It’s an excellent piece and studying this key law is wonderful and produces many insights. Thank you for sharing.
One this I think of recently that is almost always absent from any discussion is the law. Law is critical and in was owned by a government and that law represents the claim on the territory or land and controls all activity in that land, including rights and property rights. Why do I mention this? I’ve been reflecting on it because the American Revolution was a revolt, uprising, from British Law, the British King or Tyrant, who claimed the land and used the law to control it and the vast wealth directly gained through that control. America was not “America” in 1775, it was Britain. Everyone lived under British law and British citizens, and owned slaves under the laws of Britain that were approved or “ascended to” by the King. Whether those laws covered the territory of London, Wales, or Massachusetts or Virginia, all laws had to be ascended to by the King to become laws. That is what made him a tyrant, a word in the declaration instead of King.
But the declaring independence from tyranny and getting it are two different things. First you have to declare to steal the land and the laws away from the owner —the centralized government of King George III and his lineage who fronted the money through debt to built his new state. Then you have to successfully kick him off the land by stealing it, which means killing or driving out his domestic police force who enforced the law, his laws he ascended to. Good luck with that. I’m glad it worked out in the end, but it wasn’t until 1883 the King George gave up his competing claim to the land and law.