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Why the Colonies Had to Leave Great Britain
The origin of the United States is in a way an epic story of an underdog taking on the grand champion and winning. They had almost no chance of being free from Great Britain, but here we are. Now, this didn’t happen overnight, and they never really wanted to leave until the end. Great Britain was being very difficult and almost forcing us out.
Americans always explain why we left England as “taxation without representation,” but that wasn’t what really drove us over the edge. In 1688 the Bill of Rights was created by England to make sure they didn’t treat the colonies badly. We were happy with this for many years until the French and Indian War, when King George III used it to increase the taxes on the colonies. We didn’t like this but we still wanted to be with England so Benjamin Franklin came up with the Albany Plan. This would allow us to have our own military, trade agreements, and it would even alleviate the tax burden on the colonies while letting the king save money. The king rejected this and gave us more taxes
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with the Stamp Act in 1765. We were being taxed more than ever before and we had no representation in the Parliament. This also violated the Bill of Rights and our social contract. This all lead to us protesting against England.
We addressed what was wrong to Parliament and they sent us away. King George got angry with us because we were so active about not wanting so much tax. This scared Parliament and led to us getting the Townshend Acts. This was a series of taxes on goods like paper, glass, lead, sugar, molasses, and tea. We began protesting even more in many forms; we publically protested, boycotted the goods with extra taxes, and wrote some pretty hardcore complaints about England, like Common Sense by Thomas Paine. It got especially rough in Boston. On March 5th of 1770, there were active protests and 5 unarmed civilians were shot and killed by British troops. Later, in 1773, Sons of Liberty, led by Sam Adams and John Hancock dumped 3.5 million dollars worth of tea in the harbor. We call this even the Boston Tea Party. We wanted to let England know that we didn’t need
them. Soon after this Boston was under Marshall law and the port of Boston was closed. Along with this the Quartering Act, which allowed British soldiers to come into anyone's home for whatever they wanted, was founded. They also passed the Quebec Act which prohibited us from moving further past the Appalachians and made Roman Catholicism the Religion of the colonies. This was basically the king thinking that the only way to keep us from rebelling more was to give us more rules we must follow. In 1775 the First Continental Congress came together and tried to create a peaceful solution, because we still didn’t want to leave England. The king didn’t agree with their ideas either. British Troops marched to Lexington and Concord to take away firearms and arrest John Hancock. Later we created the Second Continental Congress which also tried to reason with the king, this time with the Olive Branch Petition, to which he angrily refused. A year later we decided we had enough of it, so in 1776 Richard Henry Lee motioned for independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and on July 4th, 1776, we became our own country. In conclusion, the colonies were treated very poorly by the king. He taxed them until they had to boycott everyday goods. He took away all their rights and made them so hopeless that they felt the only they could ever recover was to completely leave England, even if it meant losing their lives.
With all this shoving against the colonists, provoking them rebel they ended up doing so in 1776. For the taxation, military actions, and acts against their beliefs and government philosophies had went too far for the colonists. Also they were scared that if they stayed it would have gotten worse for them so leaving was seen as their only option.
The soldiers were trialed for murdered but were found innocent. Afterwards, a group of men formed named The Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty lead protest in Boston. A key event leading to the revolution was the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party was a protest lead by the Sons of Liberty. The group of men dumped the imported tea and further eroded the relations with Britain. After the Boston Tea Party, the colonist refused to drink British tea. As stated in Tom Gage’s Proclamation, “Whereas the rebels hereabout, Are stubborn still, and still hold out; Refusing yet to drink their tea, In spite of Parliament and me” Furthermore, the British were becoming annoyed by the colonists actions. Therefore, the British passed the Intolerable Acts. The Intolerable Acts, as the name predicts, made the colonists furious. The British had passed the Intolerable Acts precisely to punish the Massachusetts colonist. The Acts consisted of the Massachusetts Bay closing, until tea was paid for, and a new Quartering Act, The new Quartering Act allowed British Troops to be stationed in private homes if necessary. Also, it gave power to the crown to elect all officials in
The Sons of Liberty answered the call. In an act of defiance, “a few dozen of the Sons of Liberty, opposing new British laws in the colonies, systematically dumped three shiploads of tea into Boston harbor. They acted to prevent the royal authorities from collecting taxes on that import” (Bell). This left Parliament infuriated. They did what they only knew how to do and put a tighter squeeze on the colonists.
The British Empire has had a long lasting and strong influence on the American colonies for over three centuries. From the 16th century all the way to the 18th century, the British empire has held power within the colonies in terms of legislature, economy, and social stature. The British’s rule has been both a positive and negative driving force
In the first few months of 1773 the British East India Company found it was sitting on large stocks of tea that it could not sell in England. It was on the verge of bankruptcy, and many members of Parliament owned stock in this company. (USA, 1) The Tea Act in 1773 was an effort to save it. The Tea Act gave the company the right to export its merchandise without paying taxes. Thus, the company could undersell American merchants and monopolize the colonial tea trade. By October, the Sons of Liberty in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston threatened tea imports and pledged a tea boycott.
July 4th of 1776 is arguably the most significant day in American history. On this day, the thirteen British colonies won their independence from Great Britain, their mother country at the time. The war that allowed the colonies to gain their independence was, of course, the American Revolution. One reason the colonists’ declaration of independence was understandable was because after an extended period of salutary neglect, the British started imposing laws on the colonies. Another reason was that the British violated colonists’ rights by implementing the Proclamation of 1763. A third and final reason the colonies were correct in breaking away from Great Britain was that although the colonists were not represented in British Parliament, Great Britain still taxed them. The thirteen British colonies were absolutely justified in seceding from Great Britain because the British started to enforce laws after a long period of salutary neglect, they violated the colonists’ rights by passing the Proclamation of 1763, and the colonies were required to pay taxes even though they were not represented in Parliament.
Instead they passed new acts which were worse than the ones passed before. As a result of the Tea Act, all the taxes except the tax on tea was repealed in order to keep Parliament’s right to tax the colonies, and the colonists did not like this act. As a result of their anger towards the British, the Boston Tea Party occurred: Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston Harbor and empty 342 chests of tea to the Boston. Still, the British kept on trying to control the Americans, but this time, they passed 4 acts, the Intolerable Acts, in order to punish and control people; The Boston Harbor would be closed, the people of Boston would have a curfew, Massachusetts would lose its self-government/town meetings, royal officers would be allowed to be tried in Britain, and the British troops would use empty buildings. Instead of giving Americans the freedom they wanted, the British punished them. Yet, this did not stop Americans. Instead, they were even angrier to the British for the strict rules the British was passing in order to control the colonists. They knew they had to do something, which resulted in continental congresses, the Articles of Confederation, and the American Revolution. The British was not going to stop trying to hold power over the colonies, and as Patrick Henry started off by saying “Caesar had his Brutus — Charles the first, his Cromwell — and George the third — ” and finished “may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it”(Wolverton, Joe, II). This was no longer of a fight against the British, but a fight to be
The imperial tactics of the British Empire were exercised on the colonists through heavy taxes trade restrictions because of their mercantilist economy. The Stamp Act taxed the colonists directly on paper goods ranging from legal documents to newspapers. Colonists were perturbed because they did not receive representation in Parliament to prevent these acts from being passed or to decide where the tax money was spent. The colonists did not support taxation without representation. The Tea Act was also passed by Parliament to help lower the surplus of tea that was created by the financially troubled British East India Company. The colonists responded to this act by executing the Boston Tea Party which tossed all of the tea that was imported into the port of Boston. This precipitated the Boston Port Act which did not permit the colonists to import goods through this port. The colonists protested and refused all of these acts which helped stir the feelings of rebellion among the colonists. The British Mercantilist economy prevented the colonists from coin...
There are four major reasons that the rebellion of the colonists accumulated into a full scale revolution. The most indistinct of these four reasons is the old societal legacies of the colonies, namely: social, political, religious, and economic values. These deeply rooted values were ingrained and inherited from the generations of colonists, and once the British began upsetting those values, resentment set in and began to undermine the British authority. For example, many of those who came to America were of British decent; they loved being English and fancied that, as colonists, they were taking part in the building of a bigger and stronger British Empire. But to those in England, the Americans were no better than barbarians. The English did not view A...
The last reason would be the revolt of the Townshend Acts. The patriots and Americans did not agree and strife with the British soldiers over it. The Act built tension between the two. (Griswold 23)
The Boston tea party was a brief incident among many, composing, economic, and political crisis that ultimately caused a revolution. These events consisted of The French and Indian war, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Revenue Act, the Tea Act, and of course the Boston Tea Party. The incident caused by the colonies infuriated the British government therefore as punishment parliament responded to the abuse with the Coercive Acts of 1774 . When the thirteen colonies once again decided to resist the British troops revolution spread. “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” This act later on lead to the American Revolutionary War, were years later independence was
In the 1760s, Boston was full of disorder. With each new British law came protest from American colonists. The people of Boston believed that Britain did not have the right to tax them because they did not elect their representatives in Parliament. Only the Massachusetts Assembly, whose members were elected every year, had the right to tax its citizens. The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 led to boycotts and unrest, steered by a group known as the Sons of Liberty. As a result, the British government sent troops to Boston to keep order. Instead of staying in a fort on an island in the Boston harbor, the British troops stayed on the commons and were living in buildings in the middle of town. The British troops’ presence in Boston was not welcome and Bostonians viewed them as a threat. Because they did not like the English army in their city, fights between the American colonists and the British troops were common.
One of the reasons that the colonists wanted to separate from Britain was that people in the colonies had begun to see themselves as small separate nations such as North Carolinians, Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and on goes the list. This started to give them an identity separate of Britain, but in many ways the colonists still considered themselves to be British. Since the colonists continued to see themselves as British, it made little impact that the people in each colony were developing new identities. Another factor that contributed to the American Revolution would be tax collectors. Many people fled to the colonies because of debt, and tax collectors followed to collect on debts that these people owed them. This reason is given a little more weight than it should because the majority of the population was not first or second generation colonists by the mid eighteenth century. Tax collectors would not be able to collect on individuals if surnames changed or the surname died. Royal governors are another small reason that people would want to be free of British rule as they were a constant reminder of British rule over the colonies. However, this reason...
The main reason for the severance of the colonies from Britain was the lack of equality in parliament and the disregard for colonial needs. Whether it be forcing someone to pay for a war they did not fight or want, limiting one’s need for land, or piling on the taxes, all of these factors played a part in the dissolving of British-colonial ties. The colonists were only human and had the human reaction of defiance to injustice. If the colonists had not of had the audacity that they did, today’s America would be a very different place. Breaking away from Britain was the greatest thing the colonists could have possible done.
In 1776 the founding fathers created a document announcing America’s demand freedom from its governing country, England, due to the fact that their life wasn’t worth living without freedom from a criminating system. The king was neglecting essential laws to be ordained in the states. He was only allowing laws that benefited him and not the presiding citizens of the colonies. He was neglecting certain representatives, to have positions in government where they could make a change. He made the judges reliant on him, therefore making the system corrupt in his favor. His officers were harassing the people and he was waging wars against them without them having any forms of immediate protection. Essentially America was at one of its lowest points, and this document was announcing its right to be reborn in freedom.