be imposed on them without their consent. The King responded by declaring that a "revolt" had begun in the colonies; he sent armed forces to suppress it, and he demanded the complete submission of the colonies. [Picture] Paul Revere, Commencement of Military Actions Military engagements between the armed forces of the English King and the colonists began in the spring of 1775. This is the way it happened. The English sent from Boston two regiments of royal forces to seize rifles, wagon trains, gunpowder, bullets, and flour-in short, the entire secret military stores created by the American colonists. A detachment of English soldiers dressed in red uniforms marched out of the city at a measured pace. But the soldiers guessed that someone had informed the population about the military raid. And in fact Paul Revere, a highly skilled silversmith who was intelligence chief of the Boston Revolutionary Committee, had ridden his horse at top speed from Boston to raise the alarm. Alarm bells were rung and there were shots along the route of march of the English soldiers. Following a brief skirmish along the way a detachment of royal forces scattered the Minutemen-local inhabitants who were supposed to run with their arms to a meeting place within a minute after the alarm. The royal forces seized the cache of arms, but on their return trip the farmers fired upon them from behind trees and houses. The shooting intensified, and the withdrawal of the English became a disorderly flight. That is how the colonists began to use the tactics of extended order, the combat tactics of an armed populace in rebellion. There was little gunpowder and lead; they used sheets of lead from roofs, later they even sawed up a lead statue of the English King; they rationed out the lead in sparing portions, and every soldier cast his own bullets according to the muzzle of his gun. [Picture] Rebellious populace hurls down statue of the English King. Congress named Col. Col. George Washington (1732-99), a Virginia planter known to be a confirmed advocate of the liberation of the colonies from English oppression, to be commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the rebellious colonies. He was known as an outstanding organizer and the only important military specialist in the colonies. In response to the demands of the commercial and young industrial bourgeoisie, farmers, craftsmen, and workers, one after the other the colonies began to declare their secession from England. [Picture] George Washington. Document Excerpt From the Declaration of the Chiefs of Indian Tribes to the English Authorities in the Colonies in 1768. Brother, we and our families have recently been living as if in hell, not knowing what to do. Wherever we look, everywhere we see our blood, and when our young men want to hunt game in our country, we come upon fences. They have become tired of climbing over them. They cannot take deer for food and tree bark for pots, since they are prevented from hunting animals, and the trees are being cut down. ... The English, instead of protecting us, as we had hoped, are taking advantage of the fact that they are more cunning than we are, and they have deceived our people; they have begun to slaughter our people in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and throughout the country, and the merchants have begun to deceive us more and more, and now they care about nothing and no one. . . . [Picture] Thomas Jefferson. Declaration of the Independence of the Colonies Under the pressure of the masses, on July 4, 1776, the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence; i.e., the declaration of separation from England. The author of this document was Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), an advanced thinker for his time and an outstanding political figure. Elected a member of the Virginia Legislative Assembly, he strove for the abolition of slavery. In England he was sentenced to death for a pamphlet against the King. The Declaration of Independence said that England was oppressing its colonies in America and that the united colonies were seceding from England and setting up an independent nation. All men are created equal, the Declaration stated. They are entitled to life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness as their inalienable rights. The Declaration announced that the people itself had the right to establish authority and a government; i.e., it proclaimed the idea that the people itself is the source of power-the idea of popular sovereignty. The proposition that the people itself can set up a government was aimed against the power of the King, against the monarchy, and it signified recognition of the republic. On the other hand, this same idea was aimed against colonial oppression. The Declaration proclaimed the equality of man and nations. Thus, the founders of the American republic condemned colonial oppression and colonialism. [Map] Revolutionary War in North America, 1775-83. [Map locates major American, English, and French military actions.] [Picture] Soldiers of Washington's army winter in the field. But the bourgeoisie used the progressive ideas of the Declaration to reinforce the power of the wealthy, provided also that they were white. The Declaration did not abolish slavery and did not put an end to annihilation of the Indians and their being driven from their land, and it preserved the exploitation of hired workers. The former colonies proclaimed themselves to be States, and they formed a union-the United States of America. courageously and valiantly. One detachment of Negroes died to the last man in putting up a defense in the State of New York. A Negro woman named Gannet from Massachusetts put on men's clothes and fought heroically for 17 months in one of the regular regiments. Rich landowners, some of the slaveowners, and the royal civil servants opposed the colonists in their fight for independence. [Picture] Benjamin Franklin. The farmers and craftsmen were the principal strength of the colonists. The revolutionary bourgeoisie led the struggle against the royal forces and the aristocrats. In order to augment his armed forces the English King hired from the German princes about 30,000 soldiers, whom he sent to America. He wanted to hire from Catherine II in Russia another 20,000 soldiers, but in view of the strained relations between Russia and England and the recent peasant war led by Pugachev, the Empress refused to send the soldiers to America. Taking advantage of the old enmity between the two colonial states, England and France, the Americans obtained a treaty of alliance and armed aid from France. In order to obtain France's aid, the Congress of the United States sent as its ambassador to Paris Benjamin Franklin, an outstanding scientist, diplomat, and public and political figure who had participated in writing the Declaration of Independence. Progressive social circles in France were ardently sympathetic with the struggle of the Americans to free themselves. Course of Military Operations The war continued until 1782. The English managed to take the capital of the seceding coloniesPhiladelphia. The American soldiers wintered in the open field in bitter cold weather. They did not have enough arms, money, footwear, or clothing. Bloody footprints on the ice and snow indicated the paths taken by Washington's barefoot soldiers. It was not easy for Washington to achieve discipline in an army consisting of brave, but unclothed, farmers and craftsmen. Several thousand Negro slaves fought against the English in the ranks of the colonists. They fought [Map] The United States in 1783. [Major map features identify the 13 original States and the territory acquired under the peace treaty of 1783.] The aristocrat Lafayette, for example, fitted out a warship at his own expense, called it the Victoire (Victory) and sailed for America against the King's prohibition, and there he fought in the revolutionary forces. In 1781 the main forces of the English surrendered to Washington at Yorktown. The peace was signed in 1783. The English recognized the independence of the colonies, 100,000 English aristocrats and members of their families were expelled from the United States, and their land was confiscated and put up for sale. That was the end of the war for independence that Lenin called the revolutionary war "of the American people against the plundering English, who had oppressed America and held it in colonial bondage."1 Thus, during the Revolutionary War, in the course of a fierce class struggle, power in the United States passed from one class to another-from the aristocratic landowners to the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie of the North, which ruled in an alliance with the slaveowning planters of the South. This signified that a bourgeois revolution had taken place in the United States. A republic was set up, the equality of all before the law was proclaimed, and slavery was gradually abolished in the northern States. But the capitalists and slaveowners took advantage of the people's victory to strengthen their own domination. 1787 in order to strengthen their power; by and large it is still in force today. The Law Setting Up the GovernmentThe Constitution (from the Latin word constitutio-establishment). After independence was proclaimed, every State became a separate nation with its own armed forces, finances, and customs boundaries. These almost independent States sent their representatives to a Congress that had little power. Under the 1787 Constitution the central power was strengthened, but the States retained considerable independence in local affairs. [Picture] Daniel Shays' rebellion. The illustration portrays the moment when the rebels seized a courthouse. Shay is standing on the steps with arms akimbo and is preventing the judges from entering the building. Shays' Rebellion (1786-87) The war was devastating to many farmers. After the war there remained an enormous Government debt, which the Government decided to pass on to the farmers by raising taxes. The livestock, houses, and land of the indebted farmers began to be sold for back taxes. In response the farmers and city poor, mainly craftsmen, in a number of northern States began an uprising that was headed by Daniel Shays, a participant in the War for Independence. Rebels numbering some 12,000 to 15,000 men took up arms in September 1786. They demanded that debts not be collected from farmers and that their houses and livestock not be sold. The poor farmers and poor people in the cities-factory workers, day laborers, and craftsmen-presented their own demands. Some of the rebels demanded that the money of the rich be divided equally among the poor and that the rich man be forced to work like the common people. It took the armed forces of the United States half a year to suppress this rebellion. Unbeknownst to the people, the bourgeoisie of the North and the slaveowning planters of the South worked out a constitution in IV.I. Lenin. Polnoe sobranie sochineniy (Complete Works). Vol. 37, p. 48. Under this constitution President elected for 4 years became the chief executive authority in the country. He commanded the army and navy, ran the government, and appointed officials-in short, he had enormous authority. Washington was elected the first President. The American parliament-Congress-enacts laws, which are subject to approval by the President. Congress consists of two houses. Deputies are elected to the lower house-the House of Representativesaccording to the number of inhabitants in each State. The upper house of Congress-the Senate-consists of representatives of the States (two from each). The American Constitution reinforced the domination of the large bourgeoisie and slaveholders. A number of the basic principles of the new American Constitution and of the State constitutions were manifestly aimed against the masses of people. In almost all the States one had to have property-land or capital in order to obtain the right to vote. Women, slaves, and Indians did not enjoy suffrage. In 1791 the United States Constitution was supplemented by the Bill of Rights. This law recog nized the rights of citizens to freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of conscience; i.e., the freedom to profess any religion or to renounce religion altogether. Arbitrary arrests without court order were prohibited. |