what led to the independence of the united states

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 confronting the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade before. Escalations began shortly later on the terminate of the French and Indian State of war—known elsewhere as the Seven Years War in 1763. Here are a few of the pivotal moments that led to the American Revolution.

1. The Stamp Human action (March 1765)

Sheet of penny revenue stamps printed by United kingdom for the American colonies, afterward the Postage stamp Human activity of 1765.

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To compensate some of the massive debt left over from the war with French republic, Parliament passed laws such as the Postage 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 accept, and collected them," explains Willard Sterne Randall, a professor emeritus of history at Champlain College and writer of numerous works on early American history, including Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Concluded the American Revolution. "They felt that they'd spent a lot of blood and treasure to protect the colonists from the Indians, and then they should pay their share."

The colonists didn't run across it that style. They resented non only having to buy goods from the British simply pay revenue enhancement on them as well. "The taxation never got collected, because there were riots all over the stride," Randall says. Ultimately, Benjamin Franklin convinced the British to rescind information technology, but that simply fabricated things worse. "That made the Americans think they could push back against anything the British wanted," Randall says.

READ MORE: The Stamp Act

two. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)

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

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Parliament once more tried to affirm its authority past passing legislation to tax goods that the Americans imported from Great Britain. The Crown established a lath of customs commissioners to stop smuggling and corruption amidst local officials in the colonies, who were frequently in on the illicit trade.

Americans struck back by organizing a boycott of the British goods that were subject to revenue enhancement, and began harassing the British customs commissioners. In an try to quell the resistance, the British sent troops to occupy Boston, which simply deepened the sick feeling.

READ More than: The Townshend Acts

3. The Boston Massacre (March 1770)

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

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Simmering tensions between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over one tardily afternoon, when a disagreement betwixt 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.

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

READ MORE: Did a Snowball Fight Commencement 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 place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Human activity, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable handling under taxation regulations, so that it could sell tea at a price that undercut the American merchants who imported from Dutch traders.

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

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The Sons of Liberty, a radical group, decided to confront the British head-on. Thinly disguised every bit 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 point that they were rebels rather than vandals, they avoided harming any of the coiffure or damaging the ships themselves, and the adjacent day even replaced a padlock that had been cleaved.

Nevertheless, the act of defiance "really ticked off the British regime," Randall explains. "Many of the Due east Republic of india Company'due south shareholders were members of Parliament. They each had paid 1,000 pounds sterling—that would probably be about a million dollars now—for a share of the company, to get a piece of the action from all this tea that they were going to forcefulness down 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 Party

5. The Coercive Acts (March-June 1774)

The outset Continental Congress, held in Carpenter'southward Hall, Philadelphia, met to define American rights and organize a plan of resistance to the Coercive Acts imposed by the British Parliament as punishment for the Boston Tea Political party.

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In response to the Boston Tea Political party, the British authorities decided that it had to tame the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In the bound of 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which airtight Boston Harbor until restitution was paid for the destroyed tea, replaced the colony'southward elected council with one appointed past the British, gave sweeping powers to the British military governor Full general Thomas Gage, and forbade town meetings without approval.

Nevertheless another provision protected British colonial officials who were charged with capital offenses from existence tried in Massachusetts, instead requiring that they be sent to another colony or dorsum to Swell Uk for trial.

But perhaps the well-nigh 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 strength the colonists to board troops in their own 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 Annunciation of Independence.

6. Lexington and Concur (April 1775)

The Battle of Lexington broke out on April 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 so caput to Concord and seize their gunpowder. Just American spies got air current of the plan, and with the help 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 some other 174 wounded and 26 missing in activeness. The bloody encounter proved to the British that the colonists were fearsome foes who had to be taken seriously. It was the start of America'due south state of war of independence.

READ More than: The Battles of Lexington and Concord

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

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

"The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to buy 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 earlier the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the littoral towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies. In Falmouth, where townspeople had to grab their possessions and abscond for their lives, northerners had to face upward to "the fright that the British would do any they wanted to them," Randall says.

Equally historian Holger Hoock has written, the burning of Falmouth shocked General George Washington, who denounced information technology as "exceeding in barbarity & cruelty every hostile act adept among civilized nations."

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

Leaders of the rebellion seized the burnings of the 2 ports to make the statement that the colonists needed to ring together for survival against a ruthless enemy and cover the demand for independence—a spirit that ultimately would pb to their victory.

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

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