An Old Insult Still On The Books

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.

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 echoed through American memory ever since: we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

Whether Franklin actually said it is historically uncertain, the attribution didn’t appear in print until 1840, but the sentiment was real, regardless of who first voiced it. These were men formally declared traitors by their king. The humor was gallows humor in the most literal sense.

The war that followed settled the political question definitively. The Treaty of Paris, signed Sep. 3, 1783, officially ended the War of American Independence and recognized the Thirteen Colonies as free and sovereign. King George addressed Parliament, acknowledged reality and the two nations began their long journey toward becoming the closest of allies.

The proclamation of rebellion, having failed utterly as a policy, was simply left on the books. A historical curiosity, an artifact of imperial pique, technically still the unrescinded law of the Crown.

And there it has sat for 250 years.

No one seriously argues that the proclamation carries legal weight today. The United States is not a colony. Its citizens are not subjects of the British Crown.

The Treaty of Paris rendered the document moot as a matter of international law before the ink was dry. But the law and the symbolic record are different things entirely, and the British Crown has never seen fit to formally close the ledger. The proclamation declaring Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the rest to be traitors engaged in open rebellion has never been rescinded. It has simply been ignored.

That is not the same thing.

There is a reason nations issue formal apologies and symbolic rescissions of unjust acts even when those acts are centuries old. It is not about legal liability. It is about the integrity of the historical record and the quality of the relationship going forward. Britain has done this before acknowledging past wrongs not because anyone demanded it, but because honesty about history is a mark of national character.

The 250th anniversary of American independence is a natural moment for exactly this kind of gesture. The relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is, by any measure, the most consequential bilateral alliance in the world. It has survived wars, trade disputes, two world wars, and the long twilight struggle of the Cold War. It is robust enough to survive a little historical honesty.

What would it cost the Crown? A simple formal statement, a royal proclamation rescinding its predecessor acknowledging that the men and women of the American Revolution were not traitors but patriots, acting in the best traditions of the English liberty they had been taught to cherish. It would cost nothing. It would mean something.

The Founders staked their lives on a proposition about self-government. George III responded by calling them criminals. The war proved who was right. The treaty confirmed it. All that remains, two and a half centuries on, is a piece of paper that still, technically, says the wrong thing.

At 250 years, the United States deserves to have that paper formally retired. Not out of grievance — Americans have long since made their peace with the Revolution — but out of respect for the historical record and the friendship that has grown in the centuries since. The British Crown should rescind the Proclamation of 1775. It is the easiest thing in the world to do. It is simply the right thing.

The Founders won. It is time, at last, to take their death warrant off the books.

Leif Larson is a messaging consultant and media strategist for multiple political candidates and issue campaigns across the country.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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