History 2010 - Ramey: Exam #2

In 1765, the British Parliament imposed stamp duties on the American colonies, setting in motion the chain of events which ultimately led to the American Revolution. This paper analyzes the practicalities of the Stamp Act to provide insights into the way in which a tax instrument that was successful in one setting failed to achieve similar success in another. The reasons for choosing stamp duties as an appropriate fiscal measure, the colonial reaction to the tax, and the way in which the tax was accounted for by the British government bureaucracy are examined. The paper demonstrates the value of using an accounting lens to provide a more nuanced interpretation of the Stamp Act crisis.

The article explores how American colonial sentiments towards the 1774 Quebec Act became a cause of the American Revolution. The author argues that the personal efforts of Great Britain's King George III to both support and pass the legislation helped solidify anti-British sentiments unlike previous legislation aimed against the colonies such as the Townshend duties, the Tea Act, and the Boston Port Act. The author considers how the Quebec Act was portrayed in American colonial newspapers and periodicals, matters of religion in British North America, and historiography associated with the Quebec Act.

London's East India Company was in dire condition in 1772 and hoped to recover by selling surplus tea to the American colonies, though Britain refused to revoke the three-pence a pound tax on the tea. The resulting Boston Tea Party led directly to the Revolutionary War.

By: Jack Rakove
In: American History. 45.3 (Aug. 2010): p58
From: Academic OneFile

An essay is presented which discusses the commercial dispute between the U.S. and Great Britain during the 1780s, with a particular focus on the role that American nationalism played in the dispute. The roles that the U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the U.S. diplomat and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Virginia legislator and future U.S. President James Madison played in the U.S.'s trade dispute with Great Britain, including in regard to U.S. sovereignty, are discussed.

Thomas Jefferson's hatred of “money men” and commerce led to the creation of an unruly banking and regulatory system prone to periodic and disastrous breakdowns. The seeds of the current financial crisis were sown during Jefferson's epic battles with the first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, who was better acquainted than Jefferson with the rough-and-tumble of the marketplace. The two statesmen clashed over enormous war debts from the American Revolution, an unstable money supply, and the question of whether America required a central bank. Initially, Hamilton gained the upper hand, getting the young republic on a sound financial footing by establishing a coherent, disciplined banking system, but Jefferson and his supporters eventually destroyed Hamilton's system, setting the nation on a course to bank fraud and failure, a chaotic money supply, and a boom-and-bust cycle that has produced major financial crises about every 20 years.

Federalist No. 1 sets the basic framework for interpreting the U.S. Constitution. It contains an implied definition of 'good government' that occupied the founders as they built a stronger national government. This essay explains the conflict embedded in the debate between the two theories of good government offered by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and asks how the competing definitions might be reconciled with recent experience.