The American Revolution was a big part of American history that should have revolutionized the United States but it didn’t because the only thing that changed was the people that was in control of things and nothing else for American people. The American Revolution was a colonial revolt that took place between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America. In this essay, I will argue why the Revolution wasn’t truly a revolution, it simply was just a shift of power from one ruling class to another. Before I jump right in to why the Revolution wasn’t really a revolution, I want to tell you a little more about why the Revolution came about. The reason behind …show more content…
Men from several western counties, many of them Revolutionary war veterans from leading families, violently opposed the high taxes levied by the legislature to pay war debts. It was an ironic turn of events. In the 1760s, the British – looking for ways to pay their debt for the Seven Years War – decided to tax the colonists to increase British revenue. As we know, this led to the American Revolution. In the 1780s, the colonists were now in control of their own government, and – looking for ways to pay their debt from the American revolution and the new republic – settled on taxing the colonists. Colonists in western countries argued that they weren’t represented in the eastern-dominated legislature, and they rebelled. Shays rebellion would end relatively quickly, but what is interesting is that they viewed the new American government in the same light as the old British one. They called it “tyrannical,” and claimed “whenever any encroachments are made either upon the liberties or properties of the people, if redress cannot be had without, it is virtue in them to disturb
The Shays Rebellion were series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers. However, protests began before Shays Rebellion, the Massachusetts protest convention, circa of 1780 is a prime example of this, “...The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers....”.(B) Many farmers in this area suffered from high debt as they tried to start new farms. Unlike many other state legislatures in the 1780s, the Massachusetts government didn't respond to the economic crisis . As a result local sheriffs seized many farms and some farmers who couldn't pay their debts were put in prison.These conditions led to the first major armed rebellion in the post-Revolutionary United States called Shays Rebellion. Anti-Federalist were primality poor uneducated farmers. An exception of a the poor Anti Federalist stereotype is George Mason, whom is a huge political influence of the Bill of Rights, exploits his ideology in his Virginia Bill of Rights “That
When we hear about the Revolutionary War, one of the most popular phrases to be tied to it is “no taxation without representation,” and was coined from the fact that the colonies were being directly taxed without democratic representation. The fact that the American people did not have representation in Parliament while being taxed was virtually universally disapproved and was an extremely big factor in driving the American people to protect their democratic ideals through war in the years prior to the revolution.
When the colonies were being formed, many colonists came from England to escape the restrictions placed upon them by the crown. Britain had laws for regulating trade and collecting taxes, but they were generally not enforced. The colonists had gotten used to being able to govern themselves. However, Britain sooned changed it’s colonial policy because of the piling debt due to four wars the British got into with the French and the Spanish. The most notable of these, the French and Indian War (or the Seven Years’ War), had immediate effects on the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain, leading to the concept of no taxation without representation becoming the motivating force for the American revolutionary movement and a great symbol for democracy amongst the colonies, as Britain tried to tighten their hold on the colonies through various acts and measures.
The American Revolution has too often been dominated by the narrative of the founding fathers and has since been remembered as a “glorified cause.” However, the American Revolution was not a unified war but a civil war with many internal disputes that wreaked havoc and chaos throughout America. In his book, The Unknown American Resvolution, Gary B. Nash attempts to unveil the chaos that the American Revolution really was through the eyes of the people not in power, including women, African American slaves, and Native Americans. In his book, Gary B. Nash emphasizes their significance in history to recount the tale of the American Revolution not through the eyes of the privileged elite but through the eyes of the people who sacrificed and struggled the most, but were left forgotten, in their endeavors to reinvent America.
Gordon Wood’s Radicalism of the American Revolution is a book that extensively covers the origin and ideas preceding the American Revolution. Wood’s account of the Revolution goes beyond the history and timeline of the war and offers a new encompassing look inside the social ideology and economic forces of the war. Wood explains in his book that America went through a two-stage progression to break away from the Monarchical rule of the English. He believes the pioneering revolutionaries were rooted in the belief of an American Republic. However, it was the radical acceptance of democracy that was the final step toward independence. The transformation between becoming a Republic, to ultimately becoming a democracy, is where Wood’s evaluation of the revolution differs from other historians. He contributes such a transformation to the social and economic factors that faced the colonists. While Gordon Wood creates a persuasive argument in his book, he does however neglect to consider other contributing factors of the revolution. It is these neglected factors that provide opportunity for criticism of his book.
The most important issue prompting Americans to rebel in 1776 is clearly parliamentary taxation. The first time a Parliamentary imposed tax threatened the livelihood of the colonies was in 1733 with the Molasses Act, stemmed from the loss of profit for the British West Indies under the Navigation Act. However, this act was avoidable and rarely paid. Following the long and harrowing French and Indian War, Britain was deep in debt and George Grenville was appointed British Chancellor. He was determined to pay off the debt by brutally taxing the colonies. He not only reinforced the ignored Navigation Acts, but he placed the new Sugar Act which was similar to the Molasses Act which put a tax on rum and molasses imported from West Indies, but this Act would be enforced. Needless to say, the colonists were not used to this intrusion of Parliament and felt that it was wrong because there were no members in Parliament to represent the colonies. They felt it was a direct violation of their civil liberties and the first whiff of resentment was beginning to spawn. Next was the Currency Act which disregarded the colonies paper money, forcing the colonist to pay in only silver and sending their economy into chaos. Perhaps the most important and controversial acts were the Stamps Acts that placed a tax on legal documents, almanacs, newspaper, pamphlets, playing cards and dice.
The revolution brought major changes in the system but if seeing from a larger view everything remained the same. The questions that the American Revolution went deeply through were the slavery question, the women emancipation and the system of politics. But at the end radical changes were very little and the lives lost were not worth the advantages for the country. The first issue the revolutionary war had to face was slavery. Social changes never touched the lives of white men since they already had rights and benefits but instead they touched slaves and women even though the scene remained unchanged after the end of the war.
Shays' Rebellion, in Massachusetts, was the first uprising in the new nation. During the time period of 1786-1787, The United States government decided to raise taxes in order to raise capital and pay off war debt, which ultimately led to an economic depression.. A great postwar depression meant that prices for farm produce in general decreased. Many farmers became overcome with debt, causing seizure of their property when they were forced to default on their debts. Such a tense environment erupted in a rebellion as a protest against the Massachusetts government's refusal to provide economic relief to the struggling farmers of the state (Carson, Bonk). A rebel group known as the Regulators, led by Daniel Shays, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, began to form (Stock). Daniel Shays was the son of an Irish immigrant and joined the Continental Army at the beginning of the American Revolution and managed to attain the rank of captain before returning home (Bigelow). He became a typical farmer, who eventually fell into debt, along with many of his neighbors. It is a shame that the 'American Dream' led to many people falling int...
After the Great War for Empire, the British parliament began carrying out taxes on the colonists to help pay for the war. It was not long from the war that salutary neglect was brought on the colonies for an amount of time that gave the colonists a sense of independence and identity. A farmer had even wrote once: “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world” (Doc H). They recognized themselves as different than the British, so when parliament began passing bills to tax without representation there was an outcry of mistreatment. Edmund Burke, a man from parliament, sympathized with the colonists: “Govern America as you govern an English town which happens not to be represented in Parl...
The American revolution was a reaction to unfavorable tax policies from the King of England. When the King of England began to infringe on the colonists’ liberties, leaders inspired by the enlightenment grouped together to defend the rights of the American colonies. As Thomas Jefferson writes in the Declaration of Independence, “History of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries ad usurpations,
After the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, European Nations competed in a race against one another to claim pieces of the new land. Before Columbus found this land, the sea separating the New World from Europe seemed endless, and mundane. The Europeans were only interested in the land to the East. But with the New World as a new hat thrown into the ring, the Europeans tossed aside their old toy to go play with a new one. This time period of conquest over the New World was known as the Age of Exploration, and by the 1700s, they kept their pickings. A New World meant more land to build homes and plant crops, and more money to be earned by buying out new houses and selling new crops grown in foreign soil. Spain claimed Mexico, and the Southwest portions of what would be known as America. France got their hands on most of present-day Canada, as well as Louisiana. The Dutch set foot on land they called New Amsterdam, however, The English, who had settled their first colony in Jamestown, Virginia, drove the Dutch out and claimed New Amsterdam for themselves, later renaming it New York. The English claimed more land as time passed, and eventually they had formed 13 different colonies in the Eastern part of America. The English Colonies were separated into 3 different regions. The New England Colonies (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire), the Middle Colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware), and the Southern Colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia). The New England Colonies were the earliest of the 3 regions, founded by English Settlers seeking religious freedom. The Middle Colonies were also founded by settlers seeking religious freedom. The Southern Colonies,...
The American Revolution marked the divorce of the British Empire and its one of the most valued colonies. Behind the independence that America had fought so hard for, there emerged a diverging society that was eager to embrace new doctrines. The ideals in the revolution that motivated the people to fight for freedom continued to influence American society well beyond the colonial period. For example, the ideas borrowed from John Locke about the natural rights of man was extended in an unsuccessful effort to include women and slaves. The creation of state governments and the search for a national government were the first steps that Americans took to experiment with their own system. Expansion, postwar depression as well as the new distribution of land were all evidence that pointed to the gradual maturing of the economic system. Although America was fast on its way to becoming a strong and powerful nation, the underlying issues brought about by the Revolution remained an important part in the social, political and economical developments that in some instances contradicted revolutionary principles in the period from 1775-1800.
Holton exemplifies how these two conflicting beliefs played out in post-Revolutionary America by describing one of the farmers' rebellions that intimidated the American elite. In Virginia, Greenbrier farmers, lead by Adonijah Mathews, staged an uprising against high taxes. As Holton put's it, the fact that the Virginia farmers had succeeded in intimidating state government proved to the elite the extent to which the will of the majority had become to powerful (Holton, 12). Holton provides ample examples of rebellion, illustrating the fact that 'ordinary Americans', mainly farmers, did not agree with the Frames that the revolution had created a republic that was too democratic. Holton's evidence proves the contrary, that ordinary Americans thought that the thirteen state governments didn't listen to them enough. (Holton, 153). The description of these rebellions also establishes the link between rebellion and tax relief. Holton points out that “Rebellions and confrontations resulted in relief where petitions and ...
Revolution is briefly described as an attempt to overthrow a government to start a new one. The American Revolution took place between 1775 and 1783 and was a fight for American Independence from England. In 1764, the first of many “Intolerable Acts” were passed. The British Parliament began to excise tax on the American colonies without representation, sparking the great conflict. The British were continuing to incorporate new ways to make more money. England was the most powerful country at the time with an intimidating military, so this wasn’t a hard task to complete. The American Revolution was very Revolutionary because, it jump started the abolition of slavery, it brought about many political and social advances, and served as a stepping stone towards a democracy and a strong centralized government.
Ordinary colonists in North America saw British taxes as both an economic hardship as well as a trampling of their rights. Even before such men as Sam Adams and Paul Revere led protests through the streets of America, the everyday farmer and shopkeeper were finding ways around British taxes such as smuggling goods in and out of colonial ports. The God given rights of the common man were being tested and some American colonists started to consider fighting their British overlords.