merchants encouraged people to boycott (refuse to buy) English goods. Secret Societies: Some colonists were not content with mere boycotts. They began to form secret societies to protest British policies.

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Learn about the Sons of Liberty of the American Revolution including how they got their name, important members, protests, the Stamp Act, the Boston Tea Party, and interesting facts.

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The Sons of Liberty were a grassroots group of instigators and provocateurs in colonial America who used an extreme form of civil disobedience-threats, and in some cases actual violence-to intimidate loyalists and outrage the British government. The goal of the radicals was to push moderate colonial leaders into a confrontation with the British Crown.

The Sons marked one of their early victories in December 1765. The Stamp Act-the first tax imposed directly on American colonists by the British government-had only been in effect for a month, when a group of Boston merchants and craftsmen sent a letter to Andrew Oliver, the newly-appointed official collector of stamps. The group informed Oliver that he was to show up the next day at noon at the Liberty Tree in the city's South End to publicly resign.

"Provided that you comply with the above, you shall be treated with the greatest Politeness and Humanity," the letter explained. The message left to Oliver's imagination what terrible fate might befall him if he didn't comply.

Oliver didn't need much persuading. He appeared as demanded, walking through the streets of Boston in a driving rainstorm and quit his job, to the cheers of a crowd of 2,000 people.

It was an exhibition of the fearsome clout of the Sons of Liberty. The Sons likely formed from a secretive group of nine Boston-based patriots who called themselves the Loyal Nine. The first Sons chapters sprung up in Boston and New York City, but other cells soon appeared in other colonies as well.

The group may have taken its name from a speech given in Parliament by Isaac Barre, an Irish member sympathetic to the colonists, who warned that the British government's behavior "has caused the blood of these sons of liberty to recoil within them."

Their most famous act of disobedience was destroying 92,000 pounds of British tea in Boston Harbor in December 1773. The Boston Tea Party, as the act would become known, was one of the key events that pushed the colonies and the British government toward war.

Prominent Leaders Included Samuel Adams, John Hancock

The Sons' most prominent leader was Samuel Adams, the son of a wealthy brewer who was more interested in radical rabble-rousing than commerce. Adams wrote his masters thesis at Harvard on the lawfulness of resisting British rule. While George Washington eventually led the war effort against the British, "the truth is that there might not have been a fight to begin with had it not been for the work of Sam Adams," writes historian Les Standiford.

Another key member was John Hancock, who later was immortalized by his flamboyant signature on the Declaration of Independence. James Otis, Paul Revere, Benedict Arnold, and Dr. Benjamin Rush, among others, were also involved in the group.

Adams and Hancock in particular were so loathed and feared by the British that when General Thomas Gage offered amnesty to Bostonians who stopped their resistance in 1775, he made a point of excluding the two men, "whose offences are of too flagitious a nature" not to be punished severely.

It's not hard to understand why Gage took a hard line against them. After forming in the summer of 1765, the Boston Sons chapter marched through the streets and burned stamp officer Oliver's effigy, and then broke into and looted his house. When Massachusetts Lt. Gov. and Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson, a loyalist, declined to renounce the Stamp Act, they similarly looted and destroyed his house as well.

The Sons didn't stop there. After Parliament passed the Townshend Acts in 1767, which imposed import duties on goods such as china and glass, Adams organized a boycott to keep British goods out of Massachusetts altogether. According to Adams biographer Dennis Fradin, the Sons enforced the boycott by sending boys to smash the windows and smear excrement on the walls of local shops that didn't comply. If that didn't work, the proprietor faced the risk of being kidnapped and tarred and feathered, a painful, humiliating torture that could leave lasting scars.

"Violence was not necessarily accepted as a regular feature of politics, but there was an understanding that it might be part of politics as a last resort," explains Benjamin L. Carp a historian at Brooklyn College and author of the 2010 book Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America.

During this time, the Sons' core views evolved, Carp says. They rejected the British notion that they had fought the French and Indian War on behalf of the colonists, and that as a result, the Americans were obligated to pay for continued upkeep of British soldiers in North America. But beyond that, they also rejected the authority of the British Parliament to make laws for Americans. Most of all, they argued the British government could not compel Americans to pay taxes.

Their overarching goals similarly shifted over time. "At the outset, most Sons of Liberty only wanted something limited-for Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act," Carp explains. "But over time, more and more Sons of Liberty became convinced that independence was the answer."

The Boston Tea Party

Parliament's passage in December 1773 of the Tea Act, which propped up the financially struggling British East India Company by giving it a virtual monopoly on selling tea to the colonies, pushed the Sons to become even more brazen. The law threatened the livelihood of the American merchants who had been importing tea from Dutch traders. The Sons couldn't let that stand.

"I don't think the Bostonians set out to destroy property. I think they felt it was a last resort," Carp says. "Their first preference would have been to send the tea back. But when the merchants (consignees) were unwilling, the ship captains were unwilling-it would have ruined them-and the governor was unwilling to bend the rules for them, they felt they had no choice."

"If they'd allowed the tea to land, they knew that customers wouldn't be able to resist it-so they would have paid the tax on it AND let a monopoly company, the East India Company, muscle into the local market," Carp says.

The Bostonians also knew that if they let the tea be unloaded, they'd lose standing in the eyes of other Sons of Liberty groups in New York, Philadelphia and other places, he notes.

The Sons' defiance of the British not only helped spur the Revolutionary War, it also fostered an American tradition of grassroots activism that various activist groups have applied over the centuries to push for change.

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Most famous for their role in the Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty used grassroots activism to push back against British rule.

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1. Adams defended British soldiers after the Boston Massacre.Although Adams joined with the Sons of Liberty in objecting to what he believed was unfair taxation by the British government, the principled attorney believed in the primacy of the rule of law. After the killing of ...read more

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Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

The opening lines of "Paul Revere's Ride" are perhaps the best-known words today of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem, with its galloping measure and steady rhyme, take the reader through Paul Revere's urgent ride on the eve of the battle of Lexington and Concord. When it was published in Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), the poem became "The Landlord's Tale," with the proprietor of the old inn in Sudbury telling the local history.

"Paul Revere's Ride," 1923-1949, Research, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems and Prose, in the H.W.L. Dana Papers (LONG 17314)

Inspiration & Research

Longfellow's poem was inspired by local places and historic events, though he took significant poetic license with the historic facts. The triggering event seems to have been a tour of Boston on 5 April 1860, which he recorded in his journal:

Go with [George] Sumner to Mr. Having, of the North End, who acts as our guide to the "Little Britian" of Boston. Go to the Copp's Hill burial ground and see the tomb of Cotton Mather, his father and his son; then to the old North Church, which looks like a parish church in London. Climb the tower to the Chime of Bells, now the home of innumerable pigeons. From this tower were hung the lanterns as a signal that the British troops had left Boston for Concord.

Longfellow began writing the poem the next day. The signal lanterns were immortalized in his phrase, "One, if by land, and two, if by sea." He used his trip up the Old North Church tower to paint a vivid picture of Revere's friend preparing to hold up the lanterns:

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade

Longfellow continued work on the poem over the next several months - noting particularly writing a few lines on April 19, "this being the day of that achievement." The poem was published in the Boston Evening Transcript and Atlantic Monthly in December 1860; three years later it was included in Longfellow's book Tales of a Wayside Inn.

Poetic License with History

Though based on historic events, the poem should be read as a myth or tale, not as a historical account. Many historians have dissected the poem since 1860 and compared it to Revere's account of the ride in his own words and other historic evidence. Of the several inaccuracies, three stand out:

Revere knew the British route before he left Boston. Though two lanterns were held aloft in the Old North Church tower, Revere was not waiting on the Charlestown shore to see them. Instead, they were a fallback plan in case he could not get out of Boston.

Revere was captured by patrolling British Regulars in Lincoln, just past Lexington, and never arrived in Concord.

Revere did not ride alone that night. He was one of two riders to leave Boston, and one of many messengers spreading the alarm.

The omission of other riders was a particularly sore point for some. Henry Ware Holland, a descendant of William Dawes, self-published a history in 1878 titled William Dawes and His Ride with Paul Revere. He sent a copy to Longfellow, who wryly remarked that it was "a very handsome book... in which he convicts me of high historic crimes and misdemeanors."

Longfellow owned the 1832 New England Magazine featuring a biography of Paul Revere with an account of his ride, and was able to provide it as a reference to a correspondent in 1877. It is less certain whether he had read Revere's account before writing the poem. The fact that one of Longfellow's poems was published in the same 1832 New England Magazine presents circumstantial evidence for his earlier awareness. Looking at his other historically-based works, including Evangeline and The New England Tragedies, it fits his method to have conducted extensive research in preparation, but not be bound to the historic truth when shaping his message.

Paul Revere's Ride set to music in 1905 (LONG 23076)

The Message

Longfellow wrote "Paul Revere's Ride" in 1860, in the midst of a national crisis that would break out into war a year later. He was a pacifist and an abolitionist, though quiet compared to his friend Senator Charles Sumner. In earlier decades, he had used his poetry to speak out against slavery in seven Poems on Slavery (1842), against war in "The Arsenal at Springfield" (1845), and for the strength of the union in "The Building of the Ship" (1850).

Taking poetic license, Longfellow turned the singular character of Paul Revere into an icon of a unified patriotic past with resonance in the current political moment:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,--
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

In March 1861, only three months after the poem's publication, Abraham Lincoln made a similar appeal in his inaugural address: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Because of Longfellow's portrayal, Paul Revere and his ride became icons of patriotism and the American Revolution. Even Longfellow's critic Holland admitted that the scene of Revere waiting for the signal lights was "one of the finest in our colonial annals," though he added that it "is pure fiction."

The fame from the poem led to the preservation of the Paul Revere House in 1901 and the erection of an equestrian statue of Revere in the shadow of the Old North Church. In 1967, Martin Luther King summoned Longfellow's iconic messenger, saying, "We still need some Paul Revere of conscience to alert every hamlet and every village of America that revolution is still at hand." Thus, the "midnight message" of Paul Revere and Henry Longfellow echoes to this day.

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Paul Revere's Ride - Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year. The opening lines of "Paul Revere's Ride" are perhaps the best-known words today of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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Paul Revere Timeline
Timeline Description: Paul Revere was a patriot in the American Revolution, and he is known for alerting the American militia to the approach of the British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord. He was memorialized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride."

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Paul Revere was a patriot in the American Revolution, and he is known for alerting the American militia to the approach of the British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord. He was memorialized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride."

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Paul Revere is known for his midnight ride, but what about the rest of his life? He was no stranger to hard work and challenge, and he had a strong love of family and country.
Fun Facts

Paul Revere's father grew up in Midi, France, a beautiful farming area. His family were Huguenots, a specific religion, which the king of France did not like.

The king made a law that if the Huguenots in France would change their religion, they could stay. Otherwise, they had to leave or face persecution, imprisonment, loss of property, or even death.

Paul Revere's grandparents were too old to leave, but they wanted their son to have a better life. When he was thirteen, they put him on a boat, knowing they would never see him again.

Paul's father sailed to Guernsey, off the coast of England, and then to America. An uncle paid for his passage on the ship and sent money for the boy to be apprenticed to a silversmith in Boston.

The boy was homesick. He couldn't speak English and the other boys in Boston teased him. He worked hard, learning to speak English and to mold silver. He changed his French name, Apollos Rivoire, to Paul Revere, which was easier for the English to pronounce.

But he never forgot his French name, which means He taught his son, Paul Revere, "Take the oak as your pattern of life, for it is a strong and useful tree. There are many trees more showy than the oak, but none is so staunch, so honorable, and so good." (America's Paul Revere by Esther Forbes, 1974).

Paul Revere went to school until he was thirteen, learning how to read, write, and do sums. After that, he began to learn the silversmith trade with his father. He worked hard and became one of the best silversmiths in Boston, if not all of New England.

When Paul was eighteen, his father died, leaving the shop to him. He had to work hard to provide for the family and take care of his mother, who lived with him all her life.

When Paul was twenty one, he went to fight in the French and Indian War, leaving his mother to manage the home and care for her five younger children. He was a good soldier, but he was glad to come back to Boston a year later.

He married Sarah Orne and they lived in his father's house. Paul was becoming a famous silversmith.

The British tax laws soon made it difficult for people to trade in Boston. Everyone, including Paul, was poor. Paul learned to make copper plates and he also learned dentistry since silver was expensive and few people could afford it anymore.

Paul Revere belonged to a political group that met at a tavern, The Green Dragon, to discuss what to do about the British. He was there during the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

And on the night of April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren asked Paul Revere to ride to Lexington to warn John Hanco-ck and Samuel Adams of a conspiracy to capture them, and then to ride to Concord to warn the colonists that the British were coming to take a stockpile of weapons and arms. Paul Revere rode through the night, with his lesser known partner, William Dawes, alerting towns along the way. Revere was captured by the British, but eventually released.

When the war was over, Paul Revere went back to being a silversmith. He made beautiful church bells, one of which is in King's Chapel in Boston. You can also still see his house if you visit Boston.

Learn More
Watch a video about Paul Revere's ride.

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Facts about Paul Revere during the Revolutionary War

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Paul Revere is known for his midnight ride, but what about the rest of his life? He was no stranger to hard work and challenge, and he had a strong love of family and country. Fun Facts Paul Revere's father grew up in Midi, France, a beautiful farming area.

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For Kids: The colonists in Massachusetts began storing guns and ammunition in the little town of Concord, located about 20 miles outside of Boston.

The British heard about it. They had spies everywhere. The British sent soldiers to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, two men who had helped to set up the weapons depot in Concord. They did not catch them, but they surely tried. They also sent troops to destroy the weapon depot.

The British were not the only ones with spies. The colonists were watching the British troops very closely. When they saw the British were on the move, Paul Revere galloped over the countryside, warning colonists that the British were coming.

When Paul Revere reached Lexington, two other riders joined him. The three men were stopped by a British patrol. But two riders got away. William Dawes was tossed from his horse, but still managed to escape. Samuel Prescott, a young doctor, kept his horse and rode to warn the militia in Concord that the British were en route.

The British soldiers were delighted that they had captured the famous Paul Revere. But when the British soldiers heard shots break out, they let Paul Revere go, but kept his horse. They knew they could move faster without a prisoner. All three men made it safely through the night and through the war.

Liberty Kids - The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
Myths and Facts School House Rocks - The Shot Heard Round the World Lexington & Concord Other Famous People of the Revolutionary War for Kids

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The American Revolution for Kids - Paul Revere, William Dawes, Samuel Prescott - Road to Revolution for Kids

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For Kids: The colonists in Massachusetts began storing guns and ammunition in the little town of Concord, located about 20 miles outside of Boston. The British heard about it. They had spies everywhere. The British sent soldiers to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams, two men who had helped to set up the weapons depot in Concord.

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Built around 1680, the Paul Revere House, owned by the legendary patriot from 1770-1800, is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston and also the only official Freedom Trail historic site that is a home.

No trip to Boston would be complete without visiting the home of the famous patriot, craftsman, businessman and entrepreneur Paul Revere. Tour his home and hear about 18 th-century family life. In the new education and visitor center, enjoy displays of silver and evocative artifacts related to Revere's many business ventures, and learn the real story of his midnight ride presented in his own words. View the Paul Revere House event schedule and plan a trip to experience special living history programs in the site's courtyard and period gardens.

Choose to visit Previous or next Sites on the Freedom Trail

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Built around 1680, the Paul Revere House, owned by the legendary patriot from 1770-1800, is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston and also the only official Freedom Trail historic site that is a home. No trip to Boston would be complete without visiting the home of the famous patriot, craftsman, businessman and entrepreneur Paul Revere.

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Paul Revere was born in the North End of Boston on December 21, 1734. Although Revere originated from the middling sort, through his membership in St. Andrews Lodge of Freemasons, he made connections with a number of people who later became the founding members of the Loyal Nine. Although he was not a member of the Loyal Nine, it is believed that he assisted this predecessor organization of the Sons of Liberty in leading political protests against Parliament's authority to tax the colonies. While he was not known for exceptional oratory, he was a master of propaganda, and his works helped the Sons of Liberty galvanize support for their dissident cause.

Resisting Taxation Without Representation

In August of 1765, Paul Revere participated in the Stamp Act Riots in response to the impending Stamp Act that was to take effect in the coming months. During these riots, the mob tore down the houses of government officials, including the house of Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson. While these riots were viewed in a negative light by Parliament, the now apparent unpopularity of the Stamp Act in British North America forced its repeal. Following swiftly on the heels of the Stamp Act's repeal was the passage of the Declaratory Act in 1766, further asserting Parliament's right to tax the colonies. From this point forward, Paul Revere dedicated himself to the production of engravings which highlighted the excesses of the British government, and the unpopularity of their laws in Boston.

On October 1, 1768, two thousand British regulars arrived in Boston. Paul Revere rendered his first of many engravings which, in a subtle manner, detailed the ill effects of British imperial policy in North America. In his engraving of the arrival of British troops, Revere included towering church steeples along Boston's skyline as evidence of the town's orderly and religious origins. To the viewer of the eighteenth century, this made the arrival of British regulars even more offensive. If Boston was capable of managing its own affairs, then why were two thousand regulars quartered in the town?

The Boston Massacre

As time passed, tensions between the occupying force of British regulars and the town of Boston mounted. On March 5, 1770, these tensions resulted in the deaths of five unarmed Boston civilians on King Street. This tragedy later became known as the Boston Massacre. Henry Pelham produced an engraving that was later copied and sensationalized by Paul Revere entitled the Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street. In this engraving, Revere depicted Captain Thomas Preston standing behind his soldiers of the 29th regiment, implying that he ordered them to fire into the crowd-which was later refuted during the Boston Massacre Trial. In addition, Ebenezer Richardson was shown firing his buckshot into the crowd (which had happened only a few weeks prior on February 22, 1770, resulting in the death of Christopher Sneider), and a storefront labeled "Butcher's Hall" as to appeal to the viewer's perception of the British Army as brutal oppressors.

Revere's Revolutionary Propaganda

These examples of propaganda did much to convince the public of Parliament's flawed colonial policies. In the years that followed, Paul Revere, and the leaders of the Sons of Liberty did everything in their power to keep the memory of the Boston Massacre alive. On March 5, 1771, only one year after the massacre, Paul Revere staged an elaborate public demonstration from his home in the North End. From the windows of his home, he displayed various scenes of the Boston Massacre. In one of his windows, he displayed the ghost of young Christopher Sneider along with the names of the five men that fell on King Street. A second window depicted the soldiers of the 29th regiment firing into the crowd, and the third window displayed lady liberty with one foot on the head of a British Grenadier, and her finger pointing toward the window displaying the massacre.

Paul Revere's Ride

These various forms of propaganda had a profound effect on the people of Boston, and were instrumental in persuading the citizenry that the struggle for liberty was a just cause. In the years that followed, the leaders of the patriots would discover other useful talents in Paul Revere. Following the Boston Tea Party, he was dispatched to New York and Philadelphia to inform the Sons of Liberty in those towns of Boston's resistance to the Tea Act. In addition, he was sent by Dr. Joseph Warren to alert the countryside of British regular troop movements on the evening of April 18, 1775, the day before the Battle of Lexington-Concord. While Paul Revere has widely been credited with the midnight ride, other riders were dispatched to raise the alarm of the approaching British Army. His place in history would be solidified by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who canonized Revere as the lone midnight rider in an 1860 poem entitled "Paul Revere's Ride."

Legacy & Leadership

While Paul Revere is best remembered for his horsemanship, his most important contributions came from his hammer and chisel. His ability to appeal to the sensibilities of colonial subjects through the works of his copper engravings, and vigils demonstrated the power of propaganda. After the War of Independence, Revere expanded his business to open an iron foundry in the North End of Boston making utilitarian cast iron products that were useful and widely consumed by the local populace. He also opened a copper mill which produced bells for churches, rolled copper for the hulls of wooden ships, along with copper bolts and spikes that were useful to Boston's burgeoning ship industry. All of this demonstrated that Paul Revere was a man of many talents and a true revolutionary, and was therefore indispensable to Boston's success in resisting the authority of the British Parliament, and King George III.

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Paul Revere was an early revolutionary from Boston who made a number of key connections with leaders of the Loyal Nine and Sons of Liberty.

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Kids learn about Paul Revere's famous ride of warning the patriots about the British; major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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Who Was Paul Revere?

Paul Revere was born in the North End neighborhood of Boston at the end of 1734 (the exact date is unknown) to a French Huguenot father who ran a silversmith shop and a mother from a local family.

The young Revere was educated in reading and writing in school before completing his training as an apprentice to his silversmith father. At age 19, Revere inherited the business upon his father's death. But he left the business briefly and enlisted in a provincial army in 1756 during the French and Indian War.

Children

Revere returned to Boston after a failed military expedition and started to build his family life and business. He wed Sarah Orne in 1765, and they had eight children before she died nearly two decades later.

The silversmith was resourceful and dabbled in a range of work, taking on apprentices and workers who created specialty flatware, silver bowls, tea sets and even casting the first bell in Boston in his foundry. He turned to dentistry to augment his income when the colonial economy faltered during a recession.

Revere's network was also expanding to include local activists angered by British rule. In the mid-1760s, as tensions were rising between the colonists and the British, he joined the rebellious Sons of Liberty.

Revere took part in the Stamp Act protests in 1765, which eventually led the Crown to repeal a tax that ignited the colonists' hatred of taxation without representation.

Did you know? Paul Revere did not gain immediate fame for his April 1775 "Midnight Ride." In fact, it wasn't until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1861 poem, which greatly embellished Revere's role, that he became the folk hero we think of today.

Boston Massacre

With British troops in Boston and a rebellion stewing, Revere became a master propagandist, using his artisan skills to craft engravings that incited the colonists to join in the rebellion.

The growing unrest boiled over on March 5, 1770, when British troops and a crowd of colonists faced off on Boston's King Street near the Customs house. The tense standoff ended in the Boston Massacre, as the British used their bayonet rifles to shoot and kill five unarmed colonists.

One of Reveres' best-known pieces of propaganda depicted the violent night. He reworked a Henry Pelham drawing in an engraving and widely distributed prints of the stark image of armed British troops taking aim at the colonists.

Paul Revere's House

Amid the growing political tensions in Boston, Revere continued to strengthen his roots in the colonial harbor city. In 1770, he bought the now-landmarked Paul Revere House at 19 North Square for his growing family.

Revere lived in his North End home on and off for 30 years as his family continued to evolve. After the death of his wife, Sarah, in 1773, he married Rachel Walker and they had eight additional children.

Revere sold the home in 1800, and it was purchased by his great-grandson roughly a century later to ensure it was preserved. The 1680 structure still stands today as the oldest building in downtown Boston.

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

As Revere was settling into his Boston home in the early 1770s, he became active politically. He responded to the new laws about tea imports that bypassed Boston's merchants by attending secret meetings with the inner circle who planned the Boston Tea Party. Revere joined other activists and dumped tea from the British East India Company on December 16, 1773, into Boston's harbor.

His activism extended beyond the confines of Boston when Revere began work as a courier and rode from Boston to New York on horse to spread information about the colonies.

When his associates learned the British were moving troops out of Boston and planned to arrest revolutionary leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Massachusetts, Revere was tasked with tipping them off to help them avoid arrest.

He first used his signal system and had two lanterns placed on the Old North Church steeple in Boston to alert those on the harbor that the troops had left Boston and were crossing the Charles River.

Then, at about 10 p.m. on April 18, 1775, Revere set out in the dark from his North Boston home by horse with William Dawes to reach Adams and Hancock. The two riders met Adams and Hancock in Lexington and enabled the revolutionaries to avoid arrest.

Revere's next stop that late night was Concord, Massachusetts, a hotbed of the resistance and the suspected location of the British troops' second attack. But Revere, Dawes and a third rider named Samuel Prescott were captured by the British en route, and only Prescott reached Concord.

Revere was soon released, but he had already helped give the colonial militia a key advantage by alerting them to the impending attack by the British. The Battles of Lexington and Concord would spark the Revolutionary War.

Paul Revere's Ride

Revere remained active in the Revolutionary War, building Boston's first gunpowder mill and joining a Massachusetts infantry, but his remaining war record was lackluster, and he was largely unknown in his lifetime.

He became an American folk hero about 100 years later because of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's stirring retelling of his act of patriotism in "Paul Revere's Ride."

It begins with the now-famous lines, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere" and depicts a dangerous, midnight ride as Revere warns the colonists about the British attack. The poem recounts his lantern signal system in the lines "one if by land, two if by sea."

The stirring poem made him an American hero, and while it contains historical inaccuracies-such as claiming Revere rode alone-the poem highlights the risks taken by this patriot at the start of the American Revolution.
READ MORE: 7 Events That Led to the American Revolution
Sources

The Paul Revere House. Paul Revere Memorial Association.
"Paul Revere's Ride." Academy of American Poets.
Revolutionary War Battles. American Battlefield Trust.
Paul Revere. Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.
Voices of the Revolution: The Five Riders. Constitution Facts.

Fact Check

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Paul Revere: House, Midnight Ride, Boston Massacre - HISTORY

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Paul Revere was born in the North End neighborhood of Boston at the end of 1734 (the exact date is unknown) to a French Huguenot father who ran a silversmith shop and a mother from a local family. The young Revere was educated in reading and writing in school before completing his training as an apprentice to his silversmith father.

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The British Parliament in 1767 passed a series of laws known as the Townshend Acts, after the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend. This series of taxes proved very unpopular in the American colonies.

Just a year before, Parliament had rescinded the Stamp Act in response to great outcry from the American colonists. But the Crown still needed money because it had incurred a significant amount of debt in winning the French and Indian War.

George Grenville , who was in charge of the Treasury when the war ended, decided that the American people should pay a large part of the money Great Britain owed to its banks and to other countries that had given it money to buy weapons and to otherwise fight the war. After all, at the time, the American colonists paid less than one-twentieth of the taxes paid by people living in England.

The Townshend Acts had five parts:

1. The New York Restraining Act. Parliament had in 1765 passed the Quartering Act, which required colonial assemblies to look after British soldiers, providing food, housing, and supplies. In response to the New York assembly's skimping on provisions, the British Government suspended the assembly's operations.

2. The Revenue Act. This was a host of new taxes on various things imported into the colonies. Among them were china, glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. Townshend chose those items because he thought that the colonists would have difficulty producing them on their own and so would have to buy them from Britain and, naturally, pay the taxes. In anticipation of an increase in smuggling in response to the new taxes, the Government also authorized customs officials to employ search warrants known as writs of assistance to aid in the seizure of contraband. Such writs were used to search people's homes as well.

3. The Commissioners of Customs Act. This created a new customs commission, with headquarters in Boston, and authority to punish anyone who didn't pay the new taxes.

4. The Indemnity Act. This eliminated all taxes on tea that the British East Indian Company brought into Great Britain. As a result, tea sold by that company was cheaper than tea sold by any other company (and was even cheaper than tea sold on the black market).

5. The Vice-Admiralty Court Act. This created admiralty courts in Boston, Charleston, and Philadelphia, to be more effective than the one existing court, in Halifax.

The opposition to the Stamp Act, Townshend thought, focused on "internal" taxes, ones that governed daily activities that took place within the colonies. Parliament had heard from no less eminent a spokesman than Benjamin Franklin that this was how Americans looked at things. The new taxes placed duties on "external" activities, on goods imported to the colonies from other places. No matter what Franklin or anybody else said, Townshend had misjudged the American sentiment. Imposing taxes in order to regulate trade was one thing; erecting new taxes just to raise money was something altogether different. Further, the colonists had no representation in Britain's far-away Parliament.

Opposition to the Townshend Acts was swift and loud, if not often violent. Among the acts of protest were the publication of the Massachusetts Circular Letter, drafted by John Adams and James Otis, Jr., which urged the other colonies to follow Massachusetts' lead and petition King George III to repeal The Townshend Acts, and John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, which warned that the new taxes set a dangerous precedent and urged resistance through economic means.

Dickinson also wrote the patriotic "Liberty Song," which appeared in the Boston Gazette and became quite popular throughout new England. One of the stanzas was this:

By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall;
IN so RIGHTEOUS a Cause let us hope to succeed,
For Heaven approves of each generous Deed.

American colonists boycotted British-made goods. An effort spearheaded by the Sons of Liberty signed on people in 24 Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island towns to go out of their way to avoid buying British goods of almost any kind, not just the ones with the new taxes. Rougher customers resorted to vandalism of shops selling the items being taxed or intimidating people who were willing to pay the taxes in order to obtain the goods being taxes.

Some riots broke out and were put down with violence by British soldiers; one particularly violent altercation involved the confiscation of the Liberty, a ship belonging to John Hancock.

Townshend didn't live long enough to see most of it. His successor, Lord North, confronted the colonists' vitriol.

As usual, in Boston, tensions were high. British troops arrived there in October 1768 and kept coming, totally more than 2,000 the following year. Tempers boiled over in March of 1770, in what was later called the Boston Massacre. A month later, Parliament repealed the Townshend Acts, with the exception of the Tea Act. That tax was reaffirmed in 1773, an action that led to the reaction known as the Boston Tea Party. By the time that Parliament repealed the tea tax, in 1778, the Revolutionary War had begun.

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The British Parliament in 1767 passed a series of laws known as the Townshend Acts, after the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend. This series of taxes proved very unpopular in the American colonies. Just a year before, Parliament had rescinded the Stamp Act in response to great outcry from the American colonists.

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Causes of the Revolutionary War - Townshend Act

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This page describes the causes, implementation, and effects of the Townshend Act.

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Table of Contents

1. Crisis in Britain

2. Saving the East India Company

3. The Destruction of the Tea

4. The Coercive Acts and American Independence

The Tea Act of 1773 was one of several measures imposed on the American colonists by the heavily indebted British government in the decade leading up to the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). The act's main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the floundering East India Company, a key actor in the British economy. The British government granted the company a monopoly on the importation and sale of tea in the colonies. The colonists had never accepted the constitutionality of the duty on tea, and the Tea Act rekindled their opposition to it. Their resistance culminated in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, in which colonists boarded East India Company ships and dumped their loads of tea overboard. Parliament responded with a series of harsh measures intended to stifle colonial resistance to British rule; two years later the war began.

Crisis in Britain

In 1763, the British Empire emerged as the victor of the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Although the victory greatly expanded the empire's imperial holdings, it also left it with a massive national debt, and the British government looked to its North American colonies as an untapped source of revenue. In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first direct, internal tax that it had ever levied on the colonists.

The colonists resisted the new tax, arguing that only their own elective colonial assemblies could tax them, and that "taxation without representation" was unjust and unconstitutional. After the British government rejected their arguments, the colonists resorted to physical intimidation and mob violence to prevent the collection of the stamp tax. Recognizing that the Stamp Act was a lost cause, Parliament repealed it in 1766.

Did you know? Each year around the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a re-enactment party is thrown in Boston and visitors can tour replicas of the Dartmouth, the Beaver and the Eleanor, the three ships that were docked in the Boston Harbor and loaded with the East India Company's tea.

Parliament did not, however, renounce its right to tax the colonies or otherwise enact legislation over them. In 1767, Charles Townshend (1725-67), Britain's new chancellor of the Exchequer (an office that placed him in charge of collecting the government's revenue), proposed a law known as the Townshend Revenue Act. This act placed duties on a number of goods imported into the colonies, including tea, glass, paper and paint. The revenue raised by these duties would be used to pay the salaries of royal colonial governors. Since Parliament had a long history of using duties to regulate imperial trade, Townshend expected that the colonists would acquiesce to the imposition of the new taxes.

Unfortunately for Townshend, the Stamp Act had aroused colonial resentment to all new taxes, whether levied on imports or on the colonists directly. Moreover, Townshend's proposal to use the revenue to pay the salaries of colonial governors aroused great suspicion among the colonists. In most colonies, the elective assemblies paid the governors' salaries, and losing that power of the purse would greatly enhance the power of the royally appointed governors at the expense of representative government.

To express their displeasure, the colonists organized popular and effective boycotts of the taxed goods. Once again, colonial resistance had undermined the new system of taxation, and once again, the British government bowed to reality without abandoning the principle that it had rightful authority to tax the colonies. In 1770, Parliament repealed all of the Townshend Act duties except for the one on tea, which was retained as a symbol of Parliament's power over the colonies.

Saving the East India Company

The repeal of the majority of the Townshend Act took the wind out of the sails of the colonial boycott. Although many colonists continued to refuse to drink tea out of principle, many others resumed partaking of the beverage, though some of them salved their conscience by drinking smuggled Dutch tea, which was generally cheaper than legally imported tea.The American consumption of smuggled tea hurt the finances of the East India Company, which was already struggling through economic hardship. Although it was a private concern, the company played an integral role in Britain's imperial economy and served as its conduit to the riches of the East Indies. A glut of tea and a diminished American market had left the company with tons of tea leaves rotting in its warehouses. In an effort to save the troubled enterprise, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773. The act granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England, and to commission agents who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies. The act retained the duty on imported tea at its existing rate, but, since the company was no longer required to pay an additional tax in England, the Tea Act effectively lowered the price of the East India Company's tea in the colonies.

The Destruction of the Tea

If Parliament expected that the lowered cost of tea would mollify the colonists into acquiescing to the Tea Act, it was gravely mistaken. By allowing the East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies, the Tea Act cut out colonial merchants, and the prominent and influential colonial merchants reacted with anger. Other colonists viewed the act as a Trojan horse designed to seduce them into accepting Parliament's right to impose taxes on them. The fact that the agents commissioned by the company to sell its tea included a number of pro-Parliament men only added fuel to the fire.The Tea Act revived the boycott on tea and inspired direct resistance not seen since the Stamp Act crisis. The act also made allies of merchants and patriot groups like the Sons of Liberty. Patriot mobs intimidated the company's agents into resigning their commissions. In several towns, crowds of colonists gathered along the ports and forced company ships to turn away without unloading their cargo. The most spectacular action occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, where on December 16, 1773, a well-organized group of men dressed up as Native Americans and boarded the company ships. The men smashed open the chests of tea and dumped their contents into Boston Harbor in what later came to be known as the Boston Tea Party.

The Coercive Acts and American Independence

The Boston Tea Party caused considerable property damage and infuriated the British government. Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts of 1774, which colonists came to call the Intolerable Acts. The series of measures, among other things, repealed the colonial charter of Massachusetts and closed the port of Boston until the colonists reimbursed the cost of the destroyed tea. Parliament also appointed General Thomas Gage (1719-87), the commander in chief of British forces in North America, as the governor of Massachusetts. Since the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, radical colonists had warned that new British taxes heralded an attempt to overthrow representative government in the colonies and to subjugate the colonists to British tyranny. The Coercive Acts convinced more moderate Americans that the radicals' claims had merit. Colonial resistance intensified until, three years after Parliament passed the Tea Act, the colonies declared their independence as the United States of America. The American Revolution had begun.

Fact Check

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The Tea Act of 1773 was an act of Great Britain's Parliament to reduce the amount of tea held by the financially insecure British East India Company. It became a catalyst for the Boston Tea Party, which was a critical event in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War.

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Events leading up to American Revolution

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Events leading up to American Revolution

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For Kids: After the uproar caused by the Stamp Act which led to its repeal, the British Parliament still needed money. Plus they wanted to bring the colonists back into line and make sure they knew that Parliament was in charge. What happened next was collectively known as The Townshend Acts. Back in England, the king's financial minister, Charles Townshend, made some suggestions to Parliament that he felt might benefit the crown.

A series of laws based on Townshend's suggestions were passed by Parliament. These acts did the following:

Colonists had to house British troops, and provide food as well as shelter.

Taxes were placed on some goods brought into the colonies

To enforce the taxes, Parliament issued writs of assistance. These were search warrants British officers could use to enter homes or businesses in search of smuggled goods.

As well, jobs were beginning to be lost by the colonists because British soldiers, who were paid very poorly, had begun to accept jobs on the side at lower wages than colonists had been paid. These were the same British soldiers the colonists had to house and feed.

The Sons of Liberty asked colonial merchants not to sell British goods at all. The Daughters of Liberty encouraged woman to weave their own cloth and to use American made goods.

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Road to Revolution for Kids - The Townshend Acts

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For Kids: After the uproar caused by the Stamp Act which led to its repeal, the British Parliament still needed money. Plus they wanted to bring the colonists back into line and make sure they knew that Parliament was in charge. What happened next was collectively known as The Townshend Acts.

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Learn the basics about the Townshend Acts, a series of laws that intensified colonial rage toward the British crown in the 1760s.

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Historical Facts About The Townshend Acts

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A complete guide to Townshend Acts and their impact, in Boston. Stamp Act of 1765. Boston Massacre. Includes a list of interesting facts you may not know.

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Learn about the Townshend Acts from the American Revolution including how they got their name, what the laws did, why the colonists protested them, results, and interesting facts.

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Townshend Acts - Definition, Facts & Purpose | HISTORY

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The Townshend Acts were a series of unpopular measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. The laws heightened the tensions between Great Britain and the American colonists and were a precursor to the Revolutionary War.

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The Boston Massacre

Tensions were high in Boston on March 5, 1770 as a mob of colonists, unhappy about recent tariffs and rising tyranny, came face to face with British Captain Thomas Preston and his men. In all the yelling and general confusion, one soldier fired into the mob, which promptly led to more firing from the rest of the troops. When the sea of colonists fled, and the haze of gunpowder cleared, the confusing incident took five lives. This event is now known as the Boston Massacre

Coined the "Fatal Fifth of March," the massacre was used as propaganda by patriots to bring people to their side against British tyranny. The use of it as propaganda caused the Boston Massacre to stand out against the many events that led to the American Revolution. Because it was used to rally colonists as an example of a tyrannical atrocity, the legend of the Boston Massacre has possibly overshadowed the reality of it.

Right after the massacre, Captain Preston and his men were tried for murder. They were defended by John Adams, a known patriot and future president. The result? Captain Preston and most of his men were acquitted, but two of the soldiers were branded using a hot iron, and then pressed against their thumbs.

An illustration of the death of Crispus Attucks during the Boston Massacre

Due to the use of it as propaganda, some say that the Boston Massacre was blown out of proportion. Others say that this event is what led to the American Revolution. No matter which side you stand on, the Boston Massacre is one of the best examples of how bias plays a part in history. Which side of history do you stand on?

Research Questions:

Why would patriots want to call this a massacre, and use it to persuade others?

Why was Boston one of the birthplaces of the American Revolution?

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Tensions were high in Boston on March 5, 1770 as a mob of colonists, unhappy about recent tariffs and rising tyranny, came face to face with British Captain Thomas Preston and his men. In all the yelling and general confusion, one soldier fired into the mob, which promptly led to more firing from the rest of the troops.

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The Boston Massacre Monument, a monument to American independence

Boston Massacre
March 5, 1770
Conflicts between the British and the colonists had been on the rise because the British government had been trying to increase control over the colonies and raise taxes at the same time. The event in Boston helped to unite the colonies against Britain. What started as a minor fight became a turning point in the beginnings of the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre helped spark the colonists' desire for American independence, while the dead rioters became martyrs for liberty. Can you think of other major events in history that began with a small incident?

page 3 of 3

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The Boston Massacre Monument, a monument to American independence Boston Massacre March 5, 1770 Conflicts between the British and the colonists had been on the rise because the British government had been trying to increase control over the colonies and raise taxes at the same time.

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look At Paul Revere's Most Famous Engraving

When Paul Revere first began selling his color prints of "The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street" in Boston, he was doing what any like-minded patriot with his talents in 1770 would have done. Only, Paul Revere did it faster and more expeditiously than anyone else, including two other artist-engravers who also issued prints of the Massacre that year.

Twenty-one days before - on the night of March 5, 1770 - five men had been shot to death in Boston town by British soldiers. Precipitating the event known as the Boston Massacre was a mob of men and boys taunting a sentry standing guard at the city's customs house. When other British soldiers came to the sentry's support, a free-for-all ensued and shots were fired into the crowd.

Four died on the spot and a fifth died after four days. Six others were wounded.

The presence of British troops in Boston had long been a sore point among Boston's radical politicians. Paul Revere wasted no time in capitalizing on the Massacre to highlight British tyranny and stir up anti-British sentiment among his fellow colonists. As you will see, Revere's historic engraving is long on political propaganda and short on accuracy or aesthetics.

Notice how the British Grenadiers are shown standing in a straight line shooting their rifles in a regular volley, whereas when the disturbance actually erupted both sides were belligerent and riotous.

Notice also that Revere's engraving shows a blue sky. Only a wisp of a moon suggests that the riot occurred after nine o'clock on a cold winter night.

Notice too the absence of snow and ice on the street, while Crispus Attucks - a black man lying on the ground closest to the British soldiers - is shown to be white. As an aside, it should be noted that as a result of his death in the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks would emerge as the most famous of all the black men to fight in the cause of the Revolution, and become its first martyr.

Documentation has come to light over the years revealing details on the other Boston Massacre paintings. Revere copied engraver Henry Pelham's drawings of the Massacre, produced his own engraving, and three weeks after the occurrence was advertising his prints for sale in Boston's newspapers. By the time Pelham's prints hit the street, Revere's print had flooded the market. A third engraving was executed by Jonathan Mulliken, who also issued prints depicting the event. Except for a number of minor differences, all three prints appear alike.

In his rush to produce his engraving Revere employed the talents of Christian Remick to colorize the print. Remick's choice of colors is simple yet effective. Notice the use of red for the British uniforms and the blood. The other colors - blue, green, brown and black - all contribute to make this print what is arguably the most famous in America.

Few historians would deny that the Boston Massacre proved to be a milestone in America's road to independence. By popularizing the tragic event, Paul Revere's print became "the first powerful influence in forming an outspoken anti-British public opinion," one which the revolutionary leaders had almost lost hope of achieving.

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When Paul Revere first began selling his color prints of "The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street" in Boston, he was doing what any like-minded patriot with his talents in 1770 would have done. Only, Paul Revere did it faster and more expeditiously than anyone else, including two other artist-engravers who also issued prints of the Massacre that year.

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Townshend Acts - Definition, Facts & Purpose | HISTORY

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The Townshend Acts were a series of unpopular measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. The laws heightened the tensions between Great Britain and the American colonists and were a precursor to the Revolutionary War.

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Boston Massacre and the Trial

From the moment they set foot in Boston, the redcoats were constantly at odds with the town's inhabitants. By the beginning of March, 1770, tensions seemed to reach a boiling point. On the evening of March 5, Private Hugh White was under assault by a crowd of boys throwing snowballs, oysters in their shells, stones and clubs. Moments later, Captain Thomas Preston arrived on the scene along with grenadiers from the 29th Regiment. The soldiers formed a half circle around White, with Captain Preston standing in front of his men to keep the peace. According to witnesses, a club flew through the air striking one soldier in the head, which caused him to lose his balance, and discharge his musket. Thinking they had been given the order to fire, the other soldiers also discharged their weapons into the crowd, leaving five civilians on the ground, mortally wounded.

The very next day, John Adams received a loud knock on his door. He was asked to defend the soldiers and Captain Preston, as nobody else would take the case. Without hesitation Adams agreed to defend the soldiers and their captain. Above all, John Adams believed in upholding the law, and defending the innocent. Adams was convinced that the soldiers were wrongly accused, and had fired into the crowd in self-defense. But in the months that followed, his second cousin, Samuel Adams did everything in his power to paint the redcoats as the troublemakers who started it all. Public vigils were held to remind the people of the brutal oppressors who killed their friends. Paul Revere altered an engraving by Henry Pelham commemorating the bloody massacre on King Street to show the redcoats taking great pleasure in firing at the town's people, and also depicting Captain Preston standing behind his men while giving them the order to fire.

The trial commenced in October of 1770, starting with Captain Preston. The prosecution, led by Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Quincy argued that the British regulars had been a hostile occupying force. They argued that Captain Preston and his grenadiers treated the town's inhabitants with malice, and purposefully fired into the crowd to settle old scores from the brawls that preceded the incident on March 5. On the other hand, the defense represented by John Adams and Josiah Quincy Jr. argued that Captain Preston and his men had no intention of firing. Instead, they were the victims of mob violence, only firing their muskets under extreme duress. Thanks to the legal acumen of John Adams, Captain Preston was found not guilty.

The second and more publicized trial was of the soldiers of the 29th Regiment who fired their muskets into the crowd. While Adams believed the soldiers were innocent, he also believed that the incident was brought on by the policies of Parliament, and more specifically, the quartering of troops in the town of Boston during peacetime. On December 3, 1770, John Adams addressed the jury in his closing speech. Invoking a quote made by the Marchese di Beccaria, Adams concluded that "Soldiers [when] quartered in a populous town will always occasion two mobs where they prevent one. They are wretched conservators of the peace."

In defense, John reminded the jury that "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." John Adams reminded the jury of that fateful night in early March when the "motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jacktars" pelted the redcoats with rocks all while daring them to fire. "Kill them! Kill them!" shouted the crowd. Meanwhile, church bells pealed throughout the town indicating that a fire had spread to several buildings. People from all corners of the town yelled "Fire! Fire!" How was a soldier to respond? "Do you expect he should behave like a stoic philosopher, lost in apathy?" Adams asked.

The jury was out for nearly three hours before they returned with their final decision. Six soldiers were found innocent, while the other two were convicted of manslaughter. John Adams' defense of Captain Preston and his soldiers was a resounding success. John's practice suffered, as he would later claim that he lost half his practice as a result of his defense of Captain Preston's soldiers. But his service to the law only strengthened his reputation with both sides-patriots and Tories alike. In the years ahead, his opinions would be respected as impartial, and evidence based. Later in life, John Adams would remember the trial as "one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country."

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John Adams and The Boston Massacre | Boston Tea Party Museum

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Boston Massacre and the Trial From the moment they set foot in Boston, the redcoats were constantly at odds with the town's inhabitants. By the beginning of March, 1770, tensions seemed to reach a boiling point. On the evening of March 5, Private Hugh White was under assault by a crowd of boys throwing snowballs, oysters in their shells, stones and clubs.

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John Adams
Photo Courtesy of Independence National Historical Park

The crowd strained forward in the Queen Street courtroom on October 17, 1770. Murmurs and rumblings of anger filled the air. Captain Thomas Preston, a British grenadier, shifted his feet nervously and felt the sweat rising to his brow. If the jury found him, and his men, guilty of murder as the indictment suggested, he could only expect death as a penalty. That is what these Bostonians wanted! The only hope for Preston and his men lay with this short, stocky country lawyer-a colonial American after all-John Adams, and his too young assistant Josiah Quincy.

Seven months had passed since the "horrid, bloody massacre" took place on the 5 th of March. But the passions of the people remained strong. "Sons of Liberty" such as Samuel Adams and John Hancock had seen to that! They reminded the good citizens that the British soldiers were not welcomed, and that mobs had as much right to carry clubs as the soldiers had to carry loaded muskets! But now the jury was set and the true drama was beginning. Only a fair trial would show the world that Massachusetts, and by association all Americans, deserved their liberty by an appeal to justice and not by the rule of a mob.

Captain Preston had his doubts that a fair trial was possible. Yet there was something about his lawyer that gave him hope. This fellow Adams-colonial though he was-was tenacious when it came to the truth, braver than most when it came to risking himself or his family, devoted beyond reason when it came to the law, and undeniably intelligent. If anyone could help these hapless soldiers in a foreign land, Preston thought, Adams seemed the man. The lawyer hardly cut a gallant figure standing before the bar wearing the powdered wig and black robe of His Majesty's court. Yet there was something...

Adams seemed at home in the courtroom, like an experienced mariner navigating the shoals of a dangerous coastline. He had been able to impanel a jury from out-of-town, not a single Boston man among them and, Preston felt, the jury seemed uncommonly thoughtful for upstart colonials! Now Adams was questioning Richard Palmes, a witness most of the crowd recognized, about events that night. Preston could hear Palmes saying,

"That instant...I saw something resembling Snow or Ice strike the Grenadier on the Captain's right hand...He [the Grenadier] fired the first Gun. After the Gun went off I heard the word 'fire!' The Captain and I stood in front about half between the breech and muzzle of the Guns. I don't know who gave the word to fire."

Adams let Palmes' words settle like fallen snow on the minds of the jury. Who could say where the command "fire" had come from? Many in the mob had been yelling "fire, damn you...ye' dare not!" Clubs and chunks of ice had been ready in menacing hands! What reasonable man, or even seasoned soldier, would not fear for his life? "Malice aforethought" is what the indictment had charged. Yet Adams was showing that confusion, terror, and even curiosity were more on the minds of everyone that night in
King Street
. Even the jury's faces showed the common truth of this.

John Adams was in his element! Like a gladiator he loved the arena where great battles were fought! For Adams, a man's character was not measured by the popularity he inspired in his neighbors, but by the "truth" he pursued. As he would say in a letter to his beloved Abigail, "I...have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children." But he would also assert "the law...will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men." When the jury quickly returned with a "not guilty" verdict against Preston, Adams felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders.

Soon after, the trial of the other eight men-Hugh White, Hugh Montgomery, Matthew Kilroy, John Carroll, James Hartigan, William McCauley, William Warren, and William Wemms-began. By now, Captain Preston had great admiration for their lawyer's abilities. Generally, Preston resented these colonials and felt that "malcontents" were "using every method to fish out evidence to prove [the shooting] was a concerted scheme to murder the inhabitants." But if a British soldier could be acquitted by a New England jury, perhaps there was more, he thought!

Following one of the first trials in American history to last for several days, even the frenetic crowd seemed exhausted. Testimony after testimony had been used to show both sides of the "massacre" story. But as Adams said in his summary, "facts are stubborn things...if they [the soldiers] were assaulted at all...this was a provocation for which the law reduces the offense of killing, down to manslaughter..." In less than three hours, the jury reached a verdict. No malice was found. All eight men were found not guilty of murder. Two, Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy, were found guilty of manslaughter.

A defense lawyer to the last, Adams negotiated the sentences of Montgomery and Kilroy using and ancient precedent of English law. The "Plea of Clergy" meant that instead of death, the two men would be branded on the thumbs as first offenders, never to be permitted to violate the law again.

Adams would later describe his role as "the greatest service I ever rendered my country." Why? In a town where British soldiers were hated, there had been a fair trial by jury. In a land where mobs could sway events, the world saw that justice and liberty were valued as the legal rights of all!

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Boston Massacre Trial - Boston National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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The crowd strained forward in the Queen Street courtroom on October 17, 1770. Murmurs and rumblings of anger filled the air. Captain Thomas Preston, a British grenadier, shifted his feet nervously and felt the sweat rising to his brow.

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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Learn about the Boston Massacre where five colonies were killed by the British. Major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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Boston Tea Party Ships

The Beaver, Eleanor and Dartmouth...

To fully tell and understand the story of the Boston Tea Party, a flotilla of all three ships is necessary. With only the at the site of the museum for so many years, many people have the impression there was only one ship that was off-loaded during the Boston Tea Party. The new Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum will illuminate the importance and the significance of this historic event with replicas of all three ships involved. On the night of the Boston Tea Party, three ships that had sailed from London carrying cargoes of British East India Company tea were moored in Boston Harbor. The vessels were built in America and owned by Americans. The Beaver and the Dartmouth were whalers, and the Eleanor was a full rigged ship.

Historical accounts record that no damage was done to any of the ships.

The Boston Tea Party Ships' Arrival

The Dartmouth arrived in Boston on November 28, 1773, the Eleanor on December 2, and the last to arrive was the Beaver, which came into port on December 15. Each of the three ships carried more than one hundred chests of British East India Company tea.

Destruction of the Tea

340 chests of British East India Company Tea, weighing over 92,000 pounds, were dumped overboard the night of December 16, 1773. All of the chests were smashed open with axes and the tea dumped into Boston Harbor. The cargo was worth more than $1,700,000 dollars in today's money. Historical accounts record that no damage was done to any of the ships except a broken lock which was replaced the next day. The event was witnessed by thousands, and the implications and impact of this action were enormous, ultimately leading to the sparking of the American Revolution.

The Restoration Process Begins

We are restoring and retrofitting the full rigged ship Eleanor and the brig Beaver at the Gloucester Marine Railways located on Rocky Neck in Gloucester, Massachusetts. While we redesign the 103 year-old replica Beaver, we are also recreating the Eleanor. Both masterpieces will be historically correct ships of the 1770's and will be an invaluable part of The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum. We are also creating drawings of the Dartmouth, which will be newly constructed from the keel up.

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Boston Tea Party Ships To fully tell and understand the story of the Boston Tea Party, a flotilla of all three ships is necessary. With only the at the site of the museum for so many years, many people have the impression there was only one ship that was off-loaded during the Boston Tea Party.

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Types of Teas Destroyed

What tea was thrown overboard in Boston Harbor?

All the East India Company tea aboard the ships docked in Boston Harbor on the evening of December 16, 1773 was produced in China, not India. Tea would not be cultivated in India or Sri Lanka until the 19th century. It was all loose tea because the colonists had no taste for tea bricks, and tea bags were still 150 years in the future.

Benjamin Woods Labaree's The Boston Tea Party says the three tea ships contained 240 chests of Bohea, 15 of Congou, 10 of Souchong (all black teas), 60 of Singlo, and 15 of Hyson (both green teas).

Green Tea

It may surprise you to know that green tea accounted for about 22% of the shipments' total volume and 30% of the value. One-third of the tea exported from China in the 18th century was green tea, with spring-picked Hyson being one the favorites. The first tea plucked in the spring is always the finest, which the Chinese designated yu-tsien or before the rains tea. The English traders who bought the tea in China thought the Mandarin name of this tea sounded like the name of a wealthy East India Company director in London named Phillip Hyson, and forevermore the young spring tea took on Mr. Hyson's more pronounceable moniker. Hyson was a favorite tea of both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Singlo green tea was picked later in the season and the leaves were a bit larger. It tended to spoil sooner than other teas and was not widely known in the colonies. It was only included in the ill-fated shipment because the East India Company had quite a bit of stock that needed to be liquidated before it became undrinkable. They wanted to introduce the tea to the colonies in hope that American's would develop a taste for it. A few chests were aboard all seven ships which left London bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston in late summer 1773.

Black Tea

But the bulk of the tea that westerners consumed was common black tea known as Bohea (boo-hee), a corruption of the name for the Wuyi mountains south of Shanghai. The tea was so popular, that the word Bohea became the slang term for tea.

John Adams diary entry from December 17, 1773 reads in part:
Last Night 3 Cargoes of Bohea Tea were emptied into the Sea. This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire.

One London publication described Bohea as infusing a dark and dull brownish red color which, on standing, deposits a black sediment. The liquor is sometimes faint, frequently smoky, but always unpleasant. The superior form of Bohea is known as Congou.

Seventy percent of the tea imported by the East India Company was Congou (kung-foo.) It brewed a deep transparent red liquor with a strong and pleasant bitter flavor. The addition of milk surely added to the enjoyment of this beverage.

is a classic black tea from the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian province which has a very distinctive smoky aroma. The original term Souchong souchong (xiaozhong) means "small leaf variety," and refers to a family of tea cultivars that existed in this famous tea-growing region of Fujian since 1717. The souchong teas drunk by early colonists would have had a very slight smoky aroma which the tea leaves picked up during the drying process. Most of today's souchong exports are intentionally smoked with smoldering pinewood and are called lapsang souchong. 12 chests of Souchong weighing a total of 684 pounds were aboard the ships in Boston Harbor.

Certainly, all the teas tossed overboard would disappoint a modern tea drinker because they were way past their prime. The Boston teas were plucked in 1770 and 1771, transported by ship to London warehouses where they sat for a couple of years, and finally placed aboard ships bound for the colonies in October 1773.

Forget taxation! The colonists should have been more offended by the slight regard King George showed toward their good tastes!

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The Boston Harbor Tea | Boston Tea Party | East India Tea Company

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Types of Teas Destroyed All the East India Company tea aboard the ships docked in Boston Harbor on the evening of December 16, 1773 was produced in China, not India. Tea would not be cultivated in India or Sri Lanka until the 19th century.

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December 16th, 1773
View Participant List >
It is estimated that hundreds took part in the Boston Tea Party. For fear of punishment, many participants of the Boston Tea Party remained anonymous for many years after the event. To date it is known that 116 people are documented to have participated. Not all of the participants of the Boston Tea Party are known; many carried the secret of their participation to their graves. The participants were made up of males from all walks of colonial society. Many were from Boston or the surrounding area, but some participants are documented to have come from as far away as Worcester in central Massachusetts and Maine. The vast majority was of English descent, but men of Irish, Scottish, French, Portuguese, and African ancestry were documented to have also participated. The participants were of all ages, but the majority of the documented participants was under the age of forty. Sixteen participants were teenagers, and only nine men were above the age of forty. Many of the Boston Tea Party participants fled Boston immediately after the destruction of the tea to avoid arrest. Thousands witnessed the event, and the implication and impact of this action were enormous ultimately leading to the start of the American Revolution.

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Participants in the Boston Tea Party | Boston Tea Party Participants

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Were your relatives participants in the Boston Tea Party? Find out here!

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"The commander of the division to which I belonged... ordered me to go to the captain and demand of him the keys to the hatches and a dozen candles. I made the demand accordingly, and the captain promptly replied, and delivered the articles; but requested me at the same time to do no damage to the ship or rigging. We then were ordered by our commanders to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water. In about three hours from the time we went on board, we had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in the other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time. We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us... During the time we were throwing the tea overboard, there were several attempts made by some of the citizens of Boston and its vicinity to carry off small quantities of it for their family use. To effect that object, they would watch their opportunity to snatch up a handful from the deck, where it became plentifully scattered, and put it into their pockets. One Captain O'Connor, whom I well knew, came on board for that purpose, and when he supposed he was not noticed, filled his pockets, and also the lining of his coat. But I had detected him and gave information to the captain of what he was doing. We were ordered to take him into custody, and just as he was stepping from the vessel, I seized him by the skirt of his coat, and in attempting to pull him back, I tore it off; but, springing forward, by a rapid effort he made his escape. He had, however, to run a gauntlet through the crowd upon the wharf, each one, as he passed, giving him a kick or a stroke. Another attempt was made to save a little tea from the ruins of the cargo by a tall, aged man who wore a large cocked hat and white wig, which was fashionable at that time. He had sleightly slipped a little into his pockets, but being detected, they seized him and, taking his hat and wig from his head, threw them, together with the tea, of which they had emptied his pockets into the water. In consideration of his advanced age, he was permitted to escape, with now and then a slight kick..."

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Destruction of British East India Company Tea | Boston Tea Party

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The Boston Tea Party. More about the destruction of the British East India Company tea.

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Read all about Boston Tea Party Facts and Boston History. Learn about the event that lead to an American Revolution!

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Kids learn about the Boston Tea Party major event in the American Revolutionary War.

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In 1771, a group of colonists protest thirteen years of increasing British oppression, by attacking merchant ships in Boston Harbor. In retaliation, the British close the port, and inflict even harsher penalties.

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In 1771, a group of colonists protest thirteen years of increasing British oppression, by attacking merchant ships in Boston Harbor. In retaliation, the British close the port, and inflict even harsher penalties.

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December 15, 1773

On December 15, 1773, the Beaver, the last of the three ships sailing from London, England arrived at Griffin's Wharf in Boston. The was delayed due to a case of smallpox which broke out onboard, and she was held in quarantine for two weeks in Boston's outer harbor. Previously, the Dartmouth had arrived at Griffin's Wharf on November 28 and the Eleanor on December 2. The Beaver was commanded by Captain Coffin, the Dartmouth by Captain Hall, and the Eleanor by Captain Bruce. There were to be four ships, but the William ran aground off Cape Cod on December 10, 1773, in a violent storm. The Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor each carried more than one hundred chests of British East India Company Tea. The tea came from China and was described as the "Bohea" type. In the 18th century tea trade, black tea was referred to as "Bohea" which traditionally came from the Wuyi Mountain region of China, but the term "Bohea" was hijacked by the tea trade to refer to all black tea varieties. Additionally, the shipment of British East India Company tea also contained green tea from the Chinese province of Anhui..

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Boston Tea Party History | Where the Tea Party Began

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Educate yourself about the event that helped start the American Revolution. Learn about Boston Tea Party History and Where the Tea Party Began.

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Why Did the Boston Tea Party Happen?

In the 1760s, Britain was deep in debt, so British Parliament imposed a series of taxes on American colonists to help pay those debts.

The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed colonists on virtually every piece of printed paper they used, from playing cards and business licenses to newspapers and legal documents. The Townshend Acts of 1767 went a step further, taxing essentials such as paint, paper, glass, lead and tea.

The British government felt the taxes were fair since much of its debt was earned fighting wars on the colonists' behalf. The colonists, however, disagreed. They were furious at being taxed without having any representation in Parliament, and felt it was wrong for Britain to impose taxes on them to gain revenue.

Boston Massacre Enrages Colonists

On March 5, 1770, a street brawl happened in Boston between American colonists and British soldiers.

Later known as the Boston Massacre, the fight began after an unruly group of colonists-frustrated with the presence of British soldiers in their streets- flung snowballs, ice and oyster shells at a British sentinel guarding the Boston Customs House.

Reinforcements arrived and opened fire on the mob, killing five colonists and wounding six. The Boston Massacre and its fallout further incited the colonists' rage towards Britain.

Tea Act Imposed

Britain eventually repealed the taxes it had imposed on the colonists except the tea tax. It wasn't about to give up tax revenue on the nearly 1.2 million pounds of tea the colonists drank each year.

In protest, the colonists boycotted tea sold by British East India Company and smuggled in Dutch tea, leaving British East India Company with millions of pounds of surplus tea and facing bankruptcy.

In May 1773, British Parliament passed the Tea Act which allowed British East India Company to sell tea to the colonies duty-free and much cheaper than other tea companies-but still tax the tea when it reached colonial ports.

Tea smuggling in the colonies increased, although the cost of the smuggled tea soon surpassed that of tea from British East India Company with the added tea tax.

Still, with the help of prominent tea smugglers such as John Hancock and Samuel Adams -who protested taxation without representation but also wanted to protect their tea smuggling operations-colonists continued to rail against the tea tax and Britain's control over their interests.

Sons of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty were a group of colonial merchants and tradesmen founded to protest the Stamp Act and other forms of taxation. The group of revolutionists included prominent patriots such as Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere, as well as Adams and Hancock.

Led by Adams, the Sons of Liberty held meetings rallying against British Parliament and protested the Griffin's Wharf arrival of Dartmouth, a British East India Company ship carrying tea. By December 16, 1773, Dartmouth had been joined by her sister ships, Beaver and Eleanor; all three ships loaded with tea from China.

That morning, as thousands of colonists convened at the wharf and its surrounding streets, a meeting was held at the Old South Meeting House where a large group of colonists voted to refuse to pay taxes on the tea or allow the tea to be unloaded, stored, sold or used. (Ironically, the ships were built in America and owned by Americans.)

Governor Thomas Hutchison refused to allow the ships to return to Britain and ordered the tea tariff be paid and the tea unloaded. The colonists refused, and Hutchison never offered a satisfactory compromise.

Facts: What Happened at the Boston Tea Party

That night, a large group of men-many reportedly members of the Sons of Liberty- disguised themselves in Native American garb, boarded the docked ships and threw 342 chests of tea into the water.

Said participant George Hewes, "We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water."

Hewes also noted that "We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us."

Did you know? It took nearly three hours for more than 100 colonists to empty the tea into Boston Harbor. The chests held more than 90,000 lbs. (45 tons) of tea, which would cost nearly $1,000,000 dollars today.

Boston Tea Party Aftermath

While some important colonist leaders such as John Adams were thrilled to learn Boston Harbor was covered in tea leaves, others were not.

In June of 1774, George Washington wrote: "the cause of Boston...ever will be considered as the cause of America." But his personal views of the event were far different. He voiced strong disapproval of "their conduct in destroying the Tea" and claimed Bostonians "were mad." Washington, like many other elites, held private property to be sacrosanct.

Benjamin Franklin insisted the British East India Company be reimbursed for the lost tea and even offered to pay for it himself.

No one was hurt, and aside from the destruction of the tea and a padlock, no property was damaged or looted during the Boston Tea Party. The participants reportedly swept the ships' decks clean before they left.

Who Organized the Boston Tea Party?

Though led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty and organized by John Hancock, the names of many of those involved in the Boston Tea Party remain unknown. Thanks to their Native American costumes, only one of the tea party culprits, Francis Akeley, was arrested and imprisoned.

Even after American independence, participants refused to reveal their identities, fearing they could still face civil and criminal charges as well as condemnation from elites for the destruction of private property. Most participants in the Boston Tea Party were under the age of 40 and 16 of them were teenagers.

Coercive Acts

But despite the lack of violence, the Boston Tea Party didn't go unanswered by King George III and British Parliament.

In retribution, they passed the Coercive Acts (later known as the Intolerable Acts) which:

Closed Boston Harbor until the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party was paid for

Ended the Massachusetts Constitution and ended free elections of town officials

Moved judicial authority to Britain and British judges, basically creating martial law in Massachusetts

Required colonists to quarter British troops on demand

Extended freedom of worship to French-Canadian Catholics under British rule, which angered the mostly Protestant colonists

Britain hoped the Coercive Acts would squelch rebellion in New England and keep the remaining colonies from uniting, but the opposite happened: All the colonies viewed the punitive laws as further evidence of Britain's tyranny and rallied to Massachusetts' aid, sending supplies and plotting further resistance.

Second Boston Tea Party

A second Boston Tea Party took place in March 1774, when around 60 Bostonians boarded the ship Fortune and dumped nearly 30 chests of tea into the harbor.

The event didn't earn nearly as much notoriety as the first Boston Tea Party, but it did encourage other tea-dumping demonstrations in Maryland, New York and South Carolina.

First Continental Congress Is Convened

Many colonists felt Britain's Coercive Acts went too far. On September 5, 1774, elected delegates from all 13 American colonies except Georgia met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress to figure out how to resist British oppression.

The delegates were divided on how to move forward but the Boston Tea Party had united them in their fervor to gain independence. By the time they adjourned in October 1774, they'd written The Declaration and Resolves which:

Censured Britain for passing the Coercive Acts and called for their repeal

Established a boycott of British goods

Declared the colonies had the right to govern independently

Rallied colonists to form and train a colonial militia

Britain didn't capitulate and within months, the " shot heard round the world," rang out in Concord, Massachusetts, sparking the start of the American Revolutionary War.

Sources

A Tea Party Timeline: 1773-1775. Old South Meeting House.
The Boston Tea Party. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The Boston Tea Party. Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Boston Tea Party, 1773. EyewitnesstoHistory.com.
The Intolerable Acts. U.S.History.org.

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Boston Tea Party - Definition, Dates & Facts | HISTORY

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The Boston Tea Party was a political protest staged on December 16, 1773 at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated at Britain for imposing "taxation without representation," dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists.