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The Stamp Act
To setl some of the debt left over from the war with France Parliament passed laws such as the Stamp Act which taxed a wide range of transactions in the colonies.The colonists resented having to buy goods from the British and pay tax on them as well. The tax never got collected because there were riots.Ultimately Benjamin Franklin convinced the British to rescind it but that only made things worse.That made the Americans think they could push back against anything the British wanted. -
The Townshend Acts
Parliament again tried to assert its authority by passing legislation to tax goods that the Americans imported from Great Britain.Americans struck back by organizing a boycott of the British goods that were taxed and began harassing British customs commissioners.In an effort to stop the resistance the British sent troops to occupy Boston, which only angered the colonist more. -
The Boston Massacre
Tensions between the British occupiers and Boston residents increase when a disagreement between an apprentice wigmaker and a British soldier led to a crowd of 200 colonists surrounding seven British troops. When the Americans began taunting the British and throwing things at them, the soldiers began firing into the crowd.The massacre became a useful propaganda tool for the colonists especially after an engraving that misleadingly depicted the British as the aggressors. -
The Boston Tea Party
The British eventually withdrew their forces from Boston. But they left in place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Act. That didn’t sit well with Americans. They didn’t want the British telling them that they had to buy their tea. So the Sons of Liberty, a radical group decided to confront the British.They boarded three ships in Boston harbor and destroyed more than 92,000 pounds of tea by dumping it into the harbor.The act of defiance really angered the British government. -
The Coercive Acts
In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government decided that it had to subdue the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In 1774 Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor, replaced the colony’s elected council with one appointed by the British, forbade town meetings without approval, and more. But perhaps the most provocative was the Quartering Act. The quartering of troops eventually became one of the points in the Declaration of Independence. -
Lexington and Concord
British General Thomas Gage led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington, where he planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock.But American spies got wind of the plan.On the Lexington Common, the British force was confronted by 77 Americans, and they began shooting at each other.The Americans stop the British at Concord. The encounter proved to the British that the colonists had to be taken seriously. It was the start of America’s war of independence. -
British attacks on coastal towns
The Revolutionary War’s hostilities started with Lexington and Concord but it was unclear whether the southern colonies would be in for a all out war of independence. The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to buy their crops, and they didn’t trust the northern. But that was before the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies.
