This was at the period when the colonies had not actually rebelled, but when they meditated resistance,—­during the years between 1773 and 1776, when the whole country was agitated by political tracts, indignation meetings, patriotic sermons, and preparations for military struggle.  Hitherto the colonies had not been oppressed; they had most of the rights and privileges they desired; but they feared that their liberties—­so precious to them, and which they had virtually enjoyed from their earliest settlements—­were in danger of being wrested away.  And their fears were succeeded by indignation 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.