The American Revolution

It is hard to describe something as complex as the American Revolution in one word, when I think of the commonly used words a few general terms come to mind, independence, patriotism, and justice, but one word that best describes the revolution to me is greed. The American Revolution was a large scale rebellion guided by a handful of important business men, plantation owners, and politicians in hopes of shifting the revenue and power the colonies yielded from the British Empire to themselves. All of the imports and exports coming to and from America were making the Empire extensive amounts of money, and the colonists were not getting their cut of the revenue. The colonists were done abiding by an overseas authority that absorbed the fruits of their labor and sucked them dry through unfair taxation and numerous oppressing forces. The American Revolution, the counter act to the binding force applied by the British Empire on the American colonies, was driven by greed and the desire for personal gain.

It was no secret to the British Empire that their economy hinged on the mass amounts of money from the imports and exports to and from America, so they did everything in their power to keep control of the colonies. They were very strict with rules and regulations that the colonists were forced to abide by. They did everything from unfair taxations to regulating where the colonists could inhabit land. It is safe to say that Britain did not have support from most of the colonists during the years prior to the revolution. For over twenty years the colonists built up a strong hatred towards the people making decisions in Britain, King Gorge III and his committee. They were subject to things like the Quartering Act in 1765. This act required that all colonists must house and feed British soldiers at their own expense, and most colonists were barely scraping by as it was. It took a group of highly ranked colonists to engage a revolution that would ultimately shift the control and wealth of the colonies to themselves.

When you ponder the motives of the men that lead the revolution, it is quite obvious that money was a key driving force. Most of the men that were the leaders owned plantations and businesses such as, Thomas Jefferson, Gorge Washington, and John Adams, that generated a great deal of money that filtered back to Britain and not to themselves. This was unacceptable to these men; they wanted to reap the full benefit of their labor. Britain did not aid these men with the costly expenses of running their businesses, they had to pay for their slaves, supplies, and themselves, so they saw no reason for the money to be absorbed into the British economy. The colonies produced 500,000 pounds in 1700 and by 1770 they were producing an upwards of 2,800,000 pounds per year, and nearly all of the money was seized by Britain. This was on top of heavy taxation for illegitimate reasons that Britain forced them to pay. They were tired of Britain steeling their hard earned money and keeping it overseas for themselves.

To run their businesses the owners needed large plots of land to plant crops and house the thousands of slaves they owned. As colonies grew larger in population, from 270,000 people in 1702 to 2,200,000 people in 1765, things became crowded. Colonists that were promised land were many times refused, and the plantation owners that wanted more land to work with, were not able to expand. The colonists wanted to move westward to the vast open plains of the midwest, but the King prohibited them from moving past the Appalachians, due to issues with the Indians. The wealthy colonists could not stand the fact that they had to limit themselves even though there was plenty of land to be utilized. This cut the amount of money that the colonists knew they could be making. Almost all of the colonists were effected by this regulation because as the population increased exponentially, the amount of space for every colonist to live and work decreased. It angered the colonists to be confined like slaves, especially because they knew that there was plenty of land that they could be using. It killed them to watch Indians dance on the fertile lands that they could be using to make money. The fact that the colonists could not move past the Appalachians because of an arrangement with the Indians strikes me as very odd. I find it odd because British imperialists did not care about taking the Indians land when they first migrated to the continent, but now they cared about the conflict they caused with the Indians. It makes me wonder if Britain was scared of the definite possibility of the colonies becoming more powerful than themselves. So they tried to suppress them with unfair regulations in hopes of slowing the country's roll that was soon to devour them.

The last piece of evidence I have is, once the founding fathers gained independence nothing changed for the poor or the slaves. Once the power was shifted from Britain to colonists, life only changed for the people that were now in charge, rich white men. They did not move to abolish slavery for a hundred years, women still were only good for babies, and the vast majority of the population was still poor. However, the men that lead the revolution now regulated the power, money, and land. The separation between the rich and the poor lengthened because the rich became richer and the poor stayed about the same. Fifty percent of the wealth was owned by 10 percent of the colonists. Finally, the founding fathers got what they wanted, the control of what was soon to be the super power we now know as America.

The American Revolution was nothing more than the result of a few powerful men's journey in the conquest of land, money, and power. The founding fathers were fed up with their money being wrongfully stolen and being strictly regulated by a man over a thousand miles away. They were tired of not being able to occupy the expansive west America and loosing sleep over how much more money they could be making. Even when they did gain control, they did not help the poor, they kept all of the money to themselves. It makes you question the foundation of the country we so comfortably inhabit and support. It makes you question the motives of the men that pioneered this country. Did they yearn for money so badly that they hoarded it from their fellow colonists in desperate need of support? Was the desire so powerful that they would let their fellow Americans struggle so that they could prosper? If our country was based off of the ideals of power hungry men, then what does that say about our country and the people who we praise so much for founding it? Are the men who founded this country at all better than King Gorge III and the British Empire? Should America really be thought of as a model country or are we on the same level as the countries we accuse of such atrocities?