Why Is America Justified In Declaring Independence

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What would America be like today if people from America’s beginning tried to reconcile with Great Britain in the late 1700’s instead of declaring independence? Would they have just gone to war anyway? Or would America even be called the country it is today? America’s founding fathers created the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 and is the reason why Americans celebrate Independence Day today. The Declaration was written to state grievances, or complaints, early Americans had with King George and Great Britain. The colonists felt like Great Britain was treating them unfairly and a big part of this was taxation without representation. All this eventually led to the colonies to declare independence from Great Britain and a lot of great minds, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, to create the Declaration of Independence. The Founders of this country made the right decision on declaring independence against the tyrannical leader of Britain. King George was a very oppressive ruler and didn’t listen to anyone else. In the Declaration of Independence, the founders stated many things about King George that displayed how he was cruel and selfish. The biggest complaint that supports this reason is the third grievance they had against him in which Jefferson states, “He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only” (Jefferson 19). In modern language, this means that King George ignored the laws that the colonies have made and made his own set of laws that colonists were forced to follow, made colonists shelter and feed British soldiers, stopped America’s trading with everyone but Britain, and imposed taxes that the colonists were forced to pay. Not only did it state all these things, it also meant that people could be punished without a fair trial and jury. These are all things only a tyrant would do and this makes him possess very bad qualities such as selfishness and just being plain cold-hearted to the colonists. Not only did his oppressiveness lead America to declaring independence, the founding fathers and colonists also tried multiple times before to improve their relationship with Britain but was shot down every time. One of the largest and most well-known efforts to negotiate with Britain was the Olive Branch Petition which was …show more content…
They might say that the actions of the colonists could have provoked war instead of trying to avoid it. The Boston Tea Party is an example of this. To be true, they are right to a point. Americans at the time did do things to provoke the British government and army, but they must know that they did try many times to reconcile before these things happened. An act of protest the colonists displayed was the Boston Tea Party.The Boston Tea Party was provoked because of the very high tea taxes being imposed on all imported tea. The colonists did send over great minds to negotiate with Britain but just like the Olive Branch Petition, all these efforts were ignored. At this point, many colonists were fed up with Britain’s ignorance and did this in order to get Britain’s attention. Peaceful attempts at restoring their relationship were being ignored so they had to move to a different

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