Another influence which hastened the Revolution was a desire to supplant
the men highest in official life. There was no place in the colonial
government for a Samuel Adams or a John Adams while the Hutchinsons and
the Olivers were preferred. But no personal ambitions can account for the
agreement of thirteen colonies having so many points of dissimilarity. The
merchants of Boston and New Haven, the townsmen of Concord and Pomfret,
the farmers of the Hudson and Delaware valleys, and the aristocratic
planters of Virginia and South Carolina, deliberately went to war rather
than submit. The causes of the Revolution were general, were wide-spread,
and were keenly felt by Americans of every class.

[Sidenote: Resistance of taxation.]

The grievance most strenuously put forward was that of "taxation without
representation." On this point the colonists were supported by the
powerful authority of Pitt and other English statesmen, and by an unbroken
line of precedent. They accepted "external taxation;" at the beginning of
the struggle they professed a willingness to pay requisitions apportioned
in lump sums on the colonies; they were accustomed to heavy taxation for
local purposes; in the years immediately preceding the Revolution the
people of Massachusetts annually raised about ten shillings per head. They
sincerely objected to taxation of a new kind, for a purpose which did not
interest them, by a power which they could not control. The cry of
"Taxation without representation" had great popular effect. It was simple,
it was universal, it sounded like tyranny.

[Sidenote: Resistance of garrisons.]

A greater and more keenly felt grievance was the establishment of
garrisons. The colonies were willing to run their own risk of enemies.