Being an American, and inclined to approve of the Revolution, I tend to emphasize the things that put the Americans in a good light — though I can add, in fairness to myself, that the Americans wrote more about the war than the British did, and not surprisingly, since most of it was happening on their doorstep instead of across the sea. I can’t claim to be unbiased, but I do try to be fair.
Another reason why it’s easier to find things that were said in favor of the Revolution than against it is because that some people were intimated from speaking against it. For example, one person in Philadelphia wrote home to England on August 1, 1775, condemning the revolutionaries, but didn’t want anybody to know about it, because they were afraid of reprisals. They wrote:
You would hardly conceive, without seeing it, to what a height the political fury of this Country is arrived. I most heartily wish myself at home among free-born Englishmen, not among this tyrannical and arbitrary rabble of America. They have made many protestations of respect for England, and of their desire of union with the Mother Country, but you may take my word for it, my dear friend, it is the meanest and basest hypocrisy that ever was assumed. … You would feel the indignation I do every day, when I hear my King and Country vilified and abused by a parcel of wretches who owe their very existence to it. … Are the friends of Great Britain and their property to be left exposed at this rate to the dictates of an inhuman rabble? I expect, with many others, if I do not join in the seditious and traitorous acts in vogue, to be hauled away and confined in a prison, with the confiscation of all I have in the world. … Conceal my name; or I should run a great risk of my life and property, were it discovered here that I had sent you any account of these proceedings. Indeed, I incur some danger in writing at all; nor should I, if I could not confide in my conveyance.
American Archives, 4th Series, vol. 3, pp. 3-5
While being grateful for what came of the Revolution, let’s not forget that there were mobs and other things that we shouldn’t be proud of in the Revolution. As the above writer mentioned, the people, and not just a king or dictator, can be tyrannical.
Also on this day, recruiters for the Royal Highland Emigrants started enlisting soldiers in Quebec to fight against the Americans.