Documentation Based Question: American Revolution

Document Based Question 1 There have been many different opinions about how the colonists developed a sense of their identity and unity as Americans by the eve of the Revolution. In the twenty five years leading up to the Revolution, the patriots got angered with Great Britain’s actions towards the colonies and wanted a solution. The patriots joined together and formed many attempted compromises with Great Britain. After the King and Parliament consistently rejected their proposals, the patriots realized that a revolution was their only option left. The economic and political situation between the two sides was very heated ever since the French and Indian War. These tensions were caused by the taxing acts proposed by Britain, and the protests following the acts by the colonists. A few of the key events were the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party. It all started in the year of 1754 with the start of the French and Indian War. The war was an empire battle versus the British and the French. The British fought with the colonists and the French fought with most of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River. The war ended in the year of 1763 The British and the Colonists won the war, marking the end to French rule in the new world. This was the last time that the Colonies and Great Britain had a significant amount of peace with each other. Soon after the war, Britain enforced the Proclamation of 1763. The Proclamation forbid the colonists from traveling west of the Appalachian Mountains. This was the first of many key laws that Britain passed which unknowingly upset colonists. (D) The biggest and most controversial events were the passings of Britain’s tax acts. The first of many was the Navigation Act. The act didn’t hurt the colonist’s economy too much, but it made the colonists feel they were being robbed due to the fact that they could only trade with Britain. (F) The biggest and most significant tax on the colonists was the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act infuriated the colonists. They had to pay a direct tax on every single piece of paper they bought. Of course Britain sees this as the colonist’s fair share of the war costs, which was acceptable. But the colonist’s couldn’t get over the fact that Britain was taxing them without any sort of consent from them. (F) The colonists agreed that it was only fair for Britain to tax them if they had direct representation in Parliament. Britain couldn’t believe that the colonists wanted this right. (B) The colonists then did everything they could to try and avoid as much taxing as possible. This mainly involved smuggling and protests towards Parliament. The passing of these acts had the colonists agreeing with one another that the British were starting to become something they didn’t want to be a part of. (F) This was primarily the first step of colonists joining together to become Americans. As Britain’s tax acts kept coming into the colonial lifestyle, more and more protests started happening. Patrick Henry created the House of Burgesses in Virginia. Twenty seven delegates from nine colonies met in Albany, New York. They would become the Stamp Act Congress. Their main goal was to repeal the stamp act and get direct representation into Parliament. Britain ignored their request and immediately ended the Stamp Act Congress due to the fact that they didn’t want and form of government under them. (B) The colonies also implemented the Non Importation Agreements. These simply were the colonies not trading with Britain and smuggling their goods in. (C) The most notable form of protest was the Sons of Liberty group formed by Sam Adams. This group was basically a terrorist group targeting British soldiers and officers. They also used propaganda to try and convince the colonists that Britain was a negative in their lives. Two very important events that changed almost everyone’s opinion about the British involved the Sons of liberty. The first act was the Boston Massacre. The Boston Massacre was British soldiers shooting Bostonians that were heckling them. The Sons of Liberty made this event their biggest and most successful propaganda attempt. People across the Colonies saw Paul Revere’s picture of the Bloody Massacre and they feared that it could happen to them too. This was yet another key event turning Colonists into Americans. An event that fired up the colonists to become Americans was the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Party(s) were protests to the Tea Act. Sons of Liberty members dressed up as Indians and formally dumped British tea into the Boston Harbor. Many colonists watched and heard about the events and got them believing in Americanism. This had almost all of the colonists believing they were Americans but none of them were thinking about revolution yet. Britain heard about all of these events and proposed even stricter laws on the Colonies. The colonies were completely fed up with the British and their actions. The colonists formed the Continental Congress which was the both the start of revolution, and the last attempt for Britain to accept a compromise. (E) After Britain denied the compromise, the Congress started recruiting for their protection. They used propaganda to get the colonies to join the Continental Army. (A) The Congress came to the conclusion that they needed a formal statement declaring their Independence from Britain. The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and then revised by the rest of the Congress. The Declaration was finalized and signed on July 2, 1776. This was a strange event to the colonists because only forty percent of the colonists wanted independence. The Americans didn’t care because they knew that the picture was much bigger than independence from Britain. They were trying to change the world forever. It took the colonists a little more than twenty years to transform themselves into Americans. It was ironic that the British passed laws that were more lenient towards the Colonies than to themselves, but those laws were the main reason for the Americans to claim independence. It is even more ironic that the war the colonist started with the Indians, led to their own independence from Britain. All of those events were the cause of the colonists to realize their identity and unity as Americans before the Revolutionary War.