Napoleon Bonaparte issued the Berlin Decree in the Prussian capital on November 21, 1806, in answer to the British blockade of France. Napoleon claimed that by blocking commercial ports, Great Britain was acting in defiance of international maritime law. The Berlin Decree initiated the Continental System, which declared Great Britain to be under a blockade. Napoleon sought to wage economic warfare in lieu of France’s lack of a strong navy to wield against the superior British fleet. Despite this bold prohibition, black markets thrived along continental Europe’s shores. Merchant ships from the United States were quick to capitalize on the illegal trade. However, Great Britain opposed Napoleon with Orders in Council (1807), regulations that forbade neutral traffic with France and her allies unless those neutral ships purchased a special license available only at British ports.
Napoleon countered with the Milan Decree, an order that threatened French seizure of any neutral ships that engaged Britain for a license and then landed at a continental European port. President Thomas Jeeeer-son believed that the blanket decisions of Britain and France impinged on U. S. sovereignty. Although he lacked the military power to back up his intentions, Jefferson signed the Embargo Act (see Embargo oe 1807), which prohibited exports from leaving the United States. The act failed to exert sufficient pressure on either French or British policy. Instead, the Embargo Act led to an exodus of merchant sailors to British ships, and it created economic hardship in the United States.
Further reading: Lawrence S. Kaplan, Entangling Alliances with None: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Jefferson (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987).
—Catherine Franklin
Bernard, Sir Francis (1712-1779) government official
Francis Bernard was the governor of Massachusetts throughout most of the turbulent 1760s. He was born in England, went to Oxford, and became a lawyer in 1737. He might have lived in obscurity as a country lawyer in Lincolnshire had he not married Amelia Offley, a cousin of Lord Thomas Barrington. This noble was highly influential at court and served in the British government for most of the time from 1755 to 1778. Politics in England depended heavily on patronage, and Bernard, something of a social climber, soon became a client of Lord Barrington. In 1758 Barrington managed to get Bernard appointed as the governor of New Jersey. A talented bureaucrat and a careful politician, Bernard quickly won over the local leadership in that colony and thereby became a successful governor. Barrington and other English officials took note of this success, and transferred Bernard to the governorship of Massachusetts, one of the most populous and richest colonies. Unfortunately for Bernard, as he moved from Perth Amboy to Boston in 1760, the British Empire was about to face its greatest challenge.
Interestingly, Bernard recognized that the British-colonial relationship was troubled, and soon after he arrived in Massachusetts, he worked out an elaborate plan to reorganize the North American empire. Bernard’s advice was not acted upon, but it suggests that independence was not the only possibility available on the eve of the American Revolution. Bernard wanted to rewrite the colonial charters to create larger more coherent colonies, especially in New England where there were many jurisdictions divided into small entities like Rhode Island and Connecticut. He also wanted to create a North American nobility, which would form an upper house of legislature in each colony and that would thus help to stabilize a volatile social situation. He believed that the king in Parliament remained sovereign in the colonies, with the right of taxation. But he also advocated that the colonial assemblies be responsible for most taxes and that Parliament should be mainly concerned with trade regulations. Instead of acting on these recommendations, the British government began to pass a series of customs duties and laws—Sugar Act (1764), Stamp Act (1765), Townshend Duties (1767)—that made governing Massachusetts all but impossible. The successful governor of New Jersey wrestled throughout the 1760s with a tide of events beyond his control. Although sympathetic to many colonial demands, Bernard witnessed outright flaunting of customs regulations, the nullification of the Stamp Act through mob action, and the harassment of customs officials. Bernard struggled to keep up with events. The publication in 1769 of a series of letters he had sent home to officials in England complaining of colonial behavior made him extremely unpopular. At the request of the assembly he was recalled to England. There he was exonerated, but he did not return to the colonies. He was made a baronet, becoming Sir Francis Bernard of Needleham, Lincolnshire. He held some other government sinecures and received a pension. He died in relative isolation and retirement in 1779.
See also resistance movement.
Further reading: Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953).
Billings, William (1746-1800) composer William Billings was the leading composer and singing teacher of his generation, and he helped to define a distinct American Music. Billings was born into a modest Boston family and was apprenticed as a tanner. Although he continued in the tanner trade off and on for the rest of his life, while in his early 20s he began to establish a reputation as a psalm singer and music teacher. He opened his first singing school by 1769.
American music was undergoing an important transformation in the revolutionary era. Church music expanded beyond psalm singing and increasingly included more sacred songs, organ playing, and elaborate choral performances. Initially these changes were introduced based on English practices; Billings added a particular American character to this development. In 1770 he published The New England Psalm Singer: or American Chorister. All of this collection, as the book proudly proclaimed, was of American origin and written by Billings. The book contained music and songs for church performances, as well as instructions on how to teach the music. Innovative in its approach and in its identity as American, the book was an instant success. Over the next couple of decades, Billings taught at singing schools throughout New England. Billings became an ardent supporter of the American Revolution and published another book, The Singing Master’s Assistant, or Key to Practical Music, in 1778. This work featured many patriotic tunes, portraying the revolutionary movement as the work of God. If anything, this book was even more popular than the New England Psalm Singer and was sometimes called “Billing’s Best.” Billings continued to write and publish music in the 1780s and 1790s and remained the most popular and renowned composer of sacred music in the United States during his lifetime. Despite this success, he seems to have struggled financially in his later years. After his death, his music declined in popularity as musical tastes shifted in the 19th century.
Further reading: Kenneth Silverman, The Cultural History of the American Revolution: Painting, Music, Literature, and Theatre in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).
World History
