The American colonists felt that they were not being treated fairly by the British government. The government had imposed several new taxes on the colonists. The colonists had no vote in the British parliment. These taxes caused quite a bit of anger in the colonists. To demonstrate their unhappines with the tea tax, several colonial men dressed up like indians and threw boxes of tea off of a ship in Boston. This event became known as the Boston Tea Party.
This and many of the colonists' reasons for independence are cited in Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense. This pamphlet was well read throughout the colonies and helped to fan the fires of independence
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