Abstract
While doing research into the reasons for the American Revolution, I began to doubt the ones that were generally given to students in the United States and abroad. Did a tax on tea, which, absurdly enough, actually lowered the price of tea for the consumer, and the Stamp Act, which indeed inconvenienced both land speculators and their customers, upset the colonial populace enough to drive them into a revolt against their established government? Or was it the idea that these acts came from a legislative body in which they had no vote and were not represented? These reasons must have played a role because they were extensively used by the propagandists or pamphleteers. However, it quickly became clear to me that the Founding Fathers had more substantial reasons to activate the people against King and Parliament. Taking a closer look at the leading Revolutionaries, our Founding Fathers, I not only found that they had more substantial reasons for their fight against Great Britain but also came to the conclusion that they were no revolutionaries. Indeed, I became convinced that the American Revolution was no revolution, at all. At best, it was a war of independence. For many of the Patriots, independence was the ultimate aim. For almost all of them, it was a struggle to retain the power that the colonial elite had established for themselves ever since the first settlers touched North American soil.