APUSH Unit 3 REVIEW [Period 3: 1754-1800]—Everything You NEED to Know!

[0:00]All right, it's time to go over everything you need to know about APUSH Unit 3. And look, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, this is the Wendy's T-Rex equivalent of units thus far and by the end, if you don't feel like you've dislocated your jaw to fit this thing in your mouth hole, then you're doing it wrong. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. Okay, as is my custom, let me start by giving you the big idea that will act as the connective tissue holding this beast of a unit together. The time period is 1754 to 1800, which corresponds to the beginning of the French and Indian War and ends with the election of Thomas Jefferson. And basically the whole narrative here has three acts. The first act is the causes of the American Revolution. The second act is called a New Republic. And the third act is migration and conflict. Okay, so that's where we're going and that's enough mouth hole flapping by way of prelude, so let's jump into the first act. Okay, now if the climax of this unit is the American Revolution, then the inciting incident for sure is the French and Indian War. So basically this was a conflict between France and Great Britain over disputed territory here in the Ohio River Valley. And as it turned out, British colonists in North America were rapidly multiplying, and that meant that they very much wanted to migrate west into the Ohio country to find better accommodations. But as it further turns out, the French claimed that territory and they were ready to give the migrants a good French slap if they started squatting on their land. And to even further complicate the matter, several indigenous groups also lived there and they were none too pleased to see those wily British folk moving in. Therefore, several American Indian groups led by the Shawnees and the Delawares allied together in order to defend their rights to this territory. And so, when the British colonists considered all of that, it put them in a proper huff, because as you might know, the heart wants what it wants and what their heart wanted was the dang Ohio country. Now, I'm not going to go into all the details of the war, except to say this. The conflict erupted in 1754 because of a military blunder by our boy George Washington. And although it started on the North American continent, the war soon spread to Europe and parts of India and Africa as well. And that's when the conflict became known as the Seven Years' War, which arguably was the first proper World War. So, here's where I tell you that Great Britain won the war to the great annoyance of the French, who retired to their secret base, twisted their mustache and plotted their revenge. And they will get that revenge, baby, but not yet. Just put that juicy bit in your pocket and we'll get back to it. But for our purposes, what you really need to focus on is the effects of this war. So, you know, let's talk about it. But before I do, let me just mention that if this video is helping you and you want even more help getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, you might want to check out my APUSH Heimler Review Guide. It's got everything you need to study as fast as possible, including exclusive videos that are not here on YouTube, practice questions, practice exams, and all the rest. So if that's something you're into, that link is in the description below. Okay, so effects number one, the Treaty of Paris signed in 1763 changed the map of British North America. First of all, Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain. Wait a minute, why in the fresh heck is Spain involved in this all of a sudden? Well, to keep things simple, I didn't mention before that later in the war, Spain allied with France, so they also had to make some concessions to Great Britain in the Peace Treaty. Okay, second, France gave up their territory west of the Mississippi River to Spain. And then third and most important, France ceded their territory in the Ohio River Valley to Great Britain. And hey, that's everything the colonists ever dreamed of, right? Like westward migration, level 10, commence. But hold on right there, because the second effect of the war was that Great Britain went ahead and prevented westward expansion for its colonies. And they did this by drawing the proclamation line of 1763, which forbade British colonists from migrating west beyond the Appalachian Mountains. And the reason Big Mama Britain laid down this law is because winning this war cost her a fortune, and that meant she had no additional boom boom to spend on resolving conflicts between the American Indians and the migrating colonists. And to be clear, this was not just theoretical. You see, colonists had already started a conflict with an alliance of American Indians known as Pontiac's Rebellion. But even so, the colonists were, as we say here in the South, madder than a wet hen at this proclamation. They believed that they were owed this land on account of their participation in the war that helped Britain win it. And then the third effect of this war, which I already hinted at, was the problem of Britain's war debt. Not only did it cost a fortune to win the war, but the cost of running the colonies had increased five-fold owing to the rapid population growth in the colonies. Therefore, at this point, Great Britain began implementing policies aimed at tighter control over the colonies so that they could earn some much needed tax revenue. Okay, so at the end of the war, King George appointed George Grenville as the British Prime Minister and he helped develop a plan to reassert control in the American colonies. First, Grenville began enforcing existing laws that colonists had routinely flouted on account of salutary neglect. And chief among these laws were the Navigation Acts that restricted colonial trade to Great Britain alone. Second, certain wartime policies were kept in force after the war was over. Especially nasty was the Quartering Act, which required colonial subjects to house and feed members of the British military who were there in response to the French and Indian War as well as Pontiac's Rebellion. And then third and most significant, Grenville persuaded Parliament to enact a series of new taxes on the colonies that would help pay down Britain's war debt. Now, to keep things simple, let's just focus on one taxation law in particular, namely the Stamp Act of 1765. This was just a tax on paper items like newspapers or diplomas or playing cards. And while that may not seem like a huge deal, it provoked colonial displeasure something awful. Now, there were several reasons for that displeasure, but chief among them was that the colonists resented that they were being taxed without any representation in Parliament. In other words, laws were being imposed on them without their consent. And the whole reason they felt thusly imposed upon was because the colonists had grown used to a significant degree of self-government. And so they summarized their grumies with the now famous phrase, No Taxation without Representation. Now, to George Grenville, this protest was altogether puzzling. He argued that the colonists did in fact have representation, namely virtual representation in Parliament. In other words, members of Parliament represented the interest of all English subjects, whether they were home or living in a colony. And to be clear, this was how all British subjects on the mainland were represented in Parliament, so, you know, the colonists were not special here. But the colonists saw things differently. You see, because they had developed habits of self-rule over time, colonists believed that true representation must be local. And since there were no members of the colonies in Parliament, they believed therefore that they had no representation. Now, Grenville ignored the colonists' plea with a mixture of broiling resentment and classic British restraint. And just kept squeezing all the cash he could out of the colonies. And that reality in turn united the colonies in protest against these Grievous laws. Some gave impassioned speeches or wrote pamphlets. But the most significant mode of protest was the formation of Committees of Correspondence. By 1774, all but one of the colonies had created a network of these committees, which organized and spread information about colonial grievances with speed. Additionally, merchants, traders, and artisans created groups like the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty, who fought for the repeal of the Stamp Act. However, the most formal and organized protest came in the form of the Stamp Act Congress, which convened in 1765. Here, delegates from nine colonies formally petitioned Parliament to repeal Stamp Act because taxation without representation amounted to tyranny. However, there's one very important point to remember here. Neither the colonists nor the delegates at the Stamp Act Congress were agitating for independence from Britain at this point. No, what they wanted was to remain British subjects without experiencing the infringement of their British rights. Anyway, the work of Congress combined with the widespread boycotts of goods taxed by the Stamp Act, led Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act in 1766. But about five minutes after that, they also passed the Declaratory Act, which essentially said that Parliament is still in charge and can pass any dang laws they wanted to. Look, I repealed the Stamp Act because I wanted to, not because you nagged me. Sure, sure. Now, this fat would go on for the next few years. After all, Big Mama still needed that colonial scratch for her bank account and so Parliament will pass new taxation laws and colonists would boycott the goods or find other ways to frustrate Grenville's plan. But starting in the 1770s, three developments seriously cranked up the heat on these tensions. First was the Boston Massacre in 1770. Long story short, occupying British soldiers opened fire on a group of protesters in Boston and end up killing five Bostonians. Second was the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Here, colonists protesting Britain's increased efforts to control the colonies dumped 50 tons of British tea into the Boston Harbor. And then third, Britain responded to this offense with the Coercive Acts in 1774. Now, these laws closed the Boston Harbor until the tea was paid for and introduced a new Quartering Act, which mandated that even more soldiers must be accommodated in colonial homes. You don't have to guess how the colonists felt about that, since these laws in the colonies were policies known as the Intolerable Acts. And such a name made sense to the colonists because this set of laws in their minds represented the most significant grab for power and control that they had yet experienced from Parliament. But even with all this pressure on the colonies, you still need to remember that for them revolution was not yet the mood. Even now they wanted to remain British subjects while enjoying the fullness of their British rights. But all those taxes and developments I just mentioned combined with a piping hot stew of ideas began to tip the scales into revolution territory, so let's talk about that. First, the proliferation of enlightenment ideals contributed to a revolutionary mindset. And there are two of these ideas you'll need to know, although there are certainly more you could know. First is the idea of natural rights, which by definition argues that human beings are born with certain rights, namely life, liberty, and property. And those rights are given to each individual by God and not a monarch. Second, you have the social contract. The idea here is that human beings endowed with natural rights must construct governments of their own will and that the main purpose of that government is to protect their natural rights. Therefore, if the government becomes tyrannical, thus violating the contract, then the people have the right to overthrow that government and replace it with a new one. And then the second set of ideas that contributed to a revolutionary mindset were religious ideas. Now recall that it was only a few decades prior to this that the Great Awakening had occurred. And this movement emphasized individual religious awakening and individual communion with God. Like the emphasis was, don't listen to what the old crusty pointy-hatted church hierarchy tells you to do, listen to what God tells you to do by means of your own interpretation of the Bible. And if you're paying attention, that clearly signals a growing colonial conviction to challenge traditional authority structures. And one of the chief effects of this widespread movement was that the colonists started believing that the liberty they enjoyed was actually a gift from God. And so when the dumb King and Parliament came in trampling on that liberty, it wasn't just the colonists they were challenging, but the dang almighty himself who gave the colonists this liberty. Therefore, as the colonists' mind were shaped by these ideas, they began to believe that individual talent trumped hereditary power. What I mean is, Enlightenment ideas argued that individuals had rights given by God and that no arbitrary power structure could infringe on those rights. The religious ideas argued that individuals could decide for themselves what God was saying instead of relying on the power structures found in the church. And I think you begin to see how ideas like this, combined with all those curtailments of liberty that I mentioned before, could start riling folks up for revolution. But even still, the revolution loaf had not yet risen in the oven to its full doughy goodness. Like even after the colonists convened the First Continental Congress to centralize resistance to British policies, still they wanted to remain British subjects with their full British rights. And even after they convened the Second Continental Congress in response to actual British aggression at Lexington and Concord, many delegates maintained that the best course of action was to negotiate with Britain, and that was in 1775. But 1776 was the year of revolution, so what in the fresh heck changed? Well, a very significant factor was the publication of a deeply sassy pamphlet by our boy Thomas Paine. It was called Common Sense, and it argued that British tyranny had reached its peak and the only way for colonists to preserve their liberty was to declare independence. This pamphlet sold like crazy throughout the colonies and convinced many folks that revolution was inevitable. And one of the reasons it spoke to so many people is that Payne used the kind of arguments and evidence that aligned with ideas already deeply held by the colonists. For example, Paine used enlightenment ideas like natural rights and the social contract and republicanism to demonstrate that Britain was a tyrannical turd that needed to be flushed. He also used biblical arguments and allusions, most notably the development of monarchy in the Old Testament and how God considered it a sin. And so, by 1776, it was Independence Time. So Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and made the argument for separation using, you guessed it, Enlightenment ideas like natural rights and the social contract. And that, my dear pupils, is how you start a revolution. Okay, now before you get out your fireworks and your star-spangled tank tops, I need to tell you why the Americans should not have won this war. And then I'll tell you why they ultimately did, and at that point you may excuse yourself and high-five as many bald eagles as you wish. But first there were two main factors that should have contributed to a British victory in the American Revolution. First was the presence in the colonies of a significant loyalist opposition. Now, a loyalist was just someone who did not support the revolution and wanted to remain loyal to Great Britain. And the best estimates say that about 15 to 20% of the colonists were loyalists. And to be clear, only about half the population supported the Patriot cause for independence. So that means the other roughly 30% of the folks just didn't want anything to do with either side and wanted to keep as far from the troubles as they could. But then the second reason the British should have won is the indisputable fact of their military superiority. Like it wasn't even close. Great Britain, if you'll recall, has spent the majority of their time in the last century building a global maritime empire, the size of which would have made Julius Caesar poop his pants, or, you know, his toga. I don't know, did they have pants under the toga, not the point. The point is, in order to establish and maintain that empire, Great Britain had a massive army and the world's deadliest navy. And those troops had plenty of practice mowing down their enemies on account of the nearly constant wars Great Britain found themselves in. So it's not looking good for the colonists who just declared independence. But, and I hope this isn't a spoiler, the Americans did win, and that was because of three very important factors. First we have the leadership of George Washington. Now, it's true that the soldiers that made up the colonial militias and the Continental Army were in general poorly equipped, poorly trained, and often deserted their posts. And that meant in the first six years of the war, the Continental Army never won a single victory in battle, and it appeared that the overwhelming forces of the British would prevail. But Washington was an exceedingly capable leader and he was able to score some important victories. First, a surprise attack at the Battle of Trenton against Britain's hired Hessian troops, while not a major strategic victory, proved that the Americans could in fact win. Second, Washington enlisted a Prussian officer named Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben to train the soldiers in the Continental Army and he was able to make a lot of progress on their discipline. Okay, now the second factor in the American victory was their alliance with France. You see, the Continental Congress had sent Benjamin Franklin to France in 1776 to try to enlist their help against Great Britain, but thus far the French would not ally with the colonists. And that's mainly because the Americans hadn't really proven that they could actually win, and, you know, that's important. But that changed with the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, in which Patriot militias won a resounding victory against British forces. And after proving they could actually win, the French went ahead and joined the war against the British, sending aid and troops and ships and all manner of supplies that would ultimately lead to an American victory. And finally, the third factor that contributed to an American victory was the colonists' ideological commitment and resilience. And although this was kind of an intangible factor, it was real potent nonetheless. Like think about it, the British motivation for fighting the war was to maintain their economic and political dominance in North America. Lame. But for the Patriots, the war was an existential battle to secure liberty and throw off tyranny. And I don't think it's too hard to judge which was the more powerful set of ideas. Now, ultimately those factors led to the Patriot victory in the American Revolution in 1781, the final battle being won at Yorktown. And in 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, which both ended the war and doubled the land holdings of the freshly born United States. And that's the end of Act 1, so let's take a brief intermission. Okay, that's enough, we need to move on to Act 2. Okay, now before we get to talking about all the flurry of developments that created new constitutions and governments and all of that, let's stick for a moment with the revolutionary ideals that helped sustain the Patriot victory. Yes, they definitely helped energize the Americans for military victory, but here's where I tell you that those ideas had a significant impact on American society and across the world as well. First, these revolutionary ideals led to calls to address various social inequalities, two of which I'll tell you about now. First of all, ideas about liberty and equality of all people led to movements to abolish slavery, mostly concentrated in the north. You see, when black people of all stripes heard Jefferson say that all men are created equal, they assumed that all men, including black men, were equal and therefore slavery had no place in the new Republic. And some states when writing their new constitutions agreed with that logic. For example, Vermont's constitution abolished slavery outright and Pennsylvania's made provision for the gradual abolition of slavery. However, to the elite planters in the south, whose entire way of life, not to mention their wealth and status, depended on slavery, they did not in fact believe that all men included the black people they had enslaved. So here you can begin to see differing regional attitudes taking shape around the question of slavery and whether the institution contradicted the ideals on which the new nation was founded. Okay, the second example here is that revolutionary ideals led to calls for women's equality.

[15:36]Now, though they're not mentioned as often as they should be, women played significant roles in the victory over Britain and the Revolution. Therefore, women certainly believed that the equality for which the Revolution was fought ought to include them as well. And contrary to what men like Thomas Jefferson thought, women were actually capable of more than just knitting socks for their husbands or making us dang sandwiches. Case in point, Abigail Adams, who was a woman of fierce intellect, wrote to her husband, John Adams, while he was at the Constitutional Convention. She encouraged the delegates to remember the ladies as they were constructing a new constitution on the principles of liberty. But as you may have guessed, the delegates did not in fact remember the ladies and refused to recognize their political equality in the new Republic. However, I guess they were in the mood to throw women a bone because Benjamin Rush defined women's role as participating in something called the Republican Motherhood. Basically, the most important way a woman could participate in a republican society was to thoroughly educate her sons about liberty and government. And while this notion certainly kept women from active political participation, it did expand their access to education, which was a welcome opportunity for many women. And then third, revolutionary ideals influenced other revolutions across the Atlantic world based on those same ideas. First was the French Revolution in which the people overthrew the monarch and established a Republic. Second was the Haitian Revolution in which the majority enslaved black population rose up against their French overlords and established the first black-led Republic in history. And third, the ideals of the American Revolution inspired various Latin American revolutions. So Creole military leaders like Simone Bolivar appealed to colonial subjects across racial lines with enlightenment ideals, including appeals to popular sovereignty and the right to self-rule among the various Spanish and Portuguese colonies. And so, through a series of long and protracted wars, one Latin American colony after another won its independence and many of them formed republican governments in its wake. Okay, now it's time to talk about how this brand spanking new Republic is going to govern itself. And so let's start by talking about all the new state governments and then we're going to consider the formation of the federal government. Now, right after declaring independence, each state drafted a new constitution, and there are two very important commonalities that you need to know. First, state constitutions created governments in which most of the power was concentrated in the legislature, as opposed to an executive or governor. And that's not hard to understand because the legislature was the representative body of the people.

[17:39]And that's where the states wanted the power after having so long been crushed under the tyrannical centralized power thumb of Great Britain. And then second, as I mentioned earlier, most state constitutions limited voting rights to white male property owners. Okay, now let's consider the formation of the Republic's new national or federal government. So in 1777, the Continental Congress drafted the first Constitution of the United States, namely the Articles of Confederation. Now, the main thing you need to remember about the government created by the Articles is this. It kept the federal government exceedingly weak. So in this first political iteration of the United States, the state governments held most of the power while the federal government was weak. In fact, it wasn't as much a federal government as it was a fart in the shape of a government. And while this limited federal power satisfied Americans who wanted to avoid centralized power at all costs, the Republic began facing significant problems that began to show the weaknesses of the Articles to govern effectively. And there are five categories of weaknesses that you're going to need to know. First, the federal government was too weak to solve problems related to international trade. After the war, Great Britain cut off trade between the United States and the British West Indies. And then Spain prohibited American trade ships from accessing Mississippi River via Louisiana. And then pirates off the Barbary Coast of North Africa attacked U.S. merchant ships. That made things real dire for the new nation, but the federal government with its glaring lack of centralized power was helpless to remedy these economic problems. Second, the federal government struggled to address their financial problems. For example, the Congress had no constitutional authority to collect tax revenue from the states, and so the federal government was broke as a joke. But nobody was laughing at that joke, because a significant bill on which the Congress was defaulting was paying soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Now, put that in your pocket and we'll come back to it. The third problem showing the weaknesses of the federal government had to do with interstate commerce. So because the nation was more like a collection of independent and powerful states, they each competed with one another for economic gain. So states put tariffs on goods and hampered free trade in and around the new Republic and the federal government under the Articles had no authority to settle disputes over interstate commerce. Fourth, foreign relations were exposing the weaknesses of the Articles. You see, although Great Britain had lost the war, they kept forces occupying several ports along the western border and instead armed American Indians and encouraged them to attack American settlements in the Ohio River Valley. And then Spain went ahead and did the same in the South, arming Creeks and Cherokees who used those weapons to resist American westward migration. Now, not surprisingly, this was a great annoyance both to the migrants and to the U.S. government. So in order to address these increasing conflicts, in 1794, George Washington dispatched about 2,000 American soldiers into the Ohio country. There they fought against an alliance of American Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Now, U.S. troops won handily and the conflict was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Greenville, which effectively opened the Ohio territory for U.S. settlement without resistance. And then that same year, Jay's Treaty was signed, which Great Britain agreed to withdraw its forces from the western borderlands in the U.S. And then two years later, the U.S. ratified the Pinckney Treaty with Spain, which formally recognized the borders between U.S. and Spanish territory while also opening the Port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River to U.S. merchants. And this effectively ended the Spanish opposition to U.S. westward expansion in the south and reduced the conflict between the two states. And with all those developments in the bag, westward migration spiked, and although their movement didn't go entirely unopposed, it was certainly easier than it was before these events. But then the last consequence I want to mention about migration is the spread of slavery and the conflicts that such a spread caused. So southern planters were especially desirous to migrate westward in search of new land to plant. That's because high-demand crops like tobacco and cotton depleted the soil of its nutrients and therefore, in order to keep pace, especially with European demand, they began to migrate west in large numbers. And as they moved, not surprisingly, they brought slavery with them, and that created a whole new conflict in the new nation. Now, Southerners of course, wanted no hindrance to the westward expansion of slavery. And that's not hard to understand because most of their economy deeply depended on it. But in the northern states, alarm bells started ringing as slavery expanded. Now, some were abolitionists who objected to slavery on moral grounds, and often they were religious people like the Quakers or the Mennonites. And then others had strictly economic motives. Like in their minds, free labor was a threat to paid labor, which was the dominant labor system in the north. Now, this debate is certainly not going to be settled in this time period, but don't worry, we're going to fight an entire stinking civil war over it, so stay tuned. And that is Unit 3. So you can click here to get my Heimler Review Guide, which is everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, or you can click here to check out my other topic videos for Unit 3. I appreciate you coming around, and I'll catch you on the flip-flop.