There were two different sets of laws. The assemblies were legal under American law and illegal under British law. The war was the means by which it was determined which set of laws were applicable.
I think the big thing that kept the post-war period relatively nonviolent was that there were places for people on the losing side to go. They could go to Canada or the Caribbean or back to Britain. So they weren’t around as a potential target for one of the post-war purges that stained so many other revolutions.
First, you’ve just radically changed your argument. Second, that’s ultimately an imaginary and irrelevant argument anyhow. The very question of what was the legitimate government of America was what the war answered. Further, I would argue that Parliament was legally incorrect, and neither they nor the King had the power they claimed. It should also be noted that their assumption of power was not based on a particular reading of the colonial charters.
I haven’t seen any evidence that anyone particularly wanted a purge in the first place. Having an option to leave might possibly have helped - but not many actually did so.
Nobody wants a purge in the immediate aftermath of a change in government. The people that are now in power are all happy that they won and they’re still predicting everything will be perfect from now on. They’re in such a good mood they’re even willing to forgive their opponents.
But a year or two later, when reality has returned and it’s becoming clear that the new system isn’t going to be able to deliver everything it promised, then the temptation to pick a scapegoat arises. Just blame all the your problems are the counter-revolutionary element that’s sabotaging society and direct the general public’s anger and resentment away from you and towards them.
Even in America there was a lot of anti-British hostility. But the British weren’t in the immediate area so that hostility remained mostly theoretical.
Essentially, then, the degree of purge depended on the level to which the dissenters acquiesced once the war was settled.
Also keep in mind the war lasted from 1776 to 1783 with some areas mainly under revolutionary control much of that time. People who chose to leave had plenty of time to make up their minds before Yorktown.
I guess one question to ask, too, is to what extent this was an internecine revolution? Were many communities divided, or did some of the country go along, and other areas were staunch loyalists? I imagine even the die-hard revolutionaries had better things to do than to wander into an area where the risk was many of the locals would turn out en masse to “suggest” they take their forfeiture laws elsewhere… And did they have the manpower to waste on community liaison when the war was consuming so much of the resources?
As for decisions to move; I suspect it had little to do with tax incentives, and more to do with the level of hostility and risk in staying. Perhaps some communities felt more strongly about the dissent than others. Plus other issues figured in - how much they had to lose by leaving. If all your assets are forfeit, and that’s the general mood of the government, then in that community odds are you are better off skipping town.
No, I’m challenging yours. 
Were the Confederate States of America “legal” when they challenged the United States government over a disagreement?
The area where the War for Independence was most clearly a civil war is the southern colonies. It’s also the only place where the British ever controlled (to some extent at least) significant territory, in Georgia and South Carolina. There much of the fighting is local guerilla action, or border raids, or the settling of local feuds. While South Carolina passed a confiscation act in 1782, it seems that most of the proscribed individuals eventually returned to South Carolina.
The second citation I give seems to back up your second paragraph. Loyalists were able to return to South Carolina because a) they had only supported the British for pragmatic reasons, b) they were properly contrite, and c) South Carolina needed their capital and expertise to rebuild. There might well have been a political, regional split as well between patriots: low-land planters vs backcountry patriots.
History has generally focused on those loyalists who fled the United States. Many more stayed, though. I wonder how that worked. Perhaps most loyalists who stayed weren’t rich enough to have their property confiscated, most people on either side weren’t fire-eaters, and there was a long period during the war to work things out – almost two years between Yorktown and the peace treaty.
No, because they lost.
They were also fighting for a wicked cause, but that’s not essential here. After all, as Doctor Johnson said about the patriots, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”
They had plenty of time to leave even after Yorktown. A lot of people forget that the Battle of Yorktown didn’t end the war; it went on for another two years.
But that’s somewhat beside the point. Picking up and relocating would have been a major decision. I think a lot of people would have decided to wait out the war and see who won. A loyalist who abandoned his farm in 1778 would have felt kind of foolish if the British had won the war and restored their authority in 1782. So most people reasonably waited until the war was virtually over and the results were clear before deciding if they were going to move.
As for a post-war purge, I don’t feel it’s based on just what the losers do. As I wrote, sometimes the winners need a scapegoat.
It was the same situation. Secession and the formation of a new country was legal under Confederate law. It was not (despite arguments to the contrary) legal under American law. And it would have had the same outcome if the Confederates had won; it wouldn’t have mattered that what they did was illegal under American law because American law would no longer apply to them.
Your are changing the argument. Specifically, you argued that the governments under the revolution were not continuations of the existing government. I said that they were, and pointed out that the colonial governments during the Revolutionary War maintained specific forms of government, retained the same structure, operated under the same basic rules, and considered themselves to be continuing the same role. I specifically deny your concept that changing a hypothetical sovereign represented a hard stop on the continuity of government - especially since it’s blatantly obvious the same government did continue.
If you want further proof, I would point out that dispute between the representative government and agents appointed by the monarchy started years before the Declaration of Independence. This is is important because the elected bodies simply continued operating even without royal approval before the Revolution itself took began.
Regardless, I would mostly agree with LittleNemo over your specific reference to the Confederacy. The legitimacy of governments occurs more or less by common consent and international recognition. The Confederacy failed to achieve either. For that matter, the Confederate state governments also were more or less continuous.
We are at an impasse. Great Britain was the government. Those guys were in rebellion because they didn’t want to pay their taxes.
Perhaps we argue over semantics. You define government as the guys who are in control, I define government as the legitimate government until the rebels win.
Parliament claimed government power, certainly. However, it’s an extremely dubious theory in that there certainly was no documentation giving them that right. In fact, the colonies had no legal relationship to England or Great Britain. They had an executive relationship to the monarchy, but even that was surprisingly limited. Otherwise, the colonies always held for themselves the same powers locally that Parliaments did.
I mean, all you’re doing is just asserting that Parliament was right. Would you be so kind as to explain why Parliament’s justifications for claiming full executive, legislative, and judicial authority over the colonies was correct, and why specifically their claims were more legitimate than competing claims backed by established legal tradition?
First, I am arguing about law, history, tradition, and mot importantly what actually happened, none of which remotely resembles semantics. I don’t think you actually have an argument, since you don’t seem to be able to articulate anything beyond a blind assertion. DO you have anything beyond saying, “Nuh-uh!” in response?
Since you are so vocal in emphasising that you are arguing about law, let me tell you that from a legal point of view your argument is spurious. Under the international law rules applicable at the time, there was no doubt that Britain had valid title to the colonies - either original title because the colonies had been set up as settlements by Britain, or as derivative title because Britain had conquered the colonies from other powers that had set them up before (as in the case of New York). Both were, at the time, legally valid grounds for establishing title under international law, so there can be no doubt that prior to the American Revolution, the colonies were under the jurisdiction of Britain. And under British law, the doctrine of sovereignty of Parliament was, by that time, already established. So from a legal point of view, the powers of the Westminster Parliament certainly extended over the colonies.
Would you now be so kind as to explain the “competing claims backed by established legal tradition” that you refer to?
The government that was actually functioning in America had a legitimate claim to being the legal government of the United States, even if it wasn’t recognized as such by most other countries.
Look at Taiwan. Would you argue that President Tsai isn’t running a real government?
The colonies were all established under titles granted by British monarchs. Each of these charters granted specific rights and privileges to the colonists. Critically, however, all of these colonies were run under established British law and custom. Not all of which was specifically documented, but was well understood by educated Englishmen. Particularly important for our purposes was the critical fact that no Englishman could be taxed without consent by a representative. English monarchs therefore depended on consent for the resources to government.
During the English Civil War, this principle was confirmed (after getting a LOT of people killed, but that’s a whole 'nother story). While Parliament took over many state functions from the monarchy in the century that followed, the colonies were also developing rapidly and along very similar lines. Parliament held the responsible authority over several regions: England, Wales, and Scotland. Of critical importance was Ireland, however, because Parliament exercised authority there by virtue of pure military power. Whatever they said, went, and the Irish had no representation part fro Englishmen or Scots who owned power there. The Irish parliament, itself purely Protestant and in which few Irish could have served even if also Protestant, was a purely puppet government with no independent authority.
This was not so in the colonies, and more importantly, never had been so. The Royal governors didn’t even exist in the early colonies, which always governed their own affairs.
This becomes important following the Seven ears’ War because of Parliament’s attempts to tax the colonists (not even the colonies, but the people who lived there) directly, to directly hamper and hinder inter-colonial trade (this was partly accidental, due to deep and self-satisfied ignorance among Parliamentarians), to maintain a standing army among the colonies, to control the judiciary entirely, and to rewrite the laws or dissolve the colonial government at will. Parliament had direct power to do precisely none of these. In some cases, the Royal Governor had some authority to do some of theses, some of the time.
The specific divided here is that Parliament blindly assumed it held such authory. Lord North, and a group of powerful lords, intended fully to reduce the colonies to a dependant status similar to Ireland. For this, they had no authority, which is exactly why the colonies revolted for the exact same reason as Parliament in the English Civil War - except in this case, the colonies actually were being assaulted by troops under the authority of a corrupted monarchy.
Taiwan is a bad example, because the regime in Taipei (which is, of course, a “real” government) doesn’t lay claim to being the government of a state of Taiwan. It claims to be the government of all of China, including the mainland. The PRC government, on the other hand, claims to be the legitimate government of all of China, including the island of Taiwan. The scenario is thus one where you have two entities - mainland China and the isalnd of Taiwan - which are, for practical purposes, both independent states; yet neitehr side in the conflict claims that this is the case.
As for the United States: It is true that under international law, specifically the ex factis ius oritur principle, the question whether an entity is an independent state is a factual assessment: If it has territory, with a population living on it, and an authority that exercises governmental control over it, then it is objectively a state, no matter what other countries say. It is, however, also true that international law applies a high threshold for considering these requirements to be met. A rebellion within the territory of another state which leads to the government of that state to lose control over parts of that territory is not enough (if it were, then the ISIS-controlled areas in the Middle East would have started to be considered a state long ago). At some point during the Revolutionary War, the revolutionary governments might have exceeded the threshold for control over the American colonies in a manner that’s sufficient for statehood under international law. I’m not saying the exact time when this occurred can be determined; and the question became, of course, moot with the Treaty of Paris. But certainly, under international law, the jurisdiction of Britain over the colonies did not end the moment the Revolutionary War started.
Even more critically, however, it was understood by Englishmen at the time already that the crucial feature of the British constitution is sovereignty of Parliament. Parliament is free to override the unwritten conventions you refer to by adopting a statute to the contrary. It is true that in the British collective mind, there is a general feeling that some things should “just not be done”, and that Parliament should not adopt statutes contravening certain values. It is, however, also understood that if Parliament ever did so, that would be a valid and enforceable law. Arguing to the contrary would require to argue that the values which Parliament violates have a legally (as opposed to merely politically) binding force in such a way that Parliament is bound by them and unable to deviate from them. That is not a principle included in present-day British constitutional law, and it was not in 1776 or 1783.
How do you feel about France? The British government didn’t officially withdraw its claims to rule France until 1760. By your theory of legal recognition that means France didn’t have a legitimate government before then.
Actually not. There is some ambiguity but for all practical purposes, there aren’t any real claims by Taiwan to being the legitimate government of all of China. However, China has stated that a declaration of independence by Taiwan would be a red line and a reason for war.