“The British are coming, the British are coming!” Did you know that these famous words were never yelled by Paul Revere? However, the British were indeed coming. America’s forefathers came to this land to escape oppression from British rule. It wasn’t until they were being overtaxed by the British that they rose up to fight for independence and freedom. This historic event was known as The American Revolution. The American Revolution gave birth to democracy in America through great historical events, unknown facts, and famous penned agreements.
Resistance to the British and their control over the colonies began with a small group of men called The Sons of Liberty. Over time, they grew into a large organization having members in all of the colonies. Their primary purpose was to reject the extreme taxes the British were imposing on them. After many parliamentary acts were enacted to extort money via taxes from the colonists, they began to revolt in an attempt to show the British their discontent (History.com Staff, 2009). The most famous uprising of the Sons of Liberty was the Boston Tea Party.
The British had been taxing everything they could get away with on the colonists. When they taxed the tea – that of which the colonists could only buy from the British, the colonists told the British to take their tea ships home. The British refused. As a result, colonist Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty protested by sneaking on board the tea ships disguised as Indians and dumped the tea in its entirety into the Boston Harbor. The British, angered by this, closed the harbor and imposed more penalties ("Boston tea party," 2009). The American Revolution began shortly thereafter.
Many battles took place in the American Rev...
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Bet you didn't know: Revolutionary war [Web]. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/american-revolution-history/videos/bet-you-didnt-know-revolutionary-war?m=528e38969e64d
Boston tea party [Web]. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/boston-tea-party
History.com Staff. (2009). Stamp act [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/stamp-act
Paul revere [Web]. (2014). Retrieved from Paul Revere. (2014). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 05:16, Mar 15, 2014, from http://www.biography.com/people/paul-revere-9456172.
Treaty of Paris [Web]. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/treaty-of-paris
ushistory.org. (2014). Drafting the constitution [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.ushistory.org/us/15.asp
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Show MoreBy this point, the colonists were beginning to question Britain’s motives towards them. They believed they were being treated like slaves and being used solely for the economic growth of Britain. One night, in 1773, the colonists rebelled against these taxes on their tea. A group of men dressed as Native Americans boarded a ship at Boston Harbor and unloaded three vessels of taxed tea (Boston Tea Party). This event, known a...
On a cold December night, a group of townspeople stormed the ships in the Boston harbor and tossed 342 chests of tea into the ocean. This event is known by the Boston tea party, it was a protest of the colonists against the Tea Act which passed by the Parliament on May 10, 1773. This act granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies. Since the tea cargos were the only thing townspeople thrown overboard and they were really careful about the other things on the ship, they are sending a clear message: they are not going to pay the tax on tea. The colonists loved tea, they used it on daily basis. And it is
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.
In the mid eighteenth century colonist of the new world started to rebel against Britain. Living in the colonies cost Britain a great deal of money Colonist did not like that they were being taxed. There were several acts passed that angered the colonists. For example, the Stamp Act, the Stamp Act was passed in 1765 taxed all legal documents including newspapers and other printed materials. The Stamp Act affected all that bought printed materials and it did not affect the poor because it was not too expensive. The colonist started to rebel and boycotted “No taxation without representation.” The colonists rebelled in many ways one of them was the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party occurred in 1773 as an act of revolt colonists threw tea cargo of a ship to the ocean. These acts of Britain towards the new colonies caused colonist to revolve and declare war to separate from Britain. The colonists were not justified to going to war to break away from Britain because England was paying more taxes and the mother country deserved absolute respect; however, the colonists were justified to break away from Britain because they were taxed without representation.
The East India trading company was in debt and asked parliament for assistance. Parliament made the Tea Act, which made imports of tea to the colonies from the trading company much cheaper than those from local sources. This angered the colonists because they could no longer compete with these prices and they feared that if they acquiesced to this new act, that others like it would soon follow. Groups like the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty then organized protests and the boycotting of English goods, not just tea. The sons of liberty even boarded one of the trade ships in Boston harbor dressed as Indians and proceeded to dump all of the tea overboard in an event called the Boston Tea Party. Colonists in other port cities copied
The American Colonies were beyond frustrated. They were tired of the British Parliament not responding to the American colonists’ boycott. The Sons of Liberty took three ships full of tea at the Boston Harbor and dumped 342 crates of...
That day would happen on March 5th 1770. On this evening, a British guard was patrolling a custom house, some colonists began taunting the soldier and soon a crowd of angry colonists arrived. The British officer decided it would be necessary to call in more troops. Later, around eight soldiers arrived to support the guard, by this time the mob grew to about three hundred people. A colonist kicked one of the soldiers down, and the soldier fired upon the crowd. After a short pause, the other British troop fired on the colonists. Thanks to the press and art of Paul Revere, this event is now known as the Boston Massacre. The Boston Tea Party, one of the most famous events of per-revolution America. The British imposed a tax on all tea and this united the colonists in an agreement against the tax. The Sons of Liberty once again mobbed up and threatened the shop owners to not support the tax. Throughout the colonies, agents of the Tea Act were forced to resign. When this didn't seem to be enough, the Sons of Liberty devised a plan at the liberty tree in Boston. On the night of December 16th a group of men dressed as Mohawk Indians, boarded four British ships carrying tea and dumped it all into the harbor. This tea never landed and therefore this tea was never
The Tea Act was passed by Parliament in 1773 (Tea Act). It was an effort from Britain to economically boost the East India Company, which at the time was struggling to stay in business (Tea Act). The act imposed no new taxes and created a very buyer friendly tea market in America. However, the American colonists believed that the act was a way for Britain to gain popular support for the previously in place taxes. Because of this belief and the fact that the low tea prices would undercut the local market, Americans rebelled and sent most shipments away with the exception of the import to Boston (Tea Act). In Boston the ships were held from leaving and locked in the bay, where colonists ravaged them during The Boston Tea
...ere laden with tea. The disguised colonists proceeded to throw the entire tea cargo of the boats into the harbor (Hansen 166). The reason that this was done was because the colonists were tired of being taxed for items such as tea. Many did no mind being taxed for some things, but not tea. They believed that the money from the taxes was going to help England, and not back to the colonies as they thought that it should. Two years after the Boston Tea Party took place the American Revolution began.
The colonists believed that England was wrongfully taxing them in order to pay off the debt that was accrued by the French and Indian War. This issue became widely known as “Taxation without Representation.” Parliament had implemented various acts that taxed the American colonists on tea, stamps, oil, lead, paper, etc. In response to these taxes being imposed on the colonies, a group of colonists called “The Sons of Liberty” rebelled on the evening of December 16, 1773 (Boston Tea Party, 2016). Their rebellion consisted of destroying 342 chests of tea distributed by the East India Company (Boston Tea Party, 2016). The American Colonists accused King George III of tyranny and soon after insisted upon independence from
Splash! “…Patriots disguised as Native Americans threw 342 chests of tea overboard from three British ships” (Hart 71). This event, which the colonists enjoyed but angered the British, was later referred to as the Boston Tea Party. This started off when the East India Company had a superfluous supply of tea that nobody was buying. As a result, they lowered the price of the tea and sent it to America for the colonists to buy. This was called the Tea Act. The colonists weren't stupid and immediately recognized it as a hidden tax. They were extremely outraged and a secret group called the Sons of Liberty got the idea of throwing out the tea into the Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party had a prodigious impact on the colonies politically, economically, and socially which altered the course set for America.
On the eve of the American Revolution, colonists have signified and ensured their newly discovered identity by coming together to rid the American colonies of the British monarchical influence. Throught means of newly developed legislatures, both passive and aggressive protests, and formation of propaganda were the American colonists able to engrave their identity on the future of America forever.
Both the British and the American colonists contributed to causing the American Revolution. The war grew out of contempt: England’s contempt for the colonies and colonial contempt for British policies. A series of actions by the British eventually pushed the colonists over the edge and towards independence. The results of the war gave many citizens a new role in society while others, like slaves, felt no change at all. This paper will examine the specific causes and effects of the American Revolution.
In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote ‘there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island’. This Enlightenment thinking is what made the Revolution revolutionary. Colonists rejected the ideas of imperial monarchy and made a bold statement in deciding to have a non-monarchical government. In the 1680s John Locke’s writings of a social contract, showed the colonists that the British lacked the legitimacy to impose taxes on them, in his writings Locke wrote that if the people are dissatisfied with the government then they have a right to rebel – this is what the Americans did in 1775. By the time the fighting had started most of the colonists were already self-governing and saw themselves as a different entity to Britain. This can be seen in the term ‘Patriots’, which was used for the colonists who rejected the Acts passed by Britain.
A new era was dawning on the American colonies and its mother country Britain, an era of revolution. The American colonists were subjected to many cruel acts of the British Parliament in order to benefit England itself. These British policies were forcing the Americans to rebellious feelings as their rights were constantly being violated by the British Crown. The colonies wanted to have an independent government and economy so they could create their own laws and stipulations. The British imperial policies affected the colonies economic, political, and geographic situation which intensified colonists’ resistance to British rule and intensified commitment to their republican values.