The success of the American revolution was both confounding and astounding .... More incredible than the event was the motivation. Never before had an overarching cause of revolution been so steadfastly tied to individual liberty.... National identity was the facilitating cause that held together all other reasons and justifications for the pursuit of this liberty. Without a firm belief in who colonial Americans were as a nation, such a war would never have been fought, let alone won. This paper will show the existence of a true national identity prior to the Revolutionary War, and that it was this identity that held the cause together....

National identity can be determined in two ways: actions and worlds. Examining the crisis that evolved throughout the decade following the French and Indian War (1754-1763) a clear picture of the conscious decision of the colonies to choose each other over their Mother country is produced. Each effort to protest the incessant acts to raise a revenue resulted in ever increasing unification and identification...

Colonial rhetoric mirrored this fact. Protest against English usurpation of colonial government never varied much from the initial declarations.... As each colonial petition for redress was met with scorn and condescension, colonial protests gradually grew from single colony issues to include the whole, and their enemy expanded from a faction in Parliament to the whole of England. Communication amongst each other increased, and an awareness of identity developed.

Writings of prominent figures such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson have been well digested and for this reason, well-known authors have been avoided. National identity is composed of the public at large, and in order to discern the mindset of the general populace, newspapers and pamphlets offer a better insight. Papers from Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Georgia, and North and South Carolina were used to gain a cross-continent representation of colonial discourse and rhetoric. Also included are pamphlets representing New England (Dr. Franklin's Examination), the middle colonies (Daniel Dulany's Considerations) and the southern region (Willliam Henry Drayton's Letters of a Freeman). Through wide publications of newspapers and pamphlets, the organized Committees of Correspondence, and frequent town and provincial meetings of freeholders, colonial ideology was disseminated and embraced throughout the continent. A colonial worldview emerged in the private and public communications of ordinary citizens: to stand together, as one country, as brothers and sisters, as keepers of true English liberty, as protectors of this liberty against a corrupt England, or perish a traitor to themselves.