The Story of the American Revolution That Started 250 Years Ago

On 4 July, Americans celebrate the events of 1776. That was the year when the Continental Congress decided to break away from Great Britain with the adoption of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The American War of Independence started that year.

However, the American Revolution was already ongoing at that time.

Initially, it had a different purpose: forcing reforms from the Crown. The colonials’ main grievance was taxation without representation. Tensions flared up when new pieces of legislation, such as the 1765 Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts of 1774, were passed by Parliament in London without having any representatives from America to vote on them. The aim of these new laws was to collect additional tax revenue from the American colonies to make up for the cost of protecting them during the French and Indian War a few years prior.

The two most notable incidents that occurred before the start of the all-out war were the Boston Massacre (1770) and the Boston Tea Party (1773). In 1770 a crowd in Boston egged on the stationed Royal troops so much that soldiers ended up opening fire, killing five. However, this was not exactly the act of tyranny the Patriots in America would have had you believe. At their trial, the soldiers were defended by none other than future Founding Father John Adams, and he managed to get most of them acquitted on the grounds of reasonable self-defence.

In 1773 the revolutionary group Sons of Liberty dressed up as Native Americans and boarded a British merchant ship docked in Boston Harbor. In protest against the law forcing colonials to buy the tea only from British companies, they dumped the shipment of tea into the ocean. The value of the lost goods was around £10,000, which would be equal to around $1.7 million today.

Tensions between the American colonies and the power centre of the British Empire kept rising and subsiding at that time.

On 19 April 1775, however, a point of no return came. That day, the American Revolutionary War started.

With the hostilities escalating, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress asked local militias to train and prepare for a possible armed conflict. In response, the British Empire declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion and sent out Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith with around 700 British regulars to collect and destroy the firearms of local civilians. The Patriots, however, got word of the plan in advance through their spy network.

Thus, they moved their arms supply to the countryside, outside of major population centres like Boston. Lieutenant Colonel Smith and his men had to go on a dangerous expeditionary journey to find all the weapons, with revolutionaries waiting to ambush them.

This was also when local silversmith and militiaman Paul Revere went on his famous midnight run to warn his fellow patriots of the soldiers coming. However, he certainly did not yell ‘the British are coming’, as it is commonly portrayed in modern folklore—that would not have made much sense, since at this point, the vast majority of people living in the American colonies also considered themselves British. Instead, he was most likely yelling ‘the Regulars are coming’ or ‘the Regulars are out’.

So, as the Regulars were indeed coming and trying to get their hands on the weapons of colonial revolutionaries, the ‘shot heard around the world’ rang out in Lexington, Massachusetts. It is unclear to this day which side fired first, but one thing is certain: with the Battles of Lexington and Concord (another nearby town), the American Revolutionary War was on!

‘On 19 April 1775, the “shot heard around the world” rang out in Lexington, Massachusetts…the American Revolutionary War was on!’

The Continental Congress made an earnest effort to come to a diplomatic resolution by sending the Olive Branch Petition to King George III in July 1775. However, his response was not what the Patriots in America had hoped for. Instead of the desired reforms, all they got was a promise of amnesty if they put down their weapons. Continue fighting, and they were threatened with hanging by the King.

A year later, by the time the famous date of 4 July 1776 came, which we celebrate today, it was certain: the colonies were going their own way, breaking away from the British crown, and forming the great nation of the United States of America.

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