The American Revolution Part II

By: Thunyarath Munyukong

• In April 1775 fighting had broken out in Massachusetts.

• Of the total American population of 2.5 million in 1776, one fifth—500,000 men, women, and children—was enslaved.

• The Declaration of Independence set forth a philosophy of human rights that could be applied not only to Americans, but also to peoples everywhere.

• In the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world, writers in this country-opposition tradition were especially fearful that executive power—particularly as it operated under the ministries of Sir Robert Walpole—was corrupting Parliament and English society in order to erect a fiscal-military state for the waging of war.

• The confidence of the Revolutionaries in 1776 in their popular representative legislatures was remarkable.

• These provisions, together with the substantial powers granted to the Congress, made the United States of America as strong as any similar republican confederation in history.

• The major European nations refused to open themselves freely to American trade