Grievance #5 of the Declaration of Independence
What happens when a government shuts down your representatives entirely?
In Grievance #5 of the Declaration of Independence, C. David Carlson of Trinity Academy South Bend explains how King George III dissolved colonial legislatures when they pushed back against British policies.
Colonial assemblies had a long history of self-government, managing local affairs and representing the people. But as tensions grew in the late 1760s and 1770s, those assemblies began coordinating resistance to British taxes. The response from the Crown was clear: shut them down.
Massachusetts was one of the first, but it didn’t stop there. Other colonies faced the same fate, especially as they moved toward unified action through the Continental Congress.
This wasn’t just a political disagreement anymore. Dissolving representative governments signaled something bigger: a shift from conflict over policy to a crisis over power and self-rule.
This is Part 5 of our 27-part series breaking down every grievance that led to the American Revolution, building toward Independence Day.
0:00 Today, we’re going to be learning about
0:01 some of the history behind the fifth
0:03 grievance in the Declaration of
0:04 Independence, which reads, "He has
0:06 dissolved representative houses
0:08 repeatedly for opposing with a manly
0:10 firmness his invasions on the rights of
0:13 the people." The colonies of British
0:15 North America had a history of
0:16 representative self-government going
0:18 back to their earliest formation,
0:19 creating assemblies to manage local
0:21 affairs. The quality of the relationship
0:23 between the colonial governments and the
0:24 government in London ebbed and flowed.
0:27 Colonial laws required approval from
0:28 London, and London often vetoed laws
0:30 that it determined interfered with its
0:32 own interests. But, in the late 1760s
0:35 and into the 1770s, tensions truly
0:38 reached a crisis pitch. In 1768, the
0:41 Massachusetts colonial assembly began
0:42 encouraging colonial governments to
0:44 coordinate in their resistance against
0:46 British taxes. The king responded by
0:48 dissolving that assembly and threatening
0:50 to do likewise with any other colony
0:52 that followed the Massachusetts example.
0:54 North Carolina and Virginia soon faced
0:57 similar shutdowns. When the colonies
0:59 began to discuss forming a Continental
1:00 Congress in 1774 to direct a unified
1:03 policy toward the British, the king
1:05 again shut down the governments of any
1:07 colonies that looked inclined to
1:08 organize. This matters because the
1:10 British actually shutting down
1:12 long-standing local governments helped
1:14 push colonists to think that this wasn’t
1:17 just a misunderstanding about taxation
1:19 and representation, but that the British
1:21 really had tyrannical designs for
1:23 Americans. Dissolving colonial
1:26 assemblies represented a dramatic
1:28 escalation that helped propel what had
1:30 started as a tax dispute into a crisis
1:32 of sovereignty and a revolution.
