Ms. Wood
APUSH
1 September 2014
Why Revolt?
The colonists had endured much turmoil before the 1770s. Colonists had to fight the Native Americans and Spanish for their land. Furthermore, there was the French and Indian War in which the colonists joined forces for the first time to defeat the French and Native Americans for their land. It was during this time that the colonists learned that if they worked together, they were capable of achieving things on their own, without the help of the British. There is not one simple cause of the Revolutionary War but events that create a chain reaction. These events are as follows: the Stamp Act and taxation, colonial unity and resistance to this taxation, and Great Britain’s response to the colonial resistance.
An initial cause behind the Revolutionary War was the Stamp Act passed in 1765 by the British Parliament. This caused uproar in the colonies because it was “Taxation without Representation,” and the colonists believed that “only representatives elected by the colonists had the right to tax the colonies” (Doc. D). Furthermore, the colonists were not just taxed on paper and official documents. They were also taxed on tea, and according to a …show more content…
Many colonies held protests against these taxes (Doc. G), and one colonist, Thomas Paine, published a pamphlet titled Common Sense which “urged Americans to declare independence from Great Britain” (Doc. C). This “paved the way for the Declaration of Independence” (Doc. C). Moreover, there were inter-colonial organizations that coordinated these protests and much more. For example, the Sons of Liberty were very influential in colonial resistance. They “plac[ed] themselves between the colonial leadership and the mob” (Doc. B), the mob being the enraged colonists in the streets. As a result of this resistance, Great Britain was forced to take action, not only in the colonies but in parliament as