6/7 AP United States History DBQ Essay: Taxation and the Revolution

The Prompt

The Essay

The Colonies in the mid 18th century had just recently witnessed the French-Indian war, something many call the first world war, as it was the first war of its kind to be fought upon four separate continents—North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. Britain had eventually succeeded in winning the war, however the British did not come out unscathed. British victory released a plague of debt onto the Isles sustained during the war, which triggered immediate British action; the enforcement of aggressive taxation upon their North American colonies. Colonists become the new victim of desperate British taxation, having to suffer through the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, and the Townshend acts, to name a few, which in return had colonists protest against taxation without representation frequently within the colonies. Some of these protests would be harmless but engineered entirely to set a precedent of intimidation, or they would be physically violent and manic, in which the target would be maimed and hurt in an attempt to signify the colonists unrest with the British. Although during the mid 18th century there was an increase in enlightened dogma, as seen through John Locke or Rousseau, the primary force for the American revolution was taxation without representation through protests ignited by the establishment of new taxes, and colonial figures who professionally argued against the unjust taxes. American colonists would argue against the heavy taxations imposed by British Parliament, and criticized the fact that the British allowed them almost no say in the parliament, thus they lacked the abilities promised to all British citizens. The Virginia house of Burgess clearly outlines that the British must allow the colonists to consent to their taxation, and begs the King of England to assist with their troubles of broken liberties (doc 1). During this period however, King George had ruled through Divine Right, the belief that kings and queens were chosen by God specifically to rule over the kingdom. This cemented the belief that King George should not tolerate any type of questioning on his power, which further led to his feverish rejection of moderate agreements set out by the colonists. This document directly supports the idea that the revolution was sparked via taxation through the fact that many colonists viewed the new taxes presented to colonists as unjust and against their own rights as citizens of the crown, and by their appeals to the King they strived to fix that problem. The Stamp Act Congress directly comments on the actions taken by the colonists to insure their dignity and rights to be protected, through the stamp act congress making direct demands and arguments to the British Government (doc 2). The document states that the colonists were citizens capable of making their own sovereign decisions, and these demands were attributed to the growth of unjust taxes set upon the colonies as they were developed to directly counter British rulings. Some of these rulings were the Stamp Act, which they fought against through the built, colonial led Stamp Act congress. Even lawyers such as Daniel Dulaney, someone who agreed with British control of imports into the colonies, argued staunchly against unjust control of the colonies internal taxes. Daniel Dulaney was a Maryland lawyer narrated document three, and who supported the rights of colonists, however still believed in colonial limitations set by the British. His argument against tax control is one maintained in most moderate to patriot thinkers of the time, and his perspective on Britain establishes a nuance that it was not control of imports that had caused the catalyzation of the revolution, but instead the rejection of the colonists to pursue their own democracy within the colonies. Dulaney was impartial to British control of imports, stating that it was a right maintained by the motherland to the colonies, however, his opinion against the internal taxations against the colonies is what bolsters the ideology that gave rise to the revolution. Dulaney’s status as a British loyalist who still spoke up against unfair taxation means that even loyalists were growing aggravated. When the colonists were restricted from their own civil liberties, they would lead violent protests against figures of British power in the colonies. These were often British Tax collectors, who they would humiliate via tar and feathering, which is represented through document 4. Document four, although likely drawn to signify the idiocracy of the newly developed mob mentality of the colonists to fellow loyalist viewers, is a helpful picture to show just how outraged the colonists had grown to become because of their lack of representation in parliament. Their specific victims, commonly tax collectors, shows just how specific their mob-mentality was placed. The creator of this early political cartoon was likely a loyalist, such as Dulaney, who viewed colonist action as idiotic and intense, but nonetheless, it supports the claim that protests against the British were symptoms from taxation without representation. This distaste towards British tax collectors eventually led to a growth of anger towards other figures of British imperialism within the colonies. This anger was what grew into the Boston Massacre, which then led to even more British officers in the colonies. British enforced acts which legally established that colonists were forced to house British soldiers through the Quartering Acts furthered colonists to feel as if they were being exploited. Finally, when Britain later declared that Massachusetts was in a state of rebellion and demanded more and more forces be sent to the colonies, it further cemented the idea that colonial liberties were being attacked, all beginning from the lack of taxation without representation. So despite the argument that the growth of enlightenment thinking was the main inspiration for the American revolution through a new rise of intelligent thought about civil liberties, the lack of colonial representation in parliament was the main catalyst for the American revolution, as seen through physical, violent protests when colonists would tar and feather British representatives or legal approaches via political thinkers of the time who would gather and attempt to reason or fight against the British legally.

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