It seems to me that Benjamin Franklin - father of another prominent Loyalist - was arguing first for an equal union with the Mother country, so that the 13 colonies, whose population was just 2.5 million at the time, should be able to undo Acts of Parliament and grant themselves freedoms that the even the British (population 5.8 million) did not have; and when he could not achieve this, denounced the system he wanted to join as corrupt and defiling: a union of the living with the dead. Yet he would avoid war unless compelled to it "by dire necessity".

What was that necessity? The right to trade with enemies. How is that for the common good of the old and new lands?

Is that why his son repudiated him?


Quote Originally Posted by steelish View Post
... how would the Americans (many of whom were armed with pitchforks and other farming implements) have defeated the well-armed British?
By getting the French to pay for the rebel army's weapons and uniforms, and eventually to fight for them, too.