Question

What happened at the battle of Lexington? About 2 tell u!

Answer 1

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were engagements fought between British regular soldiers and militia from the colony of Massachusetts on 19 April 1775. The British troops were on their way to seize military supplies stored in the town of Concord when they were confronted by the colonial militiamen. An American victory, the battles triggered the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).

Answer 2

At the end of the French and Indian War (1754-1763), as the North American theater of the Seven Years War is often called, the belligerent powers signed the Treaty of Paris of 1763. While most of the colonial territories captured during the war were returned to their previous owners, there were several notable exceptions: the vanquished Kingdom of France, for instance, was forced to cede Canada and all its North American holdings east of the Mississippi River to its victorious rival, Great Britain. This greatly expanded Britain’s colonial territory in North America but also came with a new set of problems, particularly regarding defense. The ink on the peace treaty was barely dry when a steady stream of American colonial settlers began trickling into the newly won lands between the Appalachian Mountains and Mississippi River. It did not take long for these settlers to begin fighting with the displaced Native American nations who lived there.

A Royal Proclamation issued in October 1763 that forbade American colonists from settling this region went largely ignored; conflict between white settlers and native peoples escalated into the bloody Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1764). Though the native revolt was crushed by the end of 1764, the destructiveness of the conflict convinced Parliament that new steps would have to be taken for the defense of the American colonies. It was decided, therefore, that a standing army of 10,000 British regulars would be dispatched to keep the peace in North America. The maintenance of such an army was estimated to cost an annual £200,000, an expense that Parliament could ill-afford, as it was grappling with mountains of postwar debt. A new source of revenue would have to be found and, since the money was going toward the defense of the American colonies, many in Parliament believed it only fair that the colonists themselves footed part of the bill.

Answer 3

On 5 April 1764, British Prime Minister George Grenville (l. 1712-1770) passed an act through Parliament that would become known as the Sugar Act. An extension of the existing Molasses Act of 1733, Grenville’s Sugar Act imposed a tax of 3 pence per gallon on molasses produced outside of the British Empire, as well as restricted the trade of other valuable colonial goods, such as lumber, to Britain alone. The Sugar Act proved unpopular amongst colonial merchants, who relied on foreign molasses from the Dutch and French West Indies for the broader triangular trade; merchants primarily in the New England colonies protested the act, boycotting luxuries from Britain and petitioning Parliament to repeal it. Occasional instances of violence broke out, particularly in Rhode Island, as British customs officers were bullied, intimidated, and in some cases jailed by colonial officials.

Answer 4

Although the Sugar Act outraged the colonial merchant class, the level of overall protest remained low, as the tax did not affect the every-day American. But by mid-1764, rumors began circulating that Grenville meant to implement another tax on paper documents, which would affect more colonists than the previous molasses duties. Colonial anxieties continued to rise over what Grenville’s new tax would entail and, on 2 February 1765, four agents representing the colonies met with Grenville in London to find out. The agents, who included the already famous Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) of Philadelphia, told Grenville that the colonies were worried about the forthcoming Parliamentary tax, and that the colonial assemblies preferred to tax themselves. If the colonies lost this ability, the fear was that Parliament would inadvertently subvert the institutions of representative government in America, since royal governors would no longer have a reason to convene the colonial assemblies. Grenville recognized the colonists’ concerns but expressed his belief that the Americans had to help pay for their own defense; since the agents had not presented a viable alternative plan, Grenville decided to go ahead with the vote.

On 6 February 1765, Grenville brought his resolution before the House of Commons. Unlike the Sugar Act, which Parliament had passed without opposition, there was lively debate surrounding the proposed Stamp Act. Describing the Americans as “children planted by our care,” and “nourished up by our indulgence,” Charles Townshend asked his fellow MPs why the colonists should be allowed to refuse to shoulder the financial burden of their own defense. To this, the Anglo-Irish Colonel Isaac Barre issued a dynamic reply:

Answer 5

They planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country – where they exposed themselves to almost all hardships to which human nature is liable…They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them…to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them; men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of these Sons of Liberty to recoil within them (Middlekauff, 79).

Answer 6

The oratory of Colonel Barre and his compatriots was impressive but was not enough to stop the stamp bill from receiving its first reading on 13 February. The opposition asked to introduce several petitions from the colonies of Massachusetts, Virginia, and Connecticut, but the House of Commons refused to hear them. The bill was approved in the House of Commons by a vote of 245-49 and was passed unanimously in the House of Lords. On 22 March, George III of Great Britain (r. 1760-1820) affixed his royal signature to the bill, and the Stamp Act became law. It was set to go into effect on 1 November 1765.

Answer 7

I had to do this for school, so I copied and pasted it from their

Answer 8

from my google doc, (from my project)

Answer 9

this is good