The American Colonists: Freedom Fighters or Terrorists? Essay Example

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gordon S. Wood, the American Revolution “does not appear to resemble the revolutions of other nations” when innocent people were killed and property was destroyed.” Also, the leaders of the revolution “do not fit our conventional image of revolutionaries” as being angry, passionate, reckless, and bloodthirsty” (The Radicalism of the American Revolution, p. 3). But in fact, the American Revolution was as “radical and revolutionary as any in history” (The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 5).

With these facts in mind, were the leaders of the revolution true terrorists or

were they freedom fighters that simply grew tired of being under the domination of the British Crown? Certainly, despite years of oppression by Great Britain and King George III, the American colonists were very patient, considering all of the legal acts that were imposed upon them by the British Parliament. But with the Boston Massacre, things came to a head and the colonists reacted with violence. Therefore, it is clear that their violent reactions were justified, due to the British firing the first shots at the Boston Massacre in 1770.

The first oppressive act imposed upon the American colonists was “a sort of litmus test for their extraordinary patience and desire to oppose the British Crown without resorting to violence” (Shaara, 67). This was the Tea Act which taxed all tea products in the colonies and reasserted “Parliament’s right to levy direct revenue taxes on the Colonies.” For the colonists, this tax was one of the first oppressive actions by the British Parliament and British Crown and quickly became “a symbol of taxation tyranny” for the colonists, not to mention making it possible for other taxes to be imposed in the future (“American Revolution”).

The second act was known as the Quartering Act which forced the colonists to provide free housing, room and board, and of course alcohol to all British soldiers stationed anywhere in the American colonies. If a soldier had to be at a certain place at a certain time, the colonists were also forced to provide transportation; if this place was a fort or military station, the colonists also had to provide gunpowder. This action by the British Parliament was especially “resented in New York where the largest number of reserves were quartered” which then led to outward defiance by the people of New York City (“American Revolution”).

The third act was the Townshend Act which imposed more taxes on items like glass, writing paper, various kinds of metal (lead and copper), materials for clothing and also tea. It also created a new system that would enable the British Crown to collect taxes via custom duties. For the colonists, this much despised action “posed an immediate threat to established traditions of colonial self-government” and to the long-held tradition of representation in state assemblies (“American Revolution”). Not surprisingly, resistance “rose up to this act in the city of Boston through face-to-face confrontations and often physical violence between the colonists and British enforcement agents” or government authorized policemen (Wood, The American Revolution, 145).

In rapid succession, three additional acts mandated by the British Parliament came about, being the Sugar Act which replaced another tax on molasses and sugar, one of the prime ingredients in making alcoholic beverages like beer, whiskey, and rum. Basically, this act was meant to bring an end to smuggling sugar and molasses from the Caribbean, but it unfortunately increased customs duties on sugar and molasses imported into the colonies. For those colonists that depended upon shipping sugar and molasses from the West Indies for a living, this tax act made it almost impossible to earn a profit.

The next act was the Stamp Act which placed a heavy tax on all legal documents, including marriage licenses, college diplomas, and personal wills. As might be expected, this act infuriated colonial lawyers as well as the common man and woman and as Dennis Fradin points out, protests by the colonists spread throughout the colonies and resulted in “small riots in large urban cities like Philadelphia and Boston, and the public burning of stamps as a form of refusal to recognize the tax” (The Stamp Act of 1765, 56).

The final act was called the Intolerable Act which was mandated by the British Parliament in 1774 as a way to punish those who had participated in the Boston Tea Party in 1773. This act had four basic parts–the Boston Port Bill which closed the port of Boston; the Massachusetts Government Act which took away all of the colony’s legal rights; the Administration of Justice Act which prevented British officials from being charged with a crime; and the Quebec Act which gave Quebec legal jurisdiction over the fur trade between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers (“American Revolution”).

Therefore, by the time of the Boston Massacre, the patience of the American colonists had run out, due in part to all of the acts imposed upon them by the British Parliament and the Crown. In many ways, these acts like the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act were directly responsible for what happened after the Boston Massacre, namely, outright rebellion by the American colonists. Also, since it was British soldiers that fired the first shots at the Boston Massacre, the colonists were truly justified to react with violence in order to achieve their independence to live as free men and women, but undoubtedly, in the eyes of the British Crown, the American rebels were indeed seen as terrorists, due to attempting to overthrow British domination and their outright defiance of the will of the all-powerful monarchy of King George III.

Works Cited

American Revolution. 2012. Web. Accessed 7 October, 2012. http://www.harlingen.isd.tenet.edu/coakhist/amrev.html

Fradin, Dennis. The Stamp Act of 1765. New York: Benchmark Books, 2009.

Shaara, Jeff. Rise to Rebellion: The American Revolution. New York: Ballantine Books, 2001.

Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Random House, 1991.

—. The American Revolution: A History. New York: Random House, 2003.