CHAPTER 61 Things went along like this for quite a while, with nothing much important happening anywhere but where the settlers were mostly exiles and refugees from Great Britain,
2 Until there were thirteen English-speaking colonies that thought they had aidentities of their own, namely,
3 In no particular order,
4 New York,
5 Virginia,
6 bNew Jersey,
7 Delaware,
8 Massachusetts,
9 Connecticut,
10 Rhode Island,
11 New Hampshire,
12 cPennsylvania,
13 North Carolina,
14 South Carolina,
15 Georgia,
16 dAnd Maryland,
17 Unless some of these are wrong.
18 The Brits who owned these colonies were pleased at how well they were doing,
19 And got the idea that maybe they could help out a little bit with all the expenses Great Britain was incurring at the time,
20 eWhat with Britain being involved in a bunch of major wars against the French and all,
21 Which suggested the idea of taxes,
22 And upset the colonists quite a bit.
CHAPTER 71 fThe thing was, the colonists had already gotten used to doing things the way they wanted to,
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2 gWhich was called the American Way,
3 And meant that they no longer wanted to do things the Brit way,
4 hWhich is usually the hard way.
5 The more they thought about it, the more taxes seemed like an unnecessarily hard way of handing the Brit economic crunch,
6 Hard on the colonists, that is,
7 Who didn't much care about fighting the French anyway,
8 iHaving already tried it in the French and Indian War,
9 Some years back.
10 But the Brits were stubborn and tried out the tax plan anyway,
11 Putting a tax on tea,
12 Which wasn't smart,
13 Since the colonists were still pretty much Brits and hadn't yet discovered that coffee is about a thousand percent better than tea anyway,
14 jAnd therefore thought that they still needed tea,
15 Tax-free,
16 Or how would they ever get up in the morning?
17 kSo the colonists threw all the Brit tea into Boston Harbor,
18 And then sat down for a while to think up what to do next.
CHAPTER 81 Without their morning tea, the colonists got pretty lcranky,
2 And decided the thing to do was tell the Brits they weren't ever going to pay the tea tax,
3 Because,
4 Well,
5 Because that's the way it was.
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