We came from Great Britain to start a new life in America. Many of us were Puritans and were not able to practice our faith the way we wanted to. The boat trip to American was hard to put it mildly. After we got over being seasick, the food started to rot and make us sick. People were dying every day. We were so happy to get back on land! Little did we know that even though we were thousands of miles away from Great Britain, the king and Parliament would still have control over our lives. All the acts that they passed to get money out of us to fund their wars were hard to take. It was especially hard when we had no representation in Parliament. In 1764, the British tried to take control of our lives with their Sugar Act. They taxed …show more content…
We traded with other countries for tea and the British took that away from us. They made sure that the British East India Company had a monopoly on our tea market. The trade company got around paying many of the taxes that other companies had to pay to ship to us and then to add insult to injury, they also could bypass our merchants to sell directly to the shops. Because of this, they were able to sell their tea much cheaper than anyone else could. Talk about favoritism! They hurt our merchants with this act and some of them had to close their shops. With the shops closing, we had to go further to get our supplies and we were not going to stand for it. One night a bunch of us got together, dressed up as Native Americans, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor. The British didn’t like it and we ended up having more taxes to …show more content…
They restricted our rights and they didn’t let us have the basic right to trial by jury. What gives Parliament the right to do that to us? They had the right to a trial by jury. What difference does it make on what side of the ocean we live on? Now we have to really watch what we say or do. If we do one thing wrong or someone takes it wrong, we could go before a judge and be punished without being heard. In Massachusetts, they even have to get the British government’s approval to have town meetings. With the Intolerable Acts, the soldiers now had the right to search our homes or businesses without any reason. They also could move into any of our buildings and we couldn’t do anything about it. The British also thought we should pay for the soldiers to be here. We took care of ourselves against the Indians for many years, we don’t need the Britain’s help with them now so we shouldn’t have to house them or pay their