Birthday 250

The main reason America declared independence 250 years ago is simple: no-one was going to deprive an Englishman of his rights – not even another Englishman. But there were other reasons too.

When Britain and America fought the French and Indians from 1754 to 1763, the soldiers of both nations were amazed, and even appalled, at how different they were. The two tribes had grown apart considerably since Jamestown and 1606.

Some of this was due to extreme geographical distance, as well as the much more pioneering, adventurous, and ambitious spirit of the colonists. Additionally, America had developed her nation and culture over a period of 150 years while free from powerful monarchy-based Royals and established-church Priests. So the separation of classes in the colonies was a small fraction of that of the United Kingdom. Moreover, Britain’s frankly-admitted policy of mercantilism – where the mother-country explicitly exploited, and benefited at the expense of, the 13 colonies – was increasingly resented and viewed as unjust and unnatural.

After the war ended, from the years 1763 to 1775, the British Parliament initiated something new and unwelcome. They passed a slew of tyrannical laws which enraged and alienated the Americans. Altho these measures often seemed reasonable and moderate to the British, in fact, they were not.

America joined the French and Indian War mainly to gain access to the farmland and resources across the Appalachian Mountains, but without being attacked by any Frenchmen or Indians. When Britain won the war and then legally forbade this in late 1763 the colonists were stunned. They felt betrayed and oppressed – and started to think in completely new ways. When Britain passed many other unprecedented and dictatorial acts, culminating in the 1774 openly-named Coercive Acts, that was that. The War for Independence was inevitable.

It needs to be noted that from 1763 to 1776 – and then to 1792 or so – America was an absolute intellectual ferment. The 13 North American colonies debated politics, and even philosophy, with a passion, and in a manner, previously unknown to man. And they drew conclusions of a similar type. As John Adams noted in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, most of the American Revolution took place in the minds of Americans well before the War for Independence began.

One giant determination the outraged colonists made from 1763 to 1776 was: “Enough is enough.” There was no chance in hell the Americans would bow down to “taxation without representation”. Nor any form of British taxation. Nor any form of legislation by these absolute foreigners.

If America hadn’t declared independence in 1776, she would have done so in five or ten years maximum. If America had lost the War for Independence, she would have declared a second war in five or ten years maximum. Independence was a foregone conclusion by the late 1774 First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

The bottom line was simple: no-one was going to deny an Englishman his rights – especially not a super-powered Englishman who understood, and believed in, liberty and the rights of man far better than just 14 years before.