Tax Protests Lead To Revolution
In the colonial era, Americans insisted on their rights as Englishmen to have their own legislature raise all taxes. Tax loads in practice were very light, and far lower than in England. Beginning in 1765 the British Parliament asserted its supreme authority to lay taxes, and a series of American protests began that led directly to the American Revolution. The first wave of protests attacked the Stamp Act of 1765, and marked the first time Americans from each of the 13 colonies met together and planned a common front against illegal taxes. The Boston Tea Party of 1773 dumped British tea into Boston Harbor because it contained a hidden tax Americans refused to pay. The British responded by trying to crush traditional liberties in Massachusetts, leading to the American revolution starting in 1775.
The Parliament attempted a series of taxes and punishments which met more and more resistance: First Quartering Act (1765); Declaratory Act (1766); Townshend Revenue Act (1767); and Tea Act (1773). In response to the Boston Tea Party Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts: Second Quartering Act (1774); Quebec Act (1774); Massachusetts Government Act (1774); Administration of Justice Act (1774); Boston Port Act (1774); Prohibitory Act (1775). By this point the 13 colonies had organized themselves into the Continental Congress and began setting up shadow governments and drilling their militia in preparation for war.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Thirteen Colonies
Famous quotes containing the words tax, lead and/or revolution:
“I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.”
—Wendell Berry (b. 1934)
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Womens Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. Liberation of Women, in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)
“Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)