PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
1. Of course, the reason for the Revolutionary War was unfair taxation, and the impetus was the desire for political liberty
.sort of. Overlooked was the religious nature for the war. The Puritans, later known as Congregationalists, fled the King
and the Anglican Church.
a. John Dickinsons Letter form a Farmer in Pennsylvania appears in the Boston Chronicle of December 21, 1767, in which he argues that Parliament had no right to impose taxes for the purpose of raising revenue. His compelling polemic against said taxation was the most influential American pamphlet before Thomas Paines Common Sense.
b. Calvinist Samuel Adams, liberty-activist, thought it unfortunate that Dickinson gave so much attention to the financial and political issues of taxation without representation, but ignored the threat to religious liberty: What we have above everything else to fear is POPERY. Adams was railing against what he saw as the threat of the imposition of the Catholic Church by the royal government in Massachusetts. He believed that the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties would lead to religious oppression. Kidd, God of Liberty, p. 58.
c. These acts were contrived with a design only to inure the people to the habit of contemplating themselves as the slaves of en; and the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan, is mighty easy. Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette, April 4, 1768, Cushing, The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol.1, p. 201.
2. Many colonists transposed their hatred of the Catholic Church to a new enemy, the political actions of the British.
3. Between 1761 and 1775, matters of religion were intimately connected to two issues: he potential appointment of an Anglican bishop for American, and the British policy toward Catholics in Canada, as reflected in the 1774 Quebec Act.
a. American Protestants fiercely resented the thought that Britain would take away their religious liberty, since the Congregationalists Puritan forefathers had left the Anglican Church when they migrated to New England in the 1630s. They saw imposition of an Anglican bishop as the next step in forcing an Anglican establishment on New England.
b. Because of these feelings about Catholicism, the reaction to the Quebec Act of 1774 was understandable. As a result to the Seven Years War, Britain needed to accommodate the conquered Quebecois, it reinstated the French legal system, and granted the French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion. And, they moved Quebecs border down to the Ohio River, which appropriated land claimed by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia.
c. A young New York Lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, viewed the Quebec Act as a British plan to encircle the colonists with hostile Catholics. He joined a volunteer militia company to prepare for the defense of New York. Alexander Hamilton, Remarks on the Quebec Bill, June 15, 1775, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, by Harold Syrett, vol. 1, p. 166, 173.
4. After April 19, 1775, Lexington and Concord, anti-Catholicism, pragmatically, toned down. Patriots sought alliance with Canadian Catholics, and sizable Catholic groups in Pennsylvania and Maryland.
a. George Washington forbid anti-Catholicism in the Continental Army, and wondered how anyone could be so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step as this juncture. George Washington quoted in The Founders on Religion, Hutson (ed.), p. 43.
a. John Dickinsons Letter form a Farmer in Pennsylvania appears in the Boston Chronicle of December 21, 1767, in which he argues that Parliament had no right to impose taxes for the purpose of raising revenue. His compelling polemic against said taxation was the most influential American pamphlet before Thomas Paines Common Sense.
b. Calvinist Samuel Adams, liberty-activist, thought it unfortunate that Dickinson gave so much attention to the financial and political issues of taxation without representation, but ignored the threat to religious liberty: What we have above everything else to fear is POPERY. Adams was railing against what he saw as the threat of the imposition of the Catholic Church by the royal government in Massachusetts. He believed that the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties would lead to religious oppression. Kidd, God of Liberty, p. 58.
c. These acts were contrived with a design only to inure the people to the habit of contemplating themselves as the slaves of en; and the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan, is mighty easy. Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette, April 4, 1768, Cushing, The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol.1, p. 201.
2. Many colonists transposed their hatred of the Catholic Church to a new enemy, the political actions of the British.
3. Between 1761 and 1775, matters of religion were intimately connected to two issues: he potential appointment of an Anglican bishop for American, and the British policy toward Catholics in Canada, as reflected in the 1774 Quebec Act.
a. American Protestants fiercely resented the thought that Britain would take away their religious liberty, since the Congregationalists Puritan forefathers had left the Anglican Church when they migrated to New England in the 1630s. They saw imposition of an Anglican bishop as the next step in forcing an Anglican establishment on New England.
b. Because of these feelings about Catholicism, the reaction to the Quebec Act of 1774 was understandable. As a result to the Seven Years War, Britain needed to accommodate the conquered Quebecois, it reinstated the French legal system, and granted the French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion. And, they moved Quebecs border down to the Ohio River, which appropriated land claimed by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia.
c. A young New York Lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, viewed the Quebec Act as a British plan to encircle the colonists with hostile Catholics. He joined a volunteer militia company to prepare for the defense of New York. Alexander Hamilton, Remarks on the Quebec Bill, June 15, 1775, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, by Harold Syrett, vol. 1, p. 166, 173.
4. After April 19, 1775, Lexington and Concord, anti-Catholicism, pragmatically, toned down. Patriots sought alliance with Canadian Catholics, and sizable Catholic groups in Pennsylvania and Maryland.
a. George Washington forbid anti-Catholicism in the Continental Army, and wondered how anyone could be so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step as this juncture. George Washington quoted in The Founders on Religion, Hutson (ed.), p. 43.