Revolutionary War Dbq

The American Revolutionary War caused the widely accepted written and unwritten laws of society to be called into question.Many groups of people who had been deprived of freedom prior to the Revolution are some of the elite in modern society. Because a small group of colonists called out for liberty and stood up to the biggest military power of the time, many minorities were given the spark to do the same. People began using the “language of liberty” that was used in the Declaration of Independence to try to gain freedoms and rights in religion, economic situations, and in equality. The struggle for American liberty caused minority groups to do the same. Minority groups wanted the same liberties that the colonists fought over. Slavery

By the year 1800, indentured servitude was all about gone, and many slaves took advantage of the commotion of the Revolution to escape to freedom. Free labor was becoming less and less common. Also, pre-revolution, many families were practicing primogeniture, the act of passing down their land to their oldest son, prior to the revolution. Many laws were passed afterwards to prevent this so that an aristocracy didn’t form like it did in Britain. The founding fathers didn’t want a wealthy class ruling over all the others, so they did all they could, including limiting primogeniture and entail (keeping wealth and land within one family), to try to prevent this. Economic freedom at the time was equated with land and economic resources - if one could independently financially support himself, he was economically free, so congress granted 50 acres of land (taken from the Indians) to anyone who didn’t already have it. This helped close the wage gap between the rich and the poor. However, almost everyone was hurt by post-war inflation. To finance wars, congress began printing paper money. This caused the prices of basically everything to skyrocket. America tried to fix this by adopting measures to fix wages and prices. This did help a bit, and once the economy became a bit more regular, America would go on to follow Adam Smith’s ideas on economic regulation - allowing supply and demand to regulate themselves for

Dissenters and Catholics, groups that were largely unaccepted prior to the revolution began using the language of liberty to gain rights just like the slaves, women, and those in the lower economic class. Before the revolution, religious groups like Dissenters, Catholics, and Jews were all restricted of many rights and liberties. Especially when it came to voting and officeholding, as they were not allowed to do either. But, by 1790, every state granted everyone the freedom to practice whatever religion they believed in, and a member of any religion could vote; however Pennsylvania did demand that its citizens acknowledge the existence of a God. Catholics in particular benefitted greatly due to the fact that the Americans would not have won the revolution without the assistance of France, a Catholic nation. Many people saw and acknowledged this fact and realized that the Catholics had a role to play in gaining freedom, so they should be allowed to reap the benefits. However, although religious groups were gaining rights, the church itself was not benefitting at all. In fact, many churches became disestablished, or deprived of public funding and special legal privileges, which made many people very unhappy. But the founding fathers believed that a separation between church and state best benefit the common good. Many feared that without the church and government combination,