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Unfair Power During The American Revolution

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Throughout history, we have seen nations across the world have governments wielding varying degrees of power. Some are good uses and some are abusive and unjust. Unfair power has existed during the American Revolution from 1607 and up until 1783 when the Americans took back their country and claimed what was rightfully theirs. The enduring issue of power can be defined as the ability to influence or control behavior of people. War is used to gain power, something England wanted to have over the American colonists. England was left owing a tremendous amount of debt after the French and Indian War. This led to them taxing the Americans, and the Americans responded by violently protesting. They went to war and America won their independence. England …show more content…

Parliament passed many acts to the colonists as laws that had to be followed and could not be disobeyed. As seen in “Various British Act and the Colonists Responses” (Doc 3) One of the acts is the Quartering Act. The Quartering Act was passed in 1765 and required colonists to let the British soldiers stay in their homes and they had to house and feed them. This was seen as unfair and was an invasion of the colonists' privacy and violation of their rights because they were forced to bring the strangers into their home and give them the best bed in the house. Another act was the Tea Act. This was a tax the crown used to reduce the tax on tea to encourage the colonists to buy British Tea. The colonists wanted this unreasonable tax completely gone, but all the British did was lower it slightly. The colonists took this as a spit in the face and offensive. This led to the Boston Tea Party. The Boston Tea Party was an historical event that took place on December 16th, 1773. A group of Massachusetts colonists disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians and boarded 3 British tea ships and dumped 342 chests of tea worth 1.7 million dollars into the harbor. This was their way of protesting and boycotting the tea and showing the crown that they did not want to buy from the East India Tea Company. In 1774, England passed yet another unfair act called the Intolerable Acts. This was a form of “punishment” for the Boston Tea Party and this act closed the Boston Harbor to all ships; supplies could not be loaded or loaded. The colonists' response was forming the 1st Continental Congress, a meeting to discuss how to deal with England's laws in the colonies. This was a misuse of power because Great Britain was taking advantage of the colonists and was forcing them to follow these unjust laws and pointless

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