The_American_Repulic

The American Republic in 1787 was the result of many historical events. The process started when the colonists in North America broke free from the British Empire to found the United States of America. The first English colony was founded in Jamestown Virginia in 1607. The colony was a deathtrap, every summer the river became contaminated around Jamestown and sent out killing waves of dysentery, typhoid fever, and malaria. Things were very hard that first year and only 38 of the 104 survived. Over time more settlers came and they began to prosper. The House of Burgesses was the first governing legislature that started by Jamestown colonists in 1619. It first met as a one-house assembly in Virginia with a Governor, Sir George Yeardley, four members of the council, and two burgesses from each of the boroughs. They met to preserve the same rights as the residents of Britain for Virginia's freeholders, the white male property holders. The house determined the eligibility of its own members, passed local laws, carried out the provisions of the governor and the charter, and regulated taxes. Then in 1620, the Mayflower compact was written. The Mayflower compact was the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony. It was written by the Colonists, later known as the pilgrims, who had crossed the Atlantic to come to the New World; America. The compact was signed by 41 of the one hundred passengers aboard the ship. Almost half of the colonist that traveled on the Mayflower was part of a separatist group seeking the freedom to practice Christianity. The Mayflower Compact was based simultaneously upon a majoritarian model (even though the signers were not in the majority) and the settlers' allegiance to the king. It was in essence a social contract in which the settlers consented to follow the compact's rules and regulations for the sake of survival. In 1639, a group of Puritans drafted a constitution affirming their faith in God and their intention to organize a Christian Nation. Delegates of the town of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield drew up these fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The orders represent the frame work for the first formal government written by a representative body. During this time period the people on the New World “America” were ruled by the Kingdom of England, they were treated as though they couldn’t make their own choices, or for lack of better words, people had to be controlled. As time moves on, you will see that the people of what is now, the United States of America, gain their freedom from England and become a free country. In England there was a revolution going on, at this time called the Glorious Revolution. It was called that because there was no bloodshed in this war. This war was the overthrow of King James ll of England by a union parliamentarian with an invading army led by William of Orange; who was married to Mary. As a result of all this, William and Mary took over the throne of England. The English Bill of rights was passed in the parliament in 1689. This Bill of Rights basically said “that subjects have the right to petition the monarch, as well as to have arms in defense “. Back in America, in 1735 our country took a big step towards our Bill of Rights, by way of the John Peter Zenger Case. Peter was a German born-American that owned the New York Weekly Journal. He printed a document that criticized the Governor of New York. The Governor was so mad that he asked the assembly permission to have the journal burnt to the ground. When the assembly refused the Governor, he had Zenger arrested on charges of seditious libel. Andrew Hamilton was appointed defense attorney after Ben Franklin persuaded him to do so. At the end of the trial on Aug. 5, 1735, the twelve jurors returned a verdict of “Not Guilty “on the charge of publishing sedition libels. Hamilton had successfully argued Zenger’s articles were not libelous because even if they were slanderous in use, all the statements were based on fact. Zenger published a verbatim account of the trial as A Brief Narrative of the Trials of Peter Zenger “ No Nation, ancient or modern, ever lost the liberty of speaking freely, writing, or publishing their statements, but forth with lost their liberty in general and became slaves “. This is also in our 1st Amendment of the United Stated Constitution, the freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. The English had the idea that they owned all of North America. The French and the Spanish had also settled here; and let’s not forget that the Native Indian’s that were already here. By 1750 the English population had soured and the people felt crowded in their original 13 colonies, so they were given permission to move west and expand their territory. The French also thought that this land belonged to them, so a war broke out over who was going to control this land. The war was called the French and Indian war because the French had recruit Indian tribes that they had trading connections with, to help in their effort to hold on this part of North America. The English had sent out a man named George Washington, to help fight this war with the French. This war lasted seven years, from 1756 to 1763; some call it the seven year war. In 1755 in Albany the Commander had a meeting to figure out how to take over Quebec. The turning point of this war was when the British captured fort Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Fort Niagara, in Quebec. The French were defeated and soon gave way for the British to settle west of the Mississippi. After the war the British needed to pay the troops for their effects and felt that the colonists should be willing to pay them as well. This bought about the Stamp Act of 1765, in which printed materials, in the colony, be produced on stamp paper produced in London and carrying an embossed revenue stamp. The British troops arrived in Boston around 1768, the troops were there trying to enforce the King’s rule among the colonist. Heavy concentration of British military troops led to a lot of tension among the colonist. This tense situation boiled over into a riot, and eventually led to troops being attacked, in the aftermath, the troops fired their muskets into the crowd of people. This incident led to five civilian deaths, and many injuries all at the hands of the British troops. On March 5, 1770, the legal aftermath of all this helped spark the rebellion in some of the Colonies, which culminated in the American Revolution. John Locke was a philosopher who believed that we are all born with a blank slate; he maintained that we are born without innate ideas and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience served from sense of perception. Before this new theory, people had about two thousand years of the thought that we are not born equal, and that we had to be controlled. John Locke, and others after him, paved the way to a more liberal way of thinking, and reflected in the American Declaration of Independence. This was a very important concept because before this time there was always a ruler, dictator government that was wealthier than the people below them. This period was called the Enlightenment period. The British parliament passed a tea tax, around 1773. The tea tax was came about to make the American colonist pay tax on the tea that was shipped in, but instead of the tax money going to the colonist, it went back to the British Monarch. The colonist called this taxation without reparation, this tax did not go over well with the colonist. Three ships entered the Boston Harbor full of tea; a group of colonist boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into the harbor. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of the taxed tea. The British parliament responded to this act by closing the harbor to other commerce until the colonist pay the tea company back the money for the tea, this was called the Coercive Acts. In turn the colonist protested again by convening the First Continental Congress. The whole crises escalated and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775. All these events lead to the American republic in 1787, after the Revolutionary war we win our independence from the throne of England and became The United State of America.