preview

Were The American Grievances Really Justified

Better Essays

Ch. 7-10 Questions 1. Were all the American grievances really justified, or were the British actually being more reasonable than most Americans have traditionally believed? The British were actually more reasonable than most Americans have traditionally believed. For example, the navigation laws, laws that regulated trade to and from the colonies, would be seen as an American grievance but were not really enforced by the British government until 1763, which allowed people to smuggle goods, “But the truth is that until 1763, the various navigation laws imposed no intolerable burden, mainly because there were only loosely enforced. Enterprising colonial merchants learned early to disregard or evade troublesome restrictions. Some of the …show more content…

The British enrolled about fifty thousand American Loyalists and enlisted the services of many Indians, who though unreliable, who fair-weather fighters, inflamed long stretches of the frontier”(135). This extra help from colonists, Loyalist, hessians, and the Indians only add to the army creating a bigger advantage towards the colonists. Even though they did not win it can said that the British seemed to have a bigger lead on the colonists. Colonists presented themselves as weak and disorganized, where one would presume that they wouldn’t win at all, “Yet the American rebels were badly organized for war. From the earliest days, they had been almost fatally lacking in unity, and a new nation lurched forward uncertainly like an uncoordinated centipede”(136). Organization is important for the colonists because they are competing against a well-developed and trained army. 4. What was radical and new in the Declaration of Independence, and what was old and traditional? What did the statements like “all men are created equal” mean in their historical context, and what did they come to mean later? The old and traditional of the Declaration of Independence is that the idea of having alienable rights. The British defied these rights to the colonist, and the constitution gave them back or reconnected the colonists with these rights, “Jefferson’s pronouncement, couched in a lofty style, was magnificent. He gave his appeal universality by invoking the

Get Access