The Stamp Act was disliked due to the taxation of stamps on official documents. The Quartering Act, the Townsends Acts, and the Tea Act soon followed and all where opposed by the colonists. The Intolerable Acts, which were meant to punish the colonists for rebellion, was the last straw. British control had to be stopped. The colonists’ opinions on the British policies formed into the ideas of independence through the words of Thomas Paine. Paine guided the thoughts of the people with his writings in his pamphlet Common Sense. He used the colonists’ ancestors to turn thoughts toward the concept of a revolution, stating “the same tyranny which drove the first immigrants from home [England], pursues their descendants still” (“Thomas Paine”). Richard Henry Lee also convinced people to contemplate independence. Lee went to the Continental Congress in 1776 on behalf of Virginia. In his resolution at this meeting, he stated “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved"(“Lesson 6”). His resolution called for a separation from Great Britain, influencing the delegates at the congress to create a declaration of