American Revolution

Americans Will Never Shut Up or Do As We're Told

Two distinctly American traits that powered the Revolution: We don't like being told what to do by our supposed betters, and we really don't like being told to shut up.

Matt Welch | 7.3.2026 7:45 AM

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(Illustration: Hiskia Hurlatu/Dreamstime/Library of Congress)

In 1757, a full generation before the American Revolution, British soldiers in Albany, New York—the main military staging area for the French and Indian War—demanded that the local sheriff open up his jail to detain a town farmer accused of harassing nearby troops.

The sheriff, a physically unimpressive shoemaker in his early 30s named Abraham Yates, refused on the grounds that they had no legal writ. Yates complained about the marauding ways of the occupying forces to John Campbell, Fourth Earl of Loudoun, who had recently been installed as England's commander in chief for all of North America. After Lord Loudoun imperiously retorted that there was a war on, Yates filed a complaint against the commander to New York's lieutenant governor, James De Lancey. That's when things got spicy.

As recounted by the historian Russell Shorto in New York Archives magazine: "Loudoun approached Yates on the street and the two had a public confrontation. Loudoun said he had seen the letter Yates sent to the lieutenant governor and that it was filled with lies. Yates replied that every sentence could be proved. Loudoun had previously used the local jail for military purposes; he now warned Yates against discharging a military prisoner he had confined there. 'Sir,' Yates replied, 'I have already discharged him.' 'By whose order?' Loudoun........

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