An Old Insult Still On The Books

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Two hundred and fifty years ago, King George III put pen to parchment and branded the American colonists traitors. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Issued on Aug. 23, 1775, the royal Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition declared the colonies in a state of “open and avowed rebellion,” ordering imperial officers throughout the empire to hunt down and punish anyone corresponding with the rebels. It showed the Crown as a tyrant, a king refusing to hear his subjects and instead reaching for the scaffold.

The proclamation worked magnificently as a historical accelerant. The Founders had tried diplomacy, sending the Olive Branch Petition to London that July in a final appeal for reconciliation. George III refused to receive it. (RELATED: Freedom At Home, Persecution Abroad)

Instead, he branded colonial leaders traitors and began assembling a massive military expedition across the Atlantic. The effect was the opposite of what he intended. Fence-sitters moved toward independence. Moderates who had argued the king would find reason lost all standing. The proclamation that was meant to crush rebellion instead fueled it, culminating in the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

Benjamin Franklin, ever the wit in a room full of men contemplating the gallows, reportedly captured the stakes with a line that has........

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