Imagine a country where the government could do anything they wanted because it was simply their “right.” The revolution was caused by a series of events which were started by the king passing taxes on the colonists and enforcing laws which were violating the civilians natural rights. There has been an argument since the war started about whether the colonists were justified in declaring independence and breaking away from their home country. The American colonists were justified in waging war for independence against Britain because the british government ignored countless formal petitions sent, the government didn’t have the right to impose taxes on the settlers, and Britain waged war against the colonists. The first reason the revolutionary war was justified was because the king ignored a myriad of petitions. In return, their “petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.” (7) Can you serve, respect, and honour a country that has brought death and soldiers into your land? Even after the King George III received the pleas of the settler, he continued to send more troops to their land, waging a silent war with the colonist’s. In Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, makes a very bold point that supports a big reason why the colonists were not guilty of declaring independence from Britain. He says “But...then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honour, and faithfully serve the power [ English Parliament ] that hath carried fire and sword into your land?” (6)What Paine
Thomas Paine makes a statement and compares the king to a thief that stole their land. Paine states, “but if a thief breaks into my house, threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?”(Paine). Trying to persuade people to join the fight, Paine is asking the colonists why they are subjecting their selves to the tyranny of the king; furthermore, Paine is explaining that the colonists have no choice, but to fight or they will forever be under the tyranny of the king. Patrick Henry makes a statement about the petition in his speech that says, “Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received?”(Henry). With his rhetorical question, Patrick Henry is trying to show the colonists that the king did not care for their petition and would not settle for anything. Therefore, Henry would then go on to state why they should declare war on Britain and gain their
april 1775, Colonies located in North America put their foot down and worked towards a unified
The American Revolution should never have happened. The British were not tyrannical, oppressive rulers although the American colonies perceived them to be so. The American colonists misperceptions led to revolution and independence.
According to the Declaration Of Independence, abuse of the representative powers and their natural rights gave the people the right to eliminate their current government and create a new one. Thomas Jefferson outlines the mistakes of the British government, and asserts that citizens were restricted of natural rights. In such case, during the American Revolution, colonies had the right to get rid of their government because the king was not rightly protecting the citizens rights. Not only that, but direct taxes were enforced upon the citizens leading to acts being passed in opposition to the rebellion. All things considered, I would say that the American Revolution was justified under the Declaration of Independence.
The American Revolution was justified because the colonists were not being treaty fairy and equally by the British. And according to Jefferson, “people being oppressed have a moral obligation to rebel against their oppressors”. From the beginning, the colonists were not given the full rights as British men, just because they were not living in that country. The Navigation Acts passed by the Parliament to restrict colonial trade, and all of colonial trade with Europe had to go through England, overall they wanted to keep colonies in a position of economic dependency on Britain. And that was a serious damage in the colonial economies and people’s aspirations, it makes many colonists unhappy and smuggle goods to other country. And British
4. What was the Revolutionary movement, at its core, really all about? Was it about the amount of taxation, the right of Parliament to tax, the political corruption of Britain and the virtue of America, the right of a king to govern America, or the colonies’ growing sense of national identity apart from Britain? Was the Revolution truly a radical overturning of government and society—the usual definition of a revolution—or something far more limited or even conservative in its defense of traditional rights?
In the year of 1776, emotions intensify in Colonial America creating an atmosphere prime for dissidence and a yearning for independence. The livid Americans, overtaxed and mistreated by the British after the French and Indian War, debate and argue amongst themselves about the fate of their fledgling colony. The American colonies interested in seeking independence from their motherland Britain, look abroad in hopes of finding moral and political reasons to justify revolution. In the pamphlet, Common Sense, Frenchman Thomas Paine conveys such reasons using rhetorical elements such as figurative language, rhetorical questions, and assertions in order to enhance the morale of the colonists and support the Americans in their revolution against Britain.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fear the people, there is liberty.” The British government was feared by the American colonists in the seventeen hundreds, so that means there was tyranny. The American colonists were justified in fighting a war to break away from Britain because they were not being represented by Britain, and King George was abusing his power on them.
The American Revolution was the uprising of the existing thirteen American colonies to gain independence from Britain in the mid 1700’s. The American colonists began questioning Britain’s authority as early as the French and Indian War. During the French Indian War, the colonies wanted to defend themselves against the French in North America. They asked King George for permission to raise armies in order defend themselves. Although their reason to raise an army was sincere, George II was suspicious of the intentions of the colonial government and disapproved their petition. After the French Indian War, Britain decided to raise money by taxing the American Colonists for reparations. Taxes such as the Stamp and Tea Acts created controversy
Today we look back at the American Revolution and picture a united people fighting for inalienable rights, but to grasp the impact that Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” had upon his contemporaries we must understand the situation in the American colonies in 1776. When Paine wrote his pamphlet, the colonist and The Parliament in London, were almost 10 years into a debate over the rights of limited self-government by the colonies. In the months preceding the publication of Paine’s pamphlet the situation had steadily worsened until the April 19th, 1775 armed confrontation between Massachusetts colonists and British Army soldiers. By the end of that day, blood had been shed by both sides, and armed colonists placed the British garrison in Boston under siege. Despite this violence, most colonists viewed the events as a part of a struggle between Englishmen that would be resolved with the continued allegiance of the colonies to the Crown, but with more favorable treatment from London. It was with this popular mindset throughout the colonies, that Paine would deliver his “Common Sense” pamphlet arguing for complete independence from England. Paine understood that to make his argument resonate he needed to appeal to the public in a manner that had yet to be done.
In conclusion, the Colonists were very justified in waging war as they were being over taxed, being ruled from across the sea, and weren’t being taken seriously. The main reason was that the King was no longer for his people and was for the money instead. They were rightly justified because a leader of a country should always be for his people. These reasons helped the Colonists because it gave them a reason to keep going when things got tough. They could see the future of this country and they continued to fight until they could live their vision and
In result of The Seven Years’ War Britain controlled American trade and territory. In order to pay for the expenses of the war several taxation acts and military presence were implemented such as the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Currency Act, Quartering Act and the presence of British troops at the colonies. Consequently, Americans who thought these actions violated their political and constitutional liberties opposed these policies with petitions, boycotts, and resistance strategies known as the Imperial Crisis. In January 1776 Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was composed to convince Americans of the need for independence from British rule and establishment of democracy. This pamphlet
During the revolutionary, many important things happened. The king of Great Britain was in charge of America at first. The king would place laws that were not fair at all to the colonists. Therefore, this made the colonists dislike the king. The king would make laws, that violate the colonist’s freedom, and put out new acts that would be worse than the previous one the colonists had petitioned against.
About a decade before the American Revolution happened in 1775, there were lots of tension building up between the colonists and the British. The colonists did not like being under British rule and control because they liked freedom and wanted independence. However, the British government attempted to raise tax revenues by imposing more taxes on the colonists to pay for the leftover debts from the Indian-French War. Some of the laws passed include the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Tariffs of 1767, and the Tea Act of 1773. Some events that escalated the tension include the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, etc. The colonists were justified in rebelling against Britain.
Furthermore, as Thomas Paine argues in his pamphlet, Common Sense, the colonies are protected with British military force strictly for Britain’s