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The Constitutional History of the United States, 1765/1895: 1765-1788.
The Constitutional History of the United States 1765/1895 17651788 Author:Francis Newton Thorpe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 10 THE EIGHTY YEARS' STRUGGLE. in the neighboring provinces. Equal to the emergencies of the hour, the people of Boston, by general consent, appointed a commi... more »ttee of safety, who for the time directed public affairs. The legislature convened and declared that the charter given in 1629 was restored. The charter of Connecticut was triumphantly brought forth from its place of concealment in an ancient oak tree, and democratic government was resumed. Rhode Island easily took up the democratic form it had so quickly surrendered. William and Mary were proclaimed and the acts of King James were popularly construed as having been committed without constitutional authority. The accession of William and Mary1 changed, but did not diminish, the tenseness of the relations of the colonies and England. It involved England in an exhaustive war with the allied powers led by Louis XIV., and embroiled the colonies in war,—for which they were not prepared,—with the Indians, the French and the Spaniards along the entire Western and Southern frontier. Those who shouted loud and long over the accession of William of Orange, did not know that the war between savagery and civilization, between freedom and absolutism, which his coming to the throne inaugurated, was to continue in America, almost without interruption, for over eighty years. During that long struggle, three generations of Americans were to be educated by hard experience in the principles of popular government. The struggle was to lead them to new and unexpected responsibilities. It was to be the military school of the youth of the new nation, and the chief lesson of the long contest was to be the exemplification of the capacity of the American people for self government. Of highest importance to America was the Bill of Rights of 1689, ...« less