American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and
political revolution that
occurred in British America between
1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in
the American
Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from
the British Crown,
establishing the constitution and
establishing the United States of America,
the first modern constitutional liberal democracy.
American
colonists objected to being taxed by the British Parliament, a
body in which they had no
direct representation. Before the 1760s, Britain's American colonies
had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in
their internal affairs, which were locally governed by colonial
legislatures. The passage of the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed internal taxes
on the colonies, which led to colonial protest, and the meeting of
representatives of several colonies in the Stamp Act Congress.
Tensions relaxed with the British repeal of the Stamp Act, but flared again
with the passage of the Townshend Acts in 1767. The British
government deployed troops to Boston in
1768 to quell unrest, leading to the Boston Massacre in 1770. The British
government repealed most of the Townshend duties in 1770, but retained the tax
on tea in order to symbolically assert Parliament's right to tax the colonies.
The burning of the Gaspee in Rhode Island in 1772, the passage of
the Tea Act of 1773 and
the Boston Tea Party in
December 1773 led to a new escalation in tensions. The British responded by closing Boston Harbor and enacting a series of punitive laws which effectively
rescinded Massachusetts Bay
Colony's privileges of self-government. The other colonies rallied
behind Massachusetts, and twelve of the thirteen colonies sent delegates in
late 1774 to form a Continental
Congress for the coordination of their resistance to
Britain. Opponents of Britain were known as Patriots or Whigs,
while colonists who retained their allegiance to the Crown were known as Loyalists or Tories.
Open warfare erupted when British regulars sent to capture a cache
of military supplies were confronted by local Patriot militia at Lexington
and Concord on April 19, 1775. Patriot militia, joined by the
newly formed Continental Army,
then put British forces in Boston under siege by land and their forces withdrew
by sea. Each colony formed a Provincial Congress,
which assumed power from the former colonial governments, suppressed Loyalism,
and contributed to the Continental Army led by Commander in Chief General George Washington. The Patriots
unsuccessfully attempted to
invade Quebec and rally sympathetic colonists there during the
winter of 1775–76.
The Continental Congress declared British King George III a tyrant who trampled the
colonists' rights as Englishmen,
and they pronounced
the colonies free and independent states on July 4,
1776. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to
reject rule by monarchy and aristocracy. The Declaration of Independence
proclaimed that all men are
created equal, though it was not until later centuries that
constitutional amendments and federal laws would increasingly grant equal
rights to African Americans, Native Americans, poor white men, and women.
Among the significant results of the war were American independence and
the end of British mercantilism in
America, opening up worldwide trade for the United States - including with
Britain. The Americans soon adopted the United States
Constitution, replacing the weak Confederation by establishing a
comparatively strong national government structured as a federal republic, which included an
elected executive,
a national
judiciary, and an elected bicameral Congress representing
states in the Senate and
the population in the House
of Representatives. It is the world's first federal democratic
republic founded on the consent of the
governed. Shortly after a Bill of Rights was
ratified as the first ten amendments,
guaranteeing fundamental rights used as justification for the revolution. Around 60,000 Loyalists migrated
to other British territories, particularly to Canada, but the great
majority remained in the United States.
Origin
1651–1748: Early seeds
King Philip's War ended
in 1678, which the New England colonies fought without any military assistance
from England, and this contributed to the development of a unique identity
separate from that of the British people. But King Charles II determined
to bring the New England colonies under a more centralized administration in
the 1680s to regulate trade to more effectively benefit the homeland. The New England colonists fiercely
opposed his efforts, and the Crown nullified their colonial charters in
response. Charles' successor James II finalized
these efforts in 1686, establishing the consolidated Dominion of New
England. Dominion rule triggered bitter resentment throughout New
England; the enforcement of the unpopular Navigation Acts and the curtailing of
local democracy angered the colonists. New Englanders were encouraged, however,
by a change of government in
England which saw James II effectively abdicate, and a populist uprising in New
England overthrew Dominion rule on April 18, 1689. Colonial governments reasserted their
control after the revolt, and successive Crown governments made no more
attempts to restore the Dominion.
Some writers begin their histories of the American Revolution
with the British coalition victory in the Seven Years' War in 1763, viewing
the French and Indian War as
though it were the American theater of the Seven Years' War. Lawrence Henry Gipson writes:
It may be said as truly that the American
Revolution was an aftermath of the Anglo-French conflict in the New World
carried on between 1754 and 1763.
The Royal
Proclamation of 1763 redrew boundaries of the lands west of
newly-British Quebec and
west of a line running along the crest of the Allegheny Mountains,
making them indigenous territory and barred to colonial settlement for two
years. The colonists protested, and the boundary line was adjusted in a series
of treaties with indigenous
tribes. In 1768, the Iroquois agreed to the Treaty of Fort
Stanwix, and the Cherokee agreed to the Treaty of Hard Labour followed
in 1770 by the Treaty of Lochaber.
The treaties opened most of Kentucky and West Virginia to colonial settlement.
The new map was drawn up at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768 which moved the
line much farther to the west, from the green line to the red line on the map
at right.[25]
1764–1766: Taxes imposed and withdrawn
Grenville had asserted in 1762 that the whole revenue of the
custom houses in America amounted to one or two thousand pounds a year, and
that the English exchequer was paying between seven and eight thousand pounds a
year to collect. Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth
of Nations that Parliament "has never hitherto demanded of [the
American colonies] anything which even approached to a just proportion to what
was paid by their fellow subjects at home." Benjamin Franklin would later testify in
Parliament in 1766 to the contrary, that Americans already contributed heavily
to the defense of the Empire. He argued that local governments had raised,
outfitted, and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France—as many as Britain itself
sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone.
Parliament finally passed the Stamp Act in March 1765, which
imposed direct taxes on
the colonies for the first time. All official documents, newspapers, almanacs,
and pamphlets were required to have the stamps—even decks of playing cards. The
colonists did not object that the taxes were high; they were actually low.[b] They objected to their lack of
representation in the Parliament, which gave them no voice concerning
legislation that affected them. However, at the conclusion of the recent war
the Crown had to deal with approximately 1,500 politically well-connected
British Army officers. The decision was made to keep them on active duty with
full pay, but they - and their commands -
also had to be stationed somewhere. Stationing a standing army in Great Britain
during peacetime was politically unacceptable, so the next determination was
made to station them in America and have the Americans pay them. The soldiers
had no military mission; they were not there to defend the colonies because
there was no current threat to the colonies.
The Sons of Liberty formed
shortly after the Act in 1765, and they used public demonstrations, boycotts,
and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable.
In Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of the vice admiralty court
and looted the home of chief justice Thomas
Hutchinson. Several legislatures called for united action, and nine
colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in
New York City in October. Moderates led by John Dickinson drew
up a Declaration
of Rights and Grievances stating that taxes passed without
representation violated their rights as Englishmen,
and colonists emphasized their determination by boycotting imports of British
merchandise.
The Parliament at Westminster saw itself as the supreme
lawmaking authority throughout the Empire and
thus entitled to levy any tax without colonial approval or even consultation. They argued that the colonies were
legally British corporations subordinate to the British parliament, and they
pointed to numerous instances where Parliament had made laws in the past that
were binding on the colonies. Parliament insisted that the colonies
effectively enjoyed a "virtual
representation" as most British people did, as only a small
minority of the British population elected representatives to Parliament, but Americans such as James Otis maintained that there was no
one in Parliament responsible specifically for any colonial constituency, so
they were not "virtually represented" by anyone in Parliament at all.
The Rockingham government came to power in
July 1765, and Parliament debated whether to repeal the stamp tax or to send an
army to enforce it. Benjamin Franklin made the case for repeal, explaining that
the colonies had spent heavily in manpower, money, and blood defending the
empire in a series of wars against the French and indigenous people, and that
further taxes to pay for those wars were unjust and might bring about a
rebellion. Parliament agreed and repealed the tax on February 21, 1766, but
they insisted in the Declaratory Act of March 1766 that they
retained full power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases
whatsoever". The repeal nonetheless caused widespread
celebrations in the colonies.
1767–1773: Townshend Acts and the Tea Act
In February 1768, the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay issued a
circular letter to the other colonies urging them to coordinate
resistance. The governor dissolved the assembly when it refused to rescind the
letter. Meanwhile, a riot broke out in Boston in June 1768 over the seizure of
the sloop Liberty, owned by John Hancock, for alleged smuggling. Customs
officials were forced to flee, prompting the British to deploy troops to Boston.
A Boston town meeting declared that no obedience was due to parliamentary laws
and called for the convening of a convention. A convention assembled but only
issued a mild protest before dissolving itself. In January 1769, Parliament
responded to the unrest by reactivating the Treason Act 1543 which called for
subjects outside the realm to face trials for treason in England. The governor
of Massachusetts was instructed to collect evidence of said treason, and the
threat caused widespread outrage, though it was not carried out.
On March 5, 1770, a large crowd gathered around a group of
British soldiers on a Boston street. The crowd grew threatening, throwing
snowballs, rocks, and debris at them. One soldier was clubbed and fell. There was no order to fire, but the
soldiers fired into the crowd anyway. They hit 11 people; three civilians died
at the scene of the shooting, and two died after the incident. The event
quickly came to be called the Boston Massacre. The soldiers were tried and
acquitted (defended by John Adams), but the
widespread descriptions soon began to turn colonial sentiment against the
British. This began a downward spiral in the relationship between Britain and
the Province of Massachusetts.
A new ministry under Lord North came to power in 1770, and
Parliament withdrew all taxes except the tax on tea, giving up its efforts to
raise revenue while maintaining the right to tax. This temporarily resolved the
crisis, and the boycott of British goods largely ceased, with only the more
radical patriots such as Samuel Adams continuing to agitate.[citation needed]
In 1772, it became known that the Crown intended to pay fixed
salaries to the governors and judges in Massachusetts, which had been paid by
local authorities. This would reduce the influence of colonial representatives
over their government. Samuel Adams in Boston set about creating new Committees
of Correspondence, which linked Patriots in all 13 colonies and eventually
provided the framework for a rebel government. Virginia, the largest colony,
set up its Committee of Correspondence in early 1773, on which Patrick Henry
and Thomas Jefferson served.
A total of about 7,000 to 8,000 Patriots served on
"Committees of Correspondence" at the colonial and local levels,
comprising most of the leadership in their communities. Loyalists were
excluded. The committees became the leaders of the American resistance to
British actions, and later largely determined the war effort at the state and
local level. When the First Continental Congress decided to boycott British
products, the colonial and local Committees took charge, examining merchant
records and publishing the names of merchants who attempted to defy the boycott
by importing British goods.
Meanwhile, Parliament passed the Tea Act to lower the price of taxed tea
exported to the colonies to help the British East India
Company undersell smuggled Dutch tea. Special consignees were
appointed to sell the tea to bypass colonial merchants. The act was opposed by
those who resisted the taxes and also by smugglers who stood to lose business.[citation needed] In most instances, the consignees were
forced to resign and the tea was turned back, but Massachusetts governor
Hutchinson refused to allow Boston merchants to give in to pressure. A town
meeting in Boston determined that the tea would not be landed, and ignored a
demand from the governor to disperse. On December 16, 1773, a group of men, led
by Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke the appearance of indigenous people,
boarded the ships of the East India Company and dumped £10,000 worth of tea
from their holds (approximately £636,000 in 2008) into Boston Harbor. Decades
later, this event became known as the Boston Tea Party and remains a
significant part of American patriotic lore.
1774–1775: Intolerable Acts and the Quebec Act
In response, Massachusetts patriots issued the Suffolk Resolves and formed an alternative shadow government known as the "Provincial Congress" which began training militia outside British-occupied Boston. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress convened, consisting of representatives from each colony, to serve as a vehicle for deliberation and collective action. During secret debates, conservative Joseph Galloway proposed the creation of a colonial Parliament that would be able to approve or disapprove of acts of the British Parliament, but his idea was not accepted. The Congress instead endorsed the proposal of John Adams that Americans would obey Parliament voluntarily but would resist all taxes in disguise. Congress called for a boycott beginning on 1 December 1774 of all British goods; it was enforced by new committees authorized by the Congress.
Military hostilities begin
Massachusetts was declared in a state of rebellion in February 1775 and the British garrison received orders to disarm the rebels and arrest their leaders, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775. The Patriots laid siege to Boston, expelled royal officials from all the colonies, and took control through the establishment of Provincial Congresses. The Battle of Bunker Hill followed on June 17, 1775. It was a British victory—but at a great cost: about 1,000 British casualties from a garrison of about 6,000, as compared to 500 American casualties from a much larger force. The Second Continental Congress was divided on the best course of action, but eventually produced the Olive Branch Petition, in which they attempted to come to an accord with King George. The king, however, issued a Proclamation of Rebellion which declared that the states were "in rebellion" and the members of Congress were traitors.
The war that arose was in some ways a classic insurgency.[clarification
needed] As Benjamin Franklin wrote to Joseph Priestley in October 1775:
"Britain, at the expense of three
millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20,000 a
head ... During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America.
From these data his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and
expense necessary to kill us all.".
In the winter of 1775, the Americans invaded
newly-British Quebec under generals Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery,
expecting to rally sympathetic colonists there. The attack was a failure; many
Americans who weren't killed were either captured or died of smallpox.
In March 1776, the Continental Army forced the British to evacuate
Boston, with George Washington as the commander of the new army. The
revolutionaries now fully controlled all thirteen colonies and were ready to
declare independence. There still were many Loyalists, but they were no longer
in control anywhere by July 1776, and all of the Royal officials had fled.
Creating new state constitutions
Following the Battle of Bunker Hill in
June 1775, the Patriots had control of Massachusetts outside the Boston city
limits, and the Loyalists suddenly found themselves on the defensive with no
protection from the British army. In all 13 colonies, Patriots had overthrown
their existing governments, closing courts and driving away British officials.
They held elected conventions and "legislatures" that existed outside
any legal framework; new constitutions were drawn up in each state to supersede
royal charters. They proclaimed that they were states, not colonies.
On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire ratified
the first state constitution. In May 1776, Congress voted to suppress all forms
of crown authority, to be replaced by locally created authority.
Virginia, South Carolina,
and New Jersey created their constitutions before July 4. Rhode Island and Connecticut simply
took their existing royal charters and
deleted all references to the crown. The new states were all committed to
republicanism, with no inherited offices. They decided what form of government
to create, and also how to select those who would craft the constitutions and
how the resulting document would be ratified. On 26 May 1776, John Adams wrote James Sullivan from
Philadelphia warning against extending the franchise too far:
Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open
so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation, as would be opened by
attempting to alter the qualifications of voters. There will be no end of it.
New claims will arise. Women will demand a vote. Lads from twelve to twenty one
will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man, who has not a
farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other in all acts of state. It
tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks, to one
common level[.]
The resulting constitutions in states such as Maryland,
Virginia, Delaware, New
York, and Massachusetts[c] featured:
·
Property
qualifications for voting and even more substantial requirements for elected
positions (though New York and Maryland lowered property qualifications)
·
Bicameral
legislatures, with the upper house as a check on the lower
·
Strong governors with veto power over the
legislature and substantial appointment authority
·
Few or no restraints
on individuals holding multiple positions in government
·
The continuation
of state-established
religion
In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New Hampshire, the resulting
constitutions embodied:
·
universal manhood
suffrage, or minimal property requirements for voting or holding office (New
Jersey enfranchised some property-owning widows, a step that it retracted 25
years later)
·
strong, unicameral legislatures
·
relatively weak
governors without veto powers, and with little appointing authority
·
prohibition against individuals
holding multiple government posts
The radical provisions of Pennsylvania's constitution lasted
only 14 years. In 1790, conservatives gained power in the state legislature,
called a new constitutional convention, and rewrote the constitution. The new
constitution substantially reduced universal male suffrage, gave the governor
veto power and patronage appointment authority, and added an upper house with
substantial wealth qualifications to the unicameral legislature. Thomas Paine
called it a constitution unworthy of America.
Independence and Union
The Declaration
of Independence was drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson and presented by the
committee; it was unanimously adopted by the entire Congress on July 4, and each colony became an independent
and autonomous state. The next
step was to form a union to
facilitate international relations and alliances.
The Second Continental Congress approved the Articles of
Confederation and Perpetual Union for ratification by the
states on November 15, 1777; the Congress immediately began operating under the
Articles' terms, providing a structure of shared sovereignty during prosecution of
the war and facilitating international relations and alliances with France and
Spain. The Articles were fully ratified on March 1, 1781. At that point, the
Continental Congress was dissolved and a new government of the United States
in Congress Assembled took its place on the following day,
with Samuel
Huntington as presiding officer.
Defending the Revolution
British return: 1776–1777
According to British historian Jeremy Black,
the British had significant advantages, including a highly trained army, the
world's largest navy, and an efficient system of public finance that could
easily fund the war. However, they seriously misunderstood the depth of support
for the American Patriot position and ignored the advice of General Gage,
misinterpreting the situation as merely a large-scale riot. The British
government believed that they could overawe the Americans by sending a large
military and naval force, forcing them to be loyal again:
Convinced that the Revolution was the work of a full few miscreants who had rallied an armed rabble to their cause, they expected that the revolutionaries would be intimidated .... Then the vast majority of Americans, who were loyal but cowed by the terroristic tactics ... would rise up, kick out the rebels, and restore loyal government in each colony.
The British also took New Jersey, pushing the Continental Army
into Pennsylvania. Washington crossed the Delaware River back into New
Jersey in a surprise attack in late December 1776 and defeated the Hessian and British armies at Trenton and Princeton,
thereby regaining control of most of New Jersey. The victories gave an
important boost to Patriots at a time when morale was flagging, and they have
become iconic events of the war.
In 1777, the British sent Burgoyne's invasion force from Canada
south to New York to seal off New England. Their aim was to isolate New
England, which the British perceived as the primary source of agitation. Rather
than move north to support Burgoyne, the British army in New York City went to
Philadelphia in a major case of mis-coordination, capturing it from Washington.
The invasion army under Burgoyne was much too slow and became
trapped in northern New York state. It surrendered after the Battles of Saratoga in
October 1777. From early October 1777 until November 15, a siege distracted
British troops at Fort Mifflin,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and allowed Washington time to preserve the Continental
Army by safely leading his troops to harsh winter quarters at Valley Forge.
Prisoners
On August 23, 1775, George III declared Americans to be traitors to the Crown if they took up arms against royal authority. There were thousands of British and Hessian soldiers in American hands following their surrender at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777. Lord Germain took a hard line, but the British generals on American soil never held treason trials and treated captured American soldiers as prisoners of war.[64] The dilemma was that tens of thousands of Loyalists were under American control and American retaliation would have been easy. The British built much of their strategy around using these Loyalists.[65] The British maltreated the prisoners whom they held, resulting in more deaths to American prisoners of war than from combat operations.[65] At the end of the war, both sides released their surviving prisoners.[66]
American alliances after 1778
The Spanish and the Dutch became allies of the French in 1779
and 1780 respectively, forcing the British to fight a global war without major
allies and requiring it to slip through a combined blockade of the Atlantic.
Britain began to view the American war for independence as merely one front in
a wider war,[69] and the British chose to withdraw troops from America to
reinforce the British colonies in the Caribbean, which were under threat of
Spanish or French invasion. British commander Sir Henry
Clinton evacuated Philadelphia and returned to New York City.
General Washington intercepted him in the Battle of Monmouth Court
House, the last major battle fought in the north. After an
inconclusive engagement, the British retreated to New York City. The northern
war subsequently became a stalemate, as the focus of attention shifted to the
smaller southern theater.[70]
The British move South, 1778–1783
Beginning in late December 1778, they captured Savannah and controlled the Georgia coastline.
In 1780, they launched a fresh invasion and took Charleston,
as well. A significant victory at the Battle of Camden meant that royal forces
soon controlled most of Georgia and South Carolina. The British set up a
network of forts inland, hoping that the Loyalists would rally to the flag.[72] Not enough Loyalists turned out, however, and the British
had to fight their way north into North Carolina and Virginia with a severely
weakened army. Behind them, much of the territory that they had already
captured dissolved into a chaotic guerrilla war, fought predominantly between
bands of Loyalists and American militia, which negated many of the gains that
the British had previously made.[72]
Surrender at Yorktown (1781)
The end of the war
Historians continue to debate whether the odds were long or
short for American victory. John E. Ferling says that the odds were
so long that the American victory was "almost a miracle".[77] On the other hand, Joseph Ellis says that the odds favored
the Americans, and asks whether there ever was any realistic chance for the
British to win. He argues that this opportunity came only once, in the summer
of 1776, and the British failed that test. Admiral Howe and his brother General
Howe "missed several opportunities to destroy the Continental
Army .... Chance, luck, and even the vagaries of the weather played
crucial roles." Ellis's point is that the strategic and tactical decisions
of the Howes were fatally flawed because they underestimated the challenges
posed by the Patriots. Ellis concludes that, once the Howe brothers failed, the
opportunity "would never come again" for a British victory.[78]
Support for the conflict had never been strong in Britain, where
many sympathized with the Americans, but now it reached a new low.[79] King George wanted to fight on, but his supporters lost
control of Parliament and they launched no further offensives in America on the
eastern seaboard.[70][d] However, the British continued formal and informal assistance
to Indian tribes making war on US citizens over the next three decades, which
contributed to a "Second American Revolution" at the 1812-1815 War of 1812. In that war against Britain, the
US permanently established its territory and its citizenship independent of the
British Empire.[81]
Paris peace treaty
The British largely abandoned their indigenous allies, who were
not a party to this treaty and did not recognize it until they were defeated
militarily by the United States. However, the British did sell them munitions
and maintain forts in American territory until the Jay Treaty of 1795.[84]
Losing the war and the Thirteen Colonies was a shock to Britain.
The war revealed the limitations of Britain's fiscal-military state when
they discovered that they suddenly faced powerful enemies with no allies, and
they were dependent on extended and vulnerable transatlantic lines of
communication. The defeat heightened dissension and escalated political
antagonism to the King's ministers. Inside Parliament, the primary concern
changed from fears of an over-mighty monarch to the issues of representation,
parliamentary reform, and government retrenchment. Reformers sought to destroy
what they saw as widespread institutional corruption, and the result was a
crisis from 1776 to 1783. The crisis ended after 1784 confidence in the British
constitution was restored during the administration of Prime Minister William Pitt.[85][86][e]
Finance
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Britain's war against the Americans, the French, and the Spanish cost about £100 million, and the Treasury borrowed 40-percent of the money that it needed.[88] Heavy spending brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution, while the British had relatively little difficulty financing their war, keeping their suppliers and soldiers paid, and hiring tens of thousands of German soldiers.[89] Britain had a sophisticated financial system based on the wealth of thousands of landowners who supported the government, together with banks and financiers in London. The British tax system collected about 12 percent of the GDP in taxes during the 1770s.[89]
Concluding the Revolution
Creating a "more perfect union" and
guaranteeing rights
The war ended in 1783 and was followed by a period of prosperity. The national government was still operating under the Articles of Confederation and settled the issue of the western territories, which the states ceded to Congress. American settlers moved rapidly into those areas, with Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee becoming states in the 1790s.
However, the national government had no money either to pay the
war debts owed to European nations and the private banks, or to pay Americans
who had been given millions of dollars of promissory notes for supplies during
the war. Nationalists led by Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other veterans
feared that the new nation was too fragile to withstand an international war,
or even the repetition of internal revolts such as the Shays' Rebellion of 1786 in
Massachusetts. They convinced Congress to call the Philadelphia
Convention in 1787.[101] The Convention adopted a new Constitution which
provided for a republic with a much
stronger national government in a federal framework, including an effective
executive in a check-and-balance system
with the judiciary and legislature.[102] The Constitution was ratified in 1788, after a fierce
debate in the states over the proposed new government. The new
administration under President George Washington took office in
New York in March 1789.[103] James Madison spearheaded
Congressional amendments to the Constitution as assurances to those cautious
about federal power, guaranteeing many of the inalienable rights that
formed a foundation for the revolution. Rhode Island was the final state to
ratify the Constitution in 1790, the first ten amendments were ratified in 1791
and became known as the United States
Bill of Rights.
National debt
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Ideology and factions
The population of the Thirteen States was not homogeneous in
political views and attitudes. Loyalties and allegiances varied widely within
regions and communities and even within families, and sometimes shifted during
the Revolution.
Liberalism
John Locke (1632–1704) is often referred to as "the philosopher of the American Revolution" due to his work in the Social Contract and Natural Rights theories that underpinned the Revolution's political ideology.[108] Locke's Two Treatises of Government published in 1689 was especially influential. He argued that all humans were created equally free, and governments therefore needed the "consent of the governed".[109] In late eighteenth-century America, belief was still widespread in "equality by creation" and "rights by creation".[110] Locke's ideas on liberty influenced the political thinking of English writers such as John Trenchard, Thomas Gordon, and Benjamin Hoadly, whose political ideas in turn also had a strong influence on the American Patriots.[111]
The theory of the social contract influenced the belief among
many of the Founders that the right of the people to
overthrow their leaders was one of the "natural
rights" of man, should those leaders betray the historic rights of Englishmen.[112][113] The Americans heavily relied on Montesquieu's
analysis of the wisdom of the "balanced" British Constitution (mixed government) in writing the state and
national constitutions.
Republicanism
The American interpretation of "republicanism" was
inspired by the Whig party in
Great Britain which openly criticized the corruption within the British
government.[114] Americans were increasingly embracing republican values,
seeing Britain as corrupt and hostile to American interests.[115] The colonists associated political corruption with
ostentatious luxury and inherited aristocracy, which they condemned.[116]
The Founding Fathers were strong advocates of republican values,
particularly Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton,[117] which required men to put civic duty ahead of their personal
desires. Men were honor bound by civic
obligation to be prepared and willing to fight for the rights and liberties of
their countrymen. John Adams wrote to Mercy Otis Warren in 1776, agreeing with
some classical Greek and Roman thinkers: "Public Virtue cannot exist
without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics."
He continued:
There must be a positive Passion for the
public good, the public Interest, Honour, Power, and Glory, established in the
Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real
Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superior to all private Passions. Men
must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their
private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and
dearest connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society.[118]
"Republican motherhood"
became the ideal for American women, exemplified by Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren; the first duty of the
republican woman was to instill republican values in her children and to avoid
luxury and ostentation.[119]
Protestant Dissenters and the Great Awakening
President John Witherspoon of the College of New
Jersey (now Princeton University),
a "new light" Presbyterian, wrote widely
circulated sermons linking the American Revolution to the teachings of the
Bible. Throughout the colonies, dissenting Protestant ministers
(Congregational, Baptist, and Presbyterian) preached Revolutionary themes in
their sermons, while most Church of England clergymen preached loyalty to the
king, the titular
head of the English state church.[123] Religious motivation for fighting tyranny transcended
socioeconomic lines to encompass rich and poor, men and women, frontierspeople
and townspeople, farmers and merchants.[120] The Declaration of Independence also referred to the
"Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" as justification for the
Americans' separation from the British monarchy. Most eighteenth-century
Americans believed that the entire universe ("nature") was God's
creation[124] and he was "Nature's God". Everything was part
of the "universal order of things" which began with God and was
directed by his providence.[125] Accordingly, the signers of the Declaration professed
their "firm reliance on the Protection of divine Providence", and
they appealed to "the Supreme Judge for the rectitude of our
intentions".[126] George Washington was
firmly convinced that he was an instrument of providence, to the benefit of the
American people and of all humanity.[127]
Historian Bernard Bailyn argues that the
evangelicalism of the era challenged traditional notions of natural hierarchy
by preaching that the Bible teaches that all men are equal, so that the true
value of a man lies in his moral behavior, not in his class.[128] Kidd argues that religious disestablishment,
belief in God as the source of human rights, and shared convictions about sin,
virtue, and divine providence worked together to unite rationalists and
evangelicals and thus encouraged a large proportion of Americans to fight for
independence from the Empire. Bailyn, on the other hand, denies that religion
played such a critical role.[129] Alan Heimert argues that New Light anti-authoritarianism was
essential to furthering democracy in colonial American society, and set the
stage for a confrontation with British monarchical and aristocratic rule.[130]
Class and psychology of the factions
The Revolution was effected before the war
commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people ....
This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of
the people was the real American Revolution.[131]
In the mid-20th century, historian Leonard Woods Labaree identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists that made them essentially conservative, opposite to the characteristics of the Patriots.[132] Loyalists tended to feel that resistance to the Crown was morally wrong, while the Patriots thought that morality was on their side.[133][134] Loyalists were alienated when the Patriots resorted to violence, such as burning houses and tarring and feathering. Loyalists wanted to take a centrist position and resisted the Patriots' demand to declare their opposition to the Crown. Many Loyalists had maintained strong and long-standing relations with Britain, especially merchants in port cities such as New York and Boston.[133][134] Many Loyalists felt that independence was bound to come eventually, but they were fearful that revolution might lead to anarchy, tyranny, or mob rule. In contrast, the prevailing attitude among Patriots was a desire to seize the initiative.[133][134] Labaree also wrote that Loyalists were pessimists who lacked the confidence in the future displayed by the Patriots.[132]
%2C_The_Bostonians_Paying_the_Excise-man%2C_or_Tarring_and_Feathering_(1774).jpg/220px-Philip_Dawe_(attributed)%2C_The_Bostonians_Paying_the_Excise-man%2C_or_Tarring_and_Feathering_(1774).jpg)
Historians in the early 20th century such as J. Franklin Jameson examined
the class composition of the Patriot cause, looking for evidence of a class war
inside the revolution.[135] More recent historians have largely abandoned that
interpretation, emphasizing instead the high level of ideological unity.[136] Both Loyalists and Patriots were a "mixed lot",[137][138] but ideological demands always came first. The Patriots
viewed independence as a means to gain freedom from British oppression and
taxation and to reassert their basic rights. Most yeomen farmers, craftsmen,
and small merchants joined the Patriot cause to demand more political equality.
They were especially successful in Pennsylvania but less so in New England,
where John Adams attacked Thomas Paine's Common Sense for the
"absurd democratical notions" that it proposed.[137][138]
King George III
Although Prime Minister Lord North was not an ideal war leader,
George III managed to give Parliament a sense of purpose to fight, and Lord
North was able to keep his cabinet together. Lord North's
cabinet ministers, the Earl
of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord
George Germain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, however, proved
to lack leadership skills suited for their positions, which in turn, aided the
American war effort.[140]
George III is often accused of obstinately trying to keep Great
Britain at war with the revolutionaries in America, despite the opinions of his
own ministers.[141] In the words of the British historian George
Otto Trevelyan, the King was determined "never to acknowledge
the independence of the Americans, and to punish their contumacy by the
indefinite prolongation of a war which promised to be eternal."[142] The King wanted to "keep the rebels harassed,
anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process,
discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse".[143] Later historians defend George by saying in the context of
the times no king would willingly surrender such a large territory,[144][145] and his conduct was far less ruthless than contemporary
monarchs in Europe.[146] After the surrender of a British army at Saratoga, both
Parliament and the British people were in favor of the war; recruitment ran at
high levels and although political opponents were vocal, they remained a small
minority.[144][147]
As late as the Siege of Charleston in
1780, Loyalists could still believe in their eventual victory, as British
troops inflicted defeats on the Continental forces at the Battle of Camden and the Battle of
Guilford Court House.[153] In late 1781, the news of Cornwallis's surrender at the
siege of Yorktown reached London; Lord North's parliamentary support ebbed away
and he resigned the following year. The King drafted an abdication notice,
which was never delivered,[145][154] finally accepted the defeat in North America, and
authorized peace negotiations. The Treaties of Paris,
by which Britain recognized the independence of the United States and returned Florida to Spain, were signed in
1782 and 1783 respectively.[155] In early 1783, George III privately conceded "America
is lost!" He reflected that the Northern colonies had developed into
Britain's "successful rivals" in commercial trade and fishing.[156]
When John Adams was
appointed American
Minister to London in 1785, George had become resigned to the
new relationship between his country and the former colonies. He told Adams,
"I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having
been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that
I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an
independent power."[157]
Patriots
Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Common Sense in
January 1776, after the Revolution had started. It was widely distributed and
often read aloud in taverns, contributing significantly to concurrently
spreading the ideas of republicanism and liberalism, bolstering enthusiasm for
separation from Great Britain and encouraging recruitment for the Continental
Army.[163] Paine presented the Revolution as the solution for
Americans alarmed by the threat of tyranny.[163]
Loyalists
The revolution could divide families, such as William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin and
royal governor of the Province of New
Jersey who remained loyal to the Crown throughout the war. He
and his father never spoke again.[166] Recent immigrants who had not been fully Americanized were
also inclined to support the King, such as Flora
MacDonald, a Scottish settler in the backcountry.[further
explanation needed][167]
After the war, the most of the approximately 500,000 Loyalists
remained in America and resumed normal lives. Some became prominent American
leaders, such as Samuel Seabury.
Approximately 46,000 Loyalists relocated to Canada; others moved to Britain
(7,000), Florida, or the West Indies (9,000). The exiles represented
approximately two percent of the total population of the colonies.[168] Nearly all black loyalists left for Nova Scotia, Florida,
or England, where they could remain free.[169] Loyalists who left the South in 1783 took thousands of
their slaves with them as they fled to the British West Indies.[168]
Neutrals
Role of women
Other participants
In early 1776, France set up a major program of aid to the Americans, and the Spanish secretly added funds. Each country spent one million "livres tournaises" to buy munitions. A dummy corporation run by Pierre Beaumarchais concealed their activities. American Patriots obtained some munitions from the Dutch Republic as well, through the French and Spanish ports in the West Indies.[178] Heavy expenditures and a weak taxation system pushed France toward bankruptcy.[179]
In 1777, Charles
François Adrien le Paulmier, Chevalier d’Annemours, acting as
a secret agent for France, made sure General George Washington was privy to
his mission. He followed Congress around for the next two years, reporting what
he observed back to France.[180]
Spain did not officially recognize the United States, but it was
a French ally and it separately declared war on Britain on June 21, 1779. Bernardo de
Gálvez y Madrid, general of the Spanish forces in New Spain, also served as governor of
Louisiana. He led an expedition of colonial troops to capture Florida from the
British and to keep open a vital conduit for supplies.[181]
Germans
American Patriots tended
to represent such troops as mercenaries in propaganda against the
British Crown. Even American historians followed suit, in spite of Colonial-era
jurists drawing a distinction between auxiliaries and mercenaries, with
auxiliaries serving their prince when sent to the aid of another prince, and
mercenaries serving a foreign prince as individuals.[182] By this distinction the troops which served in the
American Revolution were auxiliaries.
Other German individuals came to assist the American
revolutionaries, most notably Friedrich
Wilhelm von Steuben, who served as a general in the Continental Army
and is credited with professionalizing that force, but most who served were
already colonists. Von Steuben's native Prussia joined the League of
Armed Neutrality,[183] and King Frederick II of
Prussia was well appreciated in the United States for his
support early in the war. He expressed interest in opening trade with the
United States and bypassing English ports, and allowed an American agent to buy
arms in Prussia.[184] Frederick predicted American success,[185] and promised to recognize the United States and American
diplomats once France did the same.[186] Prussia also interfered in the recruiting efforts of
Russia and neighboring German states when they raised armies to send to the
Americas, and Frederick II forbade enlistment for the American war within
Prussia.[187] All Prussian roads were denied to troops from
Anhalt-Zerbst,[188] which delayed reinforcements that Howe had hoped to
receive during the winter of 1777–1778.[189]
However, when the War of the
Bavarian Succession erupted, Frederick II became much more
cautious with Prussian/British relations. US ships were denied access to
Prussian ports, and Frederick refused to officially recognize the United States
until they had signed the Treaty of Paris.
Even after the war, Frederick II predicted that the United States was too large
to operate as a republic, and that it
would soon rejoin the British Empire with representatives in Parliament.[190]
Native Americans
The great majority of indigenous people did not participate
directly in the war, with the notable exceptions of warriors and bands
associated with four of the Iroquois tribes in New York and
Pennsylvania which allied with the British,[193] and the Oneida and Tuscarora tribes among the Iroquois of
central and western New York who supported the American cause.[194] The British did have other allies, particularly in
the regions of
southwest Quebec on the Patriot's frontier. The British
provided arms to indigenous people who were led by Loyalists in war parties to
raid frontier settlements from the Carolinas to
New York. These war parties managed to kill many settlers on the frontier,
especially in Pennsylvania and New York's Mohawk Valley.[195]
In 1776, Cherokee war parties
attacked American Colonists all along the southern Quebec frontier of the
uplands throughout the Washington
District, North Carolina (now Tennessee) and the Kentucky
wilderness area.[196] The Chickamauga Cherokee under Dragging Canoe allied themselves closely
with the British, and fought on for an additional decade after the Treaty of
Paris was signed. They would launch raids with roughly 200 warriors, as seen in
the Cherokee–American
wars; they could not mobilize enough forces to invade settler areas
without the help of allies, most often the Creek.
Joseph Brant (also Thayendanegea)
of the powerful Mohawk tribe
in New York was the most prominent indigenous leader against the Patriot forces.[191] In 1778 and 1780, he led 300 Iroquois warriors and 100
white Loyalists in multiple attacks on small frontier settlements in New York
and Pennsylvania, killing many settlers and destroying villages, crops, and
stores.[197]
In 1779, the Continental Army forced
the hostile indigenous people out of upstate New York when
Washington sent an army under John Sullivan which
destroyed 40 evacuated Iroquois villages in central and western New York.
Sullivan systematically burned the empty villages and destroyed about 160,000
bushels of corn that composed the winter food supply. The Battle of Newtown proved decisive, as the
Patriots had an advantage of three-to-one, and it ended significant resistance;
there was little combat otherwise. Facing starvation and homeless for the
winter, the Iroquois fled to Canada. The British resettled them in Ontario,
providing land grants as compensation for some of their losses.[198]
At the peace conference following the war, the British ceded
lands which they did not really control, and which they did not consult about
with their indigenous allies during the treaty negotiations. They transferred
control to the United States of all the land south of the Great Lakes east of
the Mississippi and north of Florida. Calloway concludes:
Burned villages and crops, murdered chiefs,
divided councils and civil wars, migrations, towns and forts choked with
refugees, economic disruption, breaking of ancient traditions, losses in battle
and to disease and hunger, betrayal to their enemies, all made the American
Revolution one of the darkest periods in American Indian history.[199]
The British did not give up their forts until 1796 in the
eastern Midwest, stretching from Ohio to Wisconsin; they kept alive the dream
of forming an allied indigenous nation there, which they referred to an "Indian barrier state".
That goal was one of the causes of the War of 1812.[201]
Black Americans
The effects of the War were more dramatic in the South. Tens of
thousands of slaves escaped to British lines throughout the South, causing
dramatic losses to slaveholders and disrupting cultivation and harvesting of
crops. For instance, South Carolina was
estimated to have lost about 25,000 slaves to flight, migration, or death which
amounted to a third of its slave population. From 1770 to 1790, the black
proportion of the population (mostly slaves) in South Carolina dropped from
60.5 percent to 43.8 percent, and from 45.2 percent to 36.1 percent in Georgia.[205]
During the War, the British commanders attempted to weaken the
Patriots by issuing proclamations of freedom to their slaves.[206] In the November 1775 document known as Dunmore's
Proclamation, royal Virginia, governor Lord
Dunmore recruited black men into the British forces with the
promise of freedom, protection for their families, and land grants. Some men
responded and briefly formed the British Ethiopian Regiment.
Historian David Brion Davis explains
the difficulties with a policy of wholesale arming of the slaves:
But England greatly feared the effects of any
such move on its own West Indies, where
Americans had already aroused alarm over a possible threat to incite slave
insurrections. The British elites also understood that an all-out attack on one
form of property could easily lead to an assault on all boundaries of privilege
and social order, as envisioned by radical religious sects in Britain's
seventeenth-century civil wars.[207]
Davis underscores the British dilemma: "Britain, when
confronted by the rebellious American colonists, hoped to exploit their fear of
slave revolts while also reassuring the large number of slave-holding Loyalists
and wealthy Caribbean planters and merchants that their slave property would be
secure".[208] The Americans, however, accused the British of encouraging
slave revolts, with the issue becoming one of the 27 colonial
grievances.[209]
The existence of slavery
in the American colonies had attracted criticism from both
sides of the Atlantic as many could not reconcile the existence of the
institution with the egalitarian ideals espoused by leaders of the Revolution.
British writer Samuel Johnson wrote
"how is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of the
Negroes?" in a text opposing the grievances of the colonists.[210] Referring to this contradiction, English
abolitionist Thomas Day wrote
in a 1776 letter that
"if there be an object truly ridiculous
in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with
the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted
slaves".[211]
African-American writer Lemuel Haynes expressed similar
viewpoints in his essay Liberty Further Extended where he
wrote that "Liberty is Equally as pre[c]ious to a Black man, as it is to a
white one".[212] Thomas Jefferson unsuccessfully attempted to include a
section in the Declaration of Independence which asserted that King George III
had "forced" the slave trade onto
the colonies. Despite the turmoil of the period,
African-Americans contributed to the foundation of an American national
identity during the Revolution. Phyllis Wheatley, an African-American poet,
popularized the image of Columbia to represent America. She came
to public attention when her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and
Moral appeared in 1773, and received praise from George Washington.[214]
The 1779 Philipsburg
Proclamation expanded the promise of freedom for black men
who enlisted in the British military to all the colonies in rebellion. British
forces gave transportation to 10,000 slaves when they evacuated Savannah and Charleston,
carrying through on their promise.[215] They evacuated and resettled more than 3,000 Black Loyalists from New York to Nova
Scotia, Upper Canada, and Lower Canada. Others sailed with the British to
England or were resettled as freedmen in the West Indies of the Caribbean. But
slaves carried to the Caribbean under control of Loyalist masters generally
remained slaves until British abolition of slavery in its colonies in 1833–38.
More than 1,200 of the Black Loyalists of Nova Scotia later resettled in the
British colony of Sierra Leone, where they became leaders of the Krio ethnic
group of Freetown and the later national government. Many of their descendants
still live in Sierra Leone, as well as other African countries.[216]
Effects of the Revolution
Interpretations
Interpretations vary concerning the effect of the Revolution.
Historians such as Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and Edmund Morgan view
it as a unique and radical event which produced deep changes and had a profound
effect on world affairs, such as an increasing belief in the principles of the
Enlightenment. These were demonstrated by a leadership and government that
espoused protection of natural rights, and a system of laws chosen by the
people.[219] John Murrin, by contrast, argues that the definition of
"the people" at that time was mostly restricted to free men who
passed a property qualification.[220][221] This view argues that any significant gain of the
revolution was irrelevant in the short term to women, black Americans and slaves,
poor white men, youth, and Native Americans.[222][223]
Gordon Wood states:
The American Revolution was integral to the changes occurring in
American society, politics and culture .... These changes were radical,
and they were extensive .... The Revolution not only radically changed the
personal and social relationships of people, including the position of women,
but also destroyed aristocracy as it'd been understood in the Western world for
at least two millennia.[224]
Edmund Morgan has argued that, in terms of long-term impact on
American society and values:
The Revolution did revolutionize social relations. It did
displace the deference, the patronage, the social divisions that had determined
the way people viewed one another for centuries and still view one another in
much of the world. It did give to ordinary people a pride and power, not to say
an arrogance, that have continued to shock visitors from less favored lands. It
may have left standing a host of inequalities that have troubled us ever since.
But it generated the egalitarian view of human society that makes them
troubling and makes our world so different from the one in which the
revolutionists had grown up.[225]
Inspiring other independence movements and revolutions
The U.S. Constitution, drafted shortly after independence,
remains the world's oldest written constitution, and has been emulated by other
countries, in some cases verbatim.[230] Some historians and scholars aruge that the subsequent
wave of independence and revolutionary movements has contributed to the
continued expansion of democratic government; 144 countries, representing
two-third of the world's population, are full or partially democracies of same
form.[231][232][233][234][235][236]
The Dutch Republic, also at war with Britain, was the next
country after France to sign a treaty with the United States, on October 8,
1782.[67] On April 3, 1783, Ambassador Extraordinary Gustaf Philip Creutz,
representing King Gustav III of Sweden,
and Benjamin Franklin, signed a Treaty
of Amity and Commerce with the U.S.[67]
The Revolution had a strong, immediate influence in Great
Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France. Many British and Irish Whigs in
Parliament spoke glowingly in favor of the American cause. In Ireland, the
Protestant minority who controlled
Ireland demanded self-rule. Under the leadership of Henry Grattan, the Irish Patriot Party forced
the reversal of mercantilist prohibitions against trade with other British
colonies. The King and his cabinet in London could not risk another rebellion
on the American model, and so made a series of concessions to the Patriot
faction in Dublin. Armed volunteer units of the Protestant Ascendancy were
set up ostensibly to protect against an invasion from France. As had been in
colonial America, so too in Ireland now the King no longer had a monopoly of lethal
force.[237][227][238]
The Revolution, along with the Dutch Revolt (end of the 16th century)
and the 17th century English Civil War, was among the examples of
overthrowing an old regime for many Europeans who later were active during the
era of the French Revolution,
such as the Marquis
de Lafayette. The American Declaration of Independence influenced
the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of
1789.[239][240] The spirit of the Declaration of Independence led to laws
ending slavery in all the Northern states and the Northwest Territory, with New
Jersey the last in 1804. States such as New Jersey and New York adopted gradual
emancipation, which kept some people as slaves for more than two decades
longer.[241][227][242]
Status of African Americans
In the late 1760s and early 1770s, a number of colonies,
including Massachusetts and Virginia, attempted to restrict the slave trade,
but were prevented from doing so by royally appointed governors.[243]: 245 In 1774, as part of a broader
non-importation movement aimed at Britain, the Continental Congress called on
all the colonies to ban the importation of slaves, and the colonies passed acts
doing so.[243]: 245 In 1775, the Quakers founded first antislavery society
in the Western world, the Pennsylvania
Abolition Society.[243]: 245 [245]: 186
In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state
legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves, in part based on
revolutionary ideals. Northern states passed new constitutions that contained
language about equal rights or specifically abolished slavery; some states,
such as New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more widespread, passed laws
by the end of the 18th century to abolish slavery by a gradual method. By 1804,
all the northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately
or over time. In New York, the last slaves were freed in 1827. Indentured
servitude (temporary slavery), which had been widespread in the colonies (Half
the population of Philadelphia had once been bonded servants) dropped
dramatically, and disappeared by 1800.
No southern state abolished slavery, but for a period individual
owners could free their slaves by personal decision, often providing for
manumission in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court papers to free
individuals. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves cited revolutionary
ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a reward for service. Records
also suggest that some slaveholders were freeing their own mixed-race children,
born into slavery to slave mothers. The number of free blacks as a proportion
of the black population in the upper South increased from less than 1 percent
to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as a result of these actions.[248][249][250][251][252][253][254][255][256][257] Nevertheless, the slavery continued in the South,
transforming slavery into a "peculiar institution", and setting the
stage for future sectional conflict between North and South over the issue.[245]: 186–187
Thousands of free Blacks in the northern states fought in the
state militias and Continental Army. In the south, both sides offered freedom
to slaves who would perform military service. Roughly 20,000 slaves fought in
the American Revolution.[258][259][260][261][262]
Status of American women
The traditional constraints gave way to more liberal conditions
for women. Patriarchy faded as an ideal;[dubious – discuss] young people had more freedom to choose
their spouses and more often used birth control to regulate the size of their
families.[original
research?] Society
emphasized the role of mothers in child rearing, especially the patriotic goal
of raising republican children rather than those locked into aristocratic value
systems.[original
research?] There
was more permissiveness in child-rearing.[clarification
needed] Patriot
women married to Loyalists who left the state could get a divorce and obtain
control of the ex-husband's property.[264]
Whatever gains they had made, however, women still found
themselves subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands, disfranchised
and usually with only the role of mother open to them. But, some women earned
livelihoods as midwives and in other roles in the community not originally
recognized as significant by men.
Abigail Adams expressed
to her husband, the president, the desire of women to have a place in the new
republic:
"I desire you would remember the Ladies,
and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put
such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands."[265]
The Revolution sparked a discussion on the rights of woman and
an environment favorable to women's participation in politics. Briefly the
possibilities for women's rights were highly favorable, but a backlash led to a
greater rigidity that excluded women from politics.[266]
For more than thirty years, however, the 1776 New Jersey
State Constitution gave the vote to "all inhabitants"
who had a certain level of wealth, including unmarried women and blacks (not
married women because they could not own property separately from their
husbands), until in 1807, when that state legislature passed a bill interpreting
the constitution to mean universal white male suffrage, excluding paupers.[267]
Loyalist expatriation
Commemorations
The Revolution became a matter of contention in the 1850s in the
debates leading to the American Civil War (1861–1865),
as spokesmen of both the Northern United
States and the Southern United
States claimed that their region was the true custodian of the
legacy of 1776.[274] The United States Bicentennial in
1976 came a year after the American withdrawal from the Vietnam War, and speakers stressed the themes
of renewal and rebirth based on a restoration of traditional values.
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