Causes of the American Revolution

Causes of the American Revolution Chapter 2: The Press and the Revolution

As before, what do you know? • How much do you know about the facts of ‘the American Revolution?’ • Thursday’s class video is a chance to review or learn at least a bit. • Watch it and take notes. Be prepared by 10:30 am Thursday to respond to specific questions and submit to your Google Drive folder.

TESTS OF PRESS FREEDOM • According to First Amendment scholar Leonard Levy, the persistent image of colonial America as a society in which freedom of expression was cherished is a “hallucination of sentiment that ignores history.”

TESTS OF PRESS FREEDOM • They just didn’t understand that freedom of thought and expression meant equal freedom for others, especially those with hated ideas. • This was evident in two of British America’s most celebrated cases involving William Bradford and John Peter Zenger.

TESTS OF PRESS FREEDOM • William Bradford had been noted in Chapter 1 noted as … when Ben Franklin arrived in New York on his runaway voyage, Franklin met the colony’s only printer, William Bradford, who had earlier supported James Franklin’s fight against the Boston authorities.

Freedom of the Press • Early newspapers that criticized the government were guilty of sedition (the stirring of rebellion). • The truth of their statements was no defense. • Chap. 1: In 1735, John Peter Zenger printed articles critical of the Governor William Cosby. He was arrested and thrown into jail.

Freedom of the Press • Because Zenger printed attacks on the British crown, he was guilty of libel, even if the statements were true. • Andrew Hamilton defended him and appealed to the jury that everyone has the right to speak and write freely—as long as it is the truth. • The jurors deliberated briefly and found Zenger not guilty.

The Birth of the Nation • The Zenger trial fanned the flames of freedom that were beginning to burn in the colonies. • By 1775, when the Revolution began, 37 newspapers were being published. • They backed the Revolution and printed the cries to battle that rallied the rebels. • Some say there would not have been a Revolution without the support of the press.

The Birth of a Nation • When the Revolutionary War ended, the framers of the Constitution did not spend much time on freedom of the press, because most states already covered the matter. • However, the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. • In it, the First Amendment guaranteed the freedom of the press. (why 1st?)

Historical Background • There were many causes of the American Revolution. • The long struggle between England and her 13 colonies in America took place over the course of several years during the middle of the 18th century. • A number of important events lead up to the Revolutionary War, which resulted in freedom for the colonists and the birth of the United States of America.

Historical Background • The Zenger trial got people to thinking about the concept of liberty. • However, it would take more than thirty years from the end of colonial America’s most famous trial, in 1735, to Parliament’s enactment of the Stamp Act, in 1765, that those seeking liberty would witness the power of the press in manipulating public opinion on a grand scale.

Historical Background • “Since the inception of the controversy,” Arthur M. Schlesinger said, “the patriots exhibited extraordinary skill in manipulating public opinion, playing upon the emotions of the ignorant as well as the minds of the educated.” • ‘propaganda’ by those who favored an independent nation

Historical Background • So Schlesinger’s comment is a fair summary of the Americans as propagandists. • “Propagandist” applied as well to the loyalist (or, ‘Tory’) press, which was just as skillful but outnumbered. • Revisionist historians who see the Revolution as an economic conflict fail to understand people’s deep, fundamental emotions, which the newspapers of the time clearly revealed.

Ben Franklin • The colonies, as Benjamin Franklin attested, felt closer to England than they did to one another. • Franklin, like many in colonial America, thought himself as much an Englishman as an American. • He did not believe that independence would come about in his lifetime and saw no reason why it ever should, so long as England treated the colonies as equals.

Ben Franklin • Franklin saw America as the future center of the British Empire. He thought his task was to guide growth, to make life useful and beneficial to the people of the future greatest empire in the world. • His views changed even before the first shots were fired. Two events caused that change: the end of the Seven Years’ War and the Stamp Act.

#1: Proclamation of 1763 • The Treaty of Paris ended The Seven Years’ War (known as the French and Indian War in the New World) in 1763. • The war erupted in 1756, the result of years of rivalry between Britain and France about French land claims in Canada and the territory near the Mississippi River all the way to Louisiana.

#1: Proclamation of 1763 • Many colonial settlers wanted to settle beyond the Appalachians in the land they had just fought for, but that was prevented by the Proclamation of 1763. • The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in N. America after the end of the Seven Years' War. • Forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains.

Post-War • The Seven Years’ War left Great Britain nearly bankrupt. Left with an enormous debt and created fresh territorial responsibilities. • Wanted the colonies to help in the cost of defending them -- with taxes, set forth in the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765. • Under the 1764 Sugar Act, the molasses duty was halved, but ‘precisely documented and collected.’

#2: Stamp Act: Taxed Items & Amounts • Word of the Stamp Act reached the colonies the last week of May 1765. • By November 1, the Crown stated, almost everything written or printed on paper, including pamphlets, newspapers, advertisements, diplomas, bills, legal documents, ship’s papers, and …

#2: Stamp Act: Taxed Items & Amounts • …playing cards, except for books and personal letters, would be required to carry revenue stamps, which could cost as much as ten pounds. • Often cited as a particularly unjust example of “taxation without representation”

Newspapers’ response • The publishers were divided on the question of resistance. A minority simply declared that they could no longer carry on their businesses profitably and suspended publication of their papers. • Such actions aroused citizens who relied on these journals to advertise their wares and get their news.

Newspapers’ response • Its printer, John Holt, then told his readers that he was going to continue publishing on unstamped paper. • He said it was the “unanimous sentiment” that the Stamp Act was not legal as well as impractical to execute, because no printer could apply for the stamped paper “without certain Destruction to his Person and Property from the General Resentment of his Countrymen.”

Newspapers’ response • The majority, like the New York Gazette and Post-Boy, fought the law by evading it. • If a newspaper was published without its masthead or title, it was technically not a newspaper, and therefore not taxable. • A much bolder evasion was to publish without the required tax stamp on each issue, and to explain editorially that the publisher had tried to buy stamps but found none available.

Aftermath • What emerged were three political ideas—Tory, Whig, and Patriot—that began to dominate newspapers before the Revolution. • Causes attract zealots, and the writers and editors attracted to these conflicting ideas of the social order were nothing if not zealots. Each represented about a third of the colonists.

Aftermath • The Tories, best exemplified by James Rivington and Hugh Gaine, remained loyal to their country and refused to bear arms against the British in the War of Independence. • The Whigs, represented by John Dickinson, “the Penman of the Revolution,” were a rising capitalist faction who mildly opposed the Tory point of view. Simply, they were fence-sitters who supported the Patriots after the first shots were fired.

Aftermath • Finally, the Patriots’ philosophy was best represented by Isaiah Thomas, Samuel Adams, “the Master of the Puppets” and the leading radical, and Thomas Paine. • Except for Isaiah Thomas, many of the most important Patriots weren’t editors but contributors to some of the most important newspapers of the period. • Note Chapter 2’s further detail about these.

Thomas Paine, 1737-1809 • Thomas Paine was truly “the godfather of the American nation.” • He did more than any other individual to bring about the Declaration of Independence, according to Paine biographer W. E. Woodward. • The title is not meant to diminish the work of Revolutionary leaders Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams.

Thomas Paine • It is meant, however, to underscore his efforts as a writer in bringing all diverse revolutionary activities together and giving them a common aim—the establishment of American independence. • Paine was a failure in most of his early pursuits • He left England in 1774 for Philadelphia…

Thomas Paine • …armed with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin, who met and took a liking to the young man when he was in London. • Printer Robert Aitken immediately offered him a position on his Pennsylvania Magazine. • He eventually became its editor.

Thomas Paine • Paine began associating with leading advocates of political change. • Such revolutionary impulses moved him to anonymously publish, in January 1776, a pamphlet titled Common Sense. • In it he condemned the monarchy, saying it was folly of a strong, self-reliant people to take orders from a nation across the seas.

Thomas Paine • He also pointed out that many of the British rules, conceived by stupid officeholders, were utterly senseless, lacking all sound ideas of America and her people. • The pamphlet, simple in style as an ordinary conversation between friends, sold an a astonish 150,000 copies.

Thomas Paine • In later papers, he suggested a union of the states instead of a long string of small independent republics. • He proposed a number of innovative ideas. • For example, he is credited with starting the movement for women’s emancipation and being the first major writer with a large audience who called for the abolition of slavery.

Thomas Paine • He advocated a tax to care for the elderly. • In his Rights of Man, he called for what today would be a League of Nations and a World Court. • He also proposed a toast to “world revolution,” but he was not an early Communist. Like Thomas Jefferson, he believed in individualism. He regarded the state as a “necessary evil”

Read about other significant people • Hugh Gaine, ‘Turncoat Editor” • Isaiah Thomas, The “Patriot Voice” • Samuel Adams, The “Master of the Puppets” • And others in Chapter 2 • And about NEWSPAPERS AS A REVOLUTIONARY FORCE: Newspapers played a key role in the events of the Revolution

A few other notes • Some noteworthy things during this time period not mentioned in Chapter 2…

#3: America’s First Political Cartoon The image first appeared in the May 9, 1754, issue of Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette Why would Patriots feel the disjoined snake would be a good symbol for their cause?

Political Cartoon: segments of snake The image Gazette Why would Patriots feel the

#4: The Quartering Act The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers… …then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, and other accommodations.

#5: The Boston Massacre The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry.

#5: The Boston Massacre 1) Describe how the soldiers in the picture are organized. Are they firing from close range or from a distance? 2) Are the colonists in the crowd armed with weapons or fighting back? 3) In the year 1770, why might a picture have a larger audience and a greater effect than a newspaper article? 4) Propaganda is misinformation, or a half-truth that gives only one side of the story. It is used for the purpose of stirring up feelings or emotions. Why could this engraving be considered colonial propaganda?

And so again… • Watch the linked video and take notes. • During class time Thursday you must have completed the video and uploaded a copy of your notes CORRECTLY to your shared Google Drive folder • Then be ready to read the instructions on the outline to write a brief quiz / analysis paper and upload it by 10:45 am, end of class time • 

Operated the first chain book store operator, providing colonists with the best literature available, attempted to be objective and fair in his Gazette, may have been a double agent during the war, published political pamphlets that influenced the course of the revolution : James Rivington

The Stamp Act had the greatest impact on publishers and what other major profession? lawyers

Started the movement for women's emancipation, early voice to call for the abolition of slavery, advocated a tax to care for the elderly, proposed a turn to internationalism: Thomas Paine

They were edited by young and lively editors, the Crown stopped licensing them, their proliferation, they surpassed the sermon and pamphlet as propaganda instruments are all reasons why newspapers are recognized as good for what in American colonial days? A potent medium for revolution

He was the "master of the puppets" who pulled the strings igniting a war: Samuel Adams

To his enemies he was tagged a "demon of discord": Thomas Paine

This band of men, strident enemies of objective journalism, reported to Samuel Adams: Sons of Liberty

He was tagged "the penman of the American Revolution": John Dickinson

Causes of the American Revolution