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The Stamp Act was the first internal tax levied directly on the American Colonists by the British Parliament, The act was imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a deep time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven year war.

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Parliament again tried to assert its authority by passing legislation to tax goods that Americans had imported from Britain. The Crown established a board of customs commissioners to stop smuggling and corruption among local officials within the colonies, who were often in on the illicit trade.

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Simmering tension between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over one late afternoon, when a disagreement between an apprentice wigmaker and a British soldier led to a crowd of 200 colonists surrounding 7 British troops. When the colonists began taunting the troops and throwing things at them, the troops lost control and began firing into the crowd of colonists

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The British eventually withdrew their forces from Boston and repealed much of the onerous Townshend legislation. But they left in place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Act, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable treatment under tax regulations, so that it could sell tea at a price that undercut the American merchants who imported from Dutch traders.

That didn’t sit well with Americans. “They didn’t want the British telling them that they had to buy their tea, but it wasn’t just about that,” Randall explains. “The Americans wanted to be able to trade with any country they wanted.”

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In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government decided that it had to tame the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor until restitution was paid for the destroyed tea, replaced the colony’s elected council with one appointed by the British, gave sweeping powers to the British military governor General Thomas Gage, and forbade town meetings without approval.

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British General Thomas Gage led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington, where he planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, and then head to Concord and seize their gunpowder But American spies got wind of the plan, and with the help of riders such as Paul Revere, word spread to be ready for the British.

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British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776)

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British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776)

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Though the Revolutionary Wars hostilities started with Lexington and Concord, Randall says that at the start, it was unclear whether the southern colonies, whose interests didn’t necessarily align with the northern colonies, would be all in for a war of independence.

“The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to buy their crops, and they didn’t trust the Yankees,” he explains. “And in New England, the Puritans thought the southerners were lazy.”

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Declaration of Independence (August 2, 1776)

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Declaration of Independence (August 2, 1776)

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The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by a nation’s people asserting their right to choose their own government. When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies’ intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence—written largely by Jefferson—in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence.