{"id":21761,"date":"2025-07-02T09:32:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T13:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21761"},"modified":"2025-07-04T11:42:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T15:42:12","slug":"the-1775-two-step-that-led-to-american-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/02\/the-1775-two-step-that-led-to-american-independence\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1775 Two Step That Led to American Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reposted on Zero Hedge<\/strong><\/a>, Mises Institute<\/strong><\/a>, Counterpunch<\/strong><\/a>, RealClearPolicy<\/strong><\/a>, and many other websites<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

The 1775 Two Step That Led to American Independence<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As Americans prepare to celebrate the 249th<\/sup> anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should also toast the 250th<\/sup> anniversary of a savvy political two-step that paved the way to formally breaking with Britain the following year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe, your Majesty\u2019s faithful subjects\u2026\u201d began the petition beseeching reconciliation with King George from the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775.\u00a0 That offering became known as the Olive Branch Petition<\/a>.\u00a0 The following day, Congress issued its\u00a0 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms<\/a>, explaining why hostile British troops would henceforth be gunned down on the battlefields of America.<\/p>\n

Were the petition and the Declaration on Taking Up Arms sent to England on the same ship?\u00a0 If so, was a sticker attached to the Olive Branch petition saying,\u00a0 \u201cOpen me first\u201d?\u00a0<\/strong> The petitioners \u201centreat your Majesty\u2019s gracious attention to this our humble petition,\u201d stressed their \u201cutmost deference for your Majesty,\u201d boasted that \u201cour breasts retain too tender a regard for the kingdom from which we derive our origin,\u201d and stressed that they remained\u00a0 \u201cfaithful subjects\u201d to \u201cour Mother country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even tying a red ribbon around that petition would not have helped. King George III refused to accept it or even to read it.<\/strong> The king\u2019s obstinacy helped spur the rarely remembered provision of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the right \u201cto petition the Government for a redress of grievances.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Olive Branch petition was fiercely controversial within Congress. Virginia delegate Benjamin Harrison declared, \u201cThere is but one word in the paper of which I approve, and that is the word, \u2018Congress.\u2019\u201d Harrison was later elected governor of Virginia; his son and great grandson both became U.S. presidents. The Olive Branch petition passed as one last attempt at reconciliation with the British monarch in part because many Americans believed that the king had been misled by his corrupt or devious advisors. This was the 1700s version of the Russian folk saying \u201cif only the Czar knew about all the starving peasants!\u201d<\/p>\n

King George\u2019s response to the petition was shaped in part by the British military disaster at Bunker Hill, when patriot sharpshooters killed or wounded every British officer on the battlefield amidst a vast carnage inflicted.\u00a0 That Pyrrhic victory spooked the British generals but the lesson was not learned until far too late in London. Two days after the Olive Branch petition was delivered to British officials in London, the British government formally labeled the American colonies in a state of \u201copen and avowed rebellion\u201d and called for \u201cutmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion.\u201d The subsequent vast increase in British aggression swayed hundreds of thousands of Americans\u2019 minds in favor of independence at any cost.<\/p>\n

The July 6 Declaration, written by Thomas Jefferson<\/strong> and John Dickinson, castigated \u201cthe legislature of Great Britain\u201d which \u201cattempted to effect their cruel and impolitic purpose of enslaving these colonies by violence.\u201d\u00a0 Americans felt that the British legislature had been warring on them practically since the day the French and Indian War ended. The Declaratory Act of 1766 announced that Parliament \u201chad, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.\u201d The July 6 Declaration demanded to know: \u201cWhat is to defend us against so enormous so unlimited a power? Not a single man of those who assume it, is chosen by us; or is subject to our control or influence.\u201d Law after law trumpeted Americans\u2019 legal inferiority to their foreign masters.<\/strong> \u201cWrits of assistance\u201d entitled British soldiers to search any home for evidence of evading tariffs on tea or whiskey. Massachusetts lawyer James Otis denounced those writs for conferring \u201ca power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1775 Declaration proclaimed: \u201cWe have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.\u201d \u201cSlavery by Parliament\u201d was a commonly used denunciation of British legislative power grabs.<\/strong> Law Professor John Phillip Reid, author of The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution<\/em>, noted that \u201cmost commentators of the Eighteenth Century thought slavery the opposite of liberty without equating it with chattel slavery\u2026. The word \u2018slavery\u2019 did outstanding service during the revolutionary controversy\u2026 because it summarized so many political, legal and constitutional ideas and permitted a writer to say so much about liberty.\u201d Bernard Bailyn, author of The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution<\/em>, wrote, \u201c\u2018Slavery\u2019 was a central concept in eighteenth century political discourse. As the absolute political evil, it appears in every statement of political principle\u2026 in every exhortation to resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The British parliament saw the American colonies as offering \u201call the easy emoluments of statuteable plunder,\u201d a phrase in the 1775 Declaration that captured the default attitude of politicians to anyone under their sway<\/strong>. The Continental Congress scoffed that their British rulers \u201cboast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.\u201d The Declaration stated that \u201cwe mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us.\u201d But it warned that Americans would only lay down their arms \u201cwhen hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Declaration on Taking Up Arms contains flashes of wisdom that should have been burned into popular memory as much as any phrase from the following year\u2019s Declaration of Independence. In 1775, Congress boldly declared that \u201cour attachment to no nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.\u201d<\/strong> Unfortunately, Washington policymakers long ago buried that maxim in their pursuit of dominating much of the globe.<\/p>\n

One year later, Americans offered only contempt and cannon balls for King George. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration: \u201cA Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Actually, there is plenty of political wisdom in both the 1775 and 1776 declarations, as well as many other state papers in that era. But schools are probably doing a worse job than ever before in helping young Americans recognize the deadly risks of officialdom unleashed. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor groused in 2014 that fewer than 20% of high school seniors \u201ccan say what the Declaration of Independence is, and it\u2019s right there in the title.\u201d Did O\u2019Connor roll over in her grave when President Trump recently astounded an ABC reporter by asserting that the 1776 Declaration was \u201ca declaration of unity and love and<\/a> respect\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regardless of Oval Office revisionism, Americans should never forget that their nation was forged in resistance to political slavery and claims by distant masters to unlimited power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reposted on Zero Hedge, Mises Institute, Counterpunch, RealClearPolicy, and many other websites The 1775 Two Step That Led to American Independence by James Bovard As Americans prepare to celebrate the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should also toast the 250th anniversary of a savvy political two-step that paved the way to formally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[446,4604,869,4539,4601,3531,4540,4602,4603,3868,811,935,257,4605],"class_list":["post-21761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-revolution","tag-benjamin-harrison","tag-britain","tag-bunker-hill","tag-continental-congress","tag-james-otis","tag-john-dickinson","tag-king-george-iii","tag-olive-branch-petition","tag-parliament","tag-slavery","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-virginia","tag-writs-of-assistance"],"yoast_head":"\nThe 1775 Two Step That Led to American Independence - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21761"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21777,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761\/revisions\/21777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}