A century and a half ago when the American colonists were still foreign subjects, when there were a few men who had faith in the common people and their destiny and believed that they could rule themselves without a king, in that day to question the divine right of the king to rule was treason. If you will read Bancroft or any other American historian, you will find that a great majority of the colonists were loyal to the king and actually believed that he had a divine right to rule over them…But there were a few men in that day who said, “We don’t need a king. We can govern ourselves.” And they began an agitation that has immortalized them in history. Washington, Adams, Paine— these were the rebels of their day. At first they were opposed by the people and denounced by the press. But they had the moral courage to stand erect and defy all the storm’s detraction. And that is why they are in history, and that is why the great respectable majority of their day sleep in forgotten graves.