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Introduction
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Introduction To appreciate these letters, it might first be useful to review British colonial policies , which over time led to the eruption of violence in North America in 1775. To begin with, much colonial discontent stemmed from unresolved issues that remained after the French and Indian War (1756–1763) in North America, commonly called the Seven Years’ War in Europe. The British persisted in the view that the American colonists had not paid their share of the cost of this conflict, and they should reimburse the mother country for the considerable outlays incurred in sending additional troops to North America in order to resist the French in Canada and the West Indies. Collecting reparations was out of the question in the eyes of the American colonists, so between 1763 and 1775, Parliament passed a series of Acts that would oblige them to supply funds to His Majesty’s Treasury. The first of these was the Customs Act of April 1763, which was designed to lessen the smuggling of goods into the colonies. Customs officials were ordered to be more diligent in their collection of duties, including enlisting the help of the Royal Navy ships assigned to patrol North American waters. In April 1764 Parliament passed the American Revenue Act, a modified version of the Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733. It remedied an oversight in the original bill where no duty had ever been collected on these commodities. However, beginning in 1764, only molasses or sugar from the British West Indies would be allowed into the colonies duty free; if either of these came from other Caribbean islands, they would incur a high tax. In September 1764, as a result of complaints by British merchants that colonial merchants were paying off their debts with inflated paper currency rather than gold, Parliament extended the 1751 Currency Act to apply to all British colonies in North America, forbidding the issuance of paper money. Parliament then designed the Stamp Act of 22 March 1765, specifically for the colonies of British America. It levied a tax on all written material, newspapers, legal documents, and playing cards, each of which was required to have a stamp affixed to it, indicating that the tax had been paid. The colonists realized that almost all written material was covered by this Act, so protests were organized, 1 2 the american revolution through british eyes culminating in October with a Stamp Act Congress that met in New York City and drafted a petition to Parliament for relief. The issue, the delegates argued, was not so much fiscal as constitutional: Parliament did not have the right to impose these duties without the consent of colonial legislatures. The need for a yearly renewal of the Mutiny Acts (originally drawn up in 1689 and amended in 1765) afforded Parliament the opportunity to expand its scope and include a Quartering Act in 1774. This ensured funding for adequate provision and housing for British soldiers in the colonies and authorized the use of public buildings to house British troops if military barracks were not available, although it avoided requiring billeting in private homes. However, each colony was required to supply His Majesty’s forces with heat, light, bedding, cooking utensils, and either beer or cider. Whether from a desire to accommodate the growing colonial unrest or because British public opinion was becoming impatient with the unexpected duration of the transatlantic power struggle, the year 1766 produced several signs of compromise from London. On March 18 the Stamp Act was repealed, yet on the same day Parliament passed the Declaratory Act that asserted Britain’s right to regulate all aspects of the colonies and “bind the . . . people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever,” effectively assuring Britain’s complete domination of colonial affairs. A few months later, the duty on molasses and sugar was reduced to one pence regardless of where it originated, effectively eliminating the smuggling trade. In July 1767 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend, proposed a series of acts where a whole host of items became subject to new duties, including tea, fruit, china, lead paint, and paper products. The violent reaction of the colonists to these new taxes propelled the British government to send additional troops to Boston, where, on 5 March 1770, a crowd gathered to protest the new taxes. Five protestors were killed, and many others were wounded. The incident became known as the Boston Massacre. As a result of this event...