During the American Revolution, why were charges made against the King, as opposed to Parliament?

by immeeh88

Didn't the revolutions and civil war reduce the power of the monarch? Was it a specific point that the founding fathers were trying to make charging the King?

irishpatobie

You ask an excellent question. After a brief search for an identical thread, I was shocked that I did not come across one. (I admit, however that the search was brief! I don’t always have the patience for research. My apologize if a thread already exists.)

Let me be begin by suggesting a few threads that will provide some background:

Now, to your specific question: To make a long story short, popular opinion turned against King George III after the war had already broken out in the colonies. While Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence is most remembered for its “all men are created equal” and “inalienable rights” clauses, David Armitage rightly demonstrates that at the time these were the “throw away lines”; or, as another historian tells his undergrad students, the “yadda, yadda, yadda” section of the document. The reality is that the Declaration of Independence was a document meant to justify what some might have called an unjust civil war or rebellion. In the DOI, Jefferson specifically charges King George III with violating his duties as sovereign and endangering the people of the British colonies in America. Among the numerous charges were the King’s failure to protect colonists from “merciless savages” and the King’s direct involvement in the promotion of “domestic insurrection” (read that as “slave rebellion” and see Dunmore’s Proclamation. Collectively, Jefferson uses the DOI to justify the rebellion against the British King.

This direct assault on the King, however, was not present in some of the earliest complaints of the American colonists. The Revolutionary Period began well before Lexington and Concord in 1775. While I would argue going back even further to recognize some earlier trends the indicated trouble was brewing, colonial complaints became evident shortly after the end of the Seven Years War (French and Indian War in North America) in 1763. One of the first attempts to generate revenue for the nearly bankrupt British Empire was the Stamp Act, which placed a tax on official paper goods including newspapers and playing cards along with wills and deeds. Although the tax was based on earlier taxes instituted in New York, colonial uproar stretched from the Caribbean Islands to Quebec and Halifax. Even though in reality colonists in the thirteen colonies that would become the United States were among the least taxed peoples in the British Empire, the increasing attention the British Parliament paid to the North American colonies after French expulsion did not sit well. Even after demonstrations and riots caused the Parliament to repeal the tax, others shortly followed.

Throughout the tax conflicts, American colonists focused the majority of their complaints towards Parliament. While I believe Americans lean too heavily on “Taxation without Representation” to explain the coming of the American Revolution, (there should be more emphasis on increasing slavery, growing mercantile expansion, rural versus cosmopolitan divides, religious difference, etc.) colonists did indeed charge Parliament with breaking their English rights by taxing the colonists who were not able to represent themselves. During this period, American colonists actually praised King George III as protector of colonial people and urged royal interference in the corrupt Parliament. You see, many American colonials looked back across the Atlantic and believed their British counterparts had shied away from being protectors of liberty. Colonists believed avarice and greed were rampant in Parliament and believed the King alone could quell such follies. (This also differed from region to region. For example, Virginians had supported Royalist forces during the English Civil War and so were more likely to naturally side with the King, while Puritans in New England were strong supporters of Parliament and Cromwell. There could be a whole post on this, so I’ll just leave that there; it’s oversimplified and doesn’t do it full justice, but it’s only meant to add context.)

When fighting broke out in Lexington and Concord, both the King and a majority of Parliament (though there were objectors) believed that swift action was necessary to put down the New England rebellion. However, British measures to ensure that the rebellion did not spread to other colonies backfired and caused the mobilization of many patriots along the eastern seaboard. In this sense, many colonists turned on the King once they perceived him to be in allegiance with Parliament. In New York City, famously, rebels tore town a statue of the King and melted it down to form musket balls. The King had failed to allay the American colonists from their Parliamentary oppressors. Furthermore, the King had advised his royally appointed governors to actively undermine American institutions. The publication of Thomas Paine’s incendiary *Common Sense threw gas on the fire. Paine brilliantly argued how British control of the American colonies was exploitative and illogical. He also depicted George III as a villain intent on keeping his Empire and the colonists subjugated to his control. By July of 1776, the American colonists were convinced that the rebellion that began in Massachusetts was now the common cause of all the colonies with the aim of independence. When Jefferson wrote the declaration on behalf of the thirteen states, some had already declared themselves independent. Jefferson’s targeting of the King for his grievances reflected the sentiments of most American colonists.

TL;DR: American colonists turned against George III when he didn’t step in and stop Parliament from “bullying” (as they saw it) the American colonies.

Sources

David Armitage The Declaration of Independence

Pauline Maier American Scripture

Bernard Bailyn The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Thomas Paine Common Sense

Gordon Wood The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Iibid. Revolutionary Characters

Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy An Empire Divided

T. H. Breen The Marketplace Revolution