Talk:American Revolution/Archive 5

Archive 1

←

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Request for link

"King George" doesn't have a link to the Wikipedia article on him. George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.38.202.223 (talk) 14:37, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Why is it not called what it actually was: a war of secession? Is common ignorance considered more 'correct' than proper terminology?

Wikipedia doesn't "fix" information, only reflect it. For that applied to names, see WP:COMMONNAME. --A D Monroe III (talk) 23:01, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

'Patriots' and 'patriots'

The word 'patriot' is misused and not really explained in a number of places in this article. It is often misused in modern books and and articles about the American Revolution. It's also a word that seems to have got itself embedded in the American psyche in such terms as Patriot Missile, Patriot Act. The Patriot, Patriot Games, Oliver North American Patriot etc.

It needs to be made clear that in the context of the American Revolution the word 'Patriot' always needs to be spelled with a capital letter and that it refers to the name of a political party or group of parties and is not a simple reference to people who were being patriotic in the general sense of the word. Cassandra. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.236.9 (talk) 10:31, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

See Oxford English Dictionary, which does not mandate a capital letter for the common designation for supporters of independence. It is not true that the term was limited to an organized Party. Breen for example uses lower case in his major scholarly book about them. see https://books.google.com/books?id=oxy0wIl4LeIC&pg=PA46 Rjensen (talk) 02:39, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Civil War or Revolution ?

Was the American Revolution an actual war between Loyalist and Patriot colonists ? Cmguy777 (talk) 03:38, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

It's not up to us to figure the "correct" name ourselves; per WP:COMMONNAME, we must call it "Revolution". --A D Monroe III (talk) 17:37, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

"Civil war" is quite a wrong word. - Zorobabele

It was a revolution because we were under British rule which the British weren't treating us fairly! So, yeah it was a revolution! Bubba2018 (talk) 01:09, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

The date is wrong by 10 years

The American Revolution started in 1775, not 1765. This is a very simple and important change that must be made imminently. IvicaGo (talk) 12:26, 26 October 2017 (UTC)IvicaGo

We have separate articles on the Revolution and the Revolutionary War (which did start a few years later). Rmhermen (talk) 00:40, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Source failed verification in section "Independence and Union"

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The issue with the Maier source was resolved. Sparkie82 (t•c) 22:58, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

---

The section refers to the Declaration of Independence and says, "it was slightly revised and unanimously adopted by the entire Congress on July 4, marking the formation of a new sovereign nation which called itself the United States of America." The source cited doesn't mention the word "sovereign" in regards to the US as a whole. A Google search of the book shows that it uses the term four times:

"power had revered to the sovereign people" in consequence to British violations of its compact

"our sovereign" (in reference to the King of England)

"and of right ought to be a sovereign and self-governing association" (North Carolina's Mecklenburg Resolution, May 20, 1775)

Jefferson's assessment of a "federal bargin negotiated at the time of the Revolution by which the states retained their sovereign power"

None of these mentions of the word hint at the US as a soveriegn nation at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (instead of an association of sovereign states). Sparkie82 (t•c) 19:58, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

it's dangerous to use half a sentence -- it loses context. Try this argument: "Independence amounted to a new status of interdependence: the United States was now a sovereign nation" from George Billias American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776-1989 (2011) p 17. Rjensen (talk) 01:20, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually, both are correct: a sovereign nation composed of sovereign states. The text should probably reflect that. Sparkie82 (t•c) 23:58, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

No, the individual states are not independently sovereign; they are united together under some measure of federal oversight. The thirteen colonies withdrew themselves from British oversight and banded together under a new Continental Congress in which each individual state agreed to participate, and to which each state agreed to be accountable. This made the separate states into a single autonomous entity known as the United States of America—which became a sovereign nation composed of various states. —Dilidor (talk) 11:27, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

As a matter of law, even today the states retain plenary sovereignty over those powers not specifically granted to the union. It's a fundamental aspect of federalism -- a vertical sharing of power as a complement to the horizontal separation of powers of the branches of government. Today we think of the US as a single country, but prior to the ratification of the Constitution, it was essentially a treaty organization for trade and defense. There have been several major changes between then and now which have shifted the US from that association of states into the country we have today with a very strong central government: ratification of the Constitution, the growth in the power of the executive, the Civil War and its amendments, post-depression SCOTUS opinions, and most recently legislative responses to preceived eternal threats. This issue was discussed at length here. I think this article should more clearly communicate the fact that during its early years the nation was composed of individual sovereign states that granted very limited power to a central government. Sparkie82 (t•c) 06:45, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Your use of the word sovereign is too casual and haphazard. What you are describing is autonomy. —Dilidor (talk) 16:38, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Aside from the semantics, do you agree? Sparkie82 (t•c) 14:33, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's a reference from a 1991 opinion by SCOTUS (who presumably understand this subject):

Despite the narrowness of its terms, since Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890), we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transportation, 483 U.S. 468, 472 (1987) (opinion of Powell, J.); Employees v. Missouri Dept. of Public Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279, 290-294 (1973) (Marshall, J., concurring in result); and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the "plan of the convention." See Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 494 U. S. —, — (1990); Welch, supra, at 474 (opinion of Powell, J); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 238 (1985); Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 99 (1984).

— Supreme Court of the United States, BLATCHFORD v. NATIVE VILLAGE OF NOATAK, No. 89-1782

Sparkie82 (t•c) 01:09, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

I rephrased it in a way that I think may be acceptable for both sides of this discussion -- plus it's shorter and includes more context. Sparkie82 (t•c) 03:06, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@Rjensen: You just reinserted the Billias quote, which I replaced with the rephrasing of the last paragraph as explained above. What you added is redundant and retains the problematic wording regarding sovereignty. Can you please explain your edit within the context of this discussion? Sparkie82 (t•c) 05:46, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

The quote does NOT fail verification--your premise is wrong. It's word-for word. Billias is leading expert and we follow the RS. If there are alternative RS then Wiki rules require they be added. However so far no one has suggested an alternative reliable secondary source on the topic. As for the personal views of Wiki editors they do not trump reliable secondary sources. The paraphrase is too short and inadequate--it does not explain the US's new role in world affairs as an independent nation freed from British sovereignty. Rjensen (talk) 06:14, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

The failed verification was for Maier, not Billias (Maier, American Scripture (1997) pp. 41–46). You added the Billias quote AFTER this thread was started, which resolved the issue with the source, but not the issue of the presentation of shared sovereignty between the states in the article. Because the original issue about the source was resolved, and editors are getting confused here, I'm closing this thread and starting a new one on the subject of sovereignty below (#Shared sovereignty among the states) Sparkie82 (t•c) 22:58, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

War of the Regulation

No direct mention of this event here? --BeckenhamBear (talk) 15:47, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

The War of 1812

Some historians believe that the revolution actually ended with the war of 1812, or at least that that war was a test of the soundness of the revolution. The war is mentioned in the article under the section "American Indians," but perhaps at the end of the section "Defending the Revolution" it should say that the War of 1812 firmly demonstrated the permanence of the United States. Sparkie82 (t•c) 03:49, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Hearing no objections... Sparkie82 (t•c) 17:41, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Shared sovereignty among the states

In the section "American_Revolution#Independence and Union" there is a quote from a historian that says, "Independence amounted to a new status of interdependence: the United States was now a sovereign nation entitled to the privileges and responsibilities that came with that status." But the section (and the article) doesn't properly present the fact that during its early years the nation was composed of individual sovereign states that granted limited power to a central government, which resulted in a shared sovereignty between the states and the central governement. As a matter of law, even today the states retain plenary sovereignty over those powers not specifically granted to the union. It's a fundamental aspect of federalism -- a vertical sharing of power as a complement to the horizontal separation of powers of the branches of government. Today we think of the US as a single country, but prior to the ratification of the Constitution, it was essentially a treaty organization for trade and defense. This concept was discussed at length here.

Here's a reference from a 1991 opinion by SCOTUS (who presumably understand this subject):

Despite the narrowness of its terms, since Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890), we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, Welch v. Texas Dept. of Highways and Public Transportation, 483 U.S. 468, 472 (1987) (opinion of Powell, J.); Employees v. Missouri Dept. of Public Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279, 290-294 (1973) (Marshall, J., concurring in result); and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the "plan of the convention." See Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corp. v. Feeney, 494 U. S. —, — (1990); Welch, supra, at 474 (opinion of Powell, J); Atascadero State Hospital v. Scanlon, 473 U.S. 234, 238 (1985); Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 99 (1984).

— Supreme Court of the United States, BLATCHFORD v. NATIVE VILLAGE OF NOATAK, No. 89-1782

I think the article should more clearly explain this shared sovereignty, rather than characterizing the new nation as sole, supreme sovereign, which it was not. Sparkie82 (t•c) 22:58, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Wiki uses reliable SECONDARY sources -- it does not use the private interpretation of supreme court decisions made by anonymous wiki editors. Sparkie82 needs to provide the secondary sources he using, if any. Rjensen (talk) 04:36, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Are you not familiar with the concept of state sovereignty in the US? It's always been a canon of US law and is well documented starting with the early state declarations of independence. The citation above is just one of the most recent sources. Is that the only problem you have with this -- a citation? Why didn't you just say so? Sparkie82 (t•c) 15:44, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

@Rjensen: That wasn't a rhetorical question. Do you have any other objections besides the requirement of a cite? Sparkie82 (t•c) 01:36, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

the text we are talking about deals entirely with diplomacy with Europeans, not with internal US legal norms. You need to cite reliable SECONDARY sources to make your points. Rjensen (talk) 02:29, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, everything that needs to be cited will be. The section is titled "Independence and Union". It's scope is to explain what happened with regard to the colonies' break with the British and forming the confederation of states. Yes, the quote you added is part of an analysis of the international ramifications of US independence from a book about its global implications during the period of 1776 to 1989, but it is placed in the middle of the section without establishing context. This is a lengthy article. Rather than adding a lengthy qoute about a very specific aspect of the topic, I think it would be better to summarize. What, exactly, do you want to say? Sparkie82 (t•c) 18:47, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Fatal problems: no reliable secondary sources, and zero on diplomacy. Rjensen (talk) 18:55, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

What do you want to say in the article? Sparkie82 (t•c) 19:04, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

the credibility of a wiki editor is undermined when they cannot tell us the reliable secondary sources they are basing their ideas upon. Maybe the RS don't exist. Rjensen (talk) 19:08, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

What do you want to say in the article? Sparkie82 (t•c) 19:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

You're the one who added the Billias quote, not me, so you're the one who has to defend it. I've suggested a compromise presentation. If you are unable or unwilling to discuss what you are trying to add to the article, then it will be reverted. Sparkie82 (t•c) 23:25, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Easy enough to defend a relevant quote on the importance of the Am Rev for how USA was treated by other countries --written by a leading scholar with a link to full text. that meets all Wiki criteria. I did not invent any of that--and the quote from a reliable secondary source proves that. Rjensen (talk) 01:45, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

This section is titled, "Independence and Union." It's about the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. It's not about international relations. We can mention that one of the reasons for the Articles of Confederation was to facilitate international relations, but it is not appropriate to plop in a long, verbose quote from a relatively unknown author about the global implications of independence during the period of 1776 to 1989. Also, declaring independence was primarily about the colonies' relations with England, not Spain and France and the "international community." If you think the information in the quote has something to add to this section, then distill it down to a couple of words and integrate it into the existing text. Don't just plop a huge, verbose quote into the middle of the section. Sparkie82 (t•c) 19:07, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

@Rjensen: Sparkie82 (t•c) 23:24, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

the article is about the "American Revolution" and the leading scholar who is quoted explains why the Declaration changed the US status in dealing with all European powers--who were essential in isolating Britain. That is the European powers could deal with an independent country in a way they did not want to deal with an insurgency. Rjensen (talk) 03:26, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

That's an important point. Could you put that into just a few words? Perhaps it would be better in the section American Revolution#Other participants, which is more about US international relations. Also, the article Diplomacy in the American Revolutionary War would be a nice place to have more exposition on the subject. (Billias is not currently cited in that article.) Sparkie82 (t•c) 04:52, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Rjensen:? Sparkie82 (t•c) 16:36, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Front matter necessity

Is the front matter here:

"In this article, inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies who supported the American Revolution are primarily referred to as "Americans" or "Patriots," and sometimes as "Whigs," "Rebels," or "Revolutionaries." Colonists who supported the British side are called "Loyalists" or "Tories". In accordance with the policy of this encyclopedia, this article uses American English terminology."

really necessary as an introductory caution, or is it really more for editors, in which case it can be placed atop the edit field. It would make more sense just to define each term as they come up, and afterwards use parenthecised form, like "Whigs (Americans" and "Tories (British)."-Inowen (talk) 08:50, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

keep. it's for both but readers need it up front--they jump around the topics in a long articles and miss items that are buried in sections they do not read. Rjensen (talk) 17:46, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Remove. WP:HAT specifies that hatnotes are for clarifying confusion about the title. Clarifying terms within the article, and clarifying national variety of English are probably not appropriate uses. Additionally, this hatnote is not especially helpful. Whig and Tory are only used in the article once, when defined (except for a reference Irish Whigs in Ireland), and so don't need additional clarification. 'Americans' is used within the article both to refer to all residents of the 13 colonies and also to the Patriots. Teretylac (talk) 13:26, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Contemporary feeling of the time of the revolution being a repeat of the English Civil War (to an extent)?

In 'American Nations', Colin Woodard (I concede, I am aware that he is just a mere journalist and not a historian) appears to argue (in the chapters that briefly deal with the lead-up to and the actual revolution) that there was a contemporary feeling, particular among those in New England, that the revolution was - to an extent - a repeat of the English Civil War. That being the Puritan New Englanders being the grandsons of the New Model Army and Cromwell facing off against the new British Army, which was led by the new class of Royalists (the elite emerging from the Glorious Revolution and leading the country who tended to be a far cry from the Parliamentarians that preceded them), and fighting for very similar aims.

It appears to be a similar argument to James C. Spalding's 1976 essay 'Loyalist as Royalist, Patriot as Puritan: The American Revolution as a Repetition of the English Civil Wars' (on my reading list, but have yet to completely read). The preview (which for the time being, is all that I have access too) appears to indicate that this may have been a somewhat popular sentiment of the time.

As this does not appear in the article, I ask: is there any further information on this? Is this a fringe position? Is this something that a passing reference may or should be made in the article?172.96.34.206 (talk) 23:53, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

I think it's fringe--in my experience historians rarely mention it (only one mention of Spalding in an English scholarly book or article in 42 years see https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4664195022035298540&as_sdt=5,27&sciodt=1,27&hl=en ). The Americans insisted as late as 1775 that they were loyal to the king. Rjensen (talk) 01:01, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

I cannot think of any contemporaneous writings which make any reference to Cromwell or the English Civil War. Fringe, at best; more likely just a modern notion. —Dilidor (talk) 12:02, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

Virginia had many connections to the Cavaliers, not the Roundheads. Many Virginia Revolutionary leaders had ancestry among that group. Rmhermen (talk) 18:01, 21 September 2018 (UTC)

If none of you can find any contemporary sources then i would suggest that this simply simply shows how you have limited yourselves only to sanitized i.e. patriot sources that tell the whig partisan version of the story. The loyalists historian of the revolutionary period pretty much ALL made this point and so did the French. It was omitted by the early patriot writers to help build unity in the new United States and to push the line that the 'Americans' were the injured party.

For example, throughout the decade 1764-75 the French had spies in the colonies trying to establish how much rebellious spirit there really was. In March 1768 the French Foreign Minister Count du Chatelet wrote that were a man of Cromwell’s genius to rise in New York the rebellion would be easier than the civil war usurpers.

In Historical & Political Reflections on the Rise & Progress of the American Rebellion, written in 1779, Joseph Galloway likened the tactics and spirit of the rebels to those used by Oliver Cromwell in effecting the destruction of the British Government in the English Civil War;

“The leaders in both set out with a pretense of asserting the liberties of the people. Professions of the most zealous loyalty and firmest attachment to the established government were the veils under which, for a time, they concealed their sedition. The same arts and hypocritical falsehoods, with the fame kind of illegal and tumultuous violence, were employed by both. Factious conventions, committees and mobs were the instruments by which they carried their treasonable practices into execution. If the pulpits of the sectaries in England in the year 1641, were founded with sedition, the pulpits of the Congregational Independents and Presbyterians, from Nova Scotia to Georgia, rung with the same flagitious doctrines.”

George Chalmers and the Reverend Jonathan Boucher said the same thing in their own books, as did Hutchinson, and these are all contemporary sources. But they were loyalists, and the loyalist viewpoint must not be represented on Wikipedia because it would offend Conservatives like Rjensen--Godwhale (talk) 08:36, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

"the elite emerging from the Glorious Revolution and leading the country who tended to be a far cry from the Parliamentarians that preceded them"

The Glorious Revolution passed new legislation, the Bill of Rights 1689. Some of its ideas were shared by the American revolutionaries in the 18th-century. "The Bill of Rights lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament, including the requirement for regular parliaments, free elections, and freedom of speech in Parliament. It sets out certain rights of individuals including the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and reestablished the right of Protestants to have arms for their defence within the rule of law."

The Bill of Rights was a main source used for the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), and the United States Bill of Rights (1789). Parts of the United States Constitution are copied directly from the Bill of Rights: "The English Bill of Rights (1689) was an inspiration for the American Bill of Rights. Both require jury trials, contain a right to keep and bear arms, prohibit excessive bail and forbid "cruel and unusual punishments"." Dimadick (talk) 14:18, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Loyalist historians did not know much English history so they engaged in wild speculation of the sort that two centuries of scholarship in US, Canada and Britain have discarded. Dimadick is quite right: scholars link the Patriots of the 1770s to the Glorious Revolution of the 1680s. As for "Cavaliers" -- they supposedly were identified with Virginia--but Loyalism was very weak there. Rjensen (talk) 15:45, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

To get an idea of what historians have done please look at Hattem, Michael D. "The Historiography of the American Revolution" Journal of the American Revolution (2013) online Rjensen (talk) 16:39, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Godwhale: "If none of you can find any contemporary [I presume you mean contemporaneous] sources then i would suggest that this simply simply [sic] shows how you have limited yourselves only to sanitized i.e. patriot sources that tell the whig partisan version of the story." The victor writes the history books. Welcome to reality. —Dilidor (talk) 13:27, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

Alan Taylor's book 'American Revolutions' (2016) goes over a lot of the recent scholarship, and does not paint the Patriots in an especially flattering light. But, he includes no discussion of a relationship to the English Civil War. I do agree with Rjensen that the article could more balanced. For example, the British alliance with Native Americans to resist unfettered settlement west of Appalachia was a key driver for the war, but the intro focuses only on the tax revolt. Taylor also points to fear of eventual emancipation of slaves by the British as a motivation for the southern Patriots, but not mentioned in the article. The great indebtedness of the British because of the 7 Years War (which helped the British colonists), and the much lower taxes levied on the colonists versus British to service that debt was seen as supremely unjust by the British, but isn't discussed here. Teretylac (talk) 14:06, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

A recent book on George Washington (p. 194) notes that only Willard Sterne Randall in his biography of Washington says that Washington and the British saw him as the Cromwell of the American Revolution.[1] By 1776, Cromwell was remembered as a bloodthirsty usurper, while royalism and jacobitism (at least outside Scotland) had been long forgotten. TFD (talk) 19:36, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

My point is where is the loyalist viewpoint in all of this? Rjensen you say that the loyalists knew little of British history - where's the 'RS' for that? When are you going to stop writing this patriotic drivel? Its infantile. The heroic revolution story we see here - virtuous Rebels versus evil British was invented in the late 18th century by nationalists like David Ramsay in an attempt to unify the country, which was so horribly divided to the point that another civil war seemed likely. The loyalist viewpoint had to be ignored because it directly and irrefutably showed up the patriots as the hypocrites they really were. Freedom of Speech? When someone called him fat, John Adams suspended Habeas Corpus & brought in the Alien & Sedition Act which imprisoned people for criticising the government. Proper historians like Taylor, Gary Nash, James Loewen, Simon Schama & Ray Raphael have repeatedly shown how everything in this article is a bunch of crap, a nationalistic fantasy. British 'oppression' was basically a collection of trumped up charges, which is why Hutchinson wrote a pamphlet referring to the declaration of independence as 'a series of invented grievances.' Through the English Bill of Rights of 1689, Americans already had all the rights that it is claimed the founding exploiters gave the American people with the constitution & US Bill of Rights. The constitution infers no automatic right to vote but did guarantee slavery in three places. The exploiters used extreme violence to get it passed and only brought in the Bill of Rights as a sop to the slaveocracy of the south (three fifths compromise) This means that the founders did not give Americans the right to freedom of speech, have guns, right to fair trial etc but initially took these rights away before being forced to give them back. Apart from improved rights for women to inherit property, the only right the founders gave Americans that they didn't already enjoy under British rule was the right to own slaves. In 1783 there were half a million slaves, in 1861 five million, a tenfold increase, and slavery had spread to new territories where it had previously been outlawed. That's your 'more perfect union'. Where is the bit about Evacuation Day in September 1783 when Washington rode a white horse into New York as the exploiters came to take back their slaves, who had been living there for years as free men? Where is the Dunmore Proclamation and how the exploiters reacted to the flight of the slave by saying anyone escaping would be hanged without the benefit of clergy? And they did hang plenty of them. In the south, the revolution was brought on by a rumor of a slave uprising, not sympathy for Boston. Where is the Boston Pamphlet of November 1772, which was written in response to the Somerset decision, where the exploiters made the first mention of independence anywhere but also made a naked defence of slavery? At its greatest extent the Continental Army had 20,000 men, but at times 2-3000 men, which is about half of one percent of all fighting age men in the colonies by my calculation. Not exactly a 'popular' revolution then. No Taxation without Representation? They were repeatedly offered representation, but the exploiters repeatedly also said it was impossible for them to be properly represented in parliament because of the great distance, yet each colony had an agent in London with free and ready access to ministers. Feel free to prove to me how I am wrong with any of this. This article is no more true than the 'history' we would have had of WWII if the Nazis had won. By the way, I love the bit about how the founding exploiters 'settled' the question of the Indian lands. We all know how they went about 'settling' it.--Godwhale (talk) 09:47, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly good to see that you are practicing what you preach by maintaining such a neutral point of view in the above diatribe. —Dilidor (talk) 14:35, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Just like to say, happy to have seen the question spur on a debate.

Rjensen, thank you for that link. I was unaware of that feature. Rjensen and Dilidor, I would concur based off what you have both argued and linked to - a fringe theory; thank you for your time :)

Dimadick: Thank you for your follow-up on the Glorious Revolution. I would just like to expand on my quote you responded to: Woodard's argument is that the Parliamentarians of the English Civil War era were (and I know this is a generalization) locally raised people compared to those who came after them: a new elite, educated and raised away from the people they were to represent and a new aristocratic elite that replaced the cavaliers. What Rmhermen commented about, is also one of Woodard's central arguments: the "tidewater" elite (as he calls them, in addition to some from the "deep south") stemming from the cavaliers who fostered a "Norman" culture compared to the "Yankees" of New England who were the ancestors of the roundheads and who focused on their "Anglo-Saxon heritage"; a lot of far-fetched arguing imo … but one that led me to the above source and this question that started all this.172.96.34.206 (talk) 23:10, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 October 2018

To add the following infobox to the header of the article:

American Revolution

John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, showing the Committee of Five presenting its plan for independence to Congress on June 28, 1776
Date	1765 - 1783
Location	Thirteen Colonies
Participants	Colonists in British America
Outcome	Independence of the United States of America from the British Empire End of British colonial rule in the Thirteen Colonies End of the First British Empire

TheDarkFrontier (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

 Done L293D (☎ • ✎) 15:30, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 March 2019

In June 1772, American patriots, including John Brown, burned a British warship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations in what became known as the Gaspee Affair. The affair was investigated for possible treason, but no action was taken.

In 1772, it became known that the Crown intended to pay fixed salaries to the governors and judges in Massachusetts. Samuel Adams in Boston set about creating new Committees of Correspondence, which linked Patriots in all 13 colonies and eventually provided the framework for a rebel government. Many historians believe that the genesis of this new rebel government was initiated in the outskirts of New York City, namely the town of Hempstead in the often visited tavern Sammis, where George Washington often stayed. Virginia, the largest colony, set up its Committee of Correspondence in early 1773, on which Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served. Pvdavis (talk) 08:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

 Not done: You wish to add the text "Many historians believe that the genesis of this new rebel government was initiated in the outskirts of New York City, namely the town of Hempstead in the often visited tavern Sammis, where George Washington often stayed." but have not provided a source. Greene and Pole is the source currently in the article. Does it also cover what you wish to be added? NiciVampireHeart 09:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

References

Error in the last paragraph of the introduction....

The last paragraph of the introduction contains an error, in so much as it reads "Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of the United States Constitution, establishing a relatively strong federal national government" - these would not occur for another six years, following the many challenges of the Confederation Period.

While I would happily change this, I suspect it might surprise some, hence this talk section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterWhittaker (talk • contribs) 18:10, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Just Incredible

This article has become a joke. Yet again, an attempt by myself or other editors to introduce even a tiny bit of balance by mentioning the loyalist / British viewpoint has been immediately reverted. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopaedia, yet what we have here is pure propaganda and multiple statements that are simply not true, such as the claim the Quartering Act of 1774 “allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring permission of the owner.” This has been shown to be wrong so many times it really shouldn’t be necessary to point it out. The act wasn’t talking about people’s homes but outbuildings and barns, and the only officers staying in colonial homes were those renting rooms from willing hosts who were paid the going rate by the British army; when the soldiers came to Boston in 1768 they stayed on Boston Common in tents.

The claim that colonial charters were nullified because of an outbreak of popular democracy and resistance to trade regulations is utterly laughable, but fairly typical. The only charter nullified at this time that I am aware of was that of Massachusetts Bay, and this was because a tiny theocracy of freemen refused to yield their ecclesiastical power over the majority, whipping and hanging Quakers, Catholics, and anyone else whose religious views did not correspond with their own. As James Truslow Adams explained in his Pulitzer Prize winning The Founding of New England in 1922; “from the beginning, they had striven to banish from the colony all ideas not in harmony with their own, and had thus lowered and impoverished the intellectual life of the community. On nearly every occasion, they had led in fanning the flames of intolerance and persecution. Over and over, they had helped to brutalize the natures of the citizens by calling for the blood of victims to whom the community would otherwise have shown mercy.” Transcripts of the original Privy Council minutes of the debate that culminated in the decision to nullify the charter in 1684 can easily be found contained in the British History Online Journals of the House of Commons, and they clearly show how it was the anti-democratic sentiment of the theocracy that caused the ending of the charter – the complete opposite of what the article claims.

Then there is the ridiculous claim that the colonists fought King Phillip’s War with no military help from Britain and how they resented the handing back of Fort Louisburg which they had taken themselves at much loss of life and treasure. The truth is that after war began in May 1744 French privateers from Louisburg swept NE shipping vessels off the Grand Banks and Governor William Shirley immediately asked London for substantial navy support. He wrote also to commodore Peter Warren of the North America Squadron at Antigua, who was subsequently ordered by the Admiralty in early 1745 to “attack and distress the enemy in their settlements, and annoy their fisheries & commerce.” Though enthusiastic, the colonists were not trained soldiers and instead, Vice-Admiral Peter Warren was sent to blockade Fort Louisburg. Some colonial militias were ferried by ship along with RN marines but they did not in the end make a landing. Faced with certain starvation and no hope of help from the sea, the fortress surrendered after a few weeks. In other words, ‘the colonists’ did little to take the fort and its doubtful any died, and rather than doing nothing, the British actually sent the largest naval force to America in 35 years. Just one source for this is Frigates and Foremasts: The North American Squadron in Nova Scotia Waters (page 8) by Julian Gwyn. We have also the claim that the Molasses Act ‘severely damaged’ the New England economy. Scholars like the multi-award winning Charles Andrews in the Colonial Period of American History vol. IV have repeatedly shown how the Navigation Acts and the vice-Admiralty courts were of immense benefit to the colonies and that they thrived because of them. The Acts did not damage the NE economies because practically nothing was ever paid, (Smuggler Nation, Page 36, Professor Peter. Andres, 2013) and smuggling occurred simply because it was so easy to get away with. In The Navigation Acts & the American Revolution (1951) Oliver Dickerson produced the classic account of the trade laws, in which he showed that the enumerated articles clauses were actually a positive economic advantage because they gave a guaranteed market for colonial produce and restrictions on colonial manufactures had little or no affect.

The article claims the colonies "objected to the fact that they had no representation in the Parliament, and thus no voice concerning legislation that affected them." It then contradicts itself by continuing; Benjamin Franklin testified in Parliament in 1766 that..." So they clearly did have a voice concerning legislation. Franklin's extraordinary twisting of facts and crass dishonestly in 1765 in claiming in Parliament the troops were not sent for the colonies defence was the subject of a pamphlet in 1769 by former Boston governor William Knox, The Controversy Between Great Britain and the colonies Reviewed. in it, be pointed out the many time the colonies begged Britain for protection after provoking the Indians and French, only to then refuse to contribute towards the cost and put all the debts onto the British taxpayer.

The rebels did not say ‘no taxation without representation’ as this article claims; they said ‘no taxation without consent,’ as anyone can see by actually reading the primary sources. While being told of the acts regulating the trade in wool, hats & molasses why don’t we hear how royal officials frequently tore up tobacco that had been illegally planted in England and fined those growing it? Or how Spanish tobacco was banned from Britain for the benefit of the colonies even though it was cheaper and tasted better? When hearing about the Stamp Act, why don’t we hear about the several acts passed to soften the pill, such as one to encourage the whale fisheries of America? When being told about the Royal Proclamation of 1763 why nothing on the 1758 Easton Treaty by which, in return for them withdrawing military support for the French in the Seven Years War, the tribes were supposedly ‘guaranteed’ that the Ohio would never be settled. Instead of hearing the truth, about how once the war was over Washington, Lee and Jefferson et al were determined to renege on the Easton Treaty, viewing it merely as ‘a piece of paper’ and how Britain was simply honouring its side of the bargain, it is all turned into yet another colonial ‘grievance.’ A few days before declaring independence, in late June 1776, the Virginian legislature formally repudiated the Royal Proclamation, thus showing what it was really all about. Numerous modern historians such as Simon Schama, Woody Holton in Forced Founders and Alan Taylor in The Internal Enemy show how a fear of slave uprisings helped trigger revolution in the south. Whites in Virginia believed slaves would go on a murderous rampage, so panicked & prepared for the worst. Yet there is nothing on this, the Dunmore Proclamation or the hanging of the slaves who were re-captured while trying to escape to the British.

Then there is the claim the Olive Branch Petition was an attempt to come to an accord with King George; “The king, however, issued a Proclamation of Rebellion which stated that the states were ‘in rebellion’ and the members of Congress were traitors. The king said the states were in rebellion because they WERE in rebellion, and he said they were ‘not conciliatory’ because they were NOT conciliatory. While writing the Olive Branch Petition, the Congress had already ordered Washington to invade Canada and it was issuing multiple letters of marque for colonists to attack British shipping. Why no mention of the Conciliatory Resolution of February 1775, when Parliament offered everything the rebels claimed to be asking for, but which was rejected by Congress as ‘unreasonable and insidious? Why nothing on the mooted plan for an American branch of Parliament that would have taken away all the ‘grievances’ about lack of consent and representation, but which was rejected by the Congress and all record of it being discussed was removed from the Journal of Congress? Why nothing on how, when he issued a pamphlet telling people how duplicitous Congress had been, several attempts were made on the life of the sponsor of the Plan of Union Joseph Galloway? Why nothing on the extreme violence used by the mobs to enforce the Association or the pamphlet war that broke out in late 1774? How the arguments made by Samuel Seabury, ‘Grotius’ and Daniel Leonard were so powerful that the patriots led by Isaac Sears smashed up the loyalist printing presses of James Rivington in New York, where support for rebellion was wafer thin, and how they took the writers captive? John Adams and Alexander Hamilton tried to refute the loyalist arguments in their own pamphlets but Adams admitted people were starting to realise they had been duped by the rebel rhetoric that there was a genuine British plot to enslave the colonies. In January 1775 “Grotius” summarized the Loyalist point of view on the rebellion when he asked the President of the First Congress Peyton Randolph how “could you thus attempt to make blind eyes blinder, to make the mad Americans rage, and the deceived people imagine vain things. Fellow Americans, we have been lied to, betrayed, and used by a false idea." When the New York Anglican rector Charles Inglis wrote a pamphlet that refuted Paine’s Common Sense in early 1776, the Mechanics Committee warned its printer Samuel Loudon to stop publishing the pamphlet, or else his “personal safety might be endangered.” Late the next night, forty men returned, broke into his office, burned 1500 copies of the pamphlet and smashed up his printing presses. Unable to win the argument ideologically, the patriots did what they always did and resorted to violence.

A major principle of WP is supposed to be that ‘all articles must strive for verifiable accuracy,’ but this article is shot through with multiple untruths which are allowed to sit there uncontested, such as this weasel paragraph; “London had to deal with 1,500 politically well-connected British Army soldiers. The decision was to keep them on active duty with full pay, but they had to be stationed somewhere. Stationing a standing army in Great Britain during peacetime was politically unacceptable, so the decision was made to station them in America and have the Americans pay them. The soldiers had no military mission; they were not there to defend the colonies because there was no threat to the colonies.” The soldiers were there because of Pontiac’s War, which broke out immediately after the ceasefire and because the colonial legislatures, particularly Virginia and Pennsylvania, actively encouraged illegal occupation of Indian lands.

The one sidedness of this article is simply staggering. According to the Five Pillars of Wikipedia, WP is ‘an indiscriminate collection of information,’ written “from a neutral point of view: We strive for articles that document and explain major points of view, giving due weight with respect to their prominence in an impartial tone… we describe multiple points of view, presenting each accurately and in context rather than as "the truth" or "the best view". Yet this isn’t the case at all; the loyalist / British viewpoint simply never appears. I have in the past tried to introduce some sort of balance but it is always swiftly deleted. All we get is the usual crap about how liberalist the rebels were and the ideology of John Locke, whose own writing was bigoted and highly convenient for his own interests, such as where he justified slavery. A consistent alternative view point of the rebellion made by numerous opponents of the rebellion, including the king, was that a relatively small number of self interested elites employed rabble rousers who used noble sounding words like liberty, constitution and tyranny which were deliberately vague and meaningless slogans that were simply a means to incite the mobs. In May of 1775 North Carolina Governor Josiah Martin issued a proclamation that for “their own mistaken interest and aggrandizement,” the rebels were “cajoling the people by the most false assertions and insinuations of oppression on the part of His Majesty and his government, to become instruments to their base views of establishing themselves in tyranny over them, treacherously aiming, by specious pretences of regard to their rights and liberties (that have never been invaded or intended to be invaded), to delude the people to work their own destruction, in order to gratify for a moment their own lust of power and lawless ambition.”

The Third Pillar states that no editor owns an article, yet what we have is a small number of militant editors who act like its their personal property and refuse to compromise, insisting always that the ultra-patriotic 19th century narrative of American virtue and British evil, known as the ‘partisan Whig’ narrative, which was utterly repudiated in the early decades of the 20th century by real scholarly historians, endures. If this persists, the only alternative will be to re-name this article to make it clear it is not neutral but represents a nationalistic fantasy, and have a new article that represents the viewpoint of both parties and more honestly states what modern historians believe actually happened.--Godwhale (talk) 11:06, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Revolution?

I added the following text to the Interpretations section but it got deleted with the objection that it misstates the U of Houston source. I think it's accurate, and it's an important understanding of the basic nature of the event that is the subject of this article.

Unlike social revolutions, for example the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, no change occurred in the institutional social and economic foundations of the ancien regime or old order in America, and there was no transfer of power from the ruling American economic elite to new social groups."

--NYCJosh (talk) 00:28, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

The Houston source states: "The American Revolution was not a great social revolution like the ones that occurred in France in 1789 or in Russia in 1917 or in China in 1949. A true social revolution destroys the institutional foundations of the old order and transfers power from a ruling elite to new social groups. Nevertheless, the Revolution had momentous consequences. It created the United States. It transformed a monarchical society, in which the colonists were subjects of the Crown, into a republic, in which they were citizens and participants in the political process. The Revolution also gave a new political significance to the middling elements of society-- artisans, merchants, farmers, and traders--and made it impossible for elites to openly disparage ordinary people. As I read that I conclude Houston says it was indeed a social revolution, just not as great or as total as in France, Russia and China. Houston is anonymous and does not cite sources, which reduces its status as a reliable scholarly source. You need to read more widely. (1) Try Gordon Wood The Radicalism of the American Revolution ['Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one" he goes on: "The American Revolution was integral to the changes occurring in American society, politics and culture,....These changes were radical, and they were extensive... The Revolution not only radically change the personal and social relationships of people, Including the position of women, but also destroyed aristocracy as it'd been understood in the Western world for at least two millennia." pp 7-8)] (2) Gary B. Nash (2006) states "This book presents a people's revolution.... Highlighting the true radicalism of the American Revolution that was ...[a] world-shaking event. By 'radicalism' I mean advocating wholesale change in sharp transformation... A redistribution of political, social and religious power; the discarding of old institutions and the creation of new ones; the overthrowing of in great patterns of conservative, elitist thought; the leveling of society...." Rjensen (talk) 01:24, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

You're misreading it. Here is a part of what you quoted:

"A TRUE SOCIAL revolution destroys the institutional foundations of the old order and transfers power from a ruling elite to new social groups. NEVERTHELESS, the Revolution had momentous consequences." (All caps mine to show emphasis.) So, he is saying it wasn't a "true social revolution" but nonetheless it had momentous consequences. (No one suggests that it did not have momentous consequences.) He then goes on to list important POLITICAL developments, including the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of republics, and some changes in social relations and culture. Notably, he does not list fundamental changes to the "institutional social and economic foundations of the old order," or any kind of changes in the structure of the economic order. Nor does he mention a "transfer of power from the ruling American economic elite to new social groups." That is, the founding fathers and their ilk were the richest men in the country before and they remained so during and afterwards. Their class ran the show and held the keys to power in the country.

Some authorities have a less conservative view and they should be mentioned. But the article already does so.--NYCJosh (talk) 03:23, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Re the Houston page--it's not a RS -- not scholarly--(I was a consultant on that project 20 years ago--it was designed for distance learning high school kids and has not been upgraded in a decade or longer). The Founding Fathers were in general NOT the rich elite (except in Virginia perhaps)-- lawyers were NOT upper class. they were rejecting a British political system that was indeed controlled by very rich hereditary landowners and titled aristocrats. The issue is covered in Founding Fathers much deeper than Houston provides. That article describes the Signers of Declaration: "There were indeed disparities of wealth, earned or inherited: some Signers were rich, others had about enough to enable them to attend Congress. ... The majority of revolutionaries were from moderately well-to-do or average income brackets. Twice as many Loyalists belonged to the wealthiest echelon. But some Signers were rich; few, indigent. ... The Signers were elected not for wealth or rank so much as because of the evidence they had already evinced of willingness for public service." Rjensen (talk) 03:49, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

The distinction made in the Houston reference between a true social rev. and the American event is well established, as is the fact that the American event did not entail the kinds of change mentioned (let's call them A for short). So the historical controversy centers on the extent of the changes of this non-A kind in the American event and thereafter, the significance of these non-A changes, and more basically, the definition of the term revolution. Really important and interesting stuff.

I was speaking of some of the leading lights like John Laurens, George Washington, Robert Morris, John Jay and the merchant-bankers, not the back benchers of the Continental Congress. But the point is not the individuals or even the Founders as such, but the elite class and the have nots, and how there was little or no change intended or effected with respect to their respective socio-economic positions.-NYCJosh (talk) 04:47, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

My basic point is that the deleted text about "social revolution" & American Revolution was not based on solid reliable sources. It was sourced to vert brief, superficial, unsourced, non-scholarly online material pitched to middle school and high school students. The deleted text shows no awareness of the contrary ideas of top scholars like Gordon Wood and Gary Nash. Simply not up to Wikipedia standards. I might add that John Laurens, George Washington, Robert Morris, & John Jay were not the powerful ruling elite leaders BEFORE 1775. --Laurens was a student in Europe until after the Revolution was underway. Washington was a local planter with minor government offices when he first became a revolutionary. Morris was a prosperous businessman without political or government roles. John Jay was a young local lawyer with no political role before he became a revolutionary. They were not powerful men before become revolutionaries. Rjensen (talk) 05:25, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

References

Missing Commas in Numbers

In the section 1.3 "1767–1773: Townshend Acts and the Tea Act", 7th paragraph, 1st sentence, there are commas in the numbers missing. I think that the sentence should be changed from
"A total of about 7000 to 8000 Patriots served on "Committees of Correspondence" at the colonial and local levels, comprising most of the leadership in their communities." to
"A total of about 7,000 to 8,000 Patriots served on "Committees of Correspondence" at the colonial and local levels, comprising most of the leadership in their communities."
DarthFlappy (talk) 22:09, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

 Done Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 23:44, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Editor inciting revert war

@Shoreranger: The edits with which you are revert-warring are excessively minute details which do not belong in the introduction. The fact that 2.4-percent of the American population emigrated to Canada after the war is certainly interesting and definitely belongs in the article—in the body of the article, not in the introduction. The article is about the Revolutionary War, not about its affect on the make-up of the population. France was by far the major ally of the US; the role of Spain was minimal and insignificant by comparison. You insist on belaboring the fact that France was not the only ally, but succeed only in cluttering and confusing the introduction. Please move these details into the body of the article and expand upon them there. —Dilidor (talk) 16:31, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

All the edits are factual and useful additions to the introduction. I deny "inciting" anything, and don't appreciate the incendiary language

Firstly, the phrase "the Crown" was linked to the Wiki article on the subject, as it cannot be expected that the casual reader will have familiarity with the term. This is not even a change to the content of the article, why revert it?

The editor has a problem with phrasing that makes it clear the French were not the only American ally, nor to the allusion to the fact that there were domestic allies among Native Americans by the use of the qualifier "foreign" to describe the French. The editor also took the opportunity to remove a long-standing phrase that was not even mine for some reason, without explanation, despite perfectly acceptable and clear language concerning the context of the War to the overall Revolution, and the link to the article on the war.

The editor did not like the addition of the phrase "Formerly providing aid only covertly," when describing the point when the open alliance with France became effective. Again, with no explanation. It adds valuable context and clarity, while adding very little verbiage.

Finally, the editor is dissatisfied with the qualifying phrase "...or about 2.4% of the total population," when discussing the 60,000 Loyalists who fled after the war. When first reverting this edit the editor tried to justify it by categorizing it as "minutiae". However, again while adding very few words, it adds great context to the story of Loyalists during this period. If anything, the specific number of 60,000 is minutiae, while the percentage of the overall population provides real insight.

Wikipedia policy is to "boldly" edit, however this editor demands I "Take it to the talk page" so here it is. All these edits are factually correct and improve the clarity and convenience of the article, and have no reason to be reverted. I ask that they be left in place until consensus demands otherwise. Shoreranger (talk) 16:36, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

@Shoreranger: I am not disputing that your additions are "factually correct", nor that they "improve the clarity and convenience of the article". My contention is that they are not improving the clarity nor the convenience of the introduction. They are bogging down the intro, steering it askew from its purpose of summarizing the highlights of the overall article. The percentage of population is most assuredly not a highlight nor a central point of the article.

As I said in my edit summaries, these points are interesting—perhaps even important or significant—and certainly deserve attention——in the appropriate place. The introduction is not that place. —Dilidor (talk) 17:45, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Dilidor is right that the matter in question does not belong in the introduction. Regulov (talk) 18:23, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Secession?

See Talk:Secession#The American Revolution was a Secession. Doug Weller talk 08:44, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Funding from France

@Rjensen: Re: this edit, info about how much money France was sending to the U.S. doesn't need to meet strict accounting standards. Any general notion from a reliable source would be a big improvement. It also doesn't have to go right where the tag was. Approximate numbers would help "show not tell". I've heard that French support was a decisive factor in the American victory, so I'm curious, for example, whether French funding actually exceeding American funding. The article says France sent "large sums"; it's unclear what "large" is in relation to - the budget of France? The American war budget? Is this just exaggeration? Getting even approximate figures would clarify. -- Beland (talk) 06:54, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

You';re asking for other editors to do a lot of work. Try your own research skills -- use google scholar. Start with Mihm, Stephen. "Funding the revolution: monetary and fiscal policy in eighteenth-century America." in The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution (2013) pp. 327-351. Rjensen (talk) 09:30, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

The phrase "but the political friction was more serious which the acts triggered" is not correct English

The editor Dilidor, who says he is an "editor and ghost writer for a major publishing house" on his user page, amazingly claims that "Some argue that the economic impact was minimal on the colonists, but the political friction was more serious which the acts triggered" is better wording than "Some argue that the economic impact was minimal on the colonists, but the political friction which the acts triggered was more serious". I find it hard to believe that he is seriously maintaining this, and not simply edit-warring to defend an error. Carlstak (talk) 15:41, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

You are needlessly separating subject and verb; I am keeping them together ("friction was") which is better syntax. Your construction is not egregious, but your edit warring is. Regardless, it is not an issue worth haggling over. I just self-reverted because I don't really care if the sentence is poorly constructed. The bigger issue previously was that you were wholesale reverting some other edits I had made which were more significant. Your latest revert only addressed this sentence, so we'll just STET. —Dilidor (talk) 18:08, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, but you are clearly not paying attention, or else misrepresenting my actions. I did no such "wholesale reverting". My original revert (I made just two) changed only the location of the disputed phrase, as anybody can plainly see. Also, you were reverted first by me, and WP:BRD encourages editors to follow the Bold, Revert, Discuss cycle, which you did not do. There is no universe in which your preferred version is correct English, and I am astonished that you continue to defend it. Carlstak (talk) 18:53, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

---

I agree having "which the acts triggered" at the end of the sentence is unnecessarily difficult for readers to follow; we can do better. I disagree that editors pointing fingers at each other is in any way helpful in discussing this. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 19:03, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, A D Monroe III; I agree that this little tiff may not be helpful, but I will not allow a false imputation concerning my editing behavior to stand and thus give it implicit credibility, nor should I be expected to. Carlstak (talk) 19:28, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 June 2020

The american revolution started in 1775 not in 1765. 24.168.234.249 (talk) 11:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made.

RandomCanadian (talk / contribs)  13:39, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

The American Revolution did not begin in 1775. The American Revolutionary War began in 1775, which is clearly stated on the page. 021120x (talk) 19:24, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Taxation without representation ?

Did the colonists lack representation in government ? George Washington was part of Virginia's House of Burgesses for 15 years. Does not that count as representation ? Did not all the colonies have colonial governments and governors ? Where specifially was the lack of representation ? Were the people who lived in England respresented by Parliment ? No. Cmguy777 (talk) 02:38, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

The colonists were content with their representation at home. However the colonists were not represented in Parliament when taxes were levied. They said that violated their rights as Englishmen. Were people in Britain also under represented? Yes indeed and that is a main theme of British history leading to major reforms especially the Reform Act 1832. Rjensen (talk) 03:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Rjensen. I am not trying to argue either way, but the House of Burgesses must have represented the colonists in some manner of legal authority. The colonists outcry was not "Taxation without direct representation in Parliment". The critical question is were the colonists represented by their respected colonial governments ? I would say yes, at least in Virginia. Otherwise, Washington was not representing his constituents who apparently voted him into office for 15 years. Cmguy777 (talk) 03:53, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, could the colonial governments, such as the House of Burgesses, levy taxes on the colonists ? Cmguy777 (talk) 04:05, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

The Colonial Experience Cmguy777 (talk) 04:09, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

The Mayflower Compact was created independent of the King. Cmguy777 (talk) 04:13, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

The colonial goverments could levy their own taxes, according to the The Colonial Experience article. "England regulated trade but allowed colonists the right to levy their own taxes." Cmguy777 (talk) 04:15, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Colonial Governments of the Thirteen Colonies pdf Cmguy777 (talk) 04:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Rhode Island and Connecticut were self-governing colonies. Cmguy777 (talk) 04:31, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Oliver Cromwell and the Seeds of Revolution

The seeds of the Revolution may have gone far back as Cromwell during the English Civil War. Puritans from Massachusetts or New England traveled back to England to fight for Oliver Cromwell to defeat Charles I. American Puritans were part of Cromwell's Army. I believe there is some relative new research on this issue. America was not ruled by a King during Cromwell and Parliment period. Any opinions on the matter ? According to this source New England Puritans returned to England in 1642 and fought for Col. Thomas Rainborower under Cromwell's Puritan Army. Adrian Tinniswood (2013) The Rainborowes One Family's Quest to Build a New England Cmguy777 (talk) 18:14, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

• English overseas possessions in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms Cmguy777 (talk) 18:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

"In 1642, after the English Civil War began, a sixth of the male colonists returned to England to fight for Parliament, and many stayed, since Oliver Cromwell was himself a Puritan." Cmguy777 (talk) 18:25, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

their goal was to fight for Parliament. The Patriot goal in 1770s was to fight AGAINST Parliament. Rjensen (talk) 20:12, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Their goal respectfully was to fight against King Charles I. Washington was fighting against King George the III and Parliament. The seed would be Indepenence from the King. Virginia was a Crown Colony. As far as I know, the British Army was under the King's authority, not Parliaments. Who had authority over the British Army, Parliament or the King during the American Revolution ? Also the British Parliament was pro King. The Cromwell Parliament was anti-King, just like the Patriots were. The DOI was a direct attack on George III. The American colonies were free of a King from 1649 to 1660. For eleven years England was a de Facto Republic under Cromwell. Charles II was defeated at Battle of Worcester in 1651 and fled to Europe. The seed would be a break away from being ruled by two Kings, Charles I and Charles II. Then over 100 years later a break away from King and Parliament. Cmguy777 (talk) 05:49, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

The New Englanders were fighting for Cromwell, a fellow Puritan, just as the Patriots were fighting for George Washington, a fellow Patriot. Cmguy777 (talk) 06:10, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Parliament controlled the British Army in Am Rev....when Lord North lost his majority in Parliament (after Yorktown) peace with the USA was at hand, even though the king wanted to keep going. Rjensen (talk) 06:58, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Lord North controlled the war, and except for keeping Canada, failed to suppress the Revolution. Were the British troops under the authority of the King or Parliament, in essense, George III was a King without an army ? Britain during the Revolution was a monarchy, and still is today. The British troops were fighting to keep the King's colonies. Under Cromwell, and the Puritan New Englanders, who fought for Cromwell and Parliment, were fighting for a republic, that is no King. The Patriots were fighting for a republic, no King, who owned or had authority over the colonies. So leaving out Parliment, for a moment, the New England Puritans who fought under Cromwell, and the Patriots, who fought under Washington, were fighting against the British monarchy, no King. That would be the seed. Cmguy777 (talk) 16:41, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

This discussion should be hatted per WP:NOTFORUM. Please stop, it's a bad precedent. Doug Weller talk 17:54, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

There is no forum on my part. Just a discussion. This article has a section titled "Early seeds". I had planned on dropping the subject anyways, since there was no concencus. I have not added anything in the article, nor am I pushing any agenda. I have stopped. Thanks. Cmguy777 (talk) 21:19, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

White-splaining?

I don't object to the changes made by Jondclarke regarding what he calls "the offensive and unnecessary term "Indian", but he should should know that there are Native American scholars such as historian Donald Fixico who have published many academic works that use the term "Indian". There are also some Native Americans who find the term "indigenous" offensive, as well as others who find "Native Americans" offensive. I don't know if Jondclarke is white or not, but white people who pronounce what is acceptable terminology are "white-splaining", and appropriating the rightful prerogative of Native peoples to disagree among themselves on what is appropriate usage. Carlstak (talk) 03:00, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@Jondclarke: more than that, looking at List of federally recognized tribes in the United States shows well over 200 tribes using the term Indian. Jondclarke, are they being offensive? Doug Weller talk 12:25, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

There maybe no word that adequately describes the native tribes. Native American ? The term America did not exist until 1538. Indians was a mistake by Columbus thinking he landed in India. The best alternative is to use the actual name of tribes in the article to describe the pre-European peoples. The Vikings, 1,000 AD, called the natives "Skraelings". The Vikings called America, Vinland. Do we say Native Vinlanders ? Cmguy777 (talk) 02:34, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi - thanks everyone, for what feels like respectful contributions on a controversial topic. It looks like collectively we don't yet have a better term to use. Yes, I'm of European, white ancestry. And thanks particularly: I hadn't grasped the extent to which usage and views of the word "Indian" vary between the US and Canada (where I'm currently living). This article from a US university gives a useful discussion - https://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/name.html - but I note that the author themselves actually uses the term "indigenous" in the manner that I have. So, I'm left with the impression that "Indian" is generally seen as more acceptable in the US than I'd realised. Maybe we change everything back? But then we're left with an inaccurate term (given that not a single person referred to in this way was born in India). @Carlstak: I would certainly agree with your specific concern of "white-splaining" if we knew that the person originally phrasing these passages in this way themselves identified as "Indian", or that someone involved right now did so and preferred it that way. I take your point that many people may well identify that way, and that many indigenous groups in the US do indeed name themselves in English that way. Unless someone can point me at some sort of recent (since 2010?) reference suggesting there is a consensus or majority among indigenous people in the US to use that inaccurate label, then, personally, I will still avoid using it unless the person or group I'm referring to explicitly prefer it. I'm not going to get into edit wars with anyone who feels differently: reading the passages as they were originally phrased, it just felt like they'd been written a while ago by someone writing from a mainstream white American perspective, and the use of the term did not seem in any way necessary, given that I'm sitting in a country where it *is*, broadly, seen as offensive. Jondclarke (talk) 15:17, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Jondclarke, it seems to me that you are presuming a lot. I don't think I'm qualified to call myself "Native American", "Indian", or "Indigenous", but my great grandmother on my father's side was Cherokee and practiced her native way of life on the family farm, including the use of herbal medicine and treating sick family members. I have relatives who call themselves "Indians". You are white-splaining when you tell us, all of us, that you're not surprised "when required to communicate with their colonisers in their colonisers' language, some chose to use words created from a racist mindset." Who are you to decree what is racist and not racist in this context? I say it's not your place. Tell it to Donald Fixico, who has written a dozen books and many others works that use the term "Indian". Russel Means was a founding member of the American Indian Movement, some of whose members tore down the Christopher Columbus statue outside the Minnesota State Capitol on 10 June 2020. Means himself said "I abhor the term Native American". By the way, the term "indigenous" is not favored among some Canadian First Nations peoples, since, as the WP Native American name controversy article points out, "the French equivalent indigène has historically been used in a derogatory sense toward them". Carlstak (talk) 14:01, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Carlstak - I'm intrigued, are you honestly suggesting that naming an entire population for a country with which they have not the slightest connection was not driven by racist beliefs? I do not presume to suggest that in all contexts nowadays -- especially not an indigenous person choosing to use that word to describe themselves -- that the word "Indian" is racist, but I assert very strongly that that was its origins. And why use it in *this* context when more neutral, precise terms are available? Concerning the white-splaining, I understand mansplaining to be a man talking down to a woman about a subject on which she is more expert. I have not asserted that indigenous people cannot call themselves whatever they like, but taking a view across Wikipedia articles from the USA and Canada that touch on race, there seems very much a bias in the content and terminology. It seemed to me a minor step to attempt to make the terminology in this article match a bit closer to what I have seen repeatedly asserted by indigenous writers to be seen as less offensive. With shame, I will absolutely agree to your charge of "white-splaining" as an accurate description of my behaviour if one or more indigenous people had been involved in the phrasing in this article. I suspect that, as with so many articles that touch on race in North America, that is unlikely to be the case. In the meantime, I will continue to do my best to be an ally to people such as the writer of this article - https://www.insider.com/native-american-offensive-racist-things-2020-1 . By comparison, I do not deny the right of any person of black African ancestry to use the n-word (or, indeed, any other) to describe themselves, but I will be gravely concerned about someone else using it to describe them, and I'd be surprised to be charged with "white-splaining" for attempting to reduce the frequency of its use in an article which appears to have been written by people that do not have that identity and where its use is in no way necessary other than to label to things that were named, officially, at the time in that manner, as with "Indian" in this article. Jondclarke (talk) 04:51, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Jondclarke Yes, I am "honestly" suggesting that "naming an entire population for a country with which they have not the slightest connection was not [necessarily] driven by racist beliefs"; I am also suggesting that you are willfully trying to impose your own white-centric beliefs on the article and persist in white-splaining, even here in your reply. In my eyes, your statements here are just more of the "the white man knows best and will defend the poor ignorant natives" attitude that continues to plague the original peoples of the Americas. I feel that you are denigrating my own Cherokee ancestry, and I am insulted. How do you know that "one or more indigenous people" have not been "involved in the phrasing in this article", and how did you obtain this god-like omniscience? I am not going to argue with you, as it appears that you are determined to defend in your walls of text the usurpation of native people's right to define themselves and call themselves what they like. Carlstak (talk) 13:23, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: Hi - I just realised you'd posed a specific question which I hadn't addressed. Sorry about that. Words have context: I wouldn't dream of telling groups of indigenous people what they should choose to call themselves in English. However, this appears to be a Wikipedia page written largely about an issue of huge concern to white people (the origin of the USA), seemingly written largely by white people, in which a term has been used that is *not* widely accepted as neutral or objective by indigenous people in the country where I live, and so it seems useful to attempt to shift in a more neutral direction with it. Given that colonisation has been such a thorough process within the US and Canada - to the extent that only 1.0% of the US's population now consists of people of indigenous origin - then it doesn't surprise me that, when required to communicate with their colonisers in their colonisers' language, some chose to use words created from a racist mindset. And if naming whole groups of people for a country which has precisely nothing to do with them or their ancestors does not reflect a racist mindset on the part of the colonisers, then I struggle to picture which words would qualify as such. As I said above, I'm happy to have someone, especially someone of indigenous origin, choose a different path for this article, and I'm not going to get into edit wars over it. But if a more neutral term is available for this Wikipedia page, why not use it? Jondclarke (talk) 23:03, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't have anything against "indigenous", except, again, the word is European origin, just like America was derived from European Amerigo Vespusi. The first peoples, on what is now called North America, were individual tribes or nations, before European invasion, including Russia, in part Russia is on the Asian continent. I would call them "tribal nations" or "tribal peoples" or address them specifically by their respected tribal names. I thought in Canada the term used was "First Nations". First nations or tribal nations would work. My limited experience with tribal people is that their tribal name is a very important identification of who they are, in addition, to being very selective on who can be a member of their respected tribe. How about "first tribal nations" ? Thanks. Cmguy777 (talk) 21:01, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Cmguy777 - yes, First Nations is often the preferred term here for those that this article refers to as "Indian". I wasn't sure that would work so well with the US-focus of this article. (Indigenous is used as an umbrella term in Canada for First Nations, Metis and Inuit people, and I've seen it used widely and recently by indigenous people to describe themselves.) Jondclarke (talk) 04:51, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

There's some confusion here. @Cmguy777 and Jondclarke: we can't simply choose a name, we have to go by what reliable sources use. They don't use First Nations or any variant (or if there are one or two that do, they are unusual). Unfortunately both the two main names used by sources will upset someone. By the way, I don't think Columbus calling them Indians was anything but ignorance on his part. He thought he'd landed somewhere that was known, the East Indies, as explained at Native American name controversy. Doug Weller talk 12:22, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes. We have to go by what the sources say, but there is no concensus among historians, on the exact word to use for "Indian". That would leave some room for editor concensus on Wikipedia. Since this artile is focused on the "American Revolution", then we would have these choices: "American Indian" "Native American" "Indian" "Indiginous People". "Indian", although inaccurate, from Columbus' ignorance of geography, is probably the most neutral of all the terms from the sources. The term "Native American", is linked to Amerigo Vespuci. I think "Native American", "Indigenous People" and "Indian" could be used throughout the article. We don't have to settle for one word. Thanks. Cmguy777 (talk) 23:44, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

"in which a term has been used that is *not* widely accepted as neutral or objective by indigenous people in the country where I live" Wikipedia is a poor place to resolve real-life naming controversies. We can report on the various terms used for certain ethnic and religious groups, but we can't arbitrarily decide which is the "correct" one. We have no control over the various positive or negative connotations which a term may invoke on our readers. Dimadick (talk) 16:03, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Cmguy777 that we don't have to settle for one word, and Dimadick sums up my thoughts exactly concerning the fact that we can't arbitrarily decide which is the "correct" one. Carlstak (talk) 01:37, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion on French Revolution

There is currently a discussion underway on the influence of the American Revolution on the French Revolution; it would seem appropriate to inform editors of this page that the discussion is going on here. Please contribute.

In particular, the influence that the Revolution had on Lafayette is in question. 021120x (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Proposed alterations to lede

The lede currently states,

The American colonials proclaimed "no taxation without representation" starting with the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. They had no representatives in the British Parliament and so rejected Parliament's authority to tax them. Protests steadily escalated to the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, followed by the Boston Tea Party in December 1773.

I think two things are missing here:

1. The background of "salutary neglect" of the colonies, with a high degree of autonomy, which is what made the imposition of taxes and tightening of Parliamentary control in the 1760s objectionable to many colonists.
2. The give-and-take of the late 1760s, with the passage and repeal of the Stamp Act, the passage and repeal of (most of) the Townshend duties. This is somewhat different from the statement that "Protests steadily escalated." It's more of a periodic flaring of tensions, punctuated by attempts to conciliate the colonists.

I think both issues could be addressed without lengthening the paragraph too much. I don't want to make a bold edit to the lede of such a prominent article without asking for input first, so I'd like to ask for thoughts on the above points first. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:59, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: YES, heartily agree, and by happenstance, that same material is about to be removed as off-topic at American Revolutionary War. See the following Talk section for text along with HarvRef footnotes and references for the Bibliography. - TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:44, 14 October 2020 (UTC)