Events that led to the American War of Independence

The English Civil Wars (1642-1651) gave rise to the philosophy that created the American nation.  Prominent thinkers speculated about the nature of man and the role of government.

John Locke a puritan who was educated in Oxford focused on the problems of human society.  He concluded that knowledge came from trying new ideas and facts and government was an agreement,  "a social contract" put together to enable men to live together in peace.  Thus, governments depended on the consent of those who they governed.

In what has become known as the Age of Enlightenment, in France Voltaire ridiculed a world bound on superstition and religion.  In Scotland, Adam Smith argued that men constructed a rational economy as they acted in their own interest.

During the Age of Enlightenment-era, people embraced scientific reasons regarding natural laws.  In part, the new ideas of Locke and other thinkers reflected the need of Europeans to make sense of the information coming from the North American colonies and in turn, these ideas traveled back to the colonies.  These principles affected every aspect of colonial life as they were organized under the British crown.  By 1740 every colony had a royal governor but elected Assemblies had the power as they controlled the purse strings.  

This system of governance held sway until 1763 when American colonials discovered they did not share the same relationship with the government as Englishmen did at home.  The series of measures put in effect by Britain in 1763 after the French/Indian war ended were policies to prevent expensive wars.  One of these policies was prohibiting colonials from moving west across the Appalachians.  Colonials loathed the new rule.  Soon after in 1764, the parliament taxed sugar.  In 1765 it required colonials to defray the expenses of British troops, a law known as the Quartering Act.  In the same year, it passed the Stamp Act, a law that levied taxes on all paper documents.  When the tax was paid, the document was stamped to show compliance.  This onslaught of taxes and bureaucracy cooled colonials' enthusiasm for being British subjects. 

In 1760 opposition especially towards the Stamp Act took hold on Americans living in seaports like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.  The Boston attorney John Adams saw in the Acts the growing strength of the government towards subjugating its subjects.  He became an activist and one of the leaders of what became a revolution against British rule.  He was George Washington's Vice-President and was elected as the 2nd President of the United States.

Colonials' conviction that the new land required a new kind of government grew.  Although the British parliament repealed the Townshend duties in 1770 except one on tea, colonials considered it as "taxation without representation".  In December 1773 a group of colonials dressed as American Indians turned Boston's harbor into a teapot the so-called Boston Tea Party by throwing a shipload of tea into it.

When the King retaliated by closing the harbor, colonial leaders responded by organizing their own governing body: the First Continental Congress.  They met in Philadelphia in 1774 and declared they had the right to legislate without parliament's consent.  When the governor of Massachusetts Lieutenant General Thomas Cage tried to dissolve the Massachusetts legislature its members reconvened and took control of the colony.  When Cage tried to stop them by seizing their military supplies at Concord, Massachusetts in 1775 on the dark cold ground of Lexington Green, someone fired "the shot that was heard around the world".  By the end of that evening, 300 colonials and British soldiers lay dead or wounded.  On July 4, 1776: The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. 

                              Happy 4th of July United States!