[DiogenesLamp]

Read James Otis. "The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved."

Otis was the man who started the revolution. If you don't believe me, just read what John Adams said about him.

[EternalVigilance]

He was. It’s a crying shame that he took a blow to the head, and pretty much lost it mentally before things really bore fruit.

A truly great man.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Read James Otis. 'The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved.' "

Otis' ideas were driven by British misbehaviors, not some philosophically removed "right of secession" at pleasure.
Indeed, it was Otis around 1760 who first said, "Taxation without representation is tyranny".
His idea was the colonies deserved good representative government, not that they must declare Independence for light & transient reasons.

Regardless, by 1770 health reasons put Otis pretty much out of the picture, though he lived to age 58 in 1783.
So the Founders who wrote & signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 were reformers by choice first, and only revolutionaries by absolute necessity of British abuses & usurpations.