Mercantilism In The Revolutionary War

By the end of the French and Indian War Great Britain’s national debt had grown exponentially. As a result, Parliament began to press the issue of mercantilism (taxation) in order to compensate for the budget deficit. According to America: A Narrative History Brief Ninth Edition, the average Briton paid twenty-six times the median yearly taxes paid by Americans, so Parliament reasoned that they should share the greater portion of the cost of the British troops providing their defense. Many Americans also disregarded British trade regulations by smuggling goods frequently, so to combat this, colonial officials were ordered to tightly enforce the Navigation Acts. Under the Navigation Acts European goods that were delivered to America had to go
By the time the second Continental Congress met in May of 1775 The Revolutionary War was already underway. Appeals for peace were sent to the king in England, but he refused to even look at them and there was still no genuine drive towards independence on behalf of the colonists. The war was still underway in January of 1776 when Thomas Paine published a jolting pamphlet titled Common Sense. Until reading his pamphlet; many colonists had not even considered independence as an option, but Paine denounced loyalty to the monarchy. Paine urged the Americans to pursue their own interests and to liberate themselves from King George III. Within a few months hundreds of thousands of copies of Paine’s pamphlets were circulating throughout the colonies, thus spreading Paine’s ideas with them. In May 1776 the Second Continental Congress authorized all thirteen colonies to form themselves into new state governments. On June 7, Henry Lee moved that “These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states…”. His resolution was adopted on July 2, 1776, but July 4 of the same year was when the Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence as the official statement of the American position. The Declaration of Independence was authored by five men appointed the by the Congress – Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston (New York), and Roger Sherman(Connecticut) – and the result justified the Revolution, provided the fundamental ideal of American government (The Constitution was ultimately drafted from this) and it provided a list of all of the colonists’ grievances with Great Britain and the perceived injustices they had to endure at the hands of the British government. The Declaration of Independence was the offspring of the American