[Pharmboy]

That is well-recognized as fact. At the end of the F&I War, the Brits had spent a lot of treasure defending their colonists, and felt strongly that the colonists should help repay the crown. Further, when the Brits pulled out of their wartime headquarters in NYC, it produced an economic depression there.

The Stamp Act Congress was held in NYC, as it was there from 1765-1770 that was the hotbed of revolutionary fervor; it then shifted to Boston.

The combination of increased taxes and economic hard times yielded a strong reaction to George III and the tinderbox was finally touched off by the Boston Massacre.

[cripplecreek]

A full decade before the war broke out, Franklin was warning the British that they were going to cause a war. (Its amusing to me that Franklin taunted them with the fact that they would find no guns but they would find a war)

Q. Can anything less than a military force carry the Stamp Act into execution?

A. I do not see how a military force can be applied to that purpose.

Q. Why may it not?

A. Suppose a military force sent into America; they will find nobody in arms; what are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.

Benjamin Franklin, Testimony Against the Stamp Act (1766)