Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about the causes of the American Revolution. But this isn't going to be the usual discussion about these causes. I'm sure you studied the stated causes of the American Revolution in the history classes that you took in school. What we want to look at tonight is to examine these causes in the light of the teachings of Jesus and His apostles.
After all, the majority of the people on both sides of the conflict, that is, in both America and in England, considered themselves to be Christians. And today, conservative Christians promote the American Revolution as something very godly, as a righteous Christian cause, a battle of good versus evil. Now, in reality, the causes of the American Revolution were much more complex than what we learned in middle school and high school.
And we're going to be talking about that later on, some of the realities of these causes. But first, let's just assume that things were truly just as black and white as they were taught to us in American history class, that the British were being tyrants and imposing unfair taxes and other laws on the American colonists. The question is, even if all of that is true, how should a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ respond in such a situation?
Now, fortunately, we don't have to guess about this because both Jesus and His apostles addressed those very issues. So now let's look at the colonial grievances, and then let's look at what the proper response a Christian should have when faced with those grievances. Well, the first cause that I remember studying in school was the whole mercantile system and the Navigation Acts passed by Parliament. This is what I was taught that under the Mercantile Theory, the colonies existed for the good of the Mother Country.
And England subscribed to this theory, so it didn't care about what was good for the American colonists. It only cared about what was good for England. So it passed various laws to benefit the English people at the expense of the colonists. And the specific example we were given in school were the series of navigation acts passed by Parliament in the 1600s and 1700s. Now, it's interesting to note that the First Navigation Act was passed in 1651 at the instigation of Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans in Parliament.
So if the Navigation Acts were something evil and unjust, we should remember that they were passed by evangelical Calvinistic Christians, at least people who profess to be Christians. The First Navigation Act, as I mentioned, was passed in 1651, and it was aimed at the Dutch people. Now, it's interesting that the Dutch were fellow Calvinists along with the Puritans who were passing the act.
So we can see just how deep the Christianity of the Puritans ran, for they obviously cared far more about the good of England than about the welfare of their brothers in Christ just across the channel. In other words, their country was more important to them than their cold relationship with Jesus Christ with fellow Christians, particularly fellow Calvinists.
Now what the Navigation Act did was to ban foreign ships from transporting goods to England or to English colonies, or to transport goods from England to other places. Furthermore, any goods being transported to England or to English colonies, or from England or the colonies, had to be transported in British ships. Now, at the time that the Navigation Act was passed by England, the Netherlands was the dominant shipping power in Northern Europe.
So these acts were completely ruinous to its economy, since England was one of its biggest customers. In fact, it eventually led to war between the two countries, a war that England won. So the purpose of the Navigation Act was to diminish the power of the Dutch. It was not intended to inflict any hardship on the American colonies. That wasn't the point of it at all. Nevertheless, the effect of the Navigation Acts was to place burdens on colonial trade.
Because these acts meant that all European goods bound for America or for any other British colonies had to be shipped through England or Wales first. So if it was coming from France, they couldn't just take it from France to Massachusetts, they had to go from France to England. Okay, then the goods all had to be unloaded from the French ship, inspected, duties would have to be paid on them, and then they would have to be reloaded onto English ships.
This didn't apply just to things going into the colonies, but likewise, some of the commodities produced by the colonists, not all of them, but some of them, such as sugar, rice, tobacco, they had to first go to Britain. Tax had to be paid on those exports. And then the goods could go on to other countries. So the Virginia settlers couldn't sell tobacco directly to the Spanish or the French. I mean, they could sell it, but it would have to go through England and customs tax be paid on it.
So this increased the cost to the colonies, which would have to be passed on to their ultimate consumer. And it also lengthened the time that it would take to ship cargo. So how did the colonists respond? Well, they responded by largely just ignoring these navigation laws and smuggling foreign goods into America and American goods out of America directly to other countries.
In other words, the Dutch and the French and other countries pretty much continued to trade directly with the American colonies, even though it was against British law. They just had to do it secretly. But Britain was in no position to be able to police the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States. So the colonists largely got away with just breaking the law. And this led to a culture in the American colonies of ignoring Parliament's laws when they didn't suit the colonists.
Okay, that's what they did, not just the unbelievers, but the professing Christians as well. But what do the Scriptures teach about how a Christian should respond to import duties and things like that? Well, the exact subject is discussed in the New Testament. Paul wrote to the Romans, Romans 13:1, " Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. " For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil, do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.
Therefore, you must be subject not only because of wrath, but also for conscience's sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render, therefore, to all their due. Taxes to whom taxes are due. Customs, that is, tariffs and import duties. To whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor, owe no one anything except to love one another.
So what the American colonists were doing was directly against God's law, not just against parliament's laws, but against God's. Yeah, you may say, but the navigation laws were so unfair. Surely a Christian doesn't have to obey unfair laws. Well, what was the setting in which Paul gave those instructions to the Romans and through that to all Christians? Well, he was specifically referring to the Roman authorities.
Now for the vast majority of Christians in Paul's day, Rome was simply a foreign power who had conquered their country. There was nothing fair about the system at all. Their taxes and tariffs were a heavy burden on the people whom Rome had conquered. So God is telling us how He wants us to respond in even the worst situation. And He says that the ruling authorities are His ministers, even where, such as in the case of Rome, their legitimacy came only through the sword.
So if God wanted Christians to honor the Roman authorities and to pay all of their taxes and import duties, he certainly expected the American colonists to do the same. You know, it's interesting how worldly Christians, institutional Christians, will argue the absoluteness of Romans 13 when it comes, say, to military service, that, oh, even if it violates the laws of God, even if it means you are killing your fellow Christian, even if it means you're doing this on behalf of a wicked ruler.
Well, Romans 13 says you have to obey the superior authority. So, I mean, that supersedes everything. That's funny, those same people who will say that, that somehow Caesar trumps God, " Oh, when it comes to something like that, oh no, the colonists didn't have to obey those laws. Those laws were unjust. " Well, as we're going to see later on, the laws weren't as unjust as they were made out to be in our textbooks, but even if they were, the commandment is crystal clear.
So it's the utmost hypocrisy to say, " Oh, we have to obey the ruler, " even when he's wicked and is telling us to do something that would violate God's laws. But then when it's something that's just inconvenient, we're not having to do anything against God's laws. We're just having to pay taxes or custom duties that we don't want to pay. Oh, well then it's okay to ignore the law if you think it's unjust. That I'm afraid is hypocrisy. That's not how a real disciple of Jesus Christ thinks.
Now let's move to one of the most inflammatory causes leading up to the revolution. That was the Stamp Act of 1765. This required that many of the printed materials in the colonies would carry a tax stamp. Now, these printed materials included things like legal documents, magazines, newspapers, so it affected quite a lot of people. Well, the purpose of the tax wasn't just to be mean or to gain revenue to be spent in Britain.
It was to help pay for the troops, the British troops who were stationed in North America following the victory of the British over the French in what we know as the French and Indian War. The British people were paying a huge sum of money to maintain these soldiers to protect the borders of America. In case the French would try to win these territories back or the Spanish or someone like that. And they felt like, " Hey, the American colonists ought to pay for some of this cost.
" The British were still paying for most of it, but the stamp tax was requiring the colonists to shoulder part of the burden. Well, what was the response of the colonists? Well, unlike the Navigation Acts, the colonists didn't just ignore the law. They responded with both legal protests and with violence.
Now, some of the colonial leaders, whom the parliamentary leaders had discussed the whole thing with before they levied it, had told the English that the colonies would respond better to the tax if the authorities responsible for collecting the tax would be local American colonists, not tax agents from Britain. And so various people, generally leaders, some of them were ministers or leading merchants, things like that, were appointed to be the agents to collect the tax.
Well, as it turned out, that didn't make any difference to the colonists at all. In place after place, the tax collectors were met with mob violence. In fact, that was nearly everywhere. They were beaten, they were threatened with death, sometimes their houses were burned down. Others were viciously treated by having hot tar poured upon their naked bodies, and then they were covered with feathers. Now in school, we were taught that this was real funny.
Today we would call it an inhuman act, a terrorist act, because it caused severe burns, and when you took the tar off, your skin came off with it. And so in a short time, you had a situation where there was nobody who dared to try to collect this tax because of the violence that they were threatened with. Not only that, then various ones made legal arguments to England. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with filing a legal protest. I'll leave that up to somebody's conscience.
James Otis, in a lengthy work that he wrote about the matter, told the British that Parliament couldn't tax the colonists, a direct tax like that, because the colonists had no representation in Parliament. And of course, that's what we heard in our high school history, no taxation without representation. And we were given the impression that that was the motto going all the way up to the revolution.
Actually, it was only a few people who argued that because the American colonies had about a million and a half people at the time, and Britain had around 6 million. So even if the colonists had had proportionate representation, they would have been extremely outnumbered. And to be represented in Parliament then would acknowledge that Parliament could tax them.
So even though that was something James Otis argued and a few others, that slogan was very quickly dropped because if the British had acceded to that, then the colonists would have been fixed where they would have been taxed, and they would have had no legal grounds to protest. Now, Benjamin Franklin went to Parliament and he told them that Parliament did not have the legal right to levy an internal tax on the colonists. Only their own legislatures could do that, but it had the authority to levy external taxes.
Let me read to you what he said. This is a transcript of his testimony before Parliament on February 13th, 1765. He was asked, was it an opinion in America before 1763 that Parliament had no right to lay taxes and duties there? Benjamin Franklin, " I never heard of any objection to the right of laying duties to regulate commerce, but a right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not represented there. All right, question.
You say the colonies have always submitted to external taxes and object to the right of parliament only in laying internal taxes. " Now, can you show that there is any kind of difference between the two taxes to the colony in which they may be laid? Benjamin Franklin. I think the difference is very great. An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported. That duty is added to the first cost and other charges on the commodity, and when it is offered for sale, makes it a part of the price.
If the people don't like the price, they refuse it. They're not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent, unless it is laid by their own representatives. Now, we're going to visit that argument a little bit later, but like you say, the colonists originally argued, number one, they could be taxed internally if they had representation in Parliament. And number two, Parliament had the power to levy duties, export and import taxes that that had always been acknowledged.
And as we've seen, yes, that had been around from almost the day one of the colonies, but so many of the colonists had just ignored those laws. But like I say, the leaders were acknowledging, yes, those were legal powers. Okay, so we know how the colonists responded. Again, including those who purported to be Christians, who were leaders in their church, they resorted to mob violence. But this is what Jesus said when they asked him about paying taxes.
Luke 20, starting with verse 21, it says, " Then they asked him saying, ' Teacher, we know that you say and teach rightly, and you do not show personal favoritism, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But he perceived their craftiness and said to them, " Why do you test me? Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription does it have? " He answered and said, " Caesars.
" And he said to them, " Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. " So we don't have to speculate. What should a Christian do if faced with a tax that he considers is unlawful or improper? Jesus directly answered that question, " You pay Caesar what is Caesar's? " And the same teaching was repeated there in Romans that we read not too long ago. Now, I'm not saying it's wrong for a Christian to lodge a legal protest.
For example, Benjamin Franklin going to England and speaking to Parliament and arguing that the tax was illegal. I mean, some Christians might feel like we shouldn't do that. We should just pay. I'll leave that question open. Jesus never comments on that. Obviously, we would pay it until such time we could persuade the authorities that it's an unlawful tax. But to threaten tax collectors with their lives, to burn their houses down, to beat them, torture them. That's horrible. Christians don't do things like that.
The very Christians today, who talk about the American Revolution as though it was such a godly thing, they would think it was awful if someone did that today, if somebody beat up a tax collector or burned his house down or threatened him with death. I mean, they wouldn't want any part of that. They'd say that's some kind of patriot extremist or something. That's not how we Christians feel. We pay our taxes. Quite a double standard.
But again, you may be thinking, " Okay, Jesus said we're supposed to pay taxes, but would his words apply in a situation like the ones the American colonists faced in 1765? " Well, let's just look at the context in which Jesus gave His commandment. There are a lot of parallels between 1st century Judea, the setting in which he gave his commandment, and 18th-century America. That is, America in, say, 1765. In Judea, they chafed under the rule by an overseas power.
In the colonies, they chafed under rule by an overseas power. Not to the extent the Jews did, but they did. Okay, so you've got the same setting, the same situation. The immediate issue that these people had with Rome was that of taxes. The immediate issue the colonists had with Britain was over taxes. Many Judeans were ready to use force to protest against the Romans. In America, many Americans were willing to use force. Rome was ready to return force in response if the Jews used force.
Britain was ready to respond with force as well. The Judeans, who acquiesced to Rome and even served as tax collectors themselves, were viewed as traitors. Similarly, Americans who acquiesced to Britain and served as the tax collectors for the stamp tax were considered traitors to their country. So see, the situation is almost exactly parallel. It's the very kind of situation in which Jesus gave His commandment.
He didn't say if you've got some nice tax and you voted for this representative and He levied this tax that you should pay it. No, he said in the worst possible situation, " Were you safe under the rule of a foreign power? You still pay your taxes. " But there were also some huge differences between first-century Judea and America in the year 1765. Rome had acquired its power over the Judeans purely by force. It had no other legal right over the Judeans.
In fact, for several centuries, the Jews and the Romans had been allies. They were on the same side in a number of conflicts. And how Rome got involved in Judea in the first place was that two of the Jewish rulers, they were physical brothers, were quarreling over who should be the king, and they went to the Roman General Pompey to have him decide the dispute. Well, he came in and decided it on behalf of one of the brothers, and he took over Judea in the process.
In contrast, in America, the British weren't foreign conquerors. Britain acquired its rule through charters. Each of the colonies was issued a charter under the authority of the Crown of England before the colonies were even started. The colonists acknowledged that the king of England was their sovereign and that they were bound to obey his laws. And they were citizens of England. Even if they were born here in America, they were still English citizens. That was not true of the Judeans.
Okay, the first century Judeans, they had a completely different religion than the Romans. The Romans were pagans, Gentiles. They brought in foreign gods and things that were a violation of God's law that he had given through Moses. So it wasn't just a foreign people who conquered them, but a foreign religion as well. In the case of the colonists, they had the exact same religion as the British.
You had Calvinists in England, you had Calvinists in America, Methodists in England, Methodists in America, Anglicans in England, Anglicans in America. They all profess to be Christians. And one other difference, the taxes that the Romans levied on Judea were heavy taxes. They were quite a burden. And they went to pay for things that were harmful to the Jews. It paid for the Roman armies who were holding them in subjection. It was paying for Caesar's palaces and temples to false gods.
And yet in all of those situations, like I say, it's the worst situation you can imagine, a foreign conqueror who has no legitimate right over you, except that he's stronger than you. And Jesus said, " You pay his taxes, even if they're burdensome. " In contrast, the British taxes on the colonies were very light. In fact, the only one that they had levied as a direct tax was the stamp tax. The British people were under a much heavier tax burden than were the colonists.
I mean, people were streaming from England over to America, not the other way around. So if Jesus commanded the Jews to pay Caesar his taxes, certainly the American colonists were required as disciples of Jesus, those who claim to be, to pay their taxes to England. Now, it's interesting to note Benjamin Franklin's assessment of the violent reaction by the colonists and some of their legislative assemblies. He wrote, " The rashness of the assembly in Virginia is amazing.
I hope, however, that ours, meaning the assembly of Pennsylvania, will keep within the bounds of prudence and moderation, for that is the only way to lighten or get clear of our burdens. " A firm loyalty to the crown and faithful adherence to the government of this nation, which it is the safety as well as the honor of the colonies to be connected with, will always be the wisest course for you and I to take.
Whatever may be the madness of the populace or their blind leaders who can only bring themselves and their country into trouble and draw on greater burdens by acts of rebellious tendency. So it's interesting that at this early date, the observation of Benjamin Franklin, that he was appalled at the ration violent acts on the part of so many people.
And it's interesting that of all of the people I've read from this period, Benjamin Franklin is usually the one who is the most sensible, who often is advising the course that is the most Christian course. And Benjamin Franklin was, you know, really a deist. I mean, he believed in Jesus, but not in the divinity of Christ. Certainly no evangelical today, if Benjamin Franklin were around today, would accept him as a born-again Christian. I mean, he would not have claimed that himself.
And yet he behaved better and wiser than most of the Christians of his day. Well, amazingly, Parliament gave in to the colonies and the Stamp Act was repealed within a year. The British believed what Benjamin Franklin and others had told them, that the colonists sincerely believed that Britain had the right to levy custom duties, that is, external taxes, but not to levy an internal tax.
Now, Parliament wasn't about to take the position that the citizens in Britain had to bear the full cost of England sending troops to the western and northern borders of the American colonies in order to protect them. I mean, the citizens in England were already paying for the brunt of it, and it was obviously unfair that the colonists pay none of the costs whatsoever. So they said, " Okay, we'll resort then to external taxes.
" That is, excise duties, customs and tariffs being charged on imported or exported goods. So Parliament passed a series of acts known generally as the Townshend Acts that levied customs on various items such as tea, paper, lead, paint, et cetera. Now, as we've talked about, tariffs like those weren't anything new. They'd been around for at least a century. But as we discussed earlier, they were so blatantly ignored by most colonists that they brought in relatively little revenue to the English crown.
It costs more to try to enforce those laws than the revenue that was brought in. So if England was going to rely on these tariffs to help pay for the costs of protecting its newly expanded empire, there was going to have to be real enforcement this time. So this meant there would have to be more revenue agents, and then there would have to be more British troops stationed in America to protect those revenue agents.
I mean, the violence of the Stamp Act showed that the very life of a revenue agent would be at risk if there weren't soldiers there to protect him. And then it meant they would have to have more ships patrolling the American coast, looking for smugglers, or else the American colonists would just simply get around these acts by ignoring them and smuggling goods in without paying the tariff.
Well, now various colonial leaders change their story and began claiming that Parliament had the right to levy excise taxes and duties for the purpose of regulating commerce, but not for the purpose of raising revenue. Well, all I can say is that on the constitutionality of the Stamp Act, there was a reasonable argument to be made against its legality. Now, to be sure, it wasn't a particularly strong argument, but at least there was some legal question there. It wasn't just nonsense.
But to argue that Parliament couldn't levy custom duties in order to raise revenue was a totally made-up argument. In fact, it was clearly understood from the founding of Jamestown on that Britain could and that it would levy tariffs. Let me just read to you a section of the Charter of Virginia dated April 10th, 1606.
It says this, " A King James gives and grants Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, and Edward Maria Wingfield, and to their associates, that they and every one of them, by their deputies, ministers, and factors, may transport the goods, chattels, armor, munitions, and furniture needed to be used by them for their said apparel, food, defense, or otherwise in respect of the said plantations.
Out of our realms of England and Ireland, and all other of our dominions, from time to time, for and during the time of seven years next ensuing the date hereof, for the better relief of the said several colonies and plantations, without any custom, subsidy or other duty unto us, our heirs or successors to be yielded or paid for the same. Now that's old-fashioned legalese, and in case you didn't totally grasp that, I don't blame you, but I'm used to reading that kind of language.
It's saying that in order to help the colony get started, that for the first seven years, beginning on the date of that charter, that there would be no duties or customs levied against any of the furniture, weapons, food, anything like that that these men brought into the colonies, not just them personally, but any agent working for them. So it was obviously understood that custom duties were going to be levied after that, the fact that they were exempted for the first seven years.
And the money was going to go to the crown and its successors. There was no limitation that this is for the purpose of regulating commerce. In fact, the implication would be the opposite that the purpose was to bring revenue to the crown. So what was the colonial response to the Townshend Acts? Well, they tried to get around them and, to a large degree, were successful in getting around them by smuggling goods, bribing officials, pulling shenanigans in the courts, things like that.
In other words, if a merchant was caught smuggling items and he was charged in court, well, the court would be a colonial court. And the men on the jury would be his fellow citizens. And so they would always find him not guilty. Again, you had mob violence, threats of life, and other harm against anybody involved in helping the British enforce these laws.
Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty and other people launched a very successful propaganda war, saying that there was this conspiracy in England to try to take away our liberties and things like that. When like you say, there was only one thing afoot, and that was to try to gain revenue because the British crown was bankrupted by the French and Indian War, and it was expending hundreds of thousands of pounds to maintain forts on the western and northern frontier of the American colonies.
Furthermore, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty, they coerced citizens to boycott various British goods. In other words, goods that would carry these tariffs, they would tell merchants, don't carry those goods and tell people not to buy them. Well, it wasn't a free choice.
If you decided, well, I'm going to sell them anyway, you'd get a visit at night threatening you with your life, and you might have your business burned down or your house burned down, or found yourself suddenly confronted by a mob and beaten up. As a result, the Townshend Acts weren't very effective. But what should have been the Christian response to all of this? Well, Paul already told us we read the passage there in Romans 13. It said to pay whatever taxes and customs are required of you.
And as we said earlier, this was from a foreign government who had no legal rights. Britain had the legal rights. Rome didn't other than the fact that they were the de facto government. They were stronger than these other countries had conquered them, and they were the law. The scriptures tell us that we should view the agents of the governmental authorities as God's ministers, not only paying our taxes, but also giving them honor and respect.
Well, it was just the exact opposite what the colonists were doing, calling these British agents every name imaginable and heaping contempt upon them, insulting them at every opportunity, et cetera. Something else, Jesus often referred to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth. One of the reasons why Jesus commanded His disciples not to swear oath is because our yes must mean yes and our no must mean no as a Christian. The Christian speaks the truth at all times.
In fact, Jesus told the Pharisees he was speaking about Satan. He says, " He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. " When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. So when we're spreading lying propaganda, we're following in the footsteps of Satan, not the footsteps of Jesus.
And Revelation 21: 8 says, " All liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. " So people who purposefully spread lies, which is what Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty and the ones associated with them were doing. And these were malicious lies that were stirring people up to armed rebellion. We are doing something very ungodly. We are not a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Now let's move to an incident that also was crucial leading up to the American Revolution. And this is what's known as the Boston Massacre. It occurred in the year 1770. Now, from the issuance of the Townshend Acts on, what you basically had was Britain asserting its right to levy taxes on the American colonies, if not internal taxes, at least tariffs and duties, and a well-organized band of colonists who were opposing them at every step.
Now, Parliament had an enormous principle at stake, and it didn't just involve the 13 colonies. Britain had colonies in the West Indies and other parts of the world. We think of the 13 colonies as being something enormously important to England because they later became the United States, et cetera. But at the time of the American Revolution, the West Indies were far more valuable to Britain than were the 13 colonies.
The amount of revenue that England received from the West Indies, the colonies there, was six times as much as it was getting from the 13 American colonies. And you see, if Parliament accepted the colonists ' argument that it didn't have the right to levy taxes, well, it wasn't just backing down from the 13 colonies, it would be backing down from all of these other colonies around the world. I mean, it would have been ruinous to the British Empire.
And it was a pretty unreasonable position the colonists were taking. What they were basically saying is, " We want the benefits of being part of the British Empire, but we are not willing to contribute one red cent towards it. " Now, if Parliament was going to accept the position the colonists were taking, then they would be better off just simply giving the 13 colonies their independence right at that point, which is not what very many people were seeking.
It's what Samuel Adams were seeking, but very few other people. But that's really what they basically, the choice given them, either give us our freedom, even though no one was asking for that, or eventually you're going to have to fight us because we're not going to pay the taxes. And if you back down, you end up with 13 colonies that are just draining your treasury and you're getting nothing back in return, and you're setting a precedent that's going to affect all of these other colonies you have.
Now, please understand, I'm not some liberal revisionist saying these things. I'm not in that camp in the least bit. I'm just saying, let's look at this as kingdom Christians. Where does all of this stand? Just looking at truth. I'm not pro-British, and again, I'm not the least bit liberal, but I do try to be intellectually honest. Now, Britain could have done things as well. For one, it could have granted the 13 colonies representation in Parliament, and that would have at least taken that excuse away.
Of course, there were risks in doing that too. If they granted that to all of their colonies, in proportion to their populations, at some point, the colonies would be ruling them. And so I can see why Britain was a little slow to agree to do that or was unwilling to agree, but I think they could have if they wanted to be totally fair. Furthermore, the British did have a very contemptuous view of the colonists. They didn't treat them often with respect and kindness, and certainly didn't treat them as equals.
So there were a lot of valid complaints on the part of the colonists. The other thing you need to recognize is that certainly it's true that the vast majority of colonists disliked these new taxes. I mean, after all, who doesn't dislike taxes? However, it was a small but extremely well-organized minority who pushed these various confrontations with the British. In Boston, they were led by Samuel Adams, as I've mentioned, who was a master propagandist.
I mean, he churned out lie after lie, stirring up people's fears that the real design of England was to totally take away the freedoms and rights of the colonists. That there was this conspiracy underway. And when Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty organized a boycott of British goods, I mean, it wasn't a voluntary thing that they just asked the colonists, " Hey, please don't buy these. " Oh no. If they said don't buy or sell a certain product, you had better comply, or you were going to get a visit at night.
And if you're a man, you were going to likely get beaten up by a mob, or threats that your house would be burned down over your head, or your business burned down or ransacked, or a forceful boycott made of your business. I mean, Boston slowly descended into essentially mob rule. So to stem the growing mob rule in Boston, the governor asked Britain for more troops to help maintain order. You can see how things were escalating. It wasn't again that the British wanted to do these things.
It was the radicals in the colonies who were forcing it by refusing to pay the customs taxes. Well, then that forced England to bring ships to try to stop smugglers. And then that brought confrontations because the American juries always acquitted anyone charged with smuggling. Then Britain passed a law saying that if you were arrested for smuggling, you would be tried in a maritime court by British judges. Well, then of course that brought more ire from the colonies. You're taking away our liberties.
I mean, it was a no-win situation for the British. Either they just backed down and say, look, why don't you just have your freedom and go your own way? Or they were going to have to pass these laws, which ultimately was going to lead to war. Now, if they were dealing with real Christians, that's not the way it would have to be. But as I said, they weren't.
The other thing you have to recognize is that the last thing that Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty wanted was for there to be peace and good relations between the British and the colonists. Because Samuel Adams wanted a conflict, he wanted the American colonies to be free and independent. But he represented an extremely small minority view at that point in time. I mean, I would guess less than 5% of the colonists wanted independence in the year 1770.
I mean, it was a minority who wanted it even in the year 1775 when the American Revolution started. So what Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty did was to always do something to create a conflict with the British and to start an incident and then milk that incident for all the propaganda value that you could. And the so-called Boston Massacre is the perfect example of this. As I said, the British had sent troops to Boston at the request of the Massachusetts governor to help restore law and order.
But the Sons of Liberty and others there in Boston, they continually harassed the British soldiers. They taunted them. They insulted them. They made fun of them. They called them names like lobster back and things I can't repeat on the message. Well, finally, all of this led up to a tragic incident on the night of March 5th, 1770.
On that night, a lone British sentry got into an argument with one of the colonists, and before long, a mob gathered around the sentry and began jeering at him and hitting him with snowballs and chunks of ice. Well, he backed up to the customs house and yelled for help from the other soldiers. Captain Preston, who was the officer on duty, was in quite a quandary. He could see that the private's life was in danger, but he had only seven soldiers with him. They were hugely outnumbered by the mob.
And he also knew that the law forbade the soldiers from firing on civilians unless they had an order from the magistrate. Well, after weighing everything, he finally decided to come to the soldiers rescue. So he and the seven others rushed over there and ordered the mob to disperse. But instead of dispersing, the mob just kept coming in closer and closer, pelting now all of the soldiers with ice, sticks, snowballs, and coal. The mob grew to about 400 people, mainly young men.
Well, finally, the leader of the mob, Crispus Attucks, he grabbed one of the soldiers ' muskets and then knocked him to the ground. Well, the soldier got up and fired, and then several of the other soldiers fired as well. Well, the captain, who had never given the order to fire, yelled at once for them to cease firing, which they did. In the end, five civilian men were killed and six others were wounded. The captain and his soldiers were immediately arrested and put in jail.
About six months later, when things had calmed down, they were tried for murder. But even though they were tried by a Boston jury, all but two of them were acquitted since the jury ruled they had fired in self-defense. Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and were branded in the hand as a result. Well, a young artist, Henry Pelham, depicted the event and turned it into a piece of propaganda.
And Paul Revere, a silversmith and engraver, made copies of the pictures, made an engraving from it, and these were spread throughout the colonies. Well, instead of drawing a picture of what truly happened, the scene in the drawing is purposely false. For example, it shows the captain ordering his men to fire, which he definitely did not do, and there were plenty of witnesses to that. And the jury found that that was true. He had not ordered them to fire.
The picture shows a musket peering out of the window of the customs house firing, which never happened, and they labeled the customs office Butcher's Hall. Also, the painting shows this bright blue skies as if this happened in broad daylight, just an unprovoked murder of people, when, in fact, it was in the dark. These men's life was in grave danger, and they acted in self-defense.
But Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty got an enormous amount of propaganda out of this and turned the opinion of colonists everywhere against the British. But what would Jesus have to say about all of this? You know, interestingly, Jesus lived in a setting similar to that of the colonists in Boston. Only it was far, far worse. He and the other Jews didn't have British soldiers around. They had Roman soldiers.
And unlike the British soldiers, the Roman soldiers were foreign conquerors, and they didn't need the permission of a magistrate to attack a civilian who gave them any problems. So how did Jesus tell His Jewish disciples how they should respond to this foreign occupying army? Well, he told them to love their enemies and not to resist evil. He told them that if someone, probably meaning a Roman soldier, commanded them to carry his load for one mile, that they should go ahead and carry it two miles.
Well, if the so-called Christians in Boston had responded that way to the British soldiers, there would have been no Boston massacre. And I'm sure there would have been no American Revolution. In fact, there wouldn't have been British soldiers in Boston in the first place. The only reason they were there was because of the rampant lawlessness and to give protection against the mob violence that was there. And those mobs were run by Samuel Adams, who was a devout, very moralistic, Calvinist professing Christian.
Well, the finally Vanter grievance led to the American Revolution I want to talk about is the Boston Tea Party, which occurred in 1773. Parliament finally decided that the Townshend Acts, which levied these duties on various items, weren't worth the bother. So once again, they backed down. They repealed all of these new duties except the one on tea.
On the other hand, the government made a deal with the East India Company that was in financial trouble that enabled them to sell this tea, even though it had a tariff on it, to be able to sell it to the American colonists more cheaply than even the smuggled tea that was being sold there. Well, this was obviously a good deal for the majority of the colonists who were big tea drinkers. They could now purchase legal tea. They could make Parliament happy and they could save money all at the same time.
And I have no doubt that most of the colonists would have been happy to purchase this tea. However, Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty had different ideas. They felt that this was making the tariff palatable to the population. And once the people accepted it, then Parliament would come back with more tariffs. Secondly, this inexpensive tea was going to cut majorly into the income of the various smugglers, nearly all of whom were aligned with the Sons of Liberty.
So rather than allowing the people to make their own choice on the matter, the Sons of Liberty used the same kind of mob violence tactics that had been so successful with the Stamp Act. Almost no one dared become a consignee for this East India tea because their lives were threatened. Those who had agreed to become consignees to receive it quickly resigned their posts.
And as a result, all over the Eastern Seaboard, wherever the tea was brought, it wasn't unloaded because everyone was afraid to take consignment of it. And so the ships had to just return with the tea to England. It happened everywhere except Boston. There, the governor was adamant that he was not going to let the Sons of Liberty rule the city. And his sons had agreed to take consignment of the tea. However, the Sons of Liberty controlled the dock workers, and they made sure that the cargo was not unloaded.
They told the ship captains to just leave Boston without unloading their tea or paying the duty on it, because under British law, you still owed the duty once you docked with the cargo, even if you didn't unload it. However, the governor, who is now in a showdown of power with the Sons of Liberty, I mean, whose law was going to prevail, he wasn't going to let the ship leave until it paid its duty.
Well, to make things even more complicated, under British law, unless a ship that was docked, unless it unloaded its cargo within 20 days, the custom officials could just seize the cargo in lieu of the duties that would be owed. Well, when the 20 days were about to expire, a mob organized by the Sons of Liberty and thinly disguised as Indians, boarded three ships that were carrying the tea one night, and they dumped all 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor, destroying the tea.
Well, Benjamin Franklin was appalled by this needless vandalism, and he declared that the people responsible needed to pay for all 90,000 pounds of tea. The colonists had had a number of friends in Parliament, which is why they won most of these battles in the showdown with Parliament. But now, these ones who had supported the colonies, they were totally shocked.
In fact, Parliament was now united in realizing that the colonies had descended into mob rule, that England needed to either abandon its authority and just say, " You guys win, the colonies are yours, " or England must reestablish its authority. If it just walked away, it was going to set a very dangerous precedent for the other colonies it had. So Parliament decided they must reestablish their authority in the colonies.
So they passed a law that closed the port of Boston as punishment for destroying the tea and issued other very strong laws in response to what happened there. Well, in turn, these laws only further enraged the American people. People got more whipped up, more angry at the British, and it culminated in the American Revolution. As I said, England was in an absolutely no-win situation.
They were either going to have to walk away or assert themselves by force, which was going to lead to armed rebellion, which is exactly what happened. Again, what would Jesus have done? Now, can you picture Jesus or his apostles vandalizing some third party's property because it had, say, a Roman tariff on it? No, even though they lived in the middle of a hotbed of political tension between the Jews and the Romans, Jesus, His apostles, and the New Testament Christians refused to get caught up in the conflict.
They obeyed Caesar whether they liked his laws or not. Their homeland, their country, was the kingdom of God. It wasn't Judea, or Rome, or Greece, or any other man-made country. The tensions between the Jews and the Romans never overflowed into the Church. Now, there were theological tensions between the Jews and the Gentiles over whether the Gentiles had to keep the law of Moses.
But there was never any political or national tension between Jewish Christians and Roman Christians, even when their two countries were at war. The Christians stayed completely out of the conflict. They didn't participate on either side of that war. Now, we've been talking during the past hour about the causes of the American Revolution that you and I studied in school. But from a secular perspective, the real cause of the Revolution goes back to the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years War.
At the end of that war, the French Foreign Minister made a very insightful prediction. He said this: " The colonies will now no longer need Britain's protection. She will call on them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off their chains. " And that is exactly what happened. The colonists and the British regulars had fought side by side in that war, but each side came out of the war, hating the other.
The British saw the colonists as undisciplined, greedy, and cowardly. The colonists saw the British as snobbish, harsh, and incompetent. But tens of thousands of colonists received military training and experience as a result of that war. So the military capability of the colonies was immensely different after the war than it had been before it. Actually, by the time of the French and Indian War, America was virtually free except in name.
The colonists wanted the protection that being part of the British Empire gave them. However, once Britain eliminated France, the common enemy that made the Americans reliant on Britain, the colonies no longer needed Britain's protection. Now, they were happy to remain British colonies as long as it costs them nothing, which had been the case for 150 years of colonial life. I mean, it was great to have a ready-made entry into the British market.
A person might think that after the American Revolution, that the colonies really prospered because they didn't have these navigation laws that they had to deal with and these various restrictions that Britain had placed on them. Just the opposite is true. It took the United States decades and decades to ever get back to the level of commercial trade, particularly sea merchant trade, that it had had before the American Revolution.
Despite the restrictions, being part of the British Empire provided far more economic opportunity than being independent. But that same French and Indian war that had been so beneficial to the colonies, it bankrupted both France and England. The English people were now being taxed heavily to pay for that war, and they had reached the limit of how much they were going to pay. The Americans were going to have to help share the cost of maintaining the British Empire, but they were unwilling to do that.
The other issue that came out of the French and Indian War is that at the end of that war, Britain entered into a treaty with the Indian nations, saying that the colonies would not expand west of the Appalachians. In fact, one of the main reasons England sent armies to North America after the French and Indian War and why they needed taxes to pay for them was to enforce that part of the treaty made with the Indians and to keep the Indians and the colonial settlers separated.
Unfortunately, the colonists weren't willing to have such a boundary put on their expansion. They would take as much of the Indians ' land as they wanted. And that's why the colonists didn't want to pay to provide these forts and these troops of British soldiers on the western frontier. They didn't want those boundaries on the western frontier. They wanted to grab more land, and the British soldiers were preventing them from doing that.
Anyway, in a nutshell, those were the real reasons why the American Revolution took place. Things like the Stamp Act and the Townshend Act. Those were the symptoms, not the underlying cause. The underlying cause was that the colonies no longer needed Britain, and they wanted no restraints put on their unbridled expansion into Indian land. However, from a kingdom perspective, we can say that the main cause of the American Revolution was that professing Christians failed to live by Jesus ' teaching.
As I said earlier, most of the soldiers on both sides of the fighting in the American Revolution were professing Christians. Now, in the colonies, probably the majority of them didn't go to church any longer, but they still would have classified themselves as Christians. Now, if these professing Christians had been genuine disciples of Jesus Christ, there never would have been an American revolution.
You see, if it was God's will for America to be an independent nation, and I believe it was His will, then this would have come about without an armed insurrection. Practically all of Britain's former colonies are now independent nations, and most of them were given their independence without a war. You see, when we truly trust in God, we use His methods, not man's methods.