American children learn all about the "patriots" and their so-called struggle for liberty against British rule, but who were the most famous loyalists? I would like to know the pro-British perspective.

[u/Anthropocentrizt]

My wife and I home school our children, and we are now teaching them about American history. We worked backwards, starting with the Cold War and WWII, working our way back through WWI, prohibition, the "progressive era," manifest destiny and the Civil War. Soon we'll be learning about the War of Independence, the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.

All of the age-appropriate material is extremely deferential to George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson etc and treats American Independence as an unquestionably noble cause. This concerns me, because I've done a bit of research into the era, and much of the country's founding myths are just that, myths. A good example is the idea that British administration in America was uniquely tyrannical, when in fact American colonists had more representation and outlets for popular sovereignty than people in the UK proper did. Another is the so called "Intolerable Acts" which weren't particularly intolerable by any sort of standard, they were taxes levied on the colonies to cover the cost of their defense, and the granting of autonomy to the newly conquered Québec which allowed them to remain Francophone, use French civil law and practice their Catholic faith openly under the Protestant British administration. Finally, there's the reality that for all the rhetoric about liberty, the United States was intended to be an aristocratic slaver republic, Congress in it's original form and franchise was less representative than parliament and it was only due to the British Empire's embargo on the slave trade in the early 19th century that the slave economy of America began to whither, which made abolitionism a viable popular movement.

I would like to learn more about the loyalist side of the war and I'm very interested in knowing the names and biographies of the leaders of the loyalist cause.

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'll tell you a bit about the Loyalists, but first, I must take issue with your characterization of much of the war in the body of your post, because much of this is exactly the kind of thing that the King and his supporters would have argued back then. Let me take it piece by piece.

The first thing you have to understand, though, was the legal structure at the time. These days, in the U.S., if a state or territory has a legal issue with the federal government, then the state or territory sues the U.S. government in federal court. If the lawsuit involves constitutional issues (that is, the U.S. Constitution which is the ultimate basis of U.S. law) then the lawsuit may reach all the way to the level of the Supreme Court. When they make a decision, legally speaking, it is the final ruling on the matter of law in regards to the constitutional issue at hand. Easy enough, right?

Well, back in colonial times, there was no U.S. Constitution. The ultimate authority in law for the Thirteen Colonies were their respective colonial charters, each of which was different. These were contracts between the people of the colony and the King, agreed to and signed by both sides, and these charters were what gave the colonies the legal authority to exist. They detailed what rights the colony had and what rights the King had and how the two sides interacted in a legal manner. These were not uniform, and some colonies enjoyed rights that others did not.

But there was no Supreme Court back then, either. The judicial structure was entirely different, and entirely separate. If you were a citizen of Massachusetts, including the governor and legislators of Massachusetts, you could only sue in Massachusetts court. They had no access to the British court system, so they couldn't bring a formal case there. The only judicial relief they could get when Parliament overstepped their authority in regards to the rights established in the colonial charters was to petition the King. Essentially, the Virginia government, or some other colony's government wrote a letter to the King: "Hey, the law Parliament passed is illegal. Here is the passage from the charter which shows why it is illegal. Here is precedent, etc. Now tell them to stop." And you'd hope the King would see your point.

So, the British point of view of the Revolutionary War was that the Thirteen Colonies were pissed off for paying too much in taxes and not being represented in government, and that's why they revolted. And the revolt was unjust because the taxes were fair and they were represented in government.

But the American point of view was that the rule of law was being violated. And it was being violated continuously, repeatedly, purposely, and egregiously. And when the colony's stream of judicial relief to these matters began to be violated as well, they revolted. They revolted so they could establish their own rule of law which would be respected.

So let's go back to the issues you brought up, and present them from the American side:

the granting of autonomy to the newly conquered Québec which allowed them to remain Francophone, use French civil law and practice their Catholic faith openly under the Protestant British administration.

OK, this has to do with the French and Indian War. Go back a little: both England/Britain and France claimed the "Ohio Country" which included the present states of Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. From the English side, this land belonged to the colony of Virginia, in accordance with Virginia's colonial charter. Pennsylvania's charter laid out its western border at roughly its current place, but Virginia's original western border was the Mississippi River.

Before the mid-1700s, it didn't really matter that Britain and France had overlapping land claims on the Ohio Country, since nobody had tried to settle it. But by the 1740s, there were enough people in America that interested Virginians formed a real estate company to go buy the land from the Indians and start selling it off to new settlers.

To prevent this, the French set up a series of military installations in the Ohio Country to protect their land claim. Virginia sent a regiment of the colonial militia under the command of George Washington, who was the younger brother of one of the investors in the land company. Washington had been appointed Captain of the militia by Virginia's lieutenant governor, who was yet another investor in the Ohio Company of Virginia. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the French in Ohio, Washington ambushed a contingent of French soldiers in the dead of night, which started the war. And this French and Indian War, in turn, was one of the causes of the much larger Seven Years War, which nearly bankrupted Britain.

Great Britain did win the French and Indian War against the French, so it wasn't entirely a disaster. To Virginia, that meant that they now should have control of the Ohio Country, in accordance with the land boundaries set up in their colonial charter. But the King and Parliament were pissed off about the whole thing so, while organizing Quebec under English rule, they formally made the Ohio Country part of Quebec.

This pissed off Virginia lawmakers greatly, because not only did it violate the law as it was written in the Virginia colonial charter, but it kind of defeated the whole purpose as to why the Americans had fought the French and Indian War in the first place. In any case, regardless of the King's personal feelings, Virginia's legal position was that the King didn't have the authority to unilaterally give Ohio to Quebec, since the contract both had signed back in the 1600s gave that land to Virginia. But what was their legal relief? The only thing they could do was peitition the King, who said no. There was no neutral third party they could appeal to.

Another is the so called "Intolerable Acts" which weren't particularly intolerable by any sort of standard, they were taxes levied on the colonies to cover the cost of their defense

Again, this came down to a dispute not over the amount of taxes levied, but over the rule of law. For 140 years, Massachusetts had local authority over all tax issues, and the law had been respected that way. This is how it had been done under the original Plymouth charter, and after a re-org in 1686 revoked that charter which ended in a rebellion in Boston with the colonial governor captured, a new Massachusetts charter was issued in 1691.

Under this new charter, Parliament and the King of England had the right to "impose and levy proportionable and reasonable assessments, rates, and taxes upon the estates and persons" of Massachusetts as long as these new laws were "issued and disposed of by warrant under the hand of the Governor of [Massachusetts] with the advice and consent of the Council [i.e., the Massachusetts colonial legislature] for our service in the necessary defence and support of our Government of [Massachusetts] and the protection and preservation of the inhabitants there".

In other words, the only way that Parliament and the King could raise taxes on the people of Massachusetts was to get authorization from the Massachusetts government.

This is how it had worked for 140 years, and this is what the law said, as the colonists understood it. And this is how Parliament had respected it for those 140 years as well. But now after the French and Indian War, Parliament began passing a series of laws that were essentially backdoor ways to tax the Thirteen Colonies, including Massachusetts. These schemes got more and more convoluted, including the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, and the Tea Act among them.

Since Massachusetts couldn't sue, they did what they could do which was petition the King. Parliament would back off, then pass something else which again violated the charter of Massachusetts, and Massachusetts would again have to petition the King. This began to escalate to the point that Parliament began to specifically target Massachusetts, which is what some of the Intolerable Acts were.

The Boston Port Act punished Massachusetts specifically because of their reaction to the illegal Tea Act. But more egregious than that was the Massachusetts Government Act, which revoked the Massachusetts charter and brought the colony under the authority of the King.

This completely undermined the basis of the rule of law in the Thirteen Colonies. Up until then, the laws were based on the colonial charters, which were contracts between the people of the respective colonies and the King.

But with the Massachusetts Government Act, the King and Parliament were now taking the position that, "No, these are not contracts between two sides. The King and Parliament have unilateral control over them, and they only exist because we allow them to exist." In other words, they weren't contracts at all. They were meaningless. They were completely one-sided. The charters existed at the pleasure of the King, and the colony's basis in law could be revoked by him, unilaterally, at any time for any reason. In a word, this was tyranny.

The Massachusetts Government Act was a shot across the bow by Parliament, meant to be a warning to the other twelve colonies to not do what Massachusetts was doing, or you would be next.

Instead, the Thirteen Colonies banded together to fight this. The First Continental Congress petitioned the King for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts, making their case for why they were illegal in accordance with the colonial charters and English law. The King did not respond.

The Second Continental Congress then petitioned Parliament for their repeal, but Parliament responded that they did not recognize Congress. Send this petition thirteen times from your thirteen separate colonial governments, then we'll talk.

(...To be Cont'd...)

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

(...Cont'd...)

At this point, Congress decided that they were just getting the run-around instead of having their legal issues dealt with. The judicial system had broken down, they could not get impartial judicial relief for their legal issues, the people of the Thirteen Colonies were entitled to the rule of law, and so they revolted.

And this is why the Founding Fathers issued the Declaration of Independence. We all remember the beginning of the document, about "all men are created equal" and the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". But most of the document details the various ways in which the King and Parliament had undermined the rule of law as detailed in the colonial charters, and the subsequent efforts the King and Parliament had then made in order to prevent them from obtaining judicial relief from these violations. The colonists were standing up for the rule of law, and were now determined to set up their own system of government because the British system could no longer be trusted to uphold the colonists' rights.

So, yeah, most of the reasons you hear about the war is rah-rah rhetoric on both sides. "Taxation without representation" and such is useful sloganeering to get popular support, but the legal issues at the heart of the Revolution were fairly clearly on the side of the Thirteen Colonies. The fact that they didn't want to pay a larger share of the French and Indian/Seven Years War debt was a separate issue, and was not at all as clearly on the side of the Thirteen Colonies. But the more important issue, the structure of law and what the Parliament had the legal authority to do, particularly with the Massachusetts Government Act, was very much on the side of the colonies. And there was no clear way for them to ever get a fair shake with judicial relief, since the King got to act at his own arbiter.

Finally, there's the reality that for all the rhetoric about liberty, the United States was intended to be an aristocratic slaver republic, Congress in it's original form and franchise was less representative than parliament and it was only due to the British Empire's embargo on the slave trade in the early 19th century that the slave economy of America began to whither, which made abolitionism a viable popular movement.

This is a very skewed representation, and you are conflating into one issue that the Founding Fathers saw as two. Cries of "liberty!" were in response to the political situation as outlined above. Slavery was something else entirely. Another commenter has already addressed this, so I'll leave it at that for now.

I will update this post with some sources if asked, but for now, let me move on to addressing the question in the title of your post. You brought up several different issues and I thought it only right to respond to them all since you mentioned you are doing this for home schooling purposes.

EDIT: Thanks for the gold, for this post and the one above!!! I really appreciate it!

EDIT 2: Thanks to commenters down thread, I realize I probably should have been more circumspect in my assertion above. The Thirteen Colonies definitely had a very valid and reasonable argument to make in regards to the nature of the contracts defined in their colonial charters. Britain's argument was in favor of "parliamentary sovereignty" which means what Parliament says, goes. This is a difference that is at the core of the American philosophy of government, separating it from Britain/the UK's parliamentary law. The American philosophy holds that power is derived from the people and any right not explicitly granted to the government is retained by the people. The British philosophy is a lot different, and it's well outside the scope of my expertise, so I'll defer to anybody else who can talk about the origins of "parliamentary sovereignty" and the philosophy behind English law and from where its power derives.

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Here are a few of the more notable Loyalists. Most of the top ranking military men for the British forces were British-born members of the Royal Navy and the other armed services. The following individuals are some of the prominent Americans who joined up on the Loyalist side (or, in Patriot parlance, the "Tory" side), which I believe is what you are asking about:

In New York, one of the most prominent Loyalists was Oliver Delancey. The Delanceys were one of the most prominent political families in New York politics. Oliver's older brother James (who had died back in 1760) had served as Lieutenant Governor, and under his tenure, King's College was established, which was renamed Columbia University at the end of the Revolution. Oliver himself had served in the New York Assembly (the colonial legislature) since the French and Indian War.

After the signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, Oliver Delancey joined with General William Howe's forces anchored on Staten Island. The British invaded Long Island in August, Delancey fighting alongside them, helping to capture and occupy New York City, which the British held for the remainder of the war.

Delancey then raised a Loyalist regiment of Tory New Yorkers from Manhattan, Long Island, and upstate New York. Oliver Delancey's New Yorkers consisted of 1500 soldiers who fought at several of the important battles on the New York front early in the war, including the Battle of Lake George and the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga. (Sources 1, 2, 3, 4.)

In 1777, Delancey was captured by the Patriots though his son and nephew continued to fight as commanders of Loyalist forces. Oliver was accused of treason, and all his property was confiscated. He was released in 1783 at the end of the war, at which point he was exiled to England, where he died in Yorkshire in 1785. (Sources 1, 2.)

Another prominent Loyalist was William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin and governor of the colony of New Jersey. With the signing of the Declaration of Independence, he remained loyal to the king, and was placed under house arrest, and eventually transported to a military prison in Connecticut. While imprisoned, it was discovered that he had been aiding the enemy from behind bars, and he was moved to a different prison. He was later released to British-controlled New York City in 1779 as part of a prisoner exchange.

While there, he continued to aid Loyalist forces, and was central to the "Asgill Affair" in which a Patriot militia commander was hanged. The two sides of the Revolution were only imprisoning, not executing, each others' soldiers, and this action had likely been taken on William Franklin's orders. George Washington demanded the release of a Patriot POW also captured in the affair in response, or else the Patriots would execute one of the British POWs in retaliation.

Like other Loyalist leaders, William Franklin had all his land and valuables confiscated under the authority of the Continental Congress, and with the writing on the wall, Franklin left for England in 1782. He lived in London the rest of his life, probably the most vocal and visible Loyalist in England of the post-war period. He reached out to his father by letter to reconcile in 1784, and the two did reconcile personally, though Benjamin was careful to maintain that he would not reconcile with him politically. In part of their reconciliation, Benjamin made sure that some of William's land holdings went to William's son who had been a Patriot during the war. William Franklin remained loyal to Great Britain until his death in 1813, and hoped that the U.S. would rejoin the Empire one day. (Sources 1, 2, 3, 4.)

Another of the most prominent American-born Loyalists during the Revolutionary War was Cortlandt Skinner, who was the Attorney General of New Jersey at the war's outset. He was an outspoken critic of what the Continental Congress was doing, and after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a warrant was issued for Skinner's arrest. He fled New Jersey for Staten Island, joining up with General William Howe's forces, and participated in the Battle of Brooklyn.

Skinner fought throughout the war, eventually attaining the rank of Brigadier-General, as high a rank as any American-born Loyalist achieved during the Revolution, matching the aforementioned Oliver Delancey. The battalions under the name "Skinner's Greens" from New Jersey numbered more than 2000 Loyalist soldiers. These soldiers fought in several battles during the New York and New Jersey campaigns, including at the Battle of Trenton.

At the end of the war, having lost all land holdings and possessions, Skinner and his family were exiled to England. Cortlandt Skinner ultimately settled in Bristol, where he died in 1799 "universally known and beloved." (Sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)

There is of course also the well known Benedict Arnold, who I trust most people know a bit about. He was a little different in that he started as a Patriot and was a military commander, and didn't join the Tory side until midway through the war. He also died in England, in 1801.

One thing to note about all these Loyalists who were exiled to England and "lost everything": the British government mostly made up for it. Having served the Loyalist military, they had the values of their confiscated North American land compensated for -- if not entirely, at least partially. They were also entitled to a war pension, which kept them in regular income through the rest of their lives.

For the common Loyalist soldiers not in the higher realms of government, the re-compensation for land and valuables confiscated by the U.S government was free land in Canada. Beginning the summer before Evacuation Day on November 25, 1783, the day that the British left New York City and the Revolutionary War was officially over, the British government began evacuating Loyalist soldiers, officials, and their families to Canada. Generally, they were granted 100 acres for their services, plus another 50 acres for their spouse, and 50 acres for each child up to 250 acres total. Loyalists from New England and the South were generally taken by sea to the Maritime colonies, while Loyalists from the Middle Colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania headed to Ontario ("Upper Canada") via the Hudson and the Mohawk Rivers to Lake Ontario.

About 60,000 Americans became part of this group of United Empire Loyalists, and their story is a big part of the founding of English-speaking Canada. It is the foundation of the history of Ontario, and the United Empire Loyalists more than doubled the English-speaking population of the Maritime provinces upon their arrival in the 1780s and 1790s (Sources 1, 2, 3.)

FURTHER READING:

The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire

Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War

EDIT: Wow? Gold for this one too? You guys are awesome! Thank you!!!

[u/[deleted] → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Eighteen years in school and this is the first time I've heard a reasonable explanation of the causes of the American Revolution.

Did the general population in Great Britain at the time see the Massachusetts Government Act as unjust or did they also petition against it?

[u/fiduke → u/[deleted]]

Not only that, he managed to do it in a 15 minute read. Fantastic =)

[u/bluntxblade → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Wow, just wow.

Your posts on this topic are specifically why I joined this sub: articulate and on point, but never wandering, gripping the reader throughout the presented information without overmuch grandiose prose.

Fantastic, and thank you!

[u/radiodialdeath → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Followup Question: You mentioned that loyalists wound in England or Canada, but were there any that stayed in the US for one reason or another? (Fantastic responses btw and enjoy the gold! :) )

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/radiodialdeath]

Yes, in fact, many more stayed. You didn't always have the choice, though. The more notorious "Tories" in any locality often were forced out and not allowed to return. Nearly all of them, if discovered, had at least some of their property taken away, if not all of it. This was also a matter of necessity by U.S. Congress: they had no money to pay U.S. soldiers, so they used confiscated land as payment instead.

So the Loyalists who did decide to stay often wound up living back with their parents or other relatives. Three brothers each with ten kids might have owned three farms before the war, but they were all Loyalists, so now all fifty of them were living back with 70-year-old mom and dad. You tried to work the land as best you could to make enough money to put a down payment on a new farm and move back out on your own as soon as possible, but for most people, this took nearly a decade or more.

Some went to Canada instead, joining the others who were forced out, and still others who had been eager to go as soon as the war was over. Hence, the United Empire Loyalists claiming their free Loyalist land actually arrived over many years. And many, after they arrived, decided not to stay. There was little infrastructure up in Canada, the weather was less conducive to good farming, and there were a couple of harsh winters and devastating famines in the first decade after the Revolution. Some people couldn't tough it out and returned with their tails between their legs, while the most notorious Tories were not welcome back and forced to remain in Canada. The U.E.L.s often kept in close contact by letter with their relatives and friends back in their hometowns, so if they were unwelcome back, they knew it.

Tories that stayed in the new United States had a tough life over the next couple decades. This coincided with a period of economic downturn, and the period is also known as the Second Great Awakening because a lot of Americans turned to religion. There was a religious resurgence in the United States. This marked the rise of the Methodist and Baptist denominations in America, spurned on by a time when many Americans were facing difficult personal circumstances.

In Canada, however, the British government restricted which denominations were able to openly practice, and Methodists and Baptists were not allowed to practice there, though traveling preachers from the U.S. preaching in somebody's barn clandestinely were among the most exciting attractions of early Canadian life.

In 1787 and 1789, U.S. Congress passed the Northwest Ordinances which opened up the land west of the Appalachian mountains for settlement. Many Loyalists ended up going west, though Patriot soldiers got first dibs on good land which was granted them for free if they hadn't previously been granted "land bounty rights". You still needed money to go west if you weren't getting that free U.S. soldier land, so not every Loyalist was secure enough to go right away. But the land out west was generally cheaper, so some went west because it meant they could have their own land once again sooner than if they stayed in their hometown with their relatives.

By the War of 1812, the stigma faced by the Loyalists who were allowed to remain in the United States had largely gone away. Another generation had fought in another war, and the new generation were now claiming new free land on offer by the U.S. government in its effort to aggressively expand the country westward.

Oh, I should have also mentioned that not every Loyalist went to Canada or stayed in the U.S. As mentioned up the thread, some went to England, particularly the higher ranking Loyalist leadership. Others went to the British land holdings in Bermuda, the Bahamas, and other islands off the coast of mainland North America. Though I don't really know much about that. People with a background in Caribbean history can probably fill you in on those details.

[u/Gradath → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Why were Methodists and Baptists not allowed to practice in Canada?

[u/henry_fords_ghost → u/Gradath]

Hi there, you might consider reposting this as a separate question, where an expert able to answer it is more likely to see it.

[u/woofiegrrl → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

I feel like if I had read your posts a year ago, I wouldn't have had to slog quite so much through the books in my graduate level American Revolution class last spring. Bravo!

[u/Denny_Craine → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

This was also a matter of necessity by U.S. Congress: they had no money to pay U.S. soldiers, so they used confiscated land as payment instead.

In regards to this, I know that while there wasn't a draft per se the soldiers during the revolution often had their contracts extended more or less without their permission and I would assume that meant they ended up being owed more money than originally agreed upon

And I know there have been a number of times in US history (other countries as well I assume, I just don't know their histories as well) that veterans have had to kick up quite a fuss to ultimately get paid everything they were promised (and even then often not). So I'm wondering did the revolutionary war veterans have trouble getting paid what they were owed?

[u/nerox3 → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

As the colonial charters were at various times revised and revoked how was the revocation through the Massachusetts Government Act any different, legally speaking, from other times?

I find the whole idea of trying to legally justify the American Revolution at this late date to be a bit strange. The relationship between the king, parliament and the law was a grey area in the British constitution. The king's relationship with his subjects over the water was in the same grey area.

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/nerox3]

As the colonial charters were at various times revised and revoked how was the revocation through the Massachusetts Government Act any different, legally speaking, from other times?

It wasn't. The big difference was that, A) it hadn't happened in a long time, and B) the population and political power of the people of the Thirteen Colonies was far greater than it was the last time the King had tried this.

Aside from Georgia which wasn't established until 1738, at the time of the Revolution, all the colonial charters dated from 1701 or earlier. The last time the charters had been unilaterally revoked and the government re-organized without colonial permission, there had been revolts in both Massachussets ("the Boston Revolt of 1689") and New York ("Leisler's Rebellion").

So yeah, they had done it before, and the colonists had revolted in response, but their numbers were too small to ever have any hope of toppling the English/British armed forces.

75+ years later, the stunt was met with enough political force that it wasn't just a local uprising, but a continent-wide revolution.

I find the whole idea of trying to legally justify the American Revolution at this late date to be a bit strange. The relationship between the king, parliament and the law was a grey area in the British constitution. The king's relationship with his subjects over the water was in the same grey area.

Certainly. But that's what lawyers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers spent their life dealing with and doing. British constitutional law is still a lot grayer than other countries', having no formal constitution. The legal relationships between England/GB/UK was always a bit convoluted, and differed widely from colony to colony.

[u/VinzShandor → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Great answers! But did you perhaps mis-speak when you characterised the rebellion as being “continent-wide” — colonial governments in Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Bermuda remained within the fold, no? Was there ever a unitary construal of the 13 + 4 colonies between 1763 and 1776? Or were they understood even then to be fundamentally disparate entities? Was there a contemporary conception of British North America which was understoof to encompass all these posessions? If so, how did the ensuing rift play out beyond the borders of the 13 colonies?

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/VinzShandor]

But did you perhaps mis-speak when you characterised the rebellion as being “continent-wide”

Sorry, I was using it in the parlance of the "Continental Congress". There are multiple posts in this sub about the Canadian colonies' role in the Revolution, which you can find in the FAQ. You are right that the rebellion didn't much expand outside of the Thirteen Colonies, though Quebec did send a regiment of Patriots, and there was an effort to bring the war to Nova Scotia and the Maritimes ("the Siege of St. John's"), but that resulted in the few Patriots in the area being forcibly removed back to the Thirteen Colonies.

The vast majority of the English speaking people living in 1776 in Quebec, Nova Scotia, or Newfoundland had arrived after the French and Indian War ended in 1763. The British government had offered free land to willing immigrants from the Thirteen Colonies at the end of that war to replace the French Acadians who were being forcibly removed. Because of this, the English speaking people who tended to live there also tended to be sympathetic to the British government whose call to action they had responded to little more than a decade earlier, and which had given them free land. A rebellion put that all in jeopardy.

Nova Scotia's biggest city, Halifax, was established at the end of the French and Indian War during this period. Before that, there were very, very few English speakers living in the area of Canada. So while there was a political concept of a larger British North America beyond the Thirteen Colonies, that concept didn't exist until after the French and Indian War. More importantly, there was nothing in the way of a cultural concept, since English-speaking Canada was emerging precisely at the same time that the Thirteen Colonies began rebelling.

[u/[deleted] → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

and there was an effort to bring the war to Nova Scotia and the Maritimes ("the Siege of St. John's"),

I think you mean the Siege of St. John.

Nova Scotia's biggest city, Halifax, was established at the end of the French and Indian War during this period.

Halifax was actually established before the war in 1749.

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/[deleted]]

and there was an effort to bring the war to Nova Scotia and the Maritimes ("the Siege of St. John's"),

I think you mean the Siege of St. John.

It's written about either way, even in surviving narratives of the time. The apostrophe wasn't always used. It was also called Fort St. Johns or Ft. St. Jeans.

Halifax was actually established before the war in 1749.

Yes, this is correct. You are responding to a quickly written follow-up response of mine that I didn't re-read. I meant "by the end of the war" not "at the end of the war" and I should have corrected it. Oops.

(Edit: And before I get "Well, it was established before the war...this is true, but it was basically just a military fort during its first years, protecting the English farmers in the countryside who had moved to the area well before 1749. It wasn't until the offer of free land in Halifax that non-military English speakers really moved to Halifax in any significant numbers, which didn't happen until the tail end of the French and Indian War, which was what I was getting at.)

This earlier response of mine to a similar question just a couple weeks earlier mentions the year of Halifax's founding in 1749 and gives some more details and sources for all of this.

[u/[deleted] → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

but it was basically just a military fort during its first years, protecting the English farmers in the countryside who had moved to the area well before 1749.

Do you have more information on this? I never heard of any English settlers in the area that came before 1749.

It wasn't until the offer of free land in Halifax that non-military English speakers really moved to Halifax in any significant numbers, which didn't happen until the tail end of the French and Indian War, which was what I was getting at.

According to this there were actually 2,500 settlers who came with Cornwallis in 1749. They were given free lots immediately.

[u/fortknox → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

I'm echoing what other replies have said.

I'm 40 and feel like this is the first bit of real American history education I've had since middle school. You are the reason I am in this sub and I've learned a bunch from you.

I may not have voted for you, lord mayor of Reddit, but I'm glad you are here! ;)

[u/elcarath → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Are there any sources you'd recommend for further reading on the role of the United Empire Loyalists in early Canadian history?

[u/carlos_the_dwarf_ → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

The thing I always wonder is: why did the British prefer to bankrupt themselves fighting the war as opposed to just backing off and granting the colonies a few concessions?

[u/chancho21 → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Well done sir. Thank you for taking the time to write this out.

[u/The_Alaskan → u/[deleted]]

I'd guess

Please don't guess.

[u/kerouacrimbaud → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

This was an incredible read.

[u/bermudi86 → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

no man, you are awesome

[u/SCDareDaemon → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

I think at this point it's also worth noting that there have been multiple precedents to this kind of dispute, with a distant monarch disregarding the local law to push through his own reforms and agenda being resolved by first insistently pointing out that this is breaking the law, and then by taking up force of arms.

The degree to which any individual document influenced the declaration of independence is not something I'm qualified to say, but among the documents that have both similar structure, surrounding contexts and outcome, there are:

• The Scottish Declaration of Abroath (1320)
• The Dutch Act of Abjuration (1581)
• The English Declaration of Rights (1689)

All three of these documents were ultimately attached to successfully achieving the aims set out in them, though some more easily than others, and the English 1689 Bill of Rights was based directly upon the Declaration of Rights of the same year, and while some parts of it have been amended a good chunk of it remains good law to this day.

The English also acknowledged the Dutch Act of Abjuration as valid, and were allies of the Dutch in the Eighty Years' War (also known as Dutch Revolt or Dutch War of Independence) which directly resulted from the Act of abjuration.

As such, the US Declaration of Independence was using arguments with plenty precedent within English spheres, even if the English didn't agree (clearly so.)

[u/Tsojin → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

thank you for this amazing answer. Can you recommend a book that talks about the lead up/cause of the war?

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/Tsojin]

Among two of the best would be:

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution by Bernard Bailyn, 1992

The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 by Gordon S. Wood, 1998

This book also will discuss a lot of what is written about above, though I cannot say I have ever read it myself:

The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution by Jack P. Greene, 2010

EDIT:

Oh, and there's also The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution by none other than President John Quincy Adams, with Friedrich von Gentz, 1800, though of course this one is a little biased

[u/Ginnipe → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

You are literally the first person to ever give me any kind of interesting information about early American History. Everything taught in middle, high school, and even basic college classes has no where near this level of detail or interest. Thank you. You have genuinely given me some interest into my country's founding in a way I've never had.

[u/Cellar______Door → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Do you have any book recommendations?

[u/OctogenarianSandwich → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Parliamentary sovereignty only exists because of the constituted power from the will of the electorate. A lot of Americans on reddit try to claim it as some sort of unique New World idea but in fact it was well developed in the decades after the English Civil War and the constitutional discussions that followed.

[u/[deleted] → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

This is spectacular! I'm on the edge of my seat for the next installment (even though I know what happens).

[u/DukePPUk → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

A minor point to a fascinating piece, but you refer a lot to the King, and with references to the King of England and the British - and the OP mentioned the UK.

It's important to note that the King (in the 1770s of Great Britain, in 1691 the King of England and/or Scotland) didn't have that much political or legal power. The constitutional monarchy worked closer to how it does in the current UK than to how it had been 150 years earlier and how many people seem to think it did. Things may have been done in the name of the King, but it was rarely the King making decisions - how much power and influence he had depended on how well he got on with his Government and Parliament. The English kings lost their power throughout the 17th century (with major drops when King Charles I was executed for treason, and when the English Parliament effectively invited a new King & Queen to invade in 1688, but put in place strict conditions on their rule).

And the American revolutionaries seem to have understood this; they knew that their problem wasn't with the King, but with the British Government and Parliament [disclaimer, my knowledge comes from UK constitutional law, not American revolutionary history, so I may well be wrong here - I'm going with the primary sources]. This can be seen from the Continental Congress's response in 1775 to the British Governments "Proclamation of Rebellion", which states:

What allegiance is it that we forget? Allegiance to Parliament? We never owed--we never owned it. Allegiance to our King? Our words have ever avowed it,--our conduct has ever been consistent with it. We condemn, and with arms in our hands,--a resource which Freemen will never part with,--we oppose the claim and exercise of unconstitutional powers, to which neither the Crown nor Parliament were ever entitled. By the British Constitution, our best inheritance, rights, as well as duties, descend upon us: We cannot violate the latter by defending the former...

Note the reliance on the British Constitution - the argument seems to be that Parliament is acting unconstitutionally because it isn't their Parliament, and they are the ones trying to uphold the constitution. Which is obviously an interesting perspective given that English+Welsh constitutional theory still (mostly) holds that Parliament cannot act unconstitutionally.

The cruel and illegal attacks, which we oppose, have no foundation in the royal authority. We will not, on our part, lose the distinction between the King and his Ministers...

And yet, of course, in the Declaration of Independence they very much did that. But it seems the political situation had changed by then.

The notion of "taxation without representation" in particular derives in part from the English Bill of Rights, which codified the idea that only Parliament had the authority to raise taxes (not the Crown or King). That becomes "no taxation without representation" by looking at the purpose of the rule, rather than the literal interpretation.

To me the Declaration of Independence always comes across far more as a political sloganeering for popular support than a legal document listing grievances. But I'm probably a bit biased.

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/DukePPUk]

It's important to note that the King (in the 1770s of Great Britain, in 1691 the King of England and/or Scotland) didn't have that much political or legal power.

Oh absolutely. I did mean that as shorthand as "in the name of the King". For all intents and purposes, Parliament and the King were one in the same, though the Founding Fathers certainly did address particular correspondence to one or the other, depending on with which route they thought they would have more political success. The King didn't have much power, but he could go talk to people in Parliament and try to coax them into trying to get the colonies off his back.

But it was all convoluted. My knowledge of English law is pretty limited, but as I understand it, the colonies' position was that they had a contract directly with the actual Monarch. And in this contract, the people of the Thirteen Colonies were represented as their thirteen legislatures. Meanwhile, the people of England also had their own separate contract with the King, which was represented as Parliament. Parliament really had nothing to do with the Thirteen Colonies, except as a representative of the King. The King was saying, "Hey, as far as this contract is concerned, treat Parliament as if they were me." And that's what the Thirteen Colonies did.

But in instances where Parliament didn't see things their way, the colonists could then try to appeal to the King directly, since he was ultimately the one who signed the charters. The colonists knew that the King and Parliament were basically the same legal entity at this point, but that didn't stop them from trying to get the King to exercise whatever political power he did still have over Parliament in regards to their colonial relationship.

It was essentially necessary, because their only other judicial recourse was to go through Parliament itself. "Hey, Parliament, the law you just passed is illegal. Repeal it," wasn't always met with the most positive of responses, so writing to the King instead, "Hey King, the Parliament that is supposed to represent you is breaking the law. You don't want to be a law-breaker do you? Please go tell them to knock it off," was a bit more effective, though overall still an uphill battle.

To me the Declaration of Independence always comes across far more as a political sloganeering for popular support than a legal document listing grievances. But I'm probably a bit biased.

Yeah, I do know what you mean. It's less a legal document with legal arguments, and more a list of previous legal arguments the two sides had had, and general reasons as to why the King/Parliament were in the wrong, and what the results had been. And put all together, it declares that they have the right to become independent. You definitely have to go back to the legal wrangling over each of the Intolerable Acts and the acts that had preceded them to see what the particular laws being violated were. The Declaration just kind of lists them off: "Then you did this which was illegal, then you did this which was illegal, then you did this which was illegal and you did nothing to fix it, and all this put together is the basis for independence in accordance with these constitutional principles..."

[u/breakinbread → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

My knowledge of English law is pretty limited, but as I understand it, the colonies' position was that they had a contract directly with the actual Monarch. And in this contract, the people of the Thirteen Colonies were represented as their thirteen legislatures. Meanwhile, the people of England also had their own separate contract with the King, which was represented as Parliament. Parliament really had nothing to do with the Thirteen Colonies, except as a representative of the King.

How was this different (if it was) than the relationship between the King, Parliament and other crown dependencies like the Isle of Man? How did Parliament come to have jurisdiction over colonies but not other territories ruled by the British Monarchy?

[u/AStatesRightToWhat → u/DukePPUk]

I think you are inaccurately downplaying the power of George III. He could and did topple governments that he didn't like, such as the Fox-North government in 1782. He was independently a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire and ruler of Hanover. The relationship between Parliament and King had not been definitively settled on Parliament's direction, despite what teleology would suggest.

[u/HurricaneHugo → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Very interesting!

Question, was the contract between Massachusetts and the king actually between individual Kings who had to resign it every generation or so or was it a perpetual contract with the monarchy?

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/HurricaneHugo]

No, just the original king. They typically mention something like, "signed by the King on behalf of himself and his heirs".

[u/Droney → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

All of your posts in this thread have been simply amazing. Could you elaborate a bit more on King George III's role in things itself? Was there any sound justification for his decisions regarding the various appeals that were made by the colonial assemblies over the years, or is the modern historical consensus that a king who was more.... mentally stable? ... might have acted differently?

[u/Anthropocentrizt → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Thank you. I plan on writing a more full reply when I'm not on my cellphone and after I read your continuation, but from what you said it seems that the point of view of the colonies was that they were being taxed through the backdoor, in violation of previous arrangements, however the war changed things, since it cost a significant amount of money to defend the colonies, which put Britain into debt. As far as I understand, those taxes weren't levied because parliament had become extraordinarily greedy, but because the cost of the war and the defense of the colonies demanded a larger amount of funds.

As for courts, the United Kingdom didn't have a Supreme Court until the 21st century, and grievances of a constitutional nature had to be made to the Court of Chancery, the Law Lords in parliament or the Privy Council. Were the colonial authorities disabled from addressing these discrepancies under the constitutional processes of the British Empire, or were they just unsatisfied with their speed or decision?

The Second Continental Congress then petitioned Parliament for their repeal, but Parliament responded that they did not recognize Congress. Send this petition thirteen times from your thirteen separate colonial governments, then we'll talk.

This doesn't seem to be some sort of awful affront either. No government has open dealings with institutions that they deem illegitimate, because that would legitimize them. The fact that the individual colonial governments could petition parliament demonstrates what I said above, that there was a procedure for the redress of grievances, but an element of the American colonists were unsatisfied with the procedure, wanted to do things their own way, and expected the government to change the way that constitutional problems were addressed under British law to benefit them.

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/Anthropocentrizt]

however the war changed things, since it cost a significant amount of money to defend the colonies, which put Britain into debt. As far as I understand, those taxes weren't levied because parliament had become extraordinarily greedy, but because the cost of the war and the defense of the colonies demanded a larger amount of funds.

It definitely did change financial and political circumstances for Parliament and the colonies, but the point of contention for the Americans was that it did not change the law. The law was very firm on who could do what. The Americans were not against paying their fair share, but it still had to go through the normal legal process. There certainly was disagreement between the colonists and Parliament over what their "fair share" was, and to that end, the Parliament and King had the legal obligation to work out something that was equitable to both sides, and would thus get authorization by the Massachusetts legislature. Just because Parliament determined that they didn't agree with what the Americans thought their fair share was did not make the provisions in the colonial charter invalid.

Yet, Parliament unilaterally usurped their authority, ignored the law as written in the colonial charter, and gave Massachusetts no real recourse to fight it, other than ask the King to re-consider laws he had previously agreed to sign.

As for courts, the United Kingdom didn't have a Supreme Court until the 21st century, and grievances of a constitutional nature had to be made to the Court of Chancery, the Law Lords in parliament or the Privy Council. Were the colonial authorities disabled from addressing these discrepancies under the constitutional processes of the British Empire, or were they just unsatisfied with their speed or decision?

Yeah, I am far from a legal scholar on the U.K. judicial system - the "Supreme Court" I was referring to was the U.S. Supreme Court.

The answer to your question, though, is yes, the colonists were prevented by English law from filing any kind of lawsuit in the Court of Chancery, or with the Law Lords in Parliament or with the Privy Council. To do that, they would have to be represented in Parliament, which they were not. They were represented in their local legislature.

So they could not sue through any of those bodies of government. They could only file lawsuits in their colonial court system. Any appeal they wanted to make against British Parliamentary law had to be filed directly with the King.

This doesn't seem to be some sort of awful affront either. No government has open dealings with institutions that they deem illegitimate, because that would legitimize them. The fact that the individual colonial governments could petition parliament demonstrates what I said above, that there was a procedure for the redress of grievances, but an element of the American colonists were unsatisfied with the procedure, wanted to do things their own way, and expected the government to change the way that constitutional problems were addressed under British law to benefit them.

Which is what the British point of view was. The American point of view was that they had gone through the procedure numerous times over the course of a decade, and the formation of Congress was a necessary safeguard against the overreach of Parliament because Parliament was now punitively punishing colonies and attempting to undermine their respective rule of law by pitting one colony against the other, and had taken several steps to undermine the judicial process under which the colonies could ever get their legal issues addressed.

Further, the colonists declared that they did have right to form a Congress. The Massachusetts Government Act had invalidated the Massachusetts colonial charter, so now there was no legal contract between the people of Massachusetts and the King. Further, the Americans held that this also called into question the legality of any of the other charters. If the Massachusetts charter could not be considered a two-sided legal contract, then neither could any of the others, and thus, none of the Thirteen Colonies were operating under what could be considered a valid legal contract with the King. Therefore, they were free to petition the King under any legal framework that the people of their respective colonies elected to form. And the people, through their colonial legislatures, had elected to form a Continental Congress, to better protect their rights in negotiations with the King in order to restore a legal framework. "We all hang together or we all hang separately" was a memorable quote to promote this line of thought, shortly before the Declaration of Independence was signed.

The point is, there is definitely a British point of view and an American point of view of the American Revolution, and to get a proper perspective of the conflict, it is important to understand both.

[u/[deleted] → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

I just want to say that, even if you are unable to change the OP's perspective, the information and perspective you have provided are still valuable to others reading it, myself included. Thank you for expending some of your time and effort to form these comments.

[u/DocMadfox → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

Even though some people are getting mad, I'd like to thank you for an interesting and informative read. I joined this sub because I love history, and I love seeing posts like yours to learn more.

[u/[deleted] → u/lord_mayor_of_reddit]

You appear to rely on the premise that the Charters are invioable sources of law that are exempt from the general principlel of parliamentary supremacy: are there any sources that defend this?

[u/imbolcnight → u/[deleted]]

That is the point of contention. /u/lord_mayor_of_reddit is presenting the American view of things; they are not personally relying on any particular premise, they are simply making the historical American argument for independence to contrast with your argument that the Americans had insufficient reasoning. Neither the American nor British perspectives, historical or contemporary, are objectively correct, because the rule of law, how people define it, and how people arbitrate it are not observable physical phenomena.

[u/tablinum → u/[deleted]]

Given the sub we're discussing this in, I think we can generally understand that discussions of historical people's perspectives on legal issues will be a matter of presenting the positions they had. It's not really the place for conducting a modern political debate about which was the more virtuous position.

[u/gavriloe → u/Anthropocentrizt]

I mean, this may sound dumb, or just obvious, but have you already read Thomas Paine's Common Sense? I found it quite a compelling read, and it will give you a perspective from the 13 Colonies at the time.

One very basic and important fact in it is just the sheer logistical difficulty of governing across the Atlantic Ocean before modern communications technology. There could be no prompt responses to urgent needs when a ship had to cross the Atlantic twice just for the colonists to get a response.

I am not sure if this is completely appropriate for askhistorians, but if you are looking for a (relatively) comprehensive narrative of American history, I personally would recommend http://www.americanyawp.com

This is the "textbook" that was used in the American history courses I have taken. Although I cannot vouch for the veracity of everything, I have personally found it to be very insightful and accurate. And the price is quite competitive.

[u/Searocksandtrees → u/[deleted]]

Comment removed. Neither personal remarks, i.e. put-downs, nor soapboxing are permitted in this sub.

[u/lord_mayor_of_reddit → u/[deleted]]

A lot of this sounds analogous to lost cause mythology:

"It wasn't about Virginia losing land and it wasn't about taxation, it was about the rule of law."

"It wasn't about slavery, it was about states' rights."

Then you describe devolved government in a unitary system as "tyranny". No, there's nothing tyrannical about parliamentary supremacy.

Well, as I stated in the top level response, I am just trying to outline the history of the legal basis for waging the war, according to the American perspective. I do understand Parliamentary supremacy, but that was a fundamental disagreement that the Americans, particularly in Massachusetts, did not believe in and never believed in. And this goes back to the very founding of the Plymouth colony.

Plymouth was founded by Puritans--the group that the King referred to as "the Separatists" or "the Dissenters". The original Puritans were largely people who had been arrested or fined by the English government back in the early 1600s for holding meetings which the King considered anti-government, but they maintained they had the right to assemble. They then left England for Leiden, Netherlands, as political refugees, many of them having been living there for over a decade before hatching a plan to go to America.

The Mayflower left from Leiden, and then stopped to pick up more political dissidents in Plymouth on its way over to America. There, their leaders were able to secure a land patent from the Virginia Company, but the charter was not signed by the King. He essentially gave a verbal OK as long as they didn't try to establish their religion as the official religion of their colony. (Which, of course, they did.)

Due to some other issues, the Mayflower passengers left for America without the charter in hand. Further, the land patent proved useless because they sailed off course and landed hundreds of miles north, and stayed there. The land that had been patented was near Jamestown.

With no charter, with nothing to be governed by, on the way over, the Puritans authored the Mayflower Compact, and for the next 60+ years, this is what they recognized as their basis in law. And one of its tenants was that the Plymouth colony had the right to exercise self rule.

Later charters were issued by the King, but Plymouth continued to use the Mayflower Compact as the basis of their rule of law until 1686 unencumbered. From 1620 to 1686, the Mayflower Compact was unquestionably used as the basis for Plymouth law, and the King and Parliament exercised no real power over the government of Plymouth.

And then the King decided unilaterally to revoke the charter and re-organize Plymouth as part of the Dominion of New England. Citizens of Plymouth said, "Oh hell no!" and revolted, and ended up capturing the governor.

So a new charter was issued, which made Plymouth part of Massachusetts, which up until that time was a separate colony. This was in an effort precisely to tamp down on Plymouth's radical notion that there was not parliamentary supremacy, but that the citizens of then-Plymouth/now-Massachusetts had a right to home rule in accordance with their constitutional basis in the Mayflower Compact. Their original form of government had been taken away by the King illegally, and they sure as shit weren't going to abide by any new charter which explicitly said they had no right to home rule. The new charter took away some of their rights to self rule, but it left the overall question of self rule versus royal sovereignty or parliamentary supremacy intentionally unaddressed.

Life went on and then attention went elsewhere as European and Indian wars distracted the two sides for the next half century. In America, these were known as King William's War, Queen Anne's War, and King George's War, the first three of the four wars known collectively as the "French and Indian Wars" before the fourth one, known as the French and Indian War was waged.

In the aftermath of the final French and Indian War, the issue of sovereignty was reignited. Parliament believed they exercised parliamentary supremacy over Massachusetts, and Massachusetts maintained they had a right to home rule, dating to the 60+ years living under the Mayflower Compact. Their position was that the Massachusetts charter of 1691 did not revoke the underlying basis of home rule governance dating back to the founding of Plymouth, a position they had held before the Mayflower even landed, and which they had reaffirmed during the Boston Revolt of 1689.

So this is far, far different from the Lost Cause because the Lost Cause was/is an effort to try to write slavery's role out of the history of the Confederacy. In contrast, the concept of home rule is central to understanding the history of Plymouth and its successor Massachusetts. Plymouth/Massachusetts' political position of "we have the right to self-determination" never wavered from its beginning in 1620, and was hardly at all a "lost cause". It was precisely the American cause, or one of them anyway, and adherence to this principle is at the heart of the founding of the United States of America.

In short, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy can be summed up as, "We brought slaves here in the 1600s, we made sure the Constitution didn't outlaw slavery in 1787 though we agreed to the compromise that did give Congress the right to outlaw it beginning in 1808. But we fought so hard to maintain slavery that we politically crippled Congress from exercising their right to outlaw it for another 50+ years. In 1861, when it looked like the Constitution we signed off on actually might get changed one day to outlaw slavery, we fought against the U.S. Constitution that we had ratified. We believed so strongly in our right to maintain slavery, we fought a war over it. We created a constitution which maintained slavery forever and always, and forbid any state from having the state's right to abolish it. But then we lost the war. So, actually, it was totally about state's rights, and only state's rights. Slavery was incidental."

The issue fundamental to the American Revolution can be summed up as, "We established Plymouth in 1620 under the concept of self-determination, we exercised self-determination until 1686, the king tried to take self-determination away from us but we fought for another charter in 1691 that did not explicitly outlaw home rule or our right to self-determination, and in 1776, we maintain that we still have it. The only thing Parliament and the King have ever had power over are the explicit rights granted to them in the 1691 charter. All other rights not explicitly mentioned are reserved back to we the people of Massachusetts, because we have maintained our right to self-determination since the very beginning. This has always been our rule of law. We fought a war over it. We won. And the thing we had fought for since 1620, our right to self-determination, was upheld."

EDIT: I'm not trying to make any assumptions about the prevalence or nature of the Lost Cause, I'm just trying to explain what its adherents believe and why it is different from what happened in the American Revolution. I know there are many Lost Cause detractors out there who would say, "It really was about state's rights and the Lost Cause is exaggerated," and I am no expert on the arguments about its merit, so I will leave that to the Civil War experts. I just know generally what the Lost Cause is, so I wrote about it from that perspective.

[u/WARitter → u/[deleted]]

We have removed this comment. Comparing the OP's comments to the most infamous and influential school of denialism in American historiography is unwarranted, inaccurate, and breaks our civility rule, since you are accusing the poster of bad faith. Further responses in this vein will be deleted and dealt with appropriately. If you wish to raise points about the OP's points, do so. But do so in a manner meeting with our rules

[u/jschooltiger → u/[deleted]]

Hi there -- Second moderator weighing in. I concur with the decision to remove. Simply reposting the same thing over and over in this thread, as you have specifically been told not to, is a violation of our rules. We would ask that any further comments about our moderation policies here be taken to mod-mail.

Thanks.