Доклад: History of the USA 
regarded the standing army of about 6,000 troops maintained by London in the
colonies after 1763 with great suspicion--such a peacetime force had never
been present before. British authorities defended the force as necessary to
preserve peace on the frontier, especially after PONTIAC'S REBELLION (1763-
65), which had been launched by the brilliant Indian leader Pontiac to expel
the British from the interior and restore French rule. In another attempt to
quell Indian unrest, London established the Proclamation Line of 1763. Set
along the crest of the Appalachians, the line represented a limit imposed on
colonial movement west until a more effective Indian program could be
developed. The colonists were much angered by the prohibition. Historical
memories of the use of standing armies by European kings to override liberty
caused widespread suspicion among the colonists that the soldiers stationed
on the Line of 1763 were to be employed not against the Indians, but against
the colonials themselves should they prove difficult to govern.
Indeed, for many years colonists had been reading the radical British press,
which argued the existence of a Tory plot in England to crush liberty
throughout the empire. Surviving from the English Civil War of the previous
century was a profound distrust of monarchy among a small fringe of radical
members of Britain's Whig party, primarily Scots and Irish and English
Dissenters--that is, Protestants who were not members of the Church of
England. As members of the minority out-groups in British life, they had
suffered many political and economic disadvantages. Radical Whigs insisted
that a corrupt network of Church of England bishops, great landlords, and
financiers had combined with the royal government to exploit the community at
large, and that--frightened of criticism--this Tory conspiracy sought to
destroy liberty and freedom.
In the cultural politics of the British Empire, American colonists were also
an out-group; they bitterly resented the disdain and derision shown them by
the metropolitan English. Furthermore, most free colonists were either
Dissenters (the Congregationalists in New England and the Presbyterians and
Baptists in New York and the South); or non-English peoples with ancient
reasons for hating the English (the Scots-Irish); or outsiders in a British-
dominated society (Germans and Dutch); or slaveowners sharply conscious of
the distaste with which they were regarded by the British at home.
A divisive controversy racked the colonies in the mid-18th century concerning
the privileges of the Church of England. Many believed in the existence of an
Anglican plot against religious liberty. In New England it was widely
asserted that the colonial tie to immoral, affluent, Anglican-dominated
Britain was endangering the soul of America. Many southerners also
disapproved of the ostentatious plantation living that grew out of the
tobacco trade--as well as the widespread bankruptcies resulting from dropping
tobacco prices--and urged separation from Britain.
The current ideology among many colonists was that of republicanism. The
radicalism of the 18th century, it called for grounding government in the
people, giving them the vote, holding frequent elections, abolishing
established churches, and separating the powers of government to guard
against tyranny. Republicans also advocated that most offices be elective and
that government be kept simple, limited, and respectful of the rights of
citizens.
Deterioration of Imperial Ties
In this prickly atmosphere London's heavy-handedness caused angry reactions
on the part of Americans. The Quartering Act of 1765 ordered colonial
assemblies to house the standing army; to override the resulting protests in
America, London suspended the New York assembly until it capitulated. In 1767
the TOWNSHEND ACTS levied tariffs on many articles imported into the
colonies. These imports were designed to raise funds to pay wages to the army
as well as to the royal governors and judges, who had formerly been dependent
on colonial assemblies for their salaries. Nonimportation associations
immediately sprang up in the colonies to boycott British goods. When mob
attacks prevented commissioners from enforcing the revenue laws, part of the
army was placed (1768) in Boston to protect the commissioners. This action
confirmed the colonists' suspicion that the troops were maintained in the
colonies to deprive them of their liberty. In March 1770 a group of soldiers
fired into a crowd that was harassing them, killing five persons; news of the
BOSTON MASSACRE spread through the colonies.
The chastened ministry in London now repealed all the Townshend duties except
for that on tea. Nonetheless, the economic centralization long reflected in
the NAVIGATION ACTS--which compelled much of the colonial trade to pass
through Britain on its way to the European continent--served to remind
colonials of the heavy price exacted from them for membership in the empire.
The Sugar Act of 1764, latest in a long line of such restrictive measures,
produced by its taxes a huge revenue for the crown. By 1776 it drained from
the colonies about 600,000 pounds sterling, an enormous sum. The colonial
balance of trade with England was always unfavorable for the Americans, who
found it difficult to retain enough cash to purchase necessary goods.
In 1772 the crown, having earlier declared its right to dismiss colonial
judges at its pleasure, stated its intention to pay directly the salaries of
governors and judges in Massachusetts. Samuel ADAMS, for many years a
passionate republican, immediately created the intercolonial Committee of
Correspondence. Revolutionary sentiment mounted. In December 1773 swarms of
colonials disguised as Mohawks boarded recently arrived tea ships in Boston
harbor, flinging their cargo into the water. The furious royal government
responded to this BOSTON TEA PARTY by the so-called INTOLERABLE ACTS of 1774,
practically eliminating self-government in Massachusetts and closing Boston's
port.
Virginia moved to support Massachusetts by convening the First CONTINENTAL
CONGRESS in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774. It drew up declarations of
rights and grievances and called for nonimportation of British goods.
Colonial militia began drilling in the Massachusetts countryside. New
Englanders were convinced that they were soon to have their churches placed
under the jurisdiction of Anglican bishops. They believed, as well, that the
landowning British aristocracy was determined, through the levying of ruinous
taxes, to reduce the freeholding yeomanry of New England to the status of
tenants. The word "slavery" was constantly on their lips.
The War for Independence
In April 1775, Gen. Thomas GAGE in Boston was instructed to take the
offensive against the Massachusetts troublemakers, now declared traitors to
the crown. Charged with bringing an end to the training of militia and
gathering up all arms and ammunition in colonial hands, on April 19, Gage
sent a body of 800 soldiers to Concord to commandeer arms. On that day, the
Battles of LEXINGTON AND CONCORD took place, royal troops fled back to
Boston, and American campfires began burning around the city. The war of the
AMERICAN REVOLUTION had begun.
It soon became a world war, with England's European enemies gladly joining in
opposing England in order to gain revenge for past humiliations. British
forces were engaged in battle from the Caribbean and the American colonies to
the coasts of India. Furthermore, the United Colonies, as the Continental
Congress called the rebelling 13 colonies, were widely scattered in a huge
wilderness and were occupied by a people most of whom were in arms. The
dispersion of the American population meant that the small (by modern
standards) cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia could be taken and
held for long periods without affecting the outcome.
LOYALISTS numbered about 60,000, living predominantly along the coast where
people of English ethnic background and anglicized culture were most
numerous, but they were widely separated and weak. Pennsylvania's Quakers had
looked to the crown as their protector against the Scots-Irish and other
militant groups in Pennsylvania. The Quakers were appalled at the rebellion,
aggressively led in the Middle Colonies by the Presbyterian Scots-Irish, and
refused to lend it support. London deluded itself, however, with the belief
that the Loyalists represented a majority that would soon resume control and
end the conflict.
Within a brief period after the Battle of Concord, practically all royal
authority disappeared from the 13 colonies. Rebel governments were
established in each colony, and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia
provided a rudimentary national government. The task now before the British
was to fight their way back onto the continent, reestablish royal governments
in each colony, and defeat the colonial army. By March 1776 the British
evacuated Boston, moving to take and hold New York City. Within days of the
British arrival in New York, however, the Congress in Philadelphia issued
(July 4) the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. In December 1776, Gen. George
WASHINGTON reversed the early trend of American defeats by a stunning victory
at Trenton, N.J. (see TRENTON, BATTLE OF). Thereafter, as the fighting wore
on and the cause survived, Washington became in America and abroad a symbol
of strength and great bravery.
In February 1778 the French joined the conflict by signing an alliance with
the Continental Congress. With the aid of the French fleet the British army
in the north was reduced to a bridgehead at New York City. Shifting its
efforts to the south, the royal army campaigned through Georgia and the
Carolinas between 1778 and 1780, marching to the James Peninsula, in
Virginia, in 1781. Here, in the YORKTOWN CAMPAIGN, by the combined efforts of
Washington's troops and the French army and navy, Lord CORNWALLIS was forced
to surrender on Oct. 19, 1781. The fighting, effectively, was over. In
September 1783 the Treaty of Paris secured American independence on generous
terms. The new nation was given an immense domain that ran westward to the
Mississippi River (except for Britain's Canadian colonies and East and West
Florida, which reverted to Spanish rule).
A NEW NATION
The first federal constitution of the new American republic was the ARTICLES
OF CONFEDERATION. With ratification of that document in 1781, the nation had
adopted its formal name, the United States of America.
Government under the Articles of Confederation
Under the Articles the only national institution was the Confederation
Congress, with limited powers not unlike those of the United Nations. The
states retained their sovereignty, with each state government selecting
representatives to sit in the Congress. No national executive or judiciary
had been established. Each state delegation received an equal vote on all
issues. Congress was charged with carrying on the foreign relations of the
United States, but because it had no taxing powers (it could only request
funds from the states), it had no strength to back up its diplomacy. In
addition, it had no jurisdiction over interstate commerce; each state could
erect tariffs against its neighbors.
The Confederation Congress, however, achieved one great victory: it succeeded
in bringing all 13 of the states to agree on a plan for organizing and
governing the western territories (the "public lands") beyond the
Appalachians. Each state ceded its western claims to the Congress, which in
three ordinances dealing with the Northwest (1784, 1785, and 1787) provided
that new states established in the western regions would be equal in status
to the older ones. After a territorial stage of quasi self-government, they
would pass to full statehood. The land in the NORTHWEST TERRITORY (the Old
Northwest, that is, the area north of the Ohio River) would be surveyed in
square parcels, 6 mi (9.7 km) on a side, divided into 36 sections, and sold
to settlers at low cost; one plot would be reserved for the support of public
schools. Furthermore, slavery was declared illegal in the Northwest
Territory. (The Southwest Territory, below the Ohio, was organized by the
later federal Congress in 1790 as slave country.)
The Confederation Congress, however, did not survive. Because of its lack of
taxing power, its currency was of little value; widespread social turbulence
in the separate states led many Americans to despair of the new nation. The
republic--regarded as a highly precarious form of government in a world of
monarchies--was founded with the conviction that the people would exercise
the virtue and self-denial required under self- government. Soon, however,
that assumption seemed widely discredited. SHAYS'S REBELLION in Massachusetts
(1786-87) was an attempt to aid debtors by forcibly closing the court system;
mobs terrorized legislators and judges to achieve this end. The new state
legislatures, which had assumed all powers when royal governors were
expelled, confiscated property, overturned judicial decisions, issued floods
of unsecured paper money, and enacted torrents of legislation, some of it ex
post facto (effective retroactively).
The established social and political elite (as distinct from the rough new
antiauthoritarian politicians who had begun to invade the state legislatures,
talking aggressively of "democracy" and "liberty") urgently asserted the need
for a strong national government. The influence that the London authorities
had formerly provided as a balance to local government was absent. Minorities
that had been protected by the crown, such as the Baptists in Massachusetts
and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, were now defenseless. The wealthy classes
maintained that they were at the mercy of the masses. The new United States
was so weak that it was regarded contemptuously all over the world and its
diplomats ignored.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787
A chain of meetings, beginning with one between Virginia and Maryland in 1786
to solve mutual commercial problems and including the larger ANNAPOLIS
CONVENTION later that year, led to the CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION in
Philadelphia in 1787. Deciding to start afresh and fashion a new national
government independent of, and superior to, the states, the delegates made a
crucial decision: the nation's source of sovereignty was to lie in the people
directly, not in the existing states. Using the British Parliament as a
model, they provided for a CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES that would have two
houses to check and balance one another. One house would be elected directly
by the people of each state, with representation proportionate to population;
the other would provide equal representation for each state (two senators
each), to be chosen by the state legislatures.
The powers of the national government were to be those previously exercised
by London: regulation of interstate and foreign commerce, foreign affairs and
defense, and Indian affairs; control of the national domain; and promotion of
"the general welfare." Most important, the Congress was empowered to levy
"taxes, duties, imposts, and excises." The states were prohibited from
carrying on foreign relations, coining money, passing ex post facto laws,
impairing the obligations of contracts, and establishing tariffs.
Furthermore, if social turbulence within a state became serious, the federal
government, following invitation by the legislature or the executive of that
state, could bring in troops to insure "a republican form of government."
A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES with powers much like those of the British
king, except that the office would be elective, was created. Chosen by a
special body (an ELECTORAL COLLEGE), the president would be an independent
and powerful national leader, effectively in command of the government.
Recalling the assaults on judicial power that had been rampant in the states,
the Constitutional Convention also created a fully independent SUPREME COURT
OF THE UNITED STATES, members of which could be removed only if they
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