George Bancroft, in History of the United States of America Since the Discovery of the Continent, described the Founding Fathers as demigods, men who were placed on this Earth to create such a nation great who was destined by fate to be better than the others. He likened the American Revolution to an act of God. Daniel Boorstin, in The Genius of American Politics, attributes the revolution to a rebellion by colonies that were being treated unfairly under existing laws, driving them to want to create their own and have that ability. John Hope Franklin, in “The Moral Legacy of the Founding Fathers” lays out the idea that these men, held in such high esteem by Bancroft, aimed to protect their own economic interests, rather than the colonies, as Boorstin would imply. The men who founded this country ruthlessly sought the ability to form their own economic system separate from the British one that would benefit them. This included sweeping the huge issue of slavery under the proverbial rug in order to maintain the status quo that they are the ones making the most money. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay “Britain was the mighty mother who raised men capable of laying the foundations of so noble an empire, and she alone could have trained them.” Great Britain did an incredible job of laying the foundations of freedom within the colonies, which pushed the Founding Fathers to implement the will of a divine providence to break away from the patriarch and form a new empire that had no other choice but to be the most powerful . “The people of the continent obeyed a general impulse,” believes George Bancroft presents the idea that our country's first leaders were given the keys to a new sports car that would taken wherever they wanted to go and that they knew exactly where to go. They were like gods. The institution of slavery was never mentioned, and why should it be? When, even before the First Continental Congress, slaves petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for their freedom in 1773 and a British judge declared slavery illegal due to its “odious” nature in 1772. The movement to abolish slavery was started legally in Great Britain and was started that was talked about on our continent, but which never managed to find space in any revolutionary document. This was not because the colonists were unaware, but because they chose to ignore such a topic because of the advantages they would gain by leaving the system as it was. “The American Revolution was not a revolution but simply a colonial rebellion.” There was nothing original about the separation. The men who built the country after the split remained true to their British upbringing. The Declaration of Independence was a list of wrongs under British law, not a list of acts against humanity, as in the case of the rival French revolutionary document “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” Daniel Boorstin dismantles the romanticized idea of the American Revolution founded on the basis of man's freedom and highlights the idea of the country founded on the interpretation of British history and British constitutionalism in his book. Boorstin described the authors' work as an imitation of what they already knew. Boorstin says the Declaration is more an enumeration of the king's defiance of parliamentary law than a decree of political philosophy. He writes?. (1050)
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