Page 142 - American Stories, A History of the United States

eroding the bonds of empire
5.1

5.2 What events eroded the bonds of empire during the 1760s?
5.2
t he Seven Years’ War saddled Britain with a national debt so huge that more 5.3
than half the annual budget went to pay the interest on it. Almost everyone in
government assumed that with the cessation of hostilities, most of the troops
in America would be disbanded, thus saving money. George III, however,
insisted on keeping the largest peacetime army in British history on active duty, sup-
posedly to protect Indians from predatory American frontiersmen. 5.4
Colonists doubted the value of this expensive army. Britain did not leave enough
troops in America to ensure peace on the frontier. The army’s weakness was dramati-
cally demonstrated in spring 1763.
The native peoples of the backcountry—the Seneca, Ottawa, Miami, Creek, and
Cherokee—had begun discussing how to turn back the tide of white settlement. The
powerful spiritual leader Neolin, known as the Delaware Prophet and claiming visions
from the “Master of Life,” urged the Indians to restore their cultures to the “original
state that they were in before the white people found out their country.” If moral regen-
eration required violence, so be it. Neolin converted Pontiac, an Ottawa warrior, to the
cause. Pontiac, in turn, coordinated an uprising among the western Indians who had
been French allies and hated the British—even those sent to protect them from land-
grabbing colonists. This formidable Native American resistance was known as Pontiac’s
Rebellion. In May, Pontiac attacked Detroit; other Indians harassed the Pennsylvania
and Virginia frontiers. In 1764, after his followers began deserting, Pontiac sued for
peace. During even this brief outbreak, the British army could not defend exposed
colonial settlements, and thousands were killed.
For the Native Americans who inhabited the Ohio Valley, this was a period
of almost unmitigated disaster. In fact, more than any other group, the Indians
suffered from imperial reorganization. The French defeat made it impossible for
native peoples to play off one imperial power against European rivals in the middle
ground (see Chapter 4). The British now regarded their former Indian allies as
little more than a nuisance. Diplomatic gifts stopped; humiliating restrictions were
placed on trade.
Even worse, Pontiac’s rising unloosed vicious racism along the colonial frontier.
American colonists often used any excuse to attack local Indians, peaceful or not. Late
in 1763, vigilantes known as the Paxton Boys murdered Christian Indians, women and
children, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. White neighbors treated the killers as heroes,
and the atrocity ended only after the Paxton Boys threatened to march on Philadelphia
in search of administrators who dared to criticize such cold-blooded crimes. One of
the administrators, Benjamin Franklin, observed sadly, “It grieves me to hear that our
Frontier People are yet greater Barbarians than the Indians, and continue to murder
them in time of Peace.”
Whatever happened to the Indians, the colonists intended to settle the fer-
tile region west of the Appalachian Mountains. After the British government
issued the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited governors from granting land
beyond the headwaters of rivers flowing into the Atlantic, disappointed Americans
viewed the army as an obstruction to legitimate economic development, an expensive
domestic police force.

Paying Off the National Debt

The task of reducing England’s debt fell to George Grenville, the rigid, unimaginative
chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) who replaced Bute in 1763 as the king’s
first minister. After reviewing Britain’s finances, Grenville concluded that the colonists

109