The Chamber of Commerce opposed American Revolution

"1776" by David McCullough, 2005, just finished it.  Amazing what the real events were.  Not so pretty.  After a few years of bar fights in 1775 the fighting started, with at least a couple of small wins.  1776 was a string of disasters followed by another worse one.  The public was only barely for telling the King fuck off.  And in Boston and New York (the only ones it's noted) the Chamber of Commerce was well over half against the rebels.  Shit, I didn't know the Chamber was trying to fuck us up that far back.
Spys everywhere, many called it a civil war at some point during the conflict, war of independence was not used early on to describe it.  Troops were inept,  many ran off, panic retreats leading to slaughter was common, drunkeness was epidemic, even in campaigns, it wasn't uncommon for part of the force to stop advancing and get stonecold drunk if any stores of booze were discovered.  More than once this resulted in capture of troops and further failures.  Misunderstood orders and captured messages was an everyday happening.  Washington couldn't convince his troops to stay clean, disease from poor sanitary habits killed thousands, the British were amazed at the ill health and stink of the Americans.

From Christmas 1776 to a few days into January 1777 Washington accidentally had some victories, as their attacks near Trenton were met with a blizzard and the German hired troops they attacked were caught in their shelters during the storm.  Still the victories were tiny compared to their losses at New York.  The war drug on 6 years longer, until mid 1783.  25,000 dead, 1% of the population, only a few small victories, mostly losses.  They could never have won without France and Holland joining the fight at sea and the French financing it which eventually led to their bankruptcy and the revolution killing most all who had helped us.  The war for the most part was not popular even here, most businesses wealthy were against it.

From other readings I want to comment on the Boston Tea Party.  They myth has nothing to do with it. This was a group of merchants who hired some guys to throw tea off a ship to protest a monopoly of tea importing.  Tea was taxed, one of the only things taxed, so there is the connection, the guy that imported it "was" with each sale collecting tax for the king.  The real gripe was the King had given this one company exclusive rights to sell tea to the colonies as a favor for a loan to the crown a few years earlier.  It was not the principled people of Boston fussing about tax so much as it was a fucking business grudge.