The Road to American Independence

North America and the British Empire

In the 1600s and 1700s, Great Britain held a vast empire with colonies all over the world. They established colonies to make money and gain political and military power. Each colony had its own leadership structure, but the British government was always in charge.

British explorers established colonies in North America just like they did everywhere else. Different groups of people came to colonize North America for different reasons. For example, rich investors founded colonies like Massachusetts in order to harvest natural resources and gain a profit. Other individual settlers came to the new colonies because they held certain religious beliefs that European governments would not tolerate, and they wanted to live under rulers who shared their beliefs. Places like Rhode Island were safe havens for these groups.

Life in the Colonies

Throughout the 1600s, British influence in North America continued to grow as more and more colonists flooded the region. American colonists liked having fairly independent lives and governments while still enjoying the economic benefits of being part of the British Empire. However, toward the middle of the 1700s, tensions rose between the British government and the American people.

Colonial Unrest

Beginning in 1754, Britain fought the French and Indian War on North American soil, and soon they realized they needed some way to pay for it. In order to raise money, they passed several taxes that all the American colonies had to pay. Two of these were the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act. People had to pay extra taxes on basic goods like sugar, tea, and paper.

Unsurprisingly, all the colonists hated having to pay extra money for basic materials. They didn’t like how Britain was using them just to collect money. They also believed the taxes were unfair because they had never elected their own representatives into the British government. They protested: “No taxation without representation.” Many elites wrote articles against the British government, but some felt this was not enough. They refused to buy the taxed goods.

On December 16, 1773, a group of men dressed up like Native Americans, snuck onto a British ship docked in Boston Harbor, and dumped crates of tea into the ocean as a symbol of their unhappiness. The men were members of the Sons of Liberty, a secret society organized to protect the rights of colonists and to protest unfair taxation. The event became known as the Boston Tea Party, and it sparked more feelings of anger at Britain throughout the colonies.

In response to the Boston Tea Party, Britain passed the Intolerable Acts to punish the colonists. These laws shut down Boston Harbor, loosened behavior restrictions for British soldiers stationed in the colonies, outlawed town meetings in all of Massachusetts, and required the colonists to pay for all the tea they ruined. This was the last straw for many people.

Twelve out of the 13 colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress in September, 1774 to decide what to do about this mistreatment from the British government. After much debate, they agreed the best thing to do was to further boycott all British goods, so the taxes would not actually raise any money for the British government. They also agreed to petition the British king, George III, for amends to their grievances. However, out in the colonies, some people were already preparing to defend themselves with military force if the British continued to exercise unwanted power.

The Battle Begins

To quell any possible rebellion, Britain sent troops to Massachusetts. The troops found out about a group of rebellious colonists who had stockpiled some weapons in a small town outside of Boston called Lexington, so they went to go steal the weapons. The colonists found out about this ahead of time, and a small group of minutemen, or American civilian soldiers, met them on the way. At this small skirmish, eight minutemen died but only one British soldier was hurt.

However, as the British continued on to another town nearby called Concord, a much larger group of over 400 minutemen ambushed them. Two hundred British soldiers died at the hands of the colonists. The battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 signaled the start of the Revolutionary War.

Independence at Last

Over the next year, the 13 colonies met and debated over whether they should declare their independence from Britain. The decision was difficult, for there was no guarantee they would win the war. Each colony sent representatives to the Second Continental Congress to decide how and when to officially cut ties with the British Empire. By the summer of 1776, they had made their decision.

They settled on the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson. This document declared that the colonies would unite as states to become their own country. It also listed the reasons for their separation, including the abuses of power they had endured for so long. Twelve out of the 13 colonies voted in favor of independence on July 2, 1776. The Second Continental Congress officially adopted the document on July 4, 1776, and the United States became independent.

However, the war with Britain raged on. The untrained, civilian American soldiers faced trained, regimented, and disciplined British soldiers, or “redcoats.” France sent troops to help the Americans fight for their independence. Finally, in 1781, General George Washington trapped British General Cornwallis in the Battle of Yorktown. Cornwallis surrendered, ending the war, and acknowledging that the United States was completely free of ties to Great Britain.