Making of a Revolution
Changes in British Policy

Proclamation of 1763
– Closed land West of Appalachians

Sugar Act 1764
– Designed to raise $
– New punishments for smuggling
Quartering/Billeting Act 1765
 Stamp Act 1765

– Clearly designed to make $$$
Stamp Act Crisis (1765)
Stamp Act passed in March but was to
take effect in November
 In October, delegates from 9 colonies met
 Stamp Act Congress

– James Otis of Massachusetts
– “No taxation w/out representation”
– Petitioned the King and Parliament

Colonial merchants organized a boycott

Groups sprang up to enforce the boycott
– Sons/Daughters of Liberty
– Mob action
– By November, most collectors resigned/fled

Stamp Act repealed in March, 1766
– (British Merchants protested Act)
Rising Tensions in Colonies

Declaratory Act passed same day as
repeal of Stamp Act (1766)
– Parliament had authority to make laws “in all
cases whatsoever”

1767, authority reasserted with passage of
Townshend Acts
– Duties on imports (tea, glass, etc.)
– $ used to pay salaries of royal governors
Violence Erupts in Boston

March 5, 1770, unruly crowd in Boston
threatens squad of British Soldiers

Five colonists are left dead/dying in what
becomes known as Boston Massacre
Unhappy Boston! fee thy Sons deplore,
Thy hallow’d Walks befmear’d with Guiltlefs Gore:
While faithlefs and his favage Bands,
With murd’rous rancor ftretch their bloody Hands;
Life fierce Barbarians grinning o’er their Prey,
Approve the carnage and enjoy the Day.
- Paul Revere, 1770
“The Bostonians
Paying the Excise
Man” (1774)
Parliament Responds to Massacre
Cancels Townshend Acts in May, 1773
except for tax on TEA
 1773, Tea Act provides BEIC right to sell
tea in America w/out paying normal taxes
 American merchants protested

– Several port cities refused ships carrying tea
– 1773 Boston Tea Party
Parliament Punishes Colonies
Spring 1774, Coercive Acts passed
 Bad timing?
 Colonists call for a united response to
“Intolerable Acts”


June, 1774, Quebec Act
– Govt. w/ no representative assembly
– Expanded borders into Mississippi Valley
– Guaranteed free practice of Catholics
1st Continental Congress

Sept. 5, 1774, convened in Philadelphia
– 56 delegates from almost every colony
– Agreed to boycott British goods
– Called on colonists to arm themselves
Delegates 1st appeal to the king
“The foundation of English liberty, and of all free
government, is a right of the people to
participate in their legislative council: and as
English colonists are not represented,
and…cannot properly be represented in the
British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and
exclusive power of legislation in their several
provincial legislatures, where their right of
representation can alone be preserved.”
-Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress, 1774

On October 26, the Congress ended
– Members vowed to meet again in the spring if
the crisis was not resolved

November 18, the King
writes:
– “The New England
governments are in a state
of rebellion”
“Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace! Peace!’- but
there is not peace…. The next gale that
sweeps from the north will bring to our
ears the clash of resounding arms!...Is life
so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be
purchased at the price of chains and
slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know
not what course others may take; but for
me, give me liberty or give me death!”
- Patrick Henry (1775)
Shot Heard Round the World
Americans that King George labeled
“rebels” called themselves Patriots
 Formed militias (armies of trained civilians) and
began to gather guns and ammunition
 Concord, 20 miles from Boston
 Late at night, April 18, 1775, 800 British
troops marched toward Concord

Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel
Prescott sent on horseback to alert Patriot
leaders
 British forces encountered 70 militia
(“minute-men”) at Lexington
 Destroy some supplies at Concord, but are
met by thousands of Patriots as they
return to Boston
 Over ¼ killed or wounded
 Is war inevitable?

Siege of Boston
Following L&C (April, 1775), ~20,000 armed
Patriots surround Boston to prevent 6,000
British troops from crushing the rebellion
 In May, Vermont’s militia captured Fort
Ticonderoga in NY
 June, two hills north of Boston occupied

– G.B.’s third attempt to capture hills successful
– 1,100 of 2,400 British killed or wounded
– Patriot casualties numbered 400
Second Continental Congress

Convene May, 1775 in Philadelphia

Create Continental Army
– G.W. as commander of
American forces

Support Olive Branch Petition
– T.J. and Dickinson
– Rejected outright by King
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
Pamphlet appeared in
Philadelphia in January, 1776
 Message to the colonists was blunt:

“The Period of debate is closed. Arms as the last
resource decide the contest…. Every thing that
is right or natural pleads for separation. The
blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature
cries, ‘TIS TIME TO PART.”
Meanwhile, in Boston…
G.W. placed cannons that had arrived
from Fort Ticonderoga on Dorchester
Heights
 He could shell British forces in Boston and
ships in Boston Harbor
 British, defenseless, abandon Boston in
March of 1776

Estimated Population of
Colonies in 1770
Total – 2.2 Million
VA – 447,000
 PA – 240,000
 MA – 235,000
 MD – 202,000
 NC – 197,000
 CT – 184,000
 NY – 163,000

SC – 124,000
 NJ – 117,000
 NH – 62,000
 RI – 58,000
 DE – 36,000
 GA – 23,000
 Great Britain – 6.4M
