Driving Factors that Led to the American Revolution

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The ideologies and beliefs that drove the move for independence from Britain was ever evolving and shifting as human thought and logic are. There were no distinct markers to look at to say that one event or one human thought was the motivating factor for revolution. Events in that era were always in motion, as times of revolution have to be. Dynamic changes in how people lived and made a living, how they viewed their world and their new country, and more importantly how they viewed where they came from shaped how revolution came about. Besides how Americans now thought of themselves as distinctly American, there was the Stamp Act enacted by Parliament and the Regulators in the South that were driving factors that led to the Revolutionary War in all the colonies. From 1763 to 1765 there were several acts passed by Parliament to help raise revenue to help pay for the hefty cost of the Seven Years War, and to maintain the presence of troops in the colonies. There were several acts passed by Parliament during this time such as the Sugar Act, which was tightly enforced, and the Currency Act, which forced the colonies to depend on Britain for their paper money. Perhaps the most well-known action done by Parliament that served to bind the colonies together and set up conditions for revolution was the Stamp Act passed in November 1765. This act put a tax on things like newspapers, playing cards, legal documents, playing cards, and dice. These duties were already in place in England, so Grenville argued that it was only natural to extend this to the colonies in America. In England, the Stamp Act worked well and was widely accepted there. Therefore, the British government was greatly surprised at how vehemently opposed to it the colonist... ... middle of paper ... ...oodshed could have been avoided. However, one has to wonder without the violent uprisings and the arguing back and forth could true and lasting change have occurred? Works Cited Hoffman, Elizabeth, and Jon Gjerde. Major Problems in American History: Volume 1 to 1877. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. Morgan, Edmund. The Birth of the Republic 1763-89. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Nash, Gary, et al. The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011. Oats, Lynne, and Pauline Sadler. "ACCOUNTING FOR THE STAMP ACT CRISIS." Accounting Historians Journal 35, no. 2 (December 2008): 101-143. Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 19, 2012). Simmons, R.C. The American Colonies: From Settlement to Independence. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1976.

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