Now, you remember last time or last week, anyway, we put a graph up here showing the result you probably get if you went around and asked everybody in the colonies at 25year intervals do you want to be independent of britain . And if you remember the graph shot up kind of like like this. Over the years. In other words, as the colonies move along from jamestown to 1776, more and more people, as time passes, decide that they are able to handle this on their own. They dont need to be ruled from westminster and eventually of course enough of them decide that to produce a declaration of independence. So that graph would make the revolution pretty easy to understand, right, its just like you growing up. You know, when youre 2, the last thing you want is your parents to dump you out the door and say, okay, now youve got to run your own life. By the time youre 12, you can see it might look pretty good. By the time youre 18 here you are. So if this graph is right then the colonies are just going through the normal process of maturing. And a smart parent, of course, will keep an eye on things. And as the child gets more competent and more confident ease up on the strings. In that case separation can come about reasonably nicely. If the parent doesnt see whats happening and doesnt accommodate the changing competence and confidence of the child then theres likely to be argument and eventually maybe some kind of explosion. So this graph would make the revolution pretty easy to explain. Its just one case of what normally happens with people and with societies. Unfortunately thats not the way the graph looks at all. The graph looks more like this. Nobody wants to be independent until almost the very winter of 1775 and 76. After the firing at lexington and concord, after tom paynes pamphlet common sense comes out and spreads around the colonies. This makes the revolution much harder to figure out because the colonists are probably never happier and more glad to be british than at any time before or after 1776. They just won this great war. The french are gone. The indians temporarily are quelled. These people are celebrating. They are glad to be part of the most powerful and freest country in the western world. So what we have to explain then is not how a society gradually gets more and more interested in breaking away from the Apron Strings and being independent. What we have to figure out is how did these proud and happy englishmen in 1763, how did so many of them turn out to be traitors and rebels ten or twelve years later against a government they would have said a few years before was the best and freest in the world . Now, there are some longterm trends in colonial history that if you think about it make independence more possible as the years go by. Doesnt mean people want to be independent. But population, for instance, you start out with a few hundred people. In a couple of spots on the coast. By the 1790s youre looking at 250,000 people, maybe, about double the population of Lebanon County stretched out over 1,500 miles of coast. By 1776, a couple of Million People. A fourth of the population of england herself. More people than you have in some european countries. Now, if you had to do it, you can certainly imagine you could make a go of it as your own nation. And along with growing population comes a growing sense of what would we call it . Political competence. The local elite people like ben franklin, people like william bird who we talked about a couple weeks ago these are the folks who dominate the local elected assemblies. And if you remember the assemblies are getting more and more powerful and the governors that were appointed from overseas are having less and Less Authority as the years go by. By the time you get to the middle of the 1700s youve got pretty much local selfgovernance in every colony. Not is population reaching the left here, you can imagine an independent country could work. A governing class that thinks by george if theyve been running their colony last few decades they ought to be able to run a country. The economy has also, of course, been growing. As population increases, as people push the indians out and occupy more land, as they exploit the labor of more slaves, the pros perity of the colonies grows, by the time of the revolution a third of the ships built on the shores, a fifth or sixth of all the iron in the whole world is produced in the american colonies. So while you might have a city like london, or a really fancy dukes mansion and estate in england, if you average people out the white population of the colonies is probably the most prosperous part of the whole empire. So growing population, growing political competence, improving economy, all of these things mean if you had for some unforeseen reason to go off on your own, you really might be able to do it. But again it doesnt mean you want to be independent. These people are intensely proud of being british. And theyre even trying to at least people at the upper levels are trying to imitate how the British Population of their class lives. So, again, it becomes tough to figure why do so many of these people a dozen years later take up arms against their own government . Now, there are probably three fairly new developments in the colonies that, again, dont make independence likely. Or even desirable. But at least lay the groundwork for something. Great awakening, remember, for a hundred years people in the colonies from the very beginning had been thinking of themselves as provincials, looking back across the ocean with admiration and envy at this glittering metropolis over there. Here they are with it on the edge of civilization, staring out at an endless forest and back home theres london which by itself has more people than all the colonies for many decades. There are universities, other than harvard where are the great universities in the colonies . Where are the shakespeare plays . Where are the philosophers . And even a guy like william bird who can feel good because his mansion has 15 or 20 houses even he knows perfectly well the really snazzy people in britain have mansions of 100 or more houses. Theres this sense that youre country bumpkins really looking at your betters over in england. Always trying to be like them, always striving to more and more match the english pattern but never, of course, quite coming close. Youre definitely second class citizens in your own minds in the empire. And then here comes the great awakening. This huge surge of evangelical religion sweeping through the colonies. It pretty well faded out by the 1750s. But its left behind it a whole lot of evangelical christians who have been told by their faith that britain is not necessarily the best model for them. What matters in this world is not how educated you are, how cultured you are, how good your family is, how much wine you have in your basement, how well you can read philosophy. What matters in this world is how well are you getting ready for the next world . How do you live this life, but how are you going to live the next one . And so the example these people are told to follow, the people theyre told to admire, arent so much the local elite. Or the entire country of england back home. What theyre supposed to model themselves on is who is the most godly person. It isnt necessarily going to be the merchant with the fancy house. It isnt necessarily going to be the guy like william bird with his plantation and his slaves and his wine and his fancy clothes. It could be it could be your husband or your wife, it could be the slave out in william birds tobacco field, the carpenter in town. It isnt very likely to be one of those people you used to admire. And the same is true when you look at your place within the empire. You can look across the ocean to britain and you can see, at least in your mind, here is a group of people who arent as godly as we are. Here are people who do put the focus of the good things of this life, on the luxuries, on the corruptions that eat away at your morality. And maybe were not so bad then, compared to them. In fact, what the great awakening is telling you, is you people on this side of the atlantic should stop being embarrassed and ashamed of who you are and stop being envious of those people over in britain because you are better than they are in the one thing that matters. And that is the question every christian has to ask, of course, what must i do to be saved . So imagine how youd feel, you know, if youd grown up your whole life and youd always felt inferior to your older sister. And someone comes along and gets you to realize, wait a minute, in the ways that really matter youre actually better than your sister. Its going to change the way you think about your relationship. So theres one thing. Second thing thats going on, remember, is a lot of the elite in the colonies are reading these whig writers who are telling them history is a constant struggle between power and liberty, and liberty, regrettably, always loses. And that liberty is in danger in britain itself, the freest country in the western world, because corruption is eating away at the vitals of the country. Offices are sold. Votes are bought. Government operates not according to policy but according to what office can i get, what salary can i make, how can i get some goodies for my relatives and that sort of thing. And that allows the ambitious would be caesars in any government to use that sort of attitude, whats in it for me, to corrupt the house of commons. By saying hey, you support me, get you a good office. You support me, your aging aunt can have a government pension, your son can get into college. Weve got a little clergyman post here for your nephew. And the more and more people who are bought off by the government the less and less likely the house of commons is to be a bulwark against liberty. So liberty is safest, the whigs are telling these folks, in a country with a big, broad land Holding Middle class, farmers who are independent economically, they dont need anything from government. They dont have to go get a bribe because what good would it do them . And of course where do you find the society with the big broad land Holding Middle class . Right here in america. Not in england. Which can never have that kind of society because its just not big enough for every family to have a decent chunk of land. And so if the core of being english is to be free, and if liberty is safest in a society with this big land Holding Middle class, then the colonies are the best part of the empire, the most english part of the empire and the freest part of the empire. So stop thinking of yourselves as a bunch of backward bumpkins, think of yourselves as more english than people in england even. Youre the ones leading the way for the whole empire and perhaps all of europe, and maybe the whole world, toward a future where freedom and more and more secure and the would be caesars have less and less chance to destroy it and exalt themselves. So here are two ways in which the colonies are being are learning to think not of themselves as inferiors, and not even as equals, but as actually the best part of the empire. Thats going to change how they look at things. And then theres a growing sense of american identity, of the whole idea of what community you think of yourself as belonging to is kind of iffy for people to try to figure out. But one enterprising historian decided about 50 years ago or so lets look at newspapers and lets ask ourselves what do people mean when they use words like we and us and our the words of inclusion, and what do they mean when they use words like they and them and those, the words for, you know, the other. Well, up through, oh, about the 1730s or 40s, mostly when people talk about we they mean we pennsylvanians or we britains in the empire. You have your colonial identity. You have your british identity. When they talk about they and them, you mean, oh, those foreigners over in france and spain, or sometimes those people in the next colony down the road who we dont know about and dont really much care about. But increasingly as you get into the 50s and the 60s when you look at newspapers and see how people use those pronouns a lot of times now when they say we, they mean we americans. More than just we in our colony, less inclusive than we in the whole empire. Now youve got this intermediate identity, this sense that you have some things in common with people in other colonies on this side of the atlantic that you dont share with people in england or jamaica or other parts of the empire. And now when you talk about, you know, the outsiders, they and them, a lot of times now its not just those foreigners, it is also those people over in england. Now, this doesnt mean, of course, that if you think of yourselves as americans you think of yourselves as less british, any more than say, someone, who says im a new englander is any less american by thinking that. But it does mean that for the first time you can imagine that something binds you to the people in the other colonies. That, again, is different from what binds you to people in the rest of the empire. And you can see a greater sense, not just of american identity, but a greater sense of american unity. You know, the first three wars against the french and the indians, the government in britain are just banging its head against the wall to get the colonies to see you face a common threat. You should all be pulling together. Indians are attacking massachusetts, people in south carolina, say whats it to me . Indians are bothering people in virginia, people in rhode island, its none of their business. Finally in this last war the french and indian war, finally the colonies begin to see, yes, maybe were all in this together. Maybe we share something in common, and that is a common enemy and a common threat. Ben franklin, remember, tries to get the Colonial Leadership together at albany in 1754 to work out not just a common approach to the indian problem, but even a Colonial Government where theyll have one governor appointed for the whole of the colonies, one assembly for the whole of the colonies. Nothing comes of it. But just the fact that it could be thought of, and that some of the colonial leaders would come and talk about it and think its a good idea is something brand new. So youve got these longterm developments, growing population, growing political competence, growing economy, in fact while they dont make people want to be independent does mean that if independence should unfortunately come we probably can handle it. And then youve got this sense that, hey, wait a minute, we are no longer the backward provincials in this empire, looking with envy at the great metropolis across the seas. We are not even just the equal, but perhaps superior in some ways to those poor folks because here we are more religious, more devout. Here, freedom is safer because we have a huge group of middle class farmers who need nothing from anyone. Now, with that as background. Lets take a look at 1763. Here you are in america. Youve just won this big war against the french and the indians and you think that you won it. It kind of slips your mind that the British Government sent 25,000 regular troops across the atlantic to capture montreal and quebec and drive the french out of canada, and, of course, a british navy commanded the seas. What you remember is braddock marching his army pel mel through the forests of pennsylvania, being ambushed and practically destroyed by the indians and the french, saved only by the courage of the colonial troops led by george washington. So you dont have a terribly good impression of the park that the British Military played in winning this war. You think more of it being a colonial victory. And since the victory has been won the future looks great. Oh, that dark brooding presence out there in the forest that is laying like a shadow over your future is gone now, the french are out of america, theyre not coming back as far as youre concerned, the french without the indians without french help are less able to oppose colonial expansion. The future looks great, all the way to the mississippi. This is your world now. Well, across the atlantic, in westminster, things dont look quite that good. I mean, theyre glad to have won the war, of course. Who wouldnt be glad to beat the french, your traditional enemy, but the very completeness of the victory means the french are going to be all that more anxious for revenge. So you cant just say hot dog we won the war, peace is here, lets go home. Everybody in britain who knows about the state of the world knows theres going to be another war every generation or so. And you have to be ready to defend what you won. So victory is great but victory brings its own problems. For one thing, a bigger empire too defend. Youve got more land in america to defend. Youve got more land in india to defend. And youve got a couple of islands here and there extra to worry about. So you need to keep the navy, and you need to keep the army. At higher than the levels you had before the war. That costs money. So the three big problems facing america that worry british policymakers after they finish drinking the toasts to victory, one is what in the world do we do about these indians . The native American Population have been the enemy for 75 years and theyve looked on you as the enemy. Now, these people have to learn how to live as good loyal british subjects. Thats not going to be very easy considering that there are a lot of white loyal british subjects who want nothing more than get more indian land. So lets think about this. If you were a native american leader in 1763, and your great fear is that the english colonies are going to get more of your land what are you going to do about it . When they start saying wed like to carve out a nice big chunk of your territory . Yeah. Not going to be happy with it. And if they persist. Probably going to fight back or retaliate. Well, and this is exactly, of course, what happens in pontiacs rebellion. Pontiac leads the northwest indians, even before the war with france is over, to besiege almost every single british outpost between detroit and pittsburgh because theyre worried without french help they face a pretty dismal future. The government doesnt want to have to fight indian war after indian war in the interior of north america. So theyve got to figure out a way to deal with that. The second problem theyre looking at is law enforcement. Like almost all the colonial empires the british try to follow the Economic Policy of mercantilism, means you need to accumulate wealth in your country, because theres a war coming soon and you need to be able to fight wars. The idea of the america if y country has more, some other country has less. Countries, nations acquire wealth the same way families do, bring in more money than you spend or in trade terms, you sell more to other countries than your people buy from other coun