The American Revolution
Taxation
When the colonists learned about the Stamp Act, they complained. None of Parliaments representatives came from the American colonies. Since colonists had no representatives in Parliament they thought parliament should no tax them. A common cry in the colonies was no taxation without representation. Leaders in Great Britain decided to Tax American colonists to pay for part of the dept. The money raised from taxing colonists would also help pay the costs of defending the colonies. George III was king of Great Britain and supported the idea of taxing colonists. So did many members of Britain's law-making assembly, parliament which makes Britain's laws. In 1765 parliament passed the Stamp Act. This law placed a tax on paper products in the colonies such as legal documents newspaper and even playing cards.
Declaration of Independence Principals
Every man should be treated equally, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. It is the Right of the people to abolish it. And to institute the Government. Laying foundation on such principals and organizing its power in such form as to them might seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Boston Tea Party
The night of December 16, 1773 Samuel Adams and the sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw about 342 boxes of tea overboard. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war. At the war's conclusion in 1763, King George III and his government looked to taxing the American colonies as a way of recouping their war costs.
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists, by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1778 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townsend Act.