In the colonial era, Americans insisted on their rights as Englishmen to have their own legislature raise all taxes. Beginning in 1765 the British Parliament asserted its supreme authority to lay taxes, and a series of American protests began that led directly to the American Revolution. The first wave of protests attacked the Stamp Act of 1765, and marked the first time Americans from each of the 13 colonies met together and planned a common front against taxes the colonists considered illegal. At The Boston Tea Party, colonists threw British tea into Boston Harbor because it contained a hidden tax Americans refused to pay. The British responded by trying to crush traditional liberties in Massachusetts, leading to war in 1775.