If Teabaggers or Republicans were living back during Revolutionary War time...

[LiberalFighter]

how many of them would had fought against the British? Or would they had been on the side of the British?

Weapons were primitive compared to now. Training was minimal. Clothing for adverse winter conditions were atrocious.

They didn't have electronic communication. Population density was lower. Transportation did not allow for much more than the basic short distance.

Only about 45% of the colonists were in opposition to the British.

[johnaries]

1. Conservatives were British sympathizers. The Revolutionaries

were Liberal.

[provis99]

3. not quite true. The Revolutionaries favored slavery, the Loyalists opposed it.

The British tended to free slaves and offer them a chance to fight the Revolutionaries. Washington asked the Continental Congress to do the same, but they refused, and the few slaves that joined the Revolutionaries and were promised their freedom were enslaved again after the Armistice.

[lynne]

6. The loyalist were loyal to the British Crown. The British were importing slaves to the colonists -

- How does that translate to the loyalists were opposed to slavery?

[Donnachaidh]

12. they weren't - they just wanted to cause an uprising

It's totally FALSE that the loyalists were anti-slavery. The Brits knew that slaves outnumbered colonists in some of the southern colonies, and they offered the slaves *freedom* in order to get them to rise up. They were hoping for larger numbers than they actually got.

After the war, the Brits bailed on most if not all. It was a ploy, nothing more.

[Donnachaidh]

11. the Brits offered them freedom to use them as a wedge against the Americans

And they bailed on the slaves that took them up on the offer. The Brits were NOT anti-slavery. They just wanted to use the slaves to cause uprisings in the Southern colonies.

[provis99]

14. There are thousands of black Nova Scotians descended from British soldiers.

they were slaves, were promised their freedom, and were given it even though the Loyalists lost. They moved to Nova Scotia from America to escape American slave catchers trying to re-enslave them. They have quite an interesting story.

Here's one link on them from a Nova Scotia website: http://museum.gov.ns.ca/Blackloyalists/

as one of the posters noted, the bulk of the Loyalists were in northern states like New York. The northern cities most in favor of the Revolution were the slave-trading cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Wilmington. Loyalist sympathies in the South were strongest in the Appalachians, were there was little slavery. The British slave trade was abolished in 1787, just a few years after the Revolutionary War.

When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress left in a long list of grievances against the British crown, but expunged a section condemning the slave trade; they had no problems with that.

Most of the big merchant families of New England, the Browns, Cabots, Amorys, Lowells, Jacksons, Higginsons, Russels, Lees, and Lawrences, who supported the Revolution, depended on the slave trade to fill their ships on the America-bound passages. They also contributed considerable funding to the Revolutionaries.

Slavery within England itself had been banned in 1772, three years before the Revolutionary War. One of the fears of the Revolutionaries had been that England would ban slavery in America as well. The first shots fired in the Revolution were debatably at Williamsburg, not Lexington and Concord, as the Loyalist Governor of Virginia, the Earl of Dunmore, tried to seize the Williamsburg Magazine in April, 1775, with his intention of arming the slaves of Virginia, who had heard of England's abolition of slavery in England, and agitated for abolition in Virginia, too. He was like a Revolutionary War-era John Brown. In essense, the Loyalist leadership was thinking of freeing the slaves before the War started; this probably provoked the American Revolutionaries to rebel as much as the more famous later incidents.

[provis99]

2. Jefferson himself thought only 1/3 were opposed to the British.

He figured another 1/3 still thought of themselves as loyal British subjects, while another 1/3 just wanted to bury their heads in the sand. The American Revolution was not a popular revolution, despite the propaganda that we push in the history classes in school.

[lynne]

4. I thought it was divided into thirds, too -

- although many of those who were "burying their heads in the sand" were truly very removed from what was going on in the nation. People were very spread out - some were living self-sufficiently in remote and mountainous regions - and had little communication with the rest of the colonies. I'm not so sure that they didn't care, I think that it just didn't immediately impact them and they had little info as to what was occurring.

[Fearless]

5. I've heard similar numbers...

The key was convincing the general public that they would have it easier under the new guys than the old.

[rasputin1952]

7. It's basically a 3 slice pie when it comes the Revolution...

Most of the NY'ers were Tory, and approximately 1/3 of the rest of the colonists were as well, 1/3 just wanted to get on with life and the final 1/3 either fought for Independence or supported it in other ways and means. The major cities that were pro-Revolution were Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The others were in various states of Tory/Pro-Revolution/Couldn't Care.

Being "traditionalists", the GOP would fit right in with the Tories, just as now, the economics of the age tend to decide which side of the aisle one wishes to reside on.

I can take this a step further by saying that the GOP is hellbent on creating a "landed gentry" and the rest of the nation would be subservient to them...just like England of old...;)

[tinymontgomery]

8. An interesting book to read is "founding Myths"

Very interesting theories in here. Easy read.

Founding Myths
Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past
RAY RAPHAEL

[Gordan Shumway]

9. Teabaggers are anti progress

so they would be on the side of the British for sure. I wish the media would point out this obvious point, that the Teabaggers are anti-American in every single way.

[Donnachaidh]

10. they would be straight assed TORIES

They'd be toeing the Brit line so hard they'd break toes.

[Arkana]

13. They'd have been Tories.

Those shitheads would have been the last to pick up guns in support of revolution.

[provis99]

15. the Tories did pick up guns; they were just on the other side.

The teabaggers would have just hid in the woods, or ran away from the fight, like Thomas Jefferson did when he was governor of Virginia, and abandoned his responsibility to defend Virginia when it was invaded by British troops.

[KakistocracyHater]

16. they'd be Royalists, FOR King George, yet the Founders of our country

did a helluva lot of 'real things'-like actions, in a time when no such concept of voting in a Senate & voting for a President even existed; every 'leader' inherited power.

Somehow our 21st Century guys are failing at just maintaining our democracy.