The argument that became a revolution

After 1763 Britain wanted the colonies to help pay for their own defense, and passed a series of taxes to do it: the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties, the tax on tea. The colonists' objection was not really the amount. It was that they had no members in the Parliament that voted them. "No taxation without representation" is a slogan about consent, not about money.

Committees of correspondence carried letters between the colonies so that thirteen separate places could think as one. In September 1774 the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia — the first time they acted together as a body.

In January 1776 Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a pamphlet arguing in plain language that an island should not rule a continent and that a king was an absurd way to choose a leader. It sold in enormous numbers for a population that size, and it moved people who had not yet made up their minds. Six months later the Congress voted to separate.

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