Death and Taxes: The Beginnings of the American Revolution

One thing always leads to another.

The French and Indian War (1754-63) was fought to determine who would control North America. Despite its name, this war was a contest between France (and its Native American allies) and Great Britain (with their Native American Allies).

The specific issue at hand was whether the Upper Ohio River Valley[1] was a part of the British Empire and therefore open for trade and settlement by folks from the Virginia and Pennsylvania colonies, or part of the French Empire and therefore not.

Behind this loomed an even larger question of which national culture was to dominate the territory. British settlers were the majority, but French towns, camps, roads, trade and alliances with Native Americans predominated.

The French and Indian War and the related Seven Years’ War (which overlapped in time and included struggles between the French and British over colonial dominance in India, Africa, the Caribbean, Prussia and Austria) left Britain with massive war debt. War debt is the money a government borrows to pay for military conflicts, funding weapons, soldiers and supplies, often by issuing war bonds to the public or taking loans.

Britain primarily financed these particular wars by borrowing heavily from British and Dutch bankers, wealthy individuals, and other financial institutions—and by the end of the wars, interest payments were more than half of the British budget.

Britain “won” the war, but because they were hurting for cash and faced the massive expense of maintaining a significant military presence in North America to protect their territory and enforce the Proclamation Line of 1763[2] (a decree that forbade colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains to prevent conflict with Native Americans and control expansion, issued in the hope of avoiding more war), they decided colonists needed to pay more in taxes.

From the colonists’ perspective, this was the absolute last straw. They didn’t pay much in taxes compared to other British citizens, but the imposition of the new Stamp Act in 1765—the first tax imposed solely on the American colonies, and the first direct tax[3]—came on the heels of several other British measures that felt unjust and disrespectful. Namely:

• The Sugar Act (1764), an expansion of the older Molasses Act, which levied new duties on imports of textiles, wines, coffee and sugar.
• The Currency Act (1764), which caused a major decline in the value of the paper money used by colonists.
• The Quartering Act (1765), which required colonists to provide food and lodging to British troops under certain circumstances.

Taken together, these acts prompted outrage at “taxation without representation,” and nine of the 13 colonies drafted a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” that railed against the autocratic policies of the British Empire.

Realizing that it cost more to enforce the Stamp Act than it would to abolish it, the British government repealed the tax—but the damage was already done. The resistance to this set of taxes sparked a larger movement against the British government and was one of the threads of history that led to the American battle for independence.

Well after the Stamp Act was repealed, societies like the Sons of Liberty continued to meet in opposition to what they saw as the abusive policies of the British Empire. Out of their meetings, a growing American nationalism emerged.

To make matters worse, Britain doubled down with more import taxes in an attempt to exert their authority over the upstart colony. The Townshend Acts (1766-67) taxed goods like glass, lead, paint, paper, and (famously) tea imported into the American colonies.

After several years of ongoing protests and resistance to the Acts by colonists, British soldiers stationed in Boston fired into the crowd during an altercation outside the Customs House—an event now known as the Boston Massacre. The event was heavily propagandized by some of the leading Patriots almost immediately, to draw support to the anti-British cause.

Britain again doubled down with the Tea Act (1773), which gave the British East India Company a monopoly on the distribution and sale of tea in the colonies and allowed it to ship tea without paying any taxes. Further, the company was allowed to choose the merchants who would sell its tea. The furious Sons of Liberty raided the ships that landed in Boston and threw the tea into the harbor.

We all know what happened next.

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[1] Where exactly is the Upper Ohio River? Is it in what’s now Ohio? The Ohio History Connection has an awesome digitized Illustrated Atlas of the Upper Ohio River and Valley—but the short answer is it stretches from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati. As the population in the colonies grew, colonists wanted more farmland. Most of the farmland in the settled parts of the colonies was already taken.

[2] Did you know Quebec might have been the 14th colony? The Proclamation Line of 1763 set the stage for the later “Intolerable Acts” of 1774, which included an Act that expanded Quebec’s borders into the Upper Ohio (and Michigan!), reinstated French customs around inheritance and granted religious freedom to Catholics in the province.

This Act was intended by the British to end Quebec’s ongoing rebellion against British rule (Remember: before the French and Indian War, Quebec was a French territory). American leaders saw the discontent and thought Canada would naturally join their revolutionary cause against the British.

The First Continental Congress offered, but Quebec declined, largely because of Britain’s efforts through the Quebec Act, which successfully quelled discontent. The new Continental Army, in response, launched an invasion of Quebec in 1775 to “liberate” the French-speaking Canadians from British rule and “encourage” them to join the revolution. This again didn’t work, so the colonists tried sending Benjamin Franklin and other diplomats to win over Quebecers, in a final—but, alas, unsuccessful—effort.

[3] Direct tax means a tax on everyday goods and services purchased by ordinary individuals, rather than an import tax, which has a direct impact on importers but only an indirect (and therefore harder to pinpoint) impact on your everyday Joe or Jill.