I have read several books about the Revolution and the Founding Fathers over the last few years in an effort to better understand our current legitimacy crisis. One of the things that stands out is the ease and speed with which the Patriot side took control of state and local government, and the thinness of support for the British government. Why was that?
There were two reasons. First, the colonists had little reason to identify with Great Britain; some of them weren’t even British by ethnicity, while the others had either left Britain in the hopes of finding a better life, or were recently descended from someone who did. Second, given the state of transportation and communications and the distance from the mother country, the British government contributed very little to their everyday lives. They consequently felt themselves American, not British.
As a result of this, there were only two reasons to support the British: a direct financial interest (either commercial or officeholding) in the status quo; or the fear that what came next would be worse. The latter could quite easily have come true, and arguably did for slaves. I will be addressing those kinds of issues in posts over the next week.