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American Civil Liberties Union
The ACLU represents a Muslim-American who was detained but never accused of a crime in Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, a civil suit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft. In January 2010, the American military released the names of 645 detainees held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan, modifying its ...
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The ACLU has also criticized targeted killings of American citizens who fight against the United States. In 2011, the ACLU criticized the killing of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on the basis that it was a violation of his Fifth Amendment right to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due proces...
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On August 10, 2020, in an opinion article for USA Today by Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU called for the dismantling of the United States Department of Homeland Security over the deployment of federal forces in July 2020 during the George Floyd protests. On August 26, 2020, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven prot...
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Following Donald Trump's election as president on November 8, 2016, the ACLU responded on Twitter saying: "Should President-elect Donald Trump attempt to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we'll see him in court." On January 27, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order indefinitely barring "Syrian...
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In response to Trump's order, the ACLU raised more than $24 million from more than 350,000 individual online donations in a two-day period. This amounted to six times what the ACLU normally receives in online donations in a year. Celebrities donating included Chris Sacca (who offered to match other people's donations a...
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Grants and contributions increased from $106,628,381 USD reported by the 2016 year-end income statement to $274,104,575 by the 2017 year-end statement. The primary source of revenue from the segment came from individual contributions in response to the Trump presidency's infringements on civil liberties. The surge in d...
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Miscellaneous During the 2004 trial regarding allegations of Rush Limbaugh's drug abuse, the ACLU argued that his privacy should not have been compromised by allowing law enforcement examination of his medical records.
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In June 2004, the school district in Dover, Pennsylvania, required that its high school biology students listen to a statement which asserted that the theory of evolution is not fact and mentioning intelligent design as an alternative theory. Several parents called the ACLU to complain, because they believed that the s...
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In April 2006, Edward Jones and the ACLU sued the City of Los Angeles, on behalf of Robert Lee Purrie and five other homeless people, for the city's violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution, and Article I, sections 7 and 17 of the California Constitution (supporting due process and equal protecti...
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In 2009, the Oregon ACLU opposed the repeal of a law in the state which prohibited teachers from wearing religious clothing in classrooms. The law had been passed in 1923 under the direction of state Speaker of the House Kaspar K. Kubli, a bigot and member of the Ku Klux Klan. In June 2020, the ACLU sued the federal go...
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Beginning in 2017, some individuals claimed the ACLU was reducing its support of unpopular free speech (specifically by declining to defend speech made by conservatives) in favor of far-left identity politics and political correctness. Former ACLU director Ira Glasser stated that "the ACLU might not take the Skokie ca...
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Another basis for these claims was a leaked ACLU policy memo from June 2018, which stated that free speech can harm marginalized groups by undermining their civil rights. The memo discussed "Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities" and included the statement "[s]peech that denigrates such groups can inflict se...
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In 2021, the ACLU filed a brief, siding against a group of teachers who refused, in defiance of school district policy, to use the preferred pronouns of transgender students. The teachers had attempted to use the student's names in all cases instead, citing both their religious views and interpretations of biology as t...
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Leading ACLU attorney Chase Strangio released a tweet calling for an effort to stop the circulation of Abigail Shrier's book Irreversible Damage. The ACLU also modified a quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the subject of pregnancy, removing all references to "Women" and replacing them with "Person" in a tweet, and subsequ...
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In 2021, the ACLU released a statement denying that they are reducing their support for unpopular First Amendment causes, pointing to recent cases in which they challenged college restrictions on racist and homophobic speech, and defended antisemitic protesters who marched outside a synagogue in Michigan. See also Amer...
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General references Bodenhamer, David, and Ely, James, Editors (2008). The Bill of Rights in Modern America, second edition. Indiana University Press. . Donohue, William (1985). The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union. Transaction Books. . Kaminer, Wendy (2009). Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity, a...
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Further reading Klein Woody, and Baldwin, Roger Nash (2006). Liberties lost: the endangered legacy of the ACLU. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. A collection of essays by Baldwin, each accompanied by commentary from a modern analyst. Krannawitter, Thomas L. and Palm, Daniel C. (2005). A Nation Under God?: The ACLU a...
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Archives American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California records. 754 boxes. UCLA Library Special Collections. American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. 1942–1996. 136.66 cubic feet (including 13 microfilm reels and 1 videocassette) plus 62 cartons and 2 rolled posters. Labor Archives of Washington. Univer...
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Selected works sponsored or published by the ACLU Annual Report – American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union, 1921. Black Justice, ACLU, 1931. How Americans Protest, American Civil Liberties Union, 1963. Secret detention by the Chicago police: a report, American Civil Liberties Union, 1959. Rep...
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External links American Civil Liberties Union Records, Princeton University. Document archive 1917–1950, including the history of the ACLU. Debs Pamphlet Collection, Indiana State University Library. An array of annual ACLU reports in PDF. List of 100 most important ACLU victories, New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union...
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1920 establishments in the United States 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations Civil liberties advocacy groups in the United States Government watchdog groups in the United States Immigration political advocacy groups in the United States Legal advocacy organizations in the United States LGBT political advocacy groups in t...
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American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown, establishing ...
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American colonists objected to being taxed by the British Parliament, a body in which they had no direct representation. Before the 1760s, Britain's American colonies had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs, which were locally governed by colonial legislatures. The passage of the Stamp Act of 176...
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Open warfare erupted when British regulars sent to capture a cache of military supplies were confronted by local Patriot militia at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Patriot militia, joined by the newly formed Continental Army, then put British forces in Boston under siege by land and their forces withdrew by se...
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The Continental Congress declared British King George III a tyrant who trampled the colonists' rights as Englishmen, and they pronounced the colonies free and independent states on July 4, 1776. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject rule by monarchy and ar...
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The British captured New York City and its strategic harbor in the summer of 1776, which they held for the duration of the war. The Continental Army captured a British army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, and France then entered the war as an ally of the United States, transforming the war into a global conf...
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Among the significant results of the war were American independence and the end of British mercantilism in America, opening up worldwide trade for the United States - including with Britain. The Americans soon adopted the United States Constitution, replacing the weak Confederation by establishing a comparatively stron...
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Origin 1651–1748: Early seeds As early as 1651, the English government had sought to regulate trade in the American colonies, and Parliament passed the Navigation Acts on October 9 to pursue a mercantilist policy intended to ensure that trade enriched Great Britain but prohibited trade with any other nations. The Acts ...
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King Philip's War ended in 1678, which the New England colonies fought without any military assistance from England, and this contributed to the development of a unique identity separate from that of the British people. But King Charles II determined to bring the New England colonies under a more centralized administra...
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Subsequent English governments continued in their efforts to tax certain goods, passing acts regulating the trade of wool, hats, and molasses. The Molasses Act of 1733 was particularly egregious to the colonists, as a significant part of colonial trade relied on molasses. The taxes severely damaged the New England econ...
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Some writers begin their histories of the American Revolution with the British coalition victory in the Seven Years' War in 1763, viewing the French and Indian War as though it were the American theater of the Seven Years' War. Lawrence Henry Gipson writes:
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The Royal Proclamation of 1763 redrew boundaries of the lands west of newly-British Quebec and west of a line running along the crest of the Allegheny Mountains, making them indigenous territory and barred to colonial settlement for two years. The colonists protested, and the boundary line was adjusted in a series of t...
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1764–1766: Taxes imposed and withdrawn In 1764 Parliament passed the Sugar Act, decreasing the existing customs duties on sugar and molasses but providing stricter measures of enforcement and collection. That same year, Prime Minister George Grenville proposed direct taxes on the colonies to raise revenue, but he delay...
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Grenville had asserted in 1762 that the whole revenue of the custom houses in America amounted to one or two thousand pounds a year, and that the English exchequer was paying between seven and eight thousand pounds a year to collect. Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that Parliament "has never hitherto demanded...
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Parliament finally passed the Stamp Act in March 1765, which imposed direct taxes on the colonies for the first time. All official documents, newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets were required to have the stamps—even decks of playing cards. The colonists did not object that the taxes were high; they were actually low. T...
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The Sons of Liberty formed shortly after the Act in 1765, and they used public demonstrations, boycotts, and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of the vice admiralty court and looted the home of chief justice Thomas Hutchinson. S...
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The Parliament at Westminster saw itself as the supreme lawmaking authority throughout the Empire and thus entitled to levy any tax without colonial approval or even consultation. They argued that the colonies were legally British corporations subordinate to the British parliament, and they pointed to numerous instance...
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The Rockingham government came to power in July 1765, and Parliament debated whether to repeal the stamp tax or to send an army to enforce it. Benjamin Franklin made the case for repeal, explaining that the colonies had spent heavily in manpower, money, and blood defending the empire in a series of wars against the Fre...
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1767–1773: Townshend Acts and the Tea Act
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In 1767, the Parliament passed the Townshend Acts which placed duties on a number of staple goods, including paper, glass, and tea, and established a Board of Customs in Boston to more rigorously execute trade regulations. The new taxes were enacted on the belief that Americans only objected to internal taxes and not t...
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In February 1768, the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay issued a circular letter to the other colonies urging them to coordinate resistance. The governor dissolved the assembly when it refused to rescind the letter. Meanwhile, a riot broke out in Boston in June 1768 over the seizure of the sloop Liberty, owned by John Hanc...
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On March 5, 1770, a large crowd gathered around a group of British soldiers on a Boston street. The crowd grew threatening, throwing snowballs, rocks, and debris at them. One soldier was clubbed and fell. There was no order to fire, but the soldiers fired into the crowd anyway. They hit 11 people; three civilians died ...
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A new ministry under Lord North came to power in 1770, and Parliament withdrew all taxes except the tax on tea, giving up its efforts to raise revenue while maintaining the right to tax. This temporarily resolved the crisis, and the boycott of British goods largely ceased, with only the more radical patriots such as Sa...
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In 1772, it became known that the Crown intended to pay fixed salaries to the governors and judges in Massachusetts, which had been paid by local authorities. This would reduce the influence of colonial representatives over their government. Samuel Adams in Boston set about creating new Committees of Correspondence, wh...
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A total of about 7,000 to 8,000 Patriots served on "Committees of Correspondence" at the colonial and local levels, comprising most of the leadership in their communities. Loyalists were excluded. The committees became the leaders of the American resistance to British actions, and later largely determined the war effor...
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In 1773, private letters were published in which Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson claimed that the colonists could not enjoy all English liberties, and Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver called for the direct payment of colonial officials. The letters' contents were used as evidence of a systematic plot against ...
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Meanwhile, Parliament passed the Tea Act to lower the price of taxed tea exported to the colonies to help the British East India Company undersell smuggled Dutch tea. Special consignees were appointed to sell the tea to bypass colonial merchants. The act was opposed by those who resisted the taxes and also by smugglers...
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1774–1775: Intolerable Acts and the Quebec Act
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The British government responded by passing several Acts which came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, that further darkened colonial opinion towards the British. They consisted of four laws enacted by the British parliament. The first was the Massachusetts Government Act which altered the Massachusetts charter and r...
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In response, Massachusetts patriots issued the Suffolk Resolves and formed an alternative shadow government known as the "Provincial Congress" which began training militia outside British-occupied Boston. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress convened, consisting of representatives from each colony, to serv...
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Military hostilities begin
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Massachusetts was declared in a state of rebellion in February 1775 and the British garrison received orders to disarm the rebels and arrest their leaders, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775. The Patriots laid siege to Boston, expelled royal officials from all the colonies, and took contro...
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The war that arose was in some ways a classic insurgency. As Benjamin Franklin wrote to Joseph Priestley in October 1775: "Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20,000 a head ... During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data his mat...
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In the winter of 1775, the Americans invaded newly-British Quebec under generals Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery, expecting to rally sympathetic colonists there. The attack was a failure; many Americans who weren't killed were either captured or died of smallpox. In March 1776, the Continental Army forced the Br...
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Following the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, the Patriots had control of Massachusetts outside the Boston city limits, and the Loyalists suddenly found themselves on the defensive with no protection from the British army. In all 13 colonies, Patriots had overthrown their existing governments, closing courts and dr...
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On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire ratified the first state constitution. In May 1776, Congress voted to suppress all forms of crown authority, to be replaced by locally created authority. Virginia, South Carolina, and New Jersey created their constitutions before July 4. Rhode Island and Connecticut simply took their e...
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The resulting constitutions in states such as Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New York, and Massachusetts featured: Property qualifications for voting and even more substantial requirements for elected positions (though New York and Maryland lowered property qualifications) Bicameral legislatures, with the upper house ...
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In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, the resulting constitutions embodied: universal manhood suffrage, or minimal property requirements for voting or holding office (New Jersey enfranchised some property-owning widows, a step that it retracted 25 years later) strong, unicameral legislatures relatively wea...
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The radical provisions of Pennsylvania's constitution lasted only 14 years. In 1790, conservatives gained power in the state legislature, called a new constitutional convention, and rewrote the constitution. The new constitution substantially reduced universal male suffrage, gave the governor veto power and patronage a...
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In April 1776, the North Carolina Provincial Congress issued the Halifax Resolves explicitly authorizing its delegates to vote for independence. By June, nine Provincial Congresses were ready for independence; one by one, the last four fell into line: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and New York. Richard Henry Lee wa...
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The Declaration of Independence was drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson and presented by the committee; it was unanimously adopted by the entire Congress on July 4, and each colony became an independent and autonomous state. The next step was to form a union to facilitate international relations and alliances.
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The Second Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union for ratification by the states on November 15, 1777; the Congress immediately began operating under the Articles' terms, providing a structure of shared sovereignty during prosecution of the war and facilitating international rel...
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According to British historian Jeremy Black, the British had significant advantages, including a highly trained army, the world's largest navy, and an efficient system of public finance that could easily fund the war. However, they seriously misunderstood the depth of support for the American Patriot position and ignor...
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Washington forced the British out of Boston in the spring of 1776, and neither the British nor the Loyalists controlled any significant areas. The British, however, were massing forces at their naval base at Halifax, Nova Scotia. They returned in force in July 1776, landing in New York and defeating Washington's Contin...
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A delegation including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin met British admiral Richard Howe on Staten Island in New York Harbor on September 11 in what became known as the Staten Island Peace Conference. Howe demanded that the Americans retract the Declaration of Independence, which they refused to do, and negotiations en...
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The British also took New Jersey, pushing the Continental Army into Pennsylvania. Washington crossed the Delaware River back into New Jersey in a surprise attack in late December 1776 and defeated the Hessian and British armies at Trenton and Princeton, thereby regaining control of most of New Jersey. The victories gav...
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In 1777, the British sent Burgoyne's invasion force from Canada south to New York to seal off New England. Their aim was to isolate New England, which the British perceived as the primary source of agitation. Rather than move north to support Burgoyne, the British army in New York City went to Philadelphia in a major c...
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Prisoners
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On August 23, 1775, George III declared Americans to be traitors to the Crown if they took up arms against royal authority. There were thousands of British and Hessian soldiers in American hands following their surrender at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777. Lord Germain took a hard line, but the British generals...
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American alliances after 1778 The capture of a British army at Saratoga encouraged the French to formally enter the war in support of Congress, and Benjamin Franklin negotiated a permanent military alliance in early 1778; France thus became the first foreign nation to officially recognize the Declaration of Independenc...
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The Spanish and the Dutch became allies of the French in 1779 and 1780 respectively, forcing the British to fight a global war without major allies and requiring it to slip through a combined blockade of the Atlantic. Britain began to view the American war for independence as merely one front in a wider war, and the Br...
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The British move South, 1778–1783 The British strategy in America now concentrated on a campaign in the southern states. With fewer regular troops at their disposal, the British commanders saw the "southern strategy" as a more viable plan, as they perceived the south as strongly Loyalist with a large population of rece...
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Beginning in late December 1778, they captured Savannah and controlled the Georgia coastline. In 1780, they launched a fresh invasion and took Charleston, as well. A significant victory at the Battle of Camden meant that royal forces soon controlled most of Georgia and South Carolina. The British set up a network of fo...
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Surrender at Yorktown (1781) The British army under Cornwallis marched to Yorktown, Virginia, where they expected to be rescued by a British fleet. The fleet did arrive, but so did a larger French fleet. The French were victorious in the Battle of the Chesapeake, and the British fleet returned to New York for reinforce...
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Washington did not know when the British might reopen hostilities after Yorktown. They still had 26,000 troops occupying New York City, Charleston, and Savannah, together with a powerful fleet. The French army and navy departed, so the Americans were on their own in 1782–83. The treasury was empty, and the unpaid soldi...
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Historians continue to debate whether the odds were long or short for American victory. John E. Ferling says that the odds were so long that the American victory was "almost a miracle". On the other hand, Joseph Ellis says that the odds favored the Americans, and asks whether there ever was any realistic chance for the...
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Support for the conflict had never been strong in Britain, where many sympathized with the Americans, but now it reached a new low. King George wanted to fight on, but his supporters lost control of Parliament and they launched no further offensives in America on the eastern seaboard. However, the British continued for...
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During negotiations in Paris, the American delegation discovered that France supported American independence but no territorial gains, hoping to confine the new nation to the area east of the Appalachian Mountains. The Americans opened direct secret negotiations with London, cutting out the French. British Prime Minist...
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The British largely abandoned their indigenous allies, who were not a party to this treaty and did not recognize it until they were defeated militarily by the United States. However, the British did sell them munitions and maintain forts in American territory until the Jay Treaty of 1795.
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Losing the war and the Thirteen Colonies was a shock to Britain. The war revealed the limitations of Britain's fiscal-military state when they discovered that they suddenly faced powerful enemies with no allies, and they were dependent on extended and vulnerable transatlantic lines of communication. The defeat heighten...
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Finance Britain's war against the Americans, the French, and the Spanish cost about £100 million, and the Treasury borrowed 40-percent of the money that it needed. Heavy spending brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution, while the British had relatively little difficulty financing their war, keeping the...
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In sharp contrast, Congress and the American states had no end of difficulty financing the war. In 1775, there was at most 12 million dollars in gold in the colonies, not nearly enough to cover current transactions, let alone finance a major war. The British made the situation much worse by imposing a tight blockade on...
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Congress used four main methods to cover the cost of the war, which cost about 66 million dollars in specie (gold and silver). Congress made issues of paper money in 1775–1780 and in 1780–1781. The first issue amounted to 242 million dollars. This paper money would supposedly be redeemed for state taxes, but the holder...
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Beginning in 1777, Congress repeatedly asked the states to provide money, but the states had no system of taxation and were of little help. By 1780, Congress was making requisitions for specific supplies of corn, beef, pork, and other necessities, an inefficient system which barely kept the army alive. Starting in 1776...
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Concluding the Revolution Creating a "more perfect union" and guaranteeing rights The war ended in 1783 and was followed by a period of prosperity. The national government was still operating under the Articles of Confederation and settled the issue of the western territories, which the states ceded to Congress. Americ...
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However, the national government had no money either to pay the war debts owed to European nations and the private banks, or to pay Americans who had been given millions of dollars of promissory notes for supplies during the war. Nationalists led by Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other veterans feared that the new...
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National debt The national debt fell into three categories after the American Revolution. The first was the $12 million owed to foreigners, mostly money borrowed from France. There was general agreement to pay the foreign debts at full value. The national government owed $40 million and state governments owed $25 milli...
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The war expenses of the individual states added up to $114 million, compared to $37 million by the central government. In 1790, Congress combined the remaining state debts with the foreign and domestic debts into one national debt totaling $80 million at the recommendation of first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander H...
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The American Enlightenment was a critical precursor of the American Revolution. Chief among the ideas of the American Enlightenment were the concepts of natural law, natural rights, consent of the governed, individualism, property rights, self-ownership, self-determination, liberalism, republicanism, and defense agains...
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John Locke (1632–1704) is often referred to as "the philosopher of the American Revolution" due to his work in the Social Contract and Natural Rights theories that underpinned the Revolution's political ideology. Locke's Two Treatises of Government published in 1689 was especially influential. He argued that all humans...
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The theory of the social contract influenced the belief among many of the Founders that the right of the people to overthrow their leaders was one of the "natural rights" of man, should those leaders betray the historic rights of Englishmen. The Americans heavily relied on Montesquieu's analysis of the wisdom of the "b...
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The most basic features of republicanism anywhere are a representational government in which citizens elect leaders from among themselves for a predefined term, as opposed to a permanent ruling class or aristocracy, and laws are passed by these leaders for the benefit of the entire republic. In addition, unlike a direc...
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The American interpretation of "republicanism" was inspired by the Whig party in Great Britain which openly criticized the corruption within the British government. Americans were increasingly embracing republican values, seeing Britain as corrupt and hostile to American interests. The colonists associated political co...
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The Founding Fathers were strong advocates of republican values, particularly Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, which required men to put civic duty ahead of their personal desires. Men were honor bound b...
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"Republican motherhood" became the ideal for American women, exemplified by Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren; the first duty of the republican woman was to instill republican values in her children and to avoid luxury and ostentation. Protestant Dissenters and the Great Awakening
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Protestant churches that had separated from the Church of England (called "dissenters") were the "school of democracy", in the words of historian Patricia Bonomi. Before the Revolution, the Southern Colonies and three of the New England Colonies had officially established churches: Congregational in Massachusetts Bay, ...
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President John Witherspoon of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), a "new light" Presbyterian, wrote widely circulated sermons linking the American Revolution to the teachings of the Bible. Throughout the colonies, dissenting Protestant ministers (Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian) preached Rev...
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Historian Bernard Bailyn argues that the evangelicalism of the era challenged traditional notions of natural hierarchy by preaching that the Bible teaches that all men are equal, so that the true value of a man lies in his moral behavior, not in his class. Kidd argues that religious disestablishment, belief in God as t...
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Class and psychology of the factions John Adams concluded in 1818:
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In the mid-20th century, historian Leonard Woods Labaree identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them essentially conservative, opposite to the characteristics of the Patriots. Loyalists tended to feel that resistance to the Crown was morally wrong, while the Patriots thought that morality was on th...
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