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American Revolution Causes |
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The American Revolution began for many reasons, some are; long-term social,
economic, and political changes in the British colonies, prior to 1750 provided
the basis for and started a course to America becoming an independent nation
under it’s own control with its own government. Not a tyrant king thousands of
miles away. A huge factor in the start of the revolution was the French and
Indian War during the years of 1754 through 1763; this changed the age-old bond
between the colonies and Britain its mother. To top it off, a decade of
conflicts between the British rule and the colonists, starting with the Stamp
Act in 1765 that eventually led to the eruption of war in 1775, along with the
drafting of The Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Originally the fighting between Britain and France began in 1754 with a quarrel
in North America. It had two different names. In America it is known as the
French and Indian War. In Britain and Europe it is known as the Seven Years’
War, because the fighting lasted from 1756 to 1763. A result of the French and
Indian war was a British decision to reconsider its relationship with its
colonies. Prior to the French and Indian War, Britain had loosely controlled
its colonies. British leaders regarded the colonial government as inferior. As
long as only a few serious conflicts between Britain and America occurred, the
British government permitted colonial assemblies to oversee the royal governors
and to pass new laws that suited to the needs of the colonists.
In addition, the British did not always enforce their laws in the colonies. For
example, the British Customs Service, which was unproductive, understaffed, and
open to corruption, did not enforce the Molasses Act of 1733. British leaders
did not insist on strict enforcement of this tax or other commercial duties
because thriving American trade was making Britain very wealthy and powerful
nation.
British statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke, a orator who
successfully championed many human rights and causes by bringing people to
attention through his moving speeches. Described his country’s policies toward
the colonies as “salutary neglect” because he believed their leniency was
actually beneficial. As a result of this salutary neglect, the colonists
developed a political and economic system that was virtually independent. They
were loyal, although somewhat uncooperative, subjects of the crown. (Encarta,
2k1)
The war in North America was fought mostly throughout the Northern British
colonies, and in the closing stages Great Britain overpowered France. During
the peace talks, Britain gained French holdings in Canada and Florida from
France’s ally, Spain. Nevertheless, Britain amassed a large debt over the
course of the war. To help pay off the debt, Britain came up with the idea to
use the American colonies to generate lost money.
The French and Indian War changed the connection between Great Britain and the
colonies. Before the war, Great Britain had become very wealthy from the
colonies, after passing such acts as the Molasses Act in 1733, which imposed a
tax on molasses. Molasses was used for a variety of things including making rum
and was very important to the colonies economics. During the early period, the
colonists had developed a nearly independent political and economic system.
Because Britain had amassed large war debts; the British Parliament passed the
Stamp Act in 1765. The act was intended to generate money from the colonies
that would help pay for the cost to keep up a stable force of British troops in
the American colonies. All authorized documents, including deeds, mortgages,
newspapers, had to have a British government stamp, in order to be considered
legal.
Members of the Sons of Liberty, a patriotic secret group, were mostly active in
opposing the stamp tax. They led a course of physical violence in which many
official stamp agents were attacked by mobs and their possessions and property
destroyed and taken from them. Resolutions of protest against the stamp act
were adopted by a number of the colonial assemblies. The Virginia House of
Burgesses made five such resolutions offered by Patrick Henry the American
patriot. In resistance to the stamp act the Americans formed a stamp act
congress as a means to protest against the acts. American Merchants agreed to
stop bringing in British goods until the act was abolished, and trade was
considerably weakened. Rejecting to use the stamps on official and business papers
became common, and the courts would not punish if the stamp was not on legal
documents. British Parliament repealed the act on March 4, 1766, Benjamin
Franklin argued to the House of Commons. Franklin was Pennsylvania's
representative, in London. He turned out to be more of a representative of the
Colonies as a whole. Repeal was to go along with the Declaratory Act, which
declared the right of the British government to pass acts lawfully binding the
colonists.
The unity of the American colonists in their dislike of the Stamp Act added
significantly to the rise of American opposition, and the argument between the
colonists and the British government. The Stamp Act of 1765 required the
American colonists to apply tax stamps, like those shown here, to all official
documents, including deeds, mortgages, newspapers, and pamphlets. The colonists
convened the Stamp Act Congress to protest the act, which they called,
”taxation without representation.“ The Stamp Act is often considered one of the
main causes of the American Revolution.
Then came the Townshend Acts, measures passed by the British Parliament in
1767, affecting the American colonies. The acts were named for their sponsor,
the British chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend. The first measure
called for the suspension of the New York Assembly, thus penalizing it for not
complying with a law, enacted two years earlier, requiring the colonies to
provide adequate quartering of British troops in the New World. The second
measure, called the Revenue Act, imposed customs duties on colonial imports of
glass, red and white lead, paints, paper, and tea. A subsequent legislative act
established commissioners in the colonies to administer the customs services
and to make sure the duties were collected.
The Townshend Acts were tremendously unpopular in America. In response to a
published criticism of the measures, the British crown dissolved the
Massachusetts legislature in 1768. Subsequently, the Boston Massacre occurred
in March 1770, when British troops fired on American demonstrators. These
events brought the colonies closer to revolution.
The colonists who protested the taxes were able to distinguished between taxes
designed to raise money, which they strongly opposed, and tariffs intended
primarily to control trade, which the colonists had accepted, at least in
principle, since the imposition of the Molasses Act of 1733. They felt the
distinction between revenue and regulation was subtle if not artificial. And
Charles Townshend, who was a longtime critic of the American assemblies,
misunderstood it. Townshend belief was that the colonists were only objecting
to internal taxes, such as the Stamp Act, but not to external taxes. Therefore,
he assumed that all the colonists would accept the external taxes. The
Townshend Acts, which were passed in 1767, placed duties on colonial imports of
lead, glass, and other necessities. This act also specified that the tax money
be to be used not only to support British troops in America but also to provide
salaries for British officials who would the collect taxes. Such monies would
make these tax collectors financially independent of other colonial assemblies.
This attempt was to raise revenue through trade tariffs and to circumvent
American control of imperial officials which greatly angered many colonial
officials. John Dickinson argued in his influential Letters from a Farmer in
Pennsylvania (1767) that the Townshend duties were “not for the regulation of
trade ... but for the single purpose of levying money upon us.” Bolstered by
such arguments, the colonists opposed the taxes, not with the violence of 1765,
which ended with the repeal of the Stamp Act, but with a new boycott of British
goods, the Second No importation Movement. (Encarta, 2k1)
The Americans’ unwavering resistance to the Townshend Acts resulted in economic
and moral upheaval. The colonial economy before 1754 allowed the colonists to
earn enough from their exports to pay for their imports from Great Britain. By
the British military spending in America for the duration of the French and
Indian War strengthen the incomes of many colonists and unleashed a wave of
free spending. British creditors aided this free spending by allowing the
American traders a full year’s credit, instead of the traditional six months.
The colonists soon became overextended and had gone deeply into debt.
By wars end in 1763, the good times came to an abrupt end. A recession after
the war brought bankruptcy and disgrace to those Americans who had overextended
them selves and brought hard times to nearly everyone else. This economic
hardship generated even greater opposition to the Stamp Act in 1765, especially
among tradesmen and craftsmen. This opposition to the stamp act was brought
upon from the competition of low-priced British goods and now feared higher
taxes. Comparable economic stresses fueled quarrel to the Townshend Acts of
1767.
Such incidents as the Boston Massacre helped to fuel the American Revolution.
Encounter on March 5, 1770 the Boston Massacre, five years before the beginning
of the American Revolution, between British troops and a group of citizens of
Boston (then in the Massachusetts Bay Colony). British troops were quartered in
the city to discourage demonstrations against the Townshend Acts, which imposed
duties on imports to the colonies. Citizens constantly harassed the troops, and
during a demonstration, rocks thrown by the colonists struck a squad of British
soldiers. The soldiers fired into the crowd and killed five men, including
Crispus Attucks, who was leading the group. The eight soldiers and their
commanding officer were tried for murder and were defended by John Adams, later
president of the United States, and Josiah Quincy. Two soldiers were declared
guilty of manslaughter and, after claiming benefit of clergy, were branded on
the thumb; the others, including the officer, were acquitted. The American
patriot Samuel Adams to create anti-British sentiment in the colonies
skillfully exploited the incident. (Encarta, 2k1)
Next in line leading to the revolution was the Boston Tea Party, a popular name
the action taken on December 16, 1773, by a group of Boston citizens to protest
the British tax on tea imported to the colonies. Although most provisions of
the Townshend Acts, taxing imports to the colonies, were repealed by
Parliament, the duty on tea was retained to demonstrate the power of Parliament
to tax the colonies. The citizens of Boston would not permit the unloading of
three British ships that arrived in Boston in November 1773 with 342 chests of tea.
The royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, however, would not let
the tea ships return to England until the duty had been paid. On the evening of
December 16, a group of Bostonians, instigated by the American patriot Samuel
Adams and many of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the vessels and
emptied the tea into Boston Harbor. When the colonists of Boston refused to pay
for the tea, the British closed the port. (Grolier, 98)
Another way the colonists found very effective for scaring tax collectors, who
were hated so much, was using a method called tar and feathering. This was done
by removing clothes of the person and then applying hot tar, which in most
instances was very painful. Then well the tar was still hot right after applying
it, they would proceed to sticking and dumping feathers all over the persons
body. Over all it would make them look like a big bird, and was painful. A real
life account tells the story.
[In the spring of 1766, John Gilchrist, a Norfolk merchant and ship-owner, came
to believe that Captain William Smith had reported his smuggling activities to
British authorities. In retribution, Gilchrist and several accomplices captured
Smith and, as he reported, "dawbed my body and face all over with tar and afterwards
threw feathers on me." Smith's assailants, which included the mayor of
Norfolk, then carted him "through every street in town," and threw
him into the sea. Fortunately, Smith was rescued by a passing boat just as he
was "sinking, being able to swim no longer."] (1)
(1) Captain William Smith to J. Morgan, Apr. 3, 1766, in William and Mary
Quarterly, 1st Ser., XXI (1913), p. 167. from sight :
http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/
Tar and feathers was a very old form of punishment, but it does not appear to
have ever been widely applied in England or in Europe. Why Gilchrist and his
allies chose to resurrect tar and feathers on this particular occasion
historians can only surmise. Whatever their reasons, these Virginians
inaugurated a new trend in colonial resistance, a trend that their New England
neighbors would eagerly follow. Throughout New England, tar and feathers soon
became the "popular Punishment for modern delinquents." By March,
1770, at least thirteen individuals had been feathered in the American
colonies: eight in Massachusetts, two in New York, one in Virginia, one in
Pennsylvania, and one in Connecticut. In all of these instances, the tar brush
was reserved exclusively for customs inspectors and informers, those persons
responsible for enforcing the Townshend duties on certain imported goods.
Indeed, American patriots used tar and feathers to wage a war of intimidation
against British tax collectors.
These were the actions that made our country leap towards a revolution and
eventually make it free. As the first line of the constitution says “We the
People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote
the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.”, and this selection along with the rest of the constitution still
stands today and has not been changed or altered since it was made.
Work cited
Carroll, Andrew, Letters for a Nation, Broadway New York, 1997
Gottschalk, Louis. "Cause of Revolution." Schenckman Publishing
Company, Inc.: Cambridge, 1971.
Grolier Encyclopedia, Grolier 98, © 1995-1998
Microsoft Encarta, Encarta 2k1, © 1993-2000 Microsoft.
Olsen, Keith W., et al. An Outline of American History. As reprinted on the
Internet http://www.let.rug.nl/~usa/H/