of the American Revolution
By William S. Price, Jr.
f you could travel back
through time to 1 774 and
visit the colony of North
Carolina, you would find a peaceful
place of farmlands and forests and a
few small towns. Nothing you would
see and no one you would talk with
would give you an inkling that very
soon North Carolina would go to war
with its "owner,” George III, King of
England.
To be sure, there had been trou¬
bles for a long time. Parliament
(England's Congress) had been
passing laws placing taxes on the
colonists in America. There had
been the Sugar Act in 1 764, the
Stamp Act the following year, and a
variety of other laws that were meant
to get money from the colonists for
Great Britain. The colonists did not
like these laws.
Great Britain was passing these
laws because of the French and
Indian War, which had ended in
1 763. That war, which had been
fought in North America, left Great
Britain with a huge debt that had to
be paid. Parliament said it had
fought the long and costly war to pro¬
tect its American subjects from the
powerful French in Canada. Parlia¬
ment said it was right to tax the
American colonists to help pay the
bills for the war.
Most Americans disagreed. They
believed that England had fought the
expensive war mostly to strengthen
its empire and increase its wealth,
not to benefit its American subjects.
Also, Parliament was elected by
people living in England, and the
colonists felt that lawmakers living in
England could not understand the
colonists’ needs. The colonists felt
that since they did not take part in
voting for members of Parliament in
England they were not represented
in Parliament. So Parliament did not
have the right to take their money by
imposing taxes. "No taxation without
representation” became the Ameri¬
can rallying cry.
In 1774, much of this unrest had
calmed down, especially in the
southern colonies. Most North Caro¬
linians carried on their daily lives on
farms raising crops and tending
herds, and in cities shopkeeping,
cooking, sewing, and performing
dozens of other occupations and
tasks. They did not often think about
the king of England or his royal gov¬
ernor in North Carolina.
But beneath this calm surface
there were problems. Just three
years earlier at Great Alamance
Creek, 2,000 Tar Heel farmers called
"Regulators" had led an uprising, the
largest armed rebellion in any English
colony to that time. They wanted to
"regulate” the governor’s corrupt
local officials who were charging
huge fees and seizing property. The
royal governor, William Tryon, and
his militia crushed the rebellion at
the Battle of Alamance.
Another problem beneath the sur¬
face calm lay with the large African
and native American populations.
Many in these two groups hated their
low positions in a society dominated
by powerful whites. Some white
colonists believed that if a war with
England broke out, the black and red
Tar Heels would support the king in
hopes of gaining more control over
their own lives.
Finally, Tar Heels knew that
other colonies were continuing to
resist English control. In 1773,
colonists in Boston. Massachusetts,
had thrown shipments of tea into the
harbor rather than pay Parliament's
taxes on the tea. The "Boston Tea
Party" aroused all the colonies
against Parliament, which was
A long series of events led the American colonies to revolt against Great Britain. For instance, the
British government raised money in the 1 760s by requiring colonists to purchase stamps like this
one to put on goods sold in the American colonies. Colonists were unhappy about spending their
money on taxes and not being represented in the British Parliament.
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