This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people.

Up next, another story from our series about us, the story of America.

Here to tell it is Hillsdale College Professor Bill McLeigh.

At the conclusion of the French and Indian War, one thing was abundantly clear.

The continent was Britons for the

taking, not the French or Spanish. But with victory came division, change, and events in the

colonies that would forever shape our character. Let's get to episode four, The Roots of Revolution.

Take it away, Bill.

In the end, the British win, the Treaty of Paris settles the fate of North America. It would be British North America.

Americans were very grateful, and rightly so. But the British Prime Minister threw in a lot of money to win the battle, doubling the national debt. Imagine that.

There's a reasonable view on the British side. The colonies ought to be paying part of the freight

for their own protection. That does not seem crazy, doesn't? I mean, it doesn't to me. But for a people who've been used to ruling themselves, their rationale for paying taxes, direct taxes, levied by the parliament and not by their local legislatures, taxation without representation.

It's a form of tyranny.

That's a point of view that also makes a lot of sense.

If you're used to ruling yourself,

you've been ruling yourself from Massachusetts for 150 years.

So, sure, taxation without representation looks a whole lot like tyranny.

There are other things.

Something different, something new, going on culturally.

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