As Damon Runyon liked to say (quoting Hugh Keough): “The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”

Looking back 247 years, how would odds-makers have called it, what kind of odds would they have given the gang in Philadelphia? Before answering that, consider the following numbers:

At the end of 1775 the Colonies had a total of 2.4 million people (this includes the slaves), 50% of them under age 16. Estimates vary, but all estimate that the Colonies had roughly 200,000 men to draw from in making an army. Great Britain had 9.2 million people, and a 950,000 man pool for their army.

The Colonies had a Gross Domestic Product of 37 million pounds starling, the British a GDP of 150 million pounds sterling. The British were also drawing revenue from other colonies that added to that total – finding consistent numbers for those colonies is tough, but it would mean that the British had a de facto GDP of more than 150 million pounds, ie. More than 4 times that of the Colonies.

The Colonies had no real army, though the states had militias which had varying degrees of training and readiness. The British army regularly fluctuated in size, but in 1775 had roughly 25,000 men in uniform.

The Colonies nominally had a navy but it faced a host of problems. 13 frigates had been ordered in December 1775, 8 eventually made it to sea. At the same time, the Royal Navy had 250 ships, half of which were rated, that is, were commanded by a captain (and originally had 2 gun decks, but that got blurred, but not important here).

Restated, the Colonies were outnumbered 4 to 1 or worse in essentially every category that counts: manpower pool, size of the economy, size of the navy, and size of the army (the colonies didn’t even have an army). If someone were taking wagers, betting on the British was the way to bet. What were they thinking?

What they were thinking is that they had had enough.

In 1920 a document was uncovered that is believed to be Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration; it includes not simply a declaration of intent and an explanation why, it also contains a description of what they wanted, what they (Jefferson and the rest) wanted in the next government. It closely anticipates the Constitution and in doing so, it explains why they were so willing to take the risk of going to war with country that clearly should have beaten them.

In the document Jefferson calls for a severely limited government, that “Legislative Executive & Judicial Powers shall be for ever separate,” terms in office were all limited, he calls for an end to the slave trade, and he describes a severely constrained executive, one which is barred from a long list of actions to include coining or regulating money, pardoning crimes, declaring war or peace, and a host of others.

This is a document written by someone who has had enough. We too easily steam past what these men were doing: each of these men had enough status and wealth that they could simply choose to accept the British rule and live their lives, and live well. They chose not to, they chose to say: “no more,” knowing well that they were outnumbered and outgunned. When John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence with a signature “that King Gorge might read without his spectacles,” he already was a wanted man. The British troops that has marched out of Boston on the night of April 18th, 1775 had two missions: the first was to seize the weapons the colonials had stockpiled in Concord, the second was to arrest Hancock and Sam Adams.

The Declaration as finally drafted was severely edited – too much according to Jefferson – but the ideas remained. The ideas he spelled out in that early draft were mirrored in the Constitution, a government that served the people, that was subservient to the people, a government of limited powers, with strict orders to safeguard the rights of the citizens, a government that’s only powers were those explicitly granted to it by the people.

By the time the war ended in 1783 the entire nation had felt the cost. In a country of 2.4 million nearly 70,000 had died “in uniform.” 7,000 had died in combat, more than 10,000 had died of disease while prisoners of the British. Many had died of wounds and disease. It is the highest percentage of deaths of any war the US has fought.

But that war gave birth to this nation, this magnificent experiment in limited government, in government as Lincoln described it: “Of the people, By the People, For the People.” Thank God they stood and fought.

Happy Independence Day….. God Bless the United States of America

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