United Kingdom

DECLARATORY ACT

On March 22, 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, the first direct tax imposed on colonial Americans. To Parliament’s great surprise, outraged Americans responded angrily with legislative protests and street violence.

The Declaratory Act was a measure issued by British Parliament asserting its authority to make laws binding the colonists “in all cases whatsoever” including the right to tax. It stated that the British Parliament’s taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. The Declaratory Act was a reaction of British Parliament to the failure of the Stamp Act as they did not want to give up on the principle of imperial taxation asserting its legal right to tax colonies. 

This act meant that a Parliamentary majority could pass any law they saw fit affecting British subjects and colonists alike.

This crisis focused attention on the unresolved question of Parliament’s relationship to a growing empire. 

http://www.stamp-act-history.com/timeline/declaratory-act/

https://www.britannica.com/event/Declaratory-Act-Great-Britain-1766
https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/declaratory-act/

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

The United States Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. The Declaration announced that the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain would regard themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step toward forming the United States of America. 

The document that was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It explained why the Congress on July 2 “unanimously” by the votes of 12 colonies (with New York abstaining) had resolved that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.” Accordingly, the day on which final separation was officially voted was July 2, although the 4th, the day on which the Declaration of Independence was adopted, has always been celebrated in the United States as the great national holiday—the Fourth of July, or Independence Day. 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Declaration-of-Independence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

The Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. It showed Great Britain that Americans wouldn’t take taxation and tyranny sitting down, and rallied American patriots across the 13 colonies to fight for independence. 

The Townshend Acts passed by Parliament in 1767 and imposing duties on various products imported into the British colonies had raised such a storm of colonial protest and noncompliance that they were repealed in 1770, saving the duty on tea, which was retained by Parliament to demonstrate its presumed right to raise such colonial revenue without colonial approval. The merchants of Boston circumvented the act by continuing to receive tea smuggled in by Dutch traders. In 1773 Parliament passed a Tea Act designed to aid the financially troubled East India Company by granting it (1) a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies, (2) an exemption on the export tax, and (3) a “drawback” (refund) on duties owed on certain surplus quantities of tea in its possession. The tea sent to the colonies was to be carried only in East India Company ships and sold only through its own agents, bypassing the independent colonial shippers and merchants. The company thus could sell the tea at a less-than-usual price in either America or Britain; it could undersell anyone else. The perception of monopoly drove the normally conservative colonial merchants into an alliance with radicals led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty.

In such cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, tea agents resigned or canceled orders, and merchants refused consignments. In Boston, however, the royal governor Thomas Hutchinson determined to uphold the law and maintained that three arriving ships, the Dartmouth, Eleanor, and Beaver, should be allowed to deposit their cargoes and that appropriate duties should be honored. On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of about 60 men, encouraged by a large crowd of Bostonians, donned blankets and Indian headdresses, marched to Griffin’s wharf, boarded the ships, and dumped the tea chests, valued at £18,000, into the water.

https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/boston-tea-party#section_1 

https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Tea-Party

2^ndContinental Congress 1775

The second continental congress was the second convention of delegates from each of the thirteen Colonies that took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the spring months of 1775. Beforehand, the First Continental Congress of 1774 had reached out to King George III to plea the end of the Coercive Acts and also put into existence the Continental Association in order to make an ordered and organized protest possible. 

The second congress dealt with the colonial war effort and favored the idea of independence. This congressmembers together built the prototype of the new American government and functioned as a leading, central institution. The congress raised armies, developed strategies and arranged formal treaties such as the Olive Branch Petition. Moreover, it created the Lee Resolution. The Lee Resolution is also known as the Resolution of independence and was the formal assertion which declared the establishment of a new country out of the united Colonies.