| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

No Taxation Without Representation

Page history last edited by Mr. Hengsterman 4 years, 5 months ago

No Taxation Without Representation And Other Reasons America Declared Independence

Kelly Phillips Erb,  July 4, 2017

 

[1] On July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence is exactly what it sounds like: an announcement to the world that the United States of America was declaring its independence from King George III and Great Britain - a sort of Brexit of our own. The declaration came more than a year (442 days to be exact) after shots were fired at Lexington, Massachusetts, considered the beginning of the first battle of the American Revolutionary War.

[2] Contrary to what some believe, the Declaration of Independence did not mark the end of the Revolutionary War. It was quite the opposite: it signaled that the United States no longer wished to accept British rule. This was a big deal. The British had ruled the colonies since the early 17th century when the Virginia Company became the Virginia Colony in 1624, the first of the original thirteen British colonies.

 

[3] The United States wasn't the only part of the world - or even the only part of the Americas - subject to British colonization. The British had also exerted control over parts of Canada, the Caribbean, and South America. But ruling the world gets expensive. Guarding colonies and occasionally invading new lands takes money. And not everyone is in agreement as to who owns what land so fighting occasionally ensues. That's exactly what happened in the mid-18th century when Great Britain found itself battling a number of countries - but primarily France - in the Seven Years’ War. When the war ended in 1763, Great Britain could declare a win but the years of fighting had come at a significant cost: the British government was nearly bankrupt.

 

[4] The King needed to raise revenue – and quickly. What better way than a series of taxes and tariffs? And who better to tax than subjects who were far enough away - like the American colonists - to muffle the complaining? There was just one problem with this plan: the King underestimated exactly how loudly the colonists would react.

 

[5] The first big post-war tax imposed on the colonists was the Stamp Act of 1765. Stamps, as they apply to taxes, don't have anything to do with postage. Rather, stamps are an official confirmation of compliance with a certain rule or requirement. In this case, materials which were printed and used in the colonies, like magazines and newspapers, were required to be produced on stamped paper and embossed with a revenue stamp, confirming that tax had been paid. Colonists, of course, didn't like it, and the Stamp Act was repealed the next year. The second attempt at raising revenue was actually series of acts known as the Townshend Acts of 1767 (individually, they were the Revenue Act of 1767, the Indemnity Act, the Commissioners of Customs Act, the Vice Admiralty Court Act, and the New York Restraining Act). These taxes were a little bit different than the Stamp Act - they were indirect taxes. However, the result was no different. The colonists weren't happy and the Townshend Acts were partially repealed.

 

[6] The partially repealed bit is important. In 1773, the Tea Act was imposed on top of the remaining Townshend Acts. It was the last straw for many colonists even though it wasn't a new tax. What the Tea Act did was keep in place the duty (tax) on tea imported to the colonies (already in place under the Townshend Act). And the purpose of the Tea Act wasn't to raise revenue but rather to give the East India Tea Company a trade advantage, cutting out the ability of the colonists to do business on own their terms. Tax or not, the colonists viewed the Tea Act as another way they were being controlled.

 

[7] The colonists figured that the best way to stand up to the Tea Act was to turn away ships carrying tea headed for the colonies. The colonists were able to do so in Philadelphia and New York - but not in Boston. The Governor of Massachusetts wouldn't allow the ships to be turned back and the colonists would not allow the ships to unload in the harbor. It was a stand-off. To end it, colonists snuck onto the ships and dumped out the tea - the event that you and I call the Boston Tea Party.

 

[8] The Boston Tea Party did not immediately lead to the Declaration of Independence or the Revolutionary War, even though we like to link them as though they happened in quick succession. The Tea Party happened on December 16, 1773, long before the shots at Lexington and before the Declaration of Independence. What the Boston Tea Party did do pretty quickly, however, was annoy British Parliament. As far as the British were concerned, the Tea Party was more or less the equivalent of the Americans throwing a giant tantrum and destroying their stuff. As a result, the British attempted to punish the Americans through a series of laws called the Coercive Acts. Under the Coercive Acts, among other things, Boston Harbor was closed to merchant shipping, town meetings were banned, and the British commander of North American forces was appointed the governor of Massachusetts.

 

[9] The colonists had enough. They convened the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, to consider their next steps. Resistance against the British increased - that's what led to those first shots in Massachusetts triggering the Revolutionary War. Finally, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to separate from Great Britain. Two days later, on July 4, the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted by 12 of the 13 colonies (the one holdout, New York, approved it a couple of weeks later).

 

[10]The Declaration of Independence is technically a letter to the King. When the Declaration was being drafted, the colonists felt that it was important that the exact reasons for their unhappiness were made clear. The largest section of the Declaration - after the lines that we all memorized in elementary school - is that list of grievances. Of course, taxes were included.  

 

[11] The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.  For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent. The word "Consent" was important. Under the British Constitution, no British subjects could be taxed without the consent of their representatives in Parliament. But the colonies didn’t elect representatives to Parliament. They were, however, clearly being taxed. The colonists considered the constant imposition of taxes without a vote to be unconstitutional. It was, they felt, "taxation without representation."

The idea that the colonists had such little control over their own lives didn't just lead to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the accompanying vote, it set the United States down the road to real independence. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the United States formally became an independent nation. But the date that we most associate with our independence is the day that those in the Continental Congress were brave enough to officially declare it to the world: July 4.

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.