Resumo de American Heritage Created By The Revolutionary War Years

After the end of the Seven Years War (manifested in the colonies as the
French and Indian War) between Great Britain and France in 1763, the
British needed a way to finance their war debt. Its own inhabitants
already overtaxed, Britain looked to the prosperous American colonies
as a potential source of revenue. Under a policy of salutary neglect,
the colonists had been allowed to live in relative peace and
self-government since they were first established during the
seventeenth and early eighteenth century. However, in the years
following 1763, Parliament, with the support of King George III, passed
a string of regulatory and revenue generating measures became law. The
most notable of these acts, the Sugar act (1764) and the Stamp Act
(1765) significantly affected the colonies'' economies and thus aroused
the ire of many colonists and colonial assemblies. However, more
offensive to the colonists was the fact that these acts were
administered and enforced by a corrupt legal system of British
admiralty courts operating without juries. The first signs of colonial
resistance sprung up in the state legislatures, many of which adopted
resolutions decrying the unjust and arbitrary practices endorsed by the
British Parliament. Soon popular resistance to British rule became
commonplace throughout the New England colonies, in the form of mob
violence and demonstrations organized by the patriotic group, the Sons
of Liberty.

The colonies had developed in relative isolation from each other,
each with its own distinctive character and government. Faced with the
popular objection to British policies that affected all colonies,
however, they began to show signs of unity. Representatives of nine
colonies came together to the Stamp Act Congress in October of 1765,
where they passed resolutions denying the British Parliament''s power to
enact internal taxes within the colonies and to sanction trials without
a jury. After months of coordinated resistance and boycotts, Parliament
repealed the Stamp Act. The ensuing peace between Britain and the
American colonies was tenuous. However, there seemed little reason to
fear the outbreak of revolution.

Between 1767 and 1773, Parliament destroyed that tenuous peace by
pursuing a confrontational policy toward the American colonies. In an
act of defiance, Prime Minister Charles Townshend imposed the so-called
Townshend Duties, which taxed imports coming into the colonies. Many
American colonies responded with a policy of non-importation of British
goods, dealing the British economy a serious blow. Scattered violence
erupted throughout the colonies over the next few years: in Boston on
March 5, 1770 when British soldiers killed five colonials in the Boston
Massacre, and in Rhode Island on June 9, 1772, where colonists burned
the Gaspee, a customs ship that had run aground. Amid these smaller
conflicts, the chain reaction of policy and military decisions, which
would lead to revolution, began in 1773. By 1775, full-fledged military
conflict had begun and continued until 1781.

When the revolution was over, it left an infant country on an
unstable continent to form a government based on the principles that
had guided the revolution. There were many valid ideas on the formation
of the state, and the colonists set about deciding which were best
suited to the governing of the newly free nation. The immediate
consequence of the revolution was more than a decade of state building.
During this period, American leaders debated how best to build a
government that would right the wrongs they had seen in the British
government and embody the values of liberty, equality and democracy.

The events leading up to and during the revolution were very much
on the minds of the leaders who constructed the American government in
the late eighteenth century. Those events have remained on the minds of
the American people roughout the nation''s short history. No
historical event is as celebrated, no time period more revered than the
American Revolution and the birth of the nation. The American people
have consistently looked to the revolution in developing their ideas
about patriotism, liberty, and equality. The struggle for national
sovereignty has become a formative legend incorporated into the
American belief system, and the goals for which the patriots struggled
have become embedded in the American dream of power for the powerless.
1776 stands more starkly in the history of the United States than any
other year.

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