Will I Fight for Equality? It Depends

In colonial America you were an Englishman, or you were not.

The common claim was that an Englishman was an Englishman no matter where he stood in the world. The colonists increasingly took this to mean that they were equal in status and rights to any other English subject. British people of the upper classes viewed that idea with some distaste and were often offended when approached with familiarity by a colonial American.

Most Americans thought that British attitudes about class and title were at best laughable, at worst a corruption of the foulest sort. On the frontier a man was valued...