Colonial Uprising Quotes

The [American] Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.

There were more Americans in the British Army during the Revolution than there were in the American Army.

The founding fathers used the well regulated militias to suppress rebellions.

From present appearances there is no prospect of putting the late Coercive Acts in force but by first making a conquest of the New England Provinces.

While most Americans know about the Boston Tea Party, few are aware of the Liberty Tree and how important it was to fanning the flames of rebellion that led to the revolution in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence.

Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.

The quarrel between the colonies and the British government seems to become more serious every day ... It may prove the most fatal blow to the authority of the metropolis.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

The taverns were the headquarters of the American Revolution.

The American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, it has often been argued, were fueled by the most radical of all American political ideas.

The true history of the American Revolution can never be written… A great many if the people in those days were not at all what they seemed, nor what they were generally believed to be.

It would be easy to assume that the open letter is a symptom of the Internet age. Such is not the case. In 1774, Benjamin Franklin wrote an open letter to the prime minister of Great Britain, Lord North - a satirical call for the imposition of martial law in the colonies.

… persons, whose design, from the beginning of their opposition to the Stamp Act, was to throw off all subordination and connection with Great Britain; who meant by every fiction, falsehood and fraud, to delude the people from their due allegiance, to throw the subsisting Governments into anarchy, to incite the ignorant and vulgar to arms, and with those arms to establish American Independence --- were Congregational and Presbyterian republicans, or men of bankrupt fortunes, overwhelmed in debt to the British merchants.

In the Fall of 1774 & Winter of 1775, I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers, and gaining every intelligence of the movements of the Tories.

It's worth noting that at the time of the American Revolution, no sane person would have given two cents for its success.

The Stamp Act was to go into operation on the first day of November. On the previous morning, the 'New Hampshire Gazette' appeared with a deep black border and all the typographical emblems of affliction, for was not Liberty dead?

The colonists' first protest against the British unfolded on Aug. 14, 1765 at the Liberty Tree. A magnificent elm towering over the other trees nearby, the Liberty Tree stood at the corner of what is now Washington and Essex Streets in downtown Boston.

Religious doctrine and rhetoric … contributed in a fundamental way to the coming of the American Revolution and its final success …. Where political theory advised caution, religious doctrine demanded action. By turning Colonial resistance into a righteous cause, and by carrying the message to all ranks and in all parts of the colonies, ministers did the work of secular radicalism and did it better.

The American Revolution was the grand operation, which seemed to be assigned by the Deity to the men of this age in our country, over and above the common duties of life

… banned all trade and intercourse with the … colonies … during the continuance of the present rebellion.

The general temper of the People, as well here as other parts of America, is very warm. They look upon the Chastisement of Boston to be purposely vigorous, and held up by way of intimidation to all America; and in short that Boston is suffering in the Common Cause.

The New Englanders by their canting, whining, insulting tricks have persuaded the rest of the [American] colonies that the Government [of George III] is going to make absolute slaves of them.

From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out... It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.

The American Revolution as it actually unfolded was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth.

No times were more dangerous than when our country was born, when revolution was our midwife.