stevep
I'm afraid you've been victimized by a slightly biased education.

I've read many a British history on the ARW, and there are a few facts that many will studiously ignore. The colonies were at the time a growing, but still third world environment. Many of the laws that existed in the Colonies set forth by Parliament strangled colonial trade, but were ignored to help in the growth of the Colonies and British companies as well (rum, molasses, and slaves). This went on from the founding of the colonies until 1763.
1763 is a very important date in American history, and it's not because the whole country suddenly found the urge to listen to a bunch of rabble-rousers calling themselves the "Sons of Liberty". It was in that year the Seven Years War ended. The feeling came about that, as the war had largely passed the colonies (except in the interior), that the colonialists had not paid their "fair share" of the War Debt. That was a political matter and whether true or not could be argued till Doomsday.
But for the first time large garrisons would be placed in the colonies to:
1) Defend them from foreign attack
2) Keep a eye on the settlers.
The Americans didn't feel they needed the troops there as the threat from France had gone from slight to remote. And nobody was fooled that the second reason wasn't true. The orders had gone out w/o consideration for the fact that the colonies had no permanent military tradition, so no installations, no barracks, no place to put the troops except in private homes (Third Amendment

).
The problem was, in 1763 orders were sent out for the RIGID ENFORCEMENT OF THE ANTI-SMUGGLING LAWS. This caused such a massive imbalance of trade between the colonies and Great Britain (in Britain's favor), that by the end of 1765 every last conceivable debt the colonies could have ever "owed" was already paid off, leaving the economy of the colonies in a deep depression. Paging Sam Adams.
The problem with all this was the money was flowing into the hands of private British commerce, NOT THE GOVERNMENT. So as far as they were concerned, they hadn't seen a farthing. You can imagine what it was like for Americans in 1766 being told they had to "pay up".

So yes, in the strictest sense possible, the Americans hadn't "paid their share" to the government. But they sure paid their share to British commercial interests.
The long bloody civil war did saddle us with great debts, which we paid off. BTW, the need to defend our merchant marine forced us to develop a navy for ourselves, ultimately to go to war (one of the reasons) so those merchant seaman would not be carried off into slavery by Arab pirates (and Christian ones). It also kept us out of the Napoleonic Wars and put us in a position to buy Louisiana. Not bad, and I'm only up to 1842 (When the debts were paid off).
All wars have war-profiteers, and war-mongers. They come out in a war like thieves robbing the dead after a battle. The Opposition made enormous political advantage from North's fall, but I begrudge them nothing. If they had been listened to, starting in 1763, Britannia could well be ruling the world to this day, beyond even the dreams of you-know-who.