The American Revolution

Although many think of the American Revolution as a conflict between the righteous colonists and the villainous British, the situation in the colonies escalated by the fault of both parties. Americans acquired much wealth during the period of salutary neglect from 1713 to 1763, but the British had accumulated a massive national debt during the Seven Years’ War at the end of this period. In order to reduce the national debt, Britain began taxing the prosperous Americans. Thus began the first of three Imperial Crises, during which British rule over the colonies became increasingly repressive due to the radicalization of colonists in response to fair taxation, and Britain finally dashed any hope of reconciliation with the passing of the Coercive
Acts in 1774.
Following the Seven Years’ War, Britain utilized legislation such as the Stamp Act, which required all legal documentation on paper in the colonies to be taxed, to reduce the national debt caused by military spending during the war, but despite reasonable British demands, American colonists, both elites and radicals, reacted vigorously against these new taxes. In Britain, citizens were not taxed this way because Parliament felt that many were already overtaxed. Following the Stamp Act of 1765, conservative elites, such as Patrick Henry and James Otis, Jr., greedily clung to the wealth they acquired during salutary neglect by publishing pamphlets decrying taxation of the colonies by Parliament. These pamphlets facilitated conflict where none need be. For much the period from 1763 to 1775, conservatives often fought against taxation without actual representation, but they wished reform of Parliament, not separation from it, because they profited from the North Atlantic trade system with Britain. Unlike their elite counterparts, radical democrats responded through violence, such as mobs, boycotts, and symbolic violence such as effigy burning and tarring and feathering. Through violence, radicals paved the way to war much more than the British had up to this point. By 1766, Parliament had grown weary of the colonial response to the Stamp Act, so they repealed the law (Hamel, “First Imperial Crisis”, Sec C). Up to 1766, the British had acted reasonably, only taxing Americans so aggressively because British citizens were overtaxed and Americans were prosperous. Unfortunately for Americans, Britain would continue using its power to tax the colonies in the following five years.
Although the British amicably repealed the Stamp Act, they still needed money, therefore conflict between the King and his colonies worsened from 1766 to 1770.
Later in 1766, Parliament issued the Declaratory Act, which officially gave Parliament to tax the colonies without actual representation. Additionally, in 1767, Parliament established new taxes on the American colonies known as the Townshend Acts. These new laws taxed British imports into the colonies, so Americans had to pay a tax on basically any imports. For obvious reasons, the colonists were livid about these new taxes, so they responded by ineffectively boycotting British goods in the case of the radicals and writing increasingly radical pamphlets in the case of the elites. Pamphlets written by elites attracted much attention from the British, and lead to the dissolution of the Massachusetts Assembly which threw the colony into chaos after the Royal Governor began to rule the former commonwealth. By closing the Massachusetts Assembly, Britain began to turn from reasonable to tyrannical in the face of an increasingly volatile colonial population. Furthermore, in March 1770, a group of British regulars that were being harassed by a mob in Boston fired into the crowd, killing five. Luckily for the British, John Adams, a conservative elite lawyer, stepped in to successfully defend the soldiers in court and prevent their execution (Hamel, “The Second Imperial Crisis”) From 1766 to 1770, the apparent fault of tension
in the colonies began to shift from the colonists to Britain as the mother country began to desperately quell rebellious calls from her colonies. However, the colonists precipitated this desperation by being divisive and rapacious. To curb tensions, Lord North, a newly appointed financial official in Parliament, repealed the Townshend Acts and attempted to set the colonies and Britain on the track for reconciliation, but the worst was still to come.
By 1770, the British did not tax the American colonies for the benefit of the British government.
Now Americans only paid a tax on tea to the East India Company, and after this tax was increased in 1773, the radical colonists reacted in the extreme with the hopes of drawing the British into a conflict. In December, 1773, a group of radicals dressed in Native American garb stormed a British tea ship and threw its cargo, worth an estimated three hundred million dollars in modern currency, overboard into the harbor in an act now known as the Boston Tea Party. As always, the radical colonists were attempting to provoke the British into open conflict. Their plan succeeded in 1774 with the publishing of the Coercive Acts, which closed the port in Boston, shut down the Massachusetts Assembly permanently, protected the right of British soldiers to be tried in Britain, forced the colonists to support the British military, and expanded the province of Quebec to oppose American westward expansion. The Coercive Acts, or Intolerable Acts as they were known in the colonies, mark the point where the British overreact to colonial rebelliousness, causing an irreparable rift. John Adams then wrote a document addressing Parliament that addressed eighteen grievances of the colonies. Colonists, both radical and elite together responded by forming Constitutional Associations, as a replacement for Nonimportation Associations, that emphasized public virtue in the form of patriotism to ensure unity
in the colonies. At this point, the colonists had purposely expanded the fissure with Britain, and now the King overreacted by deploying fifteen hundred Hessian troops to the colonies (Hamel, “The Third Imperial Crisis”). In the eyes of Americans, Britain had gone overboard, and revolution was imminent.
At first, Britain had acted reasonably in order to reduce its national debt through taxation of its wealthy colonies, but the Americans overreacted with such vigor that the conflict escalated until Britain had no choice but to stamp its foot. First, American boycotts, pamphlets, and symbolic violence wore down the British resolve for peace. Then, Britain began to crack down on the upstart colonies by temporarily shutting down the Massachusetts Assembly to quell American resentment of the Townshend Acts. Finally, when the East India Company hiked the tea tax and radicals destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars in British tea revenue, Parliament felt it could only use extreme measures to control the fanatical Americans. Consequently, the situation escalated to the point where the King felt he needed not only thousands of British regulars, but also fifteen hundred Hessians to keep the colonies in line. With that many troops in the American colonies, Britain had crossed a line from which one cannot return.