Which of the following rights did british colonists in the united states advocate for in the 1770s?

A Forgotten History:  Trial by Jury and the American Revolution

In 1774 founding father John Adams said, "Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty.  Without them we have no other fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle, and fed and clothed like swine and hounds."

Most Americans recall learning about "no taxation without representation" and the demand for representative government in their history classes.  Few know about the critical role that trial by jury played in the American Revolution.  On this Independence Day, let's learn about this important, yet forgotten, history.

The spark that ignited the fire of the American Revolution was a 1734 trial.  In his New York Weekly Journal, John Peter Zenger criticized Royal Governor William Crosby for removing Justice Lewis Morris from the bench.  Crosby was outraged and had Zenger arrested and imprisoned for seditious libel  because it was a criminal offense to publish statements critical of the government.  The charges against Zenger were heard in a criminal jury trial in 1735.  Zenger's attorney, Andrew Hamilton, appealed directly to the colonists who comprised the jury.  "Jurymen are to see with their own eyes, hear with their own ears, and to make use of their own consciences and understandings, in judging the lives, liberties, or estates of their fellow subjects."  He argued that they had the right to challenge their rulers.  The jury found Zenger not guilty because he had printed the truth.  

Zenger's case guaranteed freedom of the press.  Newspaper editors and publishers could no longer be found guilty for libel when they printed the truth.  Colonial newspapers were free to openly criticize the British crown, and it was in the press that the revolutionary fervor grew.  Founding father Gouvernor Morris later wrote, "The trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American Freedom, the morning star of liberty that subsequently revolutionized America." 

Colonists used the courts to challenge other British laws they believed were unfair.  Among the worst were the British Navigation Acts.  Under these laws, only British-owned ships could bring imported goods to the colonies.  Likewise, the only option for American businesses that wanted to export goods was to use British ships.  These ship owners charged enormous fees, and the British government handed the entire market to them.  Colonists were at their mercy.  Why should colonial businesses have to pay what amounted to a high tax to import and export goods?   Why exclude American-owned ships that could haul the goods for less?    After decades of these abuses, the Americans said no more.  They used their own colonial ships and traded with foreign countries and territories directly.  British authorities arrested them, but colonial juries refused to convict.

Great Britain responded by taking away the right to trial by jury--even though that right had been established in the 1215 Magna Carta and reaffirmed in the 1689 British Bill of Rights.  The 1765 Stamp Act forced colonists who violated that law to appear in admiralty courts with no juries.  Colonists issued a formal response to Parliament.  It is in this response that you first find "no taxation without representation."  It also stated that "trial by jury is the inherent and invaluable right of every British subject of these colonies."  

Parliament passed the Intolerable Acts in 1774.  This law restricted the use of colonial juries, limited who could serve on juries and gave royal judges control of jury selection.  The judges stacked the juries with Tories, American colonists who supported the Crown, and convicted those who violated the King's laws.  The First Continental Congress met in response and authored the Bill of Rights Letters to the British and the Colonists, an open letter to the people in America and Great Britain.  Believed to be written by John Jay, who later became the first chief justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, it stated, "Know then that we claim all the benefits secured to the subject by the English Constitution, and particularly the inestimable right of trial by jury."

In 1775, the right to trial by jury became a focal point of the American Revolution.  In the Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, the Continental Congress cited the denial of "the accustomed and inestimable privilege of trial by jury, in cases of both life and property."  In 1776, the charges listed against King George III in our Declaration of Independence  included "depriving us in many cases, the benefits of trial by jury."  That same year, trial by jury was preserved in each colony's new state constitution.  

It was trial by jury that also led to the creation of the Bill of Rights.  When the new United States Constitution was drafted in 1787, it preserved trial by jury in criminal cases but not in civil cases.  This failure nearly derailed  its ratification.  Debate raged for months.  The solution was the Massachusetts Compromise, which called for the creation of the Bill of Rights.  The right to trial by jury in civil cases is the 7th Amendment.  We enjoy the other nine because of the 7th.

In 1961, Justice Hugo Black wrote, "[The denial of trial by jury] led first to the colonization of this country, later to the war that won its independence, and finally, to the Bill of Rights."   

Trial by jury is central to our history and to the rights we have as Americans today.  Learn about it.  Celebrate it.  Protect it.