Lecture: The American Revolution
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 5
Opening
Think about a nursing student reading a hospital's founding charter, or a business student checking who a company's promises actually cover. Both of them are asking the question at the center of this lecture. A grand promise was made. Who did it include, and who did it leave out?
In Week 1 you learned the four moves for reading any source: sourcing, contextualization, close reading, and corroboration. In Week 3 you saw colonial law build slavery into a status for life. In Week 4 you followed the quarrel over taxes and consent all the way to the fighting at Lexington and Concord. In this lecture I'll pick up the story there. We'll watch the colonies declare independence, and we'll read the Declaration of Independence for what it promised. We'll follow the war to its end, and we'll ask what it meant for women, for Black Americans, and for Native nations. Then we'll date a peace treaty from its own words, and we'll finish with a debate historians still have.
Here's the thread I want you to hold the whole way. A promise is not a description. When you read a promise, ask who it covered. Next, in Week 6, Confederation & Constitution, the course asks how the new states built a government.
1. Breaking with Britain: independence
Picture a farm family with two grown sons. One joins the local militia and talks about liberty. The other says the king is still the king. Their parents sit between them at supper. That's an illustrative family, but families split like that all over the colonies.
A Patriot was a colonist who supported the break with Great Britain and the war for independence. A Loyalist was a colonist who stayed loyal to the British king, sometimes against members of the same family or town. And plenty of people tried to stay out of it for as long as they could.
So what were the Patriots after? Independence is a people's claim to govern themselves, free of another country's rule. The Second Continental Congress, the congress of delegates from the colonies that met from 1775 and managed the war, made that claim in 1776.
It happened in two steps. On 2 July 1776, the National Archives records, Congress voted for independence, adopting a resolution moved by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Then Congress adopted a statement of its reasons. Thomas Jefferson drafted it for a committee of five, and Congress revised it before adopting it.
Pause and try this. Which came first, the vote for independence or the document explaining why?
Think about the two steps I described.
Here's the answer. The vote came first, on 2 July 1776, and the document explaining why came after it. Congress decided, then it explained.
Keep both steps in mind. The war had been going on for more than a year before either one.
2. The Declaration's ideas and its grievances
Think about a letter of resignation from a job. The first lines state a principle: no one should be treated this way. The rest is a list of what the boss did wrong.
The Declaration of Independence is built the same way. It's this week's Primary Source Workshop document. It's a declaration of the Continental Congress, dated 4 July 1776 in its heading, and you read it in the National Archives' transcript. A grievance is a formal complaint about a wrong, and most of the Declaration is a list of grievances against the king.
Its most famous words are these: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal". In the same sentence, the Declaration names unalienable rights, rights the document says every person holds by nature and cannot give up or have taken away. And it says governments draw their power from the consent of the governed, the idea that a government's rightful power comes from the agreement of the people it rules. You met consent in Week 4, in the Stamp Act Congress's claim about taxes. Here it grows into a reason to leave the empire.
Now the hard part. Listen to the verb. Congress says it holds these truths. That's a statement of belief, a promise. It wasn't a description of the law. Colonial law still held enslaved people in hereditary slavery, the kind of law you studied in Week 3.
Pause and try this. Is the line about equality a description of the law of 1776, or a statement of an ideal?
Hold the line next to what you know about colonial law.
Here's the answer. It's a statement of an ideal. The law of 1776 still held enslaved people in slavery, so the line promised something the law did not deliver.
3. What the Declaration says about Native nations
Imagine a newspaper report written by one side in a quarrel. It names the other side with an insult and blames it for everything. If that report were all you had, you'd learn a lot about the writer and very little about the people it insults.
One of the Declaration's grievances works like that. It accuses the king of turning Native nations against colonists on the frontier. It calls them "the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions".
Let's be careful here. Those are Congress's words, in a document written to win support for its cause. The words use the language of their time about a group of people. I'm quoting them only so you can read what the document says, and this course never adopts that language as its own. A close reading names the passage as the document's view of Native nations. It isn't a fact about how those nations fought, and it gives no Native nation's own name, reasons, or voice.
Pause and try this. Whose view does this passage show: the Native nations' view, or Congress's view?
Ask who wrote the words, and why.
Here's the answer. It shows Congress's view. The Declaration is a primary source for what Congress argued, not for the experience or the views of the nations it names.
4. A document's date, its signing, and a different document
Think about a wedding. The couple marries on one day. The certificate gets signed and filed weeks later. A photo album comes months after that. Each event is real, and each has its own date.
The Declaration works the same way. The date in its heading, 4 July 1776, is the day Congress adopted the text. The signing was a separate event. Congress had the text engrossed, written out by hand in a large, formal script on parchment. Most delegates signed that parchment on 2 August 1776, the National Park Service reports, citing the journal of Congress. So when someone asks for the document's date, you give the date of its text. That's the text's own date, the date a document gives itself in its own words.
There's a second trap nearby. The Declaration is not the Constitution. The Declaration of 1776 announced independence and gave reasons, and it set up no government. The Constitution was signed in 1787, 11 years later, as a frame of government. You'll read it in Week 6.
Pause and try this. A classmate says the Declaration of Independence set up the government in 1776. What would you tell them?
Attach each document to its year and its job.
Here's the answer. The Declaration of 1776 announced independence and explained why; the Constitution of 1787 framed the government, 11 years later.
5. The war: strategy, alliances, turning points
Picture a long season between a big, rich team and a smaller team playing at home. The big team can win a lot of games. But it can't win the season if the home team refuses to quit and finds a strong partner.
That's a rough picture of the War for Independence. British strategy aimed to capture the colonies' cities and force a surrender. The Continental Army had to survive, keep fighting, and wear Britain down. Three turning points mark the way, and this course teaches their years in words.
The first is the Battle of Saratoga, the American victory in New York in 1777 that forced a British army to surrender and helped persuade France to join the war. The second is the French alliance, the treaty of alliance of 1778 in which France joined the United States against Great Britain. It brought French money, soldiers, and ships. The third is Yorktown, the town in Virginia where a British army surrendered in 1781 to American and French forces, ending major fighting.
Notice the chain. A victory in New York changed a decision in France, and French help made the last victory possible.
Pause and try this. Why should you name the French alliance whenever you name the American victory?
Think about who was at Yorktown.
Here's the answer. Because the Americans didn't win alone. French money, soldiers, and ships were part of the victory, and French forces were at Yorktown.
6. Who the Revolution included
Imagine a town meeting called to talk about the rights of the people. Who's in the room? Who's standing outside the door? Asking that of the Revolution is how historians weigh its limits and its possibilities.
Start with women. Abigail Adams wrote to John Adams from Braintree in a letter dated 31 March 1776. It's a private letter, written to one person rather than for the public. It shows its writer's views but not what a wider group believed. Her words: "I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors." She asked that husbands not be given unlimited power in the new laws. Notice the echo of Week 4: no law without a voice.
Now enslaved people. In November 1775, Virginia's royal governor offered freedom to people enslaved by Patriots who would join the British forces. That offer is called Dunmore's Proclamation. Thousands of enslaved people sought freedom with the British. Picture someone in that position. Escape means danger, and the promise is only as good as a British victory. Free and enslaved Black men also served in the Continental Army, mostly in mixed units, the National Park Service reports.
And Native nations. Most sided with Britain, judging that an independent United States would press harder on their lands. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora nations, split. The Oneida and Tuscarora gave major support to the Americans. These nations are not only part of the past; they still live in their homelands and beyond.
Pause and try this. Does Abigail Adams's letter show a public movement for women's rights in 1776?
Name the document type first.
Here's the answer. No. It's a private letter to one reader, so it shows one woman's private argument, not a movement.
7. Dating the Treaty of Paris from its text
Think about a concert ticket that prints one date while the venue's website shows another. You trust the ticket, because it's the thing itself. Then you tell your friends about the mix-up.
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 is the treaty between Great Britain and the United States, dated in its own text the third day of September 1783, that ended the War for Independence. Its last line says it was done at Paris on the third day of September, and it writes the year out in words, 1783. The National Archives dates it 3 September 1783. But the Avalon Project's page heading reads 30 September 1783. When the heading and the text disagree, the text wins, and you name the disagreement.
Read what the treaty leaves out, too. Its text names no Native nation, though it moved the new country's boundary across Native homelands. And its seventh article lists enslaved people among the property British forces must not carry away.
Pause and try this. Which date do you give for the treaty, and what else do you say?
Remember the ticket and the website.
Here's the answer. You give 3 September 1783, from the treaty's own last line, and you say that Avalon's heading gives the thirtieth instead.
8. The debate, and the week's years
Picture two people leaving the same movie. One says it changed everything. The other says it was the same old story in new costumes. They saw the same film. They disagree about what mattered most.
Historians still argue over a radical or conservative Revolution: did the Revolution overturn the old order, or mainly defend rights and property colonists already claimed? The radical case says it threw off a king, made the consent of the governed the source of power, and gave later reformers words to use against slavery and for women's rights. The conservative case says it kept slavery and property in place, left most women and Native nations outside its promises, and many leaders saw it as a defense of rights they already claimed as British subjects. This course keys no verdict. You weigh it.
Now let's put the week's years in order. The Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' War came in 1763. The Stamp Act Congress met in 1765. The Declaration came in 1776. The Treaty of Paris that ended the War of Independence came in 1783. The Constitution was signed in 1787. From the first to the last is 24 years.
Pause and try this. How many years passed between the Declaration and the treaty that ended the war?
Count from 1776 to 1783.
Here's the answer. Seven years. You take 1776 away from 1783, and 7 years is the gap.
Closing
Let me pull it together, in the order we went. Congress voted for independence, then adopted a Declaration explaining why. The line about equality stated an ideal that the law of 1776 didn't meet. The charge against Native nations shows Congress's view, not the nations' own. A document is dated by its text, so the Declaration's date is not its signing, and the Declaration of 1776 is not the Constitution of 1787. Saratoga helped bring the French alliance, and Yorktown ended major fighting. Women, enslaved and free Black Americans, and Native nations each faced their own choices. The Treaty of Paris of 1783 takes its date from its own last line. And whether the Revolution was radical or conservative is a debate you get to weigh.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Next week, Confederation & Constitution, the course asks how the new states framed a government once the war was won.
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