Hello everybody. Uh this is your chapter 5 lecture video, imperial reforms and colonial protests. Now I left you off uh in chapter 4 with two primary questions. Right? Those questions were could the British uh develop imperial policies that that dealt with the you know British colonies in North America colonists in North America as special partners i.e. could they create two different sets of policies um that dealt with their new imperial subjects differently? Um and then the second question was could they um what were they going to do with taxation, right? Were they going to be able to develop a a system that still was based on the navigation acts or were they going to need to shift um to something more um direct as was occurring in uh the Indian colonies that they had recently acquired. Their answers are um that uh frankly they could not they could not um come up with policies that developed or that treated the colony colonists as separate and special partners uh in uh this new empire. And that's pretty apparent from the start, right? So the the seven years war ends in 1763. Um, and it almost immediately plunges uh Britain into a a a new war with its new uh uh imperial subjects, Native Americans of kind of this Great Lakes region here, right? So, if you remember back uh to the maps, this whole pink area here had been uh territories held by either France or in the case of Florida, Spain. um with the the uh you know peace of uh um Paris in 1763 that ended the war, all of this territory is seated uh to the British Empire. That's of course completely ignoring the wishes and desires and the autonomy and the sovereignty of the native peoples who lived here which frankly the Europeans didn't care about. So they're trading these territories to each other not worried about the native peoples. But the native peoples care very deeply. Um a they um they don't consider themselves subjects to any of these empires, but b they want whichever European empire is interacting with them to be one of their their choosing. And so the Native Americans of the Great Lakes region who had been used to dealing with the French are going to be very hostile now to the disappearance of the French and the emergence of these British uh uh you know officers of imperial authority that are acting as if they had conquered these natives. And so in 1763, a major Native American uprising occurs led by um a Ottawa native from the Michigan area named Pontiac. Just one of several leaders, but he's the principal leader. And it comes to be called then uh Pontiac's rebellion or Pontiac's uprising. And you can see in this map down here, these little explosions, these are all victories of the natives over the the British who had occupied all of these western posts that had once been French. And um they will do the natives will do a very good job of of defeating the British here in the early years. Uh it takes about two years. By 1765 um the British at great expense are able to push back uh the native uh you know forces defeat them and bring peace to the region. But they had decided even before the victory um that they don't want this to happen again, right? they don't want um the natives to rise up against them. Um and so that they're going to produce policies that are going to be um conducive to peace. And so one of the native uh one of the reasons for the natives to to rise up in 1763 was the shift from the French to the British, but it was also um the kind of flood of settlers who come west after the war. And if you remember all the way back to kind of the geopolitical reasons for the Seven Years War, right, it had been that these British colonists here wanted to continue to expand westward. And so after the war, of course, as the war ends and after the war, they begin to do that. And so the British decide, British leadership decides, right, that that that friction between their settlers and the natives had been a cause of this war. And to to make sure that that doesn't happen again, uh they're going to pass the Proclamation of 1763. The pro proclamation line is established and that's what's dividing this red from the pink here on this map. It roughly follows kind of like the the crest of the Appalachin Mountains. So they're basically drawing this line up along the mountains and they're saying in the proclamation of 1763 that the colonist must stay to the east in the red areas. That of course leaves then these pink areas for the natives. Now this is a fantastic policy for the natives and it's not done by the British out of any like goodwill towards the natives. Right? The idea here is that we keep these two groups separate. We don't have the we don't have new conflicts. It therefore won't cost the British any money. But put yourselves in the American colonial shoes if you will. They had fought this war. They had bled for victory and they' done it in the belief that it was going to open up the west for settlement. And now the British Empire comes in and says, "No, you can't you can't do that." And by drawing this line and separating them, the British policy, right, uh, tells the colonists that the British are are kind of seeing the natives as equals to them, right? You two children, if you will, from the British perspective, stay in your spot. Stay on your side of the right, the couch, if you will. Um if you ever think of like fighting with your sibling in the backseat of a car, right, and parents are like stay on your side. Um that's what the British are doing here. But it very much is a kind of a d, you know, denigrating uh policy from the colonial perspective. They're not being treated as a partner here, right? A special partner. They're being treated as equals to the natives and that's not very good for them. Um then you have of course that second uh issue and that was of course that the British need to raise uh money to pay back the war debts. And so you're going to have in 1764 6567 and 1773 the passage of four major pieces of legislation that will directly tax the colonies colonists. So no more navigation acts though those are still in effect. Um but they're not going to rely on just that for revenue. Um they're going to pass the sugar act in ' 64, the stamp act in ' 65, the towns and duties in ' 67 and the tea act in 1773 which will directly tax the colonist. This is kind of that tax farming idea, right? Um that they that they kind of import from India. This idea that we're going to directly attack tax subjects. The colonists have not been used to this for a century and a half in some cases, right? From the older colonies, they are used to doing their own thing. they are paying taxes through the navigation acts but it's a kind of an invisible tax that the consumer doesn't directly recognize and so these taxes that are directly on these products right sugar stamps um tea the towns and duties are on a variety of things um these are very direct very visible and it doesn't sit well with these colonists this cuts against that salient tradition of salutoy neglect that the colonists had become used too. So, the colonists respond uh in a variety of ways, right? With the Sugar Act, they're going to smuggle and they're going to circumvent uh the tax on sugar. Um the Stamp Act, which was a a tax on um paper goods. Basically, you had to buy these special stamps that then you could if you wanted to sell newspapers or playing cards or legal documents required these stamps, right? Um so so for the Stamp Act, the um colonists will do a couple things. Um in Virginia, Patrick Henry famously rises up in front of the Virginia assembly and he kind of voices the feelings of the colonists as a whole when he says no taxation without uh rep representation, right? This idea that um that the colonists should not be taxed because they don't have a say on the taxes. And so the Virginia resolves state that only Virginiaians can tax Virginiaians, right? So some of the more moderate um um leaders in the revolution don't oppose the idea of taxation, right? These are reasonable people. They just don't believe that the British government from from London should be telling them, you know, what to do. So they think that if revenue needs to be raised, then let the leaders in Williamsburg, which is the capital of Virginia, or Philadelphia for Pennsylvania or Boston for Massachusetts, let us raise the revenue, right? Um, so the Virginia kind of kind of say that. Um, you have more radical uh elements in the colonists that that are that are going to be more um directly um violent in opposition. Uh, you have uh groups called the Sons of Liberty who emerge uh throughout many of the colonial cities most most prominently in uh in Boston. And the Sons of Liberty, you probably learned about them at some point in your schooling. and they're they're generally portrayed as, you know, heroes, patriots um because of course in hindsight as an independent nation, they they help propel that. But in reality, the Sons of Liberty are some pretty pretty tough customers. They are doing using violence and intimidation um to get their way. So, for example, in um Boston where you get again the most most kind of violent Sons of Liberty group, they're going to terrorize the the British officials that are supposed to sell the stamps, right? You kind of have these agents, if you will, that that had the stamps and you would go buy the stamps from them if you needed stamps. Um these people are are terrorized to the point where nobody will do the job, right? The British weren't sending people from England to do it. They were trying to find a leader in Boston and a leader in Philadelphia to take on this role. And Sons of Liberty um using threats of violence. Their one of their famous threats of violence was taring and feathering, which seems like a silly thing, right? making people look like a chicken, but it's actually a very very ugly uh you know, punishment where you pour hot burning tar uh on people, which which could be mortal um or extremely painful because it would fuse to your skin and you'd have to peel it off and it's really really bad. Um so they're going to do that. So the Stamp Act uh fails. Um the sugar act fails because everybody smuggles around it. The Stamp Act fails because nobody's going to step up to sell the stamps out of fear. Um and so then they the towns and duties are passed um which again is on a wide variety of goods. Um the colonial opposition will organize what they call non-importation non-exportation uh um agreements where they wouldn't uh import British goods and they wouldn't export things that Britain needed. Um we we would call that a boycott today. Um, these are relatively effective even though many individuals kind of put yourself in in in the shoes of a colonist at the time, right? Many individuals don't want to go without the nice things that the towns and duties were taxing. Glass for your windows, paint, etc. Cloth, nice cloth for making clothes. Um, people didn't want to go out uh go without that stuff. So these probably wouldn't have been successful if again you didn't have the Sons of Liberty um who were out there. They would literally have agents like in the marketplaces watching who was buying what and if you bought goods that that were taxed and I therefore you violated the uh non-importation agreements um they would use intimidation tactics to basically keep people in line um to make sure that the towns and duties fail. Um and then this all of course culminates in 1773 with the passage of the tea act which is a direct attacks on tea um which results famously in the Boston Tea Party again likely propelled by the Sons of Liberty. They board these British ships of tea in Boston Harbor and they destroy what might have amounted to to a million dollars uh worth of of goods. The um tea that's being destroyed here is um owned by the East India Company. Uh the East India Company was the world's um largest corporation at the time. So you can think of one of the great tech giants of the age. That's the um that's the East India Company then. And as such, it had investors, right? People that invest in it. Investors tend to be wealthy people. Um wealthy people tend to be political leaders. Perhaps you see where I'm going here. Uh when the the the pro uh goods are destroyed in Boston Harbor, it hurts the investors of the East India Company, many of which are leaders in Parliament. And so, you know, you can kind of see these early efforts, the British keep they keep trying something new, but after the the Boston Tea Party, uh the British are going to be pretty much out of patience with these colonists. And so you're going to have then um the passage of what were called the Coercive Acts or the Intolerable Acts. Um and you can kind of see them down here. Um but of course you'll read about them, right? The B Boston Boston Port Act would close the port of Boston um to all commerce until the the um damages were repaid from the Boston Tea Party. The Massachusetts Government Act will shut down the civilian government of Massachusetts and in place there will be a mil military dictator, General Gage, uh backed by British red coats. The Administration of Justice Act uh meant that any of these British soldiers or officials in Boston would not be subject to civilian law or civilian courts. Um but instead they would be um if they did anything wrong towards a citizen they would be tried by military tribunals which of course would take the jury all right the civilian jury out of the equation which is a big tradition in free societies. The Quartering Act uh gave Gage uh the authority to uh quarter his troops in private buildings and private residents within Boston. This is, by the way, a long-standing tradition in British military history. In England, you know, British forces that moved from place to place in the countryside routinely quartered their troops in private homes. Um, so this is not anything new. This is just an express reminder, if you will, um, that the British have the authority to do that. Uh and prior to this point there are British troops um stationed in Boston but they had been to to not stir up anger they had generally they would occupy abandoned buildings if you will abandoned warehouses pretty ugly places. The Quartering Act is basically pushing Gage and British leadership in Boston to start you know exerting their authority which already existed um to to put their troops in comfortable comfortable homes. Finally, the Quebec Act um confers um civil liberties to the French Canadians who had been subjects of the empire since the defeat of the French in 1763. Right? So, French Canada had been brought into the empire in 1763. The people there had kind of been in a kind of state of limbo here for over 10 years. Um but now the Quebec Act says, "Hey, you're full members of the the empire. You're subjects citizens. you have civil liberties the same as the British colonies to the south. Um, which is a nice thing to do, but you can imagine that at this very moment when the British are stripping those civil liberties from Massachusetts um announcing that the French Canadians, others, right, non-British people who are not Protestant um are receiving these civil liberties. This is a a big blow, right, to the pride in this in the worldview and the identity of the colonists. So, this is a really really pretty extreme measure, right? And again, it crosses all these lines, all these red lines uh for the the the colonists who believe that they're British and that they should be treated a special way as a result. So in 1774 in response to the intolerable or coercive acts uh leaders from throughout the colonies right because they're all concerned even though this only affects Massachusetts everybody's concerned right that this is a signal of tyranny and once tyranny um you know rears its ugly head this is something that that must be addressed. So representatives from throughout the colonies will meet in Philadelphia in 1774, what comes to be called the first Continental Congress where they're going to debate collective response to these measures. Um there are two main factions within this group, right? One that that want to continue to to um combat British policy through peaceful means as had been done for the previous decade. Um and then there are other people who believe that armed resistance is the only um the only path forward. So there's a kind of a peace faction and a military faction. Now be very clear here at this point in 1774 independence is not on the table. We'll talk about that in the next chapter. Um but what is on the table is armed resistance. Um and uh to to convince the government to stop its what they believe is extra legal behavior. Uh the peace faction has the strength at this point in 1774. They will trump, they will defeat the military faction. Um, they're going to all agree on continued colonywide non-importation, non-exportation, i.e. boycott of British goods. Um, and they're really hoping to to hammer home an economic um impact on Britain. Right? If the British people who are relying on this trade with the colonists, if the British people suffer economically, they'll put pressure on Parliament to to to pull back on these measures. That's the theory anyway from the peace faction. Um, and then importantly, they schedule a second Continental Congress. Let's see how this works. Let's all get back together in a year and we'll reconsider our actions. Okay. Now, this next bit is covered in your next chapter, but for the sake of the conversation I want to do next, I'm going to just go forward a little bit into 1775. Um, you'll read about this uh in in uh your next uh reading. Um but when the delegates of the first Continental Congress then go home, uh the New Englanders, particularly the Massachusetts leaders are not content, right? They're the military faction that that didn't get their way. And so they're going to begin to prepare for armed resistance anyway. They start gathering weapons. they start formulating, you know, military units, the the iconic Minutemen, um, that I'm sure you've heard of, um, in preparation for opposing, uh, the British, um, through through armed measures. The British are are in Boston in, you know, several thousand troops. Uh, these leaders are outside the city. Um, they're going to be gathering their supplies uh, in conquered, which is maybe 10 miles outside of Boston. And then they, uh, some of the leadership, you know, obviously have left. They're not going back to Boston. They don't want to be around the red coats and they are kind of coalesing around Lexington. British leadership in London have they they have reports from spies in Massachusetts. They're aware of what's going on uh in the countryside. Um General Gage, who's the man on the spot, the commander of the British troops in Boston, he's content to just let this happen, right? He sees kind of the dangers of trying to do anything more direct. Um, and he's hoping everything just kind of boils boils over, but the leadership in London can't tolerate this. And they send Gage essentially direct orders to deal with it. Um, and so Gage uh famously in April of 1775, he's going to send a force um out of Boston to march on conquered where they believe the weapons correctly believe the weapons are being held. And the idea being let's seize the military stores, destroy them, and that will put an end to this potential armed resistance. Now, Lexington, where the leadership is kind of coalescing, happens to be on the road to conquered from Boston. So, the troops are going to head for Lexington uh on their way to to conquer. This then will tip off uh the leaders uh you know the the the leadership that the British are coming the famous Paul Rivere and William Dah's you know famous their famous ride everybody thinks that they're coming to Lexington for the leadership but that's incorrect the leadership will flee the Lexington militia will line up uh on their green ready to confront these troops now this is about a 10 to one disparity maybe 75 troops in in Lexington maybe 750 British troops. These these militia men have no intention of fighting the British. This is a protest, an armed one, but but a protest, right? They're going to line up. Free citizens. This is their home. They're going to stand up, stare down the British, and and you know, send a message. That's what they're intending to do. Their commander, William Parker, is a veteran of the Seven Years War. He ex We have the documentation. He expressly ordered the men not to fire, to disperse if anything weird happens. Um there's no intention, as we might think, you know, heroically that they were going to fight these British soldiers. The British soldiers for their part are not expecting a fight and not that's not their intention. Um but as they march into Lexington, they're behind schedule, meaning it's it should have been the middle of the night. They want to arrive at conquered by morning, but it's actually morning and dawn as they're marching into Lexington. They're tired. They're exhausted. They've been marching for eight hours. It's a foggy morning, so the visibility is a little bit obscured. And because it's dawn, the the citizens of Lexington are waking up and they're coming out. They hear fs. They hear drums. This is the most exciting thing that's ever happened in Lexington, they come down. And so the British march into this scene of what they think is chaos, right? people milling about the the militia which had lined up all night waiting for the British. They got tired of waiting so they had kind of drifted off to the neighboring houses and taverns to warm up. It's a cold night. So they're all rushing back to their stations. So this is not an organized planned right protest as it had originated. And then a shot rings out. Ralph Waldo Emer Waldo Emerson's uh famous shot heard around the world. Nobody knows who fired. It might have been a British soldier who is exhausted um and you know accidentally triggered their firearm or they could have been nervous from all the commotion. It could have been a militia man who's rushing back to their post, tripped or triggered their firearm. They were also in taverns all night, so they could have been a little bit tipsy. There are also reports in kind of the afteraction interviews that that were conducted. There were reports that perhaps there was somebody hiding in an alleyway or behind a hedge that shot at the British. This could have been a radical uh that wanted to spark, you know, bloodshed um to start the conflict, but we we will never know. But the shot rings out and as you can see here right a volley of British goes into the um into the crowd of militia men killing seven of them and then they disperse without really firing back. The British march on to conquer. Um news of this bloodshed spreads and you have militia men from all over New England descending upon um the road and by the end of the day it'll actually be militia from as far away as um New Hampshire. Right. that when they get news, they march immediately um to the south. The conquered militia, they vacate their town. They are going to they're much larger, perhaps 250 of them. So, not still not a match for the British, but but definitely significantly larger than the Lexington militia. They're going to line up on a hill overlooking town. Kind of again, the idea is very visible um protest. You're not allowed to do this, right? This is not cool. Um, the British arrive in town. Their job, again, their mission is to find these supplies. But Gage had been so worried about stirring up a hornets's nest that he ordered them to be very respectful of the citizens and their private property. Meaning, these aren't the British knocking in doors and rumaging through people's stuff, right? They're going to they're going to seize what's visible. Um, they're going to knock on doors and ask for permission to look and people say no. Um, so they find very very little. But what they do find, they pile up in the center of the town. They light it on fire. By all accounts, that fire accidentally lights a neighboring building on fire. Um, so there's a lot of smoke coming out of the city. And the conquered militia see that smoke. It's unclear what's happening. Um, but they know what they know by now what's happened at Lexington. So they think maybe the British are burning their town down. There's only a small British detachment confronting them at at the old north bridge. And so they attack that detachment which sparks a running fight. This is where the first British f uh casualties will be suffered. Uh the British having accomplished their mission, they they join back up into a force and they begin their march back to Boston. But the Hornets's nest has been stirred and all these militia groups are lining the road fighting the British every step of the way. by the time they arrive back in Lexington, the the original force is spent, exhaustion, you know, bloodied. Um, but of course, the British and Boston have news of what's going on and they'll send a relief force which will rescue that original force and they they all collectively still have to fight their way back to Boston. News of this spreads rapidly um throughout the colonies. Uh the news is perhaps not very accurate. There's plenty of reports that have made the British into monsters, breaking down homes, murdering babies, burning down things. Um they're either exaggerated or completely fabricated. But propaganda is an important development here because second continental congress convenes almost immediately after Lexington and conquered a month or so which is very fast in the 18th century and it's going to meet under the kind of clouds of misinformation and exaggeration from Lexington and conquered which means the mood will be very different than it had been a year before and that means that the military faction the New England leadership is able to to beat and win over enough support from the rest of the colonies to trump the peace faction. Meaning, we're going to we're going to go to war. We're not going for independence. We'll talk about that in our next lecture. But we're now going to resist the British by force of arms to convince them to stop doing this stuff. Now, the peace faction does get one final victory. Um they will get the Continental Congress to issue a olive branch petition. This is a lastditch attempt at peace sent directly to George III, the monarch of England. And it basically says to him to to to please step in and intervene and and end this. Right? This is this has been a fight between Parliament and the colonist up to this point. The monarch is off doing his own thing and the Algranch petition is an appeal to the monarch to step in and and fix everything. And we'll see in the next section how this works out, but you want to you want to remember this. All right, so we're going to pause the action there. I I've gone a little bit ahead from where you read. Um, but you'll read about this uh uh in the next chapter. But I wanted to get to this point so we can explore a couple questions here to end our our conversation for this chapter. And that is first, why do we end up at war? These are people that believed they were the same, right? They all believe they were British. Now, we've already talked a little bit how about how people from British Isles are looking down on the colonists, but the colonists believe they're British. These are the same people, right? So, why why do we end up at war? Why don't words prevail? Why does violence prevail? And I think that one of the answers to this is the radical fringes, right? That the vast majority of the people on both sides of the Atlantic don't want war. And I think this is true of most wars that happen, right? Reasonable people don't don't want war. Uh war is terrible, whether you've seen it yourself or not, right? Um reasonable people know that war is terrible. I um I'm old now, so I would probably avoid um having to serve in any conflict, but I have two sons and they're too young to serve now, but someday they will be of age. And one of my deepest terrors, right, in my existence as a father, right, is having to send my boys someday to a war, right? It's a terrible, terrible thing. It's not something to to be sought. But yet, it happens a fair amount, right, in our human existence. And I think what we learn from this scenario that we can apply to to other conflicts that maybe are more um kindly to our lives is that it's often radical fringes that suck all the reasonable people into war. Right? So this person here is Samuel Adams. He's the head of the Sons of Liberty. He's the type that was pushing and pushing and pushing uh for conflict. He believed so strongly in what he wanted that he thought that bloodshed was the only way to to achieve his his aims. So the Sons of Liberty were doing the radical things that I talked about. Or if it was somebody who shot from behind a hedge or from an alley specifically to spark Lexi the Lexington fight, that would have been somebody who was very radical that wanted this to happen. But once the blood shed blood starts flowing, reasonable people lose their reason and they're more susceptible to go along with the radicals. Right? So you have radicals on the American side, but you have radicals in Britain too, right? Hardcore leadership. So all the people who supported the colonists are going to be kind of pushed out of power and uh and you're going to have coales then a really hardline government in Britain that that will not compromise and war to these hardliners is the only only way forward. Um, a second reason that I think we end up with war, why so many colonists are willing to to to to put their lives on the line to fight their own government even when they're loyal subjects. So, prior to 1776 is a colonial paranoia about authoritarianism. Now, when you watch this video today, we are kind of at the high tide of freedom and democracy in the human experience. meaning that like since World War II, there have been more democracies on this planet than have ever existed in in history. Even if we are at a time where there's some scary stuff going on, um democracy is more the norm now than it ever was. So for these colonists in the 1770s, they understood in a way that it's hard for us modern people to understand um they understood how fragile freedom was in democracy and representative government because when they looked to the past they saw that there were really only a couple examples of this existing in the human experience. Right? We had the Greek democracies and we had the Roman Republic. And other than that, most of human history has been despotic. A king, an emperor, telling everybody what's what. Now, England, as and Britain now, as we've already seen, had a constitutional monarchy since 1688. So, they believed, right, that they were amongst this unique pantheon of of superior people who had cast off the chains of despatism. But the behavior of the British government had fed into that paranoia that they were stopping, you know, being a a a free government. And every one of those actions we've described here is confirmation, right? The arrival of the armies at Lexington was confirmation to the colonists, right, that their free society was under threat. And if they didn't act, it would collapse. Freedom isn't free, they believe, right? eternal vigilance is the cost of a free society in their minds. And so they're almost pre-programmed to react this way. All right. Our um next uh thing and final thing to consider is whether or not this movement that we call the American Revolution is truly revolutionary. Okay. Um and we can begin here with the definition of that word revolution which is right here in quotation marks a sudden complete market change in something. So a revolution is something that's fast and something that is radical. So if you want to think politics, you know, there's American Revolution and then the the French Revolution and then the Russian Revolution of the 20th century, right? Or think of some of these other movements, the industrial revolution, right? Things are happening radically to change the world, to change the existing systems and they are radical in that change. I've lived through a revolution, the information revolution, right? I'm 45 and I've lived in a world where we didn't have computers. The regular people didn't. And I wrote my papers on typewriters, right? And then in just my lifetime, we are at where we're at now where you're watching a video of me. Right? It's it's pretty wild how fast and radically things have changed even just in in my lifetime. We call that the information revolution. Right? So based on that that definition, is the American Revolution revolutionary? Right? I I I think that we have to really question this especially as we continue our narrative of the United States as we move forward, right? Because the revolutionary leadership, quote unquote revolutionary leadership is very conservative, right? These are not radicals running this, right? Um they believed that they were fighting for stability and the old order, right? So who was seeking to enact change, right? Them? No, they believed it was the British government that was changing everything that was being radical that was being right revolutionary with through these new measures and taxes and policies, right? So the movement is actually you could suggest is anti-revolutionary at least initially, right? Because they are acting against the change. They're reacting negatively towards the change. Does that make sense? So an example of that is the Boston Massacre, right? And you can see the example here, right? The British firing into the crowd. Um, and this is in 1770. And the um soldiers are arrested and they're tried for murder. And you know, famously, they cannot find adequate representation. Uh, and this is in a court that's going to be judged by a jury of their Boston peers. They're not going to get a fair trial. uh famously John Adams will step up who's the second president of the United States, the co-author of the declaration. So this is somebody that is a founding member of our nation and he steps up and he defends these soldiers and he quits them. They're not they're not convicted of murder. He wins against all odds. Now why would he do this if he was so against the British and their policies? It's because he believed in the rule of law, right? He believed in right the order and the magnificence of British society right he saw himself as a loyal British person. He's upholding those values by defending these men against wrongful conviction. So the the colonial leadership, the conservative colonial leadership, they believe what they're doing is a representation of their Britishness, not a repudiation of it. Okay? They think it's the British government that's acting wrong. They believe that they're acting right within the boundaries of their identity. Now, a real revolution would have looked like the French Revolution, right? which you see an image of here, famous with the guillotine, the regular people rising up and seizing the elites and cutting off their heads and seizing their property, just the streets running red with blood. We don't see that in the American Revolution because the leaders of the American Revolution are the wealthiest elites of America. George Washington, right? Thomas Jefferson, John Adams wasn't wealthy, but he was an educated elite and they don't want this radical change. Now, we can consider the revolution becoming somewhat revolutionary after the declaration is signed in 1776 because now they will repudiate their monarchy in favor of a republic. But it's still a pretty mild revolution compared to the French and the Russian revolution of the 20th century and the Chinese revolution after that, right? Where really some pretty violent and and radical change happens. Something to think about. Okay. Okay. Uh, we're going to stop here. Uh, and I will see you next time where we'll get into the Revolutionary War in its entirety.