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Main article: Colonial government in America
The Great Awakening was the American extension to the earlier religious revivals in Europe. It called into question the wisdom of an established church. The revival placed emphasis on individual conscience and experience as the source of value in religious experience. It started or increased the presence of Baptist views throughout the colonies. It was also the first event that swept through all the British colonies, from New England to the Carolinas, as a common experience.
After the French and Indian War and Pontiac's Rebellion, newly crowned King George III sought to overhaul his expansive North American possessions. In order to make the Empire more stable and profitable, new economic and land distribution policies were implemented. Colonial resentment of these new policies grew steadily throughout the decade, and had a significant impact on the emergence of the American Revolution.
The British national debt had risen to alarming levels during the war years and so in 1760 the Crown began a series of economic initiatives designed to extract more revenue from the colonies. These policies were justifiable, the reasoning went, because the colonists were enjoying the benefits of the peace that had been won.
In theory, Great Britain already regulated the economies of the colonies through the Navigation Acts, but widespread evasion of these laws had long been tolerated. Now, through the use of open-ended search warrants ( Writs of Assistance), strict enforcement became the practice. In 1761, Massachusetts lawyer James Otis argued that the writs violated the constitutional rights of the colonists. He lost the case, but John Adams later wrote, "American independence was then and there born."
In 1764, British Prime Minister George Grenville's Sugar Act and Currency Act created economic hardship in the colonies. Protests led to the boycott of British goods, and to the emergence of the popular slogan " no taxation without representation," in which colonists argued that only their colonial assemblies, and not Parliament, could levy taxes on them. Committees of correspondence were formed in the colonies to coordinate resistance. In previous years, the colonies had shown little inclination towards collective action. Grenville's policies were bringing them together.
A milestone in the nascent Revolution occurred in 1765, when Grenville passed the Stamp Act as a way to finance the quartering of troops in North America. The Stamp Act required all legal documents, permits, commercial contracts, newspapers, pamphlets, and playing cards in the colonies to carry a tax stamp.
Colonial protest was widespread. Secret societies known as the Sons of Liberty were formed in every colony, and used propaganda, intimidation, and mob violence to prevent the enforcement of the Stamp Act. The furor culminated with the Stamp Act Congress, which sent a formal protest to Parliament in October of 1765. Parliament responded by repealing the Stamp Act, but pointedly declared its legal authority over the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”
This exaggerated depiction of the " Boston Massacre" by Paul Revere was designed to inflame opposition to the military occupation of Boston.
The sequel was not long in coming. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, placing taxes on a number of common goods imported into the colonies, including glass, paint, lead, paper, and tea. Colonial leaders organized boycotts of these British imports. The Liberty, a ship belonging to colonial merchant John Hancock, was suspected of smuggling and seized by customs officials in Boston on June 10, 1768. Angry protests on the street led customs officials to report to London that Boston was in a state of insurrection.
British troops began to arrive in Boston in October of 1768. Tensions continued to mount, culminating in the so-called " Boston Massacre" on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers fired into an angry mob, killing three. Revolutionary agitators like Samuel Adams used the event to stir up popular resistance, but after the trial of the soldiers, who were defended by John Adams, tensions diminished.
The Townshend Acts were repealed in 1770, and it was still theoretically possible that further bloodshed in the colonies might be avoided. However, the British government had left one tax from the Townshend Acts in place as a symbolic gesture of their right to tax the colonies—the tax on tea. For the revolutionaries, who stood firm on the principle that only their colonial representatives could levy taxes on them, it was still one tax too many.
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