~My Dear Brohers...I Am Proposing WAR!~
~Ashlee Lawrence~Honors History 10~05/13/08~
My dear brothers, I speak to you today to propose a new idea. Something I am sure many of you will oppose. I can only hope that after presenting to you the following information you will agree with me and support me.
Britain is our mother country. She has been great to us through the years. Keeping us under her wing and protecting us in times of need. Together we have defeated the French! This victory that seems so great is not a blessing brought forth but rather a calamity in disguise.
Ever since we left Britian and settled in New England they have been trying to get us to come back and in doing so have been making it hard for us here in America. This all began with the Navigation Acts in 1660. With these acts Britain declared that only British ships would carry things to and fro of Britain. Any other trading with outside parties would have to go through England of Whales first, be unloaded, checked, and reloaded before it could make a sucessful trip. This caused the price for trading to go up, therefore dangling a small carrot in front of our eyes to get us to go back to the mother land.
The next hit from Britain was the Sugar and Molasses Act of 1773. They knew that molasses was a commonly used ingredient in making rum. The West Indies Islands were much cheaper in selling molasses than Britain itself was. Instead of banning import from the West Indies so that we would have to buy from Britain they decided to put taxes on the molasses that we imported. At this point they had stuck us in a pickle; either buy from Britain or pay taxes.
Once again trying to get out of debt by taxing us they came up with the Stamp Act in 1765. Any document we made had to have a taxed stamp on it. This was a plain black and white infringement on our rights as englishmen, and to top it all off, "None of the revenue from the Stamp Act was targeted at reducing the national debt." All of the money from the stamp act went into the defence that they sent over here for us to defend our new established lands. Every other minute they were creating "acts" to get more money from us.
I leave the "acts" behind us and bring up the Boston Massacre. Our mother country has been so gracious as to provide us with defences....at our own cost. The soldiers do a marvolous job at defending and standing guard...until they are teased by a little boy; at which point they loose their cool and knock the boy out with a musket. A crowd gathers and as the evening passes it grows. The soldier retreats back and calls in reinforcements. One of the reinforcements has fallen down to the ground from a club hit. The crowd is taunting, "Fire, fire". As the fallen soldier gets to his feet in anger he demands, "Fire". As I am sure you all recall and understand, I would like to recap the happenings that day. The defences that our mother country provided for us fired into a crowd of our own, killing 5 colonists.
But you know, they did not stop there. The Intolerable Acts passed in 1774 were many a result of the Boston Tea Party. Many of these acts directly infringing on the rights of us englishmen and only benefitting the British. I bring all of these horrible events to your attention so as to propose a new idea, Independance from Britain. Now, I know from reading
In the beggining, some of these acts were tollerable. But will they ever stop? The anwer is quite clear; as long as we stay attached to Britain she is going to use us as we are not at her convenience on her own land. I think we all agree that we need independance from Britain!
But wait you say, why should all of the colonies take action for something that is only dealing with Massachusettes? I shall answer with a question back to you; are we not the thirteen colonies of America? Should we not stick together and defend each other? If we do sit back and wait won't Britain attack the rest of us? I think it is clear that trying to be nice and rolling with the punches of what Britain throws at us will get us no where. Take for example the Stamp Act. We rebelled in a small manner, and look at what happened, the act was repealed. The cure to our problem is ACTION! Our rights and freedom are on the line now. The very things that these colonies were founded on are on the line! We need to act and it needs to be now before Britain has to much control over us.
My dear brothers......I am proposing WAR!
Sources used that are not linked at some point in my essay.
http://www.americanrevolution.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEBGrCb-rVU
