commitees of correspondence

news was generally disseminated in hand-written letters that were carried aboard ships or by couriers on horseback. Special committees of correspondence were formed by the colonial assemblies and various lesser arms of local government.The Committees of Correspondence were formed throughout the colonies as a means of coordinating action against Great Britain. Many were formed by the legislatures of the respective colonies, others by extra-governmental associations such as the Sons of Liberty in the various colonies. In any case, the members of these organizations represented the leading men of each colony. It took some time, and finally an act as dramatic as the Boston Port Bill, to coordinate the colonies in action against Great Britain

Proclamation Of 1763

The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 was a cause for great celebration in the colonies, for it removed several ominous barriers and opened up a host of new opportunities for the colonists. The French had effectively hemmed in the British settlers and had, from the perspective of the settlers, played the "Indians" against them. The first thing on the minds of colonists was the great western frontier that had opened to them when the French ceded that contested territory to the British. The royal proclamation of 1763 did much to dampen that celebration. The proclamation, in effect, closed off the frontier to colonial expansion. The King and his council presented the proclamation as a measure to calm the fears of the Indians, who felt that the colonists would drive them from their lands as they expanded westward.

intolerable acts

The government spent immense sums of money on troops and equipment in an attempt to subjugate Massachusetts. British merchants had lost huge sums of money on looted, spoiled, and destroyed goods shipped to the colonies. The revenue generated by the Townshend duties, in 1770, amounted to less than £21,000. On March 5, 1770, Parliament repealed the duties, except for the one on tea. That same day, the Boston massacre set a course that would lead the Royal Governor to evacuate the occupying army from Boston, and would soon bring the revolution to armed rebellion throughout the colonies

townshed act

Taxes on glass, paint, oil, lead, paper, and tea were applied with the design of raising £40,000 a year for the administration of the colonies. The result was the resurrection of colonial hostilities created by the Stamp Act.

Troops from England and Nova Scotia marched in to occupy Boston on October 1, 1768. Bostonians offered no resistance. Rather they changed their tactics. They established non-importation agreements that quickly spread throughout the colonies. British trade soon dried up and the powerful merchants of Britain once again interceded on behalf of the colonies.

tea act

The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, would launch the final spark to the revolutionary movement in Boston. The act was not intended to raise revenue in the American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes. It was designed to prop up the East India Company which was floundering financially and burdened with eighteen million pounds of unsold tea.

This tea was to be shipped directly to the colonies, and sold at a bargain price.

Boston Massacre (March 5 1770)

The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a "patriot" mob, throwing snowballs, stones, and sticks, and a squad of British soldiers. Several colonists were killed and this led to a campaign by speech-writers to rouse the ire of the citizenry.
The presence of British troops in the city of Boston was increasingly unwelcome. The riot began when about 50 citizens attacked a British sentinel. A British officer, Captain Thomas Preston, called in additional soldiers, and these too were attacked, so the soldiers fired into the mob, killing 3 on the spot (a black sailor named Crispus Attucks, ropemaker Samuel Gray, and a mariner named James Caldwell), and wounding 8 others, two of whom died later (Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr).
A town meeting was called demanding the removal of the British and the trial of Captain Preston and his men for murder. At the trial, John Adams and Josiah Quincy II defended the British, leading to their acquittal and release. Samuel Quincy and Robert Treat Paine were the attorneys for the prosecution. Later, two of the British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter.
The Boston Massacre was a signal event leading to the Revolutionary War. It led directly to the Royal Governor evacuating the occupying army from the town of Boston. It would soon bring the revolution to armed rebellion throughout the colonies.

First Continental Congress Sept. 5 1774

The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, from September 5, to October 26, 1774. Carpenter's Hall was also the seat of the Pennsylvania Congress. All of the colonies except Georgia sent delegates. These were elected by the people, by the colonial legislatures, or by the committees of correspondence of the respective colonies. The colonies presented there were united in a determination to show a combined authority to Great Britain, but their aims were not uniform at all. Pennsylvania and New York sent delegates with firm instructions to seek a resolution with England. The other colonies voices were defensive of colonial rights, but pretty evenly divided between those who sought legislative parity, and the more radical members who were prepared for separation. Virginia's delegation was made up of a most even mix of these and not incidentally, presented the most eminent group of men in America. Colo. George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton, Colo. Benjamin Harrison, Richard Bland, and at the head of them Peyton Randolph — who would immediately be elected president of the convention.

The objectives of the body were not entirely clear but, with such leadership as was found there, a core set of tasks was carried out. It was agreeable to all that the King and Parliament must be made to understand the grievances of the colonies and that the body must do everything possible to communicate the same to the population of America, and to the rest of the world.
The first few weeks were consumed in discussion and debate. The colonies had always, up to this time, acted as independent entities. There was much distrust to overcome. The first matter to be considered by all was A Plan of Union of Great Britain and the Colonies, offered by Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania. The plan was considered very attractive to most of the members, as it proposed a popularly elected Grand Council which would represent the interests of the colonies as a whole, and would be a continental equivalent to the English Parliament. Poised against this would be a President General, appointed by the crown, to represent the authority of the king in America. Conflict in Boston overcame the effort at conciliation. The arrival of the Suffolk County (Boston) resolves just prior to the vote on the Plan of Union, caused it to be discarded by a narrow margin.

Proclamation Of 1763

  

The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 was a cause for great celebration in the colonies, for it removed several ominous barriers and opened up a host of new opportunities for the colonists. The French had effectively hemmed in the British settlers and had, from the perspective of the settlers, played the "Indians" against them. The first thing on the minds of colonists was the great western frontier that had opened to them when the French ceded that contested territory to the British. The royal proclamation of 1763 did much to dampen that celebration. The proclamation, in effect, closed off the frontier to colonial expansion.

The proclamation also established or defined four new colonies, three of them on the continent proper. Quebec, which was of course already well settled, two colonies to be called East Florida and West Florida — and off the continent, Grenada. These facts were established immediately, but most of the proclamation is devoted to the subject of Indians and Indian lands. It asserted that all of the Indian peoples were thereafter under the protection of the King. It required that all lands within the "Indian territory" occupied by Englishmen were to be abandoned. It included a list of prohibited activities, provided for enforcement of the new laws, and indicted unnamed persons for fraudulent practices in acquiring lands from the Indians in times past. Resolution of the hostilities of the French and Indian War was a difficult problem for the crown. Most of the Indian tribes had been allied with the French during the war, because they found the French less hostile and generally more trustworthy that the English settlers. Now the French would depart, and the Indians were left behind to defend themselves and their grounds as best they could. Relations between the Indians and the English colonials were so poor that few settlers would argue in public that the Indians had rights to any lands. In this proclamation the King sided with the Indians, against the perceived interests of the settlers. Moreover, it provided, and Parliament soon after executed, British royal posts along the proclamation boundary. Parliament was under no illusions about relations between the Indians and the colonists. They understood that the colonists would not respect the boundary without some enforcement mechanism. Finally, the English were interested in improving the fur trade, which involved the Indians and independent trappers who lived out on the frontier.

Boston Tea Party (Sept. 6 1773)

Victory in the French and Indian War was costly for the British. 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. They were also looking for ways to reestablish control over the colonial governments that had become increasingly independent while the Crown was distracted by the war.




The colonies refused to pay the levies required by the Townsend Acts claiming they had no obligation to pay taxes imposed by a Parliament in which they had no representation. In response, Parliament retracted the taxes with the exception of a duty on tea - a demonstration of Parliament's ability and right to tax the colonies. In May of 1773 Parliament concocted a clever plan. They gave the struggling East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea to America.They gave the struggling East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea to America. Additionally, Parliament reduced the duty the colonies would have to pay for the imported tea. The Americans would now get their tea at a cheaper price than ever before.
In Boston, the arrival of three tea ships ignited a furious reaction. The crisis came to a head on December 16, 1773 when as many as 7,000 agitated locals milled about the wharf where the ships were docked. A mass meeting at the Old South Meeting House that morning resolved that the tea ships should leave the harbor without payment of any duty. A committee was selected to take this message to the Customs House to force release of the ships out of the harbor. The Collector of Customs refused to allow the ships to leave without payment of the duty. Stalemate. The committee reported back to the mass meeting and a howl erupted from the meeting hall. It was now early evening and a group of about 200 men, some disguised as Indians, assembled on a near-by hill. Whopping war chants, the crowd marched two-by-two to the wharf, descended upon the three ships and dumped their offending cargos of tea into the harbor waters.
Most colonists applauded the action while the reaction in London was swift and vehement. In March 1774 Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts which among other measures closed the Port of Boston. The fuse that led directly to the explosion of American independence was lit.

First Continental Congress (September 5, 1774)*

The first American Congress (Continental Congress) was a convention of delegates from twelve of the thirteen North American colonies that met on September 5, 1774, at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. Called in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts (also known as Intolerable Acts by the Colonial Americans) by the British Parliament, the Congress was attended by 56 members appointed by the legislatures of twelve of the Thirteen Colonies, the exception being the Province of Georgia, which did not send delegates. At the time, Georgia was the newest and smallest province and declined to send a delegation because it was seeking help from London in pacifying its smoldering Indian frontier.
Delegates met in secret. Benjamin Franklin had proposed such a meeting a year earlier, but after the Port of Boston was closed the momentum for such a meeting grew rapidly. The goal of the Congress was to resolve the differences between England and the colonies.

Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775) *

On this day in 1775, the British Army under the command of Lt. Colonel Francis Smith ordered his army of some 700+ to attack and seize the colonial armaments being stored at Concord. In response, the Boston Minutemen rallied in defence of their "nation," claiming that the British had finally crossed the proverbial line in the sand. The brave rabble of American militiamen who bravely stood against the British have been hailed for their bravery as they stood against the might of the British Army. As Ralph Waldo Emerson stated in his epic poem that has forever immortalized this battle:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world

Though nobody can doubt the boldness of this British advancement, several historians have begun to question whether or not the battles of Lexington & Concord have received too much attention and credit. While nobody will deny that the battle was both vicious and brave for the colonials, one has to question why this battle is given the unique distinction as being the "beginning battle" to the American Revolution.
As far as our Founding Fathers were concerned, the Battle of Lexington and Concord was another British atrocity that demanded a response. The measure and severity of that response, was a topic of great debate between the several delegates to the Continental Congress. The Massachusetts delegates demanded war, while many others demanded a peaceful response. War was never officially declared by the Congress, though they did manage to officially appoint George Washington to be the General of the newly established Continental Army. This, however, came AFTER the battle.
It is also important to note that very few of Massachusetts's sister colonies were making preparations for war. As far as they saw it, peace was still very much a possibility and hope. There was also no official declaration for independence, nor any new form of government established. Clearly, our Founding Fathers understood the atrocity of Lexington and Concord to be a serious problem, but not necessarily an act of war.

Sons of Liberty (August 14,1765) *

In Boston in early summer of 1765 a group of shopkeepers and artisans who called themselves The Loyal Nine, began preparing for agitation against the Stamp Act. As that group grew, it came to be known as the Sons of Liberty. And grow it did! These were not the leading men of Boston, but rather workers and tradesmen. It was unbelivable that they would be so agitated by a parliamentary act. The Adams' and other radical members of the legislature were daily in the public eye; they could not afford to be too closely associated with violence, neither could the secretive Sons of Liberty afford much public exposure. However, amongst the members were two men who could generate much public sentiment about the Act. Benjamin Edes, a printer, and John Gill of the Boston Gazette produced a steady stream of news and opinion. Within a very short time a group of some two thousand men had been organized under Ebenezer McIntosh, a South Boston shoemaker.The first widely known acts of the Sons took place on August 14, 1765, when an effigy of Andrew Oliver (who was to be commissioned Distributor of Stamps for Massachusetts) was found hanging in a tree on

Newbury street

, along with a large boot with a devil climbing out of it. The boot was a play on the name of the Earl of Bute and the whole display was made to establish an evil connection between Oliver and the Stamp Act. The sheriffs were told to remove the display but protested in fear of their lives, for a large crowd had formed at the scene. Before the evening a mob burned Oliver's property on

Kilby street then moved on to his house. There they beheaded the effigy and stoned the house as its occupants looked out in horror. They then moved to nearby Fort Hill were they built a large fire and burned what was left of the effigy. Most of the crowd dissipated at that point, however McIntosh and crew, then under cover of darkness, ransacked Oliver's abandoned home until midnight. On that evening it became very clear who ruled Boston. The British Militia, the Sheriffs and Justices, kept a low profile.

By the end of that year the Sons of Liberty existed in every colony. Their most popular objective was to force Stamp Distributors throughout the colonies to resign. The groups also applied pressure to any Merchants who did not comply with the non-importation associations. Wherever these groups existed they were either directed in secret by leading men in the community or actually lead by them. However, there were opportunists everywhere, too, who would use the name Sons of Liberty to carry out acts of revenge and other violence not related to the cause. For example, in South Carolina a group of sailors, calling themselves The Sons of Liberty, formed a mob to coerce money from people on the streets*. Such behavior could certainly undermine the cause, so the Sons spent a great deal of time policing themselves and pretenders. This was the origin on names such as "True Sons," and "True-born Sons" of Liberty

Sugar Act (April 5, 1764)*

The Revenue Act of 1764, also known as the Sugar Act, was the first tax on the American colonies imposed by the British Parliament. Its purpose was to raise revenue through the colonial customs service and to give customs agents more power and latitude with respect to executing seizures and enforcing customs law. That the Act came from an external body rather than a colonial legislature alarmed a handful of colonial leaders in Boston who held that the Act violated their “British privileges”. Their main complaint was against taxation without representation. Just as important, however, were the Act’s implications for the colonial judicial system, for the Revenue Act of 1764 allowed British officers to try colonists who violated the new duties.

The Sugar Act reduced the rate of tax on molasses from six pence to three pence per gallon, while Grenville took measures that the duty be strictly enforced. The act also listed more foreign goods to be taxed including sugar, certain wines, coffee, pimiento, cambric and printed calico, and further, regulated the export of lumber and iron. The enforced tax on molasses caused the almost immediate decline in the rum industry in the colonies. The combined effect of the new duties was to sharply reduce the trade with Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the French West Indies (Guadelupe, Martinique and Santo Domingo (now Haiti)), all important destination ports for lumber, flour, cheese, and assorted farm products. The situation disrupted the colonial economy by reducing the markets to which the colonies could sell, and the amount of currency available to them for the purchase of British manufactured goods.

The Sugar Act was passed by Parliament on April 5, 1764, and it arrived in the colonies at a time of economic depression. It was an indirect tax, although the colonists were well informed of its presence. A good part of the reason was that a significant portion of the colonial economy during the Seven Years War was involved with supplying food and supplies to the British Army. Colonials, however, especially those affected directly as merchants and shippers, assumed that the highly visible new tax program was the major culprit. As protests against the Sugar Act developed, it was the economic impact rather than the constitutional issue of taxation without representation, that was the main focus for the Americans.
New England especially suffered economic losses from the Sugar Act. The stricter enforcement made smuggling more dangerous and risky, and the profit margin on rum, so the colonists argued, was too small to support any tax. Forced to increase their prices, many Americans, it was feared, would be priced out of the market. The British West Indies, on the other hand, now had undivided access to colonial exports and with supply well exceeding demand the islands prospered with their reduced expenses while all New Englanders saw the revenue from their exports decrease. The foreign West Indies had also been the primary colonial source for specie, and as the reserves of specie were depleted the soundness of colonial currency was threatened.

Stamp Act (March 22, 1765) *

because of the French and Indian war, Great Britain was deeply in debt. Added to that dept was the cost of sendinf troops to protect the Western lands. The British decided to turn to the colonists to help pay for the troops,and to raie money the British used tax. In 1765 parliment britain's law making body passed the Stamp Act- everything made of paper legal documents, business records, even playing cards  in the american colonies had to have an official stamp before it could be bought, used, or sold.This Act threatened every single American and would drain all coinage from the colonies.

The Daughters Of Liberty(1774) *

The Daughters of Liberty used their traditional skills to weave yarn and wool into fabric known as "homespun" to support to condemn British importation. They were recognized as patriotic heroines for their success, which made America less dependent on British Textiles.They also had a large influence during the war. They were a successful group that proves women's involvement in politics could be beneficial for the country.

The "Daughters of Liberty" were working from sun up to sun down to prove their commitment to "the cause of liberty and industry". The daughters of liberty were one of the many groups of women who fought for woman's equality and supported the soldiers during the American Revolution. Abigail Adams was best known for the letters she sent to her husband urging him to "Remember the ladies" when he discussed the future of the country. She fought for women's equality during the war, and accomplished many things during her life.