APUSH Unit 3 Review (Period 3: 1754-1800)—Everything You NEED to Know – Transcript

00:00Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler's History. Now in this video I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about Unit 3 of APUS history. And this one's a right beast so there's no time to waste. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, I'm ready to milk them. Let's get to it. Now before we get started just so you know this video is part of a larger old view packet for APUS history. It's got everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May. So if you're interested in something like that, link in description below. So the major theme of this unit is how America

00:26was transformed into a collection of British colonies into a distinct independent nation and how we began to develop a distinct national identity. And just so you know the time period covered in this video is 1754 to 1800. And the place will start at 1754 with the French and Indian War which is part of a larger conflict called the Seven Years War. The conflict began at least on American soil because British colonists were getting a little twitchy about French encroachment on their western border, specifically the Ohio River Valley.

00:53And if you asked the French why they were getting a little too cozy in that region, they would have said they were getting a little twitchy about the British encroachment on their territory. So the conflict erupted and it went pretty bad for the British initially. They kept losing battles to the French and their Indian allies. So in light of this, the British government called for a Congress of Representatives from several colonies to assemble a more organized response to frontier defense and trade and westward expansion.

01:15Now I mentioned this because it was at this meeting that our good buddy Benjamin Franklin proposed his Albany Plan of Union which called for a more centralized government for the colonies which would in turn better enable them to mount a more coordinated effort for western defense. But the taxation required for raising the troops for such a plan stunk powerfully in their colonial nostrils and the plan was therefore rejected.

01:35However it was an important meeting and an important proposal because it laid the mold for the future Revolutionary Congress of which more later. Long story short, despite the early humiliation the British won the French and Indian War and signed the peace of Paris in 1763. And the results of this treaty were kind of mind-boggling to the American colonists. First, the French were almost completely ousted from North America and the Louisiana territory was given to Spain.

01:58Second, and perhaps most significant, is that the British more than doubled their land holdings on the North American continent, gaining all the land east of the Mississippi River. Now remember we're trying to figure out how the folks on this continent went from being a string of colonies to an independent nation. It's at the end of the French Indian War where the Dominos really start to fall. The first consequence of the war was that colonists hungry for land began to push westward into the Ohio River Valley, which not surprisingly intensified conflicts with the American Indians who lived there.

02:24For example, when news of the new land arrangement reached the Ottawa leader Pontiac, he gathered up some folks and led raids on the encroaching colonists. And the colonists were dumbfounded at this blatant Indian aggression. What's your problem man? We won this land. From whom? The French. And from whom did they get it?

02:41Wait for it. There it is. You know that makes a lot of sense. You guys must feel entirely overlooked and taken advantage of. Said no colonist ever. Anyway, the British government decided to put the kibosh on all this tension between the Indians and their British colonists. And they did this not only because they wanted to protect the lives of their colonists, but they also wanted to keep trade relations favorable.

03:03To that end, they issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade colonists from taking land in the Ohio River Valley, which is to say west of the Appalachian Mountains. Now this proclamation deeply frustrated the colonists who had fought in the war and therefore felt entitled to the spoils of war. They felt they could improve their lot in life by moving westward.

03:21And moreover, they had shed their blood to gain this land. A second major consequence of this war was that it was expensive. Over the course of the war, British debt doubled and the cost of running the colonies increased fivefold. And so what's the British parliament to do? Texas. And that leads us to the next part of our story, which we'll call Taxation Without Representation. And so in order to pay for the French Indian War, the British decided to clamp down on the colonies and make them help shoulder the burden of it. And that, to put it lightly, smelled like a grade A turd to the colonists. And part of the reason was this.

03:51Although Britain, of course, had always had political sovereignty over the colonies, they largely allowed the colonists to manage their own affairs, mainly owing to the large distance between the colonies and the motherland. And so even when colonists flouted laws like the Navigation Acts, which we looked at back in Unit 2, Britain largely just turned a blind eye to it. And if you want to turn for that, and I know you do, it was salutary neglect.

04:10And the main effect of the salutary neglect was that it gave the colonists the sense that they were managing their own affairs without much involvement from parliament. But now, in order to pay for this war, the era of salutary neglect was over. Immediately parliament enacted a much stricter enforcement of the Navigation Acts that already existed. This was not great for colonists who routinely avoided these laws by smuggling and setting their own terms for trade.

04:32Also, parliament passed the Quartering Act of 1765, which meant that even though the war was over, imperial troops would remain in the American colonies in order to enforce all of these new rules. And to make matters worse, the law said that it was the colonists who were responsible for feeding and housing these soldiers if the quarters of the soldiers were inadequate.

04:48Also, there was the Sugar Act, which imposed taxes on coffee and wine and other luxury items. And you may rightly wonder why it's called the Sugar Act then. Well, there was also an existing tax on molasses, which the British decided at this point they were going to start enforcing. Perhaps most odious of all was the Stamp Act of 1765. It was a tax on all paper items, like newspapers and playing cards and contracts, and it was especially threatening to the colonists because during this year, they were experiencing declining wages and a rise in unemployment. And it was at this that the debate really heated up in the colonies

05:18about whether it was just to tax the colonists if they were not represented in parliament. And British leaders countered this line of argument by saying that the colonists were in fact represented in parliament by something called virtual representation. The idea behind this is that members of parliament represented all classes of British citizens, not necessarily every locality. So in that sense, they argued the American colonists were represented. Not surprisingly, this argument wasn't very convincing to American colonists who had grown

05:44accustomed to more localized representation in their own representative bodies. And so groups like the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty sprang up and dedicated themselves to the repeal of the Stamp Act, and this tension heated up 27 delegates from nine colonies assembled in New York in what became known as the Stamp Act Congress. The result of this meeting was a formal petition to the British Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. And the chief reason they gave for such a request was that taxation without representation was tyranny.

06:11However, it's going to be very important for you to know that even as the Congress was rejecting the Stamp Act, they did so as loyal subjects to the British crown and to their country. This was not a bid for independence. It was British subjects trying to have the full rights of British citizens applied to them. Now, as it happened, parliament actually listened and repealed both the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act the next year. And they did this probably in response to all the protest in the colonies, the destruction of property, and the threats to the lives of tax collectors. However, at the same time that they passed those resolutions, they also passed

06:41the Declaratory Act, which said that they had the right to pass any law that they wanted to in the colony. It's just a little jab to make sure the colonists remembered who was in charge. Which means it sounds like a little kid in a toy box who just got their toy taken away by a bully. Whatever. I didn't even like that toy anyway. And the only reason you have it is because I let you have it. So for the colonists, the repeal of those acts was a victory. But then in 1767, parliament went ahead and passed the Towns and Acts, which levied new taxes on items imported to the colonies like paper and glass and tea.

07:08And so once the colonists took that toy away from the kid in the sandbox, they felt emboldened to take another. And so in response to the passage of the Towns and Acts, there were highly organized protests. And it wasn't just the elitists in the Stamp Act Congress, but members from all of American society. Their main plan of attack was to boycott many British goods. And the colonists especially depended on women for this, since they were largely the ones purchasing the bulk of household items.

07:29And so these women, instead of buying manufactured textiles from Britain, spun their own cloth. Instead of drinking imported tea, learned to brew their own herbal tea. Now, all of this tension brewing between the colonies and the British government reached a boiling point in 1770 in an event called the Boston Massacre. As I mentioned before, Imperial troops were stationed in the colonies in order to enforce British law. And so one night a group of boys and young men began harassing a group of British soldiers in Boston. They hurled insult at the soldiers and resorted

07:56to throwing snowballs and stones. And it was unclear how or why the first shot was fired, but the first shot went off and that led to more shooting. And in the end, eleven colonists were wounded and four were dead. Now, it's important for you to know that when these soldiers were put on trial, six out of eight were acquitted for any wrongdoing. But the point is that to the colonists, the massacre was a sure sign of increasing British tyranny. Now, another very public act of resistance to the British clampdown was the

08:21Boston Tea Party. This was a response to the passing of the Tea Act of 1773. Essentially, it gave the British East India Company exclusive rights to buy and ship tea in the colonies. And again, this angered colonists who were used to dealing in smuggled tea from the Dutch. And so in December of that year, about 50 colonists disguised as American Indians boarded a merchant ship and dumped about 45 tons of British tea into the waters of the harbor. In retaliation, Parliament passed the coercive acts which closed down the Boston Harbor until all the tea was

08:48paid for. And also, they approved a new quartering act to go along with it. Taken together, the colonists called these pieces of legislation the intolerable acts. Now, news of these new tyrannies spread throughout the colonies increasingly by folks who identified themselves as patriots. And as the news began to spread, colonists began to organize themselves into armed groups, vowing to protect themselves against any further British tyranny. Now, in addition to all that, leaders from the colonies gathered in the Continental Congress of 1774. And despite

09:16their differing views on what ought to be done, everyone agreed that the colonies needed to resist further violations of their liberties at the hands of Parliament. But even still, they did so as men who wanted to remain British subjects. Independence was not yet on the horizon. Now, as they debated, it's going to be important for you to know some of the guiding principles that animated their thoughts. And perhaps one of the most significant influences was Enlightenment thought. These men had come to believe deeply in the idea of natural rights, which is to say that all human beings are endowed with certain rights by God and not a

09:46government, and therefore a government can never take them away. Related to this, they were influenced by the idea of a social contract between the government and the people. The idea here is that the power to govern is in the hands of the people, and they willingly give over some of that power to create a government capable of protecting their natural rights. And on the flip side, if the government tramples upon the natural rights of its citizens, then it's their duty to overthrow that government. They were also deeply influenced by the superiority of the Republican form of government, and especially the separation of powers and a government that

10:16enabled the various branches to check and balance the power of the others. Now, by 1776, the Continental Congress was in its second meeting, and they were still debating these things, even as shooting had begun down in Lexington and Concord. But they came to a point where they decided that independence from Britain was the only way that their nation could survive and thrive. But remember, these were the elite, thinky, thinky people of the colonies, and even though they were convinced about independence, the majority of American colonists were not yet convinced. Enter Thomas Paine. Early in 1776,

10:45he published a little pamphlet called Common Sense, and in it he argued that the only rational way forward for America was independence from Britain. He did this with masterful allusions to the Bible and structured it with Enlightenment principles. This pamphlet spread like fire through the colonies, and by the spring of 1776, the majority of colonists had been convinced independence was the only option.

11:05And so in that year, the Second Continental Congress tasked Thomas Jefferson with writing a formal Declaration of Independence. And it's going to be important for you to know that the Declaration of Independence is shot through with Enlightenment thought. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There you have natural rights. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government.

11:33That wherever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. Okay, now there you have the social contract. And I could go on enumerating examples, but the point is, you should know that this document is deeply influenced by Enlightenment thought. Now the Declaration was presented to the Congress and adopted on July 2nd, 1776. On July 4th, it was made public. And baby, we got ourselves a revolutionary war.

11:57Now I'm aware that the way I've been presenting this, it kind of sounds like everybody in the colonies was on board with independence, but here's where I tell you, not so much. There was actually a sizable opposition to independence in a group called the Loyalists. They were called Loyalists because they did not want to separate from Britain.