People only normally disagree with that sort of thing when it wasn't their idea...while they agree with it enthusiastically when it was their idea.

The American revolutionaries were terrorists and traitors in the eyes of the English. They were freedom fighters in their own eyes. They were traitors in the eyes of the loyalists in the colonies (who comprised roughly 50% of the population and many of whom fled to Canada at war's end), and the loyalists were traitors in the revolutionaries' eyes.

It's always a question of whose ox is being gored or what side of the fence you're standing on. The reason Islamic fighters in Afghanistan were seen as "freedom fighters" by the USA in the 1980s was simple...they were killing Russians! ;-) Now that the Russians are gone, they're killing Americans. They are still fighting for the same thing they were back then: to drive out a foreign army of occupation.