The American Revolution is sometimes called the "historical oxymoron" (essay,p1) because people look at it as not a total revolution, but more of a conservative change in power in the new world. The colonial Americans fought England for control of the land they lived in and to run things their own way, but after a brief period of anarchy under the Articles of Confederation, America was being run by a very similar system that the colonists had revolted against a few years early. Three main arguments for the revolution by the colonists, Parliaments right to tax, political corruption/ interest in wealth in Parliament, and the right of a king to govern America, were all in turn adopted by the new government in America under the Constitution only a few years after the last battles of the war were fought. The reasons for the revolution and how they turned into standards for the new government under the constitution in America will prove the historians correct in calling the American Revolution a conservative revolution.
United States
Act of Maryland legislature to ratify Articles of ...
United StatesCries of "No taxation without representative"(Bailey, p126) could be heard throughout cities in New England and all over America after the Stamp Act was passed on unwilling colonist. How could England tax the colonists? What gave England the right to tax the colonists? The colonist in America felt that Parliament had no right to tax their colonies because it was a "massacre of American Liberty"(Bailey, p133). The colonists had come to the new world to escape the oppression of the English government, and start a new life free of restrictions and laws. When taxes were set upon the colonies they could not bear that they had thought they had been promised freedom, but were know being controlled once again by the government. The colonist refused to cooperate with...