A Summary View of the Rights of British America

First published in 1774; excerpted from The Portable Thomas Jefferson, 1975

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery."

Thomas Jefferson, from A Summary View of the Rights of British America

In 1774, Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was busy in London, England, trying to get his friends in Parliament to see that trouble was brewing in America over British taxes. Opposition to measures such as the Stamp Act, the Declaratory Act, and the Intolerable Acts was reaching crisis proportions. The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed printed...