There are many moments, and historians often disagree on these, that make war inevitable. It’s like stones rolling down a hill. At some point, gravity just takes over. This is the story of that long slide to rebellion.

Between 1766 and 1775, there are a dozen or more moments that could be pointed to as the true start of the American Revolution. Over time minor differences are amplified until the conflict rips the two apart. So, as the calendar flipped to 1775, after more than a decade of these small moments building up, war in America had become inevitable.

This starts with the Townshend Duties which reignite the embers that had only settled after the Stamp Act was repealed. As Britain crackdown on the protests, especially in Boston, tensions between soldiers and civilians rose to a fever pitch. It all exploded on a late night in March when eleven people were shot, and five killed.

Despite a sudden calm, the financial crisis that Great Britain faced, especially regarding the East India Company’s tea business, brought the colonies into focus again. The eventual standoff over the tea trade in America brought with it direct acts of rebellion. The rebel network continued to grow and eventually, the first shots rang out on Lexington Green: the war was on.

Join me as I lay out the slow slide towards rebellion, and help fill in those missing pages…

Join me on my journey through American History. Help fill in those missing pages.

Music

Intro: Fractured Timeline - Sémø

Outro: Don’t Tell Me What to Do - Katrina Stone

Sources

An Empire on the Edge - Nick Bunker

Voices of 1776 - Richard Wheeler

The Glorious Cause - Robert Middlekauff

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