He events that led American colonists to declare independence affected the choices they made about a new government

he events that led American colonists to declare independence affected the choices they made about a new government.

Social and Political Changes in the Colonies

SS.7.G.2.3, SS.7.C.1.3, LA.7.1.6.1

What events and movements affected colonial attitudes?

From the 1740s through the 1760s there was a religious movement called the Great Awakening. It swept across the colonies. Fiery preachers stressed the value of personal religious experience. They rejected the teachings of church leaders. Instead, they urged people to build a direct relationship with God.

The Great Awakening pressed colonists to question traditional religious authority. Enlightenment leaders urged people to question accepted political authority. Together, these social and political movements created a strong spirit of liberty, or personal freedom. This spirit strengthened the colonists’ belief that they should have the same rights as people in Great Britain.

Colonists believed that Parliament should protect the rights of British people from abuses by the king. Yet the king and Parliament made laws for the colonists. Also, America was far away, so the colonists had little voice in what happened in England. In addition, the king’s governors ruled many of the colonies. That meant colonists had little voice in choosing these leaders. Moreover, their policies favored British interests over the colonists’ needs. These concerns combined with a series of events in the 1760s to cause growing resentment against British rule.

The French and Indian War

As the colonies grew, they expanded westward. By the 1750s, British colonists were moving into areas also claimed by France. The increasing tensions soon led to war. In 1754, French forces joined with some Native American groups. Together they drove British colonists from land west of the Appalachian Mountains. The conflict was called the French and Indian War. It led to war between Great Britain and France in Europe.

Britain sent troops to the colonies. Finally, the British army won the war in 1763. Britain took control of French lands all the way to the Mississippi River. The colonists wanted to move into those lands. The French were now gone, so the colonists felt that they did not need British troops to protect them. However, British king George III had other plans for the colonies.

New Laws and Taxes

The French and Indian War had been long and costly. Fighting it had left Britain deep in debt. The colonists had caused the war by moving west. Therefore, King George decided they should pay for it. He also wanted to end the fighting in America. The French were gone, but Native Americans remained in the region. So he issued a proclamation, or an official statement. It forbade the colonists from settling in the lands won from France. He placed over 10,000 British troops in the colonies to keep order.

The king’s actions enraged the colonists. Many felt that their only hope of owning land was now gone. Others suspected that the king was punishing the colonies. They thought he was trying to limit the economic growth they might achieve through expansion into the new lands.

Next, King George asked Parliament to tax the colonies. The money would help pay off Great Britain’s war debts. In 1765 Parliament passed the Stamp Act. The law required that the colonists buy and place tax stamps on many kinds of documents. These included legal papers and even newspapers. The colonies protested this tax.

Colonial leaders called on the colonists to boycott, or refuse to buy, British goods. They claimed that only their elected representatives had the right to tax them. Leaders based the claim on the English Bill of Rights and on political traditions. For more than 100 years only their own legislatures had taxed the colonists.

Colonial leaders also organized a Stamp Act Congress in New York City. Representatives from nine colonies met to write a united protest to Parliament and the king. In 1766 Parliament repealed, or canceled, the Stamp Act. The same day, however, it passed the Declaratory Act. This law stated that Parliament had the right to tax the colonies and make decisions for them “in all cases whatsoever.”

Explaining Why were the colonists angered by the Proclamation of 1763?
Colonial Dissatisfaction Grows

SS.7.C.1.3, LA.7.1.7.3

What events increased colonists’ anger toward British rule?

A year after repealing the Stamp Act, Parliament levied a new set of taxes. The Townshend Acts placed duties on a wide range of goods that the colonies imported from overseas. Once again the colonists resisted with boycotts and protests. In 1770 Parliament repealed all the duties except for a tax on tea.

One of the Townshend Acts allowed general search warrants. British officials used these to combat smuggling—illegally moving goods in or out of a country. These warrants were called writs of assistance. They made it lawful for officers to enter any business or home to look for goods on which the import duty had not been paid. These searches greatly angered the colonists. Nearly 20 years later, Americans remembered writs of assistance. They even demanded that a protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures” be added to the United States Constitution.

In 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act. This measure was not a tax. In fact, it allowed a British company that grew tea in India to import its tea into the colonies without paying the existing tea tax. This made the British company’s tea cheaper than other tea sold in the colonies. Still, Parliament’s control of taxes angered the colonists.

In December 1773, some angry colonists boarded several ships in Boston Harbor. These ships carried the British company’s tea waiting to be unloaded. The group of protesters had disguised themselves as Native Americans. Urged on by a large crowd onshore, the protesters dumped 342 chests of the company’s tea into the water. This protest became known as the Boston Tea Party.

How did Parliament respond to the Boston Tea Party? It passed laws called the Coercive Acts. These laws were meant to punish Massachusetts—and especially Boston—for resisting Great Britain’s rule. The Coercive Acts were so harsh that the colonists called them the Intolerable Acts. Some of the laws violated the English Bill of Rights that the colonists held so dear.

Specifying Why did the colonists refer to the Coercive Acts as the Intolerable Acts?
21st Century SKILLS

Identifying Points of View

If you had been a British colonist in the 1700s, what side do you think you would have been on in the argument over independence? Prepare a list of arguments for that point of view—either supporting loyalty to the king and Parliament in their decisions to tax the colonists or agreeing with the colonists who were rebellling against the king and his actions.

Steps Toward Independence

What ideas about government influenced the Declaration of Independence?

SS.7.C.1.1, SS.7.C.1.2, SS.7.C.1.4, LA.7.1.7.3

Parliament thought the Coercive Acts would frighten the colonists into respecting British rule. Instead, the reverse occurred. The other colonies banded together to help Massachusetts and challenge British authority.

The First Continental Congress

In September 1774, delegates, or representatives, from 12 colonies met in Philadelphia to plan a united response to the Coercive Acts. Although the group was called the Continental Congress, it did not pass laws like Congress does today. Instead, the delegates discussed what to do about the colonies’ issues with Great Britain. They decided to send a letter to the king. In it they would ask that Britain respect the colonists’ rights as British citizens. They also organized a total boycott of British goods and a ban on all trade with Britain. They agreed to meet again in the spring if British policies had not improved.

King George responded by calling for even stronger measures. “The New England governments are in a state of rebellion,” he declared. “Blows [a fight] must decide whether they are subject to this country or independent.”

The Second Continental Congress

The first “blows” had been struck when the delegates met again in May 1775. In April, British troops and colonial militiamen had fought at Lexington and Concord, in Massachusetts. Congress had to decide whether to continue working towards peace or to split with Great Britain.

This time the Congress acted as a governing body for the colonies. Not every member favored a split with Great Britain. Some delegates remained loyal to Britain and the king. Others feared that the colonies could not defeat Great Britain in a war. For months, Congress debated what to do.

Meanwhile, support for independence grew in the colonies. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published a pamphlet titled Common Sense. Paine had recently moved to the colonies from Great Britain. He used the ideas of John Locke to make the case for independence. He argued that “common sense” called for the colonists to rebel against the king’s “violent abuse of power.” Paine continued,

"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. . . . We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

More than 500,000 copies of Common Sense were sold in 1776. By spring more than half the delegates of the Second Continental Congress favored independence.

The Declaration of Independence

The Congress chose a committee to draft a document to explain to the world why the colonies should be free. The committee consisted of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman. The committee chose Jefferson to write the document.

The words Jefferson wrote show that his thinking was greatly influenced by John Locke. In fact, a passage in the second paragraph of the Declaration clearly was inspired by Locke’s ideas about natural rights in Two Treatises of Government.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Then, drawing on Locke’s views about the social contract, Jefferson wrote:

"[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving [getting] their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute [create] new Government.”

Later in the Declaration, Jefferson offered proof that the social contract had been broken. He put together a long list of ways in which King George had abused his power.

Jefferson was clearly influenced by the political thoughts of Locke. But he also drew ideas from other times in history. You read earlier that ideas about democracy began with the ancient Greeks. In addition, Jefferson was inspired by the writings of other Enlightenment thinkers. For instance, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote that if a government did not protect its people’s freedom, it should not exist. Voltaire also believed that people had a right to liberty. The Declaration of Independence reflects many of these old and new beliefs.

The Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. John Hancock, the president of the Congress, was first to sign it.

The Declaration of Independence was a revolutionary document. No other nation’s government at that time was based on the principles of government by consent of the governed. Over the years, many other nations have used the Declaration of Independence as a model in their own efforts to gain freedom.

Identifying How did Thomas Paine use John Locke's ideas in his pamphlet Common Sense?
LESSON 3 REVIEW

Review Vocabulary

1. Describe the relationship between a boycott and a repeal.
LA.7.1.6.1

2. Write a sentence that shows how these words are related: duty, smuggling.
LA.7.1.6.1

Answer the Guiding Questions

3. Summarizing How were the ideas of colonists affected by events in the American colonies?
SS.7.C.1.3

4. Labeling What were the key events that led to growing colonial support for independence?
SS.7.C.1.3

5. Identifying What ideas about government did Jefferson draw on in writing the Declaration of Independence?
SS.7.C.1.1

6. PERSUASIVE WRITING Suppose you are a member of the Second Continental Congress. Write a speech using ideas of natural rights that supports the Declaration of Independence.
SS.7.C.1.4