American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika

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СКАЧАТЬ The first national meeting of representatives from the colonies in 1765. In response to duties (taxes) imposed by Parliament on the colonies through the Stamp Act, this Congress passed a Declaration of Rights that denounced taxation without representation—an important step toward the American Revolution.

      The Stamp Act also provoked representatives from nine of the thirteen colonies to gather at Federal Hall in New York in October 1765.⁸ This so-called Stamp Act Congress was the first official meeting of representatives from the various colonies, and it resulted in a Declaration of Rights. The declaration rejected the claim by the British Prime Minister, George Grenville, that as British subjects, the colonists enjoyed “virtual representation” in Parliament even if they did not formally elect representatives to Parliament. In direct defiance of Grenville, the declaration made it clear that “the only representatives of these colonies are persons chosen therein,” adding that “no taxes can be constitutionally imposed on [the colonies] but by their respective legislatures.”⁹

      Representative bodies were not the only ones motivated by the Stamp Act to take action. Throughout the colonies, individuals formed associations known as the Sons of Liberty to attack British authority and resist taxation without representation by whatever means necessary. In some places, violent protests erupted. Those who distributed the hated stamps on behalf of the British government were hung in effigy, and in some cases, their homes were attacked. Defiant colonists refused to use the stamps and boycotted British goods.

      The British Response

      The reaction of the colonists to the Stamp Act alarmed the British, and in February 1766, Parliament repealed the act. But, in March, it also passed the Declaratory Act, stating that colonial bodies had “against law” claimed “the sole and exclusive right of imposing duties and taxes” in the colonies. Noting that “all [colonial] resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings” that denied Parliament’s power to tax (including the Virginia Resolves and the Stamp Act Congress’s Declaration of Rights) were “utterly null and void,” the act reiterated that the colonies were “subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and Parliament of Great Britain.”¹⁰

      Then Parliament enacted the Revenue Act of 1767, the first of the so-called Townshend Acts, named after Charles Townshend, the chancellor of exchequer (treasury), who advocated them. Whereas the Stamp Act was a direct tax on goods in the colonies, the Revenue Act (similar to the earlier Sugar Act) was an indirect tax that placed duties on imported goods, including the paper, paint, glass, and tea the colonies imported from England. Townshend assumed that indirect taxes would be more palatable to the colonists than direct taxes, but he was wrong. The Massachusetts House of Representatives reiterated the now-familiar protest: no taxation without representation.

      This time, Britain’s response was harsh. It ordered the royal governor to dissolve the Massachusetts legislature. Soon thereafter, it sent regiments of British troops to Boston. The troops, known as “Redcoats” for their bright uniforms, became a hated fixture there. One cold night in March 1770, a group of several hundred men and boys pelted a small band of nine Redcoats with rocks, snowballs, chunks of ice, and oyster shells. Alarmed, the soldiers fired back, killing five men. The British soldiers had been provoked, but the incident was quickly dubbed the “Boston Massacre” and used to rally opposition to the oppressive force of the British. Nonetheless, John Adams—a future president of the United States—defended the British soldiers when they were tried for murder. He secured a verdict of “innocent” for the captain, who was tried first. In a subsequent trial of the remaining eight soldiers, six were acquitted and two were found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.¹¹

      Description

      Is Revere’s depiction of the Boston Massacre—British soldiers firing point-blank into a small crowd of unarmed colonists and their dog—an accurate portrayal of the event? If not, what is inaccurate about it?

      The Boston Tea Party

      As it had done with the Stamp Act, Britain backed down in the face of the colonial reaction to the Revenue Act. The colonists boycotted the imported goods that were subject to duties, and in 1770, Britain rescinded the duties for all goods except tea. Colonists evaded the remaining tea tax by buying smuggled tea from Holland, but Parliament foreclosed that option in 1773 when it passed the Tea Act. The primary purpose of that act was to save the nearly bankrupt East India Company by giving it a monopoly to sell tea in the colonies. Parliament lowered the price of tea so much that the tea from the East India Company—even after the tea tax—was cheaper than smuggled tea. Parliament assumed that the colonists would welcome the inexpensive tea. Instead, the colonists viewed it as a trick to get them to accept British taxation and tried to block British ships bringing the tea from the East India Company. In many cases, this blockade worked, but in Boston, a British ship refused to leave the harbor without unloading its cargo of tea and collecting the duty on it. The showdown led, on December 16, 1773, to the Boston Tea Party, in which a group of colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded the ship and dumped all 342 chests of tea into the harbor. This act of defiance marked an important step toward revolution.¹²

      Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party by passing a series of measures in 1774 known as the Coercive Acts (or, as the colonists liked to call them, the Intolerable Acts), designed to punish Massachusetts. Among other things, the Coercive Acts closed Boston Harbor to all commerce until Britain received payment for the destroyed tea, brought the Massachusetts government under full British control, forbade most town meetings, and allowed British troops to be quartered in private buildings and homes in Boston.

      The First Continental Congress

      Though aimed at Massachusetts, the Coercive Acts had potential ramifications for all of the colonies. As a result, representatives from all of the colonies except Georgia met in Philadelphia in September and October 1774 to decide how to respond. The delegates at these meetings of the First Continental Congress, in essence, represented twelve different nations. Although they came together in response to the common threat to their liberties posed by Great Britain, the colonies remained deeply divided on many issues. As historian Merrill Jensen put it, “The large colonies were pitted against small ones; colonies with many slaves were in opposition to those with fewer; colonies that had no western lines contended with those that did.”¹³ Despite these differences, the First Continental Congress resulted in an agreement by the colonies to engage in a total boycott of British goods.

      The First Continental Congress also produced a declaration of rights and grievances. Among other things, the declaration—drawing on the language of the English philosopher John Locke—asserted the right to “life, liberty, and property”; denounced the keeping of British troops in the colonies in times of peace as “against law”; and reiterated that “the foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council.”¹⁴ Since the colonists were not represented in Parliament, they claimed the right to a “free and exclusive power of legislation” in their own colonial assemblies, subject only to veto by the king.

      The rallying cry of “no taxation without representation” had evolved into something far more significant: All legislation produced by a parliament in which the colonists were not represented was now considered suspect. And colonies with disparate interests and outlooks were uniting against Great Britain and around the cause of liberty. The liberty that the colonists sought was a direct outgrowth of rights espoused by the British tradition. England’s failure to enforce those rights precipitated revolution.

      Revolution and Independence

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