>>Tamar, my last word on this....
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>>Your "final sentence" was
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>>"Our founders considered themselves Englishmen and their problem was that the English king wasn't affording them the rights of Englishmen."
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>>This is hardly complete.
>>
>>Fighting broke out a year before we declared our independence. Yes, the Continental Congress sent a petition to George III and his ministers before declaring independence. It was called the Olive Branch Petition. It was a request for reconciliation between the colonies and the British Crown. The Olive Branch Petition was ignored by George III and his ministers. But again, fighting had already broken out on April 19, 1775 which was more than a year before independence as a separate nation was declared on July 4, 1776.
>
>But the conflict actually started as far back as 1765 with the Stamp Act. The fighting came after about a decade of issues around whether Parliament could tax the colonists. (You can loop up the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts, for instance.)
>
>The fundamental issue all along was that Englishmen had a right to a say in their own governance and taxation, and that when Parliament taxed the colonists, they were breaching that right. As the conflict grew, other things happened (like quartering soldiers in private homes) that made things worse.
>

Were the soldiers drawn first? (trying to inject some levity into this thread)