Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
3.2 INTRODUCTION
The American eighteenth century—often called the Revolutionary or Early
National period because it coincided with the establishment of the soon-to-be
United States—was one punctuated by warfare and nation building. The country’s
rst major experience with warfare in the century came with the French and Indian
War. Part of the broader Seven Years War, this North American phase began in 1754
with territorial disputes over the upper Ohio River Valley by traders and settlers of
New France and traders and setters of the Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies. The
dispute escalated when both territories established forts in the area and escalated
again when they called their respective mother countries into the argument. The
ght between the colonies was another extension of the historic enmity between
France and England and was also mirrored by enmities between dierent Native
American tribes who allied themselves to the side which best served their interests
and desire to defeat rival tribes. The North American phase of the war concluded
in 1760. The larger conict was not settled until 1763, and France was compelled
to cede Canada and lands east of the Mississippi to England.
American colonies’ participation in the French and Indian War aected the
American Revolution in two ways: American militias gained valuable military
experience that was put to use in the later conict, and American dissatisfaction
with England erupted once they started getting the bills from the war. The British
government and public felt that it was only right that the American colonists
help pay the costs of conducting the French and Indian War since it was on their
behalf. The American colonists disagreed since they had no representation in the
government that decided what to tax and how much. American resentment of and
resistance to England peaked with the so-called Intolerable Acts of 1774, which
added the insult of usurped governance to the injury of taxation. Among other
things, the Intolerable Acts closed the port of Boston until the tea destroyed in
the Boston Tea Party was repaid. It also put the Massachusetts government under
direct British control and required American colonists to quarter the British soldiers
there to enforce that control. In response, all the colonies with the exception of
Georgia convened the First Continental Congress and sent a Declaration of Rights
and Grievances to England in late 1774. England’s reply was to send troops to put
down colonial resistance, and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775
initiated the American Revolutionary War.
Soon after those battles, the colonists set about establishing a government. The
Second Continental Congress met to draft the Articles of Confederation. Codifying
a loose connection among sovereign states with a limited central government,
the Articles also established the new name of the country and a bicameral federal
legislature, one side with representation proportionate to population and the
other with equal representation. Completed in 1777 and nally ratied in 1781, the
Articles proved to be problematic after peace with England was ocially declared
with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. While the new Congress had the power to pass
laws, it lacked the power to enforce them, and it became clear within four years of
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