The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain with lots of territorial gains in North America, but disagreements over following frontier policy and paying the war’s costs led to colonial unhappiness. By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government were not good, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. After the French and Indian War, the British needed funds to pay for the war and other costs of empire. They felt the Americans should help to pay so they forced taxes and tried to increase British control of the colonies which was not fair to the colonist.
The laws and taxes imposed by the British on the 13 Colonies included the Sugar and the Stamp Act, Navigation Acts, Wool Act, Hat Act, the Proclamation of 1763, the Quartering Act, Townshend Acts and the Coercive Intolerable Acts. The outcome was that the British Parliament passed the 1764 Currency Act which forbade the colonies from issuing paper currency. This made it even more difficult for colonists to pay their debts and taxes. Soon after Parliament passed the Currency Act, Prime Minister Grenville proposed a Stamp Tax. The King and Parliament decided the colonies should pay for part of the French and Indian War and the costs for keeping British soldiers in North America. In 1764, Parliament passed a law that came to be known as the Sugar Act.
They imported sugar, molasses, paper, glass, lead, paint and tea. What the British did to the colonist were not right and the colonist new that it wasn’t ok. Once all the laws had past the colonist were not at all happy about the idea. The colonist new themselves that the laws were not ok and were outrageously over the amount of money they had and it was unreasonable. The Massachusetts Government Act was planned to punish the people of Boston, Massachusetts for the event that would become known as the Boston Tea Party. The Massachusetts Government Act was one of a sequence of British Laws referred to as the Intolerable Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain 1774.
The colonist saw the laws as a violation to their constitutional rights and abolishing colonial laws. The First Continental Congress had delegates from the colonies they met in 1774 in response to the Coercive Acts. They tried lots of trials imposed by the British government on the colonies in response to the complaining to the new taxes. The Second Continental Congress took many actions after battles were fought at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The Second Continental Congress met in May and planned various actions to happen.
One thing they did was to take actions and formed an army. It succeeded the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia between September 5, 1774 and October 26, 1774. The Second Congress managed the Colonial war effort and moved incrementally towards independence. On June 11, 1776, Congress appointed a “Committee of Five”, consisting of John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R.
Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, to draft a declaration. The main purpose of America’s Declaration of Independence was to explain to foreign nations why the colonies had chosen to separate themselves from Great Britain. The Revolutionary War had already begun, and several major battles had already taken place. Delegates from each of the Thirteen Colonies met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 to decide the case for liberty.
The goal was to convince the States that the time had come for the United Colonies to declare their independence from Mother England.
