A large historiography concerns the reasons the Americans revolted and successfully broke away. The "Patriots", an insulting term used by the British that was proudly adopted by the Americans, stressed the constitutional rights of Englishmen, especially "No taxation without representation." Historians since the 1960s have emphasized that the Patriot constitutional argument was made possible by the emergence of a sense of American nationalism that united all 13 colonies. In turn, that nationalism was rooted in a Republican value system that demanded consent of the governed and opposed aristocratic control. In Britain itself, republicanism was a fringe view since it challenged the aristocratic control of the British political system. There were no aristocracy or nobility in the 13 colonies, and instead, the colonial political system was based on the winners of free elections, which were open to the majority of white men. In the analysis of the coming of the Revolution, historians in recent decades have mostly used one of three approaches.