Surprisingly, the Torah played an important role in the path that the Revolution ultimately took.
In. 1775, the Americans argument was with Parliament, not King George. They were perfectly happy to keep him as their sovereign, as long as they had their own Parliament. One year later, they pulled down George’s statue in lower Manhattan and melted them down for ammunition.
What happened? Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet, Common Sense, that incited the Americans to reject the right of any man to rule as King over others. I had never actually read it until last May, when I discovered that Paine had largely based his polemic on Gideons refusal to be King and Shmuel’s complaint to Hashem regarding Bnei Yisraels request for a king.