Myths about American independence:
There are, as with many major historical events, a large number of myths that over the course of time have become accepted as being facts. Some are obviously fictitious and no longer believed in by most people such as Paul Revere's ride; others continue to enjoy the status of facts in spite of being either demonstrably false, probably false, largely false or being a mixture of truth and falsehood oversimplified and distorted to the point of virtual falsehood.
I'll start off by giving some background to the American War of Independence. From 1739-1748 and again from 1756-1763 Britain was engaged in a long series of wars with France and, during the 1739-1748 period, Spain as well. Then in 1763 a major Native American uprising took place under the chief Pontiac. All these wars cost a lot of money and Britain, which in 1739 had been not simply wealthy but solvent, was forced to borrow money on a heroic scale to fund it. Much of the fighting took place in what is now Canada and the United States and led to a vast increase in the National Debt. As there was not yet any income tax (that didn't come about till the Napoleonic Wars) the government was forced to raise taxes through more indirect means, mainly taxes on goods and services. These taxes were of course deeply unpopular in Britain as well as in America.
Meanwhile the domestic political scene in Britain had changed. Between 1721 and 1762 the government, except for a brief period in 1742-43 when a coalition of opposition parties was briefly in power, was in the hands of the Whigs. The two kings of Britain during that period were both German and neither spoke much English. The consequence was that their ministers ran the country without any serious intervention by the monarch. Then in 1760 George III, British born and bred and fluent in English, came to the throne. He tried to reclaim some of the lapsed royal powers and this raised a storm in Britain as well as in America. John Wilkes was the leader of the radical opposition to royal attempts to rule as well as reign and he was also to become later a champion of American independence. By 1762 George III felt strong enough to dismiss the Whigs and to invite a new party known as the 'King's Friends' to form a ministry. Their leader was the Scottish Earl of Bute and he put together one of the most incompetent Cabinets ever seen in the history of British politics. Bute had been George's tutor and was instinctively authoritarian and encouraged the king to be 'firm' and to 'rule.' The result, at home and abroad, was utter chaos and disruption.
Nor was this the only problem with the new government. Bute, his Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Francis Dashwood, his First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Sandwich and several other members also belonged to the notorious Hell-Fire Club. So too did Wilkes and also the American Benjamin Franklin.
The Hell-Fire Club was an association of men, mainly from the aristocracy and wealthy though a few outsiders like Wilkes, Franklin, Charles Churchill and Charles Johnson were also members (known as 'inferior' members as the 'superior' members were an inner circle within the club.) It engaged in promiscuous sex, extravagant drinking, and - crucially - Satanic ceremonies. Dashwood, Bute, Sandwich and Franklin were all enthusiastic Satanists whereas Wilkes, Churchill and Johnson were more interested in the drink and debauchery and found the Satanic trappings comical.
Back to the political situation - Bute, now Prime Minister, felt that the cost of the war had to be recouped somehow and as income tax was not even considered he introduced a number of new indirec taxes. These raised a storm of protest in Britain as well as in America but Bute's position was that as the British government had, among other things, been defending the people of Canada and America from the French it was only fair that the Canadians and Americans should pay a part of the cost incurred.
This idea - that the Americans had a moral duty to help contribute financially to the cost of their own defence - seemed to strike them as outrageous. The reality is that there had been no significant increase in taxes on the American colonists since the time of Charles II so the level of taxes they were paying was far lower than the British people had to pay. Even with the new taxes their share of the tax contribution was less than that which the British people were charged.
A few voices raised the cry 'no taxation without representation.' This was - on the most charitable interpretation - naive and unrealistic and on the more probable interpretation, consciously dishonest.
If for the sake of argument Britain had created American constituencies and allowed them to send MPs to Parliament in London it would have taken months for any decisions to be brought back and forth. The strong probability is that the whole cry of 'no taxation without representation' was a dishonest attempt to evade paying taxes.
The British government reacted with fury, stupidity and ineptitude. First they tried to browbeat the colonists and then, after that failed, gave in and withdrew the new duties. The lesson was quickly learned that violence and the threat of violence would lead to the British giving in. From that point onwards a body of radicals, imbued with a misunderstood idea of John Locke's political philosophy and the heady nonsense of Rousseau's posturings, began to push for independence.
It's important to remember that even within the colonists the supporters of independence were always in a minority. New York and Georgia were strongly loyalist and so too were the majority of the original thirteen states.
What the American 'Revolution' represented was a coup d'etat by a minority of extremists rather than a genuine desire on the part of the majority of the colonists for independence.
Even though Bute's government soon fell and a succession of weak governments tried different ways to resolve the problem without success eventually in 1770 a stable Tory government came to power under Lord North. North, sadly, was totally inept and spent most of his twelve years in office offering his resignation to George III and being refused.
North came to power after one of the most tragic incidents in the lead-up to American independence, the so-called 'Boston Massacre.' This took place in 1770 and involved a group of frightened British soldiers losing their nerve and firing on a mob of American hooligans who were physically attacking them. They were put on trial and John Adams - a man for whom I have almost total contempt - demonstrated the one good act I can find in his career by defending the soldiers and arguing that they acted in self-defence. The American court acquitted them and frankly no other verdict would have been fair. I give Adams full credit for his brave defence of the soldiers which made him deeply unpopular with the advocates of independence.
Then of course in 1773 the Boston Tea Party took place. It was a reaction to the latest attempt to tax the colonists by raising the duty on tea. That hardened opinions on both sides but even at this late stage most colonists opposed the idea of independence.
In 1775 the first battle of the war took place, a year before the formal Declaration of Independence. It was a skirmish and resolved little but it showed how increasingly extremists on both side of the Atlantic were beginning to dominate things.
on 2 July 1776 the Declaration of Independence was signed and on 4 July 1776 the printer's copy made. It's ironic that ever since American independence has been celebrated on the wrong date!
The Declaration included a number of downright lies as well as a lot of distortion, rhetoric and half-truths. Most of its invective against the British bore about as much relation to reality as Goebbels' diatribes against the Jews but of course with the passage of time its lies and propaganda have hardened into myths believed as facts.
It's the 'Tonypandy syndrome' where if a lie is told often enough over the course of time it becomes 'fact.' Tonypandy was a situation before the First World War where the then Home Secretary Winston Churchill dealt with striking miners in the Welsh town of Tonypandy by sending down some London police officers with rolled up umbrellas. (This is well documented by photographs, films, eye-witness testimony and newspaper accounts at the time). This action by churchill somehow became magnified into soldiers shooting dead striking miners and a saying arose, 'South Wales will never forget Tonypandy.' So even though the massacre of Tonypandy never happened, it's become enshrined as a myth in Welsh culture.
Anyway, the war against the colonists was deeply unpopular in Britain. Even the majority of British generals involved in the war were opposed to it - Howe, Clinton and Cornwallis were all deeply against the whole campaign. Only Burgoyne hated the Americans and wanted to crush them but not only was he the most incompetent of all the British generals but he was also DELIBERATELY betrayed by Howe and Clinton on his ill-fated Saratoga venture. Both knew exactly what they were doing and both deliberately abandoned the general and his troops when they could have sent aid and had been specifically asked by Burgoyne to do so.
On top of that Howe was treasonably corresponding with the rebels and passing on vital information to them to help them in their campaign. When you consider that Britain was fighting not only the colonists but France, Spain and Holland as well and that both senior political and military British leaders were conscious traitors to their country it's not surprising that eventually the British gave in.
The stated reasons for the Declaration of Independence were a mixture of false claims about 'royal tyranny,' 'massacres' - even an American court found that claim to be false - and the imposition of 'oppressive taxes.' Considering that George III could not even succeed in reclaiming royal privileges in Britain and that his remit in America was even looser, the first charge was silly, the second downright false and the third dubious. As it happens taxes were massively higher after US independence than they had been under the Crown!
It contained ringing rhetoric about 'freedom' but of course this 'freedom' was NOT extended to women, slaves or Native Americans. In fact the position of women worsened after independence as did the position of slaves and Native Americans. John Adams' wife specifically asked him to give women the vote and greater rights in general but he dismissed her ideas with utter contempt.
British officers and soldiers who served in the campaign were so shocked by the treatment of slaves that almost all of them became ardent advocates of the abolition of slavery on their return to Britain.
So what were the hidden reasons behind the American War of Independence? They were, as so often, a mixture of things. One was the desire to seize land from the Native Americans which was firmly opposed by the British government. Another was the fear that, especially after the Mansfield judgement, the British authorities might abolish slavery.
More nebulous reasons included the fact that the 'Founding Fathers' were mainly members of the secret society known as the Illuminati to which both Washington and Jefferson belonged and Franklin of course was a conscious Satanist. Their goal was to destroy all monarchies and aristocracies and replace them with the rule of a new 'elite' to which naturally they saw themselves as belonging while women, slaves and Native Americans were of course firmly excluded from their brave new world.
Franklin tried at times to raise economic issues but these were always consciously dishonest smoke screens. The burden of taxation was far lower under the British than under the independent states; the idea that the British refusal to allow the colonists to create their own currency is also dishonest. No nation with colonies allowed that at the time so the British attitude was hardly untypical or repressive.
All in all, the 'American Revolution' was a greedy, self-interested coup d'etat by a tiny minority. They oppressed blacks, women, Native Americans and 'Tories' - American loyalists who fought for the Crown - with extreme cruelty after the last restrainst were removed by their newly independent status.
It's quite significant that they tried and failed to get the Quebecois to join them in fighting the British with NO success at all. The French Canadians PREFERRED being ruled by the British to being ruled by the French or joining the Americans.
Highly curious when all the dishonest rhetoric about 'freedom' is taken into account that the Quebecois saw through it and saw it as the hypocritical, self-serving and false nonsense it was.