The American Revolution, A Fight for Colonial Independence Essay

â€Å"Is there a single trait of resemblance between those few towns and a great and growing people spread over a vast quarter of the globe, separated by a mighty ocean?† This question posed by Edmund Burke was in the hearts of nearly every colonist before the colonies gained their independence from Britain. The colonists’ heritage was largely British, as was their outlook on a great array of subjects; however, the position and prejudices they held concerning their independence were comprised entirely from American ingenuity. This identity crisis of these â€Å"British Americans† played an enormous role in the colonists’ battle for independence, and paved the road to revolution. As a result of the French and Indian War, England’s attention became focused on the areas that required tending by the government other than North America, which provided the colonies with the one thing that ensured the downfall of Britain’s monarchial reign over America: salutary neglect. The unmonitored inhabitants of the colonies accustomed themselves to a level of independence that they had never possessed before, and when these rights were jeopardized by the enforcement of the Stamp Act after the Seven Year’s War, the colonists would not take it lying down. The colonies bound together in rebellion against the taxation without representation through boycotting the use of English goods, as embodied by Benjamin Franklin’s famous drawing of a snake; the â€Å"Join or Die† snake, as a whole representing the functionality and â€Å"life† of the colonies if they would work together, also forewarns the uselessness and â€Å"death† of the individual regions, suggesting that the colonies as a whole would have to fight the revolution against the Mother Country or else fail miserably... ...07-1788. Source: Thomas Bailey, The American Pageant, 11th Edition, 1998. Source: Thomas Bailey, The American Pageant, 11th Edition, 1998. Works Cited: Edmund Burke, â€Å"Notes for Speech in Parliament, 3 February 1766† Thomas Bailey, The American Pageant, 11th Edition, 1998 Hector St. John Crà ¨vecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, composed in the 1770's, published 1781 Ellis, Elser, World History: Connections to Today, 2001 Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Gazette, 1754 Richard Henry Lee to Arthur Lee, 24 February 1774 Declaration for the Causes of Taking up Arms, Continental Congress, 6 July 1775 Mather Byles, Cotton Mather's grandson, to Nathaniel Emmons, Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, The Famous Mather Byles: The Noted Boston Tory Preacher, Poet and Wit, 1707-1788 Thomas Bailey, The American Pageant, 11th Edition, 1998