THE LIBERTY BELL NEWS LETTER of the KANSAS SOCIETY SONS of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION November 1, 2017 Issue 3

THE LIBERTY BELL NEWS LETTER OF THE KANSAS SOCIETY SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION November 1, 2017 Issue 3 The Liberty Bell News Letter of the Kansas Society Sons of the American Revolution The President’s Corner by Dennis Nelson willing to risk it all in the are growing our Society, The March to 1000! American Revolution. They are reinvigorating existing chapters As I began to write this article, our true Patriots. with new members, and looking our Kansas Society has grown to th to expand with new chapters in The year 2026 is the 250 Kansas. over 800 members. Just in 2016, anniversary of the signing of the we exceeded 700 members for Declaration of Independence. The Kansas Society SAR march to the first time. I attribute this This will result in renewed 1,000 members is well on its way! growth to our membership telling interest in the founding of the Thank you for all you do for the others about our Society and to United States and the SAR! our hard-working state, chapter Revolutionary War. It will also and non-SAR genealogists that result in an increased interest in refuse to give up on proving an proving your ancestry back to the applicant’s lineage. I also Revolution. Some of these attribute it to the referrals we related 250th anniversaries are receive from the DAR and others beginning soon. The Townsend and the NSSAR website that Revenue Act 2017, British Troops informs us of interested arrive in Boston 2018, Boston applicants. Massacre 2020, Boston Tea Party Any time there is political 2023, Battles of Lexington and divisions within our country, Concord and Bunker Hill 2025. when there is even disagreement This is an exciting time to be a as to what is patriotic and what is member of the Kansas Society of not, there is comfort in knowing the Sons of the American that our Patriot ancestors were Revolution. With your help we THE LIBERTY BELL NEWS LETTER OF THE KANSAS SOCIETY SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION November 1, 2017 Issue 3 commerce to travel on British shipping through British harbors, th The 250 Parliament had done little to actively govern the American Colonies. The Anniversary of the vast majority of the tax incomes Townshend Acts helping sustain the operations of the Empire were paid by British subjects living in the British Isles, but as long by Compatriot Brooks Lyles (KS) as the status quo remained profitable to English merchants and ife in colonial America and its the Crown, there was no great relationship with England clamor to bring the Colonies under during the first half of the the thumb of Parliament. 18 th Century was pretty L It was not until 1754 when an good. The colonists provided timber, tar, sugar, molasses, tobacco, animal incident in the Ohio Valley sparked skins, rice, and indigo to Great The Seven Years War, known as The Britain and imported wool and silk French and Indian War to most clothing, clocks, books, china, Americans, that things changed. The Right Honourable Charles Townshend (1725-1767) Great Britain prevailed against furniture, guns and bullets, steel and 6 iron products from the shops and France and her allies in this first about 9% of the nation’s income, factories of the mother country. The world war, incurring a debt of £130M Parliament began looking again at colonists governed and taxed (greater than the annual output of the western colonies. The Colonists 3 felt they had already paid heavily themselves with minimal oversight the nation’s economy ) along the from crown officials. They had way. To put that in perspective, with the blood of their militias, the militias that defended their villages £130,000,000 in 1764 would be over vast amounts of food, wagons, £21,000,000,000 in today’s livestock and other supplies they and protected the frontier, and when 4 the Crown called they would help currency. provided British Armies operating on fight the enemies of Great Britain. the continent, as well as the local Since the Crown had incurred this taxes charged by their own colonial This long period of intentional debt protecting the American assemblies. They were doing their “Salutary Neglect” by Parliament Colonies, many in Parliament felt the duty as they had come to see their and the King had led the colonists to Colonies should help pay it. role in the empire. think themselves “Independent”, Additionally the vast French- though loyal subjects of the King. It Canadian territories ceded to A New King and Instability was a mutually beneficial England in the 1763 Treaty of Paris5 arrangement. meant an additional 10,000 troops In 1760, with two years remaining in the war, King George II died and was By the end of the 1740s however, would be needed to prevent an insurrection of the predominately succeeded by his grandson King upwards of two million people were George III. Over the next 10 years, living in the American Colonies1, and French-speaking Catholic population. With taxes consuming the young King appointed seven some in Parliament were starting to different Prime Ministers to run his look at them as an untapped source government, a period known as the of tax revenue. Other than expected 7 ‘Decade of Ministerial Instability’. compliance with the Navigation What they each had in common was Acts2, which required colonial 3 Page 17, An Empire on the Edge, How Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Bunker, 2014 4 1 Page 15, An Empire on the Edge, How http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/ 6 Page 18, An Empire on the Edge, How Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Pages/resources/inflationtools/calculator/def Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Bunker, 2014 ault.aspx Bunker, 2014 2 http://www.ncpedia.org/navigation-acts- 5 https://history.state.gov/milestones/1750- 7 http://www.historyhome.co.uk/c- 1651-1660 1775/treaty-of-paris eight/constitu/min-inst.htm THE LIBERTY BELL NEWS LETTER OF THE KANSAS SOCIETY SONS 3 OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION | the crushing debt and the Board, enforced the collection of the territories.11 The colonists viewed requirement to prepare Great Britain tax.8 The Currency Act, which this differently from previous acts, for the inevitable next war. controlled the printing and use of not as one designed to regulate colonial paper money, was driven by commerce, but a fundamental shift Another result of this constant British merchants who wanted to be in British policy to raise money in the turnover and the struggle to build paid in British sterling and not colonies without going through the and maintain Parliamentary colonial paper currency.9 colonial legislatures. If enacted, it coalitions was indifference towards set a dangerous precedent for more the North American colonies. They The reaction of the colonists was not and larger taxes in the future and were too focused on their own what Parliament had expected. The more control over their daily lives. challenges at home to worry much colonists resisted, and Parliament about their North American colonies. discovered it had very little authority And to be honest, that was what In many ways this lack of a coherent in the colonies to enforce its policies. Grenville and some others in colonial policy was a major factor in Governing from 3000 miles away the eventual loss of America. was difficult at best and almost Nowhere is this more apparent than impossible when the colonies had in the series of acts that were their own assemblies and courts imposed and just as rapidly repealed filled with free born independent by Parliament during this period. thinking men (and lawyers) who The Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp were willing to argue Parliament’s and Quartering Acts of 1765, and the right to impose its authority on Townshend Acts of 1767 are all them. In New England and New attempts to lessen the debt the York, leaders organized boycotts of empire had incurred, with a luxury items from England, but the secondary objective of reminding larger issue across all the colonies the colonies that they were subjects was a depressed post-war economy. of the King and, as such and in all The tax was considered an undue matters, subservient to Parliament. burden on the common man. The Sugar and Currency Acts of In March 1765, before the full 1764, the Stamp and Quartering colonial reaction to the Sugar Act Acts of 1765 was felt in England, Grenville and Parliament were seeking. Parliament followed up with the Stamp Act, and in May with the The uproar in colonial legislatures In 1763 Prime Minister and 10 was quick and resolute. The Virginia Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Quartering Act. Ostensibly, the tax was going to be used to help pay for House of Burgesses adopted Patrick Greenville, was bent on lowering the 12 the troops needed to protect the Henry's Stamp Act Resolves. These national debt and initiating colonial resolves declared that Americans reforms to bring the American American frontier and to garrison the newly acquired Canadian possessed the same rights as colonies more in line with the Englishmen, especially the right to Crown’s other overseas holdings. be taxed only by their own With the full backing of Parliament, representatives; that Virginians he initiated a series of well intended, should pay no taxes except those but heavy-handed laws. The Sugar Act, also known as the American 8 Revenue Act, reduced the tax on a http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related gallon of molasses from 6 pence to 3 /sugaract.html 9 pence, but closed several loop holes, http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related 11 Page 18, An Empire on the Edge, How prohibited trade with the French, /currencyact.html Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Dutch, and Spanish in the West 10For more details on the Stamp Act see: The Bunker, 2014 Indies, and in conjunction with the Stamp Act, by David Schrader, Fall 2015 12 establishment of the Customs Issue of SAR Magazine.

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