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Stamp Act
This forced colonists to pay taxes on every piece of paper they used. Two professions that were greatly affected by this were newspaper editors and lawyers. This led to negative things about Britain being printed in the papers and the finding and exploiting of legal loopholes. -
Boston Massacre
During a protest, the colonists were throwing snowballs with rocks in the middle at British soldiers. That caused one of the soldiers to fire, which caused all of the soldiers to fire, and led to five colonists being killed. The newspaper printers, who were already mad at Britain, decided to over exaggerate this event by calling it a massacre so that more colonists would start to dislike Britain. -
Boston Tea Party
The Sons of Liberty organized a protest against Britain's tax on tea. Men disguised themselves as Indians and bordered three East India Company ships. They threw 342 chests of tea into the Boston harbor that was worth about $1.7 million in today's money. -
Intolerable Acts
Britain passed four Acts that the colonists deemed "The Intolerable Acts" to punish Boston. The acts were the Boston Port Bill (shut down Boston Harbor), Massachusetts Government Act (replaced the local government with an appointed British-favoring one), Administration of Justice Act (let British officials charged with capital offenses to be tried in either a different colony or England), and Quartering Act (let Britain decide what houses the colonists would have to let soldiers stay in). -
Common Sense
This was a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine to convince colonists to fight for independence from Britain. It was full of ideas that insisted that the British were responsible for almost all of the problems in the colonies and that the crisis could only be solved by colonial independence.