The statement is wrong how? The Founding Fathers initially didn't want a split with the mother country. They were eventually pushed to it by British ham-handedness.
I'm not so sure about that. Some of "British ham-handedness" was a reation, an attempt to prevent the unthinkable. Many of our FF were students of the Enlightenment. Our FF were not all of one mind & it took British ham-handedness to get enough people on board, but I believe the revolution was something that was waiting to happen.