when the Coercion Act was
passed by the English parliament, and when it was resolved to tax them
without their consent, and without a representation of their interests.
Nor did they desire war, nor even, at first, entire separation from the
Mother Country; but they were ready to accept war rather than to submit
to injustice, or any curtailment of their liberties. They had always
enjoyed self-government in such vital matters as schools, municipal and
local laws, taxes, colonial judges, and unrestricted town-meetings.
These privileges the Americans resolved at all hazard to keep: some,
because they had been accustomed to them all their days; others, from
the abstract idea of freedom which Rousseau had inculcated with so much
eloquence, which fascinated such men as Franklin and Jefferson; and
others again, from the deep conviction that the colonies were strong
enough to cope successfully with any forces that England could then
command, should coercion be attempted,--to which latter class
Washington, Pinckney, and Jay belonged; men of aristocratic sympathies,
but intensely American. It was no democratic struggle to enlarge the
franchise, and realize Rousseau's idea of fraternity and equality,--an
idea of blended socialism, infidelity, and discontent,--which united the
colonies in resistance; but a broad, noble, patriotic desire, first, to
conserve the rights of free English colonists, and finally to make
America independent of all foreign forces, combined with a lofty faith
in their own resources for success, however desperate the struggle
might be.

All parties now wanted independence, to possess a country of their own,
free of English shackles. They got tired of signing petitions, of being
mere colonists. So they sent delegates to Philadelphia to deliberate on
their difficulties and aspirations; and on July 4, 1776, these delegates
issued the Declaration of Independence, penned by Jefferson, one of the
noblest documents ever written by the hand of man, the Magna Charta of
American liberties, in which are asserted the great rights of
mankind,--that all men have the right to seek happiness in their own
way, and are entitled to the fruit of their labors; and that the people
are the source of power, and belong to themselves, and not to kings, or
nobles, or priests.

In signing this document the Revolutionary patriots knew that it meant
war; and soon the struggle came,--one of the inevitable and foreordained
events of histor