Thursday Sept 3

Yesterday and probably part of today you were looking at the widening split. The next part of the split that I want you to look a little closer at is one of the many taxes the British put on the Americans. We will review this next week but there was a good argument why the British had to tax America. Imagine for a second Puerto Rico gets attacked tomorrow by Cuba. They could be conquered but America sends down our military to help them. It ends up costing America 200 billion dollars but we are able to save Puerto Rico from invasion. Would America not ask Puerto Rico to at least help pay some of the costs of saving it? Great Britain had just won a war against France to keep and protect America. All Great Britain was doing was asking us to pay our share of the war. Thus began the beginning of Britain trying to tax America over and over again. The tax that angered colonists more than any other was the Stamp Act. It essentially taxed many things the colonists bought and paid for. Letters, Newspapers, Licenses, Death Certificates. It was one of the many things that led to the snowball growing larger and larger and larger.

I was going to have you write down a few slides but we will save most of it for next week. In your notes section I do want you to write down the following:

I. The growing snowball leading to America's Revolution
    A. The Enlightenment
    B. The Great Awakening
    C. The results of the French and Indian War
    D. The start of taxation

Reading of Stamp Act