![]() Never mind that the increased taxes were the necessary result of the costly Seven Years’ War, or that they still amounted to only two-thirds of what mainland Britons paid. But it was the better-off Colonial elite who came to their defense, “pos as Patriots to champion the rights of common people.” These wealthier elite controlled the cities’ printing presses and could quickly popularize the idea that Parliament had taxed the colonists without fair representation. ![]() Meanwhile, in port cities such as Boston and New York, artisans, laborers, and decommissioned soldiers bore the brunt of the new taxes Parliament imposed on the Colonies. As speculators, they had no intention of moving west themselves they simply wanted to flip the real estate, cashing in on the backs of poor settlers. But it wasn’t the poor white settlers whose complaints stoked patriotic fervor: George Washington, a wealthy Virginia slaveholder and Seven Years’ War veteran, and Benjamin Franklin, an affluent publisher and slaveholder as well, had bought western land now deemed inaccessible. British policymakers in London “concluded that settlers, rather than Indians, posed the greatest threat to imperial peace.” In consequence, they drew a firm line in the sand-the Proclamation Line of 1763, running along the Appalachian Mountain chain, across which colonists could not venture. ![]()
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