CSET Practice Test History Subtest I

The War of Independence

"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 lift,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Declaration of
Independence, July 4, 1776 

John Adams, second President of the United States,
declared that the history of the American Revolution began
as far back as 1620. "The Revolution," he said, "was
effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in
the minds and hearts of the people." The principles and
passions that led the Americans to rebel ought, he added,
"to be traced back for two hundred years and sought in the
history of the country from the first plantation in
America." 

As a practical matter, however, the overt parting of the
ways between England and America began in 1763, more than
a century and a half after the first permanent settlement
had been founded at Jamestown, Virginia. The colonies had
grown vastly in economic strength and cultural attainment,
and virtually all had long years of self-government behind
them. Their combined population now exceeded 1,500,000-a
sixfold increase since 1700. 

The implications of the physical growth of the colonies
were far greater than mere numerical increase would
indicate. The 18th century brought a steady expansion from
the influx of immigrants from Europe, and since the best
land near the seacoast had already been occupied, new
settlers had to push inland beyond the fall line of the
rivers. Traders explored the back country, brought back
tales of rich valleys, and induced farmers to take their
families into the wilderness. Although their hardships
were enormous, restless settlers kept coming, and by the
1730s frontiersmen had already begun to pour into the
Shenandoah Valley. 

Down to 1763, Great Britain had formulated no consistent
policy for her colonial possessions. The guiding principle
was the confirmed mercantilist view that colonies should
supply the mother country with raw materials and not
compete in manufacturing. But policy was poorly enforced,
and the colonies had never thought of themselves as
subservient. Rather, they considered themselves chiefly as
commonwealths or states, much like England herself, having
only a loose association with authorities in London. 

At infrequent intervals, sentiment in England was aroused
and efforts were made by Parliament or the Crown to
subordinate the economic activities and governments of the
colonies to England's will and interest - efforts to which
the majority of the colonists were opposed. The remoteness
afforded by a vast ocean allayed fears of reprisal the
colonies might otherwise have had. 

Added to this remoteness was the character of life itself
in early America. From countries limited in space and
dotted with populous towns, the settlers had come to a
land of seemingly unending reach. On such a continent
natural conditions stressed the importance of the
individual. 

Frontier fosters self-reliance The colonists-inheritors of
the traditions of the Englishman's long struggle for
political liberty-incorporated concepts of freedom into
Virginia's first charter. This provided that English
colonists were to exercise all liberties, franchises, and
immunities "as if they had been abiding and born within
this our Realm of England." They were, then, to enjoy the
benefits of the Magna Carta and the common law. 

In the early days, the colonies were able to hold fast to
their heritage of rights because of the King's arbitrary
assumption that they were not subject to parliamentary
control. In addition, for years afterward, the kings of
England were too preoccupied with a great struggle in
England itself - a struggle which culminated in the
Puritan Revolution - to enforce their will. Before
Parliament could bring its attention to the task of
molding the American colonies to an imperial policy, they
had grown strong and prosperous in their own right. 

From the first year after they had set foot upon the new
continent, the colonists had functioned according to the
English law and constitution - with legislative
assemblies, a representative system of government, and a
recognition of the common-law guarantees of personal
liberty. But increasingly legislation became American in
point of view, and less and less attention was paid to
English practices and precedents. Nevertheless, colonial
freedom from effective English control was not achieved
without conflict, and colonial history abounds in
struggles between the assemblies elected by the people and
the governors appointed by the King. 

Still, the colonists were often able to render the royal
governors powerless, for, as a rule, governors had "no
subsistence but from the Assembly." Governors were
sometimes instructed to give profitable offices and land
grants to influential colonists to secure their support
for royal projects but, as often as not, the colonial
officials, once they had secured these emoluments,
espoused the popular cause as strongly as ever. 

The recurring clashes between governor and assembly worked
increasingly to awaken the colonists to the divergence
between American and English interests. Gradually, the
assemblies took over the functions of the governors and
their councils, which were made up of colonists selected
for their docile support of royal power, and the center of
colonial administration shifted from London to the
provincial capitals. Early in the 1770s, following the
final expulsion of the French from the North American
continent, an attempt was made to bring about a drastic
change in the relationship between the colonies and the
mother country. 

British and French clash While the British had been
filling the Atlantic coastal area with farms, plantations,
and towns, the French had been planting a different kind
of dominion in the St. Lawrence Valley in eastern Canada.
Having sent over fewer settlers but more explorers,
missionaries, and fur traders, France had taken possession
of the Mississippi River and, by a line of forts and
trading posts, marked out a great crescent-shaped empire
stretching from Quebec in the northeast to New Orleans in
the south. Thus they tended to pin the British to the
narrow belt east of the Appalachian Mountains. 

The British had long resisted what they considered "the
encroachment of the French." As early as 1613, local
clashes occurred between French and English colonists.
Eventually, there was organized warfare, the American
counterpart of the larger conflict between England and
France. Thus, between 1689 and 1697, "King William's War"
was fought as the American phase of the European "War of
the Palatinate." From 1702 to 1713, "Queen Anne's War"
corresponded to the "War of the Spanish Succession." And
from 1744 to 1748, "King George's War" paralleled the "War
of the Austrian Succession." Though England secured
certain advantages from these wars, the struggles were
generally indecisive, and France remained in a strong
position on the American continent. 

In the 1750s, the conflict was brought to a final phase.
The French, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748,
tightened their hold on the Mississippi Valley. At the
same time, the movement of English colonists across the
Alleghenies increased in tempo, stimulating a race for
physical possession of the same territory. An armed clash
in 1754, involving Virginia militiamen under the command
of 22-year old George Washington and a band of French
regulars, ushered in the "French and Indian War" - with
the English and their Indian allies fighting the French
and their Indian allies. This was destined to determine
once and for all French or English supremacy in North
America. 

Never had there been greater need for action and unity in
the British colonies. The French threatened not only the
British Empire but the American colonists themselves, for
in holding the Mississippi Valley, France could check
their westward expansion. The French government of Canada
and Louisiana had not only increased in strength but had
also in prestige with the Indians, even the Iroquois, the
traditional allies of the British. With a new war, every
British settler wise in Indian matters knew that drastic
measures would be needed to ward off disaster. 

First stirring of unity At this juncture, the British
Board of Trade, hearing reports of deteriorating relations
with the Indians, ordered the governor of New York and
commissioners from the other colonies to call a meeting of
the Iroquois chiefs to frame a joint treaty. In June 1754,
representatives of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and
the New England colonies met with the Iroquois at Albany.
The Indians aired their grievances, and the delegates
recommended appropriate action. 

The Albany Congress, however, transcended its original
purpose of solving Indian problems. It declared a union of
the American colonies "absolutely necessary for their
preservation," and the colonial representatives present
adopted the Albany Plan of Union. Drafted by Benjamin
Franklin, the plan provided that a president appointed by
the King act with a grand council of delegates chosen by
the assemblies, each colony to be represented in
proportion to its financial contributions to the general
treasury. The government was to have charge of all British
interests in the west - Indian treaties, trade, defense,
and settlement. But none of the colonies accepted
Franklin's plan, for none wished to surrender either the
power of taxation or control over the development of the
west. 

The colonies offered little support for the war as a
whole, all schemes failing to bring them "to a sense of
their duty to the King." The colonists could see the war
only as a struggle for empire on the part of England and
France. They felt no compunction when the British
government was obliged to send large numbers of regular
troops to wage colonial battles. Nor did they regret that
the "redcoats," rather than provincial troops, won the
war. Nor did they see any reason for curtailing commerce
that, in effect, constituted "trade with the enemy. 

In spite of this lack of wholehearted colonial support and
in spite of several early military defeats, England's
superior strategic position and her competent leadership
ultimately brought complete victory. After eight years of
conflict, Canada and the upper Mississippi Valley were
finally conquered, and the dream of a French empire in
North America faded. 

Having triumphed over France, not only in America but in
India and throughout the colonial world generally, Britain
was compelled to face a problem that she had hitherto
neglected - the governance of her empire. It was essential
that she now organize her vast possessions to facilitate
defense, reconcile the divergent interests of different
areas and peoples, and distribute more evenly the cost of
imperial administration. 

In North America alone, British overseas territories had
more than doubled. To the narrow strip along the Atlantic
coast had been added the vast expanse of Canada and the
territory between the Mississippi River and the
Alleghenies, an empire in itself. A population that had
been predominantly Protestant English and Anglicized
continentals now included Catholic French and large
numbers of partly Christianized Indians. Defense and
administration of the new territories, as well as the old,
would require huge sums of money and increased personnel.
The "old colonial system" was obviously inadequate. Even
during the exigencies of a war imperiling the very
existence of the colonists themselves, the system had
proved incapable of securing colonial cooperation or
support. What then could be expected in time of peace when
no external danger loomed? 

Colonists resist Clear as was the British need for a new
imperial design, the situation in America was anything but
favorable to a change. Long accustomed to a large measure
of independence, the colonies were demanding more, not
less, freedom, particularly now that the French menace had
been eliminated. To put a new system into effect, to
tighten control, the statesmen of England had to contend
with colonists trained to self-government and impatient of
interference. 

One of the first things attempted by the British was to
organize the interior. The conquest of Canada and of the
Ohio Valley necessitated policies that would not alienate
the French and Indian inhabitants. But here the Crown came
into conflict with the interests of the colonies, which,
fast increasing in population, were bent upon exploiting
the newly won territories themselves. Needing new land,
various colonies claimed the right to extend their
boundaries as far west as the Mississippi River. 

The British government, fearing that farmers migrating
into the new lands would provoke a series of Indian wars,
believed that the restive Indians should be given time to
settle down and that lands should be opened to colonists
on a more gradual basis. In 1763, a royal proclamation
reserved all the western territory between the
Alleghenies, the Floridas, the Mississippi, and Quebec for
the use of the Indians. Thus the Crown attempted to sweep
away every western land claim of the thirteen colonies and
to stop westward expansion. Though never effectively
enforced, this measure, in the eyes of the colonists,
constituted a highhanded disregard of their most
elementary right to occupy and utilize western lands as
needed. 

More serious in its repercussions was the new financial
policy of the British government, which needed more money
to support the growing empire. Unless the taxpayer in
England was to supply it all, the colonies would have to
contribute. But revenue could be extracted from the
colonies only through a stronger central administration,
at the expense of colonial self-government. 

The first step in inaugurating the new system was the
passage of the Sugar Act of 1764. This was designed to
raise revenue without regulating trade. In fact, it
replaced the Molasses Act of 1733, which had placed a
prohibitive duty on the import of rum and molasses from
non-English areas. The amended Sugar Act forbade the
importation of foreign rum; put a modest duty on molasses
from all sources; and levied duties on wines, silks,
coffee, and a number of other luxury items. To enforce it,
customs officials were ordered to show more energy and
strictness. British warships in American waters were
instructed to seize smugglers, and "writs of assistance"
(blanket warrants) authorized the King's officers to
search suspected premises. 

Taxation without representation at issue It was not so
much the new duties that caused consternation among New
England merchants. It was rather the fact that steps were
being taken to enforce them effectively, an entirely new
development. For over a generation, New Englanders had
been accustomed to importing the larger part of the
molasses for their rum distilleries from the French and
Dutch West Indies without paying a duty. They now
contended that payment of even the small duty imposed
would be ruinous. 

As it happened, the preamble to the Sugar Act gave the
colonists an opportunity to rationalize their discontent
on constitutional grounds. The power of Parliament to tax
colonial commodities for the regulation of trade had long
been accepted in theory though not always in practice, but
the power to tax "for improving the revenue of this
Kingdom," as stated in the Revenue Act of 1764, was new
and hence debatable. 

The constitutional issue became an entering wedge in the
great dispute that was finally to wrest the American
colonies from England. "One single act of Parliament,"
wrote James Otis, fiery orator from Massachusetts, "has
set more people a-thinking in six months, more than they
had done in their whole lives before." Merchants,
legislatures, and town meetings protested against the
expediency of the law, and colonial lawyers like  Samuel
Adams found in the preamble the first intimation of
"taxation without representation," the catchword that was
to draw many to the cause of the American patriots against
the mother country. 

Later in the same year, Parliament enacted a Currency Act
"to prevent paper bills of credit hereafter issued in any
of His Majesty's colonies from being made legal tender."
Since the colonies were a deficit trade area and were
constantly short of "hard money," this added a serious
burden to the colonial economy. History of American Money
Equally objectionable from the colonial viewpoint was the
Billeting Act, passed in 1765, which required colonies to
provide quarters and supplies for royal troops. 

Strong as was the opposition to these acts, it was the
last of the measures inaugurating the new colonial system
that sparked organized resistance. Known to history as the
"Stamp Act," it provided that revenue stamps be affixed to
all newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets, licenses, leases,
or other legal documents, the revenue (collected by
American agents) to be used for "defending, protecting,
and securing" the colonies. The burden seemed so evenly
and lightly distributed that the measure passed Parliament
with little debate. 

The violence of the reaction in the thirteen colonies,
however, astonished moderate men everywhere. The act
aroused the hostility of the most powerful and articulate
groups in the population, journalists, lawyers, clergymen,
merchants, and businessmen, north and south, east and
west, for it bore equally on all sections of the country.
Soon leading merchants, whose every bill of lading would
be taxed, organized for resistance and formed non-
importation associations. 

Trade with the mother country fell off sharply in the
summer of 1765. Prominent men organized as "Sons of
Liberty," and political opposition soon flared into
rebellion. Inflamed crowds paraded the streets of Boston.
From Massachusetts to South Carolina the act was
nullified, and mobs, forcing luckless agents to resign
their offices, destroyed the hated stamps. 

Spurred by Patrick Henry, the Virginia Assembly passed a
set of resolutions denouncing taxation without
representation as a threat to colonial liberties. A few
days later, the Massachusetts House invited all the
colonies to appoint delegates to a Congress in New York to
consider the Stamp Act menace. This Congress, held in
October 1765, was the first intercolonial meeting ever
summoned on American initiative. Twenty-seven men from
nine colonies seized the opportunity to mobilize colonial
opinion against parliamentary interference in American
affairs. After much debate, the Congress adopted a set of
resolutions asserting that "no taxes ever have been or can
be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their
respective legislatures" and that the Stamp Act had a
"manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of
the colonists." 

Tax dispute Abates The issue thus drawn centered on the
question of representation. From the colonies' point of
view, it was impossible to consider themselves represented
in Parliament unless they actually elected members to the
House of Commons. But this conflicted with the orthodox
English principle of "virtual representation," that is,
representation by classes and interests rather than by
locality. 

Most British officials held that Parliament was an
imperial body representing and exercising the same
authority over the colonies as over the homeland: It could
pass laws for Massachusetts as it could for Berkshire in
England. 

The American leaders argued that no "imperial" Parliament
existed; their only legal relations were with the Crown.
It was the King who had agreed to establish colonies
beyond the sea and the King who provided them with
governments. That the King was equally a King of England
and a King of Massachusetts they agreed, but they also
insisted that the English Parliament had no more right to
pass laws for Massachusetts than the Massachusetts
legislature had to pass laws for England. 

The British Parliament was unwilling to accept the
colonial contentions. British merchants, however, feeling
the effects of the American boycott, threw their weight
behind a repeal movement, and in 1766 Parliament yielded,
repealing the Stamp Act and modifying the Sugar Act. The
colonies rejoiced. Colonial merchants gave up the non-
importation agreement, the Sons of Liberty subsided, trade
resumed its course, peace seemed at hand. 

But it was only a respite. The year 1767 brought another
series of measures that stirred anew all the elements of
discord. Charles Townshend, British Chancellor of the
Exchequer, was called upon to draft a new fiscal program.
Intent upon reducing British taxes by making more
efficient the collection of duties levied on American
trade, he tightened customs administration, at the same
time sponsoring duties on paper, glass, lead, and tea
exported from Britain to the colonies. 

This was designed to raise revenue to be used in part to
support colonial governors, judges, customs officers, and
the British army in America. Another act suggested by
Townshend authorized the superior courts of the colonies
to issue writs of assistance, thus giving specific legal
authority to the general search warrants already hateful
to the colonists. 

The agitation following enactment of the Townshend duties
was less violent than that stirred by the Stamp Act, but
it was nevertheless strong. Merchants once again resorted
to non-importation agreements. Men dressed in homespun
clothing, women found substitutes for tea. Students used
colonial-made paper. Houses went unpainted. In Boston
where the mercantile interests here most sensitive to any
interference, enforcement of the new regulations provoked
violence. When customs officials sought to collect duties,
they were set upon by the populace and roughly handled.
For this, two regiments were dispatched to protect the
customs commissioners. 

The presence of British troops in Boston was a standing
invitation to disorder. On March 5, 1770, after 18 months
of resentment, antagonism between citizens and soldiery
flared up. What began as a harmless snowballing of the
redcoats degenerated into a mob attack. Someone gave the
order to fire; three Bostonians lay dead in the snow; and
colonial agitators had a valuable issue n their campaign
to arouse hostility toward England. Dubbed the Boston
Massacre, the incident was dramatically pictured as proof
of British heartlessness and tyranny. 

Faced with such opposition, Parliament in 1770 opted for a
strategic retreat and repealed all the Townshend duties
except that on tea. The tea tax was retained because, as
George III said, there must always be one tax to keep up
the right. To most colonists the action of Parliament
constituted, in effect, a "redress of grievances," and the
campaign against England was largely dropped. An embargo
on "English tea" continued but was not too scrupulously
observed. 

Generally, the situation seemed auspicious for imperial
relations. Prosperity was increasing and most colonial
leaders were willing to let the future take care of
itself. Inertia and neglect seemed to succeed where bolder
policies had failed. The moderate element, everywhere
predominant in the colonies, welcomed this peaceful
interlude. 

Patriots agitate: the Boston "Tea Party" During a three-
year interval of calm, a relatively small number of
"patriots" or "radicals" strove energetically to keep the
controversy alive. As long as the tea tax remained, they
contended, the principle of Parliament's right over the
colonies remained. And at any time in the future, the
principle might be applied in full with devastating effect
on colonial liberties. 

Typical of the patriots was their most effective leader,
Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, who toiled tirelessly for a
single end: independence. From the time he graduated from
Harvard College, Adams was a public servant in some
capacity-inspector of chimneys, tax-collector, moderator
of town meetings. A consistent failure in business, he was
shrewd and able in politics, with the New England town
meeting the theater of his action. 

Adam's tools were men: his goal was to win the confidence
and support of ordinary people, to free them from awe of
their social and political superiors, make them aware of
their own importance, and arouse them to action. To do
this, he published articles in newspapers and made
speeches in town meetings, instigating resolutions
appealing to the colonists' democratic impulses. 

In 1772, he induced the Boston town meeting to select a
"committee of correspondence" to state the rights and
grievances of the colonists, to communicate with other
towns on these matters, and to request them to draft
replies. Quickly, the idea spread. Committees were set up
in virtually all the colonies, and out of them soon grew a
base of effective revolutionary organizations. 

In 1773, Britain furnished Adams and his co-workers with a
desired issue. The powerful East India Company, finding
itself in critical financial straits, appealed to the
British government and was granted a monopoly on all tea
exported to the colonies. Because of the Townshend tea
tax, the colonists had boycotted the company's tea and,
after 1770, such a flourishing illegal trade existed that
perhaps nine-tenths of the tea consumed in America was of
foreign origin and imported duty-free. 

The company decided to sell its tea through its own agents
at a price well under the customary one, thus
simultaneously making smuggling unprofitable and
eliminating the independent colonial merchants. Aroused
not only by the loss of the tea trade but also by the
monopolistic practice involved, the colonial traders
joined the patriots. In virtually all the colonies, steps
were taken to prevent the East India Company from
executing its design.  

In ports other than Boston, agents of the company were
"persuaded" to resign, and new shipments of tea were
either returned to England or warehoused. In Boston, the
agents refused to resign and, with the support of the
royal governor, preparations were made to land incoming
cargoes regardless of opposition. The answer of the
patriots, led by Samuel Adams, was violence. On the night
of December 16 1773 a band of men disguised as Mohawk
Indians boarded three British ships lying at anchor and
dumped their tea cargo into the Boston harbor. 

British repress colony: others rally to its aid A crisis
now confronted Britain. The East India Company had carried
out a parliamentary statute, and if the destruction of the
tea went unheeded, Parliament would admit to the world
that it had no control over the colonies. Official opinion
in Britain almost unanimously condemned the Boston "Tea
Party" as an act of vandalism and advocated legal measures
to bring the insurgent colonists into line. 

Parliament responded with new laws-called by the colonists
"Coercive Acts." The first one, the Boston Port Bill,
which closed the port of Boston until the tea was paid
for, threatened the very life of the city, for to exclude
Boston from the sea meant economic disaster. Other
enactments prescribed appointment by the King of
Massachusetts councilors, formerly elected by the
colonists; and the summoning of jurors by sheriffs, who
were agents of the governor. Hitherto jurors had been
chosen in colonial town meetings. Also, the governor's
permission would be required for holding town meetings,
and the appointment and removal of judges and sheriffs
would be in his hands. A Quartering Act required local
authorities to find suitable quarters for British troops. 

The Quebec Act, passed at nearly the same time, extended
the boundaries of the province of Quebec and guaranteed
the right of the French inhabitants to enjoy religious
freedom and their own legal customs. The colonists opposed
this act because, disregarding old charter claims to
western lands, it threatened to interfere with the
westward movement and seemed to hem them in to the north
and northwest by a Roman Catholic dominated province.
Though the Quebec Act had not been passed as a punitive
measure, it was classed by the Americans with the Coercive
Acts, and all became known as the "Five Intolerable Acts."
These acts, instead of subduing Massachusetts, as they had
been planned to do, rallied her sister colonies to her
aid. 

At the suggestion of the Virginia Burgesses, colonial
representatives were summoned to meet in Philadelphia on
September 5, 1774, "to consult upon the present unhappy
state of the Colonies." Delegates to this meeting, known
as the first Continental Congress, were chosen by
provincial congresses or popular conventions. Every colony
except Georgia sent at least one delegate, and the total
number of 55 was large enough for diversity of opinion but
small enough for genuine debate and effective action. 

The division of opinion in the colonies posed a genuine
dilemma for the Congress: it must give an appearance of
firm unanimity to induce the British government to make
concessions and, at the same time, it must avoid any show
of radicalism or "spirit of independence" that would alarm
moderate Americans. A cautious keynote speech, followed by
a "resolve" that no obedience was due the Coercive Acts,
ended with a Declaration of Rights and Grievances
addressed to the people of Great Britain. 

The most important action taken by the Congress, however,
was the formation of an "Association," which provided for
the renewal of the trade boycott and for a system of
committees to inspect customs entries, publish the names
of merchants who violated the agreements, confiscate their
importations, and encourage frugality, economy, and
industry. 

The Association everywhere assumed the leadership,
spurring new local organizations to end what remained of
royal authority. These intimidated the hesitant into
joining the popular movement and punished the hostile.
They began the collection of military supplies and the
mobilization of troops. And they fanned public opinion
into revolutionary ardor. 

A breach that had been developing slowly among the people
widened with the activities of the Association committees.
Many Americans, opposed to British encroachment on
American rights, favored discussion and compromise as the
proper solution. This group included most of those of
official rank (Crown-appointed officers), many Quakers and
members of other religious sects opposed to the use of
violence, many merchants, especially from the middle
colonies, and some discontented farmers and frontiersmen
from southern colonies. The patriots, on the other hand,
drew their support not only from the less well-to-do but
from many of the professional class, especially lawyers,
most of the great planters of the south, and a number of
merchants. 

While the course of events after the passage of the
Coercive Acts left the loyalists appalled and frightened,
the King might well have effected an alliance with them
and, by timely concessions, so strengthened their position
that the patriots would have found it difficult to proceed
with hostilities. But George III had no intention of
making concessions. In September 1774, scorning a petition
by Philadelphia Quakers, he wrote,"The die is now cast,
the Colonies must either submit or triumph." This cut the
ground from under the loyalists or "Tories," as they were
coming to be called. 

General Thomas Gage, an amiable English gentleman with an
American-born wife, was in command of the garrison at
Boston, where political activity had almost wholly
replaced trade. A leading patriot of the town, Dr. Joseph
Warren, wrote to an English friend on February 20 1775:

"It is not yet too late to accommodate the dispute
amicably, but I am of the opinion that if once General
Gage should lead his troops into the country with the
design to enforce the late acts of Parliament, Great
Britain may take her leave, at least of the New England
colonies, and if I mistake not, of all America. If there
is any wisdom in the nation, God grant it may be speedily
called forth!"

General Gage's duty was to enforce the Coercive Acts. News
reached him that the Massachusetts patriots were
collecting powder and military stores at the interior town
of Concord, 32 kilometers from Boston. On the night of
April 18, 1775, he sent a strong detail of his garrison to
confiscate these munitions and to seize Samuel Adams and
John Hancock, both of whom had been ordered sent to
England to stand trial for their lives. But the whole
countryside had been alerted by Paul Revere and two other
messengers. 

When the British troops, after a night of marching,
reached the village of Lexington, they saw through the
early morning mist a grim band of 50 minutemen - armed
colonists - lined up across the common. There was a moment
of hesitation, cries and orders from both sides and, in
the midst of the noise, a shot. Firing broke out along
both lines, and the Americans dispersed, leaving eight of
their dead upon the green. The first blood of the war for
American independence had been shed. 

The British pushed on to Concord, where the "embattled
farmers" at North Bridge "fired the shot heard round the
world." Their purpose partly accomplished, the British
force began the return march. All along the road, behind
stone walls, hillocks, and houses militiamen from village
and farm made targets of the bright red coats of the
British soldiers. By the time the weary column stumbled
into Boston its losses totaled nearly three times those
sustained by the colonists. 

The congress debates independence The news of Lexington
and Concord flew from one local community to another in
the thirteen colonies. Within 20 days, it evoked a common
spirit of American patriotism from Maine to Georgia. 

While the alarms of Lexington and Concord were still re-
sounding, the Second Continental Congress met in
Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. Its president was John
Hancock, a wealthy Boston merchant. Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin, who had returned from London, where, as
"agent" for several of the colonies, he had vainly sought
conciliation. The Congress had barely organized before it
was called upon to face the issue of open warfare.
Although some opposition was present, the real temper of
the Congress was revealed by a stirring declaration of the
"Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms," the joint
product of John Dickinson and Jefferson: 

"Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal
resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance
is undoubtedly attainable.... The arms we have been
compelled by our enemies to assume, we will... employ for
the preservation of our liberties, being with one mind
resolved to die free men rather than live slaves."

Even as the declaration was being debated, Congress took
the militia into continental service and appointed Colonel
George Washington commander in chief of the American
forces. Yet in spite of the military involvement and the
appointment of a commander in chief, the idea of complete
separation from England was still repugnant to some
members of the Congress and to a sizeable portion of the
American people. It was obvious, however, that the
colonies could not forever remain half in and half out of
the British empire. 

Resolution stiffens As the months wore on, the
difficulties of prosecuting a war while still part of the
British empire became more and more apparent. No
compromise came from England, and, on August 23, 1775,
King George issued a proclamation declaring the colonies
to be in a state of rebellion. 

Five months later, Thomas Paine published a 50-page
pamphlet, Common Sense, driving home in vigorous style the
necessity for independence. Paine, a political theorist
who had come to America from England in 1774, even dared
to attack the sacred person of the King, ridiculing the
idea of hereditary monarchy and declaring that one honest
man was worth more to society than "all the crowned
ruffians that ever lived." Persuasively he presented the
alternatives - continued submission to a tyrannical king
and an outworn government or liberty and happiness as a
self-sufficient, independent republic. Circulated
throughout the colonies, the pamphlet helped to
crystallize conviction and to rally the undecided to the
cause of separation. 

There still remained the task of gaining the approval of
each colony to a formal declaration of separation. There
was common agreement that the Continental Congress should
take no such definitive step as independence without first
receiving explicit instructions from the colonies. But the
Congress daily heard of the establishment of other new
extralegal colonial governments and of delegates being
authorized to vote for independence. At the same time, the
predominance of radicals in the Congress increased as they
extended their correspondence, bolstered weak committees,
and fired patriot minds with stirring resolutions. 

Finally, on May 10, 1776, a resolution to "cut the Gordian
knot" was adopted. Now only a formal declaration was
needed. On June 7, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia
introduced a resolution declaring in favor of
independence, foreign alliances, and American federation.
Immediately, a committee of five, headed by Thomas
Jefferson of Virginia, was appointed to prepare a formal
declaration "setting forth the causes which impelled us to
this mighty resolution." 

Colonies adopt declaration of independence The Declaration
of Independence - adopted July 4, 1776 - not only
announced the birth of a new nation, it also set forth a
philosophy of human freedom thenceforth to be a dynamic
force in the entire western world. It rested, not upon
particular grievances, but upon a broad base of individual
liberty that could command general support throughout
America. Its political philosophy is explicit:

"We hold these truths to be selfevident, 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 or to abolish it, and to institute a new
government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their safety and happiness." 

The Declaration of Independence served a purpose far
beyond that of a public notice of separation. Its ideas
inspired mass fervor for the American cause, for it
instilled among ordinary folk a sense of their own
importance, inspiring them to struggle for personal
freedom, self-government, and a dignified place in
society. 

The Revolutionary War lasted more than six years, with
fighting in every colony. Even before the Declaration of
Independence, there were military operations that had an
important influence on he outcome of the war - for
instance, the crushing of the North Carolina loyalists in
February of 1776, and in March the forced evacuation of
British forces from Boston. 

For many months after independence was declared, the
Americans suffered severe setbacks. The first of these was
in New York. In the battle of Long Island, Washington's
position became untenable, and he executed a masterly
retreat in small boats from Brooklyn to the Manhattan
shore. The wind held north and the British warships could
not come up the East River. Thus British General William
Howe lost a chance to deal the American cause a crushing
blow, perhaps to end the war. 

Washington, though constantly driven back, was able to
keep his forces fairly intact until the end of the year.
Important victories at Trenton and Princeton revived
colonial hopes, then once more calamity struck. In
September 1777, Howe captured Philadelphia, drove the
Congress into flight, and left Washington to winter with
his men at Valley Forge. 

Nevertheless, 1777 also saw the greatest American victory
of the war, the military turning point of the Revolution.
British General John Burgoyne moved down from Canada with
a force designed to gain control of the Lake Champlain-
Hudson River line and thus isolate New England from the
other colonies. Burgoyne reached the upper Hudson River
but, before he could proceed southward, was compelled to
wait for supplies until the middle of September. 

Ignorance of American geography led him to suppose it
would be easy for a raiding force to march across the
Hampshire Grants (Vermont) down along the Connecticut
River and back, collecting horses, cattle, and wagons
along the way for the use of his army-all in a matter of
two weeks. For this exploit he chose 375 dismounted
Hessian dragoons and about 300 Canadians and Indians. They
did not even reach the Vermont line. The Vermont militia
met them near Bennington. Few of the Hessians ever
returned. 

The Battle of Bennington rallied New England militiamen,
and Washington sent reinforcements from the lower Hudson.
By the time Burgoyne again put his force in motion, the
army of General Horatio Gates was waiting for him. Led by
Benedict Arnold, the Americans twice repulsed the British.

Burgoyne fell back to Saratoga, and on October 17, 1777,
he surrendered. This decisive blow of the war brought
France to the American side. 

Colonies gain victory and freedom From the time the
Declaration of Independence was signed, France had not
been neutral. The government had been eager for reprisal
against England ever since the defeat of France in 1763.
Moreover, enthusiasm for the American cause was high: the
French intellectual world was itself in revolt against
feudalism and privilege. Still, though France had welcomed
Benjamin Franklin to the French court and had given the
United States aid in the form of munitions and supplies,
it had been reluctant to risk direct intervention and open
war with England. 

After Burgoyne's surrender, however, Franklin was able to
secure treaties of commerce and alliance. Even before
this, many French volunteers had sailed to America. The
most prominent among them was the Marquis de Lafayette, a
young army officer, who, in the winter of 1779-80, went to
Versailles and persuaded his government to make a real
effort to bring the war to an end. Soon afterward, Louis
XVI sent to America an expeditionary force of 6,000 men
under the Comte de Rochambeau. In addition, the French
fleet aggravated the difficulties the British were having
in supplying and reinforcing their forces, and Frenchmen
joined with American blockade runners in inflicting severe
losses on British commerce. 

In 1778, the British were forced to evacuate Philadelphia
because of threatened action by the French fleet. During
the same year, in the Ohio Valley, they suffered a series
of setbacks which assured American domination of the
northwest. Nevertheless, the British continued to press
the war in the south. Early in 1780 they captured
Charleston, the principal southern seaport, and overran
the Carolina country. The following year they made an
effort to conquer Virginia. But the French fleet, which
temporarily gained control of American coastal waters that
summer, ferried Washington's and Rochambeau's troops in
boats down Chesapeake Bay. Their combined armies, totaling
15,000 men, penned in Lord Cornwallis' army of 8,000 at
Yorktown on the Virginia coast. On October 19, 1781,
Cornwallis surrendered. 

When the news of the American victory at Yorktown reached
Europe, the House of Commons voted to end the war. Peace
negotiations began in April 1782 and continued through
November, when preliminary treaties were signed. These
were not to take effect until France concluded peace with
Great Britain. In 1783, they were signed as final and
definitive. The peace settlement acknowledged the
independence, freedom, and sovereignty of the 13 states,
to which it granted the much coveted territory west to the
Mississippi, and set the northern boundary of the nation
nearly as it runs now. The Congress was to recommend to
the states that they restore the confiscated property of
the loyalists.

Ancient Greek History

Our first evidence of real settlement in Greece comes from
about 55,000 BC (57,000 years ago). Even then there were
not very many people until around 3000 BC. Greek history
is usually divided into a Stone Age, a Bronze Age, and an
Iron Age. Each of these periods can be divided into
smaller periods as well. 

Greek Old Stone Age

A good deal of the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic, time
period had gone by before anyone came to live in Greece.
The first definite signs of people living in Greece are
from around 55,000 BC. We still know very little about
them. They lived mainly from gathering wild plants and got
their meat by hunting wild animals. They did not farm.
They probably knew how to plant seeds, but chose not to
because there was already plenty of food growing wild for
the few people who lived in Greece at this time.  

These people used stone, wood, plant fibers, and bone to
make their tools, but they did not use metal. They did not
build houses, but lived mainly in caves along the
coastline. One example of a cave where people lived in the
Old Stone Age is Franchthi Cave. The people living in
Franchthi Cave hunted deer and rabbits, caught fish, and
gathered wild grain for bread or porridge, wild peas and
beans, and nuts. 

Greek Middle Stone Age

We still don't know much about the people of Greece in the
Middle Stone Age. They still lived mainly from gathering
and hunting. They still did not farm or use metal or build
houses. They seem to have sailed on the Mediterranean Sea
in small boats made of reeds and animal skins. 

Greek Middle Bronze Age

These new invaders, who destroyed Lerna at the end of the
Early Bronze Age in 2100 BC, were the Greeks (though there
is still some debate about exactly when they arrived and
from where). Unlike the people of Sesklo, Dimini and
Lerna, these new people spoke an early form of the Greek
language. Their special military weapon, which helped them
to beat the Early Bronze Age people of Greece, seems to
have been the horse, either men fighting from horseback or
men fighting from chariots drawn by horses, or maybe just
using horses to get from one place to another very
quickly. Archaeologists digging at Lerna did not find any
horse bones until after this invasion. 

The Greeks also brought with them a new invention from
Western Asia: the pottery wheel. The wheel made it
possible to make clay pots much more quickly, and
therefore more cheaply, than before. 

For about 500 years after the Greeks invaded, not much
seems to have happened in Greece. The Greeks learned the
new culture and gradually mixed with the people who were
already there. The Middle Bronze Age in Greece has been
called "500 years without an idea." This is not quite
right, though. The Greeks were getting ready for their
first appearances in the Mediterranean political scene. 

Greek Late Bronze Age 

By around 1600 BC, the Greeks had gotten completely mixed
with the earlier Lerna people, and began to move on to
bigger things. First, they started to get to know the
other people living around the Mediterranean Sea,
especially the Phoenicians (foy-NEE-shans), the Cretans,
and the Egyptians. They seem to have started to take jobs
as soldiers for the Egyptians, who paid them in gold.  And
they started to buy things from the Phoenicians with their
gold. Greek graves from this time excavated at Mycenae
(my-SEEN-ay) have a lot of gold cups and jewelry and
beautiful swords in them, which are now in the National
Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. The Greeks of
this time are sometimes called the Myceneans (my-sin-AY-
ans) after this site.

As they got to know these other people, the Greeks began
to copy their ways of doing things. The Greeks started to
have kings instead of village headmen. These kings had
palaces to live in and collected taxes which they stored
in big storerooms. The palaces had big stone walls around
them. The stones were so big that later Greeks thought the
walls must have been built by giants, whom they called
Cyclops.  

Some Greeks learned to write, in a sort of hieroglyphics
called Linear B, so that they could keep records of what
taxes had been collected. The kings made their people
build paved roads. 

In addition to working as soldiers for other countries,
the Greeks seem to have sailed around the Mediterranean
Sea and the Black Sea picking fights with people on their
own, and taking their gold, and probably also taking the
people they met as slaves. 

One of these raids, around 1250 BC, may have been to
attack the city of Troy, in northern Turkey. Some of the
stories about the Trojan War (the war with Troy) were
passed down for hundreds of years by singers until they
were written down by the poet Homer around 700 BC. 

Homer says that when the Greek soldiers came back from the
Trojan War they found that Greece was in very bad shape,
with a lot of robbers and crime. There may be some truth
in this, because archaeology shows that around 1200 BC
most of the Greek palaces were destroyed, including the
one at Mycenae. 

We don't know why this happened, but many people think
that there was a general economic depression in the other
countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia
around this time, especially in Egypt and in the Hittite
kingdom. A lot of people seem to have fallen on hard
times. Maybe the Greeks found themselves out of work. 

Greek Dark Ages

After most of the Mycenean palaces were destroyed around
1200 BC, they were not rebuilt. The only palace we know of
which was not destroyed was the one at Athens. But even
Athens seems to have had a hard time for the next several
hundred years. There were no more kings. Taxes were not
collected. The roads were not repaired, and gradually
became full of holes and could only be used for walking or
riding donkeys, not for wagons. Maybe a lot of people
died, because there don't seem to have been very many
people living in Greece at this time. And the people who
were still there were poor, and had no gold jewelry in
their graves. It even seems that there were no more
potters or shoemakers or other craftsmen, and people
mostly had to make their own pots and other things (so the
things are very badly made). Without gold, people also
stopped sailing to other countries to buy things. 

Because Greece was in such bad shape during the Dark Ages,
and could not defend herself, it also seems that some of
their neighbors to the north invaded Greece and began
living in some of the Greek cities. The Greeks called
these invaders the Dorians (DOOR-ee-anns), and called the
old Mycenean, Bronze Age Greeks the Ionians (i-OWN-ee-
anns). 

A lot of the Ionians fled from the invaders, or just from
the bad times in Greece, and moved to other places during
the Dark Ages. Many of them moved to the coast of Turkey,
and people began to call that place Ionia because of all
the Ionians living there. Others moved to the coast of the
Black Sea. Some historians think that some Greeks may have
moved to Israel, where they were called the Philistines. 

But some good things also happened during this time.
Knowledge of how to make tools and weapons out of iron
spread from the Hittites around the Mediterranean Sea, and
so the Greeks also learned how to work iron. Iron is
harder than bronze and cheaper to get, because you can
mine it in Greece itself instead of bringing tin from far
away. Because iron was cheaper than bronze, more people
could use it, even poor people. And without the kings and
the palaces, people were generally more equal. The rich
people weren't as rich, so the differences between people
weren't so big. 

Archaic Period

By around 1000 BC the Greeks were starting to rebuild
their civilization after the Dark Ages. There seem to have
been more people around, and enough gold to pay for
building new buildings. The Greeks did not rebuild the
kings' palaces, though, because most Greek cities did not
have kings anymore. Most cities were ruled by a group of
rich men called aristocrats. This kind of government is
called an oligarchy (OLL-ih-gark-ee). Instead, the Greeks
built temples to the gods where the old palaces had been,
mostly on top of hills. 

There got to be so many people in Greece that the Greeks
began to send out groups of men (and sometimes women and
children) to build new cities in other parts of Europe and
Africa. One example is the city of Marseilles in the south
of France. Another is a city on the Black Sea called
Byzantion, which is now Istanbul. These are called
colonies. 

The Greeks also began to trade with Western Asia again,
especially with the Phoenicians. They learned the alphabet
from the Phoenicians around 750 BC, and that is how Homer
was able to write down the stories about the Trojan War.
The Greeks also learned about art from Western Asia. The
Greeks also began to take jobs as mercenaries (soldiers
working for other people) again, in Egypt and also in
Turkey. 

Around 650 BC there were two new ways of doing things
which seem to have started in Greece instead of being
learned from other people. We are not sure which came
first, or whether one caused the other. One was a new way
of fighting wars. The old way was rather disorganized: all
the men on one side would just run at the men on the other
side, yelling their heads off, and then they would fight
until one side ran away or were all killed. In the new
way, men lined up side by side, and each man used his
shield to protect the man next to him, so that there was a
wall of shields. Of couse this only worked if everybody
cooperated, and you had to practice a lot to be able to do
it right, like a marching band. Also, everybody had to
have a shield. But if you did it right it was much more
successful than the old run-and-yell method. 

The other new idea was for a new kind of government. Some
of the Greek cities still had kings (Sparta for instance),
but most of them were ruled by groups of aristocrats.
These aristocrats were often fighting with each other over
who would have the most power. Some of them tried to get
other aristocrats on their side. But now one of these
aristocrats had the idea to try to get the poor people on
his side, too. That was pretty easy to do, because nobody
had been paying any attention to these poor people at all.
So this aristocrat was able to get more power than his
friends and he was in charge of the city. Instead of being
called the king, he was called the tyrant. Soon other
aristocrats in other Greek cities (and in Western Asia)
copied this idea. By 550 BC many cities were still ruled
by aristocrats, especially the ones where Dorians lived,
but many others were ruled by tyrants, especially the ones
where Ionians lived. Other aristocrats hated the tyrants,
but a lot of poor people loved them. Most of the tyrants
did a good job. They protected the poor people from the
rich aristocrats, they built a lot of new buildings, and
they helped people to trade with Western Asia and the
other nearby countries. 

Classical period

In 510 BC a man named Cleisthenes, who was an aristocrat
in Athens, invented another new type of government, the
democracy. Cleisthenes, like other aristocrats, wanted to
get more power. But tyrants had gotten unpopular in
Athens. Cleisthenes decided to give even more power to
poor people.  He organized a new way of making political
decisions. Every Athenian man would have one vote, and
they would all meet and vote on what to do. The big
meeting was called the Assembly. 

But all the men couldn't meet every day; they had to work.
So there was also a smaller council of 500 men, who were
chosen by a lottery, and changed every year. Seems like
Cleisthenes AND the other aristocrats would be out of
power? But he arranged the voting so that his family, the
Alcmaeonids (alk-ME-oh-nids), would have more votes than
anyone else. 

In 490 BC the Persians attacked Athens. Everybody was very
frightened, because the Persians were great fighters. Some
people thought Athens should go back to the old system of
government, the oligarchy, in case democracy didn't work
well enough. They thought it would take too long to make
decisions in a democracy. But they didn't go back. 

All the men in Athens marched out to meet the Persians at
Marathon. They thought they would lose. But the Athenians
fought in the new way, with the wall of shields, and the
Persians were still running and yelling. So the Athenians
won! 

In 480 BC the Persians, with their king Xerxes (ZERK-sees)
attacked again. This time most of the cities in Greece
banded together and formed a league to fight the Persians.
They lost their first battle, at Thermopylae (therm-AH-
pill-aye), but they won after that, at Salamis and again
at Plataea. Again the Persians went home defeated. 

The Athenians convinced the other Greek cities that they
needed to keep the strong Greek navy together in case the
Persians came back again. At first everyone thought this
was a good idea, except the Spartans, who refused. Then
the Athenians said to the other cities, "Don't bother
sending ships and men for the navy anymore; that is too
hard. Just send money to Athens, and we will build ships
and defend you against the Persians." So a lot of cities
did that. But the Persians did not come back. After a
while, some of the cities said, "We don't want to send any
more money to Athens. We don't think the Persians are
going to come back anymore." But the Athenians used their
big navy to MAKE the other cities keep sending money. When
Miletus (my-LEE-tuss) refused, the Athenians took their
city and wrecked it. 

The Athenians also spent some of the money on their own
city. No Athenians had to pay taxes anymore. They used the
money from the other cities to build great temples like
the Parthenon. 

The other cities in Greece were angry. They asked the
Spartans to help stop the Athenians. Some cities took
sides with Athens, others with Sparta. There was a big
war, from 431 BC to 404 BC (almost thirty years!), but
finally, with the help of the Persians, the Spartans won
and the Athenians lost. By this time, all of Greece had
pretty much been wrecked, and the Classical period was
over. 

Hellenistic Period

After the Peloponnesian War was over, all the cities of
Greece were worn out and poor. Many men went and fought
for the Persians for money. But others tried to rebuild
the cities. This was the time of Socrates and his student
Plato, the great philosophers. 

But to the north of Greece, in a country called Macedon,
King Philip had noticed that the Greeks were very weak. He
attacked Greece and little by little he took it over. When
Philip was assassinated in 336 BC, his son Alexander
became king, and he also ruled Greece. Alexander was only
20 when he became king. At first a lot of people thought
he was too young. But he not only held onto Greece, he
also took a big army of Greeks and Macedonians and
attacked the Persian Empire! 

Alexander was a great general, and the Persians were also
weak at this time. So, little by little, Alexander took
over the Persian Empire: first Turkey, then Phoenicia,
then Israel, then Egypt, then further east all the way to
Afghanistan and India (see map). In India Alexander's
troops refused to go any further, and he turned back. But
a lot of the soldiers died on the way back, and soon
afterwards, in 323 BC, Alexander himself died of a fever,
in Babylon. He was 33 years old. 

Alexander died without any sons old enough to rule, and so
his kingdom was split up among his generals. There were
three main parts: Egypt, which was ruled by Ptolemy,
Seleucia (modern Israel, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and
Afghanistan), which was ruled by Seleucus, and Macedon and
Greece. Although these three kingdoms often fought each
other, still the Hellenistic period was one of prosperity
and learning. A great university was founded at
Alexandria, in Egypt. The philosopher Aristotle worked in
Athens. Men visited back and forth between India and
Greece. The combination of the knowledge of Western Asia,
and also India, with that of the Greeks led to great
achievements in science, in philosophy, and in art. 

Roman Greece

By 275 BC, the Romans in Italy were beginning to expand
out of Italy and conquer other parts of the Mediterranean.
They started with Sicily, an island near Italy. The Romans
were fighting the Carthaginians. Some of the Greeks
decided  to help the Carthaginians fight the Romans,
because the Greeks were afraid of the Romans. But the
Carthaginians lost. The Romans were very angry at the
Greeks, and they began to take Greece over as well. At
first the Romans pretended to let Greece be independent,
but by 146 BC the Romans destroyed Corinth and made Greece
into a province of the Roman Empire. 

Greece did well under Roman rule, even though the Greeks
were not very happy about it. Archaeology shows that the
Greeks built many new houses and buildings. They were able
to sail and trade peacefully all over the Mediterranean
Sea, because the Romans ruled it all. The Romans ruled
Greece for hundreds of years. 

The Romans thought Greek plays and Greek philosophy were
very interesting, and many Greeks went to Rome as teachers
and entertainers. Many Romans came to Athens to go to the
great colleges there, Plato's Academy and Aristotle's
Lyceum. 

Around 200 AD, though, Germanic people began to invade
Greece from the north, and the Roman army couldn't always
stop them.  At first they didn't come very often, but by
400 AD they came more often, and Greece became poorer
again. As the Germans conquered the western half of the
Roman Empire, Greece came to be ruled by Constantinople.

Byzantine Greece

After the collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire
around 400 AD, Greece continued to be ruled by Romans, but
now from their new capital at Constantinople. The Romans
weren't as strong as they had been before, so there were a
lot of invasions, especially by the Slavs from the Balkans
in the north, and also by pirates from the sea in the
south. Greece was much poorer during this time. Also, as
people became Christians, the old schools were closed,
because they taught old ideas that were not Christian.
Greece continued to be ruled by Constantinople until 1453
AD. 

Major Contributions to Western Civilization from Greece

Greek Government

In 510 BC a man named Cleisthenes, who was an aristocrat
in Athens, invented the democracy. Cleisthenes, like other
aristocrats, wanted to get more power. But tyrants had
gotten unpopular in Athens. Cleisthenes decided to give
even more power to poor people.  He organized a new way of
making political decisions. Every Athenian man would have
one vote, and they would all meet and vote on what to do.
The big meeting was called the Assembly. 

Greek Games

The Greeks took games of all kinds very seriously, but
especially physical athletic competition. The Greeks
believed that their gods particularly loved to see strong,
fit, graceful human bodies, especially boys' and men's
bodies. So one way to get on the good side of the gods was
to exercise, to eat right, to oil your skin, to create a
beautiful body that the gods would love. Because of the
Greek tendency to turn everything into an agon, a
competition, this also meant that there were a lot of
athletic competitions in Greece. The most famous of these
is the Olympic Games, but there were other games held in
other places as well, like the Isthmian Games at Corinth. 

Young men (from richer families who didn't have to work)
in most Greek cities spent a lot of their time training
for these competitions, and the best of them were chosen
to compete against the best young men from other cities.
Then they would all meet, at the Olympic Games or the
Isthmian Games or elsewhere, and compete for prizes and
for the favor of the gods. Of course these games also
served as good training for the army, because all these
men would be soldiers as well. The events were the same
kind as in the Olympics today: running, jumping, throwing
a javelin, and throwing a discus. Only men could compete.

Greek boys also played games which were not part of the
Olympic games, like field hockey. Greek boys usually
played games naked (and so girls were not allowed to
watch). 

We do also see Greek girls throwing balls, though the
Greeks were much less interested in physical activity for
girls. Girls from Sparta were said to do physical activity
naked, but Athenian girls wore clothes.

Greeks also played less active games like dice and
marbles, and knucklebones, and checkers. This is a famous
vase from the Vatican museum showing Achilles and Ajax
playing checkers. 

Even in these games, though, the competition was very
important, and there was a feeling that losing at games
meant that the gods didn't like you. 

Greek Philosophy 

Ancient Greek philosophy is dominated by three very famous
men: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. All three of these
lived in Athens for most of their lives, and they knew
each other. Socrates came first, and Plato was his
student, around 400 BC. Socrates was killed in 399 BC, and
Plato began his work by writing down what Socrates had
taught, and then continued by writing down his own ideas
and opening a school. Aristotle, who was younger, came to
study at Plato's school, and ended up starting his own
school as well. 

In the years after Plato and Aristotle died, in the 200's
BC, three famous kinds of philosophy started up in the
schools  that Plato and Aristotle had started. These are
the Stoics, the Skeptics, and the Epicureans. Each of
these continued to be important ways of thinking about the
world all the way through the Roman Empire, until people
converted to Christianity in the 300's AD, and even after
that. 

Greek Literature

The Greeks wrote a great deal, and a surprising amount of
what they wrote is still available to us today, 2500 years
later. Their writing is traditionally divided into types: 

1) the epic (EH-pick): Around 700 BC, Homer wrote two
connected epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Epics are long
poems which tell the story of a hero. A kind of epic from
Western Asia, written about 2500 BC, is the Epic of
Gilgamesh. Another epic, from Rome in 19 BC, is Virgil's
Aeneid. 

2) the poem: Two early Greek examples are Hesiod's
Theogony and Works and Days, both from around 700 BC.
There are also a number of shorter poems by Archilochus
(Are-KILL-oh-cuss) and Sappho (SA-foe) from the 600's BC,
among others. Sappho's poems are the only surviving
literature by a Greek woman. 

3) the play: Plays are divided into tragedies and
comedies. Tragedies are generally sad, while comedies are
funny. The oldest tragedies that we still have were
written by Aeschylus around 500 BC. We also have tragedies
written by Sophocles (around 450 BC) and Euripides (around
400 BC). The oldest comedies that we still have are by
Aristophanes, and were also written around 400 BC. Some
later comedies were written by Menander around 350 BC.
Plays are also written in verse, like poems. 

4) the history: Two major histories that we still have are
those by Herodotus and Thucydides.  About 450 BC,
Herodotus wrote a history of the Persian Wars. About 400
BC, Thucydides wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War.
These are both written in prose (not in verse). 

5) philosophical dialogues and treatises: The first
written philosophy was written by Plato around 380 BC in
the form of a kind of play, two or more people talking to
each other. Later on both Plato and his student Aristotle
wrote regular philosophical books, in prose without
dialogues. 

Greek Science

The Greeks were very interested in science as a way of
organizing the world and making order out of chaos, and
having power over some very powerful things like oceans
and weather. From about 600 BC, a lot of Greek men spent
time observing the planets and the sun and trying to
figure out how astronomy worked. They must have gotten
their first lessons from the Babylonians, who were very
good at astronomy and also very interested in it.

By the 400's BC, Pythagoras was interested in finding the
patterns and rules in mathematics and music, and invented
the idea of a mathematical proof. Socrates, a little bit
later, developed logical methods for deciding whether
something was true or not. 

In the 300's BC, Aristotle and other philosophers at the
Lyceum and the Academy in Athens worked on observing
plants and animals, and organizing the different kinds of
plants and animals into types. 

Greek Astronomy

The art of astrology, the study of the stars in order to
predict future events, and to interpret people's
characters, was already very advanced before the Greeks
began to interest themselves in the stars. The Egyptians
and especially the Mesopotamians had done a lot of
scientific observations and had named the constellations
of stars, and many individual stars. 

The Greek contribution to astronomy was not so much in
observation as it was in applying logical thinking and
geometry to these observations. That is how Greek
scientists figured out that the earth went around the sun,
calculated the size of the earth, and understood that the
moon went around the earth, so that they could understand
what caused an eclipse. 

Greek Medicine

The Greeks were very interested in using scientific
observation and logic to figure out what caused diseases
and what you could do about them. In the 300's BC and
afterward, in the Hellenistic period, Greek doctors worked
out a logical system for understanding disease. Their
writings about this have been collected in the Hippocratic
Writings, named after the first and most famous of these
doctors, Hippocrates (hih-POH-krat-ees). 

This logical system began with the idea of humors. The
doctors believed that people were made out of four
substances: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm
(pronounced FLEM) (means boogers). If you were healthy,
that was because your four humors were balanced. You had
the right amount of each one. But if you had too much of
one humor, you would be unbalanced and you would feel ill.
For instance, if you had too much blood, that would give
you a fever. So your medical treatment should be to reduce
the amount of blood in your body. Greek doctors did this
by cutting your arm until blood ran out. This was supposed
to help bring down your fever. Or they put leeches on your
arm to suck the extra blood out. They did this so often
that doctors were sometimes called "leeches". And they
thought it was such a good idea that doctors were still
letting blood about 150 years ago! 

Greek doctors also believed that some climates tended to
increase the amount of some humors in your body. If you
lived in a wet, cold climate, that would tend to increase
the amount of phlegm, for instance. One treatment might be
to move to a drier, warmer climate to balance out your
humors again. 

These ideas are all wrong, but the idea that Hippocrates
had, that you could learn to understand and treat diseases
by using careful observation and logical thought, is the
beginning of modern medicine. 

Greek Mathematics

Because the Greeks had only very clumsy ways of writing
down numbers, they didn't like algebra. They found it very
hard to write down equations or number problems. Instead,
Greek mathematicians were more focused on geometry, and
used geometric methods to solve problems that you might
use algebra for. 

Greek mathematicians were also very interested in proving
that certain mathematical ideas were true. So they spent a
lot of time using geometry to prove that things were true,
even though people already knew that they were true most
of the time anyway. 

The Greeks in general were very interested in rationality,
in things making sense and hanging together. They wanted
to tie up the loose ends. They liked music, because music
followed strict rules to produce beauty. So did
architecture, and so did mathematics. 

Some famous Greek mathematicians were Pythagoras,
Aristotle, Anaxagoras, Euclid, Thales, and Aristarchus.

Source: HistoryforKids.org