What Actually Changed in 1776

The most consequential shift that year was not one of battle lines but of ideology.

Excerpt: "Comparing the words and deeds of 1775 with those of 1776 shows a profound shift in sentiment among the American people. Patriots had been asserting and, in some cases, fighting for their rights as British subjects since the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765, which resulted from Parliament imposing taxes on unrepresented colonists. Parliament refused to back down from the bedrock principle, expressed in its Declaration Act of 1766, that it “hath, and by right ought to have, full power and authority to make all laws and statutes of sufficient force to bind the colonies and the people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all matters whatsoever,” and sent troops to enforce its law in Patriot strongholds such as Boston. Colonists did not question their status as royal subjects but maintained that legislative power over them, including the power to tax, rested in their own elected colonial assemblies.

Thomas Jefferson captured the Patriot view in his 1774 pamphlet, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. “Can any one reason be assigned why 160,000 electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four millions in the states of America, every individual of whom is equal to every individual of them?” he asks. “Were this to be admitted, instead of being a free people as we have hitherto supposed and mean to continue, we should suddenly be found the slaves not of one but of 160,000 tyrants.” Note Jefferson’s concern about tyranny by Parliament, not by the King. This would change in 1776."