CHAPTER 6 The Revolution Within
This chapter concentrates on the political and social changes resulting from the American Revolution. It focuses on how the concepts
of liberty and freedom continued to evolve during the Revolution and how they transformed society and politics in the 1770s and
1780s. The chapter begins with a look at a remarkable American woman, Abigail Adams. The democratization of freedom in the pub-
lic sphere is explored through an examination of how new state constitutions dealt with suffrage requirements. The chapter also ex-
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Abigail Adams
A. Wife of John Adams
2. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)
II. Democratizing Freedom
A. The Dream of Equality
1. The Revolution unleashed public debates and political and social struggles that enlarged the scope of freedom and
2. The Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal” announced a radical principle whose full
implications could not be anticipated.
a. American freedom became linked with equality, which challenged the fundamental inequality inherent in the colonial
social order.
B. Expanding the Political Nation
1. The leaders of the Revolution had not intended this disruption of social order.
3. In the eighteenth century, democracy had multiple meanings.
4. Artisans, small farmers, laborers, and the militia all emerged as self-conscious elements in politics.
C. The Revolution in Pennsylvania
1. The prewar elite of Pennsylvania opposed independence.
a. This left a vacuum of political leadership filled by Paine, Rush, Matlack, and Young.
D. The New Constitutions
2. States disagreed as to how the government should be structured:
a. One-house legislatures were adopted only by Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Vermont.
b. John Adams’s “balanced governments” included two-house legislatures.
E. The Right to Vote
1. The property qualification for suffrage was hotly debated.
3. Most democratic new constitutions moved toward voting as an entitlement rather than a privilege.
F. Democratizing Government
1. By the 1780s, with the exceptions of Virginia, Maryland, and New York, a large majority of the adult white male
2. Freedom and an individual’s right to vote had become interchangeable.
III. Toward Religious Toleration
A. Catholic Americans
1. Joining forces with France and inviting Quebec to join in the struggle against Britain had weakened anti–Catholicism.
B. The Founders and Religion
2. Many believed that religion was necessary as a foundation of public morality but were skeptical of religious doctrine.
a. The Enlightenment influenced this skepticism.
C. Separating Church and State
1. The drive to separate church and state brought together Deists with members of evangelical sects.
3. The seven state constitutions that began with declarations of rights all included a commitment to “the free exercise of
religion.”
5. Catholics gained the right to worship without persecution throughout the states.
D. Jefferson and Religious Liberty
2. James Madison insisted that one reason for the complete separation of church and state was to reinforce the principle that
the new nation offered “asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every nation and religion.”
E. The Revolution and the Churches
1. As religious liberty expanded, some church authority was undermined.
2. Thanks to religious freedom, the early republic witnessed an amazing proliferation of religious denominations.
a. Today, more than 1,300 religions are practiced.
F. Christian Republicanism
1. Religious and secular language merged in the struggle for independence, creating what scholars call Christian
3. Leaders wished to encourage virtue—the ability to sacrifice self-interest for the public good.
IV. Defining Economic Freedom
A. Toward Free Labor
1. The lack of freedom inherent in apprenticeship and servitude increasingly came to be seen as incompatible with
republican citizenship.
2. By 1800, indentured servitude had all but disappeared from the United States.
B. The Soul of a Republic
2. Thomas Jefferson and others equated land and economic resources with freedom.
C. The Politics of Inflation
1. Some Americans responded to wartime inflation by accusing merchants of hoarding goods and by seizing stocks of food
to be sold at the traditional “just price.”
D. The Debate over Free Trade
2. Adam Smith’s argument that the “invisible hand” of the free market directed economic life more effectively and fairly than
governmental intervention offered intellectual justification for those who believed that the economy should be left to
regulate itself.
V. The Limits of Liberty
A. Colonial Loyalists
1. An estimated 20–25 percent of Americans were Loyalists (those who retained their allegiance to the crown).
2. Loyalists included:
a. Wealthy men with close working relationships with Britain
B. The Loyalists’ Plight
2. War brought a deprivation of basic rights to many Americans.
a. Many states required residents to take oaths of allegiance to the new nation.
C. The Revolution as a Borderlands Conflict
2. Loyalists brought to Canada a commitment to self–rule that inspired rebellions in Canada in 1837.
3. The border between Quebec and New England became an international border.
D. White Freedom, Indian Freedom
1. To many Patriots, access to Indian land was one of the fruits of American victory.
a. But liberty for whites meant loss of liberty for Indians.
3. “Freedom” had not played a major part in Indians’ vocabulary before the Revolution, but now freedom meant defending
VI. Slavery and the Revolution
A. The Language of Slavery and Freedom
1. During the debates over British rule, “slavery” was invoked as a political category.
a. Britain was a “kingdom of slaves,” whereas America was a “country of free men.”
3. The irony that America cried for liberty while enslaving Africans was recognized by some (e.g., the British statesman
Edmund Burke and the British writer Dr. Samuel Johnson).
B. Obstacles to Abolition
1. Most founders owned slaves at one point in their respective lives.
a. John Adams and Thomas Paine were exceptions.
3. According to a reading of Locke, for government to seize property (including slaves) would be an infringement on liberty.
C. The Cause of General Liberty
2. Samuel Sewall’s The Selling of Joseph (1700) was the first antislavery tract in America.
3. Benjamin Rush warned (1773) that slavery was a “national crime” that would bring “national punishment.”
D. Petitions for Freedom
1. Slaves in the North and in the South appropriated the language of liberty for their own purposes.
3. Many blacks were surprised that white America did not realize their rhetoric of revolution demanded emancipation.
5. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature)
E. British Emancipators
1. Nearly 100,000 slaves deserted their owners and fled to British lines.
2. At the end of the war, over 15,000 blacks accompanied the British out of the country.
a. Many ended up in Nova Scotia, England, and Sierra Leone, a West African settlement established by Britain for former
U.S. slaves.
F. Voluntary Emancipations
2. In the Lower South, the emancipation process never started.
G. Abolition in the North
2. Abolition in the North was a slow process and typically applied only to future children of current slave women.
H. Free Black Communities
2. In all states except Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, free black men who met taxpaying or property qualifications
were “citizens of color” who could vote.
3. Despite the rhetoric of freedom, the war did not end slavery for blacks.
1. Many women participated in the war in various capacities.
2. Within American households, women participated in the political discussions unleashed by independence.
B. Gender and Politics
1. “Coverture” (which meant that a husband held legal authority over his wife) remained intact in the new nation.
3. Many women who entered public debate felt the need to apologize for their forthrightness.
4. Most men considered women to be naturally submissive and irrational and therefore unfit for citizenship.
C. Republican Motherhood
1. Women played a key role in the new republic by training future citizens.
3. The Revolution altered the structure of family life.
a. In the North, hired workers were not considered part of the family as indentured servants and slaves had been.
D. The Arduous Struggle for Liberty
1. The Revolution changed the life of virtually every American.
2. America became a beacon of hope to those chafing under Old World tyrannies.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• What did Abigail Adams mean when she wrote to her husband, “Remember the Ladies”? Did she believe in the modern notion of
equality of the sexes?
• Discuss how the struggle for American liberty emboldened various groups of colonists to demand more liberty for themselves.
• How fully did Revolutionary-era Americans embrace the concept of religious freedom? What evidence can you cite that indi-
cates that the young republic was committed to religious freedom? What evidence is there that there were limitations to reli-
gious freedom?
• Discuss the irony in the American call for freedom at a time when America was a slave society.
• How did free blacks and enslaved African-Americans respond to the revolutionary era?
• The Revolutionary War was empowering for some women. Discuss the various ways that women were able to express greater
freedoms and liberties. How did the idea of “republican motherhood” elevate a woman’s position? What limitations on freedom
did women in the new nation encounter?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
African-Americans and the War
Abolition
Slavery in the North
African-American Odyssey
Indians in the War
Religion and the American Revolution
Revolutionary War
Women in the Revolutionary War
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Andrews, Dee. The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760–1800: The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2000.
DuVal, Kathleen. Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. New York: Random House, 2015.
Fitz, Caitlin A. “ ‘Suspected on Both Sides’: Little Abraham, Iroquois Neutrality, and the American Revolution.” Journal of the Early Republic 28,
no. 3 (2008): 299–335.
Glatthaar, Joseph, and James Martin. Forgotten Allies: The Oneida Indians and the American Revolution. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.
Kerber, Linda. Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
1. Group Visual Analysis
Show the class images taken from the paintings, drawings, political cartoons, and other rich and detailed scenes used in the textbook, as well as re-
lated images from the Internet. Break the class into small groups. Provide some background information on visual analysis. Then hold a general
discussion about notions of freedom following the Revolution. As the small groups see each image, ask students to write down their individual ob-
servations. Then ask them to discuss these with the group as a whole for a group assessment and presentation.
Questions to consider asking each group:
2. Group Dramatic Activity: Stakeholders in the American Revolutionary Period
Divide the class into eight groups, with each group picking a character. Each character lived through the American Revolutionary period from
1763 to 1783:
• Southern Loyalist
Teams will create a brief identity for their character. Then ask the students to answer the following questions based on the chosen identity:
1. How did the American Revolutionary War and its aftermath affect you? Are you better off in 1783 than you were in 1775?
2. What are your views on slavery before and after the war?
3. What are your views on the role of women before and after the war?
4. What role do you see for Indians on the frontier after the war?
5. What role does religion play in your life after the war?