Road to Revolution
The American colonists were against the Parliaments Acts. They responded with organized protests. The colonies formed a network of secret organizations known as the Sons of Liberty to intimidate the stamp agents who collected Parliament’s taxes. All of the appointed stamp agents in the colonies had resigned before the Stamp Act could even go into effect. The Massachusetts Assembly proposed a meeting of all the colonies to repeal the Stamp Act. (Christiansen, T., Dobbels, M., 2012). The Stamp Act Congress passed a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances,” which claimed that American colonists were equal to all other British citizens, protested taxation without representation, and stated that Parliament could not tax colonists without colonial representation in Parliament.
The Townshend Acts were a set of British legislation enacted in 1767 that taxed commodities imported into the American colonies. The five Townshend Acts include The New York Restraining Act 1767 passed on June 5, 1767, The Revenue Act 1767 passed on June 26, 1767, The Indemnity Act 1767 passed on June 29, 1767, The Commissioners of Customs Act 1767 passed on June 29, 1767, and The Vice-Admiralty Court Act 1768. The Acts, however, were seen as an abuse of authority by American colonists who had no representation in Parliament. In the run-up to the American Revolutionary War, the British dispatched troops to America to enforce the unpopular new laws, further inflaming tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies. (LaClair, M. B., 2014) The colonists organized popular and effective boycotts of taxed items to show their displeasure.
The main objective of the Tea act 1773 was to help the financially ailing British East India Company survive by reducing the vast amount of tea it had in its London warehouses. Another goal was to reduce the cost of smuggled tea entering Britain’s North American colonies. This Act was designed to persuade colonists to buy Company tea in exchange for Townshend charges, therefore indirectly consenting to support Parliament’s authority to tax. Smuggled tea was a significant problem for Britain and the East India Company, as smuggled Dutch tea accounted for most of the tea consumed in America at the time. (Malaspina, A., 2013). When the deadline for landing the tea and paying the Townshend taxes passed, colonists disguised as Indians climbed aboard three tea-laden ships and spilled their cargo into the harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773.