Thomas Jefferson Career Lawyer
Thomas Jefferson Career Lawyer – Free Download Pdf. In 1776, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress declared the United States of America independent from Great Britain and its king. That was 442 days after the start of the American Revolution. The first American revolt against Britain was in 1765 when Parliament passed the Stamp Act. This law taxed the population to pay for British armies in the new world. The British colonists in America said “no representation (in parliament), no taxation”. When this law went into effect in November of the same year, a large part of the population of the colonies boycotted British goods and finance officials’ homes were targeted. After months of protest, Parliament was forced to repeal the law in March 1766.
Most of the population of the colony lived under British rule without opposition after that until the Tea Tax of 1773. In an effort to save the East India Company, Britain reduced the tax on tea and put the tea-growing regions in America under the East India Company. The lower taxes allowed the East India Company to sell tea cheaper than even the Dutch merchants who were smuggling tea to America. The population in the colonies saw this as another tax tyranny. In response the rebels in Massachusetts organized the Boston Tea Party and dumped 18,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor.
Angered by this and thinking it was unacceptable to harm British property, Parliament passed a new law in 1774 to establish a military base in Massachusetts and grant immunity to British officers in America. While the other colonies watched all this happen, Massachusetts formed a shadow government and began to resist Britain. In April 1775 British soldiers faced American troops for the first time at Lexington and the first shot was fired.
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In fact both the Americans and the British saw the war as a simple civil war within the British Empire. For King George III it was a simple colonial revolt. For the Americans it was a question of Americans being equal to British citizens. But Parliament’s policy of ignoring the American rebels and going so far as to hire German mercenaries to crush the rebellion resulted in the Americans removing British authority from the colonies altogether.
In January 1776 Thomas Paine published Common Sense which sold over 500,000 copies in a few months. In the spring of 1776 the colonies decided to form their own government. The declaration of independence was mostly written by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. He was influenced by John Locke’s political philosophy. The first part has the famous “All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The second part is about the causes of the rebellion.
July 2, 1776 the Continental Congress voted to secede from Britain. 2 days later 12 colonies declared independence. New York ratified July 19 and signed August 2. In 1783 the Treaty of Paris the British recognized the United States of America.