When Benjamin Franklin created the infamous ‘join, or die’ cartoon in 1754, he wanted to unite the colonists against the French. He might not have known that just a few years later, the colonists would need to unite once again to defeat one of the greatest military powers of their time, in a fight for their own freedom. The colonists were justified for fighting their own mother country because england had been passing acts that restricted things that made daily life difficult. Great britain had also refused to reason with the colonists leaving america no choice but to become independant.
First of all, tensions in colonial america had already been running high since the quartering acts had been set in place. The quartering acts of 1765 required the colonists to house the british redcoats and to supply them with some basic necessities of life. We know this is true because of what happened on March 5th 1770 in Boston Massachusetts. The results of some unruly protesters and confused british soldiers ended with 5 people dead and 6 people wounded (history.com). Within the next few weeks, the Sons of
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The stamp acts, which were put into place in 1765, required americans to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used (history.org). The townshend acts of 1767 imposed taxes on imported items such as glass, lead, paints, paper and tea (history.com). Now most colonists had found ways to get around these taxes with smuggling, but England had been making more and more laws to crack down on smuggling to ensure Americans were paying their taxes. Taxation on such commonly used products was a huge deal in colonial america because a lot of them didn't have enough money to afford basic things anymore. Most of the colonists wanted to make their own decisions on the way things were taxed, and could only achieve that with their own