The solution would have required Parliament to abandon its claims to sovereign power in America and this was almost unthinkable given its search for authority. There were two violent incidents showed how difficult it would be to achieve any peaceful constitutional compromise. In Boston during 1770 the British troops fired on an unruly mob, killing five people. This episode became known as the Boston Massacre. Two years later, a Rhode Island mob destroyed a British customs ship known as the Gaspee, wounding its captain in the process. In both of these cases, the British ministry declined to take any action. Their hope was that time and patience would resolve the crisis. Many members of Parliament wanted a more aggressive approach saying that American violence should be met with British force (American Revolution, 2009).
These incidents played heavily into the hands of those Americans who wanted independence. After the Stamp Act crisis, the Sons of Liberty in the various colonial towns contacted each other. Assertive leaders of the colonial assemblies began to also correspond and gradually an organized Patriot movement began to develop. Right after the Gaspee incident, Samuel Adams persuaded the Massachusetts assembly to establish a formal Committee of Correspondence. Not long after Patriot leaders in the assemblies of Virginia and the other colonies soon followed suit. These committees exchanged information and advanced a new sense of American interdependence and identity. For the first time during this time American Patriots would be able to formulate a coherent and unified policy of resistance (American Revolution, 2009).
The American Revolution from 1775 to 1783 was a conflict between 13 British colonies in North America and their parent country of Great Britain. It consisted of two related events: the American War of Independence (1775-1783) and the formation of the American government as laid out by the Constitution of the United States in 1787. The war attained independence from Great Britain by the colonies and the newly created United States of America established a republican form of government, in which power was given...
It led to long-term social, economic, and political changes in the colonies before 1750 that provided the basis for an independent nation with representative political institutions. After a decade of conflicts between the British government and the colonists that began with the Stamp Act crisis in 1765, and ended with the outbreak of war in 1775, the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. In 1781 the states created a loose union under the Articles of Confederation. At the end of the war in 1783, Britain formally recognized its former colonies as an independent nation. In 1789 the people ratified the Constitution that created a stronger central government (American Revolution, 2009).
The American Revolution was a very important time in the history of this country. The document that Samuel Adams wrote, entitled The Rights of the Colonists played a very important role in this countries freedom. Basically this was a first attempt at and was ultimately the basis for the foundation of the Bill of Rights as we know it today. The Bill of Rights is a very important document contained in the Constitution that gives the people of this country their rights and freedoms. These rights and freedoms are the basic foundation on which this country was built and these rights and freedoms are still the basic institution on which we live today.
References
American Revolution. (2009). Retrieved July 26,2009, from MSN Encarta Web site:
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761569964_3/American_Revolution.html
Munday, John C. (1984). Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Retrieved July 26, 2009,
Web site: http://www.avantrex.com/essay/freetalk.html
Samuel Adams American Patriot & Politician. (2008). Retrieved July 26, 2009, from Web site:
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95sep/adams.html
Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists. (1772). Retrieved July 26, 2009, from Web site:
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/adamss.html
