Keum Yong (Andrew) Lee

DBQ – Score 8/9 (95)

In what ways and to what extent did the “American identity” develop between 1750 and 1776?

Though the American colonists had not achieved a true, uniform sense of identity or unity by 1776, on the eve of Revolution, the progress towards unity and the inchoate idea of an “American” between 1750 and 1776 is inevitable in both existence and significance. Previous to the French and Indian War, America as a whole had been, more or less, loyal mercantile-based, and subservient to the British crown as British colonists in the New World; however, the Americans' sense of unity kindled and proliferated with the increased tax burdens and coercive Parliamentary decisions, while even until 1776,
Edmund Bunke sympathizes, in ideology, with Richard Lee by claiming that the colonies, merely by nature and geography, shouldn't coalesce and put up with British coercion. (Doc. B). By expressing similar ideas with Lee, the existence of ideological unity between some colonists is undeniable. By the end of the pre-Revolutionary period, enough grievances, such as the Boston Massacre, had prompted Americans to agree that a Declaration of Independence was the wisest course of action. Though the Declaration was, more or less, a culmination of the growing unity in America, loyalist factions, especially those of the upper class, prevented the development of complete inter-colonial unity.

Although the development of unity amongst certain colonists was apparent between the years 1750 and 1776, the development of unique “American” identity was not quite as prominent. Since 1750, the Americans had never explicitly asserted a desired separation from the mother country and establish themselves as “Americans”, but expressed a desire to “go back” to the way it was. In the Declaration for causes of Taking