The American Colonies are in open rebellion declared King George to Parliament in the fall of 1775.
The king’s address to Parliament on October 26th would have far reaching consequences, hardening positions on both sides, allowing the British to stir up public opinion in favor of a war, hire mercenaries and in general put forth every effort to bring the Colonies to heel.
The Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17th, 1775, a brutal fight, showed that the rag tag rebels could stand and fight. More than 25% of all the British Officers killed in the 7 years of fighting were killed there, that day. Ironically, the colonial victory at Bunker Hill would haunt George Washington (who would not take command until July) for many years. Because a seemingly untrained militia could defeat British regulars in a conventional battle, Congress would drag its feet in creating a professional army, always afraid of a military coup. The reality at Bunker Hill was that a couple of commanders, John Stark of New Hampshire and Thomas Knowlton of Connecticut, were battle-hardened veterans of the French and Indian War. They were able to steady their troops and lead them in the most professional way. By placing marking sticks at a distance of 50 yards (the musket’s most deadly effective range) and standing close by, they forced their men to wait until the last moment to fire causing enormous casualties among the British. From these tactics emerged legendary quote: “Don’t fire til you see the whites of their eyes”.
Now, with blood spilled, first at Lexington and Concord in April, and then at Bunker hill in June, in a huge embarrassment for the British, the King had assured Lord North, the Prime Minister, that all means would be used to subdue the Colonies. With this assurance, Lord North had been negotiating with several German Princes to hire an army of mercenaries to bolster the British forces.
In his Parliamentary address in October, King George denounced the colonial leaders for entering into a conspiracy to begin a rebellion ultimately aimed at establishing an independent empire. The King refused to allow Britain to: “give up so many colonies which she has planted with great industry, nursed with great tenderness, encouraged with many commercial advantages, and protected and defended at much expense of blood and treasure”. [1]
Despite the King’s words, since the conclusion of the Seven Years War in 1763, Britain, with a crushing debt of 129 million pounds sterling, had done everything to increase taxes of the American colonies to extract a significant part of the war expenses. Yet throughout this 12 year period of harsh and ever increasing taxation, the colonists responded modestly, always asserting only the rights of free Englishmen, never pursuing a separation from Britain.
In 1764 taxes were imposed on sugar, wine, coffee and other imports and exports. The currency act abolished Colonial paper currency that had sprung up, diminishing the Colonies’ ability to trade.
In 1765 the Stamp Act enacted a tax on 55 kinds of legal documents.
Because of these onerous taxes, the Virginia Legislature met in 1765 and passed the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions. Amazingly these resolutions never mentioned separation from Britain, but simply asserted the colonists’ rights as free Englishmen. Independence from Britain was not on the agenda. On the contrary there still was affection and good will toward the mother country.
Then things got progressively worse. Taxes were levied on glass, paint, oil lead, paper. A tax on tea led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Yet despite all these “taxes without representation”, the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in 1774, from September 5th to October 26th, contrary to the wishes of its more radical members, did not urge a separation from England. In its Declaration and Resolves, it again called for the Colonies to be allowed only the rights of free Englishmen, urging a fuller communication of grievances to England, the population of the American Colonies, and the rest of the world.
The October 1775 war debate in Parliament was not one sided, however. Many legislators sided with the Colonists and spoke eloquently. John Wilkes, Lord Mayor of London argued against war, declaring it unjust and ruinous to England: “We are fighting for the subjection, the unconditional submission of a country infinitely more extended than our own, of which every day increases the wealth, the natural strength, the population.”[2]
Despite the expression of such views, at the end of the debate, the skillful Lord North had accomplished the King’s mission of having the Parliament approve a vigorous war to gain the Colonies’ submission. In both the House of Lords and the Commons, the vote for war was more than 2 to 1.
King George’s declaration in October 1775 that the colonists “were in rebellion” and were conspiring to create an empire separate from Great Britain, pushed the toboggan of war faster downhill, and was an important driver of the actual rush to Independence. On hearing the news of the King’s proclamation and the action of Parliament, the Colonists began to think that separation from the mother country was inevitable. Further fueled by Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, “Common Sense” , published in January 1776, the drive to separation culminated only six months later in the Declaration of Independence.
Barry Singer
West Windsor, New Jersey
November 10, 2015
[1] For a fuller description David McCullough, 1776, Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2006, 10 - 19
[2] Ibid., 15