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The Stamp Act
To recoup some of the massive debt left over from the war with France, Parliament passed laws such as the Stamp Act, which for the first time taxed a wide range of transactions in the colonies. -
The Boston Massacre
The simmering tension between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over one late afternoon 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 were fed up and started to fire upon them. -
The Boston Tea Party
The British withdrew their forces from Boston and repealed much of the onerous Townshend legislation. But they left in place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Act, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable treatment under tax regulations so that it could sell tea at a price that undercut the American merchants who imported from the Dutch. -
Lexington and Concord
British General, Thomas Gage led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington. He planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, and then head to Concord and seize their gunpowder. But American spies got wind of the plan, and with the help of riders such as Paul Revere, word spread through the town to be ready for the British. -
The British Attacks On Coastal Towns
Before the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts, and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies. In Falmouth, where townspeople had to grab their possessions and flee for their lives, northerners had to face up to “the fear that the British would do whatever they wanted to them,”.
