Comparative Questions

COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS

Document Links

Document 6-1: Mary Jemison Is Captured by Seneca Indians during the Seven Years' War

Document 6-2: An Oration on the Second Anniversary of the Boston Massacre

Document 6-3: A Boston Shoemaker Recalls British Arrogance and the Boston Tea Party

Document 6-4: Daniel Leonard Argues for Loyalty to the British Empire

Document 6-5: Edmund Burke Urges Reconciliation with the Colonies

  1. How did Joseph Warren's arguments about colonial grievances compare with those expressed by Daniel Leonard, George Hewes, and Edmund Burke? How might Warren and Hewes have responded to Leonard's and Burke's arguments?
  2. How might Warren, Hewes, and Burke have interpreted the rebellious activities Leonard criticized? How would they have viewed the Iroquois Confederacy's treaty with the British?
  3. Fundamental assumptions about law, liberty, government, and society divided colonists. To what extent do the documents in this chapter reveal those divisions? To what extent, if at all, did patriots and loyalists share common assumptions about such basic matters?
  4. Do the documents in this chapter suggest that colonists were unified in rebellion? What were the most important sources of unity and of conflict? Do these documents provide evidence of a distinctive American identity among colonists?
  5. Judging from the documents in this chapter, why did so many colonists decide to support open and active rebellion against British rule? Why did other colonists decide instead to continue to ally with the British? How did their views compare to those of the Iroquois Confederacy recalled by Mary Jemison?