“The Balance of Injustice and the War for Independence; Multiculturalism and the American Revolution of 1776: A Response to David Lyons,” Monthly Review vol. 45, no. 11 (April 1994), pp. 27-37. DOI: 10.14452/MR-045-11-1994-04_2
Many Americans of European ancestry, like me, now see the European colonization of the Western Hemisphere as invasion, conquest, and genocide. Many have grave misgivings about the constitutional settlement that protected trade in slaves, committed government to helping slave catchers, and gave extra votes in Congress to slave owners. The moral perceptions that underlie those reappraisals oblige us to go further. There is good reason to question whether the American Revolution—the British colonies’ fight for freedom from the Crown—was morally justifiable.
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