Greedy Colonists
By Brodie Hall
Every Fourth of July, we celebrate what we know as the American Revolution, the day that the American colonists broke free from British rule. For Americans, this was obviously a glorious day because they were able to start up their own government. However, in the midst of America becoming a free country, I believe that a few groups of people really got screwed over. Britain never got the money they might have deserved, and the colonists started moving more west, invading Native American land.
America is the obvious beneficiary of the revolution. Had the revolution never happened, we wouldn’t have the America that we have today. Breaking away from the rule of Great Britain released the wealthy land owners from the king’s harsh taxes and it abolished the Treaty of Easton, which was a Treaty between Native Americans and Britain that kept Americans from moving any further west of the Appalachian Mountains. Abolishing this treaty meant that poor, and even some rich colonists, we able to claim land west of the Appalachian Mountains and me a profit by farming. This was very good for the poor because it gave them an opportunity to get out of poverty and the rich obviously made more money.
As America greatly benefited from revolting, it was somewhat of a selfish benefit. America would never have existed without masses of help from Great Britain. The English almost completely developed the American colonies, so by taxing Americans, the British were essentially making the colonist pay back the money that Britain put out to develop the colonies, revolting was almost like declaring bankruptcy. The Americans didn’t want to pay back the money that they “owed”, so they wanted to take the easy way out of it and just say “hey, we aren’t going to give you your money”, so the revolution was almost a selfish act of greed.
Another major motive of the revolution was so the colonist could move west (as I explained above). This may have been great for America, but Native Americans suffered greatly because they would now have the colonist invade the land that was originally theirs. This causes the manifest destiny mindset to greatly escalate, which results in relatively all of the native land being taken from the natives. It ends up at the United States that we know today, which could be a good think or could be a bad thing (that’s for you to decide yourself) but the land still belonged to the Native Americans in the first place, and the revolution is what allowed the Americans to invade the natives land.
Most of what people know about the American Revolution is that it was the most patriotic time in American history, but not many people think or know about the other groups that were harmed as a result of the revolution. Whether the benefits of the revolution were worth the harm that it caused is a whole different topic. However, I do believe that the Natives and Great Britain got the short end of the stick and that the colonists were very greedy and selfish by causing the revolution.
