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Historical Background

The Outbreak of War

The alliance of moderates and radicals formed again following passage of the Tea Act of 1773. This measure gave the East India Company a virtual monopoly of the colonial tea market. Even so, it probably would have aroused little antagonism had not the Company chosen as its agents the unpopular merchants who had earlier opposed the nonimportation agreements. At the "Boston Tea Party" on December 16, 1773, angry colonists retaliated by dumping shiploads of tea into Boston Harbor. Parliament's answer was to pass the "Intolerable" or "Coercive" Acts in April 1774. This body of legislation provided, among other things, for closing the port of Boston until the British East India Company was reimbursed for the tea destroyed. The other Colonies sprang to the aid of Massachusetts—with food and supplies for Boston, with heated words and fiery pamphlets, and with a call for a general meeting of representatives from all Colonies.

The meeting convened at Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. This First Continental Congress consisted of 55 delegates from 12 Colonies, Georgia alone being unrepresented. Before adjourning on October 26, the Congress adopted a Declaration of Rights and an intercolonial non-importation agreement called "The Association," which also provided for the appointment of local committees to watch for acts of disloyalty to the colonial cause. A moderate plan of colonial union, offered by Joseph Galloway, of Pennsylvania, narrowly failed of adoption.

Here, on Lexington Green on the morning of April 19, 1775, were fired the first shots in the struggle for American independence. The boulder at the right marks the approximate location of one end of the line of Minute Men drawn up to face the approaching British. (Courtesy, Boston National Historic Sites Commission.)

The actions of the First Continental Congress aroused much resentment in England, and the English people rallied to the support of Lord North's government. On March 20, 1775, Parliament passed the New England Restraining Act, which prohibited the New England Colonies from doing business outside the British Empire. The act was applied subsequently to all except four of the continental Colonies. By the end of 1774, however, the American situation seemed to be beyond restoration through either coercion or conciliation. Committees of Safety enforced effectively the provisions of The Association. Ten of the Colonies organized extralegal provincial congresses. Local groups began to accumulate stores of arms and ammunition. It was such arms and ammunition that finally, the following spring, converted the political struggle into a military struggle.

War began on April 19, 1775, when Gen. Thomas Gage's British regulars marched from Boston to seize American munitions reportedly stored at Concord. Alerted by swift-riding Paul Revere and others, the Massachusetts "Minutemen" turned out on Lexington Green (see pp. 91-92, 102-103, 104-105) to contest the advance. The professionals easily dispersed this "rabble" and continued to Concord. But they found, upon their return, that they had tipped the hornet's nest. (See pp. 55-57, 112-113.) When the weary British regulars stumbled into the defenses of Boston at last, after a nightmarish retreat along miles of stone walls manned by the farmer militia, they were part of an army beseiged.

The Bunker Hill Monument and surrounding 4-acre park denote the approximate center of the redoubt defended by American forces in the first full-scale action of the Revolutionary War, after the opening of hostilities at Lexington and Concord. (Courtesy, Massachusetts Department of Commerce.)

The American position was strengthened early in May, when New England forces under Ethan Allen seized the British posts of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, on Lake Champlain. (See pp. 127-128, 211- 212.) Strategically important, the forts also supplied artillery and military material needed in the siege of Boston.

As more and more colonial troops arrived in the vicinity of Boston, the British garrison's position became steadily more precarious. In mid-June 1775, however, the Americans crowded the enemy too closely by entrenching Breed's Hill in Charlestown, overlooking Boston from the north. Disdainfully, Gen. Sir William Howe's British regulars attacked the American position frontally on June 17. Twice the British ranks were shattered by close-range fire. But, as American powder ran low, a third British attack carried the position at bayonet point, and the misnamed "Battle of Bunker Hill" was over. (See p. 93.)

George Washington arrived 2 weeks later to take command of the army around Boston. For the next 8 years he was to bear the hopes of America on his shoulders. From this army—for the most part raw militia, insufficiently supplied, indifferently officered, and enlisted for only short periods—he was to mold a fighting force that would win independence for the American Colonies.

Independence Hall, Philadelphia. (National Park Service)