There are at least three ways of defining the American Revolution. First, and on the most fundamental level, the American Revolution can be defined as the movement that led to independence from Great Britain. Second, this definition can be expanded to include the creation of a new form of republican government. Finally, the American Revolution can also be described as a series of political, social, economic, and cultural transformations that altered the American world.
The movement toward independence can be divided into two parts. First is the resistance movement (176475) that began in the 1760s in reaction to imperial regulation. After the French and Indian War (1754-63), Great Britain passed a series of regulations intended to rationalize its overseas empire and to raise revenue for the defense of that empire. Colonists objected to these efforts. This resistance did not lead inevitably to independence. In fact, most colonists believed that they were merely asserting their rights as Englishmen when they opposed imperial regulation. Yet in the process of opposing laws like the Stamp Act (1765), the Townshend Duties (1767), and the Tea Act (1773) a pattern of conflict, distrust, and misunderstanding developed that led the colonies and Great Britain to the precipice of war by 1775. The war that broke out in April 1775, which in turn led to the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), forms the second part of this definition of the American Revolution. Without the armed conflict, independence would have been impossible. Only after the defeat of its armies did Great Britain at last acquiesce in the independence of its former North American colonies.
The second definition of the American Revolution picks up the story during the Revolutionary War (1775-83) and carries it through to the writing and ratification of the United States Constitution. During the war, it became obvious to the revolutionary leaders that some form of government must be created to replace the one being overthrown. On the local level, each state wrote or adopted its own constitution. This process was extremely important to the revolutionaries, since at the time (before 1787) they had only the vaguest notion of a national form of government. What counted was the state constitutions (see also constitutions, state). Each state experimented with a slightly different form of government in an effort to meet the republican (see also republicanism) ideal of balanced government that would protect the public welfare. The government of the United States under the Articles of Coneederation was intended as a limited form of alliance that would bind otherwise independent states to one another. The creation of the United States Constitution therefore represented a radical break from the previous form of government. It not only created a truly national government, it also placed tremendous power in the executive and limited democratic input on several levels. The president of the United States became commander in chief of the armed forces, had vast appointive powers, and could veto legislation that could be overridden only by two-thirds of both houses of the legislature.
The third definition of the American Revolution is more difficult to delineate and more difficult to date. Many historians now view the entire period running from 1760 to 1830 as the era of the American Revolution. These historians claim that the political transformations and debates— beginning with the resistance movement and the creation of republican governments— continued through the decades of the 1790s and early 1800s as the people of the United States sought to stabilize their republican experiment and delineate a democratic political system. For these historians, the ultimate political end of the American Revolution comes with the rewriting of state constitutions in the 1820s and 1830s, which opened up the political process to all adult white men.
Other historians push their definition of the era of the American Revolution even further, and talk about profound social, economic, and cultural change. For these scholars, the colonial world was marked by a social hierarchy cemented by the bonds of deference and paternalism. In such a world, no man was independent; each individual was bound and dependent upon another within a social structure that reached to the colonial governor and eventually to the king. The American Revolution overthrew this hierarchical world. The key to this revolution was Thomas Jeeeerson’s phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” The rise of the ideal of equality, however, did not emerge magically overnight. Instead, the triumph of this ideal took decades to unravel. Some men sought to slow or prevent the full implications of the ideal from taking force. From this perspective, even the Constitution of 1787 was an effort to limit the impact of equality. Likewise, the Federalist Party program of the 1790s sought to reinstall a hierarchical ideal in politics.
World History
