3.6- Interpretations of the American Revolution

“In the decades following the Revolution, American society was transformed. . . . The Revolution resembled the breaking of a dam, releasing thousands upon thousands of pent-up pressures. . . . It was as if the whole traditional structure, enfeebled and brittle to begin with, broke apart, and the people and their energies were set loose in an unprecedented outburst. “Nothing contributed more to this explosion of energy than did the idea of equality. Equality was in fact the most radical and most powerful ideological force let loose in the Revolution. Its appeal was far more potent than any of the revolutionaries realized. Once invoked, the idea of equality could not be stopped, and it tore through American society and culture with awesome power. . . . Within decades following the Declaration of Independence, the United States became the most egalitarian nation in the history of the world, and it remains so today, regardless of its great disparities of wealth.”

“Today, ‘equality’ is generally interpreted to include protection for the rights of minorities; during the Revolution, ‘the body of the people’ referred exclusively to the majority. . . . It is one of the supreme ironies of the American revolution that the assumption of authority by “the body of the people”—probably its most radical feature—served to oppress as well as to liberate. This was a real revolution: the people did seize power, but they exercised that power at the expense of others—loyalists, pacifists, merchants, Indians, slaves—who, although certainly people, were not perceived to be part of the whole. This was, after all, a war. It would not be the last time Americans sacrificed notions of liberty and equality in the name of the general good. Our Revolutionary heritage works both ways. ‘The body of the people,’ the dominant force during the 1770s, has empowered and deprived.”