Poll for Canadian / UK DUers - The American Revolution - which side?

[Screaming Lord Byron]

Poll question: Poll for Canadian / UK DUers - The American Revolution - which side?

OK. It's 1774. The tea has just gone in the harbour. People are taking sides. Which one are you on? Rebel or Loyalist? Why?
Interesting when you think about it, you may be on the opposite side from your own country.

P.S. As for me, I'd be right in there with the Rebels.

[youngred]

1. Interesting poll

wish we could verify the actual people voting though :cheers: would be interesting.

Remember only 25% of Americans favoured independence when the war started.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

2. Man, that's a lot of loyalists. Interesting.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Look at it objectively:

the rebels started the USA of today. The loyalists started Canada.

[Minstrel Boy]

4. good point!

It's why I chose loyalist myself. Does anyone believe the US would have remained a colony for much longer even if the revolution hadn't happened? Canada, Australia, New Zealand - we're no less free for not having had one.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

6. Sure, but I'm looking at it as what would you do at the time

without the benefit of hindsight. Now, my judgement may be coloured by my having been a Scottish Nationalist (a few of whom fought alongside the rebels). So, I do naturally sympathise with a civic nationalist viewpoint, particularly when its a matter of improving democracy and representation.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. Ah yes, I can see your point.

Without hindsight, I could certainly be won over to the rebel camp, just as I likely would have been during the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. (Led, perhaps not coincidentally, by the great Scottish Canadian, William Lyon Mackenzie.)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

8. Typical bloody Scot, always causing trouble.

I should of course have been more specific in the poll. It's always interesting to think what you would have done without the benefit of hindsight.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. well if you want a viewpoint for the time

then you might change my vote from 'loyalist' to 'chicken'. Would I have liked the ability to vote? Maybe. Would I have cared enough to want a war about it? No.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. Or, you could look at is as something approaching representative democracy

against a monarchic state with no real democratic components.

[Loonman]

10. Yankee Devil's advocate - list of grievances from DOI

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring 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:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.