Declaration of Independence (Grievances 1 & 2): The King Blocks Colonial Laws

This is the twenty-first episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. After listing the twenty-seven grievances, the Declaration of Independence faults King George III for treating the colonists’ petitions for redress with contempt. Consequently, the Declaration of Independence explains, the colonies have exhausted their options to reconcile with Great Britain and are declaring independence. Underscoring the importance of the right to petition the government to a free country, the First Congress included the right as one of the fundamental freedoms protected by the First Amendment when it submitted the Bill of Rights to the states for ratification.

This is the twentieth episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. While much of the Declaration is framed in elevated, universal language, the 27th grievance addresses slave revolts and warfare by Native Americans tribes in way that reflects prejudices and fears of the founding era. This episode places this grievance in its historical context and examines its relationship to the Constitution’s treatment of African Americans and Native Americans when it was drafted in 1787.

This is the nineteenth episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. This episode examines the 23rd through 26th grievances, which accuse King George III of abdicating government in America by declaring the colonists outside his protection and waging war against them. Collectively, these grievances reflect the view that it was the Crown, not revolutionary Americans, that had severed the bonds between Britain and the colonies. This episode examines the nature of allegiance under the Constitution as well as the duty of the federal government to protect the states and how power over the military is divided between the legislative and executive branches of government.

This is the eighteenth episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. Grievance 22 charges that the King and Parliament have not just suspended colonial legislatures but have also claimed absolute power to make laws for the colonies, even with respect to local matters. This episode addresses Parliament exercising its authority to suspend colonial legislatures; the role of the Declaratory Act of 1766 and the New York Restraining Act of 1767; and various ways that the Constitution protects state autonomy.

This is the seventeenth episode in a podcast series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by exploring the colonies’ grievances against King George III. Grievance 21 accuses the King and Parliament of abolishing colonial charters, which were the colonies’ fundamental laws that established the terms under which they operated. This included Parliament’s passage of the Massachusetts Government Act in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party, which replaced critical provisions of Massachusetts’s Charter of 1691 in order to increase the King’s authority over the colony. This episode explores the various ways in which the Constitution’s Framers protected state governments from federal encroachment, including Article V of the Constitution, which bars amendments that would abolish equal state suffrage in the Senate.