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Benjamin Franklin proposed a plan to unite the colonies. The plan was rejected because it gave to much power to an assembly made up of representatives from all 13 colonies
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He had different ideas about how the colonies should be governed.
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The war started as a struggle between the French and British over lands in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Great Britain won the war in 1763 and gained complete control of the eastern third of the continent.
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Imposed the first direct tax on the colonists. It required them to pay a tax on legal documents, pamphlets, news papers, and even dice and playing cards.
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Nine colonies sent delegates to a meeting in New York called the Stamp Act Congress. They sent a letter to the king arguing that only colonial legislatures could impose direct taxes such as the stamp act.
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A group of colonists dressed up as Mohawk Indians, dumped 342 chest of British tea into the Boston Harbor. In relation the parliament passed the Coercive Acts.
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The colonists called these the intolerable acts. One of these acts closed the Boston Harbor, another withdrew the right of the Massachusetts colony to govern itself.
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Committees of colonists who wanted to keep in touch with one another as events unfolded. Samuel Adams established the first committee of Boston. The idea spread quickly, within a few months Massachusetts alone had more than 80 of these committees.
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The delegates debated what to do about the relationship with Great Britain. They finally imposed an embargo, on Britain and agreed not to use British goods. They also proposed a meeting for the following year if Britain did not change its politics.
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Delegates from all 13 colonies gathered in Philadelphia for the second continental congress. They immediately assumed the powers of a central government. They chose John Hancock as president, to help raise funds for an army. The next critical steps were to organize and army, and navy, to issue money, and appoint George Washington as commander of the continental army.
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British redcoats clashed with colonial minutemen at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. The skirmish was the first battle of the revolutionary war.
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Lee introduced a resolution in the Continental Congress, that these united colonies are, and of the right ought to be, free and independent states
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The Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule
