America did not split away from Britain because of the Tea Tax. It split away because it was time. When the Constitution was written, “We the People of the United States of America” had the smallest percentage of foreign-born than at any time before or since.
The last massive immigration from Europe ended by 1715, and that was a small one.

In 1787 Americans had been born here, their parents had been born here, their grandparents had been born here, and their GREAT grandparents had been born here.

Adam Smith’s proposal in Wealth of Nations in 1776, that Americans be allowed seats in Parliament, had been considered and rejected during the Revolution. Smith also mentioned in that same book that our population increase was natural, and that we had been BORN here. America was big enough to go it alone. America was an empire in itself.

So the split occurred.

“Treason never prospers, for if it prospers it is no longer treason.” So Washington is a hero of the ages and Lee never regained his American citizenship during his lifetime. But the South seceded because it was long past time. The Northern and Southern nations had long since been established, and the South gained nothing from the Union and paid all its bills plus a subsidy to avoid tariffs to Northern industry.

In 1865 the Southern nation became an occupied nation. So it remains today.

The same process occurred when Constantine moved the capitol from Rome to Byzantium. For a long time the Western church was subservient to the Emperor.

It was against Charlemagne’s will that he was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by the pope. The pope literally snuck up behind him and put the crown on his head!

But the time had come. It had been almost five hundred years since the Roman capitol had been moved east. The western empire had driven off the Islamic invasions and had become entirely separate from the East. It was a new nationality, and it was time for it to have its own church and its own emperor.

Just as people look at the Tea Tax as the history-making splitter in 1775, so they look at the division of the Eastern and Western Churches as the result of theological hair-splitting. If you want to avoid history, the most picayune example you can find that even historians take seriously is called the filioque.

In the Nicene Creed, the Roman Catholic Church adopted the words that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father AND the Son. The Eastern Church said the Holy Spirit proceeded ONLY from the Father. That is called the filioque, and theologians take it seriously.

But the reason the old Roman Empire split in two was not a couple of words in a creed, and the reason America split from Britain was not the Tea Tax and the reason the South split from the North was not just slavery.

It was TIME.