Treaty Of Paris Dbq Essay

The Treaty of Paris signed in 1783, officially established America’s independence from England. Inexperienced soldiers, mostly farmers, had defeated the strongest army in the world, but this was not luck or coincidence. These colonists were angry and willing to give up everything to earn their freedom from the British. Britain helped protect the American colonies during the French and Indian war, but it created a huge war debt in England. King George III decided to place many high taxes on the colonies to pay for the debt, which turned him into a tyrant, a cruel and oppressive ruler, in the eyes of his own colonists. The British placed laws on the colonists like the Stamp Act, The Quartering Act, and the Townshend Act. The colonists retaliated

The colonists rallied behind the idea of “no taxation without representation.” In 1765, Patrick Henry explained to the Virginia House of Burgesses that, “We can under law be taxed only by our own representatives . We have no representatives in the British Parliament.” (Document 1) His argument was simple, they can not be taxed by Britain without representation in the British Parliament, and his solution was simple too, do not obey them. (Document 1) Many colonists supported this idea and refused to pay these taxes. They began to organize boycotts that protested the unfair tax laws. The Stamp Act was eventually repealed when the protests got out of hand, but Britain was definitely not done taxing the

The Quartering Act allowed British soldiers to occupy any colonist’s property at any time. The colonists were required to provide shelter and food to the British soldiers. This allowed more british soldiers to come to the colonies to control protests (Document 6) and regain British authority. The colonists reacted with more protests which eventually got out of control. In 1770, a large group of colonists were yelling and throwing rocks and snowballs at a group of soldiers to protest Britain. The soldiers got scared and fired into the crowd hitting 11 people and killing 5. (Document 6) This event became an inspiration for propaganda against the Redcoats,British soldiers, like Paul Revere’s print of the event. Propaganda is misleading information to persuade others point of view and it did exactly that. Paul Revere’s print referred to this as the Boston Massacre, a massacre being a brutal killing of a bunch of people. This stirred up feelings against the British and caused more people to join the patriots and support the fight for independence. (Document