The Declaration of Independence Called George III a Tyrant. It’s Just as Applicable to Trump Today.

On March 10, 1776, the brilliant Massachusetts firebrand Mercy Otis Warren wrote a letter to her good friend, John Adams, who was sitting in Congress in Philadelphia. She wrote:

I have been for sometime ballancing [sic] in my mind whether I should again interrupt your important moments, but on reperusing yours of January 8th I find a query unanswered. And though the asking my opinion in so momentous a question as the form of government to be prefered [sic] by a people who have an opportunity to shake off the fetters both of monarchie [sic] and aristocratic tyrany [sic], might be designed to ridicule the sex for paying any attention to political matters, yet I shall venture to give you a serious reply.

And notwithstanding the love of dress, dancing, equipage, finery and folly, notwithstanding the fondness for fasshion [sic], predominates so strongly in the female mind, I hope never to see an American monarchy, however fashionable in Europe, or however it might coincide with the taste for elegance and pleasure in the one sex, or coopperate [sic] with the interest, or passions of the other.

Warren was deeply attached to the republican ideal of government and, in this letter to Adams, who was chronically suspicious of it, written while the country was still a loose association of British colonies, you can see the seeds of Warren’s eventual and ferocious opposition to the Constitution thirteen years later. Her primary gripe would be the absence of a Bill of Rights, a fight she’d won. But she also was suspicious of what she saw as the potential abuse of the proposed national executive, and of the possibility that the obligations of self-government might exhaust the people and make them willing to submit to any government that leaves them alone. In 1805, when most of the dust had settled, she wrote:

Yet it must be acknowledged, that the voice of the people seldom breathes universal murmur, but when the insolence or the oppression of their rulers extorts the bitter complaint. On the contrary, there is a certain supineness which generally overspreads the multitude, and disposes mankind to submit quietly to any form of government, rather than to be at the expense and hazard of resistance. They become attached to ancient modes by habits of obedience, though the reins of authority are sometimes held by the most rigorous hand. Thus we have seen in all ages the many become the slaves of the few; preferring the wretched tranquillity of inglorious ease, they patiently yield to despotic masters, until awakened by multiplied wrongs to the feelings of human nature; which when once aroused to a consciousness of the native freedom and equal rights of man, ever revolts at the idea of servitude.

She knew what she was talking about. And people listened.

Now, every July 4, we read Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, of which Ms. Warren was an unabashed fan, praising the Virginian’s “ingenious and philosophical pen.” We concentrate mainly on the preamble with those high-sounding words that almost nobody in the history of the world had the guts to say in public. But on this Independence Day in 2025, we should all summon up our inner Mercy Otis Warren and declaim the bill of indictment lodged against George III. There are modern applications.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

John Trumbull’s ‘Signing the Declaration of Independence, 28th June 1776,’ commissioned in 1817.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

This was the justification by which Jefferson called George III a tyrant. But there are modern applications.

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