Their Lives, Their Fortunes, and Their Sacred Honor

A recent YouTube post by the political organization PragerU betrays the truth about the American Revolution. It goes as follows:

“Britain spent a fortune defending the colonies in the French & Indian War. America’s response? Boycotts, protests, rebellion. Ingratitude that sparked a revolution.”

This description of history is not just a reductive reframing of the issues; it is a crude and provocative statement insulting the intelligence of Americans who remember their history and disrespecting the men who staked everything in their noblest of causes during the American Revolution. 

One commenter in the comments section even sided with PragerU, taking to task any who dares criticize the post: “Are you incapable of creating scenarios from the opposite side?”

Unfortunately for this commenter, true history isn’t about “creating scenarios”; it’s about understanding what actually happened — the totality of the circumstances. So, let us do just that: let’s get straight to the facts. 

While Britain helped finance and supply the war effort in the French and Indian War, colonial Americans provided a substantial share of the manpower, raising, paying, and provisioning tens of thousands of provincial soldiers at significant expense to their own legislatures. That experience shaped colonial views of obligation and legitimacy: having already borne heavy military and fiscal burdens through their own representative institutions, many colonists rejected the claim that Parliament could later impose additional taxes to recover war debts without their consent.

The colonists didn’t just object to being taxed — they objected to how and by whom they were taxed. They insisted that only their own elected colonial assemblies had legitimate authority to levy taxes on them, because those assemblies had long exercised that power locally, whereas Parliament had never given them representation in its own body. That was the core constitutional argument behind the Virginia Resolves and the Declaration of Rights and Grievances — that taxation without consent violated the British constitution and their rights as Englishmen. 

And it did not stop with taxation without representation. The Crown and Parliament made their contempt for colonial rights unmistakable: general warrants, suspicionless searches, and property confiscation; the forced quartering of soldiers; colonists hauled to Britain for alleged crimes; protracted trials without counsel, impartial judges, or juries; and the dissolution of colonial legislatures — together forming a “long train of abuses” that finally culminated in a crisis over representation and the authority to tax.

Politically, leading colonial thinkers like James Otis argued that Parliament’s claim of “virtual representation” was a contradiction in terms: no English subject was legitimately taxed by representatives they never elected, and the colonies’ own legislatures were seen as their true representatives when it came to raising revenue. 

Economically, it’s important to understand that colonial Americans were already bearing fiscal burdens long before the Stamp Act. Many colonies raised significant local taxes for defense, infrastructure, and other public needs — and during the French and Indian War themselves raised, outfitted, and paid tens of thousands of soldiers comparable in number to British regulars sent from across the Atlantic, spending millions from colonial treasuries on war efforts. 

At the same time, British attempts to increase revenue after the war were not large in absolute terms compared to taxation in Britain. Estimates suggest that the per-capita tax burden in the colonies before the Revolution was only a small fraction — roughly two to four percent — of what British taxpayers paid at home. In other words, the colonists were being asked to contribute a relatively modest sum on paper, yet because they had no say in the decision-making process and were being taxed in addition to the local levies they already accepted, the political implications overshadowed the raw numbers. The taxes were seen as an assertion of distant control rather than a fair share of costs, and — critically — as precedents that Parliament could tax the colonies at will. 

This was why even taxes that were relatively small in economic burden — from the Sugar and Stamp Acts to later duties — provoked such intense resistance: the problem was not only the sums, but that they were enacted without consent and without representation, violating colonists’ deeply held views of their rights and the legitimate limits of imperial authority. 

Now, let us return to the YouTube post by PragerU. Another commenter had this to say, doing his darnedest to smear the memory of the Patriots and America’s founding generation: “The Revolution was about money. Many of the Founding Fathers were involved in the tea trade, which Britain was taxing. They made up some BS about liberty to convince the masses to fight for their business interests.”

Beyond the audacity to think that a mere three sentences could possibly suffice to rewrite an entire history — especially one as profound as the American Revolution — what we have here is a case of projection and hyper-skepticism. As such, this type of comment is more of an insight into the person who submitted it than it is a meaningful insight into the history of one of the single most important moments in world history. After all, the American Revolution not only altered the course of world history but profoundly reshaped and informed public attitudes around matters of rights, liberty, and “just government”. One simply cannot overstate the significance — political, philosophical, and economic — of the many sacrifices made by America’s founding generation. To disparage them or their efforts is to misunderstand the history and to deprive them of the gratitude each of us owes them for the rights and privileges we too often take for granted. 

The truth is that the men who signed the Declaration of Independence pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,” and scores of them suffered greatly during the Revolutionary War. This was not a symbolic or theatrical pledge, but a very real risk that carried devastating consequences. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to state outright that the lives of many of the signers would have been far better had they not participated in the Revolution. Many lost property, wealth, social standing, personal safety, and in some cases their families or their lives. Loyalty to the British Crown would, for many, have been the safer, more profitable, and more comfortable path. For example, Benjamin Franklin’s home and printing business were repeatedly threatened, and he lived under constant fear of arrest; Patrick Henry was forced to go into hiding at times due to his outspoken advocacy. Such experiences underscore the tangible dangers faced by individuals who aligned themselves with the revolutionary cause.

To suggest that these men did not have any interest in improving the political and economic position of Americans, along with pursuing higher moral and ethical clarity, is therefore highly misleading and ultimately disrespectful to the men who fought to assert and defend the stake of American liberty. The belief that liberty was merely an invented justification, fabricated to manipulate the masses into fighting on behalf of elite commercial interests, ignores the extensive ideological, philosophical, and legal foundations of the Revolutionary cause. What’s more, it ignores the facts around the final product, the American construction of government: one limited by “few and defined” powers, checks and balances, and deliberate safeguards for individual liberty. Indeed, the Founders were deeply engaged with questions of natural rights, representative government, constitutional restraint, and the rule of law — ideas that were debated, written about, published, and defended at great personal risk long before open war broke out. Historians have documented the depth of this engagement, showing that pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and John Adams’s Thoughts on Government were widely read and discussed, influencing public opinion as well as elite circles.

The belief that all figures surrounding the American Revolution were motivated solely by personal financial gain is a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues at stake; what’s more, it is likely the product of a form of hyper-skepticism that seeks refuge in the most cynical and pessimistic explanation available. While it is certainly true that many wealthy individuals in the colonies sought to improve their financial situations, there is no evidence to suggest that this was the only objective, nor even the primary one. Economic concerns existed, but they were inseparable from political grievances rooted in arbitrary taxation, lack of representation, and governance by a distant authority unaccountable to colonial interests. The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and the subsequent Continental Congresses illustrate that colonial grievances were systematically codified and debated, reflecting concerns that extended well beyond personal profit to issues of political legitimacy and legal rights.

To the extent that money matters are relevant to the object of liberty, they are relevant insofar as liberty enables Americans to become owners of their own destiny — politically, legally, and economically. The Revolution aimed to secure the ability of Americans to flourish economically and to enjoy the protections of law under a system of government more disposed to the interests and grievances of the people themselves. In this way, the rights of property and the rights of people are jointly served, not in opposition but in alignment, alongside whatever salient financial interests may have existed among the few in key positions. 

Reducing the Revolution to mere self-enrichment not only distorts history but collapses a complex struggle for self-governance into a caricature that fails to account for the genuine sacrifice, principle, and vision that animated the American founding. This point is reinforced by the broader Atlantic context: contemporary revolutions in France, the Netherlands, and the Caribbean often mixed economic and political motives, but the American Revolution is distinctive in the degree to which ideological principles structured public discourse and justified risk.

This conclusion is reinforced by the documented experiences of individual Founders whose personal sacrifices are neither incidental nor exaggerated. John Hancock’s commercial enterprises were targeted and severely damaged by British authorities; Thomas Nelson Jr. famously ordered American artillery to fire upon his own home when it was occupied by British forces; Carter Braxton saw his merchant fleet destroyed and died deeply in debt; and several signers were captured, imprisoned, or driven into exile. These men did not gamble recklessly with abstract ideals while insulated from consequence — they knowingly accepted outcomes that materially worsened their lives in pursuit of a political order they believed to be just. 

George Washington, for instance, suffered chronic financial strain despite his position as commander-in-chief, personally funding supplies and equipment for his troops in the early stages of the war. Such examples underscore the tangible intersection of principle and personal cost.

Nor were the ideological commitments of the Revolutionary generation improvised in the heat of conflict. They are preserved in a vast documentary record consisting of pamphlets, sermons, essays, petitions, correspondence, and early constitutional drafts that predate independence by years, and in some cases decades. 

Thinkers such as John Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson articulated coherent theories of consent, natural rights, and limited government rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, English constitutional tradition, and classical republicanism. These ideas were not post hoc rationalizations for rebellion, but deeply internalized convictions that shaped colonial resistance long before separation from Britain appeared inevitable. For instance, John Locke’s influence is evident in Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration, and Adams’s frequent references to the British constitution reveal a deliberate engagement with legal and philosophical frameworks rather than improvisation.

It is also worth noting that skepticism, when elevated to cynicism, is not a neutral posture. To dismiss professed ideals whenever material interests are present imposes a modern interpretive bias that misunderstands both history and human motivation. Political movements are rarely driven by a single cause; they arise from the interaction of principle, interest, fear, and moral judgment. In the Revolutionary context, economic autonomy was widely understood as a prerequisite for political liberty, not a substitute for it. The existence of material concerns does not negate moral purpose; rather, it helps explain why liberty was perceived as essential to both personal dignity and collective self-determination. Colonial debates over land ownership, commercial regulation, and taxation demonstrate that property rights and civic freedom were conceptually intertwined, reinforcing the broader legitimacy of the Revolution.

Finally, any account that reduces the American Revolution to an elite conspiracy fails to explain the sustained participation and sacrifice of ordinary colonists. Farmers, artisans, laborers, and small merchants endured inflation, shortages, violence, and displacement over the course of a long and uncertain war. They did so not because they were deceived by cynical elites, but because they recognized a meaningful connection between self-government and their own security, opportunity, and future. The widespread enlistment in militias and participation in local committees, documented in town records from Massachusetts to South Carolina, shows that revolutionary engagement was popular and often self-directed, rather than simply elite-driven. A historical interpretation that cannot account for why so many individuals repeatedly chose hardship over submission is, by definition, incomplete; it dismisses the great work and sacrifice of the men who embraced the Spirit of ‘76, who committed themselves to the American cause, and who pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to their Declaration of Independence, their declaration of God-given rights, and a revolution that represented “the cause of mankind” and redefined the nature of man’s relationship with his government.