On July 4, 1776, the fledgling American colonies declared independence from Great Britain. The colonists’ bitterness toward the Crown started almost a decade before the Declaration of Independence.The list of grievances started with the taxes levied upon the colonies by King George II to pay national debts and expenses created by the French and Indian War. According to the History website, the Stamp Act required that, starting in the fall of 1765, legal documents and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by commissioned distributors. The law applied to wills, deeds, newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and dice. Parliament repealed the act in 1766.Next, the Townshend Acts were passed in the spring of 1767. From the Encyclopaedia Britannica, they were a series of four acts passed by the British Parliament in an attempt to exert authority over the colonies. The Suspending Act prohibited the New York Assembly from conducting any further business until it complied with the financial requirements of the Quartering Act (1765). The Revenue Act imposed direct revenue duties on lead, glass, paper, paint and tea. The third act established a strict machinery of customs collection in the American colonies, all to be financed out of customs revenues. Lastly, the Indemnity Act was aimed at enabling the East India Co. to compete with tea smuggled by the Dutch.Tensions ran high in Boston in early 1770. From history.com, more than 2,000 British soldiers occupied the city of 16,000 colonists and tried to enforce Britainís tax laws. American colonists rebelled against the taxes they found repressive, rallying around the cry ìno taxation without representation.î Skirmishes between colonists and soldiers and between patriot colonists and colonists loyal to Britain were increasingly common.On March 5, 1770, there was a street brawl in Boston between American colonists and British soldiers. An unruly group of colonists flung snowballs, ice and oyster shells at a British sentinel guarding the Boston Customs House. After reinforcements arrived, the violence escalated and the colonists struck the soldiers with clubs and sticks. Reports differ of exactly what happened next, but after someone supposedly said the word ìfire,î a soldier fired his gun, although itís unclear if the discharge was intentional. Once the first shot rang out, other soldiers opened fire, killing five colonists.In 1770, Parliament repealed all of the Townshend Act duties except for the one on tea. According to History.com, the American consumption of smuggled tea hurt the finances of the East India Co., already struggling through economic hardship. In an effort to save the troubled enterprise, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, as a symbol of Parliamentís power over the colonies. The act granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies without first landing it in England and to commission agents who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies. It effectively lowered the price of the East India Co. tea in the colonies.However, the act had adverse effects to the original goal. According to the History website, by allowing the East India Co. to sell tea directly in the American colonies, the Tea Act cut out colonial merchants, and the prominent and influential colonial merchants reacted with anger. Other colonists viewed the act as a Trojan horse designed to seduce them into accepting Parliamentís right to impose taxes on them.The Tea Act revived the boycott on tea and inspired direct resistance. In several towns, crowds of colonists gathered along the ports and forced company ships to turn away without unloading their cargo. The most spectacular action occurred in Boston, where on Dec. 16, 1773, a well-organized group of men dressed up as Native Americans and boarded the company ships. The men smashed open the chests of tea and dumped their contents into Boston Harbor in what later became known as the Boston Tea Party. Parliament responded with the Coercive Acts of 1774, which colonists called the Intolerable Acts. The series of measures, among other things, repealed the colonial charter of Massachusetts and closed the port of Boston until the colonists reimbursed the cost of the destroyed tea.The first Continental Congress met in Carpentersí Hall in Philadelphia between Sept. 5 and Oct. 26, 1774. From mountvernon.org, delegates from 12 of Britainís 13 American colonies met to discuss Americaís future under growing British aggression. The Intolerable Acts, among other changes, closed off the Boston Port and rescinded the Massachusetts Charter, bringing the colony under more direct British control. Across North America, colonists rose in solidarity with the people of Massachusetts. Goods arrived in Massachusetts from as far south as Georgia, and by late spring 1774, nine of the colonies called for a continental congress.The Congress, through the Suffolk Resolves of Massachusetts ordered citizens to not obey the Intolerable Acts, to refuse imported British goods and to form a militia. Furthermore, the delegates promptly began drafting and discussing the Continental Association. The Association called for an end to British imports starting in December 1774 and an end to exporting goods to Britain in September 1775.In the immortal words of the forefathers, from the National Archives, ìIn every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury Ö . We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, AssembledÖ solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.î
