How we cite our quotes: (Article.Sentence)
Quote #1
It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch-treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc. (Intro.2)
Whether or not King George was a tyrant or not, his list of titles sure sound like something a tyrant would use. A lot of these date back to other countries entirely. While it's alien to the American mind for the leader of a country to have a title in another (it's actually forbidden in the Constitution), it's not weird at all for nobility. They intermarried all the time, and it wasn't unusual for a noble from one place to rule another country. In this case, George, a German, ruled Great Britain.
Quote #2
His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof. (1.1)
That would be the freedom the Patriots wanted from the beginning. Laid out there in black and white. To modern eyes, though, this independence doesn't look much like freedom, as it pretty much only applied to landowning white men.
Quote #3
It is agreed that the people of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and on all the other banks of Newfoundland, also in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and at all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish. (3.1)
"The unmolested right" is another way to say freedom. We had the right to take fish, as did Great Britain. That was far more important back then, when a larger percentage of the diet came from the sea.