Before the first shots were fired, before tea hit the water,the American Revolution was already underway, quietly, methodically, and with paperwork.

This episode begins in places that do not make it ontocommemorative mugs. Courtrooms. Docks. Ledger books. It begins with a simple realization that spread through the colonies like a winter chill. British authority was no longer bound by its own rules. The law, once assumed to be ashield, had started to feel like a weapon.

We tend to remember rebellion when it looks dramatic. Weforget it when it looks procedural. But long before muskets cracked at Lexington, colonists were watching ships seized under cannon, neighbors dragged into courts without juries, and legal rights evaporate behind polite language and official seals. These were not accidents. They were patterns.

Today on Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we look at twomaritime flashpoints that forced that truth into the open. The seizure of John Hancock’s ship Liberty. The burning of HMS Gaspee. On the surface, they look like local disputes. They exposed something far more dangerous. A system willing to deny juries, relocate trials, and treat distance itself aspunishment.

These events did not just provoke anger. They taught alesson. When law becomes untethered from consent, resistance stops being radical and starts being rational.

This is the story of how paperwork, procedure, and powerpushed America toward independence.