The colonies start fighting… Getting Up To Bat

The First Continental Congress After the Intolerable Acts and the Quebec Act, Massachusetts sent out a message to the other colonies that asked for a meeting People from 12 of the colonies (all of them except Georgia) came to Philadelphia to decide what to do about the situation People came with many different ideas. What they agree on was this: John Adams wrote a Declaration of Rights and Grievances This declaration said that British Parliament didn’t have the right to tax the colonies The colonies could only choose to tax themselves However, the British government should still be allowed to regulate international trade

Lexington and Concord Massachusetts had suffered a lot, because the Intolerable Acts were focused on it Massachusetts got ready in case a war would break out Colonists stashed military supplies in Concord in case of fighting The British found out about the military supplies and decided to destroy them

Lexington and Concord When the British Redcoats got to Lexington, they were stopped by American minutemen (the militia was called this, because the men should be ready for a fight within just a minute) Someone fired a shot, and both sides began to shoot. The Redcoats retreated, and were attacked by thousands of militiamen. The British managed to get back to Charlestown, but lost many more lives than the colonists

The Battle of Bunker Hill Sixteen thousand militiamen from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut went to Boston after the battles at Lexington and Concord They were sent by their leader, William Prescott, to guard Bunker Hill He and his men actually went to Breed Hill by mistake

The Battle of Bunker Hill The British decided to chase the militias out They tried twice to capture the hill, but the colonists defended themselves well The third time the British managed to take the hill, but they had lost about 1000 soldiers in the fighting Even though the British won the battle, the price was very high for them. Even though the colonists lost the battle, they thought it was a victory because it proved that they could fight against the British army

The Second Continental Congress The colonies decided to meet again after the fighting at Lexington and Concord This time, many of their minds had changed. Several of them wanted independence. Some of the decisions they made were: Creating a Continental Army and choosing George Washington to be its commander Making letters of marque to give to privateers, because they needed a navy Abolishing the old Navigation Acts Sending an Olive Branch Petition (a declaration of peace) to King George III to see if he would negotiate

Common Sense Common Sense was a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine, an Englishman who came to America The pamphlet argued that the colonists needed to become independent It called King George III a “royal brute” and said America should free itself from kings and nobles The pamphlet became very popular, and sold more than 200,000 copies It had a big impact on the colonists’ thinking

The Declaration of Independence Was written by Thomas Jefferson, who was 33 years old at the time He was a member of the Virginian delegation to the Continental Congress He was in a committee with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to write it up. He did most of the writing, while they made some small changes.

The Declaration of Independence There are three main parts in the Declaration of Independence In the first part (the “preamble”), Jefferson talks about principles that were already accepted in England. For example, he believed that governments get their power from the “consent of the governed” (in other words, governments can only exist if the people they govern agree with it) These weren’t new ideas- Jefferson was using ideas that had been around for a long time because he wanted to show that the British government wasn’t living up to the principles of English law and culture

The Declaration of Independence There are three main parts in the Declaration of Independence In the second part, Jefferson makes a long list of the ways that King George III had mistreated the colonies and broke English laws In the last part, Jefferson says that the colonies are free and that their ties to England are broken. In other words, they aren’t colonies anymore.