The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Chapter Review 109

Table 3.2 Major British Tax Policies and American Resistance, 1763–1776

Year British Policy Colonist Response

1763 Proclamation of 1763 Wealthy speculators, coveting Indian lands west of Appalachians, protest

1764 Sugar Act Massachusetts legislature denounces “taxation without representation”

1765 Stamp Act Sons of Liberty emerge and call for radical measures; boycott of British goods

1767 Townshend Duties Widespread protests, riots in port cities, culminating in “Boston Massacre”

1773 Tea Act Boston Tea Party

1774 Coercive Act First Continental Congress

1650– Parliament enacts Navigation Acts

1696

1689– King William’s War (War of the League of Augsburg)

1697

1699– Parliament enacts laws regulating colonial

1750 manufacturing

1702– Queen Anne’s War (War of the Spanish

1713 Succession): France loses Nova Scotia,

Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to Britain

1733 Molasses Act’s dutyleads to smuggling

1738– Religious enthusiasm surges during Great

1742 Awakening

1740– King George’s War (War of the Austrian Succession)

1748

1743 Benjamin Franklin founds American

Philosophical Society

1752 Franklin discovers nature of lightning

1754 Albany Congress paves way for Stamp Act

Congress and Continental Congress

1754– British and American Colonists fight French and

1763 Indians in French and Indian War (Seven Years’

War)

1760 George III becomes king of England

1763 George III’s Proclamation forbids settlement

beyond Appalachians

1764 Sugar Act places tariffs on sugar, coffee, wines,

and other imports

1765 Stamp Act places excise taxes on all printed matter;

leads to Stamp Tax Congress

1766 Stamp Act is repealed; Declaratory Act asserts

parliamentary authority over colonies

1767 Townshend Duties lead to Massachusetts

Circular Letter

1770 Five American colonists die in Boston Massacre

1772 Colonists burnGaspee

1773 Tea Act leads to Boston Tea Party

1774 Coercive Acts lead to First Continental Congress

Milestones

Chapter Review

not—it is clear that the Americans had decided that
drastic changes must be made. It was not merely a
question of mutual defense against the threat of
British power, nor was it (in Franklin’s aphorism) a
matter of hanging together lest they hang separately.
A nation was being born.
Looking back many years later, one of the dele-
gates to the First Continental Congress made just
these points. He was John Adams of Massachusetts,
and he said, “The revolution was complete, in the
minds of the people, and the Union of the colonies,
before the war commenced.”
The furious American resistance to the new taxes
baffled British officials. In 1774 Lord North declared

that colonial opposition betrayed a “distempered state

of turbulence.” Some members of Parliament declared

that the Americans had gone “stark staring mad” over

taxes any reasonable person would pay willingly.

But what had begun as a dispute over taxes had

shifted to a struggle over sovereignty. Colonists

were not against taxes in principle—and their

descendants would willingly (if not happily) pay

taxes that most colonists would have regarded as

base enslavement. The colonists insisted, however,

that they also have a say in their governance. Their

“madness,” originally manifested in bitter opposi-

tion to trade taxes, would become a feverish com-

mitment to war.