When the colonists settled into their new land, they had established order as small governments to keep the colonies in line. However, the ocean that separated England from the colonies made it difficult for England to successfully guide the colonists as they had wanted. The main thing the English attempted was to implement taxes, but they also went so far as to leave the colonies alone for a while and use the military to keep them in place. On the other hand, the colonists saw that the English were blocking their attempts at self-government, so they worked together to ignore any British policies. By the eve of the Revolution, the colonists had developed a sense of their identity and unity as Americans, carried forward by the British Parliament. Exasperated by British efforts to thwart their growing self-sufficiency, the colonists began pushing back against them by doing various things such as riots, boycotts, or expressing their opinions on paper. After the Great War for Empire, the British Parliament began imposing taxes on the colonists to help pay for the war. It wasn't long after the war that the colonies experienced healthy abandonment for a period of time that gave the colonists a sense of independence and identity. A farmer had even once written: “Here the individuals of all nations blend into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world” (Doc H). They recognized themselves as different from the English, so when parliament started passing tax bills without representation there was an outcry about mistreatment. Edmund Burke, a parliamentarian, sympathized with the colonists: “Govern America as you govern an English city which happens not to be represented in Parliament… in the middle of the paper… and will never be considered as America's cause. A year later, to help Boston, which was suffering from the consequences of the Port Bill, donations were requested from all the colonies to provide relief to Boston (Doc G). The colonies banded together to send supplies to a city in need, which truly showed that Americans were united. The colonists were ready to help each other when they needed it and worked well together to get their point across in Britain. All in all, the colonists had felt an identity from the beginning and forming a unity among themselves was not difficult for them. them to reach. They were ready to face a situation together and had started to define themselves as non-British. To conclude, the colonists already had a sense of identity and unity because they all had a common problem and needed to act together to address it.