Government Introduction

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Government Introduction

• Colonies, Revolutionary War
• Declaration of Independence, Constitution

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John TrumbullBunker Hill
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John TrumbullSigning of the Declaration of
Independence
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Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze Washingtons crossing
the Delaware
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John Trumbull Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown
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Basic Concepts of Government

• Ordered Government
• Limited Government
• Representative Government

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Landmark English Documents

• Magna Carta 1215 protection against
  heavy-handed and arbitrary acts by the king.
• Trial by Jury
• Due process of law
• Protection against the arbitrary taking of life,
  liberty, or property
• Power of the Monarch is NOT absolute

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Landmark English Documents

• Petition of Right 1628
• Demanded that the king no longer imprison or
  otherwise punish any person but by the lawful
  judgment of his peers, no martial law in time of
  peace, or shelter troops without consent.
• No man should be compelled to make or yield any
  gift, or loan, benevolence, tax, or such like
  charge, without common consent by act of
  parliament

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Landmark English Documents

• The Bill of Rights 1688 Glorious Rev.
• that the pretended power of suspending the laws,
  or the execution of laws, by regal authority,
  without consent of Parliament is illegal
• That levying money for or to the use of the
  Crownwithout grant of Parliamentis illegal
• That it is the right of the subjects to petition
  the kingand that prosecutions for such
  petitioning are illegal
• Additional rights right to fair trial, protected
  from excessive bail and cruel and unusual
  punishment

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English Colonies

• Massachusetts Royal
• New Hampshire - Royal
• New York - Royal
• Rhode Island - Charter
• Connecticut - Charter
• Pennsylvania Proprietary
• New Jersey - Royal
• Delaware - Proprietary
• Maryland - Proprietary
• Virginia - Royal
• North Carolina - Royal
• South Carolina - Royal
• Georgia - Royal

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English Colonies

• Royal
• subject to direct control of the Crown
• Governor appointed by King
• Governor appointed a Council the Council served
  as the Upper House of the Colonial Legislature
• Eventually a bicameral legislature was elected by
  property owning white men
• Any laws passed by the Legislature were subject
  to the governor and the Crown

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English Colonies

• Proprietary
• These colonies were organized by a proprietor, a
  person to whom the king had made a grant of land.
• Maryland to Lord Baltimore
• Pennsylvania and Delaware to William Penn
• Governors to be appointed by the Proprietor
• Unicameral legislature
• Ultimate decisions carried to the King in London

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English Colonies

• Charter Colonies
• Based on charters granted to the colonists
  themselves. They were largely self-governing
• Connecticut and Rhode Island
• Laws made by their bicameral legislatures were
  not subject to the governors veto nor was the
  Crowns approval needed

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Colonial Unity

• Confederation
• Albany Plan of Union
• Delegates
• Stamp Act Congress

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Independence!

• American Indian Resistance
• Pontiacs Rebellion
• Proclamation of 1763
• Separating the Indians from the Settlers
• Difficult to enforce
• Land-hungry colonists resented the measure
• Colonial governors (themselves land speculators)
  resented the measures

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Independence!

• Financing the Empire
• Sugar Act 1764
• Stamp Act 1765
• Colonial Protests
• Non-importation agreements
• Samuel Adams Sons of Liberty
• Master of Propaganda

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Boston Massacre

• March 5, 1770
• General Thomas Gage
• Crispus Attucks
• John Adams and Josiah Quincy agreed to defend the
  British Soldiers who were tried for murder.
  Neither man sympathized with the British, but
  both insisted that the soldiers deserved a fair
  trial.
• IN the end, two soldiers were convicted of
  manslaughter, As punishment they were branded on
  the hands and released.

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Boston Tea Party

• Tea Act of 1773
• The Sons of Liberty pledged a boycott of tea.
• On December 16, 1773 a well-organized group of
  colonists dressed in an Indian manner dumped
  342 chests of team into the water.

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• Coercive Acts
• Four laws designed to punish Boston
• The Colonists called these Laws the Intolerable
  Acts of 1774

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First Continental Congress

• September October 1774

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Paul Revere

• April 18, 1775 General Gage decided to seize
  rebel military supplies stored in Concord.
• 750 British troops left Boston
• Paul Revere and William Dawes joined Samuel
  Prescott,
• THE BRITISH ARE COMING!
• 273 killed or wounded British soldiers.

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Second Continental Congress
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Boston

• Charlestown
• Battle of Breeds Hill and Bunker Hill

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Patrick Henry

• Gentlemen may cry peace, peace-but there is no
  peace, The War is actually begun!...Is life so
  dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at
  the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
  Almighty God! I know not what course others may
  take but as for me, give me liberty, or give me
  death!

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Thomas Paine

• Government, even in its best state, is but a
  necessary evil in its worst state, an
  intolerable one.
• Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny
  in religion is the worst.
• "These are the times that try men's souls. The
  summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this
  crisis, shrink from the service of his country
  but he that stands it now deserves the love and
  thanks of man and woman. Heaven knows how to put
  a proper price upon its goods and it would be
  strange indeed if so celestial an article as
  Freedom should not be highly rated."

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Declaration of Independence

• July 4th, 1776
• 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. That to secure these
  rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
  deriving their just powers from the consent of
  the governed That whenever any Form of
  Government becomes destructive of these ends it
  is the Right of the People to alter of to abolish
  it, and to instituted new Government, laying its
  foundations on such principles and organizing its
  powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
  likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
• The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United
  States of America

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Benjamin Franklin

• We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall
  all hang separately

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The War!

• Retreat from New York
• Battle of Trenton
• Crossing the Delaware

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The War

• British disaster at Saratoga
• Battle of Yorktown
• Cornwalis Surrender, October 19,1781
• Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783

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War Heros

• General Washington
• Alexander Hamilton
• Green
• Lee
• Marquis de Lafayette
• Baron von Steuben
• Francis Marion (swamp fox) guerrilla warfare
• Howe (British)
• Clinton (British)
• Cornwallis (British)

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States Constitutions

• Popular Sovereignty
• Limited Government
• Civil Rights and Liberties
• Separation of Checks and Balances

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Articles of Confederation

• Adopted July 12, 1776
• Weaknesses
• One vote for each State, regardless of size
• Congress powerless to lay and collect taxes or
  duties
• Congress powerless to regulate foreign and
  interstate commerce.
• No executive to enforce acts of Congress
• No national court system
• Amendment only with consent of all States
• A 9/13 majority required to pass laws.
• Articles only a firm league of friendship.

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Critical Period (1780s)
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Daniel Shays Rebellion

• As economic conditions worsened, property
  holders, many of them small farmers, began to
  lose their land and possessions for lack of
  payment on taxes and other debts. In the fall of
  1786, Daniel Shays, a former American officer in
  the War for Independence, and other local leaders
  led an uprising that forced the debtor courts to
  shut down and stopped property auctions.

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Constitutional Convention

• Summer of 1787, Philadelphia

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Compromises

• Virginia Plan
• New Jersey Plan
• Great Compromise
• Slave States
• Free States
• 3/5th Compromise
• Federalists
• Anti-federalists
• Bill of Rights

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Ratification

• Federalists/Anti-federalists
• Federalist Papers
• New York and Virginia