Tuesday, May 11th

Began learning about the Road to Revolution in earnest. Timelines are done and we will be using the PBS series Liberty to supplement the different acts and events that lead to Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775. Today we began with a look at the colonies themselves in the early 1760s. The American colonies were but an outpost of the vast British Empire. The colonies were largely rural. There were over 50 billion trees. Only a few dirt paths connected the colonies.There were only a few "big" cities with about 10000 occupants - NY, Philly, Charleston, and Boston. Life was pretty good. America was the "land of opportunity" especially now that the vast Ohio wilderness was open. People here enjoyed a standard of living better than most places in the world. Americans were, on average, two inches taller than people back in merry, old England. People lived longer here. More children survived past the early years and families were bigger! No one is thinking about "independence" or "war for freedom", etc... Then we talked about the early controversial acts - the Proclamation of 1763 (one eyebrow raised), the Sugar Act of 1764 (two eyebrows raised), and the Stamp Act of 1765 (Hey, what's going on?)