Pros and Cons of Independence

Advantages Disadvantages:

Possibility of foreign aid from France

Legitimacy in the world community

Captured soldiers treated as POWs not spies or rebels

Independence might unite different areas of the colonies

Stating for the world the ideological basis of this new country

Freedom from subservience to the King

Might lose friends in England who supported cause of colonists in regard to representation in Parliament but not independence

Might cause division within the colonies

If Revolution failed, the and leaders might be tried and executed as traitors.

Colonies were poorly prepared for war

Fighting the largest military power in the world

No weapons nor manufacturing to make them

Dependent on England for elements needed to fight a war.

Chances of winning the war were slim.

Colonists would be cutting themselves off from the biggest, freest empire in the
world.

Sentimental attachment to homeland.