That day in history

The History Channel reminds us that:

On [30 June] in 1775, the Continental Congress drafts its rationale for taking up arms against Great Britain in the Articles of War.

In the Articles of War, written one year before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Congress referred to “his Majesty’s most faithful subjects in these Colonies” and laid the blame for colonial discontent not on King George III, but on “attempts of the British Ministry, to carry into execution, by force of arms, several unconstitutional and oppressive acts of the British parliaments for laying taxes in America.”

By phrasing their discontent this way, Congress attempted to notify the king that American colonists were unhappy with parliamentary policy. By July 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed something very different[.]