Why did the colonists revolt?

We are approaching our 250^th anniversary of Independence Day. In the 1770s, American colonists were comparatively prosperous, lightly taxed, and their safety was protected by the military might of the British Empire. The American colonists were relatively well-fed, sheltered, literate, unthreatened by war, with land and opportunity just over the horizon for the industrious. So, why did the colonists revolt? 

Because they believed in God-given rights.

American colonists were far more educated than most of the world. In 1776, the American colonies had nine well-established colleges. These included Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, William and Mary, the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia University), Queen's College (Rutgers), and College of Rhode Island (Brown University). Beyond formal education, life-long self-learning was fashionable, and most of the Founders were familiar with the teachings of Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Our people … were observed by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of the same rank generally are in other countries.” Ben should know. He built an enormous fortune selling products that required a literate audience.

The Declaration of Independence lists the particulars for the revolt, but the overarching reason was that the British monarchy believed the colonists were mere subjects. Under English common law, anyone born within the King’s dominions was a natural-born subject, not a citizen, of the British Crown. This lack of British citizenship chafed the American colonists. They viewed themselves as English and took the Enlightenment's definition of “natural rights” seriously. As Boston tour guides are fond of saying, the colonists never yelled, “The British are coming,” because they believed themselves to be British.

Almost three years prior to the Declaration, the Boston Tea Party made rebellion the topic of conversation at the dinner table, in taverns, and in churches. The battle cry was “No taxation without representation!” Today, we naively assume the colonists were angry about taxes, but the operative part of that slogan was the last two words. That’s what got their ire up.

The British were on top of the world. The popular patriotic song of the day, Rule Britannia, made that clear. Englishmen had rights, limited at the time, but those rights were sacrosanct. Even these limited rights were not bestowed upon the colonists. Propertied English males could vote for a person to represent them in the halls of government, but the powers-that-be refused to bestow that same right to colonists. Thus, no representation.

The irony is that even without representation in Parliament, the colonists enjoyed more personal liberty than their English counterparts. To have properly functioning colonies three thousand miles away from the mother country, the colonists were allowed to make many of their own rules through locally elected legislatures. The colonists had developed a taste for self-government and preferred to be somewhat independent of the rulers of the British Empire. Edicts that sailed in from across the Atlantic were more than annoying. The colonists grew increasingly enraged with the palpable disrespect they received from London. Two examples illustrate this point.

The view was different from London, of course. The rulers of the British Empire saw the colonists as getting a free ride. The great British Navy kept the seas safe for New England ships, and the mercantilist Parliament regulated trade, allowing the American maritime industry to prosper. To keep the colonies safe from foreign invasion, England built forts and posted troops throughout their North American holdings. The French and Indian War caused a major drain on the British treasury. Parliament looked at these costs and saw colonials acting like ungrateful, spoiled children who had grown large enough to pay their own way.

Were the colonists’ feelings hurt because the English refused to allow them to join their club as full members? Not exactly. Their belief in self-governance was heartfelt and part of their character. The American Revolution may have been sparked by an overbearing crown, but the fuel was an educated populace that was experienced in home rule. The edicts from England rubbed the colonists the wrong way because they were used to making decisions for themselves and had adopted Enlightenment teachings, which held that self-governance was a natural right.

Or as Thomas Jefferson powerfully put it, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

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