Key Events That Led Up To 1763

The year was 1763. Great Britain owned the largest amount of land in North America. Her colonies were very prosperous and the citizens enjoyed governing themselves. After the French and Indian War, Britain began tightening its hold on the colonies, and tensions began rising between the colonists and England. Great Britain was in a huge debt because of the French and Indian War , so to raise money, Parliament began imposing new laws and placing taxes on the colonists. The colonists were very upset because they didn't have a voice in the government which violated their rights as English citizens. The Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, and the Tea Act were huge events that led up to the Revolutionary War, and finally pushed the colonists to break

The colonists hated the soldiers, and tried their best to get rid of the hated redcoats. When England sent the soldiers over to the colonies, King George III made a new law called the Quartering Act, which stated that the colonists must house the soldiers and provide them with food, water, and alcohol. The colonists didn’t think that they should have to accommodate the soldiers, after all, they were supposed to be protecting the colonies, but they weren’t doing much, so as a result, the colonists felt that if the soldiers were just sitting around, then why should they have to equip them? Nobody resented the redcoats more than the Bostonians. They would make fun of the redcoats by calling them “lobsterbacks” , and found every way possible to aggravate the soldiers. One day, this rivalry led to a disaster on the streets of Boston. It was March 5, 1770, and a group of particularly fiery Bostonians were taunting the soldiers. They were getting closer and closer to the troops, and without warning, the soldiers opened fire on the citizens. The troops ended up killing five Bostonians. Sam Adams, a Patriot, called the event “a horrid massacre.” Paul Revere, a well known silversmith and a Patriot, engraved a picture depicting the scene. “When the shooting ended, several were dead, and many more were

Once again, angry Patriots revolted and so the Townshend Duties were repealed, which led to a short period of peace between the colonies and Britain. However, the peace was shattered in 1773, when Lord North imposed a new Act, the Tea Act. The British East India Tea Company was close to going broke because of the boycott against British tea that many colonists participated in. The Tea Act gave Britain complete control over the tea trade and lowered the cost of the tea so it was dirt cheap. Lord North hoped to trick the colonists into buying the tea since it was extremely inexpensive, but the colonists knew that Parliament was still trying to tax them even though they weren’t represented in the government. On December 16, 1773, perhaps the biggest protest the colonists participated against Parliament occurred. A group of Patriots known as the Sons of Liberty dressed up as Mohawk Indians, boarded three British ships docked in Boston Harbor, and threw all of the tea overboard. George Hewes was one of the Patriots who participated in what was known as the Boston Tea Party. He wrote down an account of what happened that night. “We had thus broken and thrown overboard every tea chest to be found in the ship, while those in other ships were disposing of the tea in the same way, at the same time.” When the Patriots heard about the Boston Tea Party, they were