Interesting Take on the American Revolution.

[Subdeacon Joe]

Fighting for their rights as Englishmen.

 

 

 

The men who raised that standard (Congress Flag, the Continental Colors, the Grand Union Flag) believed that they were fighting for their freedoms as Britons — freedoms that had been trampled by a Hanoverian king and his hirelings. When they called themselves Patriots — a word that had been common currency among Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic long before anyone dreamed of a separation — they meant that they were British patriots, cherishing the peculiar liberties that had come down to them since Magna Carta: jury trials, free contract, property rights, habeas corpus, parliamentary representation, liberty of conscience, and the common law.

It was these ideals that were set to paper in a small secular miracle at Philadelphia’s old courthouse. As the Virginia-born Lady Astor later put it, the war was fought “by British Americans against a German king for British ideals.”

 

[Alpo]

Their rights as "free-born Englishmen".

 

Somehow, that part seems to have disappeared.

[Cyrus Cassidy #45437]

I have to add: Well, duh. Have Americans forgotten this part? Independence was not declared until over a year after Lexington and Concord. The patriots were still trying to reach an amicable solution with their king until they finally threw up their hands in disgust.

[DocWard]

I was in a rather heated discussion some time back with a misguided friend who was attempting to argue the founding fathers were "liberal" because they were seeking change and wanted a different "better" government. I quickly countered with the fact that they didn't want a change in government, they wanted to be treated as equal to other Englishmen, and to have the traditional rights thereof. I pointed out that they thought it vital that they draft the Declaration of Independence, as a way of explaining why they were compelled to act as they had. As per usual, no lightbulb of understanding went off.

[Seldom Seen #16162]

Arguably our Founding Fathers were a bunch of freeloaders. It was expensive for the Crown of England to station troops and defend the settlers in the American Colonies. The Crown had just recently defended the colonists in the French/Indian Wars. When the Crown tried to raise taxes on the settlers to help pay for their own defense a small group of malcontents objected by destroying property of the Crown and stirring up discontent.