Double Standard For Freedom Dbq

The Double Standard For Freedom The colonists accepted British authority for many decades, however in the mid to late 1700’s the colonists had a blossoming divergent identity and felt the British were infringing on it. This began with the Molasses Act and continued to build through the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, and then finally the Intolerable Acts. For many decades, the colonists were effectively autonomous, remaining under the British rule but behaving mostly independently. However, after the Seven Years War, Britain began to overreach by imposing revenue taxes on things like tea. The colonists were angry, and their outrage ultimately fueled the colonies to unite against a common enemy: Britain. The colonists argued that their freedom

The freedom they were fighting for did not extend to everyone in the colonies because of the enormous wealth gap and the exclusion of women in many walks of life. The wealth gap within the colonies was drastic, one example being the New York Tenant Riots where “the general condition of so many people in the colonies remained poor and desperate as they watched a small number own huge tracts of land or accumulate fortunes”. While the wealthier colonists claimed that Britain was limiting their ability to make money, many colonists did not have adequate money to subsist. Further, the attitude of the colonial legislatures towards the most impoverished does not allow the freedom the Patriots are fighting for to reach the lower classes. The freedom the colonists fought for not only excludes the lower class, but also the women. In a letter Abigail Adams wrote to her husband she writes, “I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands”. Abigail Adams urged her husband to remember the women because the women were integral for success throughout the boycotts, but they never directly saw the benefits of the movement because the Patriots didn’t view the

However, there was a severe disconnect between the freedom they fought for and the freedom the state legislatures applied within the colonies. Through their harsh treatment and pushing out of the Native Americans it is evident that the colonists’ had no regard for the freedom of the people they are pushing out. The persistence of slavery within the colonies is contradictory to their blasphemous claim of enslavement by the British. Finally, the oppression of both women and the lower class suggests that the Patriots were fighting for the principle of freedom but had no intention of implementing freedom within the colonies. The propertied men’s fight for freedom is hypocritical to their actions because there is no implementation of freedom as one would assume a colony fighting for freedom would have. Although the revolution's leaders were broadening the definition of freedom, it was still incredibly narrow by the standards of today's world and left out a majority of the