hist.g5.f.his.road_to_revolution_1763_to_1775
Analyze the 12-year Road to Revolution 1763-1775 — Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, Boston Massacre, Tea Act and Boston Tea Party, Coercive Acts, First Continental Congress — including Patriot organizing AND Loyalist perspectives
Track the specific legislative and political-organizing events 1763-1775 that escalated from imperial taxation to armed conflict: (a) 1764 Sugar Act (Parliament taxes molasses to fund Britain's post-war debt and stop New England rum-trade smuggling); (b) 1765 Stamp Act (Parliament's first direct tax on the colonies — a stamp on every printed item; provokes 'no taxation without representation' organizing and the Stamp Act Congress 1765 with 9 colonies; the Sons of Liberty organize colonial resistance); (c) 1766 Declaratory Act (Parliament asserts authority to legislate for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever' even as it repeals the Stamp Act); (d) 1767 Townshend Acts (Parliament tax on glass, lead, paper, paint, tea — provokes non-importation boycotts organized in part by colonial women who refused to buy British goods); (e) 1770 Boston Massacre (March 5 — British soldiers fire on a Boston crowd, killing 5 including Crispus Attucks the first colonist killed; Paul Revere's engraving as PROPAGANDA primary source — Wineburg sourcing key move; the soldiers were defended in court by Patriot lawyer John Adams who secured acquittals for most); (f) 1773 Tea Act (Parliament gives the failing British East India Company a tea monopoly with reduced tax — provoking the Sons of Liberty's December 16 1773 Boston Tea Party in which ~340 chests of tea were dumped into Boston Harbor by ~100 colonists disguised as Mohawks — including George Robert Twelves Hewes the shoemaker; the Mohawk disguise was a deliberate political statement claiming American identity not English identity); (g) 1774 Coercive Acts ('Intolerable Acts' — Parliament closes Boston Harbor, dissolves the Massachusetts assembly, requires the quartering of British troops in private homes — radicalizes moderate colonists); (h) September-October 1774 First Continental Congress (12 colonies meet in Philadelphia and issue the Continental Association calling for boycott of British goods); (i) April 19 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord ('the shot heard 'round the world'). CRITICAL: throughout, identify LOYALIST perspectives — Joseph Galloway's 1774 Plan of Union as a real alternative to revolution; Jonathan Boucher's sermons defending the Crown; Ann Hulton's Loyalist letters from Boston — and identify that 15-30% of colonists were Loyalist.
- Analyze the Declaration of Independence (July 4 1776) — its principles AND its contradictions — using the Founding Contradiction T-chart MG-13
- Analyze the American Revolution (1775-1783) from multiple perspectives — Patriots, Loyalists, ~5,000+ Black soldiers on the Patriot side, ~20,000+ enslaved African Americans fleeing to the British under Dunmore's Proclamation, Indigenous nations split, French alliance
- Believing the Boston Tea Party was an unprovoked act of vandalism — it was a calibrated political response to 10+ years of Parliamentary actions.
- Treating 'all colonists' as opposed to British taxation — many colonists were Loyalist or neutral, and the response to the Stamp Act varied by colony.
- Believing Paul Revere's Boston Massacre engraving is accurate reportage — it is Patriot propaganda showing British soldiers in calm rank-and-file firing on a peaceful crowd, when in fact the situation was a chaotic crowd-confrontation. (Wineburg sourcing key example.)
- Forgetting Crispus Attucks (mixed African and Wampanoag/Natick ancestry, sailor, the first colonist killed) — restoring his identity is a unit-critical move.
- Missing that women organized the non-importation boycotts of British goods — the political organizing was not just a male endeavor.