Hi, I'm David Bercot. Last night we talked about why the colonists won the American Revolution. And it was a happy time for the victors. But tonight, we're going to talk about the ones who suffered because the colonists won. And I'm not referring to the British. Sure, they lost the war, but in the end, they lost very little.
The truth is that 13 colonies had been a drain on the British Treasury, since the colonists paid little or no taxes to the crown, and yet Britain was having to spend considerable money to guard the western frontier of the colonies. The main advantage of the colonies to the English was the commercial trade between England and the colonies. And after the war ended, this trade was restored again. So the average Englishman in no way suffered because the colonies won their independence.
It might have hurt his pride a little, but that's about all. On the other hand, there were people who suffered greatly because the Americans won the war. Among the big losers were the American Indians, the loyalists, and the black slaves. Let's begin with the American Indians. One of the glorious phrases of the Declaration of Independence is that all men are created equal. But what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he penned those words is all white men are created equal.
He certainly did not mean that blacks are equal to whites, nor did he mean that the Indians were equal to the whites. The revolutionaries felt that they had the right to take up arms and fight the British over the mere issue of taxes. Yet they didn't feel that the Indians had the right to fight for their very existence. After all, the white man had taken the Indians ' land and their right to live as a free people.
By the time of the American Revolution, some of the Eastern Indian nations had already been brought to the very verge of extinction. So the Indians had something real to fight about. And most of them sided with the British during the American Revolution. After all, remember that one of the causes of the revolution was the fact that one of the terms of the peace treaty that ended the French and Indian War was that the white settlers would not settle west of the Appalachian Mountains.
And Britain had set up forts on the western frontier, both to protect the frontier from other nations and to make sure that the colonists were abiding by the terms of the treaty. But many of these white settlers wanted to renege on this part of the treaty. And so they were still moving beyond the Appalachian Mountains, even though the peace treaty said that they wouldn't. So the Indians could see that their best interests lay with the British.
If the colonists won, well, then there would be nothing to stop the white settlers from just pouring over the Appalachians and taking all of the Indians ' land. The British weren't able to keep all of them out, but they did hold back the expansion beyond the Appalachians. So when war broke out between the colonists and the British, various tribes began to harass the settlers along the frontier. Among these were the Mohawks who raided colonial settlements along the Pennsylvania frontier.
Now, soldiers in the various state militias fought back against these Indians, and there were bloody atrocities committed by both sides. Well finally, George Washington demanded that there be a final solution. And that solution was the total annihilation of the Indian villages of the six Iroquois nations, of which the Mohawks were one. And so in the summer of 1779, the colonial armies marched into the areas where the Iroquois lived and burned down 40 Indian villages.
They destroyed all the grain, all the crops, every fruit tree, anything that had been harvested, basically a total scorched earth policy in which thousands of men, women, and children died, and the Iroquois who managed to survive fled to Canada, where they still live to this day. Now, nowadays, we would call this a war crime. We would refer to it as ethnic cleansing. However, the colonists held it as one of their quotes, " a glorious achievement.
" You see, it never occurred to the colonists that the Indians were fighting for the very things that the revolutionaries were fighting for, and for so much more. The Indians were fighting not only to preserve the independence that they had enjoyed for centuries before the white man arrived, but also for their very land and their survival as a people. Ironically, it was a village of non-resistant, peaceful Indians in Ohio who suffered the worst fate.
Before the war, Moravian missionaries had converted a number of the Lenape Indians to Christianity. Now these Indians not only embraced institutional Christianity, but authentic kingdom Christianity. They lay down their tomahawks and bows and arrows. They adopted Jesus ' teaching of loving their enemies and turning the other cheek. And these Moravian Indians established a village in Ohio that they called Gnadenhutten, which means huts of grace.
At Gnadenhutten, these Moravian Indians adopted a quiet agricultural life, renouncing war and living a life of peace. As a result, they remained neutral during the American Revolution. But this made the British and their Indian allies suspicious of them. So in September 1781, the British and their Indian allies forced these Christian Indians to move away from the frontier where they were, and they escorted them to a place near Lake Erie that they called Captive Town and forced them to resettle there.
Well, unfortunately, these Moravian Indians living at captive town were going hungry because insufficient rations had been given to them. So in February of 1782, during the winter, more than 100 of them decided to return to Gnadenhutten, to harvest the crops that had been left standing there, and to collect the stored food that they had been forced to leave behind. So they journeyed there and were able to recover a lot of their crops and their stored food and were able to live as a result.
However, a month after they got there, a raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania militia, led by Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson, they came upon these peaceful Lenape Indians there. And the soldiers rounded them up and accused these Lenape Indians of taking part in raids along the frontier in Pennsylvania. Well, of course, the Moravian Indians explained to them that they had given up war, that they weren't the ones involved in any raiding, that they had embraced non-resistance as a way of life.
Well, despite this, the militia held a council among themselves that night, and they voted to go ahead and just kill them all. And they told the Lenape that they would all be put to death the next morning. As a result, these Moravian Indians spent the night praying and singing hymns. One of their leaders counseled them to die without any thought of revenge, just as Christ died on the cross.
Now, despite the fact that these soldiers had witnessed the Indians praying and singing hymns throughout the night, the next morning, they still went ahead, tied all of the Indians up, scalped them while they were still living, and then murdered them. In all, they murdered and scalped 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children. Not one of the Indians offered any resistance to them. Well, two Indian boys, one of whom had been scalped, managed to escape and tell others about the massacre.
After slaughtering everyone, the soldiers then looted the village, gathering things like furs, pewter, tea sets, and clothing. I mean, these were Indians that had been gradually moving towards a more European lifestyle. In fact, the soldiers needed 80 pack horses to carry away all of the loot from the village. After this, the soldiers piled the dead bodies of the Indians in the mission buildings, and then burned the entire village to the ground.
They also burned the other abandoned Moravian Indian villages in the area. Well, when news of the massacre got out, many Americans were outraged. However, most of the settlers on the frontier supported the militia's actions. And despite talk of bringing these murderers to justice, no criminal charges were ever filed and the war rolled on. And even after the war, these soldiers were never punished or even tried for their war crimes.
Before leaving the subject of the Indians, I should mention that some of the American Indians sided with the colonists during the American Revolution.
You see, the Continental Congress had sent out emissaries to various Indian nations, telling them that if they would side with the colonists in the fight with Britain, once the Americans won their independence, then they would create separate states for the Indian nations who had cooperated with them, where they could have their own territory and their complete freedom.
So in 1778, in the middle of the American Revolution, the 13 United States entered into a treaty with the Delaware Nation, which treaty is also known as the Treaty of Fort Pitt, where it was signed, that would be modern-day Pittsburgh, of course. Among the terms of the treaty is that both sides would fight on behalf and defend the other one.
Another provision was that the Delaware Indians would allow the American military to pass through their lands unmolested in order to build forts on the frontier from which they could fight against the British. Article VI of the treaty is quite interesting. I'm going to read it to you.
It says, " Whereas the enemies of the United States have endeavored by every artifice in their power to possess the Indians in general with an opinion that it is the design of the states aforesaid to extirpate the Indians and take possession of their country. " To obviate such false suggestions, the United States do engage to guarantee to the aforesaid nation of Delawares and their heirs all their territorial rights in the fullest and most ample manner as it has been bounded by former treaties.
As long as they, the said Delaware nation, shall abide by and hold fast the chain of friendship now entered into. And it is further agreed on between the contracting parties. Should it for the future be found conducive for the mutual interest of both parties to invite any other tribes who have been friends to the interests of the United States to join the present confederation and to form a state where the Delaware Nation shall be the head and have a representation in Congress?
Provided nothing contained in this article to be considered as conclusive until it meets with the approval of Congress. Well, by signing this treaty with the colonists, the Delawares opened themselves up to attack by the British and by the various Indian tribes who were allied with the British. Yet Congress never gave them the protection it had promised. So they suffered quite a bit as a result of this.
But the worst thing is that after the war, Congress never even considered giving the Delawares a separate state as had been promised. Congress and the American people simply ignored the treaty, as they would do over and over again in the future with other Indians until eventually the Americans took all of the Indians ' land.
It's interesting that in the treaty, the United States said that the British were passing out rumors to the Indians that if the Americans won their independence, that they would end up exterminating the Indians and taking their land. And that one of the purposes of the treaty was to show that this was an absolutely false suggestion. Well, of course, that's precisely what the Americans did do over a period of a century.
That was to totally take the Indians land, drive them onto reservations, or totally exterminate them altogether. I want to read to you a brief excerpt about the Indians from the historian J. Castell Hopkins who lived during the 1800s. And this is what he wrote. " The New England colonists had never treated the Indians upon their borders well, and the result had been a long series of reprisals and wasting war.
Greedy traders and unscrupulous speculators in land had robbed the Indians of their intellect by Brandy and of large tracts of land by fraud. The American colonies indeed claimed the entire soil and without British permission, though they did it in the king's name, made frequent and large grants of Indian territory to European settlers, and then seemed surprised when the tomahawk and scalping knife were used in response by the untutored Indians.
Finally, land regulations were made by the home government, which to some extent stopped this sort of lawlessness. And they were respected in Canada, though more or less they were disregarded in the 13 colonies as the spirit of local revolt developed. Sir William Johnson of the Mohawk Valley in New York was appointed the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, and he did his best to enforce these regulations.
Indirectly, they were one great cause of the subsequent rebellion through the dissatisfaction created among masses of traders and border settlers. He's saying this was one of the causes of the revolution, the fact that the British agent of Indian affairs tried to make the colonists live by the terms of the treaty at the end of the French and Indian War. And these settlers were pretty unhappy about it. I'll go back to his quote.
He finished it saying, " After the revolution, it may be said here, they were repealed, " that is, these different laws, and the course of unwise oppression entered upon, which has made the modern history of the Indian a standing reproach to the United States, and a blood-red blot upon its annals. In Canada, however, they were maintained. " End quote. In other words, in Canada, the treaties were respected. And what this historian wrote was the exact truth.
Over and over again, our American forefathers stole land from the Indians, they broke treaty after treaty, and they slaughtered those Indians who tried to fight back. Now, we don't know for sure what would have happened to the Indians if the British had won the American Revolution, but I think we have a pretty good idea by looking at how the Indians were treated in Canada. Although they weren't treated as equals to whites, for the most part, the British and Canada did keep their treaties with the Indians.
As a result, you never had the Indian wars in Canada like you had in the United States. Yes, the Indians were undoubtedly the ones who lost the most because the colonists won the American Revolution. Another group who suffered enormously because of the American Revolution were the loyalists. Now, when I took American history in high school, these people were called Tories. That's because that's what the revolutionaries called them.
But the Tories were a political party in England, and the loyalists in the 13 colonies had no connection with them. The loyalists were simply colonists who wanted to remain loyal to Great Britain. So what kind of people were the loyalists? Well, generally speaking, they were the most conservative members of the colonies. In the north, they tended to be members of the upper class. They often belonged to the older, better established families in the colonies.
In fact, some of them were descendants of the original proprietors. For example, the descendants of William Penn were loyalists. I should explain that William Penn's sons left the Quakers and had joined the Anglican Church, and so his descendants were Anglicans, not Quakers. A lot of the old Dutch families in New York, who had settled there when that territory was a Dutch colony. Many of the German settlers in Pennsylvania who were not non-resistant were loyalists.
For example, Lutherans who had come over from Germany and settled in the colonies. Also among the loyalists were the royal governors and other men who were representatives of the British government in the colonies. One example was Thomas Hutchinson. He was the royal governor of Massachusetts at the time of the revolution. He was the great-great-grandson of Anne Hutchinson, the Puritan dissenter who became famous.
Another loyalist was William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, who was the royal governor of New Jersey. William had been educated in England, and afterwards he traveled to England several times with his father. On one of these trips, while he was in England, he married an English lady. And then in 1763, the English government appointed William Franklin as the governor of New Jersey.
And when the revolutionaries took over New Jersey's government, William Franklin viewed them as just an illegal assembly. The result was that the revolutionaries arrested him and he spent much of the war in prison. When he was eventually released, he fled to New York and supported the loyalist cause there. And eventually he took refuge in England, where he lived the rest of his life. Interestingly, as a general rule, the loyalists didn't like the taxes that were at issue any more than did the revolutionaries.
But they were against the mob violence in response to the taxes. They wanted to use lawful political means to get them repealed. And then at the beginning of the war, they were opposed to taking up arms against England. Because to the loyalists, taking up arms against the lawful government was simply treason. But of course to the revolutionaries, they viewed it as treasonous not to take up arms to overthrow the government. And unfortunately, the Revolutionary Party made it impossible to simply be neutral.
I say that because in many colonies, the Revolutionary Party made all adult males take an oath of loyalty to the Revolution and an oath renouncing loyalty to the King of England. And as we'll be discussing tomorrow night, there was universal conscription of males into the state militias during the Revolutionary War. So if you were a man, you were forced either to take up arms to overthrow the government, or you had to flee to where the British army was in control.
But if you fled, well, then your property would be confiscated. And if you were caught, you'd be flogged or imprisoned, and in some cases even hung. In fact, we get the terms lynching and lynch mob from the actions of a revolutionary militia colonel who was named Charles Lynch. In 1780, Colonel Lynch and his militia men started rounding up men in Southern Virginia who they suspected of being loyalists. Then they held their own lynch mob trial for the men and found them guilty.
The accused men were either then hung or flogged. Colonel Lynch and his men then confiscated their property, and many of the men they conscripted right there on the spot into the Virginia militia. So although many loyalists started off fairly neutral at the beginning of the conflict between England and the colonies, they were incensed at the way that they were treated, being forced to either join the revolution or lose their property and perhaps be flogged, imprisoned, or hung.
So a number of loyalists fought alongside the British, particularly in the south, to try to win back their rights and their property. Now you need to understand that the loyalists were different than the kingdom Christians in the colonies. By kingdom Christians, I'm referring to groups like the Quakers, the Moravians, and the Mennonites. The kingdom Christians were generally non-political, and they were non-resistant. They were opposed to using arms to settle any kind of difficulty.
And so they were not willing to take up arms either to support the revolution or to support Britain in this conflict. Their kingdom was the kingdom of God. And tomorrow night we're going to be talking about how they were treated by the revolutionaries during the war. But in contrast to them, the loyalists were not non-resistant. That wasn't their issue that they were opposed to war. They would have been willing to take up arms if they had agreed with the revolutionaries if they felt that that had been a just cause.
And in fact, as I've mentioned, some of them actually took up arms and fought alongside the British. In the opening months of the Revolution, most of the British forces were in Boston where most of the trouble had been. There were very few British troops anywhere else in the colonies other than in Boston. Now the British did have troops out in the frontier forts that were west of the Appalachians outside of the lawful boundaries of the colonies.
Well, at the outset of the war, George Washington and his army forced the British out of Boston and they evacuated on British ships. So this left the colonies without any British troops to protect the people who were loyal to Britain. By 1776, the revolutionaries had gained control of virtually all of the territory in the 13 colonies, and they had arrested or expelled all of the royal officials, along with anyone who openly proclaimed allegiance to Britain.
So the loyalists either fled, were imprisoned, or they had to keep quiet. And most of them chose to keep quiet and try to remain neutral. When the British Army and fleet returned to the colonies, they captured New York City, and that remained their base during the rest of the war. So many loyalists at that point fled to New York. And then later, when the British Army captured Philadelphia, many of the loyalists there who had been silent up to that time, now actively supported the British cause.
As a result, when the French entered the war and the British decided to evacuate Philadelphia, well, then these people who had proclaimed themselves as loyalists had to then flee with the British Army to New York. In fact, two loyalists who stayed behind were hung by the revolutionaries when the Continental Army took back control of Philadelphia. You may be wondering, well, what percentage of the population were loyalists?
John Adams, at the time of the revolution, estimated that one-third of the population were loyalists. Today, historians say no, it was more like 20% at the most. Of course, I think it depends on what your definition of a loyalist is. If you mean the ones who were actively pro-British and who fled to New York or to other areas controlled by the British Army, or who fought with the British, 20% is no doubt correct.
But if you mean the ones who didn't actively support the revolution, who wanted to remain neutral, then one-third to one-half of the colonists were loyalists under that definition. Because historians today estimate that only about 40 to 45% of the population actually actively supported the revolution. But it was these revolutionaries who were the ones who controlled most of the colonial territory, not only at the beginning of the war, but also throughout the entire war.
They were the ones with a strong vision and commitment and who were ready to fight for their cause. The other 55% of the population were people who primarily wanted to be left alone. They didn't like the new taxes, and they weren't necessarily pro-British, yet they didn't feel it was right to take up arms to overthrow the government, or in some cases, they thought it was futile to try to overthrow the British government.
As I mentioned last night, Britain mistakenly thought that the majority of the colonists were pro-British and would fight on the British side. Now they were perhaps correct that the majority of the colonists were not pro-revolution, but that didn't mean that they were strongly pro-British either, or that they were willing to die for the British cause. Well, where did the Loyalists stand with regard to Christianity? As I've mentioned, the loyalists were the conservatives.
And generally speaking, people who are conservative politically tend to be conservative spiritually. You would have had a higher percentage of church members of regular churchgoers among the loyalists than you would have among the revolutionaries. For example, years after the revolution, in a letter to a friend, John Adams wrote the following in defense of Samuel Adams. He said, " You say Mr. Samuel Adams had too much sternness and pious bigotry.
" A man in his situation and circumstances must possess a large fund of sternness of stuff, or he will soon be annihilated. His piety ought not to be objected to him or any other man. His bigotry, if he had any, was a fault. But he certainly had no more than Governor Hutchinson and Secretary Oliver, who I know from personal conversation, were as staunch Trinitarians and Calvinists as he was, and treated all Arians and Arminians with more contempt and scorn than he ever did. End quote.
The two men that John Adams referred to were two prominent loyalists. We're going to be seeing this letter again in a few nights when we talk about the faith of the founding fathers, and we'll be looking at Samuel Adams. But in general, the loyalists were the ones who were conservative professing Christians and would have been more orthodox in their beliefs than the revolutionaries. And like I say, this will be more obvious when we, in the following nights, look at the faith of the founding fathers.
Now, sadly, the animosity that the revolutionaries felt towards the loyalists was even greater than they felt towards the British. One of the things that delayed the Peace Treaty to end the Revolutionary War, I mean, the Peace Treaty wasn't signed until several years after the victory at Yorktown, was the fact that Britain wanted all property that had been confiscated from the loyalists to be returned to them, along with a full restoration of their rights as citizens.
And the revolutionaries were not willing to do this. Well, finally, England gave in on the issue, and they accepted a provision in the treaty that said that the Continental Congress would " recommend " unquote to the states that all property and civil rights be restored to the loyalists, which in fact never happened. As a result, at the end of the war, 42,000 loyalists fled from America and settled in Canada or England. Another group who suffered because the colonists won the war were the black slaves.
Not that their situation would have immediately changed if Britain had won the war, they would have remained slaves. But the English had offered freedom to any slaves who left their masters and fought on the British side during the war. And thousands of slaves took them up on this offer. But in response, the revolutionary governments issued proclamations that any slave caught trying to flee to the British side would be put to death. And so most slaves were afraid to take up the British on their offer.
And at the end of the war, the British were faithful to their claim, and these black slaves remained free, but along with many of the other loyalists, they had to take refuge in Nova Scotia at the end of the war. So about 3,000 former slaves ended up moving to Nova Scotia. But the primary negative impact of the American victory in the Revolutionary War wasn't felt until decades later.
I say that because in 1833, Parliament passed a law abolishing slavery, not only in Great Britain, but in all of the British colonies. This was 32 years before the 13th Amendment was passed in the United States that abolished slavery here. So if Britain had won the war, then slavery would have ended in the United States 32 years earlier, number one, and number two, it would have been done without any war.
Instead, the only way that slavery was abolished in the United States was through a terrible war, where you had over a half a million men killed and millions who were wounded and suffered on all sides of the war. So although many good things did come out of the American Revolution, there certainly were evil things that came out of it as well, and people who suffered because the colonies won. Having said that, I want to make clear once again that I'm not an anti-American liberal.
I have visited quite a number of other countries, and I can definitely say that I'm glad that I live in America. There's no other country I would prefer to live in. That doesn't mean I approve of all of our laws or our foreign policy through the years, and it doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see some changes in our laws. But again, even with its faults, I'm glad I was born here. I think we can honestly talk about the negative effects of the American Revolution without becoming an America basher.
And I think we can talk about shortcomings without putting a guilt trip on, for example, the Caucasian race. Well, my ancestors came to America from France in the 20th century, and they settled in California. They played no role whatsoever in the decimation of the native Indians, nor did they ever own slaves or promote slavery. So just because I'm a white Caucasian doesn't mean that I should go around with an albatross of guilt around my neck.
Neither I nor my ancestors played any role in the various injustices of the past. But even if my ancestors had, that wouldn't mean that their guilt transfers to me. God does not place the guilt of the parents on the children. That indeed would be a grave injustice. In fact, there are virtually no people on earth whose ancestors did not slaughter other people and take their land. Now, for some people groups, you have to go back a couple of thousands of years, but the result is always the same.
Their ancestors killed, pillaged, and enslaved other people. Thankfully, we answer to God for our own sins, not those of our ancestors. So in bringing up these matters of people who were adversely affected by the American Revolution, I'm not trying to put a guilt trip on Americans or particularly on white Americans.
And when I look at history and the many revolutions that have occurred in various places through the centuries, I have to say that the Founding Fathers of America did an extraordinarily good job in comparison to most other revolutions. For example, the French Revolution that followed the American Revolution by just a decade, well, it turned into a bloodbath of the guilty and innocent alike. It also became an anti-Christian and an anti-god movement.
The revolutions in Russia and China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba resulted in the slaughter of millions and millions of people. And I don't mean on the battlefield, I mean in mass annihilations or forced starvation. And that's not even to mention the millions who ended up in prisons and concentration camps and things like that.
Even though the loyalists were treated badly in the American Revolution, they experienced nothing even remotely like what other people experienced in revolutions like the French and the Russian Revolution. The other thing I can't help but noticing is that at the time of the American Revolution, few people outside of the United States believed that the leaders of the revolution would be able to set up a lasting free government here in America. They were quite certain it would turn to tyranny, but it didn't.
The Founding Fathers were able to set up a government, not a perfect one, but one that has lasted. And in doing that, they set an example for the rest of the world so that in the two centuries since the American Revolution, country after country has turned to democracy, following in the footsteps of the founding fathers of the United States. But before closing, I want to talk about one further victim of the American Revolution. And that victim was Christianity.
By that, I don't mean that Christianity would have been any less a victim if the British had won the war. No, I say that because the damage to Christianity in the Revolution was that, as has been true in so many wars, you had professing Christians fighting and slaughtering fellow professing Christians. Jesus said that no man can serve two masters. And in the American Revolution, people had to decide what came first in their lives, their Christianity, or their politics. One or the other had to come first.
And except for the kingdom Christians, like the Quakers and the Mennonites, most of the colonists demonstrated that their politics came first in their life. They were willing to hate and kill fellow Christians because they held to a different political view. You had Anglicans murdering Anglicans. You had Calvinists murdering Calvinists. You had Methodists murdering other Methodists. You had Lutherans murdering other Lutherans. And you had Presbyterians murdering other Presbyterians.
So what were all of those professing Christians saying? They were saying that the kingdom that had their ultimate allegiance, the kingdom that they would kill others for and were willing to die for, was the earthly kingdom to which they belonged. They were saying that the kingdom of God takes a secondary place in their heart. And when you say that by your actions, you're also saying the king of that kingdom takes a secondary place in your heart.
But that kind of allegiance to the kingdom of God is totally unacceptable to Christ. If He and His kingdom aren't first in our lives, then we aren't fit for His kingdom. Those were His words, not mine. Now I realize that professing Christians try to get around all of this by pretending that their country's interests are one and the same as the interests of God's kingdom.
Their ministers always tell them that God is on their side, that they are engaging in something holy, so they are actually performing a Christian act and going out and slaughtering fellow Christians. But Christ's kingdom is not of this world. Its interests will never be identical to the interests of any earthly kingdom. That's why Jesus told us to love our enemies and not to resist evil. It's why Paul said that we shouldn't even take a fellow Christian to court.
In fact, he said it's better to be defrauded than to do that. And there's a good reason why God has given us those commandments. It's because He knows what the inevitable outcome will be otherwise. It will be that you'll have professing Christians on both sides of a war, each killing the other in God's name. It will always work that way.
So we either live by Jesus ' kingdom teachings and love our enemies and don't resist evil, allow ourselves to be defrauded if necessary, or we end up slaughtering fellow Christians in the name of God while they slaughter our fellow patriots in the name of God as well. And we saw this very thing in the American Revolution. You had the Continental Congress calling for a day of prayer and fasting. And then across the ocean you had King George doing the exact same thing.
You had the clergy on both sides of the ocean telling their soldiers that they were doing God's will. The " born-again Methodists " in America supported the revolution. While their " born again " founder, John Wesley, was condemning the revolution over in England. In fact, in 1775, John Wesley wrote a pamphlet against the revolutionaries entitled " A Calm Address to Our American Colonies. " You can read the entire pamphlet on Scroll Publishing's website.
In it, Wesley addresses the specific political claims that were being made by the revolutionaries in the American colonies. And he addresses them with what I think is very sound logic. I'll read to you just a few excerpts. Addressing the revolutionary spokesman, he says, " You object saying it is the privilege of a free man and an Englishman to be taxed only by his own consent. And this consent is given for every man by his representative in Parliament. But we have no representation in Parliament.
Therefore, we ought not to be taxed by it. Wesley then replies, saying, " I answer, this argument claims too much. If Parliament cannot tax you because you have no representation in it, for the same reason, it can make no laws to bind you. If a free man cannot be taxed without his own consent, neither can he be punished without it.
For whatever holds true with regard to taxation holds true with regard to all other laws, therefore he who denies the English Parliament, the power of taxation, denies it the right of making any laws at all. But this power over the colonies you have never disputed. You have always acknowledged statutes for the punishment of offenses and for the preventing or redressing of civil wrongs. And when you accept any laws, it draws after it by a chain, which cannot be broken the necessity of accepting taxation.
He continues, " But I object to the very foundation of your plea that every free man is governed by laws to which he has consented. " Despite how confidently it has been asserted, it is absolutely false. In wide extended dominions, a very small part of the people are involved in making laws. As is true with all public business, this must be done by delegation. And the delegates are chosen by a select number. And those who are not electors, who are by far the greater part, stand by as idle and helpless spectators.
Furthermore, how has any man consented to those laws which were made before he was even born? Our consent to these and to the laws presently made in England is purely passive. And in every place, as all men are born subjects of some state or other, so they are born passively consenting to the laws of that state. " Wesley goes on to point out that he, like nearly everyone else in London in that day, had no right to vote because he didn't own sufficient land.
You had to own a certain amount of land to be able to vote. In fact, the majority of the English people had no right to vote. So the colonists were in no different position than were most English people. And I find I have to agree with his arguments. I'd like to know what tax I've ever consented to. I certainly acknowledge the necessity of taxes, but the taxes that are placed upon me right now are not taxes that I've consented to.
The fact that I have the right to vote doesn't mean that I've given my consent to the taxes imposed upon me. I've never consented to all the different laws that were passed before I was born, or that have been passed since I was born. Interesting, after the English people devoted themselves to a day of prayer and fasting, the English army routed George Washington and his troops at New York and Long Island. To John Wesley, this was proof that God was on their side.
But of course, every victory by the Americans was proof to them that God was on their side. And it goes on, and it goes on. To his credit, Wesley did plead with both the Americans and his fellow British citizens to settle the dispute without bloodshed. He wrote, " I ask you to imagine in your mind a fine painting. " And here in the painting are thousands of our brave countrymen gathered together on this plain.
They are followed by the most tender and feeling emotions of wives, children, and an innumerable multitude of their thoughtful, humane, and sympathizing countrymen. Then turn your eyes and behold a superior number at a little distance of their brethren, flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, who only a few years ago emigrated to the wilds of America. These also are followed with the most tender feelings of wives, children, and countrymen.
Now look, they advance towards each other well-prepared with every instrument of death. But what are they going to do? To shoot each other through the head or the heart, to stab and butcher each other, and hasten it is to be feared one another into the everlasting burnings. Why so? What harm have they done to one another? Why? None at all. Most of them are entire strangers to each other. But a matter is in dispute relative to the mode of taxation.
So these countrymen, children of the same parents, are to murder each other with all possible haste to prove who is in the right. Now, what kind of argument is this? What a method of proof. What a strange way of deciding controversies. So it is, and oh, what horrors attend on it? At what a price is the decision made? By the blood and wounds of thousands, the burning cities ravaging and laying waste the country.
Now who that seriously considers this horrible war can help lamenting the astonishing lack of wisdom in our brethren to decide the matter without bloodshed. What? Is there no wise men among us? None that are able to judge between brethren? But brother goes to war against brother, and that in the very sight of the heathen. Surely this is a sore evil among us. Oh, how the mighty have fallen? How is wisdom perished from the wise? What a flood of folly and madness has broken in upon us. " End quote.
Yes, indeed, the real loser in the American Revolution was Christianity itself. Tomorrow night, we're going to turn again to the subject of the American Revolution, but tomorrow we're going to be looking at how kingdom Christians were treated by their fellow countrymen during the Revolution.