Was the American Revolution a Fraud?

To repeat, none of the troops sent to North America by the British were sent to protect the colonists. The colonists were on their own on that account. All of the British military efforts during the French and Indian War were directed at the conquest and annexation of New France-Canada.

I'm not a mod, think of the potential chaos, but from what I know of them, they are sane, so you could talk with them. Click on the Contact Us link at the bottom right of the page.

Yeah, that leads to the "open a ticket page" which doesn't work for me (see previous comment re editor problems). I also always get a warning telling me about a suspicious or otherwise questionable site certificate when I try the Contact Us link, which doesn't happen elsewhere here at a2k.

The British sent several expeditions to North America during the French and Indian War. The object of every one of them was to take New France. The Braddock expedition was intended to take Fort Duquesne, and therefore the right flank of New France. It failed, but in 1758, the Forbes expedition succeeded. Also in 1758, the largest army ever assembled in North America was formed by General Abercromby to march up the Champlain valley, more or less an attack on the center of New France. His second in command was George, Lord Howe. There were about 7000 regulars and 7,000 or 8,000 American militia. As was the case with the Braddock and Forbes expeditions, the transport and the supplies were provided by the American colonies, largely at their own expense. Howe was killed in a skirmish as the army approached Fort Carillon, then an elaborate earthwork fortification to protect the south end of Lake Champlain. The British would later construct Fort Ticonderoga on that site. Although Abercromby had the largest British force yet sent to North America, and the largest force of colonial militia ever assembled, they failed to take the fort, defended by French and Canadian regulars. (French overseas colonies were under the Minister of Marine, and their defense was provided by locally raised regulars, called troupes de la marine.) Abercromby's entire conduct of this campaign is worthy of severe criticism. Montcalm turned the fortress over to another officer, and when Jeffrey Amherst approached the fort in 1759, that officer marched away, leaving a small body of Canadian regulars there to delay the British while the buildings of the fort were fired. The British had now taken the right flank and the advanced center of New France.

Amherst had arrived with more than 12,000 regulars and Lord Anson, the first lord of the Admiralty, had made every effort to give him all the naval support he could round up. Once again, the colonies provided supplies and transport. The first target of Amherst had been Louisbourg, the fortification protecting access to the St. Lawrence River. The colonists had taken the fortress during King George's War, but it had been given back to the French in the peace conference. With large-scale colonial support, Amherst quickly invested Louisbourg, which as quickly surrendered. That was in 1758, and Amherst then marched off to take Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) while his deputy, James Wolfe, took the main body of the troops, and, in about the only all-British expedition of the war, sailed up the St. Laurence to attack Québec. Through the frustrating summer of 1759, he could make no headway, and finally, in desperation, lead an attack which scaled the cliffs above the river. The British advanced, with General Wolfe in their ranks carrying a musket--a useless gesture, and possibly an example of suicide by combat. Many historians think that Wolfe was despondent and thought he would fail. Wolfe was shot three times and finally left behind as the infantry continued to advance. He died of wounds. As General Montcalm attempted to rally his troops at the gates of the Upper Town, he was shot by a musket ball which passed through both lungs. His regulars were left leaderless for the crucial period it took the British to take the Upper Town. He died in the night and was buried in secrecy by the nuns in the cathedral who feared the English would desecrate his remains. In death, Wolfe had succeeded in taking New France.

The great American source on the French in North America was Francis Parkman. His seven volume history is the finest in the English language. The final volume, Montcalm and Wolfe: The French and Indian War details all of these operations by the British, and the defense of New France by Montcalm, his regulars, the Canadian regulars and their Indian allies. The final battle took place in the fields west of the Upper Town, owned by a prosperous French Canadian peasant named Abraham Martin. After the death of Wolfe, they were grandiosely renamed "The Plains of Abraham."

the wonderful modern historian Simon Schama wrote a small tour de force in historical synthesis and coincidence entitled Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations. It tells the tale of James Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm, and their deaths before the gates of the Upper Town. It then tells about the famous painting by Benjamin West, a very successful American painter in London.



Schama also points out that the painting by Edward Penny is probably a good deal more realistic than the improbable fantasy painted by West.



From there, Schama tells us about Francis Parkman, and finally tells the tale of a notorious murder trial in Boston involving the death of a member of Parkman's family, George Parkman, a professor at Harvard. Schama said of his own work: "Historians shouldn't make it up, but i did." I highly recommend his book as an entertaining read.

The British did not come to North America to protect the colonists, but to expand their empire. In that effort, the colonists spent a good deal of blood and treasure.

I have to criticize the Able2know system which allows random users to alter the Forums distribution list and to add "graffiti tags" which allow anonymous comments and slanders to be added to the Forums list, even when no such forums exist.

For example, the bizarre tag "two accounts one ip address" was added, apropos of nothing. Additionally, a tag adding distribution to the "Fraud" forum was added. While there is a Fraud forum, this thread obviously doesn't belong to it.

I was told by one user that I could "bump" the offending tags by adding more of my own. After spending 20 frustrating minutes, I was able to eliminate the ip tag but not the "fraud" tag, which frankly would make me look like an idiot to anyone who thought I had created it. I also had to extend the tag list rather artificially with European History in order to bump the other tag that doesn't belong.

There is only one user on my ignore list and that is Setanta, because of his trolling and his constant recourse to ad hominem. Able2know staff should be able to determine the culprit and issue a warning about inappropriate use of tags. If this is Setana's way of continuing to be disruptive after being unable to do do through his comments (which are now invisible to me) they should be able to determine that. This same provocateur (whoever it is) seems to have followed my posts and added an insulting and inappropriate tag to a post I left on the Able2know Moderation forum (since successfully bumped out).

This sort of thing lends itself to retaliation, but I prefer not to waste my online time that way. My advice is to stop being an infantile, disruptive, attention seeking and counterproductive moron.

Incidentally, if the high number of thumbs-up which Setanta's comments have received here is any indication, an investigation of multiple accounts might profitably be directed his way. It would be just like him to add a cowardly, anonymous graffiti tag accusing others of his own faults.

Heh when it comes to the Second World War I'm your expert but I thought for a minute that I actually had a good point to add in the conversation on this topic but you seemed to already know about it. Plus I made the halarious mistake of mixing up James Madison and John Adams.

But thank you for responding to me so nicely.

For the record, the ill-informed, poorly-read and opinionated loon who started this thread can quickly verify, as can anyone else, that the tag which so offends him is not a tag created by me. Of course, that would require him to actually know how the system here operates. I doubt that will ever occur--he substitutes his bizarre ideas about history for an actual, careful study of history. I wouldn't expect any better performance from him in navigating this site.

You're welcome. Websites like this should be about a civil discussion of the issues. Mistakes happen. Quite aside from that, I've occasionally suffered some major "brainfarts" myself. There is no excuse for jumping all over someone for a mistake, unless they're incorrigible (like Setanta, whose childish imitation of hauteur seems designed to paper over his essential incompetence).

It's really pathetic, but rather funny how this puerile clown takes so many opportunities to slander me. But that's his problem, not mine.

How I do wish that imbecile Setanta would stop posting comments to my threads, both as Setanta and as Miss L. Toad (and as any other screen names!): though I cannot see Setanta's comments (since he is on my ignore list) it is tiresome to find that defective pseudo-sentient listed time after time as the last poster to my threads. It is like being followed around by a little stray dog that smells bad and possesses neither personality nor beauty, but simply barks tirelessly hour after hour.

It looks like someone I have on ignore, someone who always complains about a lack of civility on A2K, hasn't discovered this thread. And for that we should all be truly thankful.

You are right that the taxes were not severe and that many were repealed, but many Americans felt that the British parliament had no right to tax them at all. They felt that any taxes should come from their own colonial legislatures. Furthermore, many Americans were already annoyed at Britain for the way America was being treated in general. For example, Britain imposed restrictions on American trade so that many things could only be purchased from or sold to the British.

George Washington ordered many things from British merchants and felt that he was being given inferior goods, apparently because the merchants felt that a stupid colonial would be unable to tell the difference.

One tax that was not repealed until years later was the tax on tea, leading to the Boston Tea Party, which led to the British invasion of and military rule over Boston. This eventually led to the British killing of American militia at Lexington, which kicked off the Revolutionary War.

Setanta posted the best posts on this thread.

Surely you know the horrific punishments they risked by declaring Independence !! Please, show some gravity in yor thought. A fraud? At the risk of being drawn and quartered !!!

HOW INDIANA GOT ITS NAME

You forgot the most legitimate reason, the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The crown prohibited the colonists to go west, giving all that land away the land to the savages, who had wasted it for millennia. As always, anti-racism covers up class warfare; the aristocracy wanted to stifle the plebeian colonists, cramming, squeezing, and suffocating them all together in the narrow strip of the Atlantic Seaboard.

No. Not in the least. People have a right to oppose authority, especially that which they feel no longer has just cause.
It is nature to oppose outside control, but nature will also always be dependence on the outside, and so that's why revolutions are always violent and very divisive.


I sympathise with the ambition of a united Ireland, angry at those who would go out of their way to antagonise those who want unification. However, the truth of relativism is what would always keep me from being violent, and even from publicly supporting such a project..
I've transcended that reality, at the same time as still recognising it. My loyalty lies with nothing but reflection and the source of existence.

The reality of a cinema or a weekend is universal, therefore my reason is to reflect those realities onto either any American or Irish revolutionaries in history.
Better yet: my experiences of watching Big Brother on the tv can be reflected onto any revolutionary.