Tag Archives: James Otis

Another unpopular step England took after the war was to reorganize her defense system in the colonies. The French and Indian War had proved to the British that the colonies could not be depended upon to defend themselves. Some new system had to be worked out in North America, to defend not only the colonies, but also Canada, Florida and the wilderness east of the Mississippi. England decided to leave this task to a standing army of ten thousand British redcoats. Such an army would cost a great deal of money. Taxpayers in England were already paying very high taxes and could not be asked to pay more. Their taxes supported the powerful British navy, which protected the colonies as well as the mother country. It seemed no more than fair that the colonies should pay at least part of the expenses of the standing army in North America. The soldiers were there, after all, for their own protection. Accordingly, the colonies were given a year to raise the money themselves. They were warned that England would have to tax them if they failed to do so. For a year the colonists did nothing. They saw no need of supporting an army they had not asked for and did not want. Since the French forces had been driven from American soil, a large standing army seemed unnecessary. The colonists suspected that the real purpose of the army was to strengthen British control over all the colonial governments. England’s law-making body in London, the British Parliament, finally passed the Stamp Act in 1765. It required the colonists to buy stamps from British tax collectors. These stamps were to be placed on all newspapers, playing cards, dice and almanacs sold in the colonies and also on certain papers having to do with …

There had been few serious misunderstandings between the colonies and the mother country before the French and Indian War, but that was mainly because England had allowed the colonies to do pretty much as they pleased. They had been free to set up their own governments, make their own laws, have their own armed forces, print their own paper money and manage most of their local affairs as they saw fit. England’s American colonies had enjoyed far more freedom and independence than had any of the colonies of France or Spain. Not that England planned it that way. She had merely neglected the colonies for well over a hundred years. At first she had neglected them because they were small and far away and did not seem very important. Later she had neglected them because she was busy fighting one war after another with her most serious rivals, France and Spain. England had finally brought that struggle to an end with the great victory in the French and Indian War. It was the kind of victory she had been trying to win for seventy years. She won Florida from Spain and Canada and the wilderness east of the Mississippi from France. On the other side of the world, England had won French possessions in India as well. Her powerful navy ruled the seas and she was the strongest nation on earth. At the same time, the war had left England with many problems. She was deeply in debt, yet she had to support a large navy to protect her vast empire. To provide business for her many new factories, she had to find ways of increasing her trade with the colonies. England could no longer afford to neglect her American colonies. She had to tighten her grip on them and …