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Old May 16, 2009, 06:15 PM   #10
BlueTrain
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Join Date: September 26, 2005
Location: Northern Virginia
Posts: 6,141
Well, people were already trying to move away from government in this country a hundred years before the revolution. In most of the early colonies the people that ran things really liked to keep the people under control. That's one reason for many of the things in the constitution. So as long as there was a frontier, people moved there to get away from what basically was what they left Europe for in the first place in some cases. If you like states rights you would have loved some of the colonies.

Later, people used the power of the federal government for their own ends, which is one of the reasons for its existance. Mostly that involved dealing with the Indians, which is another way of saying getting rid of the Indians.

Finally, before the revolution, there hadn't even been a national government. It was all colonial governments, thirteen of them (you probably knew that). It was likely not until after the French & Indian War (them Indians again!) that people in the different colonies began to think of themselves as American. Many of my ancestors came to Virginia between around 1625 and 1660 (and never left). It would be interesting to know when they began to think of themselves as American--or Virginian, rather than English. On the other hand, some branches had only been in England a couple of generations. They may have been really mixed up.
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