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Summary: The Road To Revolution

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Summary: The Road To Revolution
When you look at a map, there are many turns and directions to get one destination. In the same way there were many different factors that lead to the road of the American Revolution. The road to revolution was started by a desire to separate from England. Democratic ideas from the Enlightenment, unfair taxes and laws, and revolutionary writings all contributed to the start of a the American Revolution.
There are three Enlightenment thinkers that contributed ideas that encouraged the colonist to separate from Britain; John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau. John Locke contributed the idea that everyone has natural rights. These rights include life, liberty, and property. He believed that it was the government's job to
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The Sugar Act taxed all common goods such as sugar, lumber, animal skins, and whale bone. The colonists responded in a mild protest, but it was not a huge issue for most. The next act past was the Stamp Act. The stamp act highly taxed stamps and made it so every paper had to have a stamp. The colonist were very angry about this act so they rioted until the act was repealed. The next revolutionary act was the Townshend Acts. This taxed common goods such as paper, tea, paint, and glass. The colonists responded to this act by boycotting British goods. Eventually British government repealed all the taxes except for the one on tea. This was not good enough for the colonist, they wanted all the taxes destroyed. They acted on this by going out in the middle of the night and throwing in 342 crates of tea into the Boston Harbor. As a punishment British government passed the Intolerable acts. There was four laws included in this act, the Boston Port Act, Massachusetts Government Act, Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act. In the Boston Port Act the Boston Port was closed until the people of Boston had payed for it all. This was very significant because that port was used to import food, the citizens would starve without it. The Massachusetts Government Act stated that all town meetings or

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