Early freedoms

(from The Founders at Home)

There were Americans thinking and publishing about the nature of government and liberty decades before the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

William Livingston, a lawyer in Massachusetts, was arguing for liberty in the 1750's.  Around 1767 Arthur Lee (of the family from which Robert E. Lee came much later) wrote, "I cannot conceive of the necessity of becoming a slave while there remains a ditch in which one may die free!"

A strong tradition of political freedoms had existed in England for centuries.  For instance, the right to trial by a jury of one's peers may go back to Anglo-Saxon law in the early middle ages.

Even Thomas Aquinas himself in the 1200's said "“a scheme should be carefully worked out which would protect the multitude ruled by a king from falling into the hands of a tyrant.”

As English colonists, they knew they had a right to certain freedoms and saw the King trying to withdraw them.