The flag that the Patriots actually fought under tells us what they were fighting for
By Daniel Hannan
We all know the story of American independence, don't we? A rugged
frontier people became increasingly tired of being ruled by a distant
elite. A group calling themselves Patriots were especially unhappy about
being taxed by a parliament in which they were unrepresented. When, in
1775, British redcoats tried to repress them, a famous Patriot called
Paul Revere rode through the night across eastern Massachusetts, crying
'The British are coming'. The shots that were fired the next day began a
war for independence which culminated the following year in the
statehouse of Philadelphia, when George Washington and others, meeting
under Betsy Ross's gorgeous flag, signed the Declaration of
Independence.
It's a stirring story; but it's false in every aspect. Neither Paul
Revere nor anyone else could have shouted 'The British are coming' in
1775: the entire population of Massachusetts was British (what the
plucky Boston silversmith actually yelled was 'The regulars are out!')
The overall level of taxation in the colonies in 1775 was barely a
fiftieth of what it was in Great Britain, and the levies to which
Americans had objected had been repealed before the fighting began. The
Boston Tea Party, which sparked the violence, was brought about by a lowering
of the duty on tea. George Washington wasn't there when the Declaration
of Independence was signed. The flag which the Patriots marched under
was not, except on very rare occasions, the stars-and-stripes (which
probably wasn't sewn by Betsy Ross); it was the Grand Union Flag, which incorporated the flag of Great Britain.
The men who raised that standard believed that they were fighting for
their freedoms as Britons – freedoms which had been trampled by a
Hanoverian king and his hirelings. When they called themselves Patriots –
a word that had been common currency among Whigs on both sides of the
Atlantic long before anyone dreamed of a separation – they meant that
they were British patriots, cherishing the peculiar liberties
that had come down to them since Magna Carta: jury trials, free
contract, property rights, habeas corpus, parliamentary representation,
liberty of conscience and the common law.
It was these ideals that, as I blog over at ConservativeHome,
were set to paper in a small secular miracle at Philadelphia's old
courthouse. As the Virginia-born Lady Astor was later put it, the war
was fought “by British Americans against a German King for British
ideals.”
Don't take her word for it: look at the primary sources. The
resolutions of the Continental Congress are a protracted complaint about
the violations of traditional British liberties. The same is true of
the Declaration of Independence itself. As that great Anglo-American,
Winston Churchill, put it:
The Declaration was in the main a restatement of the principles which had animated the Whig struggle against the later Stuarts and the English Revolution of 1688.
Indeed it was, often in the most literal way: the right of petition,
the prohibition of standing armies, the protection of common law and
jury trials, the right to bear arms – all were copied from England’s Glorious Revolution.
Some of the clauses of England’s 1689 Bill of Rights were reproduced
without amendment. Here, for example, is the English Bill of Rights on
criminal justice:
Excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
And here is the U.S. Constitution:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The American Revolution was motivated, not by a rejection but a
reaffirmation – indeed, an intensification – of British national
identity. No one understood this better than the great Edmund Burke, whose 1775 speech on conciliation is as fine as any delivered in the House of Commons:
The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character [love of freedom] was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles.
It did not occur to any of the actors to treat the conflict as being
between two nations – at least, not until the French became involved in
1778. Indeed, the whole affair would be better understood as the Second
Anglosphere Civil War – the First being the one fought across England,
Scotland, Ireland and America in the 1640s. If you want that story,
though, you'll have to wait for my book, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World, which is to be published in November.
The Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution that followed,
distilled and fortified the principles on which British exceptionalism
was held to have rested since the Great Charter. No Briton can be
unmoved when he stands
in the room where those sublime documents were signed. Their promise is
why large parts of the world remain prosperous, free and
self-governing. That is the gift of the English-speaking peoples to the
rest of the human race. It is why, taking the bad along with the good,
we none the less say, on this of all days, God bless America.
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