Most tribes sided with the British or stayed neutral; only a small minority backed the rebels. Generally speaking, when a cause is opposed by the two most vulnerable groups in a society, it's probably a bad idea.
So it is with the cause of American independence. Honestly, I think earlier abolition alone is enough to make the case against the revolution, and it combined with less-horrible treatment of American Indians is more than enough.
But it's worth taking a second to praise a less important but still significant consequence of the US sticking with Britain: we would've, in all likelihood, become a parliamentary democracy rather than a presidential one. And parliamentary democracies are a lot, lot better than presidential ones. They're significantly less likely to collapse into dictatorship because they don't lead to irresolvable conflicts between, say, the president and the legislature.
They lead to much less gridlock. In the US, activists wanting to put a price on carbon emissions spent years trying to put together a coalition to make it happen, mobilizing sympathetic businesses and philanthropists and attempting to make bipartisan coalition — and they still failed to pass cap and trade, after millions of dollars and man hours.
In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax. So there was a carbon tax , and the coal sector has taken a beating. Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that's literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than with presidential systems.
It was the introduction of another unnecessary decisionmaking entity, very common in the veto point-heavy US system, that created the crisis in the first place. This is no trivial matter. Efficient passage of legislation has huge humanitarian consequences. It makes measures of planetary importance, like carbon taxes, easier to get through; they still face political pushback, of course — Australia's tax got repealed, after all — but they can be enacted in the first place, which is far harder in the US system.
And the efficiency of parliamentary systems enables larger social welfare programs that reduce inequality and improve life for poor citizens. Government spending in parliamentary countries is about 5 percent of GDP higher , after controlling for other factors, than in presidential countries. If you believe in redistribution, that's very good news indeed. The Westminister system of parliamentary democracy also benefits from weaker upper houses.
The US is saddled with a Senate that gives Wyoming the same power as California, which has more than 66 times as many people. Worse, the Senate is equal in power to the lower, more representative house. Most countries following the British system have upper houses — only New Zealand was wise enough to abolish it — but they're far, far weaker than their lower houses.
The Canadian Senate and the House of Lords affect legislation only in rare cases. At most, they can hold things up a bit or force minor tweaks. They aren't capable of obstruction anywhere near the level of the US Senate. Finally, we'd still likely be a monarchy, under the rule of Elizabeth II, and constitutional monarchy is the best system of government known to man.
Generally speaking, in a parliamentary system, you need a head of state who is not the prime minister to serve as a disinterested arbiter when there are disputes about how to form a government — say, if the largest party should be allowed to form a minority government or if smaller parties should be allowed to form a coalition, to name a recent example from Canada.
That head of state is usually a figurehead president elected by the parliament Germany, Italy or the people Ireland, Finland , or a monarch. And monarchs are better. Monarchs are more effective than presidents precisely because they lack any semblance of legitimacy. Indeed, when the governor-general of Australia did so in it set off a constitutional crisis that made it clear such behavior would not be tolerated. But figurehead presidents have some degree of democratic legitimacy and are typically former politicians.
That enables a greater rate of shenanigans — like when Italian President Giorgio Napolitano schemed, successfully, to remove Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister due at least in part to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's entreaties to do so. Napolitano is the rule, rather than the exception. Oxford political scientists Petra Schleiter and Edward Morgan-Jones have found that presidents, whether elected indirectly by parliament or directly by the people, are likelier to allow governments to change without new elections than monarchs are.
In other words, they're likelier to change the government without any democratic input at all. Monarchy is, perhaps paradoxically, the more democratic option. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all.
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. There were no organized political parties, and adult white men tended to defer to gentlemen.
Established merchants, wealthy lawyers, and large planters held the major political offices. But in the years leading up to the Revolution, popular participation in politics increased. Voter turnout climbed as did the number of contested elections. Political pamphleteering also became more common. By the time the Revolution was over, ordinary people had become much more heavily involved in the political process.
The revolution also profoundly altered social expectations. It led to demands that the vote be extended to a larger proportion of the population and that public offices be elected by the people. During and after the Revolution, smaller farmers, artisans, and laborers began increasingly to participate in state legislative elections, and men claiming to represent their interests began to win office and wield power.
Leaders in the new state governments were less wealthy, more mobile, and less likely to be connected by marriage and kinship than those before the Revolution. For the first time, state assemblies erected galleries to allow the public to watch legislative debates.
So the colony's Whigs those who favored independence formed a provincial congress that sent representatives to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September. The movement against English rule spread rapidly. In April British soldiers, called lobsterbacks because of their red coats, and minutemen—the colonists' militia—exchanged gunfire at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts.
Described as "the shot heard round the world," it signaled the start of the American Revolution and led to the creation of a new nation. North Carolina joined the war the following month. Eight days later, Governor Martin became the first royal governor in the colonies to flee office.
In July he had to leave the fort and fled to the safety of a British ship anchored offshore. For eight years the Old North State was the scene of suffering caused by the war for independence. There were deaths and injuries, terrible shortages of food and warm clothing, destruction and loss of property, and constant fear. While soldiers fought the war on the field, North Carolina's public leaders fought for independence, too.
In April North Carolina's provincial congress met at Halifax and decided to send a message to the Continental Congress. The group called for all the colonies to proclaim their independence from Great Britain. These Halifax Resolves were the first official action by any colony calling for a united drive for independence. Now there was no turning back. Once the members of the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence, only the spilling of much blood would settle the matter.
But North Carolinians were greatly divided. There was bitter combat between the Whigs and Tories those loyal to England , each trying to force the other to their views or at least to stop them from helping the other side.
John Adams, who became the second president of the United States, said that in the Revolution one third of the people were Whigs, one third Tories, and one third did not take either side. This was not exactly true for all colonies, of course, and perhaps North Carolina had more Whigs than Tories.
In the midst of war, and with a divided population, North Carolina began trying to create a new government.
The king's governor had fled. If the king were no longer the sovereign, the center of authority and order, then who would be? Where would the government come from? All the colonies faced this problem. They knew about English law and understood about governors, legislators, and judges. The new "twist" in was the practice of placing the power of government in the people rather than in a monarch.
The questions of how this popular sovereignty would be expressed through elections, and how often, and who would be eligible to vote, would become areas of considerable debate.
In November the provincial congress at Halifax met to draft a bill of rights and a constitution and to create a new government for the state. First, the Declaration of Rights was adopted, and on the following day the new constitution was accepted. The Declaration of Rights guaranteed personal freedoms—the right to choose one's form of religious worship, to write and say what one believed, and to hold peaceful public meetings, among others. The constitution provided for a form of government with three equal branches: an executive to run the state government, a legislative to make the laws, and a judicial to enforce the laws.
The constitution also had provisions applying to holding public office, voting, and public education. When the Patriots adopted their bill of civil rights before they adopted their form of government, they showed how important individual liberties were to a people who were fighting against what they felt was the oppressive government imposed by the king and Parliament.
In both its bill of rights and its constitution, North Carolina—like the other states—showed a deep distrust of government. Tar Heels believed that personal freedoms needed to be stated in writing.
They believed that each branch of government had to be independent of the others so that a single individual or group could not have too much power. In creating the new government, revolutionary Americans reached their greatest achievement. They decided that sovereignty would lie with the people of the nation, not in any single person such as the king or institution such as Parliament. Democracy would be the ideal. The system devised was not perfect then, nor is it perfect now.
But the ideal of "government by the citizens and for the citizens" was the fuel that fired the revolutionary vision of a just society. It is the ideal that allows for change when the people desire change.
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