Were The American Colonists Justified Dbq Analysis

Beginning in 1764 Great Britain started establishing acts on colonies, which would raise the British revenue, ban the colonies from issuing their own paper money or require them to house British troops in their homes. Consequently, it was not long before the colonists started the revolution; the injustices of their mother country finally led them to declare independence and wage war against Great Britain. In my view it is apparent that the colonists were in every right and aspect justified to break away from Britain; moreover, it was just about the time that they stood up and took control over their own fate and life.

Significantly, there was a myriad of differences between American colonies and their mother country. The original American

settlers came to the new world for variety of reasons; however, still they were thinking of themselves as British subjects. Yet as the time passed by, the cultural, economic and political gap between people of the British Isles and separated from them by three thousand miles people of North America started dramatically deepening. Isolated from the goods that Great Britain was offering to their citizens, colonists were living in a highly primitive environment, where obtaining the most prosaic neccesities was an impossibility. Furthermore, the role of a government has evolved; paradoxically, it played much smaller role in the colonies than in Britain itself.
The end of the Seven Years War brought a burden of heavy debts on British Government leading to enforcing laws and levying taxes on the colonies, which ultimately would help in increasing revenue for the British.

As Thomas Whately wrote in his pamphlet (Document 1), British Chancellor of the Exchequer under those circumstances was justified in levying taxes on the colonists. Apparently, the French and Indian War not only caused an increase of the taxes, but also limitation of western expansion by colonists Consequently, it prevented the colonies from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, where it would be harder to control and tax them. For this reason the colonial resentment of British attempts to expand imperial authority in the colonies

increased.
By having taken many rights away from the colonists, some people say that King George III ignited a dynamite; began the prelude to revolution. Had the British Government not imposed so many restrictions, could it sustain peace rather than beginning a war. Being under pressure of the Proclamation of 1763 and set of acts, 27 men from 9 colonies all across the East Coast of North America drew up a Declaration of Rights and Grievances (Document 2), in which they condemned some of the new taxes being imposed by Parliament. It is the most compelling evidence of the colonists’ endeavor to reach an agreement, not a dispute. American boycotts of British goods and numerous protests forced the Government of Great Britain to finally led to a repeal of the Stamp Act. Promising may it seem, the view of consensus was by far remote.
Not until the British Parliament’s decision of the East India Company’s monopoly on the tax-free transport of tea for, had the colonists been at peace.

Yet soon after it meant that the colonial tea trades were discredited in competing with such an enormous rival, who, besides its treasure, is not obliged to pay taxes. For this reason insulted colonists wage a boycott of British goods and the as a form of a protest the Sons of Liberty dumped 342 chests of tea from Indian company into the harbor; good amounting to $1,000,000 dollars today. Having heard of this, the British Prime Minister Lord North said, "Whatever may be the consequence, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over". The British Parliament responded by a closure of Boston’s harbor and an imposition of Coercive Acts in hope that the acts would cut Boston and the state of New England off from the rest of Americans, which would prevent the British from unified resistance against them. However, the act was viewed as a violation of both; constitution and human or natural rights, leading to a mobilization of the

colonies.
Boston Tea Party was barely the first act of colonial resistance towards British empire. Coupled with Battle of Lexington and Concord and Battle of Bunker Hill, the colonists were persistant in their tenacity of purpose (Document 5). Having issued Common Sense, Thomas Paine helped in convicing many feered Americans that the only way to end the conflict with England is to break away from them and create a democratic republic (Document 6). Why should tiny England rule the vastness of a continent? How can colonists expect to gain foreign support while still professing loyalty to the British king? These questions led many pamphlet’s readers to one answer. If it had not been for Thomas Paine, the American Revolution would be in a deadly crisis.
As the summer of 1776 drew near, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin drafted a formal statement of the colonies’ intentions to explain and justify the rest of the world why colonies had chosen to separate themselves from Britain. On June 7, 1776, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Richard Henry Lee voiced a resolution with a long list of grievances and justifications telling that the United States should be completely free of English reign and that all political ties between the two countries should be dissolved.