Social Studies 4-3.1 Explain the major political and economic factors leading to the American Revolution.
Essential Question What were the major political and economic factors that caused the American Revolution?
Learning Tasks/Activities:
Ø Students will read the ABDO eBook Events Leading to the Revolution, take notes on the Events Leading to the Revolution graphic organizer, and determine whether the event was political or economic, citing evidence from the book as support. Using the notes from their graphic organizer, students will then participate in a thrash-out to debate which event they felt was the biggest factor for the start of the Revolutionary War. (DOK 3) Ø Students will read closely the Compass Odyssey passage “Tea Time” (pages 1-2). Students will ask and answer questions about the text using the Tea Time KWL chart as a whole-group discussion. (DOK 2-3) Ø Students will analyze and read closely the primary source document from the Compass Odyssey passage “Tea Time” (page 3). They will answer questions about the source using the document analysis sheet. (DOK 1-3) Ø Students will view the Discovery Education video clip “Intolerable Acts and the First Continental Congress.” They will analyze the video using the video analysis sheet. (DOK 2-3) Ø After completing all tasks for the indicator, students will write a personal response in their notebook from the perspective of both a loyalist and a patriot. Students will use evidence from what they have learned to demonstrate how the effects of these main causes of the Revolution influenced their daily lives as a loyalist or patriot. (DOK 3) |
It is essential for students to know:
Political factors and economic factors that ultimately led to the American Revolution started with the French and Indian War and culminated with shots fired at Lexington and Concord. It is important that students understand the chronology of these events and how one event led to another. They should understand that political factors included the question of whether the Parliament of the colonial assemblies had the right to impose taxes. Economic factors include the need for taxes as a result of the French and Indian War, and the power of the colonists to boycott British goods and force British merchants to appeal to Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. (King George III ruled Great Britain before, during, and after the American Revolution.) The French and Indian War was fought between France and England over lands in the Ohio River Valley, which both the French and English claimed. The British won the war and gained control of these lands but amassed a large debt as a result of the war. The British Parliament determined that this debt should be paid by the American colonists, whose lands the British had been defending. This was a change in the British government’s colonial policy. Before the French and Indian War, the British government ignored what was happening in the colonies and let them govern and tax themselves. After the French and Indian War, the British Parliament began to pass a series of laws that changed the relationship between the colonial assemblies and the Parliament. Colonists believed it was the right of their colonial assemblies to impose taxes, not the right of the King or of Parliament, and they resisted this changed policy through protests and boycotts of British goods. One of the British taxes, the Stamp Act, placed a tax on all papers, such as legal documents and newspapers. The colonists would pay this directly (taxes before this were indirect duties on imports included in the retail price of the goods and were invisible to the colonial consumer), and protested with the cry, “No taxation without representation.” Colonists did not have a representative in Parliament and therefore had no voice in Parliament. Colonists wanted to retain the right of their own colonial assemblies to tax in order to be respected. They did not actually want representation in the distant Parliament because they knew they would be outvoted. Colonists organized a Stamp Act Congress, which sent a petition to the King, and declared a boycott on British goods that led to the repeal of the Stamp Act. They also organized the Son and Daughters of Liberty in order to protest British taxes. (Patrick Henry was a member of the Virginia’s colonial assembly who wrote a strong protest to the Stamp Act that asserted the rights of the colonists.) The Tea Act was not a tax. This act gave the British East India Company exclusive rights (a monopoly) to sell tea in the colonies, because the East India Tea Company had financial problems and Parliament wanted to help the company avoid bankruptcy. Colonists were already boycotting tea because of a tax imposed under the Townshend Act. (Although most of the Townshend duties had been repealed as a result of a successful colonial boycott, the tax on tea remained.) The Sons of Liberty feared the availability of cheap tea would threaten the effectiveness of the boycott. In Boston, they boarded the British ship and threw the tea overboard (John Adams was a Massachusetts leader and a member of the Sons of Liberty. He was a strong advocate of independence and was on the committee charged with writing the Declaration of Independence.) These actions, known as the Boston Tea Party, led Parliament to pass the Coercive Acts, renamed by the colonists, the Intolerable Acts for their punitive nature. The Intolerable Acts closed the Boston Harbor and took away the right of the colony of Massachusetts to govern itself. The British named these acts the Coercive Acts because they were designed to coerce, or force, the colonists to pay for the dumped tea and recognized the right of the Parliament to make tax laws for the colonies. Colonists initially formed Committees of Correspondence to communicate their situations to each other then sent delegates to a Continental Congress in order to address the problem of the Intolerable Acts. The First Continental Congress established a boycott on all trade with Great Britain and sent a petition to the King. The Continental Congress also advised American colonists to arm themselves. This led to the battle of Lexington and Concord and the start of the Revolutionary War. |