Week 4 · Chapter

Chapter 4 — The Road to Revolution

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~50–60 minutes · Objectives 1, 3, and 4 · Read it first this week, before the lecture and the slide deck.

In plain language

This week is about how Britain and its North American colonies fell into a quarrel that ended in war. After Britain won a long war with France in 1763, Parliament began to tax the colonists directly. Many colonists answered that only their own representatives — the people they helped choose to make laws for them — could tax them. You will read two dated documents: the peace treaty that ended the war, and the declarations of a meeting of colonial delegates in 1765. You will also see where Native nations and enslaved people stood in this quarrel, even when the documents leave them out.

Why you already care about this

Picture a printer in a colonial port town in 1765, the year of the Stamp Act. The shop smells of ink. Each week the printer sets type for a small newspaper that neighbors read at the tavern. Then word arrives from London: soon every sheet of newspaper must carry a paid stamp, and the money goes to the Crown.

The printer can do the arithmetic on cost. But the sharper question is a different one. Who decided this? The tax was not voted by the colony's own assembly. It was voted by Parliament, an ocean away, where no one from the printer's town sat. A small tax on paper became a large argument about who had the right to tax at all.

That argument is this week's road. It runs from the Treaty of Paris of 1763, through the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, to the fighting at Lexington and Concord in 1775. You will read it the way a historian does: document by document, with dates checked against the record.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to: define the imperial crisis and give its starting and ending points; source and close-read the Treaty of Paris of 1763; explain the place of Native nations in the empire after 1763; explain what colonists meant by consent to taxation; source the Stamp Act Congress declarations and keep that congress apart from the Continental Congress; describe resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action; sort two sources as primary or secondary; and order the week's years and measure the gaps between them.

Memory hook: the printer's question is not "how much?" but "who decided?"

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 built the historian's tools, including primary and secondary sources and the four moves. Week 2 compared the empires that colonized North America and read the First Charter of Virginia and the Mayflower Compact. Week 3 traced how colonial law built hereditary racial slavery and read the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina.
This week: the Seven Years' War and the Treaty of Paris of 1763, Native nations and the Royal Proclamation, taxation and representation, the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, colonial resistance, and the road from the Tea Act to Lexington and Concord.
How they connect: you use Week 1's four moves on two new documents, and you carry Week 3's colonial society forward, because slavery was part of every colony whose protests spoke of liberty.
Where we're going next: Week 5, The American Revolution, takes up independence and the war; this week stops in April 1775.

Week 2 showed you that a colony sat on land Native nations already lived on and governed. Week 3 showed you that colonial law made slavery inherited and racial. Both facts stay true this week. The quarrel between Britain and the colonists was mostly a quarrel among British subjects, and the people it left out were still there. This chapter names them where the record lets it.

1. Define the imperial crisis: who decides the tax

Think about a rule at your workplace that a manager in another city changes without asking anyone on your shift. Even if the change is small, people start to ask who gets a say. That question can grow larger than the rule itself.

Historians give the colonial version of that question a name. The imperial crisis is the quarrel between Britain and its North American colonies from the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 to the fighting at Lexington and Concord in 1775 over who could tax and govern the colonies. It has a start and an end, which is a choice of periodization, one of the habits of mind from Week 1.

The quarrel had two sides, and you can see why each made sense to the people inside it. Britain's Parliament believed it could make laws for the whole empire. Many colonists believed that their own assemblies, which they elected, held the power to tax them. Each side read the same empire differently.

Misconception check. Students often think the imperial crisis was a long plan for independence from the start. That is tempting, because you know how the story ends. But for most of these twelve years, colonial protesters called themselves loyal subjects and asked Parliament to undo its laws. The cure is contingency: read each year's documents for what their makers wanted then, not for what came later.

Carry this sentence with you: the crisis began as an argument about consent, not independence.

2. Place the Seven Years' War

Picture a map of the world in the 1750s with colored pins for every place British and French soldiers or ships fought. The pins would land in North America, the Caribbean, West Africa, India, and Europe. That spread is the first thing to know about this war.

The Seven Years' War was the war between Britain and France for empire, fought in several parts of the world with Spain and Portugal drawn in. In North America the same war is called the French and Indian War. That name comes from the British colonists' point of view: they fought the French and the Native nations allied with France.

The second thing to know is that Native nations were not bystanders. They fought as allies of both empires, for their own interests: to protect their land, keep their trade, and hold their place between two rival powers. The Odawa, for example, supported the French, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia. That is standard historical usage, taught here in words.

Misconception check. Students often think the French and Indian War was a war between the French and the Indians. That is tempting, because of the name. But it was a war between Britain and France, and Native nations fought on both sides as allies with their own aims. The cure is to read the name as a British colonist's label and to ask who used it.

Caveat: this chapter names the war's reach and its ending. The battles themselves belong on the Readings & Resources page, which links two videos on the war.

3. Read the Treaty of Paris of 1763

Imagine two neighbors settling a fence-line dispute by signing a paper that also moves the fence across a third family's yard. The third family never saw the paper. You would want to know who signed it and who did not.

The war ended with the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the week's first roster document. It is the agreement among Great Britain, France, and Spain, with Portugal acceding the same day, that ended the Seven Years' War. To cede is to hand over land or a right to another ruler or state by a formal agreement such as a treaty.

Worked example — the four moves on the Treaty of Paris. Take the moves in order.

Sourcing: the treaty's heading says it was concluded at Paris on 10 February 1763 among the kings of Great Britain, France, and Spain; the king of Portugal joined it the same day. It is a treaty, and the Avalon Project keeps the text.
Contextualization: Britain had won the war, so the treaty records what each crown gained and gave up.
Close reading: the pinned fragment records France's largest loss in North America.

"cedes and guaranties to his said Britannick Majesty, in full right, Canada"

Close reading, continued: "cedes" is the act of handing over, and "in full right" means without conditions. The spelling "Britannick" is the eighteenth-century printing, kept as Avalon prints it. In other words, a later article has Spain hand Florida to Britain.
Close reading, what it leaves out: the parties are four European kings. No Native nation signs the treaty or is named in it, yet the lands it moves from one crown to another were Native homelands.
Corroboration: the Royal Proclamation that the king issued later the same year, in Section 4, treats these same lands as Britain's new acquisitions.

The reading in one plain sentence: the Treaty of Paris shows that France ceded Canada to Britain in 1763; it is evidence of what the crowns agreed, not of what the Native nations on those lands accepted.

Misconception check. Students often think that once a treaty says land has changed hands, the people living there have agreed. That is tempting, because a treaty sounds final. But a treaty binds the parties who made it, and no Native nation was one of them. The cure is the sourcing question: who signed this, and who is missing?

4. See the new empire from the side of Native nations

Think about a landlord who changes hands while you are still living in the building. The new owner has different rules, and nobody asked you. Many Native nations in the Great Lakes country faced a much larger version of that change in 1763.

Many of these nations had traded and allied with the French. They saw the British who took over the French forts as a threat to their lands. In the spring of 1763 an alliance of Odawa, Wyandot, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe warriors rose against British rule. Pontiac's War is the war that this alliance, led by the Odawa leader Obwandiyag (Pontiac), began against British posts in the Great Lakes country in the spring of 1763. The warriors laid siege to Fort Detroit and took several other posts, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

That autumn the king issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763. It is King George III's proclamation that reserved the lands west of the Appalachian river sources to Native nations as hunting grounds. It also forbade colonists to settle or buy land there without the Crown's leave. Its own text dates it 7 October 1763 at the king's court. Here is what it says, in other words. Native nations under the king's protection were not to be disturbed on lands they had not sold. Colonists were to leave lands they had already settled there. Any purchase of Native land had to be made by the Crown, at a public meeting of the nation selling it.

Read the Proclamation the way you read every source. It is the Crown's account of its own policy. It tells you what London wanted, which was peace on the frontier and control of land sales. It does not give you the Native nations' own view, which you would look for in their speeches, their councils, and their actions, such as the war of 1763 itself.

Many colonists who hoped to farm or sell western land resented the line. Many crossed it anyway. So the same document that recognized Native land in one way became a colonial grievance in another.

These nations are not only part of the past. Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi communities live in the Great Lakes region today, among them the unceded community of Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island, as the Canadian Encyclopedia describes it.

Misconception check. Students often think the Proclamation of 1763 shows that Britain protected Native nations out of goodwill. That is tempting, because the text speaks of protection and of preventing frauds. But a proclamation is evidence of what its maker said and planned, not proof of its motives or its results. The cure is to keep the speaker's claim apart from what happened on the ground.

Pause and choose one: (a) Write two sentences on what the Proclamation of 1763 can tell you about British aims and what it cannot tell you about Native nations' aims. (b) Write two sentences on why a colonist and an Odawa leader might read the same line on a map in opposite ways.

5. Tell taxation from taxation without representation

Picture two neighborhood fees. In the first, your block association meets, debates, and votes a small fee to fix the streetlights. In the second, a company you have never dealt with sends you a bill for the same amount. The money is the same. The feeling is not, because only one fee came from people you chose.

After 1763, Britain kept soldiers in North America and carried a heavy war debt. Parliament looked to the colonies for revenue to help pay for the war and the empire's defense, as standard historical usage describes it. The Stamp Act was the law Parliament passed in 1765 requiring that legal documents, newspapers, and other printed paper in the colonies carry a paid stamp. Even dice had to carry one, as the Massachusetts Historical Society's account of the act notes. Parliament repealed it in 1766.

Three terms carry the argument, and you will use all three all week:

Parliament — Britain's lawmaking body, made up of the elected House of Commons and the House of Lords, which claimed the power to make laws and lay taxes for the colonies.
Representation — having a member who speaks and votes for you in the body that makes the laws you live under.
Consent — agreement to a law or a tax, given by a person directly or through the representatives that person helped choose.

Worked example — the consent test. Apply one test to two illustrative taxes on the printer's paper.

Tax A: the colony's own elected assembly votes a duty on paper. The printer helped choose members of that assembly.
Test A: was the tax laid by representatives the printer helped choose? Yes. By the colonists' own principle, Tax A has their consent, even if the printer dislikes it.
Tax B: Parliament votes a stamp duty on the same paper. No member of the House of Commons was chosen by the printer's town.
Test B: was the tax laid by representatives the printer helped choose? No. By the colonists' principle, Tax B lacks their consent.

In words: the colonists' complaint was about who laid the tax, not about paying taxes at all. That is the difference between taxation and taxation without representation.

Misconception check. Students often think colonists objected to all taxes. That is tempting, because the slogans of the time sound like a refusal to pay. But colonists paid taxes their own assemblies voted. What they rejected were taxes laid on them by a Parliament in which they had no representatives. The cure is the consent test: ask who voted the tax.

Honesty note: not every colonist agreed with the protest, and Parliament's supporters argued that every subject was represented by the House of Commons as a whole. The course presents that disagreement as the people of the time argued it.

6. Source the Stamp Act Congress declarations

Imagine a museum drawer labeled "Letters of the Town Council, 1910" that holds letters from 1890. The label is wrong, but the letters are still real. You would trust the letters' own dates and signatures over the drawer's label.

The week's Primary Source Workshop document comes with a label problem of that kind. The Stamp Act Congress was the meeting of delegates from nine colonies in New York City in October 1765 that adopted declarations against taxation without the colonists' consent. The Massachusetts Historical Society counts twenty-seven delegates from those nine colonies and fourteen resolutions, and the text on the Avalon Project's page holds fourteen declarations.

Avalon's title is the name the Avalon Project prints at the top of a document's page, which a reader checks against the document's own text and origin. For this document, the title reads "Resolutions of the Continental Congress". But the Continental Congress first met in 1774. The body that adopted these declarations in 1765 was the Stamp Act Congress.

Worked example — the four moves on the Stamp Act Congress declarations. Take the moves in order.

Sourcing: the Stamp Act Congress made them; they are resolutions; they are dated 1765; the Avalon Project keeps the text, under Avalon's title naming the Continental Congress.
Sourcing, the title check: the Continental Congress first met in 1774, and 1774 − 1765 = 9 years. A congress that did not yet exist could not have adopted declarations nine years before it met, so Avalon's title names the wrong body.
Contextualization: the Stamp Act had passed earlier in 1765 and was due to take effect that autumn; crowds in several towns had already forced stamp officers to resign.
Close reading: the pinned fragment is the principle at the center of the crisis.

"that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives"

Close reading, continued: "their own consent" is the key phrase, and "given personally, or by their representatives" says how consent is given. Here is what the other declarations say, in other words. The delegates profess allegiance to the Crown and due subordination to Parliament. They say the colonists are not and cannot be represented in the House of Commons. They claim trial by jury, and they ask for repeal by petition.
Close reading, what it leaves out: the declarations say nothing about the enslaved people who lived in every one of the colonies, and nothing about the Native nations beyond the Proclamation line.
Corroboration: set the declarations beside the Stamp Act's own reach over printed paper in Section 5. The congress objected to that act by name.

The reading in one plain sentence: the declarations show that delegates from nine colonies argued in 1765 that only their own representatives could tax them; they show what those delegates claimed, not what every colonist thought.

Misconception check. Students often think the Stamp Act Congress was the Continental Congress. That is tempting, because Avalon's own title says so. But the Stamp Act Congress met in 1765, and the Continental Congress first met in 1774, nine years later. The cure is sourcing over labels: date a document from its own text and origin, then name the archive's title as the archive's.

7. Follow resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action

Think about the ways a group of tenants might push back on a landlord. They can write a letter. They can refuse to pay for an extra service until it changes. Or some of them can make a scene in the lobby. Colonists used all three.

Here are the three tools you will see again and again, each with its course-exact meaning:

Petition — a formal written request to a ruler or a lawmaking body asking it to act or to undo an act. The Stamp Act Congress ended its declarations by planning one.
Boycott — a shared refusal to buy, sell, or use certain goods in order to pressure the people who make or sell them to change a policy.
Crowd action — a group's public protest outside the law, from hanging an official in effigy to destroying property, used to force a policy or an officer to give way. In Boston in 1765, a crowd hanged the stamp officer in effigy and tore apart his house, and he resigned, as the Massachusetts Historical Society recounts.

The tools did not end with the Stamp Act. The Townshend duties were the taxes Parliament laid in 1767 on glass, paper, lead, paint, and tea imported into the colonies; all but the tax on tea were repealed in 1770. In plain words, they were a second try at raising money from the colonies. Colonists answered with a nonimportation agreement. That is a pledge by colonial merchants and towns to stop ordering goods from Britain until Parliament repealed a tax or law they opposed. Women spun and wove homespun cloth so that families could wear American-made goods. Not everyone kept the pledges, and some merchants went on importing.

Now picture a fresh scenario in your mind: a shopkeeper in a market town who sells British cloth. A boycott would cost the shop sales. Breaking it might cost the shop its customers, who read the newspaper notices of who had signed. The shopkeeper's choice shows how a boycott turned buying and selling into politics.

Worked example — sorting two sources about boycotts. The course's source-sorting set is twelve illustrative sources this course wrote, each keyed as primary or secondary for a question about the period it comes from. Two of its items fit this week.

Item 3, a 1765 newspaper notice announcing a boycott of British cloth: printed at the time, so it is primary for a question about colonial boycotts.
Item 4, a historian's 2010 article on colonial boycotts: a later account that interprets the evidence, so it is secondary.
Count: one of each, so 1 + 1 = 2 items sorted this week.

In words: the notice is the boycott speaking; the article is a historian explaining it.

Misconception check. Students often think a source is secondary if it was printed for the public, like a newspaper notice. That is tempting, because a newspaper reports on events. But a notice printed in 1765 to announce a boycott was made during the period, so it is primary for that boycott. The cure is Week 1's test: when was the source made, compared with the events it describes?

Pause and choose one: (a) Write two sentences on whether a boycott counts as a peaceful protest, using the shopkeeper's choice as your example. (b) Write two sentences on why spinning homespun cloth could be a political act for the women who did it.

8. Close the road at Lexington and Concord

Picture a harbor at night, a crowd at the docks, and crates splitting open as they hit the water. Then picture the same harbor closed to ships for months. The first picture was the colonists' act; the second was Parliament's answer.

The Tea Act was the law of 1773 that helped the East India Company sell its tea in the colonies while keeping Parliament's tax on tea, which led to the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor. The men who dumped the tea went disguised as Mohawk Indians. The Coercive Acts were the laws Parliament passed in 1774 to punish Massachusetts after the destruction of the tea, beginning with the closing of the port of Boston; colonists called them the Intolerable Acts. The First Continental Congress was the meeting of delegates from twelve colonies in Philadelphia in 1774 that answered the Coercive Acts with a boycott of British trade and a petition to the king. Lexington and Concord are the two Massachusetts towns where British soldiers and colonial militia fought in April 1775, the first battles of the war that followed.

One fact belongs beside every protest you read from these years. Colonial writers often said Parliament meant to reduce them to slavery, and the 1774 Congress spoke of a plan to enslave America. In 1775 slavery was legal in every one of the thirteen colonies. Enslaved people lived in Boston and New York as well as in Virginia and Carolina. State it plainly: the colonists' language of liberty and slavery was spoken in a society that held people in slavery.

A debate historians still have. Was the Revolution radical or conservative? Here is the strongest case on each side. The conservative case: the protesters said they were defending rights they already held as English subjects, and the 1765 declarations you read profess loyalty and ask for repeal by petition. The leaders were often men of property who wanted to keep their own assemblies and much of the existing order, slavery included. The radical case: resistance pulled ordinary people into politics, from sailors in the crowds to women at the spinning wheel. Committees and crowds took power from royal officials. And an argument about consent, once made, could be turned against any authority. The course takes no side, and you will weigh more evidence for both cases next week.

Worked example — ordering the week's years. Put the six years in order and measure the gaps.

Order, earliest to latest: 1763 (the Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years' War), 1765 (the Stamp Act Congress declarations), 1767 (the Townshend duties), 1773 (the Tea Act), 1774 (the Coercive Acts and the First Continental Congress), and 1775 (fighting at Lexington and Concord).
Treaty to the Stamp Act Congress: 1765 − 1763 = 2 years.
Stamp Act Congress to the Continental Congress: 1774 − 1765 = 9 years.
Span of the imperial crisis: 1775 − 1763 = 12 years.
Gaps in order: 1765 − 1763 = 2; 1767 − 1765 = 2; 1773 − 1767 = 6; 1774 − 1773 = 1; 1775 − 1774 = 1.
Check: the five gaps add back to the span, 2 + 2 + 6 + 1 + 1 = 12 years.

In words: you can see the crisis move slowly for its first ten years and fast at the end, with the Coercive Acts, the Continental Congress, and the first fighting packed into 1774 and 1775. Of these years, the course keys 1763 and 1765, from its survey chronology, the course's list of twenty-eight keyed years from the First Charter of Virginia in 1606 to the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

Misconception check. Students often think the causes of the American Revolution and the causes of the Civil War were the same, since both are sometimes summed up as fights over rights. That is tempting, because both wars broke a union. But this week's documents name taxation without consent, representation, and Parliament's authority. A later week reads the secession declarations of 1860, which name slavery in their own words. The cure is to let each war's documents name its causes.

Key terms

Imperial crisis — the quarrel between Britain and its North American colonies from the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 to the fighting at Lexington and Concord in 1775 over who could tax and govern the colonies. (first used: 1. Define the imperial crisis: who decides the tax)
Seven Years' War — the war between Britain and France for empire, fought in several parts of the world with Spain and Portugal drawn in, that ended with the Treaty of Paris of 1763. (first used: 2. Place the Seven Years' War)
French and Indian War — the North American name for the Seven Years' War, in which Native nations fought as allies of both sides for their own interests. (first used: 2. Place the Seven Years' War)
Treaty of Paris of 1763 — the treaty among Great Britain, France, and Spain, with Portugal acceding, that ended the Seven Years' War and in which France ceded Canada to Britain. (first used: 3. Read the Treaty of Paris of 1763)
Cede — to hand over land or a right to another ruler or state by a formal agreement such as a treaty. (first used: 3. Read the Treaty of Paris of 1763)
Pontiac's War — the war that an alliance led by the Odawa leader Obwandiyag (Pontiac) began against British posts in the Great Lakes country in the spring of 1763. (first used: 4. See the new empire from the side of Native nations)
Royal Proclamation of 1763 — the king's proclamation that reserved the lands west of the Appalachian river sources to Native nations and forbade colonists to settle or buy land there without the Crown's leave. (first used: 4. See the new empire from the side of Native nations)
Stamp Act — the law of 1765 requiring that legal documents, newspapers, and other printed paper in the colonies carry a paid stamp. (first used: 5. Tell taxation from taxation without representation)
Parliament — Britain's lawmaking body, made up of the elected House of Commons and the House of Lords. (first used: 5. Tell taxation from taxation without representation)
Representation — having a member who speaks and votes for you in the body that makes the laws you live under. (first used: 5. Tell taxation from taxation without representation)
Consent — agreement to a law or a tax, given directly or through the representatives a person helped choose. (first used: 5. Tell taxation from taxation without representation)
Stamp Act Congress — the meeting of delegates from nine colonies in New York City in October 1765 that adopted declarations against taxation without consent. (first used: 6. Source the Stamp Act Congress declarations)
Avalon's title — the name the Avalon Project prints at the top of a document's page, checked against the document's own text and origin. (first used: 6. Source the Stamp Act Congress declarations)
Petition — a formal written request to a ruler or a lawmaking body asking it to act or to undo an act. (first used: 7. Follow resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action)
Boycott — a shared refusal to buy, sell, or use certain goods to pressure the people who make or sell them. (first used: 7. Follow resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action)
Crowd action — a group's public protest outside the law, from an effigy to the destruction of property. (first used: 7. Follow resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action)
Townshend duties — the taxes of 1767 on glass, paper, lead, paint, and tea imported into the colonies. (first used: 7. Follow resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action)
Nonimportation agreement — a pledge by merchants and towns to stop ordering goods from Britain until a tax or law was repealed. (first used: 7. Follow resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action)
Source-sorting set — twelve illustrative sources this course wrote, each keyed as primary or secondary. (first used: 7. Follow resistance by petition, boycott, and crowd action)
Tea Act — the law of 1773 that helped the East India Company sell its tea in the colonies while keeping the tax on tea. (first used: 8. Close the road at Lexington and Concord)
Coercive Acts — the laws of 1774 that punished Massachusetts after the destruction of the tea, beginning with the closing of the port of Boston. (first used: 8. Close the road at Lexington and Concord)
First Continental Congress — the meeting of delegates from twelve colonies in Philadelphia in 1774 that answered the Coercive Acts. (first used: 8. Close the road at Lexington and Concord)
Lexington and Concord — the two Massachusetts towns where British soldiers and colonial militia fought in April 1775. (first used: 8. Close the road at Lexington and Concord)
Survey chronology — the course's list of twenty-eight keyed years, from the First Charter of Virginia in 1606 to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. (first used: 8. Close the road at Lexington and Concord)

Summary

The imperial crisis ran from 1763 to 1775 and was a quarrel over who could tax and govern the colonies.
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the Seven Years' War; France ceded Canada to Britain, and no Native nation was a party.
Native nations fought in Pontiac's War, and the Royal Proclamation of 1763 reserved western lands to them in the Crown's own terms.
Colonists objected to taxes laid without their consent, not to all taxes.
The Stamp Act Congress met in 1765; the Continental Congress first met in 1774.
Colonists resisted by petition, boycott, and crowd action.
Slavery was legal in every colony whose protests spoke of liberty.
Whether the Revolution was radical or conservative is a debate historians still have.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative county's records hold three dated papers, from 1752, 1760, and 1771. Find the span from the first to the last and the gap between each pair in order.
An illustrative river town pays a bridge fee voted at its own town meeting, and later a fee of the same size set by a distant board on which the town has no member. Apply the consent test to each fee.
A classmate says, "The congress that met in 1765 was the Continental Congress, because the archive's title says so." Correct the claim in two sentences.
A historian studying a 1769 boycott finds a merchant's letter written that year and a museum label written in 2005. Sort each as primary or secondary for that question, and give the reason.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The span is 1771 − 1752 = 19 years. The gaps are 1760 − 1752 = 8 years and 1771 − 1760 = 11 years. Check: 8 + 11 = 19, so the gaps add back to the span.
The bridge fee voted at the town meeting passes the consent test, because the townspeople voted it themselves. The board's fee fails it, because the town had no member on the board. The amount is the same; what differs is who decided, which is the colonists' point about taxation without representation.
The body that met in 1765 was the Stamp Act Congress, and the Continental Congress first met in 1774, nine years later. An archive's title is a label added later, so you check it against the document's own date and origin.
The merchant's letter was written in 1769, during the boycott, so it is primary for that question. The 2005 museum label is a later account that explains the period, so it is secondary. The test is when the source was made, compared with the events it describes.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week The American Revolution follows the argument over consent to independence, and asks who the new rule of government included.

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