Main content

Course: Constitution 101 > Unit 2

Lesson 6: The Reasons for the Revolution

Info Brief: Constitutional Story of the American Revolution

Learn about the constitutional story of the American Revolution.

“The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815

In 1760, the American colonists were loyal British subjects. Fifteen years later, the colonies were at war with the empire. What happened?

Let’s begin our story on December 27, 1760. The news reached Boston that the British Empire had a new king—the twenty-two-year-old King George III. The American colonists were exuberant. They were proud subjects of the British Empire, and they loved their new king. They laid claim to the cherished rights protected by Great Britain’s unwritten constitution.

At the same time, the new King, his royal officials, and Parliament rarely ever thought about the American colonists. As a result—and as a practical matter—the British Empire largely left the American colonists to govern themselves. This presented a problem.

What would happen if the British Empire began to take an interest in American affairs?
What would happen if the British Empire flexed its muscles and began to interfere in the American colonies?
What would happen if the British Empire began to overrule the popularly elected colonial governments, undermine key liberties like the right to a jury trial, and tried to tax colonists without representation in Parliament?

Over the course of fifteen years—from 1760-1775—the bonds between colonists, king, and the empire would first fray and then break. By 1776, the Americans were ready to declare independence.

Professor Akhil Reed Amar of Yale University argues that the push for American independence required three key ingredients:

Personal: The revolutionaries had to be ready to break away from the British Empire, personally—to cast aside the king, the British people, and Parliament. In other words, they had to be ready to say that they were no longer British subjects. This was a big deal!
Military: The revolutionaries had to believe that they could actually win the fighting war with the British Empire.
Legal: The revolutionaries needed to develop a constitutional theory to counter Parliament’s push to raise taxes and shape policy in the American colonies.

Now let’s take a deeper look at some of the key developments on the road to the American Revolution and see how the three key principles of the American Revolution appear throughout the push towards independence.

James Otis and the Writs of Assistance

To understand the story of the American Revolution, let’s begin with a famous episode: James Otis and the battle over the Writs of Assistance. The year is 1761—fifteen years before the Declaration of Independence. The place is Boston.

As a result of the French and Indian War, the British Empire started to enforce longstanding anti-smuggling acts in the colonies. These were known as the “Navigation Acts.” The empire began enforcing these acts in order to collect more money from the colonists. The colonists had been breaking these laws for years—for instance, through illegal smuggling. But now, the empire was looking to end its policy of salutary neglect. With this old policy, the empire turned a “blind eye” to illegal trading by the colonists, but no more! The British Empire has begun to tighten its control over the American colonies.

Why did the British Empire change its policy?: Because the Empire had a massive war debt, it needed money, and the colonists in America had it. So, the empire finally started enforcing the laws on the books. King George III then used his royal officials in the colonies to crack down on tax evaders and colonial smugglers with the use of so-called “Writs of Assistance.” These Writs gave royal officials (here, customs officials) “free range” to break into the homes or ships of colonists to search for evidence….anytime, anywhere, and for any reason. The colonists were outraged.

Enter James Otis. Otis was a prominent Boston lawyer and patriot. He took on the smugglers’ cause and attacked the Writs of Assistance. These smugglers were largely local merchants who challenged the Writs of Assistance in court. These legal challenges eventually found their way to Massachusetts’s highest court—presided over by Thomas Hutchinson. (Eventually, Hutchinson would emerge as the most prominent Loyalist in America).

In the Writs of Assistance Case (and in a five-hour speech!), Otis argued that the Massachusetts court should declare these Writs in violation of the British Constitution, the English common law, and the colonists’ natural rights. For Otis, these Writs violated a core principle: “a man’s house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince . . . ,” and he argued that the unregulated search of people’s houses, ships, desks, and private papers violated the fundamental rights of all free people.

On the one hand, Otis was laying claim to the colonists’ rights as members of the British Empire—in other words, their rights under the English common law and the unwritten British Constitution. But he was doing even more than that. He was invoking the colonists’ natural rights as human beings—rights that they didn’t owe to any government and that the colonists didn’t owe to the British Empire, but rights that are even more fundamental than that.

For instance, Otis criticized the Writs of Assistance on the basis of rule of law principles: “It is a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.” When that happens, the rule of law breaks down and our rights are in the hands of every minor British official.

For the colonists, this was the very definition of despotism and tyranny. It violated the British Constitution; it violated the English common law; and it violated the colonists’ natural rights as human beings. Within this argument, we can already see the seeds of a colonial theory for attacking the constitutionality of British laws.

Here’s Otis: The writ “appears to me . . . the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of the constitution, that ever was found in an English law-book.”
And here’s Otis again: “Had this writ been in any book whatever it would have been illegal. ALL PRECEDENTS ARE UNDER THE CONTROUL OF THE PRINCIPLES OF LAW. . . . No Acts of Parliament can establish such a writ. . . . it would be void, AN ACT AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION IS VOID.”

This was a radical argument for its time. Otis was calling on the Massachusetts court to turn aside a clear act of Parliament, and no English judge had ever done this squarely. Within the British Empire, Parliament was sovereign. Parliament was in charge. And under traditional British constitutional law, no one—and no institution—could stand in its way.

Otis lost the battle. The judges refused to turn aside the Writs of Assistance. But Otis wasn’t forgotten. Many years later, John Adams—who, as a young man, heard Otis’s arguments against the Writs of Assistance and was Otis’s friend and fellow revolutionary—said that Otis’s speech was “the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born.”

It was Otis’s battle against the unregulated search of people’s houses and private papers that helped inspire our Fourth Amendment years later. This episode also had broader importance for the American Revolution story. It planted the (constitutional) seeds of independence itself.

The Sugar Act

James Otis set the foundation for the push towards independence. From there, what are the key steps on the path to the Declaration of Independence? To begin, let’s fast-forward a few years to the Sugar and Stamp Act episodes of 1764 through 1766.

In 1764, Parliament passed a Sugar Act, which charged taxes on imported molasses and set up a new process to end illegal smuggling. The British needed the money to help offset the costs of the Seven Years War. To enforce the Act, alleged violators would be tried before vice-admiralty courts—run by royal judges and without colonial juries. Colonial juries often let alleged smugglers—usually, prominent merchants—off free, even if they had actually violated British laws. The British Empire trusted vice-admiralty courts to crack down on illegal smuggling.

Many American colonists feared the precedent that Parliament was trying to set. If the colonists permitted Parliament to impose a small tax to raise money now, what would stop the British from enacting a massive tax later? Furthermore, this tax ran against a key constitutional principle within the British tradition: only elected representatives can impose taxes to raise revenue.

So, what was the colonial response?

Let’s first return to our old friend, James Otis. In response to the Sugar Act, Otis published the 1764 pamphlet, The Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved. This pamphlet built on his arguments in the Writs of Assistance Case. In Otis’s view, Parliament couldn’t tax colonists because the colonists couldn’t vote for members of Parliament. This was the classic argument that we all remember today: No taxation without representation! Later American revolutionaries would build on Otis’s argument—pushing it even further to challenge the legitimacy of Parliament passing acts governing the colonists in any way but we’re not there yet.

Various colonies attacked the Sugar Act—with town meetings, assembly resolutions, and petitions to King George III and Parliament. Like Otis, they offered a simple argument: No taxation without representation! If the British government wanted to raise money in the colonies, it had to convince colonial assemblies elected by the colonists themselves to raise taxes.

The British government responded with its own simple theory—indeed, the traditional British theory. Parliament was sovereign and its powers were without practical limits. Not only could Parliament enact new taxes to raise money in the American colonies, but it could pass whatever sort of law it wanted to pass there. That’s what it means to be sovereign. It means that you’re all-powerful. According to Parliament, no one—and, certainly, no colonists—could stop it.

The Stamp Act

In March 1765, Parliament then followed up the Sugar Act with the Stamp Act.

The Stamp Act required various papers—diplomas, court filings, even newspapers—to carry an imperial stamp, purchased by the colonists. This new money would help fund the British government. It was the first time that Parliament tried to raise money by directly taxing the American colonists—as opposed to passing laws that (arguably) regulated trade within the empire. It affected more of the American population than other measures like the Sugar Act. To enforce the Act, alleged violators would be tried before juryless vice-admiralty courts.

But the American colonists fought back. Bostonians destroyed the would-be stamp office, trashed the would-be stamp collector’s house, and hung him in effigy. He turned down the post. Two weeks later, Bostonians then trashed the mansion of Thomas Hutchinson—in a scene that one historian described as “more violent than any yet seen in America.” Eight other colonies soon joined in the fight against the Stamp Act.

What were the unifying arguments? No taxation without representation; and jury rights for Englishmen!

This activity led to the first continent-wide assembly: the Stamp Act Congress. Twenty-seven delegates from nine colonies met in New York’s City Hall. The delegates met for less than three weeks, but they agreed on several key principles:

The colonists were entitled to the rights of Englishmen.
No taxation without representation.
Americans were not—and could not be—represented in Parliament.
The jury trial right is a key right of Englishmen.
Parliament should repeal the Stamp Act.

At the same time, the Stamp Act Congress still remained loyal to the British Empire. In Congress’s words, Americans “glory in being subjects of the best of Kings” and “humbly petitioned” for the repeal of the Stamp Act. At that point, the colonists didn’t want independence. They simply wanted dignity and respect—to lay claim to their rights under the British Constitution.

Parliament finally repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766—less than a year after it was passed. At the same time, Parliament passed a Declaratory Act—doubling down on its own key constitutional principle: Parliament had “full power and authority to make laws and statutes . . . to bind the colonies and people of America . . . in all cases whatsoever.”

The Townshend Acts

Fifteen months later—in 1767—Parliament then passed a new set of taxes on the American colonies, the Townshend Acts. Parliament passed these Acts to raise money for the British government and the new taxes covered various imported goods, including glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. The British government looked to use the new money to pay American governors and judges—removing them from the financial control of the popularly elected colonial assemblies. This act outraged many colonists. These Acts also allowed for a new set of writs of assistance.

The colonists—once again—railed against this set of taxes and organized a wave of boycotts—beginning in Boston and spreading South. In response to these protests by the American colonists, British customs officials feared for their safety. The British government addressed these concerns by sending General Thomas Gage and 2,000 British troops to America.

By late 1768, there were more than a thousand British troops in Boston. In fact, at the highest point, British troops actually represented more than a third of Boston’s adult male population. Furthermore, the British Quartering Act required the colonies to pick up the tab for these troops. For the colonists, this move violated a simple constitutional principle: No standing armies in times of peace. The colonists feared that standing armies were key tools of tyranny.

The Boston Massacre

On March 5, 1770, British soldiers were standing guard at the Boston Customs House.

As described by John Adams, these soldiers were greeted by a “motley rabble of saucy boys” and other rabble rousers. A crowd of around fifty people mocked the soldiers and threw snow, ice, and other hard objects at them. Shots were fired. Eleven colonists were wounded, and five died on the street. Crispus Attucks, an African American sailor, is believed to be the first American killed at the Boston Massacre. Attucks is often referred to as the first casualty of the American Revolution.

Governor Thomas Hutchinson arrived to calm the crowd and begin to investigate the incident. Hutchinson then allowed for ordinary criminal trials for the commanding officer (Captain Thomas Preston) and eight of the soldiers. In their trial, they were represented—not by a supporter of the King and Parliament—but by an American patriot, Son of Liberty, and future U.S. President: John Adams.

Importantly, Adams didn’t throw the case. He wanted to win because he wanted to show everyone—King George III, his royal officials, Parliament, and the rest of the world—that Bostonians weren’t a lawless mob, that they believed in the rule of law. He wished to show them that in America, the jury trial was a cherished right, and juries themselves could be trusted.

Adams fought hard—and largely won the case. Most of the soldiers were acquitted of murder.

The Boston Tea Party

Fast forward three-and-a-half years to December 16, 1773.

By April 1770, Parliament had gotten rid of most of the Townshend Duties. However, Parliament did keep in place a tax on tea. Many of the colonists accepted this—almost total—victory over the powerful British government. But Bostonians continued to resist—preferring to bribe officials and enjoy smuggled, untaxed tea instead of tea taxed by the British.

Bostonians quickly sprang into action to formulate a plan to prevent ships from unloading the tea in Boston. The solution? The Boston Tea Party.

Disguising themselves as Native Americans, the Sons of Liberty chose to throw the tea overboard into the Boston Harbor. They boarded the ships, broke open 342 chests of tea, and threw them into the harbor. Here’s how John Adams described the Boston Tea Party: “This is the grandest Event which has ever yet happened since the Controversy with Britain opened! The Sublimity of it charms me!”

The British Empire's response

How did the British Empire respond to these events? With an iron fist.

Through a series of Coercive Acts, they looked to punish Boston and the Sons of Liberty.

The British government closed the Boston Harbor until Bostonians paid for the tea thrown overboard into the Boston Tea Party.
The British attacked Massachusetts popular self-government—curbing town meetings and taking away the power of the Massachusetts General Assembly to elect the colonial council.
The Coercive Acts also insulated British soldiers and other officials from local juries—permitting British soldiers to be tried of alleged crimes back in England rather than before colonial juries. (To give you a sense of how much this one stung, colonists called this move the “Murder Act.”)
Finally, a new Quartering Act cleared the way for a new set of British troops on the ground in Boston and empowered the military to lodge soldiers in private homes.

The British hope was that Boston would learn a lesson and the other colonies would remain loyal. Of course, that did not happen. The Coercive Acts brought the colonists closer together—and closer to revolution. The American colonists would dub these new laws, the “Intolerable Acts.”

Bostonians—once again—resisted. They opened up lines of communication—called “committees of correspondence”—with one another and with the leaders of various colonies. It also led many colonists to embrace more radical constitutional arguments. Over the previous decade, the American colonists had developed a theory to attack British taxes. At the same time, they conceded that Parliament had authority over other matters within the colonies. But the Coercive Acts proved that the threat from Parliament required stronger constitutional medicine.

Sure, taxes could be oppressive, but so could other laws. The Coercive Acts proved as much. Parliament could shut down popular assemblies and could cut off the ports of a commercial center. It could also place troops on city streets, and it could keep its own abusive officials from facing the colonial music before colonial juries. This proved that Parliament was willing to treat the colonists as second-class subjects—forcing the American colonists to accept laws that those in London would never accept.

In response, the American colonists challenged the legitimacy of Parliament to legislate for the colonies altogether.

The First Continental Congress

The First Continental Congress met in response to the Coercive Acts in September 1774. It included over fifty delegates from twelve colonies. (Georgia was absent.) Luminaries included Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and George Washington; New York’s John Jay; and Massachusetts’s John Adams and Samuel Adams—among many others.

Congress met for just under eight weeks, and the delegates agreed to condemn the Coercive Acts as “infringements and violations of the rights of the colonists” and call for their repeal. If not, then the American colonists would engage in a massive boycott of British goods. The delegates also agreed to meet again in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, if the British didn’t give in.

Finally, they sent a petition to King George III himself. It read, in part: “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty: Most gracious Sovereign: We, your Majesty’s faithful subjects . . . by this our humble Petition, beg leave to lay our grievances before your throne.”

In the end, the colonists offered their objections to the Coercive Acts, but King George III never responded to the colonists’ petition. Before Congress could meet again, fighting broke out between the American colonists and the British troops.

Lexington and Concord

On April 19, 1775, British soldiers fired on militiamen on the town green in Lexington, Massachusetts. Only one British soldier was wounded, but eight colonial militiamen lay dead. Thousands of American colonists then rallied in response a few miles away in the neighboring town of Concord. More than 100 people died in the fighting.

Over the next several weeks, American colonists and British troops continued the fighting—culminating in a bloody battle at Bunker Hill in June 1775. At Bunker Hill—a full year before the Declaration of Independence—over one thousand people died. The war was on and the colonists had to begin taking sides. Would they remain loyal, or would they join the revolutionaries?

The Second Continental Congress

The Second Continental Congress met as scheduled in Philadelphia—with many of the same delegates (and in the middle of this growing crisis)—on May 10, 1775. Just weeks before, shots were fired in Lexington and Concord and Massachusetts was in the process of building a fighting force of over ten thousand soldiers. The colony was calling for support from its neighbors.

In addition, Benjamin Franklin had just returned to Philadelphia after more than a decade in London, representing the colonists before the British government. His time in London ended in embarrassment (and resentment). Dr. Franklin was America’s leading statesman—the most famous American, celebrated across the world—and yet, the British government treated him not with respect, but as a second-class subject. This helped turn Franklin—a longtime loyal subject—towards independence.

This important episode arose from a series of letters written by Thomas Hutchinson to his allies in London. Franklin somehow secured these letters in 1772 and sent them back to his allies in Boston—telling them to keep them secret. In turn, these letters found their way into the hands of Samuel Adams, John Adams, and other critics of Hutchinson—and then, into the Boston press and in newspapers throughout the colonies.

At the same time, Hutchinson managed to get his hands on the letter that Franklin had sent to his allies in Boston. And Hutchinson, in turn, sent it back to officials in London—hoping that Franklin would be punished. Franklin was then called before the King’s Privy Council just days after London officials learned of the Boston Tea Party. Franklin was attacked as a thief and a traitor—and removed from his post as America’s Deputy Postmaster. Franklin was humiliated—and radicalized.

Back in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Assembly immediately invited Franklin to join the Second Continental Congress. There, Franklin joined the likes of key patriots like John Adams, Samuel Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee. Boston’s John Hancock was chosen as Congress’s presiding officer, and John Adams endorsed George Washington as head of the new Continental Army.

The new Congress had to prepare the colonies for war, build support for independence, and promote colonial unity—this was not an easy task. It’s important to note that many in Congress still wanted to make peace with the King and Parliament. John Dickinson led the moderates in Congress and won approval to send (what is known as) the “Olive Branch Petition.” The petition explained to the King that the American colonists remained loyal, that they didn’t want independence, and that they just wanted him to address their grievances, respect their rights, and repeal all oppressive laws passed by Parliament.

King George III didn’t even allow his officials to read the American petition to him. In late August, King George III declared the American colonies in open rebellion against the British Empire.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense

In this environment, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense hit the American colonies like a thunderbolt in January of 1776.

In the fall of 1775, Americans remained divided about their views of King George III and the push towards independence. Some joined the radical patriots and blamed the King for his support for Parliament’s oppressive acts, but many others still believed that the King could aid the patriotic cause and check Parliament.

In Common Sense, Paine called for American independence and the creation of republican governments based on the consent of the people. There, he attacked monarchy itself—arguing that the idea of a monarch (and hereditary power) had “laid the world in blood and ashes.”

Paine’s account was built from the arguments of John Locke and the Whig critics of the British Crown. Consistent with social contract theory, King George III owed the American colonists security and their most cherished rights and liberties as English subjects. If the King violated this social contract, the American colonists had the power—and the duty—to break away. But Paine went even further.

In Paine’s view, monarchy itself ran against common sense. The British Crown, in particular, was the product of corruption, misdeeds, and mystical rubbish, and, more importantly, human beings were all born free and equal. In the place of monarchy, Paine argued that the colonists should establish independent republican states.

Finally, Paine argued that it was absurd for a massive—and growing—America to be ruled by a tiny island across the sea. Paine was successful in getting many Americans to think anew. Over time, the war spread—all the way up to present-day Maine and down to Virginia and North Carolina. The royal governments fell in most colonies, and informal patriot assemblies assumed the duties of governance throughout America.

In May 1776, Congress agreed to a resolution proposed by John Adams—one that called for the colonies to set up new state governments. The American colonies responded with new charters of government in the form of state constitutions. This was a constitutional revolution in itself—a decisive turn towards written constitutions rooted in the authority of the American people.

Declaring independence

On July 2, 1776, a unanimous Congress declared independence—adopting a motion introduced by Virginia’s Richard Henry Lee and seconded by John Adams. Here’s the text of the Lee Resolution: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” How did we get the text of the Declaration of Independence itself?

A “Committee of Five”—John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston—had been working on the Declaration of Independence since June 11, with Jefferson as the main drafter. But Jefferson later admitted that he was merely looking to reflect the “American mind”—bringing together the core principles at the heart of the American Revolution.

In addition to an inspiring account of the ideas at the core of the American idea, the Declaration was also a formal declaration by Congress that the United States was an independent nation. To justify the move towards independence, the Declaration provided a list of grievances against King George III.

As the Declaration explained, King George III had abused the rights of the Americans. He had “engaged in a long train of abuses.” The British government had:

Imposed taxation without representation.
Violated the cherished jury trial rights of the colonists.
Sent corrupt (and abusive) judges and royal officials to America.
Sent standing armies in times of peace without the approval of the colonists themselves—trying to intimidate the colonists with shows of military force.
Closed the doors to colonial assemblies and shut down American ports.

The King had already let the colonists down. He didn’t stand up to Parliament or stop the abuses of his royal officials. Furthermore, the King himself abused the rights of the colonists. He declared war. He violated the social contract. And he hadn’t listened to their petitions, to their grievances. He simply ignored them. Here’s how the colonists explained the King’s key flaw in the Declaration itself: “In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” So, the King—and the British Empire itself—had to go.

A bloody war followed—ending with the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 and the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

A little over two decades after King George III took the throne, the American people had broken from Great Britain and begun a new experiment in republican government.

Interested in learning more?

Much of this backgrounder relied on the indispensable scholarship in Akhil Reed Amar’s The Words that Made Us. For more information on this topic, check out Amar’s book.

Want to join the conversation?

Sort by:

No posts yet.