Plz plz correct my poor grammar.. thx

Question

Was American Revolution War Necessary?

The American Revolutionary War was necessary base upon the outgrowth of the colonists. There are several significant events along the way that happen from the year 1763 to 1776. It would be hard to point out any major event that had caused to the Revolution. But it definitely started it after the Treaty of Paris that ends French and Indian War ("Seven Years War") in 1763. The British victories in the French and Indian War had a great impact for British. It meaning for the British to claim more land in new world. The British have realized the cost of the war had greatly enlarged Britain's debt and would not ensure permanent peace in the west. In 1763, Grenville issued a Proclamation Line, that temporarily banning all colonial settlement in west of Appalachian Mountains. This outraged colonist that wish to move to west to get wealthy land, or profit from their western investment.

A year later in 1765, Grenvile imposed Sugar Act that tax on sugar, wine and coffee and other colonial imports to pay for the expenses in protecting the colonies. In 1765 Grenvile imposed another act, Stamp Act as means the first direct tax to raise money from the Colonies. This directly taxed a variety of goods; include newspaper, playing cards, and legal documents. This act resulted in outraged from the Colonies and lead to riot and violence.
During the summer of 1765, a group of Bostonians formed an organization (Sons of Liberty) lead by Samuel Adams to oppose to the Stamp Act. They use violence and threatened to the British stamp agents to resign and also stop many American merchants from imports goods from British. Their campaign spread across to other colonies (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland and New York) and most stamp agent mercilessly harassed and soon resigned.
On April, 1766 the downfall of the economic pressure lead to repeal of Stamp Act. But at the same time (“Declaratory Act was passes to asserted that Parliament had the “sole and exclusive right” to tax the colonist”.) (Berkin P.129) Charles Townshend now in charged of the government. He want to strength the power of British by imposed Townshend Act. This act taxed on glass, paper, paint, lean, and all luxury products made in England. The act also paced a three-penny tax on tea, the most popular drink among colonist. The colonist respond with boycott by not to import British goods, especially luxury products. They roamed the streets of Boston and harass anyone wearing British made cloth. In home many women supported this boycott and formed a group called Daughter of Liberty. They spun their own daily clothing

Violence erupts and four thousand troops were arrived to maintain order. On March 5, a group of mob threw snowball at a British sentries guard. Soon British came to rescue the soldier, unknown they open fire on civilians, killed five men and wounded eight others. This British brutality against colonist became what they called Boston Massacre. In April 1770, The Townshend acts are repealed, and all imports good are resumed to previous, except for tea.
On 1773, Parliament passed Tea Act that allowed East India Company to ship the tea directly to America instead of import to Britain and then reexport to the colonies. This made the tea cheaper, even with the three-penny tax. However, colonists see this as the East India Company trying to driven all foreign tea off the market. By December 16, 1773 a group of sixty men from the Boston area dressed as Mohawk Indians, boarded a ship, and dumped 342 chests of tea, worth almost ($10,000 pound) into the Boston Harbor.
British were anger with Massachusetts and passed the Intolerable Acts in responsible for dumped the tea. The Port Act effectively shuts down all commercial ship in Boston harbor until the citizens compensated the East India Tea Company fully for its losses.
In September 5, 1774 the first continental congress met in Philadelphia. And the following year they have the second continental congress. This time they approved of the Declaration of Independence and made their approval public on July 4, 1776.

Aileen · Accepted Answer

Hi, I’ll do my best.

WAS the AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE NECESSARY?

The American War of Independence was necessary if one considers that the outgrowth of the colonists was inevitable. There are several significant events ranging through the years 1763 to 1776 that contributed to the progress of the revolution. [maybe list the events]. Although it would be hard to point out any particular event that singularly caused the War of Independence, a critical threshold was crossed after the Treaty of Paris that ended the French and Indian War.

[I’d love to come back soon to try some more, hope this is OK for starters]

Aznmask · Answer

Aileen thx for your advice.. but the title is from my US History professor.

i need help to write about the conclusion.... do i have to express my feeling about why american have to indepence?

thx for help..

Aileen · Answer

Was American Revolution War Necessary?

I need help to write about the conclusion.... do i have to express my feeling about why American has to indepence?

Good question and thanks for confirming the wording of the essay topic for me. Apparently, your professor has deliberately worded the question to exclude independence. Is this a clue? I’d guess that the issue of independence as a cause of war could be contentious And worth discussing

For exams, I’d write a synopsis rather than a conclusion. For long essays, I’d prepare a conclusion if I had to.

Would you say that the revolution was about independence? In the first paragraph, we’ve stated that expansion is a central issue and that settler pressure was a rudimentary cause of war. Was independence a logical outcome for the expanding settlements?
I don’t know. Personally, I’d think of pertinent questions answer them logically and then summarise my point of view in the conclusion.

P.S I'm editing this post as a moderator now. I need practise! I just noticed that I made a mistake when I said that we've stated that expansion was a cause. All we've done is mention that the settler expansion could be relevant to our discussion. So, lots of room to debate around the issues. Good luck darlin' have a nice weekend!!

Aznmask · Answer

first can some1 correct my my poor grammar.. like past tense. or wahtever to make it more clearly..

i think WAS the AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE NECESSARY?
and Was American Revolutionary War Necessary? is almost same.. all those 3 page i stated my reason from 1763-1776 . WHy american struggle with British becuz of those heavy tax..

now i have to put up in conclusion..

SHould i say.. In conclusion this revolutionary war was necessary because of all those heavy taxes...... etc..

thx for reply Aileen.. you have a great weekend too..

too bad i wont have a good weekend until this is done..

Wumanfu · Answer

Your conclusion?
http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/01/bibfreedm.html

the so-called American Revolution was a contest over jurisdiction. Contrast this with the French Revolution which was truly a revolution. The ‘American Revolution’ differed from the American War for Independence, which was actually not a revolution, at least as commonly conceived. A revolution implies the overthrow of authority--a sudden radical change in political organization. This was not what the Americans set out to do. The framers saw the war with Great Britain as a last resort following many humble entreaties for justice before the throne. Americans were not seeking a new and different way of life, or a new and different government. They desired only to keep the kind of representative government that had prevailed in the Colonies for a century and a half. If any revolution occurred, it was a British revolution.

Wumanfu · Answer

Post again if you want specific information
Please cite this reference book in the following way. You’ll find page numbers in the text.
John C. Wahlke, ed., The Causes of the American Revolution, Revised ed. (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1967) [page].

INTRODUCTION

IT was not so very long ago that all Americans were taught that the American Revolution came about solely and simply because all colonists hated tyranny and loved freedom; because all colonists resented the denial by a foreign government of their right to share in governing themselves; and because all colonists, therefore, rising in heroic resistance to the government which oppressed them, determined to make of America an independent nation, founded on the principles of political liberty and equality. The persistence of such a simple and clear-cut picture of the revolutionary struggle is reflected in the widelyheld belief that the chief point at issue between colonies and mother country was the rightness or wrongness of the principle, "taxation without representation is tyranny."

The labors of historians of the past two generations, however, have made it impossible to believe quite so surely that the Revolution was no more and no less than a conflict produced by verbal disagreements between a people united in the cause of freedom and a regime which refused to accept freedom as the necessary basis of all governments. The reappraisal of the colonial and revolutionary era, begun by such scholars as Charles M. Andrews, George Louis Beer, Herbert Levi Osgood, and others has made it dear that, to see selfless devotion of the patriots to political ideals as the sole cause of the Revolution might well be a national tradition, but it is hardly sound history. Significant facts which today seem obvious -- for example, the extreme tardiness of the patriot leaders in formulating the demand for independence, or the apparent lack of unanimity among the colonists concerning what they wanted, why they wanted it, and how they proposed to get it -were long overlooked by the traditional explanations of why the revolutionists fought. Beginning in the 1890's, historians directed their attentions more closely to the revolutionary use of the political ideals of freedom and equality, of independence and self-government; they patiently considered the influence of such factors as economic interests, the accidental conjunctures of men and events, and the personal ambitions and prejudices of revolutionary leaders or members of Parliament; and they sought to discover all the possible logical connections between one step in the conflict and the next. As a result, there is today general agreement among historians that to understand why the Revolution was fought, one must do more than accept at face value the familiar political slogans and catch-words, that he must consider the actions and the motives of diverse individuals, groups, sections, and classes, and must be aware of the relation of the British-American conflict to British imperial problems and to larger problems of world affairs. There is no longer doubt that the causes of the

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American Revolution were complex and deep seated.

However, the specific question, "What were the causes of the American Revolution?" is more than ever a major one, because the historians have failed to arrive at any answer upon which all can agree. Instead they present an array of contradictory and conflicting interpretations, from which the ordinary citizen must, somehow or other, choose or construct his own answer.

In any of these interpretations, a critical point of comparison is the extent to which the author believes the familiar revolutionary ideas and ideals to have been a major factor in producing the eventual war between Britons and colonists: it is possible to divide interpretations into two general categories, on the basis of their attitudes on this particular point. On the one hand, there are those writers who would de-emphasize the differences of political and constitutional ideas between the colonies and England, either by asserting that such opinions are only a product of some more basic economic or social factor, or by finding that, even though these different views constituted a genuine point of disagreement, the disagreement could readily have been overcome had it not been for conflicts of a different sort. Those who hold to such a viewpoint say, in effect, that what the colonists said and wrote about the rights of British citizens and the rights of men does not, by itself, offer any real clue as to why they fought.

On the other hand, there are writers who admit the complexity of causes of the Revolution, but insist that colonial ideas about democratic self-government were one of the most important causes of the Revolution and that the political views of the revolutionists cannot be wholly explained in terms of any direct, material interests or any inner logic of events.

The problem presented here, however, is much more specific than this difference in historical philosophy. Ever since Karl Marx first showed the way, most historians have been careful to take into account all economic aspects of their particular subject of interest. Many, of course, have gone so far as to say (though not often in precisely Marxist fashion) that the basic element in any historical situation is the economic one, and have gone on to apply this type of analysis to numerous specific cases. The American Revolution has not escaped such treatment. Rather, the economic interpretation has become one of the most prominent concerning that event. Writers like Charles Beard and Louis Hacker have offered cogent and complete arguments for it. In popular discussions about the nature or the causes of the Revolution, it will generally be found that those who profess to defend the honor of the revolutionary ideals regard as their principal enemy those who make even the least suggestion that the economic interests of the parties (especially of the colonists) played some part in the struggle. Economic interpretations of the Revolution have thus come to occupy a position of prominence not only in the eyes of their supporters, but in the eyes of opponents as well.

These readings, therefore, include important examples of two views: on the one hand, the view that economic conflicts between colonies and mother country were the paramount cause of the Revolution; on the other hand, the view that the Revolution was caused primarily by the differences in political ideas between colonists and Englishmen.

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There is offered first a group of three selections relating solely to the arguments concerning the economic causation of the conflict. The first, by Louis M. Hacker, is the clearest possible presentation of the belief that it was the economic conflicts between colonial and British mercantile or industrial interests which led to the Revolutionary War. In the second selection, Charles M. Andrews gives his reasons for disagreeing with such an explanation, and in the third, Oliver M. Dickerson takes up in detail the working of the colonial economy as affected by the British Navigation Acts, and arrives at a conclusion contradicting Hacker's.

In the second group of readings, attention is focused on the numerous British policy-decisions of the period immediately preceding the outbreak of armed hostilities. Lawrence Henry Gipson's argument that the Revolution was essentially a product of the world struggle for empire can hardly be said to offer total support to either the political or the economic interpretation, as developed in this volume. His contention that further subordination to the Empire was against the material interests of major segments of the American community after 1763 implies that those material interests were much more important to the colonists than were their political and constitutional beliefs; his contention that the war with France bred major changes in British colonial policy, however, undermines one of the central assumptions of the economic interpretation -- that British policy remained mercantilist, dictated by British capitalist interests, right down to 1776. Bernhard Knollenberg, in the next selection, argues that British measures of 1759-1765 were particularly responsible for driving the American colonists into ultimate rebellion. He takes issue not only with the economic interpreters, who assume that British policy remained constant from the seventeenth century through the crisis of 1775, but also with Andrews' assertion that the colonists had, well before the pre-Revolutionary decade, drifted far from loyalty to the British Empire.

A third group of readings has to do with a related problem -- to what extent was the American Revolution a "dual revolution," i.e., both a colonial struggle for independence and an internal struggle between "aristocrats" and "democrats"? It is Clinton Rossiter's contention that virtually all colonists were agreed in their growing opposition to continued colonial status, and that they manifested a basically conservative "American consensus? Merrill Jensen, on the other hand, insists that colonists were motivated by a desire for substantially increased democracy, and were not merely conserving something they already possessed.

The next two selections address themselves to divisions of opinion among the colonists. Carl Becker's brilliant recreation of the period through the eyes of Jeremiah Wynkoop and his father-inlaw, Nicholas Van Schoickendinck, describes clearly how issues dividing the colonists often mingled with and cut across issues which separated colonists from the mother country in the preRevolutionary period. James Truslow Adams, in the next selection, goes much farther than Becket in identifying cleavages among the colonists. He argues that economic and class divisions between American merchants and radicals led to disagreements about goals and tactics. His interpretation, therefore, closely resembles the economic interpretation presented earlier.

The last reading, by Page Smith, urges recognition of the cogency and accuracy of the explanation of the American Revo-

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lution offered by a contemporary of it, David Ramsay. Smith reviews all the issues presented in this volume and presents Ramsay's views of them. Smith also offers a summary of the rise and fall of the various schools of thought concerning the causes of the American Revolution from Ramsay's time to the present.

While the major problem thus presented is one of broad historical interpretation, it is impossible to weigh the relative significance of political ideas and economic interests without first facing a number of essentially factual subsidiary questions, upon which the authors disagree at many points. One such question involves the nature of British colonial policy after 1763: Did the British government change its policy at that time, thus producing grievances which would not have arisen otherwise, or did it continue a mercantilist policy which intensified old grievances? Related to this is the question: To what extent were the colonists themselves aware of specifically economic grievances, and to what extent did they express them? What grievances did the colonists have, if not primarily economic ones? A very critical question concerns the role of the different sections and classes in the colonies: What grievances and what political ideas did artisans and small farmers have in common with merchants, or frontiersmen with city-dwellers, and where did the interests and ideas of these groups diverge from one another? Is it possible to determine which actions were the work of merchants, which the work of radicals, and which the results of their joint efforts? If so, how did those actions interrelate to cause a revolution?

Only after considering such questions as these will the reader be able to decide whether he thinks the Revolution came about because of the devotion of some or all colonists to political and constitutional ideals, or because the economic interests of some or all colonists could be served, in the long run, only by political independence from England. It need hardly be said that the formulation of an intelligent opinion on this particular problem should yield something much more valuable than more intellectual exercise. A study of the causes of the American Revolution, since it demands a questioning of the function of democratic ideals in the founding of the American nation, necessarily demands further questioning of the function of those same ideals in our own time. An understanding of the relationship of the ideals of 1776 to the economic and social situation of the revolutionary period will contribute to a better understanding of the possible utility of those ideals in solving ideological and interest conflicts within the American community today. And an understanding of the relationship of the interests and ideals of 1776 to the constitution of the 18th-century British Empire will certainly offer some basis for deciding what should be America's role in the 20th-century world-community of nations.

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Aznmask · Answer

What is the idea of an American identity that Franklin and Jefferson and other
individuals who demonstrated special qualities.

what could it be..

Wumanfu · Answer

American identity is tied to abstract principles such as those of the Declaration of Independence. The period of the American founding was a brief moment in which leading citizens such as Jefferson and Madison were strongly influenced by what was thought to be the more "universal" language of the Enlightenment. Although with few exceptions the Founders were devoutly Christian, they were persuaded by influential thinkers of the time that biblical concepts could be smoothly translated into the vocabulary of nature and reason (the stuff of the enlightenment). The American identity is forged from a philosophical interpretation, an abstraction of biblical principles. Contrast this with European cultures where whatever the different levels of religious belief and practice, the English, French, Germans, and others know that, whatever cultural identity they have, it is inextricably tied to Christian civilization.

Santa · Answer

And what is the "universal" language of the Enlightenment and how do the Americans identify themselves with it??

Wumanfu · Answer

Santa asked, ”what is the universal language of the enlightenment & what is the legacy of enlightenment principles in 21st C USA.

This is topical so I’ll spend some time. Liberalism, the core of American identity, is a Political and intellectual belief that advocates the right of the individual to make decisions, usually political or religious, according to The dictates of conscience. Its modern origins lie in the 18th-century Enlightenment. Much of the tenor of the Enlightenment survives in the liberalism, toleration, and respect for law that persists in Northern American and European societies.

Liberalism is an ideology encompassing belief in electoral democracy, civil rights, gender equality, human progress, and/or the abolition of premodern social hierarchies. Liberalism was introduced to the Islamic world in the nineteenth century by Europeans, then wielded against Europeans by Muslim intellectuals who noted the discrepancy between liberal ideals and colonial (and later postcolonial) practices. This is relevant to the war in Iraq today. Is the United States fighting for oil and geo-political reasons or for liberal ideals?

It is easier to identify intellectual trends than to define enlightened views, even where, as in France, there was a distinct and self-conscious movement. Clues can be found in the use commonly made of certain closely related cult words such as Reason, Nature, and Providence. From having a sharp, almost technical sense in the work of Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza, reason came to mean something like common sense, along with strongly pejorative assumptions about things not reasonable. Locke and Jeremy Bentham in England, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire in France, and Thomas Jefferson in America all contributed to an evolving critique of the arbitrary, authoritarian state and to sketching the outline of a higher form of social organization, based on natural rights and functioning as a political democracy.

The Enlightenment was both a movement and a state of mind. The term represents a phase in the intellectual history of Europe, but it also serves to define programs of reform in which influential literati, inspired by a common faith in the possibility of a better world, outlined specific targets for criticism and proposals for action. The special significance of the Enlightenment lies in its combination of principle and pragmatism. Consequently, it still engenders controversy about its character and achievements.

Our friend has a good topic for an essay.

Plz plz correct my poor grammar.. thx

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