ea chest that had been accidentally broken. This was not the work of anarchists who wanted to destroy everything in their way, but of Englishmen who simply wanted a redress of grievances. After the Boston Massacre, when the British soldiers who had fired upon the crowd were brought to trial, American lawyers James Otis and John Adams defended them. In any other "revolution," these men would have been calling for the deaths of the offending soldiers. Instead, they were defending them in court. When the war finally began, it took over a year for the colonists to declare their independence. During that year, officers in the Continental Army still drank to "God save the King. When the Declaration of Independence was finally declared, it was more out of desperation than careful planning, as we sought help from foreign nations, particularly the French. In the end, it was the French monarchy, not the Revolutionists. As they had not yet come to power, that helped America win its independence. Through the seven years of the American war, there were no mass executions, no "reigns of terror," no rivers of blood flowing in the streets of America's cities. When a Congressman suggested to George Washington that he raid the countryside around Valley Forge to feed his starving troops, he flatly refused, saying that such an action would put him on the same level as the invaders. Most revolutions consume those who start them; in France, Marat, Robespierre, and Danton all met violent deaths. When Washington was offered a virtual dictatorship by some of his officers at Newburgh, New York, he resisted his natural impulse to take command and urged them to support the republican legislative process. In America, unlike France, where religious dissenters were put to death, there was no wholesale assault on freedom of religion. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, there were devout Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Dutch Reformed, Lutherans, Q...
