Question

What was the King’s response to the letter from The Second Continental Congress asking him once more to remove the taxes?

Answer 1

The King's response to the Second Continental Congress's request for tax removal was to declare the colonies in open rebellion and refuse any reconciliation, exacerbating colonial tensions and moving closer to outright conflict.

Step-by-step explanation:

The King's response to the letter from The Second Continental Congress, which once more asked for the removal of taxes, was far from conciliatory. The British response to the colonial petitions, particularly after Massachusetts was declared in rebellion, was to issue the Conciliatory Proposition presented by Lord North in May 1775. This proposition stated that Parliament would still legislate for the colonies, and any taxes imposed would be meant to regulate trade, with the revenue generated going to the individual colonies provided they assumed partial responsibility for their own defense. Despite this, the conditions did not meet the expectations of the colonists and were exacerbated by the events at Lexington and Concord, which indicated a movement towards open conflict rather than reconciliation. The Continental Congress then drafted the Olive Branch Petition, which offered two possibilities: free trade with taxes equal to those levied in Britain or no taxes with strict trade regulations. Nonetheless, King George III refused to see the envoy sent with the petition and subsequently declared the colonies in rebellion on August 23, 1775, showing no sign of compliance with colonial requests to remove the taxes.

Answer 2

On October 25, 1774, the First Continental Congress sends a respectful petition to King George III to inform his majesty that if it had not been for the acts of oppression forced upon the colonies by the British Parliament, the American people would be standing behind British rule.

Despite the anger that the American public felt towards the United Kingdom after the British Parliament established the Coercive Acts—called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists—Congress was still willing to assert its loyalty to the king. In return for this loyalty, Congress asked the king to address and resolve the specific grievances of the colonies. The petition, written by Continental Congressman John Dickinson, laid out what Congress felt was undue oppression of the colonies by the British Parliament. Their grievances mainly had to do with the Coercive Acts, a series of four acts that were established to punish colonists and to restore order in Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party.

Step-by-step explanation: