Fulcher, Matthew- Test #1 Essay #3
Based on my research the 6 events that I Feel contributed to the strong revolt from the Americans are as follows; Boston Tea party, Stamp Act, Sugar Act, Quebec Act, Intolerable Acts, and Lexington and Concord. The Boston Tea Party was the destruction of tea in Boston. It was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. They were disguised as American Indians, and destroyed the entire supply of tea sent by the East India Company in defiance of the American boycott of tea carrying a tax the Americans had not authorized. The British government responded harshly and the episode escalated into the American Revolution.
The Stamp Act imposed a direct tax by the British Parliament specifically on the colonies of British America, and it required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. The Stamp Act was very unpopular among colonists. Many colonists considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen to be taxed without their consent. Local protest groups, led by colonial merchants and landowners, established connections through correspondence that created a loose coalition that extended from New England to Maryland. Protests and demonstrations initiated by the Sons of Liberty often turned violent and destructive as the masses became involved.
The Sugar Act was a revenue-raising act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on April 5, 1764. It arrived in the colonies at a time of economic depression. It was an indirect tax, although the colonists were well informed of its presence. A good part of the reason was that a significant portion of the colonial economy during the Seven Years War was involved with supplying food and supplies to the British Army. Colonials, however, especially those affected directly as merchants and shippers, assumed that the highly visible new tax program was the major culprit. As protests against the Sugar Act developed, it was the economic impact rather than the constitutional issue of taxation without representation that was the main focus for the colonists. In May 1764, Samuel Adams drafted a report on the Sugar Act for the Massachusetts assembly, in which he denounced the act as an infringement of the rights of the colonists as British subjects.
In the Thirteen Colonies, the act, which had been passed in the same session of Parliament as a number of other acts designed as punishment for the Boston Tea Party and other protests, was passed along with the other Intolerable Acts also known as the Coercive Acts. The provisions of the Quebec Act were seen by the colonists as a new model for British colonial administration, which would strip the colonies of their elected gatherings. It seemed to void the land claims of the colonies by granting most of the Ohio Country to the province of Quebec. The Americans were especially angry that the act established Catholicism as the state church in Quebec. The Americans had fought hard in the French and Indian War, and
