Colonist Case

1750 to 1776 was the beginning of the revolution.The English and Colonist were starting to buttheads with one onther. The English passed acts that increased taxes which didn’t sit too well with the colonist. The tax laws became the cause of the colonies uniting and forming the United States of America.

In 1754 the Pennsylvania Gazette printed a political cartoon of a snake cut up into eight pieces each representing the colonies with the words “JOIN or DIE” below the snake (Doc A). This cartoon was made to show the importance of colonies uniting as one. Benjamin Franklin agreed with this idea of unity and proposed the Albany Plan of Union, which was an attempt to unite all of the colonies but failed because several colonists as well as the English Parliament did not agree with the idea. Although the Albany Plan failed it was the first signs of colonial unity.

Parliament passed the Sugar Act in 1764 to pay off their debt from their war expenses from the seven year war, They also began to pass more acts like the stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act, and Intolerable Acts. The tax increases began to make life harder for the colonist and upset them.The colonists responded to the Tea Act and on the night of December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty disguised themselves as Indians and dumped three hundred forty-two barrels of British tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of the Tea Act. This caused Parliament to close the Boston Port, extended the Quartering Act, and restricted the Massachusetts government all due to the Intolerable acts. In a letter to his brother, Richard Henry Lee wrote that the colonies were now strongly unified and had agreed to defend their liberties and freedoms from England (Doc C)

The colonies formed the First Continental Congress in September 1774 in Philadelphia due to the Intolerable Acts, which was a huge step in the process of unification. They drafted and sent the “Declaration for the Causes of Taking up