American Revolution What is It Easy Answer

The American colonists' breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn't a sudden, impetuous act. Instead, the banding together of the xiii colonies to fight and win a war of independence against the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade before. Escalations began shortly later the cease of the French and Indian War—known elsewhere as the 7 Years War in 1763. Here are a few of the pivotal moments that led to the American Revolution.

ane. The Postage Deed (March 1765)

Sheet of penny revenue stamps printed by Uk for the American colonies, after the Postage stamp Human activity of 1765.

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To compensate some of the massive debt left over from the state of war with French republic, Parliament passed laws such equally the Stamp Act, which for the first fourth dimension taxed a wide range of transactions in the colonies.

"Up until then, each colony had its own government which decided which taxes they would have, and collected them," explains Willard Sterne Randall, a professor emeritus of history at Champlain Higher and author of numerous works on early American history, including Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution. "They felt that they'd spent a lot of claret and treasure to protect the colonists from the Indians, and then they should pay their share."

The colonists didn't see it that mode. They resented not only having to buy goods from the British but pay tax on them every bit well. "The tax never got collected, because there were riots all over the place," Randall says. Ultimately, Benjamin Franklin convinced the British to rescind it, but that only made things worse. "That fabricated the Americans think they could push back against anything the British wanted," Randall says.

READ MORE: The Stamp Act

2. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)

An American colonist reads with concern the royal proclamation of a tax on tea in the colonies every bit a British soldier stands nearby with rifle and bayonet, Boston, 1767. The tax on tea was one of the clauses of the Townshend Acts.

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Parliament again tried to assert its authority past passing legislation to tax goods that the Americans imported from Groovy Britain. The Crown established a lath of customs commissioners to stop smuggling and corruption among local officials in the colonies, who were oft in on the illicit trade.

Americans struck back past organizing a cold-shoulder of the British appurtenances that were subject area to taxation and began harassing the British community commissioners. In an try to quell the resistance, the British sent troops to occupy Boston, which only deepened the ill feeling.

READ More than: The Townshend Acts

iii. The Boston Massacre (March 1770)

A impress of the Boston Massacre past Paul Revere, 1770.

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Simmering tensions between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over ane tardily afternoon, when a disagreement between an apprentice wigmaker and a British soldier led to a crowd of 200 colonists surrounding seven British troops. When the Americans began taunting the British and throwing things at them, the soldiers apparently lost their cool and began firing into the crowd.

Equally the smoke cleared, three men—including an African American crewman named Crispus Attucks—were dead, and 2 others were mortally wounded. The massacre became a useful propaganda tool for the colonists, especially later on Paul Revere distributed an engraving that misleadingly depicted the British as the aggressors.

READ More than: Did a Snowball Fight Start the American Revolution?

4. The Boston Tea Party (December 1773)

The Boston Tea Party destroying tea in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773.

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The British eventually withdrew their forces from Boston and repealed much of the onerous Townshend legislation. But they left in identify the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Act, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable treatment nether taxation regulations and so that information technology could sell tea at a toll that undercut the American merchants who imported from Dutch traders.

That didn't sit down well with Americans. "They didn't want the British telling them that they had to buy their tea, only it wasn't simply about that," Randall explains. "The Americans wanted to be able to trade with any land they wanted."

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The Sons of Freedom, a radical group, decided to confront the British head-on. Thinly disguised as Mohawks, they boarded three ships in Boston harbor and destroyed more than 92,000 pounds of British tea by dumping it into the harbor. To brand the bespeak that they were rebels rather than vandals, they avoided harming whatsoever of the crew or dissentious the ships themselves, and the next day even replaced a padlock that had been cleaved.

Yet, the human activity of defiance "really ticked off the British government," Randall explains. "Many of the East India Company's shareholders were members of Parliament. They each had paid i,000 pounds sterling—that would probably be about a million dollars now—for a share of the company, to go a piece of the action from all this tea that they were going to strength downwards the colonists' throats. And so when these bottom-of-the-rung people in Boston destroyed their tea, that was a serious thing to them."

READ MORE: The Boston Tea Political party

five. The Coercive Acts (March-June 1774)

The first Continental Congress, held in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, met to ascertain American rights and organize a plan of resistance to the Coercive Acts imposed by the British Parliament as punishment for the Boston Tea Party.

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In response to the Boston Tea Political party, the British government decided that information technology had to tame the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In the jump of 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor until restitution was paid for the destroyed tea, replaced the colony's elected council with one appointed past the British, gave sweeping powers to the British military governor General Thomas Gage, and forbade boondocks meetings without approval.

Yet another provision protected British colonial officials who were charged with capital offenses from existence tried in Massachusetts, instead requiring that they be sent to some other colony or back to Britain for trial.

But perchance the about provocative provision was the Quartering Act, which allowed British military officials to demand accommodations for their troops in unoccupied houses and buildings in towns, rather than having to stay out in the countryside. While it didn't force the colonists to lath troops in their ain homes, they had to pay for the expense of housing and feeding the soldiers. The quartering of troops eventually became one of the grievances cited in the Declaration of Independence.

six. Lexington and Concord (Apr 1775)

The Battle of Lexington broke out on Apr 19, 1775.

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British General Thomas Cuff led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington, where he planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, and then head to Concord and seize their gunpowder. Only American spies got current of air of the plan, and with the assist of riders such equally Paul Revere, word spread to be ready for the British.

On the Lexington Common, the British force was confronted by 77 American militiamen, and they began shooting at each other. Seven Americans died, but other militiamen managed to stop the British at Agree, and continued to harass them on their retreat back to Boston.

The British lost 73 dead, with another 174 wounded and 26 missing in activity. The bloody encounter proved to the British that the colonists were fearsome foes who had to be taken seriously. It was the first of America'due south state of war of independence.

READ MORE: The Battles of Lexington and Concord

7. British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-Jan 1776)

Though the Revolutionary War'southward hostilities started with Lexington and Concord, Randall says that at the first, information technology was unclear whether the southern colonies, whose interests didn't necessarily align with the northern colonies, would exist all in for a war of independence.

"The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to purchase their crops, and they didn't trust the Yankees," he explains. "And in New England, the Puritans thought the southerners were lazy."

But that was before the barbarous British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies. In Falmouth, where townspeople had to take hold of their possessions and abscond for their lives, northerners had to face up to "the fearfulness that the British would practice whatever they wanted to them," Randall says.

As historian Holger Hoock has written, the burning of Falmouth shocked General George Washington, who denounced it as "exceeding in boorishness & cruelty every hostile act skillful amid civilized nations."

Similarly, in Norfolk, the horror of the town'south wooden buildings going up in flames afterwards a seven-60 minutes naval bombardment shocked the southerners, who besides knew that the British were offer African Americans their freedom if they took upwards artillery on the loyalist side. "Norfolk stirred up fears of a slave insurrection in the South," Randall says.

Leaders of the rebellion seized the burnings of the 2 ports to brand the argument that the colonists needed to band together for survival confronting a ruthless enemy and cover the demand for independence—a spirit that ultimately would lead to their victory.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/american-revolution-causes

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