Th e Revolutionary Generation

“Th e Snare Broken” sermon by Reverend Jonathan Mayhew, 1766

1760 1765 1770 1775 1780

“Th e Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men” sermon by Reverend John Witherspoon, May 1776 Preamble and Resolution of the Virginia Convention, May 1776 James Madison’s Contribution of Religious Freedom to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Spring 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, May 1776 Declaration of Independence, July 1776

Th is section discusses the key documents that form the revolutionary generation’s contribution to freedom in the United States .

In 1763, the Seven Years’ War between the British and the French and Indians came to an end. Th e British government, deep in debt, enacted a number of measures to increase tax revenues from the colonies and tighten control of trade laws. Th e time between 1763 and 1776 was a diffi cult period for the American people, as they fi rst attempted to organize protests and then decided to fi ght a war against Britain. Th is upheaval was based on colonial opposition to the British Parliament writing new trade and tax laws without the consent of the colonists. Th e American colonists simply asked for the rights they were due under the English Bill of Rights.59 Th e colonists understood that they deserved those rights as much as any person living in Britain. Th ese rights were fi rst expressed in Magna Carta, which can be considered England’s founding document of freedom. It infl uenced constitutional and legal development, culminating in the English Bill of Rights.60 Th e Declaration of Independence was written as the last in a series of declarations against Parliament that began after Parliament sought to raise money for Great Britain. Th e Declaration was not inevitable; even after blood began to be spilled, members of the Second Continental Congress sought reconciliation with the British. Th e Congress sent an “Olive Branch Petition,” seeking peace and restoration to the colonists of their rights, which was rejected by King George III in late 1775. Th e members of the Congress did not learn of the king’s contempt for the colonists until the publication of the Prohibitory Act (see table below) in February 1776, two months after the Act’s passage in Parliament. Th e Congress responded with an act protecting American rights to control their own ships at sea. Th at act characterized the Prohibitory Act as an “iniquitous [wicked] Scheme concerted [enacted] to deprive them of the Liberty they have a right to by the Laws of Nature and the English Constitution.”61

59 See “Th e English Bill of Rights (February 13, 1689),” ConSource, http://consource.org/document/english-bill-of-rights-1689-2-13/ 60 “Th e Infl uence of Magna Carta on American Constitutional Development,” H.D. Hazeltine, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1917), pp. 1-33, accessed through JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1110845?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents 61 “Reconciliation or Revolution? Th e Olive Branch Petition,” Treasures of the New York Public Library Online Exhibition, From Revolution to Republic in Prints and Drawings, Manuscripts and Archives, http://exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/show/119 35