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Table of Contents

Proclamation line 2-3

Sugar Act 4-5

Quartering Act 6-7

Stamp Act 8-9

Townshend Acts 10-11

Boston Massacre 12-13

Boston Tea Party 14-15

Intolerable Acts 16-17

First Continental Congress 18-19

Lexington and Concord 20-21

Websites used 22

Proclamation line 1763

Was issued on October 7 1763 by King George

III which forbade settler from settling across 

the Appalachian Mountains to keep the peace 

with native North Americans. But, the colonists 

still crossed the border between the 

Appalachian Mountains and the coast.  

The Sugar Act 1773

The Sugar Act, also known as the American 

Revenue Act or the American Duties Act, was a 

revenue-raising act passed by the Parliament 

of Great Britain on April 5, 1764.[1] The 

preamble to the act stated: "it is expedient 

that new provisions and regulations should be 

established for improving the revenue of this 

Kingdom ... and ... it is just and necessary that 

a revenue should be raised ... for defraying the 

expenses of defending, protecting, and 

securing the same."[2] The earlier Molasses 

Act of 1733, which had imposed a tax of six 

pence per gallon of molasses, had never been 

effectively collected due to colonial evasion. By 

reducing the rate by half and increasing 

measures to enforce the tax, the British hoped 

that the tax would actually be collected.[3] 

These incidents increased the colonist's 

concerns about the intent of the British 

Parliament and helped the growing movement 

that became the American Revolution.

Stamp Act

After England was victorious over France in the 

Seven Year's War (known in America as the 

French and Indian War), a small Stamp Act 

was enacted that covered of all sorts of 

paperwork from newspapers to legal 

documents and even playing cards. The British 

were taxing the colonial population to raise 

revenue, but the Americans claimed their 

constitutional rights were violated, since only 

their own colonial legislatures could levy 

taxes.[1] Across the American colonies, 

opposition to the tax took the form of violence 

and intimidation. A more reasoned approach 

was taken by some elements. James Otis, Jr. 

wrote the most influential protest, "The Rights 

of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved." 

Otis, the radical leader in Massachusetts, 

convinced the Massachusetts assembly to send 

a circular letter to the other colonies, which 

called for an intercolonial meeting to plan 

tempered resistance to new tax. The Stamp 

Act Congress convened in New York City on 

October 7 with nine colonies in attendance; 

others would likely have participated if earlier 

notice had been provided. The delegates 

approved a 14-point Declaration of Rights and 

Grievances, formulated largely by John 

Dickinson of Pennsylvania. The statement 

echoed the recent resolves of the Virginia 

House of Burgesses, which argued that colonial 

taxation could only be carried on by their own 

assemblies. The delegates singled out the 

Stamp Act and the use of the vice admiralty 

courts for special criticism, yet ended their 

statement with a pledge of loyalty to the king.

The Stamp Act Congress was another step in 

the process of attempted common problem-

solving, which had most recently been tried in 

the Albany Congress in 1754. That earlier 

meeting had been held at the urging of royal 

officials, but the later one was strictly a 

colonial affair. The congress was a forum for 

voicing constitutional concerns, not a rallying 

point for revolution and independence. In fact, 

the meeting afforded the more conservative 

critics of British policy some hope of regaining 

control of events from the unruly mobs in the 

streets of many cities

Townshend Acts

The Townshend Acts were a series of acts 

passed beginning in 1767 by the Parliament of 

Great Britain relating to the British colonies in 

North America. The acts are named after 

Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the 

Exchequer, who proposed the program. 

Historians vary slightly in which acts they 

include under the heading "Townshend Acts", 

but five laws are often mentioned: the 

Revenue Act of 1767, the Indemnity Act, the 

Commissioners of Customs Act, the Vice 

Admiralty Court Act, and the New York 

Restraining Act. The purpose of the Townshend 

Acts was to raise revenue in the colonies to 

pay the salaries of governors and judges so 

that they would be independent of colonial 

rule, to create a more effective means of 

enforcing compliance with trade regulations, to 

punish the province of New York for failing to 

comply with the 1765 Quartering Act, and to 

establish the precedent that the British 

Parliament had the right to tax the colonies. 

The Townshend Acts were met with resistance 

in the colonies, prompting the occupation of 

Boston by British troops in 1768, which 

eventually resulted in the Boston Massacre of 

1770.

As a result of the massacre in Boston, 

Parliament began to consider a motion to 

partially repeal the Townshend duties. Most of 

the new taxes were repealed, but the tax on 

tea was retained. The British government 

continued in its attempt to tax the colonists 

without their consent and the Boston Tea Party 

and the American Revolution followed.

Following the Seven Years War 1756–1763, the 

British Empire was deep in debt. To help pay 

some of the costs of the newly expanded 

empire, the British Parliament decided to levy 

new taxes on the colonies of British America. 

Previously, through the Navigation Acts, 

Parliament had used taxation to regulate the 

trade of the empire. However, with the Sugar 

Act of 1764, Parliament sought for the first 

time to tax the colonies for the specific 

purpose of raising revenue. American colonists 

initially objected to the Sugar Act for economic 

reasons, but before long they recognized that 

there were constitutional issues involved.

It was argued that the Bill of Rights 1688 

protected British subjects from being taxed 

without the consent of a truly representative 

Parliament. Because the colonies elected no 

members of the British Parliament, many 

colonists viewed Parliament's attempt to tax 

them as a violation of the constitutional 

doctrine of taxation only by consent. Some 

British politicians countered this argument with 

the theory of "virtual representation", which 

maintained that the colonists were in fact 

represented in Parliament even though they 

elected no members. This issue, only briefly 

debated following the Sugar Act, became a 

major point of contention following 

Parliament's passage of the 1765 Stamp Act. 

The Stamp Act proved to be wildly unpopular 

in the colonies, contributing to its repeal the 

following year, along with the lack of 

substantial revenue being raised.

Implicit in the Stamp Act dispute was an issue 

more fundamental than taxation and 

representation: the question of the extent of 

Parliament's authority in the colonies. 

Parliament provided its answer to this question 

when it repealed the Stamp Act in 1766 by 

simultaneously passing the Declaratory Act, 

which proclaimed that Parliament could 

legislate for the colonies "in all cases 

whatsoever".

Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident 

on King Street by the British, was an incident 

on March 5, 1770, in which British Army 

soldiers killed five civilian men and injured six 

others. British troops had been stationed in 

Boston, capital of the Province of 

Massachusetts Bay, since 1768 in order to 

protect and support crown-appointed colonial 

officials attempting to enforce unpopular 

Parliamentary legislation. Amid ongoing tense 

relations between the population and the 

soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry, 

who was subjected to verbal abuse and 

harassment. He was eventually supported by 

eight additional soldiers, who were subjected 

to verbal threats and thrown objects. They 

fired into the crowd, without orders, instantly 

killing three people and wounding others. Two 

more people died later of wounds sustained in 

the incident.

The crowd eventually dispersed after Acting 

Governor Thomas Hutchinson promised an 

inquiry, but reformed the next day, prompting 

the withdrawal of the troops to Castle Island. 

Eight soldiers, one officer, and four civilians 

were arrested and charged with murder. 

Defended by the lawyer and future American 

President, John Adams, six of the soldiers were 

acquitted, while the other two were convicted 

of manslaughter and given reduced sentences. 

The sentence that the men guilty of 

manslaughter received was a branding on their 

hand.

Depictions, reports, and propaganda about the 

event, notably the colored engraving produced 

by Paul Revere (shown at right), further 

heightened tensions throughout the Thirteen 

Colonies. The event is widely viewed as 

foreshadowing the outbreak of the American 

Revolutionary War five years later.

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