HISTORY?

[bvigal]

When I was in high school, I was among a priviledged group selected to attend a summer symposium called Freedom Forum. There we learned, more than I had in history or civics classes, about the ideals which formed our nation. Some very well-known scholars and historians brought to life many patriots of the Revolution, illustrating their background, writings, and the roles they played in forming our nation.

Guest speakers were from other nations, places which didn't have the freedoms we take for granted. I saw and heard a grown man, at times reduced to tears, recount his desperate actions to escape a communist country. He paid a horrifying cost, the loss of his wife and children. Their only "crime" was their desire to worship, work, peacefully gather, and believe as they wished. Throughout it all, the United States was to him a shining beacon of hope, the litmus test against which freedom was measured.

My experiences that week had a profound impact upon my view of freedom - how truly precious it is, how costly to achieve and maintain. It left me, come good or bad times in America, a strong patriot for life. But I often read comments by folks younger than me, which make me really wonder just what is being learned in school about the birth of our nation.

So, here is my question: What is your perception of the formation of our country? For what reasons did a rag-tag bunch of poorly-equipped colonists decide to take on the most powerful military might of the times? Why would they risk everything they had, and surely their lives, against such enormous odds? Was their life really that miserable? Or, was it little to do with their actual physical circumstances, and more to do with principals and ideals? Could it happen again today, that people would take such risks to assure such freedom, not just for themselves, but for unknown generations to come?

[coriolis]

Good Topic bvigal!

I imagine that each patriot had a different mix of motovation. The leaders, mostly educated and upper class, probably did it for the principals and ideals. The uneducated lower classes probably did it because they were miserable and they resented the wealth and power of the foreign throne. Some may have done it to create business opportunities for themselves, some may have been criminals, looking for a fresh start. Most people, most of the time, will act in thier own self interest before they will act out of idealism. It would be fascinating to find out about how all the interests and ideals mixed together to motivate most of the people to support the revolution. I believe that there was a minority or a silent majority who were not in favor of the revolution too.

Here's the text of the Declaration of Independence.

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

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Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence. The original spelling and capitalization has been retained.

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton


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Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

[kevin]

The American colonies were given great freedoms and concessions when they were given charters, and they belonged to a time when the Monarchy and government was weaker in England. In the American continent englishmen established their own legislatures, formed their own towns, and governed themselves. Their purpose was to give the British raw materials and to purchase manufactured goods. This was the age of Mercantalism.

As the years went by, there were subjects of the British crown who could not remember England and viewed it as a distant land. They interacted with Britain only through commerce and fighting in her wars. Now England gave many good things to the colonies, but England also came to restrict the natural growth of those who were coming to view themselves as Virginians, Carolinians, and Rhode Islanders.

First of all Britain restricted trade from the colonies, not allowing the developing American merchant navy to ply the open seas and trade with other markets. The Americans by market forces were forced to do their trade illegally. It became very costly for the British to try and regulate trade, they were spending more regulating customs than they were recieving in taxes.

Then out of humanitarian reasons, the British declared that the territory west of the Appalachians was out of reach for settlement, basically a gigantic Indian reserve. Now when this was proclaimed, some of the founding fathers had business interests staked there. Personal reasons often mix with ideological sentiment.

Now after the Seven Years War, the British began to undertake a policy where they aimed to restore control over the colonies and regain treasure spent in the defense of Colonial America. It wasn't that unreasonable of a demand.. but..

America had been governing itself. It resented being tied to the British Crown and Parliament. She was limiting the American growth, she was denying British citizenship (colonists did not have the same protections), and she was taxing in order to demonstrate sovereign control.

People grew frustrated. They formed committees of correspondence. They began to talk about resistance. Boston was a hotbed of revolutionary sentiments. When Boston began to get out of control, the British sent troops. When Boston continued to defy British rule, when riots broke out, when the colonists continued their defiance, the King removed the charter of Massachusetts it became a continental affair.

Every single colony was in danger, they were in it together. War began. Not everyone was on the Revolutionary side, many were loyalists and fought for the British crown. Our revolution is actually the first civil war ever to occur in American history, but from the disunion there was born a nation. One which after the Revolution decided that it would not serve a King, which would shun the idea of laws without representation, of quartering soldiers in homes, of condemning printers and shunning the exchange of ideas.

The American Nation was born on this day in 1776. This is our Independence Day. What would come latter would be the American Republic, which is the most astounding thing ever to happen in modern history. We have come a long way as a nation, from those trembling moments where our experiment was held on the backs of a ragtag army, through the development of our institutions, against the forces of rebellion, through economic turmoil, and through a war that almost destroyed Western Civilization.

We have always stood up for the underdog, we have always stood straight in the councils of Kings, we have discovered and guarded the embers of the classical world. Through America both Athens and Rome shine, to America's shores came millions of the persecuted and malnourished, and we are the better for it and the world is the better for the American experiment.

What America means to me is three things.

1. Liberty. The idea that all men are created equal and have the same rights. That these rights exist outside of what the government decides. That people form their nations, that people make their governments, and that people can decide for themselves how they will live.

2. Equality before the law. There is no Prince in America, there is no state sanctioned church, there is no subject, there are only citizens. The President is a citizen. He has more power than King George ever had, but his power is restrained and given a time limit. He is held accountable to the laws of the land.

3. Perservence. The American spirit is indomitable. We believe that we are exceptional. We believe that we should be respected, that we are a city on a hill. We believe in progress, that things will get better than today. We are filled with hope. We will endure anything, not simply because we have the resources, but because we will not surrender.

I love this country, and hope to see the 300th anniversary of this nation. If we are still a city on a hill, then I will die with peace.

[coriolis]

Well said, Kevin!

[HurriCat]

Also know that the signers of the Declaration paid a terrible price for their courage. Many lost their businesses and property - some even their lives!

[streetsoldier]

As to numbers, it's been estimated that the Colonials were broken into thirds; 1/3 were "Tories" (British loyalists), 1/3 were "Rebels/Patriots", and 1/3 sat on the fence, accommodating whichever military force was in the area at the time, or moving farther inland to avoid the war entirely.