AMERICA's WESTWARD EXPANSION

 

[Published in Essay 7-A: The Northwest Ordinance And Settlers in The West - Constituting America]

America’s westward expansion reshaped the way the world worked. Never before had a national government strategically outlined how settlement would evolve, how new lands would be governed, and how settler rights would be protected.

The movement of people into unsettled or unorganized land was historically shaped by conquest and occupation. Settler rights and representation were at best an afterthought. Rome and other empires granted land to soldiers and political favorites. England and the other European powers granted specific charters for colonies and trading zones. In all cases, these expansions were tied to existing centralized powers and their agendas.

Colonial America found ways to leverage the tangle of charters and geographic distance from England into local self-government. These early forms of representative government closely tied to communities created the foundation of America’s unique civic culture. This led to the Revolutionary War when Britain attempted to undermine this civic culture and constrain the consent of the governed.

America applied the lessons of the Revolution as it was inventing itself under the Articles of Confederation. The grand experiment was how a nation preserves self-governance and protects fundamental rights as it expands territorially. The laboratory for expanding democracy was the unmapped expanse of land beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

In 1670, John Lederer crossed over the Appalachian/Blue Ridge Mountains to explore the Shenandoah River valley and other western lands. In the 1730s, Jost Hite led the first organized group of settlers into this region.

Others soon followed. British King George II allowed westward expansion to counter France’s North American ambitions. King George III, on the other hand, wanted to consolidate American colonists into the narrow coastal region along the eastern seaboard. Preventing westward expansion avoided unnecessary conflicts with Native Americans, allowing England to focus on tightening its control over its colonies.

On October 7, 1763, King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763, forbidding colonists from settling west of the Appalachians. The King demanded that settlers already living west of this new “Proclamation Line” abandon their homesteads and return east. He further prohibited commerce with Native Americans except with traders licensed by the Crown.

Daniel Boone (1734-1820) was among many who ignored the Proclamation, leading legions of settlers into the west through the newly discovered Cumberland Gap (1769).
On January 14, 1784, the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolution. The treaty granted the new nation all British lands from the Proclamation Line to the Mississippi River.

Southern states immediately claimed land to their west all the way to the Mississippi River. This left unclaimed land, known as the “Territory of the United States North West of the Ohio River” to administer. This vast unsettled area was both an unprecedented challenge and opportunity.

Thomas Jefferson proposed the Ordinance of 1784 as a framework for organizing this area. His approach was too complex to implement, but it framed future discussions.
On July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance, crafted by Nathan Dane and Rufus King, both delegates from Massachusetts.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 is considered by historians and constitutional scholars as one of America’s most important founding documents, taking its place with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Ordinance outlined how American settlers in this region would govern themselves, be incorporated into the United States as citizens of new states, and enjoy the basic protections of rights and freedoms. These provisions would guide America’s expansion into the 20th Century.

The Ordinance established a three-stage process for unsettled land to evolve from a federally governed area into a self-governing territory and eventually into a state admitted into the Union as its population grew. It provided for the settlers of these lands to adopt their own state constitution based on the rule of law and consent of the governed. It embraced local governance and federalism, anticipating the U.S. Constitution, which was under consideration at this time (May-September 1787).

The Ordinance’s other key component was Section 14. Its Articles anticipated the Bill of Rights (September 1789-December 1791). This included rights to habeas corpus, trial by jury, due process relating to property, preventing cruel or unusual punishments, and freedom of religion.

The Ordinance’s Section 14, Article 6, prohibited slavery: “There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory.” This incendiary issue was deferred in the U.S. Constitution and only resolved when the 13th Amendment was adopted on December 6, 1865.

The Article 6 prohibition of slavery set the line between free and slave regions. It established the precedent and future conflict over limiting the westward expansion of slavery. Prohibiting slavery in the Northwest shifted the region’s settlement demographics. Slaveholders avoided the Northwest territories while “free laborers” and immigrants flocked there. These ancestral demographics shape the culture and politics of this region to this day.

America Opposes Britain's Power Grab - Taxation

 

[Part of the 90 Day Study: Our Lives, Our Fortunes & Our Sacred Honor – 

Exploring the Declaration of Independence]

90-Day Study Essay Schedule 2021 – Constituting America

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: Grievance Number 10.   “He has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance”.

Grievance Ten in the Declaration of Independence focuses on the most visible aspect of “taxation without representation”, which was foundational to the American Revolution.

England was deep in debt after prevailing in the first worldwide war of the modern era.  The Seven Years War (1756-1763) engaged all European countries, big and small, in a struggle for territorial and political dominance of the European Continent.  It rapidly spread to battling over control of colonies and trade routes throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. 

What was known as the “French and Indian War” in North America was just a small part of this larger world war.

After the British victory, British Prime Minister, Lord Grenville (1763-1765), desperately sought ways to pay off the crippling war debt.  Grenville choose to ignore the fact that American colonists paid, fought, and died to defeat France in North America.  Instead, he promoted the concept that the beneficiaries of the war (American colonists) should pay for it. He also asserted that American colonists should pay for retaining twenty battalions of British soldiers that remained to pacify the people conquered in the former French territories.

Grenville’s first step was to enforce existing customs duties.  Many British Customs officials managed collections through intermediaries while remaining in England.  Grenville forced them to relocate to America as part of his general crack down on smuggling, lax enforcement, and spotty revenue collection. Expanded numbers of Customs Officers became more aggressive in using search warrants, called "writs of assistance", to track down smuggled goods. Warehouses were seized and ships were captured to bolster Royal revenue collection.  Royal Customs officials became a permanent and pervasive presence in Colonial seaports along the Atlantic coast.

Benjamin Franklin cautioned that “what England gained from taxes would be lost in trade”.   A post-War economic recession proved him prophetic.

The shortfall in Customs revenue led to the Stamp Act of 1765, the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. Prior to the Stamp Act taxes were only levied by local government through their elected officials.  Now a government, 3,500 miles away, was asserting control, without the knowledge, approval, or oversight of the colonists.

The Stamp Act imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies.  This included legal documents, playing cards, newspapers, and land titles. Stamps had to be purchased with British sterling, rather than local paper currency, causing additional economic hardship. Proof of payment required affixing a Royal Stamp on documents, thus the name.

The February 1765 Parliament debate on the Stamp Tax reveals the growing chasm between King George III and his proponents versus the American Colonists:

Prime Minister Grenville:

"and now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from heavy weight of the burden which we lie under?"

 

Colonel Isaac Barré [Member of Parliament and friend of Benjamin Franklin] responded:

“They planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted ‘em in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable…

 

“They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of ‘em. As soon as you began to care about ‘em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over 'em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon 'em; men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them....

 

“They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defense, have exerted a valor amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defense of a country whose frontier while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument .... The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has, but a people jealous of their liberties, and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated."

 

Barré’s reference to the “sons of liberty” became the moniker for the Boston Patriots for years to come.

 

Parliament passed the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765.  Hundreds of Royal commissioned “Stamp Agents” arrived in major towns across the American colonies.  They were met with riots and attacks.  In October 1765, representatives from nine of the colonies met at the City Hall in New York City to coordinate opposition, a forerunner to the Continental Congresses. In the face of mounting opposition, and concerns for the safety of Royal Tax officials, the Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on February 22, 1766.

 

While seeming to address colonial concerns, Parliament linked repealing the Stamp Act to passage of the Declaratory Act.  This Act affirmed Parliament’s authority to pass any colonial legislation it saw fit, without input, notice, or representation. The Declaratory Act galvanized colonial concerns about “taxation without representation”, first raised with the Stamp Act.

 

Charles Townshend (August 1766-September 1767) became Prime Minister and developed additional imperatives for taxing the Colonies.  It was no longer just about paying war debt, it was about consolidating Imperial power. 

 

Raising taxes, and trade-based duties and fees, would provide enough money for the British Crown to “reimagine” colonial administration by directly paying Colonial Governors, Judges, and other senior officials.  American-based officials would now owe their livelihood directly to King George III instead of the colonists and colonial assemblies.  By “liberating” royal officials from their financial dependence on American legislatures, Townshend hoped to eliminate the most tangible obstacle preventing regular enforcement of parliamentary laws and royal directives.

 

Higher revenue from the American colonies were also to provide enough funds for Townsend to reduce the British Land Tax, consolidating his Party’s support in future elections.

The “Townshend Acts” created new taxes on numerous consumer goods.  The Acts authorized and funded the hiring of the much referenced, “multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”  Legions of Royal tax collectors and Customs Officers arrived from England to establish new or expanded operations in every major colonial trading center. 

Townshend died before his initiatives swept through the colonies.  Widespread opposition and protests led to the repeal most taxes in April 1770.  The controversial tax on tea remained.

The Tea Tax, and the “swarms of Officers”, remained daily reminders of oppression by unaccountable Royal officials.  Arthur Lee, serving as an observer for Massachusetts before the British Parliament, mused whether any Member of Parliament actually, "know us, or we him? No! Is he bound in duty and interest to preserve our liberty and property? No! Is he acquainted with our circumstances, situation, wants, etc.? No! What then are we to expect from him? Nothing but taxes without end!"

The ever expanding and intrusive presence of tax collectors and customs officers merited several mentions in the “Petition to the King” as part of the documents issued by the First Continental Congress in 1774, and became Grievance Ten in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.