Apush Taxation Without Representation Dbq

The motivations of American Revolutionary movement, at its peak from 1765 to 1780, are a much disputed subject between historians like Bernard Bailyn and Esmond Wright. One of the questionable motivations is the demand for no taxation without representation from the colonies at the time. It becomes clear through the documents of the Virginia House of Burgesses and Stamp Act Congress as well as letters from Thomas Jefferson that no taxation without representation was the primary motivation and unifier of the American colonies between 1765 and 1780.

In the mid-1700’s, due to the high debt created by the British after the French and Indian War, parliament created a series of new taxes used on only the American colonies to gain revenue. One of the most unpopular taxes, called the Stamp Act, required a stamp to be put on all legal documents for a certain fee. This upset many people in the colonies including the Virginia House of Burgesses, which was the legislature in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the time.

The committee there created a resolution to ask the same rights as Britons, who had representatives in Parliament to defend themselves against taxation without representation (Document A). Since the British Parliament did not listen to the colonial legislatures individually, some of the colonies joined forces to create Stamp Act Congress. This grouping was the first formal and organized unification of the American Colonies at the time and would snowball into the first and second Continental Congress which would take place ten years later.

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Stamp Act Congress (Document B) addressed issues and their possible solutions relating to the House of Commons in Great Britain, the Parliament. With the issue the Virginia House of Burgesses addressed, the Stamp Act Congress created the resolution of having a representative democracy styled legislature to discuss matters of taxation. These ideas were on par with that of the Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies by Daniel Dulany which stated “A right to impose an internal tax on the colonies, without their consent for the single use of revenue, is denied. (Document C) “No taxation without representation! ” was the slogan of many patriot groups like the Sons of Liberty in the mostly unified colonies of the 1770s. These patriots like Joseph Warren, who played a leading role in the patriot organizations in Boston and was a militia general at Bunker Hill, said that taxation without representation “could not be supported by reason and argument” and that “upon fair examination, appeared to be unjust and unconstitutional. ” (D) Beginning with the Stamp Act of 1764, the colonists found themselves with an unfair laws and government on their hands.

With this issue at hand, new legislatures were formed in the American Colonies like The Stamp Act Congress (B), First, and Second Continental Congress. These legislatures strived for a representative democracy, one better than the one they were deprived of in House of Commons in Great Britain. By the 1770s, the ideals of rights of men, as those mentioned in the Virginia House of Burgesses (A) and Joseph Warren (D), spread throughout the colonies. It was the demand of no taxation without representation that unified the colonies and drove them toward a representative democracy which every man has his say.

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