John Wilkes, a British radical -whose noisy radicalism made him enormously popular in the colonies, called the war “unjust, felonious, and murderous.” The Americans, he warned, “will dispute every inch of territory with you, every narrow pass, every strong defile, every Thermopylae, every Bunker Hill.” But opponents of coercion lacked strength and unity. When votes […]

Hi – I’m reading “The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)” by Rick Atkinson. “It had seemed only fair that the colonists should help shoulder the burden. A typical American, by Treasury Board calculations, paid no more than sixpence a year in Crown taxes, compared […]

  When you look at the negotiations for the Treaty of Ghent, it becomes abundantly clear that there was little taste for more expensive warfare in the new world. Britain certainly wanted to stop American expansion. That said the notion that the Brits should keep Canada was basically ignored by the colonies they would recognize […]