maester_millerHmmm, that’s certainly an interesting question. A liberty minded person will almost always be opposed (philosophically at least) to receiving any sort of gift that was obtained through coersion, which would include essentially any gift that comes from a government rather than a individual or voluntary association of individuals.
That said, I believe that most of the aid we received was in the form of loans, rather than gifts. As far as military aid goes, to view this as some sort of gift might be somewhat naieve. European nations didn’t provide aid to the colonies or to the south out of the kindness of their hearts or out of some sense of guilt (like the foreign aid we give out today), they gave it out of unquestionably selfish national interests. The French and the Dutch supported colonists to weaken their rivals in England, not because they loved freedom or some such thing.