American Revolution Dbq

In the late 1700’s, some American colonies were beginning to resist British rule . The American Revolution was fought in the 13 British colonies in North America for the right to be independent. Leading up to the Revolution, the colonists had been mistreated by the British. They had been taxed without a say in Parliament and were in general treated as inferior to the British. Many of the acts that British rulers passed, such as the Quartering act, made the colonists feel as though they were not being treated as actual englishmen and instead as people who were below the British. The American revolution was caused by the mistreatment of the colonies, taxation without the consent of the colonists and lack of representation in the British government.

One way that Britain was mistreating the colonists was by taxing without giving the colonists a say in Parliament.

The 1765 Resolution of the Town of Braintree, Massachusetts stated “no freeman should be subject to any tax to which he has not given his own consent”. This is in response to the Stamp act, which was an indirect tax on all paper materials. The colonists saw it unfair that they were being taxed even though they had no say in whether or not they should be taxed. George Greenville, a British official, talked about how the British fought a war for the colonists and it seemed only right that the colonists pay taxes to help regain the money spent on the war. The colonists, however, thought that in order to pay taxes, they needed to have a say in Parliament, even if the British had lost a lot of money in a war to protect

them.
There was a lot of tension between the colonists and the British army leading up to the revolution as a result of the mistreatment of the colonists. The Boston Massacre occurred on March 5, 1770. Colonists were throwing rock filled snowballs at some British soldiers. The british soldiers fired, whether it was accidentally or on purpose is unknown, into the crowd of colonists. This resulted in the death of five colonists. A few days later, on March 12, the Boston Gazette wrote about the incident, making the colonists think the British soldiers were more cruel than originally thought. The Quartering Act of 1774 was another way the British mistreated the colonists, resulting in greater tension between the colonists and the British army. It said that if the British army did not have any more room in the already determined living space, the governor could order colonists to let soldiers stay in their uninhabited buildings. The colonists saw this as a threat and thought it unnecessary to have to house soldiers if there was no war going on at that time. This increased the tension between the colonists and the British army.
The lack of colonial representation in the British government was another cause of the revolution. When the Second Continental congress met in 1775, the wrote the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms.
The American Revolution was a result of the mistreatment of the colonies by Britain. The British had been taxing the American colonists without the colonists consent and had been mistreating the colonists’ rights as Englishmen. It is hard to give an exact cause of the American revolution but it is fair to say that the general mistreatment of the colonists had led to the revolution.