The Fight For Independence

The Fight for Independence “May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!”, stated by Joseph Warren, an American Patriot. A revolution is a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system. Similarly, American Independence was a struggle to progress from dependent colonies to independent states, from monarchy to republic (Greene 1). From the perspective of the colonists the revolution for independence was a result of Great Britain’s resistance to the change, the persistent taxing, and Britain’s ignorance to acknowledging the colonist

By the spring of 1775, political resistance gave way to violence as war between the British and colonists broke out. In 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for states to form their own governments and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration. The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists. The declaration features the immortal lines, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, which among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It then goes on to present a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion. On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain ("American Colonies Declare Independence”). As stated in the declaration, “…abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies…” ("The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription."). The conflict quickly spread. Finally, in 1776 the colonists declared themselves independent and in 1783, following a prolonged and bloody war, the British were forced to recognize the independence of the United States (Cogliano). The colonists believed that Britain was conspiring to take over the colonies; therefore they sought a better form of government to replace the British Monarchy, to insure