All of this changed however with the advent of the French and Indian war (1754-1763). The war starts in North America but within two years spreads to Europe (where it is known there as the Seven Years War). To prosecute this war the British Crown made the decision to finance Fredrick the Great of Prussia to fight the French in Europe which thereupon freed the British army to go to North America to fight and ultimately defeat the French there. The end of the war comes in the year 1763 (called “The Year of Miracles” in British History). By that year the British had conquered Canada and had secured all French posession in North America taking half of French Louisiana up to the Mississippi River in addition to taking The Rock of Gibralter and Cuba from Spain.

All of this came however at a price…. a BIG price. The British national debt had grown exponentially and the Crown was naturally looking around for some way to raise money to pay this debt off. Enter the Colonies…. The King’s ministers then started looking around and soon discovered that the Colonies had never really been taxed. So naturally they just assumed that they could simply start to enforce those tax laws that were already on the books and then pass new laws of direct taxation on the colonists in order to alleviated their debt problem. In their own minds they felt “surely the colonists won’t mind….” after all, Britain had just expended millions of Pounds Sterling not to mention thousands of British lives defending British colonial posessions and lives against their arch enemy the French. And even conquering France’s North American empire in the process so that the French would never be a threat to them again.

But the colonists DID mind…! For the simple fact that these tax laws had NEVER before been enforced (which caused the colonists to see some sort of governmental conspiracy), and because direct taxation had been placed upon them without the colonists having any representation for debate on the matter in Parliament.

In response, the British Crown argued that the colonists did not need direct representation in Parliament since each individual colony already HAD representation through the Privy Council. Any requests, debate, or lists of grievences from any colony could be submitted to the Privy Council for review and their decision would be final.

And then HERE is where the snobbery comes in…. The main problem with the Privy Council (and the King’s ministers as a whole) was the fact that they saw the colonists as second class citizens. Their attitude towards the colonists can best be summed up I believe in the phrase “You are nothing but a Damned Colonial and you will Bloody well do as you’re told…!”.

This, “we know what is best for you” type attitude was pervasive throughout the British governmental establishment (especially within the Aristocracy) and started with the King himself running down through his ministers into the Privy Council and filtered its way on down through the Royal Governor’s and into the Crown’s Colonial administrators within each of the individual colonies themselves. Benjamin Franklin himself as agent for the colony of Pennsylvania was personally excoriated by the Privy Council publically in London which prompted his eventual resignation and return to America in 1775.

Thomas Jefferson, in his pamphlet “A Summary View of the Rights of British America”, argued against such attitude stating that the colonists were indeed Englishmen – just as any Englishman born in London, York, Dover, or wherever – and that as such they should be granted ALL of the rights and privileges that Englishmen in England enjoyed. But to no avail.

Simply put. The Crown viewed the colonists with a certain disdain seeing them as “upstart colonials” who were nothing more than ungrateful children and that they should be thankful to Britain for all that they had and all that Britain had done for them. Such an attitude did nothing but cause the colonists to see conspiracy in every act that Parliament passed. And when you factor in the affects of the Great Awakening which swept the colonies twenty years prior to all of this filling the colonists with a tremendous religious conversion and causing them to see themselves and their relationship to the Empire differently, the end result proved to be absolutely combustible.

Throughout the course of the Revolution the British Crown STILL maintained this high handed attitude towards ALL of the colonists…. even to the Loyalists who supported them! And as a result, it helped to finally convince the colonists that they had simply grown apart from their English cousins and that they had become different people. An American people with different beliefs and values. Values that had started in Britain but had changed over the years to become a distinctly American quality.

The real Revolution in my opinion did not occur on the battlefield, but instead occurred within the hearts and minds of the English colonials themselves when they finally woke up and realized that they had grown apart from Great Britain and had become a uniquely different people.

And this is the reason that I am SO very excited about the “Courage New Hampshire” Project. For you are taking the time to examine the belief systems of the people of that day and what influenced them and how they have influenced us to this day in the founding of our Republic. This Project is absolutely AWESOME and is SO needed by the American people at this time. Go Jim GO…!!!
Colonel Paul