It was not very long ago that all Americans were taught that the American revolution came about solely and simply because all colonists hated tyranny and loved freedom… . The persistence of such a simple and clear-cut picture of he revolutionary struggle is reflected in the widely-held belief that the chief point at issue between colonies and mother country was the rightness or wrongness of the principle, "taxation without representation is tyranny."

The labors of historians of the past two generations, however, have made it impossible to believe quite so surely that the Revolution was no more and no less than a conflict between a people united in the cause of freedom and a regime which refused to accept freedom as the necessary basis of all government.

The Causes of the American Revolution. John C. Wahlke, ed. 1950