Chapter 5 The American Revolution
The American Revolution
Introduction
In the 1760s, colonists like Benjamin Rush felt strong emotional ties to the British monarchy and constitution.
Colonists had just helped win a world war and were proud to be British.
Within a decade, these same colonists declared independence, which seemed improbable in 1763.
The Revolution shaped American identity and ideals, sparking a global "age of revolution."
Paradoxes of the Revolution:
Fought for liberty but allowed slavery to continue.
Resisted centralized authority but created new, stronger governments.
Aimed to foster republican selflessness but also encouraged self-interest.
The "founding fathers" sought independence, not democracy.
Common colonists played a crucial role, shaping the Revolution in ways not always desired by the elite leaders.
The Origins of the American Revolution
The American Revolution had both long-term and short-term causes.
Between 1688 and the mid-18th century, Britain struggled to define its relationship with the colonies.
Two main factors contributed to this:
Constant war (War of the Spanish Succession to the Seven Years’ War).
Competing visions of empire among British officials.
Old Whigs and Tories:
Envisioned an authoritarian empire based on conquest and resource extraction.
Sought to eliminate national debt through colonial taxes and spending cuts.
Radical (Patriot) Whigs:
Favored an empire based on trade and manufacturing.
Believed economic growth, not taxes, would solve the national debt.
Advocated for equal status for the colonies.
Debates between these visions hindered coherent reform.
Colonists believed they were entitled to the same rights as Britons.
Colonial economic and demographic growth led them to believe they deserved Britain’s hands-off approach.
James Otis Jr. argued for colonists' rights and privileges to possibly exceed those in Britain.
Colonies developed their own local political institutions.
Colonial assemblies assumed powers similar to the British Commons, such as taxing residents and managing revenue.
Colonial leaders unsuccessfully lobbied for legal recognition of their assemblies’ prerogatives.
Royal governors attempted to limit assembly power, but the assemblies only grew stronger.
Colonists saw their assemblies as equivalent to Parliament and viewed British inaction as justification for local governance.
The Crown and Parliament disagreed with this view.
Colonial political culture differed from Britain.
Land ownership was key to political participation, and it was easier to obtain in the colonies, leading to greater participation.
Colonies drew inspiration from the “country” party in Britain, embracing republicanism:
Stressed the corrupting nature of power.
Emphasized virtue and the “public good” over self-interest.
Called for vigilance against conspiracies, centralized control, and tyranny.
These ideas were widely accepted in the colonies.
Intellectual and Cultural Influences
Enlightenment and Great Awakening ideas combined challenging old ideas about authority.
John Locke's influence:
Argued in Essay Concerning Human Understanding that the mind was a tabula rasa (blank slate).
Individuals are shaped by their environment, not innate superiority.
Introduced new ideas about education in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
Education would create rational individuals who question authority.
The Great Awakening:
George Whitefield preached evangelical Protestant revivalism between 1739 and 1740.
His sermons appealed to emotions, emphasizing personal responsibility for one’s relationship with God.
He argued that church hierarchies were barriers between individuals and God.
Empowered individuals to question authority and take control of their lives.
Anglicization: Colonists became more culturally similar to Britons.
Colonial economies grew, becoming important markets for British exports.
Colonists purchased British goods to mimic British culture, including fashions and dining wares.
The desire for British goods meshed with the desire for British liberties.
These developments raised tensions, especially after the Seven Years’ War.
The Causes of the American Revolution
The American Revolution resulted from attempts to reform the British Empire following the Seven Years’ War.
The Seven Years’ War was a global conflict between European empires.
Britain controlled North America east of the Mississippi River and consolidated control over India.
The war was costly: Britain doubled its national debt to times its annual revenue.
Britain needed to secure and defend its expanded empire, especially the American western frontiers.
In the 1760s, Britain attempted to consolidate control over North American colonies, leading to resistance.
King George III (1760) brought Tories into government, favoring an authoritarian empire.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763:
Forbade settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains to limit wars with Native Americans.
Colonists protested, demanding access to the territory they had fought for.
The Sugar Act (1764):
Sought to combat molasses smuggling in New England.
Cut the duty in half but increased enforcement.
Smugglers would be tried in vice-admiralty courts without juries.
The Currency Act (1764):
Restricted colonies from producing paper money.
Hard money was scarce, impeding transatlantic economies.
Damaging during a postwar recession.
These acts led some colonists to fear increased taxation and restricted liberties.
The Stamp Act (March 1765):
Required that documents be printed on stamped paper to show duty payment.
Included newspapers, pamphlets, diplomas, legal documents, and playing cards.
This was a new, direct (“internal”) tax.
Parliament had never directly taxed the colonists before.
Colonies contributed through indirect, “external” taxes like customs duties.
Daniel Dulany argued that internal taxes without colonial consent were unacceptable.
The Stamp Act affected printers, lawyers, college graduates, and sailors, leading to broader resistance.
Resistance took three forms:
Legislative resistance by elites.
Economic resistance by merchants.
Popular protest by common colonists.
Legislative Resistance:
Colonial elites passed resolutions in their assemblies.
The Virginia Resolves declared colonists were entitled to the same liberties as Britons.
Radical resolutions, not passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses, were circulated, asserting that only the colonial assembly could impose taxes.
Stamp Act Congress
Led to calling of the Stamp Act Congress in New York City in October 1765.
Nine colonies sent delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Thomas Hutchinson, Philip Livingston, and James Otis.
Issued a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances”:
Declared allegiance to the king and subordination to Parliament.
Asserted colonists' rights to trial by jury and taxation only by their elected representatives.
Daniel Dulany argued that taxation without consent violated the English constitution.
Benjamin Franklin called consent the “prime Maxim of all free Government.”
Colonists rejected “virtual representation” in Parliament.
Economic Resistance:
Merchants in port cities prepared nonimportation agreements.
Hoped to pressure British merchants to lobby for repeal of the Stamp Act.
Merchants agreed not to import, sell, or buy British goods.
London merchants argued they were facing “ruin” due to the Stamp Act and boycotts.
Popular Protest:
Riots broke out in Boston.
Crowds burned the appointed stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver, in effigy.
Destroyed a building owned by Oliver.
Oliver resigned the next day.
A crowd attacked the home of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson.
Much of Hutchinson’s home and belongings were destroyed.
Popular violence and intimidation spread.
Notices threatened those who distributed or used stamped paper.
By November 16, all stamp distributors had resigned.
Groups calling themselves the Sons of Liberty were formed.
The Stamp Act became unenforceable.
The Declaratory Act and Townshend Acts
Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in February 1766.
Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, asserting its power to make laws for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”
Colonists celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act rather than focusing on the Declaratory Act.
Britain still needed revenue from the colonies.
The Townshend Acts (June 1767):
Created new customs duties on common items like lead, glass, paint, and tea.
Strengthened enforcement mechanisms, including a new American Board of Customs Commissioners and more vice-admiralty courts.
Revenues from customs seizures would pay royal officials, incentivizing convictions.
Increased British government presence in the colonies.
Circumscribed the authority of colonial assemblies.
Colonists resisted these acts.
Colonial resistance authors referred to duties as “taxes” because their primary purpose was revenue extraction.
John Dickinson argued that any special duties imposed with the intention of raising revenue were taxes.
Colonists feared that assenting to any tax would lead to ever-increasing taxes.
Merchants reinstituted nonimportation agreements.
Common colonists agreed not to consume British products.
Lists were circulated with signatories promising not to buy British goods.
Newspapers published the names of those who signed, pressuring others to follow suit.
Women became involved, circulating subscription lists and gathering signatures.
First political commentaries in newspapers written by women appeared.
Colonists wore simple, homespun clothing.
Spinning clubs formed, where women spun cloth for homespun clothing.
Homespun clothing became a marker of virtue and patriotism.
British goods and luxuries became symbols of tyranny.
Nonimportation and nonconsumption agreements changed the cultural relationship with Britain.
Committees of Inspection monitored merchants and residents.
Offenders were shamed by having their names and offenses published.
Colonies formed Committees of Correspondence to share information about resistance efforts.
Newspapers reprinted exploits of resistance, creating a sense of political community.
The Boston Massacre
British regiments were sent to Boston in 1768 to enforce the new acts and quell the resistance.
On March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered outside the Custom House and harassed the sentry.
When a small number of soldiers came to the sentry’s aid, the crowd grew hostile, and the soldiers fired.
Five Bostonians were killed, including Crispus Attucks.
The soldiers were tried in Boston and acquitted.
News of the Boston Massacre spread through resistance communication networks.
Paul Revere's engraving depicted bloodthirsty soldiers firing into a peaceful crowd, generating sympathy for Boston and anger with Britain.
Parliament repealed all new duties except the one on tea.
Colonial resistance grew more inclusive and coordinated, unlike the Stamp Act resistance.
Colonists excluded from political participation gathered signatures.
Colonists of all ranks participated in boycotts.
Britain’s imperial reform attempts created a resistant colonial population and an enlarged political sphere.
A shared sense of grievances created a shared American political identity.
Independence
Tensions eased after the Boston Massacre.
The colonial economy improved.
The Sons of Liberty sought to continue nonimportation, but New York wanted to end it.
Britain still wanted to reform imperial administration.
The Tea Act (1773):
Aimed to aid the failing East India Company.
Allowed the company to sell tea directly in the colonies without import duties.
Would lower the cost of tea for colonists.
Colonists resisted the Tea Act because:
Merchants resented the East India Company’s monopoly.
Buying tea would imply acknowledging Parliament’s right to tax them.
Prime Minister Lord North sought “to out wit us”.
The Tea Act stipulated that the duty had to be paid upon unloading the ship.
In November, the Boston Sons of Liberty resolved to keep the tea from landing or being sold.
Men guarded the wharfs to ensure the tea remained on the ships.
On December 16, men disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped tea into the sea.
The Boston Gazette reported the events that transpired, stating that dozens of the 'brave and resolute men' emptied every chest of tea on board the three ship without causing damage to it's property.
Patriots were emboldened to do the same in their harbors.
Tea was dumped or seized in Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York, with smaller “tea parties” elsewhere.
Popular protest spread across all levels of colonial society.
Fifty-one women in Edenton, North Carolina, signed an agreement to support the boycotts.
Women could express political sentiments as consumers and producers.
Their participation in consumer boycotts was particularly important.
Some women participated in mob actions, grain riots, raids, and demonstrations.
Britain responded to this with the Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts).
The Coercive Acts and Continental Congress
The Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts):
The Boston Port Act shut down the harbor.
The Massachusetts Government Act put the colonial government under British control.
The Administration of Justice Act allowed royal officials to be tried in Britain.
The Quartering Act allowed the British army to quarter soldiers in colonists’ homes.
Boston had been deemed in open rebellion.
The Crown did not anticipate the other colonies coming to Massachusetts’s aid.
Colonists collected food to send to Boston.
Virginia’s House of Burgesses called for a day of prayer and fasting.
The Coercive Acts fostered a sense of shared identity.
If the Crown and Parliament could dissolve Massachusetts’s government, they could do the same to any colony.
Patriots created the Provincial Congress in Massachusetts and seized control of local governments.
Committees were elected to direct the colonies’ response to the Coercive Acts.
Committees of Correspondence and extralegal assemblies were established in nearly all of the colonies, seizing the powers of royal governments.
Committees of Correspondence agreed to send delegates to a Continental Congress.
The First Continental Congress convened on September 5, 1774.
Delegates issued a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances”:
Repeated arguments that colonists retained the rights of native Britons.
Included the right to be taxed only by their elected representatives and the right to a trial by jury.
The Congress issued the “Continental Association”:
Declared that a “ruinous system” of colony administration was aimed at “enslaving these Colonies”.
Recommended committees be chosen to observe the conduct of all persons touching this association.
Committees of Inspection would police their communities and publish the names of violators.
Agreed to a continental nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation agreement.
Agreed to discontinue the slave trade.
The Continental Association sought to unite revolutionary governments, establish policies, and empower common colonists.
Not all colonists were patriots and not all were in agreement with the continental association.
Loyalists included elite merchants, Anglican clergy, and royal officeholders who depended on their relationship with Britain initially sought to moderate the resistance committees.
Many worried that the resistance was too radical and aimed at independence.
They expected peaceful conciliation with Britain.
By the time the Continental Congress met again in May 1775, war had broken out in Massachusetts.
Lexington and Concord
On April 19, 1775, British regiments set out to seize militias’ arms and powder stores in Lexington and Concord.
The town militia met them at the Lexington Green.
The British ordered the militia to disperse, then opened fire.
The battle continued to Concord.
News spread rapidly, and militiamen (minutemen) responded quickly.
They inflicted significant casualties on the British as they retreated to Boston.
Twenty thousand colonial militiamen laid siege to Boston.
In June, the militia set up fortifications on Breed’s Hill overlooking the city.
In the “Battle of Bunker Hill,” the British suffered severe casualties despite taking the hill.
The Continental Congress struggled to organize a response.
Radical delegates implored the Congress to support the Massachusetts militia.
Moderate delegates called for renewed attempts at reconciliation.
The Congress agreed to adopt the Massachusetts militia and form a Continental Army.
George Washington was named commander in chief.
They issued a “Declaration of the Causes of Necessity of Taking Up Arms”.
Moderates drafted an “Olive Branch Petition,” assuring the king of the colonists’ desire for harmony.
Benjamin Franklin believed this petition would be rejected.
Congress was attempting reconciliation while raising an army.
The petition arrived in England on August 13, 1775.
The king issued a “Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition”.
He believed colonists were being misled by “ill-designing men”.
In an October speech, he dismissed the colonists’ petition.
He believed the resistance aimed to establish an independent empire.
By the start of 1776, talk of independence was growing.
In the opening months of 1776, independence became part of the popular debate.
Town meetings approved resolutions in support of independence.
It would take another seven months before the Continental Congress officially passed the independence resolution.
Thomas Paine's Common Sense
A pamphlet written by Thomas Paine:
Argued for independence by denouncing monarchy.
Challenged the logic behind the British Empire.
Stressing the idea that an island shouldn't govern a continent.
His language, biblical references, and rhetoric proved potent.
Arguments over political philosophy and rumors of battlefield developments filled taverns.
George Washington forced the British to retreat to Halifax after laying siege to Boston.
In Virginia, Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation:
Declared martial law.
Offered freedom to indentured servants, slaves, and others if they joined the British.
Thousands of slaves flocked to the British, risking capture for a chance at freedom.
Former slaves fought or served as laborers and spies in the Black Pioneers.
British motives were practical, but the proclamation was the first mass emancipation in American history.
Slaves could choose to run for possible freedom with the British or hope the United States would live up to its ideals of liberty.
Dunmore’s proclamation unnerved white southerners who were suspicious of rising antislavery sentiments in the mother country.
In Somerset v Stewart, English courts undercut the legality of slavery on the British mainland.
Slaveholders feared a new independent nation might offer surer protection for slavery.
Slaveholders often used violence to prevent their slaves from joining the British or rising against them.
Virginia enacted regulations to prevent slave defection, threatening to ship rebellious slaves to the West Indies or execute them.
Many masters transported their enslaved people inland, away from the coastal temptation to join the British armies, sometimes separating families in the process.
The Congress voted on a resolution calling on all colonies to establish revolutionary governments.
The Congress recommended that the colonies should begin preparing new written constitutions.
This was the Congress’s first declaration of independence.
Richard Henry Lee offered a resolution that the colonies are and ought to be free and independent states.
Delegates went back to their assemblies for new instructions.
The resolution passed 12–0, with New York abstaining.
Declaration of Independence
A committee had been named to draft a public declaration.
Thomas Jefferson drafted the document.
A committee of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin made edit and then again, the congress approved it.
It referred to “natural law”:
All men are created equal and have unalienable rights.
Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed.
The people have the right to alter or abolish destructive governments.
The document outlined grievances with British attempts to reform imperial administration.
An early draft blamed the British for the slave trade and discouraging abolition.
Delegates from South Carolina, Georgia, and northern states opposed this, so it was removed.
The Congress approved the document on July 4, 1776.
Declaring independence was one thing; winning it was another.
The War for Independence
The war began at Lexington and Concord before the declaration of independence.
The British believed that a few minor incursions would be enough to cow the colonial rebellion.
The new states faced the task of taking on the world’s largest military.
In the summer of 1776, the British forces arrived at New York.
The largest expeditionary force in British history soon followed.
New York was the perfect location to launch expeditions aimed at seizing control of the Hudson River and isolating New England from the rest of the continent.\n* Also, New York contained many loyalists, particularly among its merchant and Anglican communities.
In October, the British launched an attack on Brooklyn and Manhattan.
The Continental Army took severe losses before retreating through New Jersey.
Washington launched a successful surprise attack on the Hessian camp at Trenton on Christmas Day by ferrying the few thousand men he had left across the Delaware River under the cover of night.
The victory won the Continental Army much-needed supplies and a morale boost following the disaster at New York.
Saratoga
In 1777, British general John Burgoyne led an army from Canada to secure the Hudson River.
In upstate New York, he was to meet up with a detachment of General William Howe’s forces marching north from Manhattan.
Howe abandoned the plan and sailed to Philadelphia to capture the new nation’s capital.
The Continental Army defeated Burgoyne’s men at Saratoga, New York.
This victory proved a major turning point in the war.
Benjamin Franklin had been in Paris trying to secure a treaty of alliance with the French. However, the French were reluctant to back what seemed like an unlikely cause.
News of the victory at Saratoga convinced the French that the cause might not have been as unlikely as they had thought.
A Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed on February 6, 1778.
The treaty effectively turned a colonial rebellion into a global war as fighting between the British and French soon broke out in Europe and India.
Howe had taken Philadelphia in 1777 but returned to New York once winter ended.
He slowly realized that European military tactics would not work in North America.
In Europe, armies fought head-on battles in attempt to seize major cities.
Meanwhile, Washington realized after New York that the largely untrained Continental Army could not win head-on battles with the professional British army. So he developed his own logic of warfare that involved smaller, more frequent skirmishes and avoided major engagements that would risk his entire army.
In 1778, the British shifted their attentions to the South, where they believed they enjoyed more popular support. Campaigns from Virginia to South Carolina and Georgia captured major cities, but the British simply did not have the manpower to retain military control.
The War in the South was truly a civil war.
By 1781, the British were also fighting France, Spain, and Holland.
The British public’s support for the costly war in North America was quickly waning.
Yorktown
The Americans took advantage of the British southern strategy with significant aid from the French army and navy.
In October, Washington marched his troops from New York to Virginia in an effort to trap the British southern army under the command of General Charles Cornwallis.
Cornwallis had dug his men in at Yorktown awaiting supplies and reinforcements from New York.
The Continental and French armies arrived first, quickly followed by a French navy contingent, encircling Cornwallis’s forces
The capture of another army left the British without a new strategy and without public support to continue the war.
Peace negotiations took place in France, and the war came to an official end on September 3, 1783.
Americans celebrated their victory, but it came at great cost.
Soldiers suffered through brutal winters with inadequate resources. During the single winter at Valley Forge in 1777–1778, over 2,500 Americans died from disease and exposure.
Life was not easy on the home front either. Women on both sides of the conflict were frequently left alone to care for their households.
In addition to their existing duties, women took on roles usually assigned to men on farms and in shops and taverns.
Women's Role
Abigail Adams addressed the difficulties she encountered while managing family affairs in Braintree, Massachusetts..
While Abigail remained safely out of the fray, other women were not so fortunate.
The Revolution was not only fought on distant battlefields. It was fought on women’s very doorsteps, in the fields next to their homes. There was no way for women to avoid the conflict or the disruptions and devastations it caused.
As the leader of the state militia during the Revolution, Mary Silliman’s husband, Gold, was absent from their home for much of the conflict. On the morning of July 7, 1779, when a British fleet attacked nearby Fairfield, Connecticut, it was Mary who calmly evacuated her household, including her children and servants, to North Stratford. When Gold was captured by loyalists and held prisoner, Mary, six months pregnant with their second child, wrote letters to try to secure his release. When such appeals were ineffectual, Mary spearheaded an effort, along with Connecticut Governor, John Trumbull, to capture a prominent Tory leader to exchange for her husband’s freedom.
Slaves and free black Americans also impacted (and were impacted by) the Revolution. The British were the first to recruit black (or “Ethiopian”) regiments, as early as Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775 in Virginia, which promised freedom to any slaves who would escape their masters and join the British cause.
In 1775, Peter Salem’s master freed him to fight with the militia. Salem faced British Regulars in the battles at Lexington and Bunker Hill, where he fought valiantly with around three dozen other black Americans. Salem not only contributed to the cause, he earned the ability to determine his own life after his enlistment ended. Salem was not alone, but many more slaves seized on the tumult of war to run away and secure their own freedom directly. Historians estimate that between thirty thousand and one hundred thousand slaves deserted their masters during the war.
Men and women together struggled through years of war and hardship. For patriots (and those who remained neutral), victory brought new political, social, and economic opportunities, but it also brought new uncertainties. The war decimated entire communities, particularly in the South. Thousands of women throughout the nation had been widowed. The American economy, weighed down by war debt and depreciated currencies, would have to be rebuilt following the war. State constitutions had created governments, but now men would have to figure out how to govern. The opportunities created by the Revolution had come at great cost, in both lives and fortune, and it was left to the survivors to seize those opportunities and help forge and define the new nation-state.
Consequences of the American Revolution
The Revolution had both short- and long-term consequences.
The most important immediate consequence was the creation of state constitutions in 1776 and 1777.
The Revolution also unleashed powerful political, social, and economic forces that would transform the new nation’s politics and society, including increased participation in politics and governance, the legal institutionalization of religious toleration, and the growth and diffusion of the population, particularly westward.
The Revolution affected Native Americans by opening up western settlement and creating governments hostile to their territorial claims. Even more broadly, the Revolution ended the mercantilist economy, opening new opportunities in trade and manufacturing.
The new states drafted written constitutions, which, at the time, was an important innovation from the traditionally unwritten British Constitution.
These new state constitutions were based on the idea of “popular sovereignty,” that is, that the power and authority of the government derived from the people.
Most created weak governors and strong legislatures with more regular elections and moderately increased the size of the electorate. A number of states followed the example of Virginia and included a declaration or “bill” of rights in their constitution designed to protect the rights of individuals and circumscribe the prerogative of the government.
Pennsylvania’s first state constitution was the most radical and democratic. They created a unicameral legislature and an Executive Council but no genuine executive. All free men could vote, including those who did not own property.
Massachusetts’s constitution, passed in 1780, was less democratic in structure but underwent a more popular process of ratification. In the fall of 1779, each town sent delegates—312 in all—to a constitutional convention in Cambridge. Town meetings debated the constitution draft and offered suggestions. Anticipating the later federal constitution, Massachusetts established a three-branch government based on checks and balances between the branches. Independence came in 1776, and so did an unprecedented period of constitution making and state building.
The Continental Congress ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781. The articles allowed each state one vote in the Continental Congress.
But the articles are perhaps most notable for what they did not allow. Congress was given no power to levy or collect taxes, regulate foreign or interstate commerce, or establish a federal judiciary. These shortcomings rendered the postwar Congress weak and largely ineffectual.
Political and social life changed drastically after independence. Political participation grew as more people gained the right to vote, leading to greater importance being placed on representation within government.
In addition, more common citizens (or “new men”) played increasingly important roles in local and state governance. Hierarchy within the states underwent significant changes. Society became less deferential and more egalitarian, less aristocratic and more meritocratic.
The Revolution’s most important long-term economic consequence was the end of mercantilism. The British Empire had imposed various restrictions on the colonial economies including limiting trade, settlement, and manufacturing. The Revolution opened new markets and new trade relationships. The Americans’ victory also opened the western territories for invasion and settlement, which created new domestic markets. Americans began to create their own manufactures, no longer content to rely on those in Britain.
Despite these important changes, the American Revolution had its limits. Following their unprecedented expansion into political affairs during the imperial resistance, women also served the patriot cause during the war. However, the Revolution did not result in civic equality for women. Instead, during the immediate postwar period, women became incorporated into the polity to some degree as “republican mothers.” Republican societies required virtuous citizens, and it became mothers’ responsibility to raise and educate future citizens. This opened opportunity for women regarding education, but they still remained largely on the peripheries of the new American polity.
Approximately sixty thousand loyalists ended up leaving America because of the Revolution. Loyalists came from all ranks of American society, and many lived the rest of their lives in exile from their homeland. A clause in the Treaty of Paris was supposed to protect their property and require the Americans to compensate Loyalists who had lost property during the war because of their allegiance. The Americans, however, reneged on this promise and, throughout the 1780s, states continued seizing property held by Loyalists. Some colonists went to England, where they were strangers and outsiders in what they had thought of as their mother country. Many more, however, settled on the peripheries of the British Empire throughout the world, especially Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec. The Loyalists had come out on the losing side of a Revolution, and many lost everything they had and were forced to create new lives far from the land of their birth.
In 1783, thousands of Loyalist former slaves fled with the British army. They hoped that the British government would uphold the promise of freedom and help them establish new homes elsewhere in the Empire. The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war, demanded that British troops leave runaway slaves behind, but the British military commanders upheld earlier promises and evacuated thousands of freedmen, transporting them to Canada, the Caribbean, or Great Britain. They would eventually play a role in settling Nova Scotia, and through the subsequent efforts of David George, a black loyalist and Baptist preacher, some settled in Sierra Leone in Africa. Black loyalists, however, continued to face social and economic marginalization, including restrictions on land ownership within the British Empire.
The fight for liberty led some Americans to manumit their slaves, and most of the new northern states soon passed gradual emancipation laws.
Some manumissions also occurred in the Upper South, but in the Lower South, some masters revoked their offers of freedom for service, and other freedmen were forced back into bondage. The Revolution’s rhetoric of equality created a “revolutionary generation” of slaves and free black Americans that would eventually encourage the antislavery movement. Slave revolts began to incorporate claims for freedom based on revolutionary ideals. In the long term, the Revolution failed to reconcile slavery with these new egalitarian republican societies, a tension that eventually boiled over in the 1830s and 1840s and effectively tore the nation in two in the 1850s and 1860s.
Native Americans, too, participated in and were affected by the Revolution. Many Native American groups, such as the Shawnee, Creek, Cherokee, and Iroquois, had sided with the British. They had hoped for a British victory that would continue to restrain the land-hungry colonial settlers from moving west beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Unfortunately, the Americans’ victory and Native Americans’ support for the British created a pretense for justifying rapid and often brutal expansion into the western territories. Native American peoples would continue to be displaced and pushed farther west throughout the nineteenth century. Ultimately, American independence marked the beginning of the end of what had remained of Native American independence.
Conclusion
The American Revolution freed colonists from British rule and offered the first blow in what historians have called “the age of democratic revolutions”. The American Revolution was a global event. Revolutions followed in France, then Haiti, and then South America. The American Revolution meanwhile wrought significant changes to the British Empire. Many British historians even use the Revolution as a dividing point between a “first British Empire” and a “second British Empire.” At home, however, the Revolution created a new nation-state, the United States of America. By September 1783, independence had been won. What the new nation would look like, however, was still very much up for grabs. In the 1780s, Americans would shape and then reshape that nation-state, first with the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, and then with the Constitution in 1787 and 1788.
Historians have long argued over the causes and character of the American Revolution. Was the Revolution caused by British imperial policy or by internal tensions within the colonies? Were colonists primarily motivated by constitutional principles, ideals of equality, or economic self-interest? Was the Revolution radical or conservative? But such questions are hardly limited to historians. From Abraham Lincoln’s use of the Declaration of Independence in the Gettysburg Address to twenty-first-century Tea Party members wearing knee breeches, the Revolution has remained at the center of American political culture. Indeed, how one understands the Revolution often dictates