The American Revolution and the subsequent creation of the American nation are historically regarded as the first milestones in the fight against European imperialism. While this is true in many respects (e.g. rebalancing power of power in Europe, integration of ethnically-diverse populations under one flag The American Revolution changed the political and social aspects of the United States. After the war ended many things changed in the states. From the political stand point women still had power but gained a few rights after the war and since the states where now free from British rule they could now create their own form of central government and elected a leader Locke's ideas are represented by the rights the Constitution and the Bill of Rights grant American citizens. The Constitution set up federal system which power was divided between national and state governments. Both show more content Those revolutions were the American Revolution and the French Revolution
The National Society | Daughters of the American Revolution
I t has become de rigueureven among libertarians and classical liberals, to denigrate the benefits of the American Revolution. In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe.
Speculations that, without the American Revolution, the treatment of the indigenous population would have been more just or that slavery would have been abolished earlier display extreme historical naivety. Indeed, a far stronger case can be made that without the American Revolution, was the american revolution a revolution essay, the condition of Native Americans would have been no better, the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies would have been significantly delayed, and the condition of European colonists throughout the British empire, was the american revolution a revolution essay, not just those in what became the United States, would have been worse than otherwise.
Like all major social upheavals, it was brought off by a disparate coalition of competing viewpoints and conflicting interests. At one end of the Revolutionary coalition stood the American radicals—men such as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson. Although by no means in agreement on everything, the radicals tended to object to excessive government power in general and not simply to British rule. At the other end of the Revolutionary coalition were the American nationalists—men such as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris, and Alexander Hamilton.
They ultimately sought a strong central government, which would reproduce the hierarchical and mercantilist features of the eighteenth-century British fiscal-military State, only without the British. Of course, any such sharp distinction entails some over-simplification. These differences were arrayed along a spectrum, and individuals over time might alter their perspectives.
Thus, John Adams started out as a radical but became a nationalist, whereas James Madison evolved in the opposite direction. Caplan asks what specific benefits came about because of the American Revolution. There are at least four momentous ones.
They are all libertarian alterations in the internal status quo that prevailed, although they were sometimes deplored or resisted by American nationalists. The First Abolition: Prior to the American Revolution, every New World colony, British or otherwise, legally sanctioned slavery, and nearly every colony counted enslaved people among its population. Vermont, which, despite participation in the Revolution remained an independent republic until it was permitted to join the union inwas the first jurisdiction to abolish adult slavery—in Inthe Confederation Congress also prohibited the extension of slavery into the Northwest Territory.
There is a tendency to minimize this first emancipation because slavery had been less economically entrenched in the northern colonies than in the southern colonies and because in many northern states slavery was eliminated gradually.
But emancipation had to start somewhere. The fact that it did so where opposition was weakest in no way diminishes the radical nature of this assault upon a labor system that had remained virtually unchallenged since the dawn of civilization.
Of course, slavery had largely died out within Britain. But the Somerset court decision ofwhich freed a slave brought from the colonies, had a limited reach. Masters continued to bring slaves occasionally into the country and were able to hold them there. Parliament did not formally and entirely abolish the institution in the mother country until Several southern states banned the importation of slaves and relaxed their nearly universal restrictions on masters voluntarily freeing their own slaves.
Through resulting manumissions, 10, Virginia slaves were freed, more than were freed in Massachusetts by judicial decree. This spawned the first substantial communities of free blacks, which in the upper South helped induce a slow, partial decline of slavery.
Byfor instance, three quarters of African-Americans in Delaware were already free through this process. Separation of Church and State: Unlike the case of slavery, the revolutionary separation of church and state was more pronounced in the South than in the North. Although the British colonies prior to the Revolution already practiced a relatively high degree of religious toleration, only four of thirteen colonies had no established, tax-supported church: Rhode Island, New Jersey, was the american revolution a revolution essay, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
As a result of the Revolution, the five other southern states and New York disestablished the Anglican Church. With the adoption of the Constitution and then the First Amendment, the United States become was the american revolution a revolution essay first country to separate church and state at the national level.
Several of the New England states, however, retained their established Congregational Church, with Massachusetts becoming the last to fully abolish tax support as late as In our modern secular age, it is too easy to take these accomplishments for granted, but they were unprecedented.
Republican Governments: As a result of the Revolution, was the american revolution a revolution essay all of the former colonies adopted written state constitutions setting up republican governments with limitations on state power embodied in bills of rights. Only Rhode Island and Connecticut continued to operate under their colonial charters, with minor modifications.
The new state constitutions often extended the franchise, with Vermont being again the first jurisdiction to adopt universal male suffrage with no property qualifications and explicitly without regard to color. Going along with this was a reform of penal codes throughout the former colonies, making them less severe, and eliminating such brutal physical punishments as ear-cropping and branding, all still widely practiced in Britain.
Virginia reduced the number of capital crimes from twenty-seven to two: murder and treason. Quit-rents, a feudal land tax that had been paid either to colonial proprietors or to the Crown, had been due in all colonies outside of New England and were now terminated.
All the new states abolished primogeniture the sole right of inheritance to the firstborn son and entail a prohibition of the sale, break up, or transfer to outside the family of an estate where they existed, either by statute or by constitutional provisions.
Doing so not only eliminated economically inefficient feudal encumbrances on land titles but also was a blow against hereditary privilege and the patriarchal family, because it undermined traditional patterns of inheritance and facilitated the rights of daughters and widows to possess property. Anyone who has read a Jane Austen novel is aware that these legal props for the landed gentry still persisted in Britain into the nineteenth century.
At the same time, all states except South Carolina liberalized their divorce laws. Even the egregious treatment of Loyalists during the Revolution indirectly contributed to the erosion of feudal entitlements. The claim that only one third of Americans supported the Revolution, one third were neutral, and one third were opposed is still frequently repeated, but it is a misreading of a letter written by John Adams in referring instead to American attitudes about the French Revolution.
The consensus of historians is that between 40 and 50 percent of the white population were active Patriots, between 15 and 20 percent were Loyalists, and the remainder were neutral or kept a low profile. Yet all the new states passed laws confiscating Loyalist estates. Since many of these estates were proprietary grants to royal placemen, 3 the confiscations entailed a redistributionist land reform.
The U. But such titles, still prevalent throughout the Old World, always involved enormous legal privileges. This provision is, was the american revolution a revolution essay, therefore, a manifestation of the extent to which the Revolution witnessed a decline in deference throughout society. No one has captured this impact better than the dean of revolutionary historians, Gordon Wood, in his Pulitzer Prize winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution.
One can view this transition even through subtle changes in language. Although these are mere cultural transformations, they both reflected and reinforced the erosion of coercive supports for hierarchy, in a reinforcing cycle.
Contrast that with Britain, where as late at Parliament passed a Master and Servant Act that prescribed criminal penalties for breach of a labor contract. The Revolution not only radically changed the personal and social relations of people… but also destroyed aristocracy as it had been understood in the Western world for at least two millennia. The Revolution brought respectability and even dominance to ordinary people long held in contempt and gave dignity to their menial labor in a manner unprecedented in history and to a degree not equaled elsewhere in the world.
The Revolution did not just eliminate monarchy and create republics; it actually reconstituted what Americans meant by public or state power. Would all of these outcomes have happened without a War for Independence?
Surely some and possibly many of them might have eventually, but the real question is whether the American Revolution played a crucial role in initiating and accelerating these developments. Those denying its significance inevitably point to Was the american revolution a revolution essay, which remained under British rule and, indeed, harbored many fleeing Loyalists.
Today it is a free, democratic polity, with a high standard of living, and as liberal as, or in some respects more liberal than, the United States. To understand why the case of Canada does not prove the point, we need to look back before the Revolution and examine the factors that ignited it. But in the mid-eighteenth century, as the colonies became more populous and more integral to the British economy, there emerged among imperial officials a clique who wished to impose tighter control upon the colonies.
The primary features of the new policy were: 1 stationing in North America during peace for the first time a large standing army, was the american revolution a revolution essay, numbering never less than 7,; 2 issuing the Proclamation ofdrawing a line along the western boundary of the colonies beyond which settlement was prohibited; and 3 imposing taxes to help defray the cost of the army.
Unfortunately for the British, the Proclamation line also alienated those who would become American nationalists, helping to throw them into coalition with the radicals.
Until then, major land speculators such as Franklin and Washington had revered the British empire and been enthusiastic supporters of its expansion. But now the fruits of a victory to which they had contributed during the recent war were being denied them. Nor did the Proclamation line presage better treatment of Native Americans.
If there was ever going to be any real check on settler aggression against the indigenous populations in North America, it had already vanished with the French defeat. Indeed, it is hard to identify any British settler colony where the aboriginal peoples were not driven from their homelands or otherwise harshly treated.
Maybe so in New Zealand, but certainly not in Australia. British acquisition of South Africa in did result in the abolition of slavery and some restraints on the Dutch-descended Boer population but the country still witnessed ongoing military campaigns against the Xhosa natives, then the Zulu War, and the ultimate emergence of apartheid.
As for British Canada, the dispossession of Native Americans was less bloody than in the United States but almost as thorough. Canada had two violent uprisings among the Métis, people of mixed French and indigenous ancestry, the first in and the second inboth suppressed and led by Louis Riel, who was therefore hanged for treason.
Following the Proclamation ofthe relations between the colonies and the mother country went was the american revolution a revolution essay three consecutive crises: the first over the Stamp Actthe second over the Townshend Dutiesand the third over the Tea Act The first two involved British efforts to impose new taxes on the colonists, provoking colonial protests and resistance.
In both cases, imperial authorities backed down, was the american revolution a revolution essay, ushering in temporary but tense lulls. Once colonial opposition effectively nullified the Tea Act, however, the British government responded harshly with a series of Coercive Acts, and outright military conflict erupted in Colonial objections to the Tea Act can be puzzling, because the act itself did not directly tax the colonists.
Instead it was essentially a bailout of the British East India Company, the quintessential mercantilist was the american revolution a revolution essay, which was struggling financially. Tea destined for shipment and eventual sale in North America would be purchased by private merchants.
The colonists then had to pay an additional import tax on tea, the one Townshend Duty that had not been repealed in Under the Tea Act, the company was now given a monopoly on re-shipment of tea to the colonies along with a rebate of the British duty.
The act, therefore, had the ironic effect of reducing the price of tea in the colonies. The colonists nonetheless defied the Tea Act for several reasons. Radicals, who had been boycotting the legal importation of tea, viewed the act as a clever ruse to get the colonists to accept Parliamentary taxation in principle.
The act hurt American merchants, not just those importing tea legally, but also, because it undercut the price of smuggled Dutch tea, those doing so illegally.
If the company could be given a monopoly on tea, it could also be given a monopoly on other activities. Fifteen hundred Thousand… perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits, but this Company and its Servants engrossed all the Necessities of Life, and was the american revolution a revolution essay them at so high a Rate, that the Poor could not purchase them. Thus,… they now, it seems, cast their Eyes on Americaas a new Theatre, wherein to exercise their Talents of Rapine, Oppression and Cruelty.
The Monopoly on Tea is, I dare say, but a small Part of the Plan they have formed to strip us of our Property, was the american revolution a revolution essay.
If the colonists needed any further evidence of British designs, Parliament, was the american revolution a revolution essay, along with the Coercive Acts, passed the Quebec Act inestablishing a new government for the former French territory. With respect to governance, it vested all authority in a royally appointed governor and council, with no provision for a colonial assembly; it re-instituted compulsory tithes to the Catholic Church; and it restored the French seigneurial system, with its feudal privileges for distributing and managing land.
In short, there is ample evidence for a claim that historian Leonard Liggio emphasized. Without the American Revolution, British hard-liners intended to fasten on North America an imperial regime in many respects similar if not identical to British rule in India. The potentially deleterious impact of these foiled British designs on North America is hinted at in a short article by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas.
Was the American Revolution Inevitable?
, time: 1:02:36Essay on the american revolution
Locke's ideas are represented by the rights the Constitution and the Bill of Rights grant American citizens. The Constitution set up federal system which power was divided between national and state governments. Both show more content Those revolutions were the American Revolution and the French Revolution Jul 02, · Wood, Radicalism of American Revolution, pp. As quoted in Bernhard Knollenberg, Origin of the American Revolution, (New York: Macmillan, ), p. The memo is part of the papers of Lord Shelburne, president of the Board of Trade, and was probably written by his secretary, Maurice Morgann The Enlightenment was the root of many of the ideas of the American Revolution. It was a movement that focused mostly on freedom of speech, equality, freedom of press, and religious tolerance. The American Revolution was the time period where America tried to gain its independence from England
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