Fact Checking the Fourth

 IN LATE JUNE, 1776, John Adams predicted that the first day of July would become forever enshrined in the new independent nation as a cherished holiday. He wasn't far off. More than half the colonists, perfectly content to be British subjects under British rule, were not in favor of declaring independence from the crown and forcing a military confrontation with the most powerful military in the world. Between 1776 and 1780, at least one hundred thousand Americans, "loyalists", got aboard ships and left the country, to live in places like England, Canada, and the Caribbean, preferring safety to revolution. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson all became revolutionaries only after extreme soul searching, all three being very patriotic British subjects. Washington and Franklin were especially loyal to the crown until well after 1770; Jefferson was a loyalist in 1773, but became a revolutionary in 1774, for precise reasons no historian has ever been able to identify. Although Washington never displayed particular talent as a filed tactician, he was an inspiring leader, and Franklin's diplomatic charm lured the french into assisting the revolution, the French were already disposed to make trouble for their traditional English enemies. Without French assistance the revolution would have been doomed; before 1780 ninety percent of arms and ammunition used by the Americans came from France. Jefferson, an introvert, stubbornly resisted writing the declaration of independence, believing that he was too young, that he lacked social status, and that others could do a better job. hew was coerced into doing it by peer pressure. Adams and Franklin did the coercing; Adams pointing out that the young Jefferson was ten times smarter than himself, and ten times more popular. Franklin merely loomed over the young Jefferson with his six foot four inch two hundred and eighty pound bulk. Dreamy Tom also feared being the object of British retaliation. In fact, at one point a contingent of British soldiers came to Monticello looking for him; he had fled into the nearby woods. When the war was miraculously won with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, the new nation faced nearly impossible problems of how to govern such a huge land mass, and how to pay for it. They got advice on federalism from the Iroquois nation, which governed itself over a huge area of territory, effectively.