My study for writing Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution resulted in me learning an awful lot about that time. We tend to look back at the American Revolution as a glorious event in our history, and the Founding Fathers as great men, who broke with an over-bearing Great Britain and forged a new nation. But was that the truth?

One document I looked at was the Resolves of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765. Written by Patrick Henry, it gave the Virginia response to the Stamp Act. The resolves covered the typical colonial complaints about taxes without representation. Then the last resolve reads:

Resolved, that any person who shall, by speaking or writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons other than the General Assembly of this Colony have any right or power to impose or lay any taxation on the people here, shall be deemed an enemy to His Majesty’s Colony.

Then, after other things Great Britain did didn’t sit well, the New York Sons of Liberty made several resolutions in 1773, the last of which was:

Resolved, That whoever shall sell, or buy, or in any manner contribute to the sale, or purchase of tea…shall be deemed an enemy of the liberties of America.

Really? You disagree with someone’s opinion as to how government shall work and they designate you an enemy? That seems rather extreme, to dismiss someone simply because they hold a different opinion than you. Who knew that, in the 1760 and 1770s in Colonial America they cast you out as an enemy if you analyzed an issue and came to a different conclusion. Kind of like cancel culture, no?

That kind of thought process, coming from two different colonies about two different issues nine years apart shows that this wasn’t a rare thing. It may, in fact, have been a dominant opinion at the time.

It was documents such as these that hit me hard as I researched and wrote the book. Not everything the colonists did was nice. Not everything was right. They have some things to answer for in history. Not that I think the outcome was all that bad, but I’ve come to question some of their methods.

But I need to file this in the “More Research Needed” category.