The Townshend Acts would use the revenue raised by the duties to pay the salaries of colonial governors and judges, ensuring the loyalty of America's governmental officials to the British Crown. However, these policies prompted colonists to take action by boycotting British goods.

American colonists rebelled against the taxes they found repressive, rallying around the cry, “no taxation without representation.” Skirmishes between colonists and soldiers—and between patriot colonists and colonists loyal to Britain (loyalists)—were increasingly common.

Britain eventually repealed the taxes it had imposed on the colonists except the tea tax. ... In protest, the colonists boycotted tea sold by British East India Company and smuggled in Dutch tea, leaving British East India Company with millions of pounds of surplus tea and facing bankruptcy.

The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party. ... Parliament passed the bill on March 31, 1774, and King George III gave it royal assent on May 20th.

While the colonists lost many minutemen, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were considered a major military victory and displayed to the British and King George III that unjust behavior would not be tolerated in America. The battles also constituted the first military conflicts of the American Revolution.

British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776) ... But that was before the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies.

The American colonists were angered by the Stamp Act and quickly acted to oppose it. Because of the colonies' sheer distance from London, the epicenter of British politics, a direct appeal to Parliament was almost impossible. Instead, the colonists made clear their opposition by simply refusing to pay the tax.