The Dunmore Proclamation, not Lexington and Concord, drove several founders to seek independence

Evidence

At first, founders such as Jefferson, Washington, John Hancock, and John Adams had constituted “restorers and not reformers,” Holton told me. “There is a huge difference between being angry and joining a protest and wanting to declare independence. Two events in 1775 turn the rebellion into a revolution. For men like John Adams, it was the battles of Lexington and Concord. For men like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, the Dunmore Proclamation ignited the turn to independence.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 100

Categorization

• XREF: This is the crux of the Revolutionary-War-cause dispute the reader must articulate — that key founders were pushed to independence by the slavery threat, not by the famous military battles. — connects to: The Lexington and Concord battles converted the late-arriving Paine to independence.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the two independence triggers’ — how different founders cite different events as their turn to revolution, a taxonomy of what actually radicalizes fence-sitters.