Essay #4: Evolving from Colony to Country in 1763-1789
What is true unity? Is it when a group comes together quickly for a short period of time to defeat a common enemy, just to disperse afterwards? Or is true unity built over a long period of time, enduring hardship and woe, to form a bond that would last for centuries? In the case of the colonies in America, it took hundreds of years for the British colonies to evolve into the United States of America. The most crucial time period that allowed America to evolve from a group of colonies to a nation was the period of 1763-1789. These years were so important to develop the unification which would help the colonies evolve into a united nation by: the colonies learning that together they could
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Professor Barton elaborates that because individuals who resided in America didn’t vote for any government official in the House of Lords or the House of Commons in England, they considered British taxation unlawful. In fact, in the English Constitution, it stated that a governmental body has no right to tax the people without their consent. The colonists already felt slighted by the English since by the end of the French and Indian War they had to pay massive amounts of money to the British in taxes yearly. Additionally, the English government attempted to tax the colonists 100,000 pounds per year through various taxation acts, such as The Sugar Act of 1763 and The Stamp Act of 1764 to upkeep British armies. For these reasons, Americans sought to distance themselves from Britain, because they knew they were being taken advantage of without their consent. Americans believed that if the British were allowed to continue to tax in this way, taxes would get worse, and the colonists would suffer because of it. So the colonies started to correspond between one another regarding unlawful taxation in the form of the Stamp Act of 1764 and unanimously decided to boycott the tax. Thus, the British repealed the act. For five years, colonists gave