My Letter Essay, Research Paper

Dear William Edwin Lewis IV,

While you have been aspiring to become a product of the enlightenment at the college of William and Mary, there has been much a fuss over England’s treatment of our great colony of Virginia. While I’m perfectly sure that you have heard much about this I would like to make sure that you are aware of my position on this new want for independence from our motherland. For my decision will have a great effect on you, as well as the rest of our family. If I choose to support independence, and we fail, I will certainly be hung. Therefore, if I am hung nothing I have worked so hard for in my life will be left for yourself when your time comes to receive it.

I believe that my father and his father also would do the same, but then I again I do not believe that my grandfather would have allowed these new acts to pass through Parliament if he were still alive. When England was only a trade empire the Board of Trade ruled the colonies fairly. This was the time that allowed us my father to amass his great wealth and support his family on our plantation. While I was a child things were much easier due to the neglect that the Board of Trade allowed as long they were making money.

In these new times George III has passed new laws only according to whim. He has tried to tax us without any consideration of the important families of the colonies, even those of our stature who was one of the first peoples of our class to come here to this royal colony. Here in Virginia I have taken a new position on what I believe the colonies should do about our new problem, England.

These new acts passed by Parliament have caused me to be treated as a second rate citizen. I will not sit back and allow my natural rights to be violated just because the English don’t want to pay for there own wars. They have tried to tax us in a time of peace when there should prosperity, not turmoil within one’s own empire. Some of their taxes have been direct such as the Stamp Act which was a direct tax on paper. I myself have noticed a slight loss in profit from these taxes because the documents stating the ownership of my slaves has cost me quite a large some of money, at the university you have also felt these taxes in every day items such as your newspapers and books.

Recently I was reading the newspaper when I read about the Boston Massacre. I was shocked, to think that a bunch of drunken men were throwing snowballs were shot by trained British officers. Five men were killed, they could have just killed the black man because he is probably a run away slave anyway. The people’s reaction to was to then dumb 15,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. The passing of the Intolerable Acts then only made things worse by shutting down the harbor till the damage was paid and establishing Martial law. I understand that things were getting out of hand, but I certainly believe that British Soldiers are not properly trained to police their own people?

Now son, I hope you understand why I have made my decision. Also that you will support me one hundred percent in my quest to free the colonies from the British Empire. I we are to become independent all people of the colonies will greatly benefit. One last thing, I have heard you are quite the student and excelling in al subjects. I hope that you will be able to finish with university quickly because your mother misses you so much, and the house is very empty without you, except for the slaves.