James Woods
@RealJamesWoods
The American Revolution was first and foremost about an overbearing government, taxing without representation, and suffocating the “common man” with its unbridled power.
____________________________________________________________
The House of Commons passes the Tea Act
On this day in history, April 27, 1773, the House of Commons passes the Tea Act, an act which would lead to the Boston Tea Party and plunge Great Britain and her American colonies into war. The colonists in America had complained about taxes before. They did not mind paying taxes. Rather, their disagreement was with who had the authority to tax them. Since they had no representatives in Parliament, they believed it was unjust for Parliament to tax them. Instead, the proper bodies to tax them should be their own elected assemblies.
When the Stamp Act was passed in 1765, the colonists protested its taxes to the point of violence. When Parliament finally repealed the Act, it passed along with it an act called the Declaratory Act, which reaffirmed Parliament’s right to tax the colonies in whatever way it saw fit. While most celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act, some saw an ominous sign in the Declaratory Act of more taxes to come.
More taxes did indeed come with the Townshend Acts of 1767, which levied taxes on paper, lead, glass painters’ colors and tea. The colonists responded by protesting and boycotting British goods as usual, forcing Parliament to repeal all of the Townshend Acts’ taxes in 1770, except for the tax on tea, which the colonists continued to boycott. The boycott especially affected the British East India Company, which shipped tea from India to Britain and her colonies.
British policy forced the East India Company to ship tea to England first where it was taxed upon import. Then the tea had to be sold in London markets to merchants who shipped it to America where it was taxed again. The multiple taxes and the middlemen merchants caused the price of tea to be very high by the time it reached consumers in America. This opened up a large market for smuggled Dutch tea, which was much cheaper. By the early 1770s, the East India Company was struggling to survive, with warehouses full of tea it couldn’t sell because its price was undercut in the colonies by Dutch tea.
In order to prevent the East India Company from going bankrupt, Parliament came up with a scheme called the Tea Act, first passed by the House of Commons on April 27, 1773 and passed into law with King George’s signature on May 10. The Tea Act allowed the Company to ship tea directly to the colonies, bypassing the London middlemen and the London duties. The only tax that remained was on the colonies’ end and that tax was quite small. This new scheme greatly reduced the price of British tea. If the colonists bought the lower priced tea, they would also be tacitly agreeing to the notion that Parliament did indeed have the right to tax them.
The colonists, however, no matter how small the tax, had no intention of paying unjust taxes to Britain. They recognized the scheme immediately as an attempt to bribe them into giving Parliament authority to tax them in exchange for cheap goods. The colonists responded by forbidding tea ships from entering their harbors, culminating with the Boston Tea Party, during which 42 tons of tea were dumped into Boston Harbor in protest.
Britain responded in force by passing the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor and shut down the Massachusetts government, until the tea was paid for. Known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies, these Acts led directly to the formation of the First Continental Congress to plan a joint colonial response. The American Revolution broke out in full fury shortly afterwards.
Thank you, http://revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/, for the main body of this essay.
2:06 PM · Apr 27, 2024
James Woods
@RealJamesWoods
The battles in the southern colonies emerged as the most significant in the end game of the American War of Independence. As General Nathaniel Greene famously declared, “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again!”
___________________________________________________________
General Greene loses the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill
On this day in history, April 25, 1781, General Greene loses the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill near Camden, South Carolina. This was a tactical loss for the Continental Army in the south, but part of an overall strategy that eventually forced the British to abandon the interior of South Carolina and Georgia.
General Nathanael Greene had taken over the decimated American forces in the south in December of 1780. After a string of victories early in 1781, Greene had forced British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis to the coast of North Carolina to regroup and resupply. Greene hoped to draw Cornwallis back to the interior to engage him further, but when Cornwallis did not fall for the bait, Greene turned south to reclaim South Carolina.
The British had built a string of forts along the interior of South Carolina and Georgia to hold the back country. Greene broke his forces into several groups that attacked various of these posts in hopes of breaking off their communications and supply lines in order to force them to retreat to the coast.
Greene’s 1,500 men went to the city of Camden, which the British had held for almost a year. Greene knew he did not have the strength to breach the town’s defenses, so he hoped to draw them out of the town and into battle. His men encamped on a ridge known as Hobkirk’s Hill northwest of the town.
On April 25th, British Colonel Francis Rawdon marched out of Camden, just as Greene had hoped and began to march up the ridge. Rawdon’s men marched up the ridge in a narrow formation, allowing Greene to attack from the front and both sides and gain an early advantage that inflicted heavy casualties on the British. Soon after the fight began, however, several of the key American leaders were shot, causing their units to break apart and flee. Rawdon took this advantage and charged up the hill, causing Greene to withdraw in full retreat, even though he had a much larger force. The Americans lost 270 killed, captured, wounded or missing, while the British lost 261.
Rawdon left a small group of dragoons (soldiers on horseback) to hold Hobkirk’s Hill and took the rest of his men back to Camden. After regrouping, however, General Greene brought his men back and they drove the dragoons off and reoccupied the hill.
The Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill was a tactical loss for Greene. Rawdon, however, was virtually trapped in Camden with Greene to the north, General Thomas Sumter to the south, Col. Andrew Pickens to the west and General Francis Marion between Camden and Charleston. The British posts began to fall one by one and Rawdon knew he had to get out of Camden and back to the coast.
On May 9, exactly two weeks after the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, Rawdon left Camden, after destroying its public buildings and many private homes, and began the march back to Charleston. Greene’s strategy had worked brilliantly so far by freeing northeastern South Carolina from British rule. By the end of June, all of the interior of Georgia and the Carolinas would be back in American hands and the British would be confined to Charleston and Savannah on the coast.
___________________________________________________________
Thank you, http://revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/, for the main body of this essay. I suggest you visit this wonderful site for so much insight into the American Revolution. It is obviously my favorite resource.
10:22 AM · Apr 25, 2024