![]() Īrtisans and laborers faced lower income and higher costs of food, firewood, and taxes. Merchants in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia declared bankruptcy in alarming numbers. Britain’s slowing economy led to a slumping West Indian economy, which reduced demand for New England livestock, lumber, and fish. After 1760, British merchants began tightening up credit to colonial merchants. Peace ended colonial contracts to supply the British military with weapons, uniforms, and provisions as well as the steady supply of gold and silver that paid for those goods. How would Britain pay down its war debt and the additional expense of defending its enlarged North American empire? How would American colonists respond to Britain’s policies? ![]() Under the peace treaty Britain gained vast new territory, including French Canada and French territory east of the Mississippi. ![]() Map of Eastern North America in 1775, National Atlas of the United States. French victories cancelled Revere’s participation in a British plan to seize a French fort at Crown Point on Lake Champlain, New York, and he returned home in November 1756. Among them was 21-year-old silversmith Paul Revere, who enlisted as a Second Lieutenant in Richard Gridley’s Artillery Train on February 18, 1756. Massachusetts remained especially proud since thousands of her provincial soldiers served-and died-alongside British “regulars” in the New York and Canadian theaters of war. Finally, on May 24, 1763, Boyle declared Britain’s complete victory: “The Definitive Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the King of Great Britain, the French and Spanish Kings was sign’d at Paris February 10, 1763.” Printer John Boyle noted: “…the Regiment of Militia were mustered, and the Town beautifully illuminated in the Evening.” On September 26, 1760, “public rejoicing” accompanied news of Montreal’s surrender. On October 16, 1759, Bostonians celebrated Britain’s defeat of France in the Plains of Abraham battle in Quebec. The same angry colonists who now attacked British taxation policies had proudly celebrated their country’s victories in the Seven Years War a few years earlier. Colonial essayists, orators, and ordinary people responded with cries of “slavery,” “tyranny,” and “No taxation without representation.”ĭeath of British General Wolfe at the moment of British victory in the 1759 Battle of Quebec.Īrchives and Collections at Amherst College īeginning November 1, 1765, legal documents, academic degrees, appointments to office, newspapers, pamphlets, playing cards, and dice required embossing with a Treasury stamp as proof of payment of the tax. Previously, only colonial assemblies assumed responsibility for internal taxes. While the Sugar Act was a duty only on foreign goods, the Stamp Act taxed items within the colonies. Both taxes promised dire consequences in a post-war economy. A year earlier, Parliament passed the Sugar Act, their first revenue-raising measure. Parliament passed the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765, to pay down a national debt approaching £140,000,000 after defeating France in the Seven Years War (1763). Offering his opinions as a man of middling rank toward the Revolutionary struggle for liberty, he claimed that the June 6 New York Gazette article “first gave the Alarm about the Stamp Act.” ![]() Harbottle Dorr, a North End ironmonger, began collecting and annotating Boston newspapers in January 1765. ![]()
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