The ways in which people interpret the past are often colored by the ways in which they see their contemporary times. One of the more colorful phenomena of American politics in the early twenty-first century has been the emergence of the Tea Party, a group that appears to want to roll back the role of government in American affairs much like the American colonists wanted to roll back British influence in North America. When a group of colonists stormed Boston Harbor in the guise of Mohawk Indians, bent on throwing a load of British tea into the harbor in protest against a new tax on tea, in a night that would take the sobriquet “Boston Tea Party,” a message was sent that the colonists were refusing to accept the rights of the British to tax the colonists without their approval. The philosophy of the Tea Party appears to assert that the American government in 2014 is just as oppressive, in terms of taxation, as the British government was in the late 1700s, in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Given the degree of reliance that the American public currently has on its government, repeating such a drastic change in society would be much more disruptive than the Revolution was on colonial America. Looking back at the American Revolution, it is apparent that, while there were many different contributing causes, the fact that the British government sat weeks away by sea gave the Americans a sense of entitlement and opportunity, and they took advantage of both to break away from the Crown.
It is important to remember that the British were not alone in their desire to colonize North America, as first the Dutch and then the French attempted to establish beachheads on this side of the Atlantic as well. It was the Dutch who bought Manhattan Island from the Native Americans for $17, not the British, and the reason why Canada has two official languages (French and English) is the French-speaking province of Quebec, which even after being occupied by England never would assimilate with the rest of what was long known as the Dominion of Canada in ways that were significant. Between 1756 and 1763, the British and French engaged in the French and Indian War, which would be the final conflict between the two European powers as to their presence in North America. When the war drew to a close, the French were driven out of the continent, but the cost was a high level of debt for the British government. In Great Britain, taxes were already quite high, and there was sentiment on that side of the ocean that the British colonists should support the costs of keeping soldiers over there. In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which was the first imposition of a direct tax on the colonies. In the colonies, protesters pointed out that taxes could not be places upon them, because they had no one representing them in Parliament. When they were offered the chance to have representation, the colonists argued that their “local circumstances” made such a thing impossible (“Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress”).
Instead of sending representatives to Parliament, the colonists instead broke out in mob violence to keep the British government from enforcing the Stamp Act, and colonists began boycotting goods from Great Britain. The British did not expect this sort of response from the colonies, as the British viewed their North American holdings as corporations that were at the management of the Parliament. Also, the fact that Great Britain lacked an explicit Constitution implied that there was no difference between laws enacting taxes and laws enacting any other purposes. Parliament had established longstanding precedent passing acts that had an effect on the colonies, and custom duties put in place by Parliament had put taxes on the colonists for decades without any agreement on their part. It is also worth pointing out that the bulk of the British people paid taxes without having any representation in Parliament, as fully half of the seats in Parliament for Wales and England were elected by about 12,000 male voters on behalf of a population that numbered in the millions. Even so, when the British government changed, the new leadership repealed the Stamp Act on the grounds of its inexpediency, but instead the leadership passed the Declaratory Act, which stated that “the said colonies and plantations in America have ben, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain” (“Declaratory Act”).
In their own writings, the Americans had branded internal taxation such as the Stamp Act as being unlawful, but they honored the right of the British to establish external forms of taxation, such as custom duties. Because of this, Parliament passed the Townshend Act in 1767, which placed duties on a number of British goods that were exported out to the colonies. However, the Americans declared that this act was illegal also, because its purpose was not to govern trade but instead was to build revenue. The reasons behind this distinction by the Americans was never made clear. In 1768, rioting broke out throughout Boston, and the British sent 4,000 troops to occupy the growing city. When Parliament made the threat to put residents of Massachusetts on trial in England for treason, the colonists were not cowed; instead, they created new associations for the purpose of boycotting goods from England. Because the Townshend Act covered goods that many colonists needed, these boycotts were not as effective as the earlier ones. However, when five Boston colonists died in the “Boston Massacre,” outrage spread throughout the colonies.
When Lord North assumed control of the government in 1770, the British government backed down once again; in April of that year, the government repealed all of the Townshend Act taxes except for the ones on tea, and the government let the colonial governors know that there would not be any more taxes. As a result, the boycotts came to an end. However, when the East India Company needed rescue from some financial struggles, the British exempted the company from the tea tax and gave certain American merchants the right to sell this tea without taxes. No colony would allow the landing of the tea, and in the ensuing chaos, the Boston Tea Party took place.
The British response to the destruction of the tea in the Boston harbor was to close the harbor until the colonists had paid for the tea they destroyed. The Massachusetts Government Act was designed to punish the colony; it replaced the upper body of the colonial legislature with a group appointed by Parliament. The governor was allowed to limit town meetings and appoint or remove any sheriffs, judges and other officials in the executive branch of government. Sheriffs would choose jurors, and if British soldiers were accused of any offenses, their trials would take place outside Massachusetts. Taken together, these four acts were called the “Intolerable Acts” by those in the colonies who were ready for revolution.
The colonial response to this law was series of town meetings that produced the Suffolk Resolves, a document that declared the colonial refusal to cooperate with the new directives. In 1774, a shadow congress was established outside Boston to run Masachusetts and to set up a militia for pending hostilities. Also in 1774, the other colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to develop a response to the situation. This group rejected the notion of a “Plan of Union” which would put together an American parliament that could disapprove or approve of the British parliamentary acts. Instead, this group simply demanded a bulk repeal of all acts that had been passed since 1763 regarding taxation of the American colonies. This congress also asserted that Parliament had no right to assert authority over American internal matters but that the colonies would pay custom duties to benefit the empire as a whole.
While the British government had yielded in the past, it would not do so now. Parliament decided to keep colonists from using the fisheries in Newfoundland and to restrict trade between the colonies in Britain. One problem in framing a response for the British was that the government was not united on what the proper response should be. The Whigs (the liberal party) favored a more lenient management philosophy for the colonies, while the Tories (the conservative party) thought that Parliament should assert its right. The Whigs thought that Tory decisions were pushing the American colonies to rebel, but the Tories thought that the leniency that the Whigs wanted to show was having the same effect. In Great Britain, many Whigs connected themselves explicitly to the cause of the American Revolution.
It did not take much time after the passage of the Suffolk Resolves for Parliament to declare that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was rebelling. On April 14, 1775, Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, received orders from London to take the weapons away from the rebels and place their leaders under arrest. On April 18, he sent troops to seize the colonial militia’s munitions at Concord, Massachusetts. Such riders as the famed Paul Revere spread the news all over the countryside, and by the next morning, there were 77 Minutemen lined up to resist the British at Lexington and more than 500 at the North Bridge outside Concord. While the British forces had no problems in Lexington, they were defeated at Concord, and during their retreat to Boston, they were beset by thousands of militia, which could have led to a complete disaster until other British troops showed up. This was the beginning of the military phase of the rebellion.
Works Cited
Brown, Richard D. Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791, 2nd
Edition. Course reading.
