The Seeds Of The American Revolution

Essay #3: The Seeds of Independence
Revolutions are like plants. If the seeds are planted and nurtured, the plants will grow. Yet, if the plants aren’t taken care of, they won’t survive. The seeds of independence that grew into the American Revolution were: the early settlers of America learned how to survive on their own, they learned how to thrive and become wealthy, and then learned that Britain was taking advantage of them. A comparison of the aspects of the American Revolution, which allowed America to develop into her own nation, with aspects of other unsuccessful revolutions that took place in different countries, must be made in order to completely understand the reasons why the plant of the American Revolution grew into a flourishing
Professor Barton describes how only after a year of settlement in the New World, during the winter of 1607, there only remained 38 of the original 104 settlers of the Jamestown Colony.” This included months on end without food or supply from the British homeland, dysentery and malaria, Indian assaults, and eventual cannibalism of cats, dogs, and people. These circumstances forced colonists to learn to be independent and self-sustaining. They wouldn’t be able to rely on others in a distant land to watch over them because it took months for supplies to come, months for communications to reach England. The American colonists were the ones who sailed on a small ship for 66 days on rough waters to get there. The colonists were the ones that fought off the Indians and tried to barter with them so that they could survive. Considering these circumstances, the colonists survived mostly based off their own wit, grit, and skill. They eventually survived long enough in the colonies until 1621, when the Wampanoag Indian Tribe helped them know how to adapt, grow food of their own and establish New England. The colonists’ ability to battle, survive, and thrive on their own in spite of the dire circumstances they faced since they landed in May 1607, created a strong sense of independence between the colonies in North
The greediness of the British government was a major point of tension that increased the distance of the relationship between the English leaders and the American colonists. With the Navigation Laws that were passed starting in 1650, they assured that all economic activity in the American colonies was transported by British ships. This allowed the British to pocket money from the American colonists’ goods, even if Britain wasn’t the target destination for trade. This was because all ships had to pass through Great Britain in order to be cleared before it went to a different European nation. So, England could receive money by way of tariffs. Imagine the outrage felt by American citizens knowing that they weren’t receiving full benefits of the goods that they worked hard to grow and sell. When colonial men and women protested, British Parliament refused to reconcile and even went so far as to “nullify any legislation coming from the colonial legislatures that went against the mercantile system.” Not only were the colonists unable to regulate their own trade, they couldn’t even protest for their own rights. The leadership in England wouldn’t even listen. This sort of arbitrary taxation affected the colonists severely and they had enough. The overarching