Throwback Thursday: The Road to Revolution, May 1776
Continuing a series we started last month, we’re revisiting the road to the American Revolution once a month, highlighting what was happening in the American colonies and territories leading into the official Declaration of Independence Day in July 1776. By May 1776, what began as just resistance to colonial rule was a full-on movement for revolutionary political, economic, and social decisions.
In Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress urged colonies to form new governments, free from British control. North Carolina was the first to do so. On May 10 and 15, prompted by John Adams and Richard Henry Lee, the congress passed resolutions officially urging all 13 colonies to abandon all royal authority.
Virginia had already told its delegates to do so. Kentucky was born out of Virginia territory. Rhode Island had already officially renounced allegiance to King George III earlier in the month. New Hampshire drafted a temporary state constitution of its own.
Consequences rippled to the West, even outside the colonies in the Ohio Valley and beyond. The British were trying to ally with Native Americans in the areas populated by early settlers and pioneers, especially the Shawnee, Cherokee, and Iroquois. They incited raids and skirmishes with their new muskets gifted from Britain. The plan was that the British would help the Native Americans take back their land and keep the settlers from expanding. That obviously didn’t work out.
This policy was designed to create a defensive line along the frontier, using indigenous knowledge of the terrain to create a buffer against the expanding American colonies. May and June 1776 saw the Cherokee War in territory that would become Kentucky. There were already mixed feelings between Native Americans and settlers in what would become our state, ever since Daniel Boone entered through the Cumberland Gap years earlier and founded Fort Boonesborough and his teenage daughter was temporarily kidnapped by a local tribe. Boone personally felt peace with the natives was a better idea, as they knew the natural resources and land, and could be huge allies in trade and development. Boone himself would go on to join the country’s new Congress after the war, bringing his frontiersman views to the East. But the British still had land in Canada and were attempting to use it to their advantage against wilderness settlers – bringing the war to the West.
Meanwhile, George Washington fortified New York by May 1776, preparing for the next British attack. By May 1776, independence wasn’t just an idea. It was becoming policy. Next month, the colonies prepare a document to make it official.
