Was the American Rewlution a
Conservative Movement?

ISSUE SUMMAEY
YES; PLlf[tzE!r '~o- "wmnmg author Carl N. Degler argues that upper-
rniddle-dass colonists led a conservative American Revolution that left
untouched the prewar economic and social dass structure of an upwardly
mohile people.
NO: P~ winning historian Gordon S. Wood argues that the American
Revolution was a f~ reaching, radical event that produced a unf~ demo-
cratic society in which ordmary people could make money, pursue happf.
Bess, and ho se~overning.


Was the American Revolution a true revolution? 'fhe answer may depend on
how the term reoo/ution is defined Strict consfructionists, for example, per-
ceive revolution as produdng significant and deep societal change, while
loose constructionists define the term as "any resort to violence witfun a
political order to change its constitution, rulers, or policies " fBstorians agree
that American Revolutionaries fulfilled the second definition because they
successfully fought e war that resulted in the overtfuowof their British rulers
and established a government run by themselves. floweve~ historians
disagree over the amount of social and economic changes that took place in
America.
Barly historians did not concern themselves with the social and economic
aspects of the American Revolution. ~ey instead argued over the causes of
the Revolution and refought the political ~ advanced by the rebel-
ling colonists and the British government, George Bancroft was the first
historian to advance the ~ig, or ~American, interpretation of the war.
America won, he said, because God was on our side. Much of Bancroft's ~
volume Hist~ of the Unitea Statcs (~~4) was written during the period
of Jacksonian democracy, when belief that it was the Manifest Destiny of the



United States to spread the ideas of freedom, progress, and democracy
across the North American continent was highest.
Bancroft's view remained unchallenged until the beginning of the twen-
tieth centuIy when a group of z.mperia/ist historians analyzed the Revolution
from the perspective of the British empire. these historians tended to be
sympathetic to the economic and political difficulties that Great Britain faced
in r .unning an empire in the late eighteenth century
Both the Whig and the imperialist historians assumed that the Revolution
was an external event whose primary cause was the political differences
between the colonists and their British rulers In 1909, howeva, historian
Carl Becker paved the way for a different interpretation of the Revolution
when he concluded in his study of colonial New York that an interna/
revolution had taken place" The American Revolution, said Becker, created a
struggle not only for home rule but also one for who should rule at home.
This pmgressive, or conflict, interpretation dominated most of the writings on
the American Revolution from 1910 through 1945. Dming this time prog-
ressive historians searched for the social and economic conflicts among
groups struggling for political power.
Since World War II, most professional historians have rejected what they
considered to be an oversimplified conflict interpretation of the Revolution
by the previous generation of progressive historians. Robert E. Brown, in his
studies on colonial Massachusetts and Virginia, argued that America had
become a middle-class democracy before the American Revolution. Conse-
quently Brown maintained, there was no need for a social revolution. Most
influential have been the works of Harvard professor Bernard Bailyn, who
used a neo-Whig approach in analyzing the Revolution. In Idealogfml Origins of
the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1968), Bailyn took ideas
seriously once again and saw the colonists implementing the views of radical
British thinkers in their struggle for independence.
In the first selection Carl N. Degler argues the neo-Whig view of the
American Revolution, maintaining that the upper-middle class colonists led
a conservative Revolution that left untouched the prewar economic and
social class structure of an upwardly mobile people. This essay is an excellent
example of the loose constructionist definition of revolution.
Gordon S wood has given a new dimension to studies of the Revolution-
ary era. In his book ~ Radiadzsm of the American Revolution, he argues the
strict constructionist view that the Revolution produced major social
changes. In the second selection taken from this book, Wood maintains that
the American Revolution was a radical event because America was the first
nation to hold democratic values allowing ordinary people to make money,
pursue happiness, and rule themselves



YES

Cul N. Degler



A NEW KIND OF Ii!EVOLUHON


CONSERVA~ CAN BE ~ATORS

Like fabled genii grown too big to be imprisoned in their bottles wars and
revolutions frequently take on a life of theft own irrespective of their first
purposes. The overarching considerations of survival or victory distort or
enlarge the narrow and limited aims for which the conflict was begun. The
American War for ~ ence was such an event. ]Begun for only Innifed
political and constitutional purposes, the war released social forces which
few of the leaders ever anticipated, but whicft have helped to mold the
~ tradition.
One such unforeseen result was the rapid and final disestablishment of
the Anglican Church, heretofore the state-supported religion in all of the
colonies south of Mason and ~ s ~e and in parts of New York and New
Jersey as well.1 In ~ out the props of the ~e from beneath the
Anglican Church, the states provided the occasion for wider and more
fundamental innovations ~ in ~ in disestablishing the Anglican
Church, put no other church in its place and instead passed alaw guarantee
ing religious freedom. This law with which Madison and Jefferson had so
much to do, prepared the ground for the ultimate triumph of the American
doctrine of separation of Church and ~ate.
The ratihcafion of the federal Constitution in ~ ~ the first step
in the acceptance of the prmdple that a man's religion was irrelevant to
government, for the Constitution forbade all religious tests forofficeholding 2
Then in ~, when the first ten amendments \ere.added, Congress was
enjoined from ~ g in any manner "respecfing an ~ of
religion or prohibiting the free ~e thereof." These legalistic and now
commonplacerhrases had ~ of man's religious history packed within
them; upon theft implementation western Christendom reached & milestone
in its long ~est for a viable accommodation between man's religious
conscience and nnsen d' ~



For rnHlennia a man~ religion had
been either a passport or a barrier to his
freedom and the opportunity to serve his
State; it had always mattered how a man
worshiped God. Since Emperor Theodo-
sius in the fourth century of the Chris-
tian era, religious orthodoxy had been
considered necessary for good ciHzen-
ship and for service to the state. All this
weighty precedence was boldly over-
thrown by Americans in ~89-91 when
they erected a government wherein "a
1uarI,s religious tenets will not forfeit the
protection of the Laws nor deprive him
of the right of attaining and holding the
highest offices that are known in the
United Stafes," as George Washington
said.
In the course of the early nineteenth
cerltury the federal example of a strict
divorce of State and Church was emu-
lated by the individual stares At the time
of the Revolution many states had de
mended ~istian and often Protestant
affiliations for officeholding and some
had even retained a state supported
~orch. Gradually however and volun-
tarily-~achusetts was last in ~
all the states abandoned whatever
connections they might have had with
the churches. ~e doctrine of separation
has been more deeply implanted in our
tradition in the twentieth century by the
Supreme Gourt, which has dedared that
separation Is a freedom guaranteed by
the Fourteenth Amendment to the Gon-
stitution and therefore obligatory upon
the states as well as the federal govern-
ment ~us the two e~emes of the
American political spectrum-the pofnt-
lar state governments and the august
Supreme Gourt-have joined in sanc-
tioning this doctrine born out of the
Revolution by the liberalism of the ~
lightenment.



It was a remarkably novel and even
unique approach to the question of the
relation between the State and religion.
Although the doctrine repudiates any
connection between the State and the
Church, the American version has little
in common with the practice in countries
like revolutionary France and Mexico
and atheistic Soviet Russia where sep
aration has been so hostile to religion as
to interfere, at Hmes, with freedom of
worship The American conception is not
antireligious at all. Om Presidents in-
voke the Deity and offer Ihanksgfving
prayers our armies and legislatures
maintain chaFlatus, and the state and
federal governments encourage religion
through the remission of ~ In Amer-
ica the State was declared to be ~
but it confirmed to reflect the people's
concern with religion. .Ihe popular int~
est in reiigion was still evident in ~2
and ~~ when the Supreme Court in-
voked the principle of separation of
church and state to ban prayers and
Biblo reading from the pubilc schools In
both Congress and the public press there
was a loud protest against such a dose
and allegedly antueflgfous interpretation
of the principle. But efforts to amend the
Constitution in order to circumvent the
Supreme Court's interpretation have yet
to get beyond advocacy by a few conser-
vatfve congressmen.
In the eighteenth century the Ame~
can principle of separation of Church
and State was indeed an audacious ~
~ Never before had a national
state been prepared to dispense with an
official religion as a prop to its authority
and never before had a church been set
adrift without the support of the state.
Ihroughout most of American history
the doctrine has provided freedom for
religious development while keepmg



pod.tics free of religion. And that, appar-
ently, had been the intention of the
Founding Fot[1ers.
As the principle of the separation of
Church[ and State was a kind of social
side effect of the Revolution so also was
the assertion in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence that ~aB men are created equal "
these five words have been sneered at as
idealistic, refuted as manifestly inaccu-
rate, and denied as preposterous, but
they have nonetheless, always been ca-
pable of calling forth deep emotional re-
sponse from Americans. Even in the
Revolutionary era, their power was evi-
dent. In 1781 the Supreme Judicial Court
of Massachusetts declared slavery at an
end in that state because it "is incon-
sistent with our own conduct and Con-
stitutiort" which set out with declaring
that all men are born free and equal. . . ."
.Ihe Reverend Samuel HOpldns told the
Continental Congress that it was illogical
to "be holding so many hundreds of
blacks in slavery . . while we are main-
taining this struggle for our own and our
~sliberty" In 1782 William Bin"
ford of Nenrico County Virginia, set free
twelve slaves because be was "fully per
suaded that freedom is the natural right
of all manhir1Ld." Another Virginian, a
few years later, freed all his slaves which
had been 'born after the Declaration of
Independence." Such efforts to reconcile
the theory of the Declaration with the
practices of life represent only the begin-
nings of the disquieting echoes of the
celebrated phrase.
~e idea of equality also worhed its
influence on the position of women if
only because women were active partici-
pants in the Revolutionary struggle Dur-
ing the days of the Association, or
boycott of British goocla women were
conspicuous in carrying out the policy



Mary Beth Norton in her recent study of
women during the Revolution tells of
women who pointedly refused to serve
tea or gave up tea even when ill, thougfl
Revolutionary Committees made excep
tions for those who were sick. Many
women became directly involved in the
cause, as in the case of a woman who
wrote: "Tho a female twas born a patriot
and cant help it If I would." More
pointed still was Mary Willing Byrd, who
applied the patriotic philosophy to her
own situation: "I have paid my taxes and
have not been Personalty nor Virtually
represented. My property is taken from
me and I have no redress " Norton noted
that during the discussions of the 1760~
women commentators on the pohtical
scene often apologized for their forward-
ness; but in the 1780's they were making
no apologies. The Revolutionary experi-
ence had changed all that. Some women
even broke up their marriages over poR-
tics Norton observes. Indeed, thanks to
the. demands of the w~ many wives
now had to take on responsibilities once
denied them. A husband might begin by
asking male ralatives or friends to ban~e
his affairs while he was away, but as time
passed the tendency was to turn things
over to his wife, the result of which was
to enhance her capabilities in his eyes.
"This war which has so often and long
separated us," wrote Timothy Pickering
to his wife in ~~ "has taught me how
to value you."
Prominent among the women who
Wok the emerging new order at its face
value was Abigail Adams the wife of
John. Early in the struggle she asked
him, in a welf known lefter to "remcm'
her the ladies" when he was helping to
devise a new society. "Do not put such
unlimited power into the hands of Hus-
bancis," she urged. 'Remember all Men



would be tyrants if they could." What
she was asldrlg was that the rights of
women withm the family be e~anded in
the name of the Revolution. Although
John Adams ridiculed his wife's sugges-
tion, women's position in the family did
alter after the Revolution. Divorce be-
came a littfe easier for women In Con
necticut, for examf)le where divorce was
commoner than in other stafes more
women either deserted or divorced their
husbands than before. More women, toQ.
had the courage to sue for separations on
the ground of their husbands' adultery:
And by the 1790's, women were asking
for Property settlements, somethmg that
had been extremely rare as recently as
the 1770's Even after the Revolution
however &vorce was still not very com-
mon; of all the new states, only Pennsyl-
vania induded the right to divorce W its
new constitution. But those limited
changes were quite in line with the most
striking improvement in women's posi-
tion after the Revolution, namely the
great expansion of education for girls
Although John Adams boasted W the
late colonial period of the widespread
literacy in the English colonies, he could
'not have been thwki[1g of women. For at
the time of the Revolution about 80 per
cent of males could read and write, but
only about 40 per cent of women could.
Soon after the Revolution, however
women themselves began to call for
schooling, though previous1y Mary Beth
Norton reports almost no complamts
about the la~ of education for women
were heard. Dorms the ~80's and ~ s
a number of schools for girls were
founded, and as pubEcly supported
schools were established, girls were in-
cluded in them along with boys. fhe
result was that the literacy level of
women began to rise, until in the middle



years of the nineteenth century it reached
that of men The role of the Revolution-
ary e)q:)erience in bringing about this
significant shift is reflected in the fre-
quent public discussions during the
J790's and after about the responsibilities
of mothers to rear patriot sons and
daughters for the new Republic. If these
mothers were to do their job right, obvi-
ously they would have to be educated.
"For the first time," in the 1790~ writes
Mary Beth Norton, "American daughters
as well as sons were being told that they
could 'improve.' "
Incalculably important for the future of
women in America as the opening of
schools to girls after the Revolution un
doubtedly was, it nevertheless did not do
more than lay the foundation for later
changes. No new jobs, aside from teacfk
fog, were opened to women in the post-
Revolutionary era, even though women
were now more likely to be educated.
And alfhotlgfl a few female societies had
been founded during the Revolutionary
years, a true feminist or women's move
meat was still in the future. Yet that later
movement would draw heavily upon the
ideology of the Revolution for its argu-
ments and rhetoric, just as the women of
the Revolutionary era had drawn upon it
to support their aspirations for greater
freedom. It is surely not without signifi-
cance that both blacks and women in the
middle years of the nineteenth century
would draw upon the words as well as
the ideas of the Declarafion of Indepen-
dence to justify their daims to freedom
and equality
It would be wrong, howev~ to as
sume that the mere indusion of the
phrase "aR men are created equal" in the
Declaration worked the mighty influence
implied in the foregoing changes; social
values are not created so deliberately or



so easily. f.ike so much else in the Deda-
ration, this sentence was actually the
distillation of a cherished popular sentf'
ment into a ringing phreae, allegiance to
which stemmed more from its prior ac-
ceptance than from its eloquence. The
passionate belief in social equality which
commentators and travelers in Jackso-
nian America would later find so power-
ful was already emergent in this earlier
period. Indeed we f1jave already seen its
lineaments during the colonial period. It
was also expressed in the "country
party" ideas that became the ideology of
the Revolutionary fathers and the heart
of republicanism After 1776, the convic-
tion was reinforced by the success of the
Revolution and by the words of the great
Dedaration itseff
It was also supported by the facts of
American social life. Despite the lowly
position accorded the Negro. wrote the
French traveler Uacques-Pierre] Brissot in
~, it still must be admitted "that the
Americans more than any other people
are convinced that all men are born free
and equal." Ivioreover he added, "we
must aclmowledge, that they direct them-
selves generally by this principle of
equality" ~ traveler Johan ~epf
noticed that in Philadelphia "ranh of birth
is not reco~ed, is resisted with a total
force . . . People ~, act, and speah
here precisely as it prompts them. . . ."
And in the privacy of the Federal ~n
vention of f787, ~es Pinclmey of
Booth ~ urged his fellow deIe
SaWs to rec~ the uniqueness of
their country "there is more equality of
ranh and fortune in America than in any
other country under the sun " he told
them.
~ere were other signs of what an
earlier generation would have sti~
as "leveling tendencies" in the new post-


Revolutionary sodety. The attacI(s made
in a number of states in the ]780's upon
the privileged Order of the Cincinnati,
because it was secret and confined to
Revolutionary officers and their descen
dents, were obviously inspired by a
growing egalitarian sentiment. French
traveler Moreau de Saint-Mery recalled
with disgust how Americans proudly
told him that the hotel custom of putting
strange travelers together in the same
bed was "a proof of hbe~ By the end
of the century old social distinctions like
rank-seating in churches and the differ-
entiating title of esquire were fast pass-
ing out of vogue. On an economic level,
this abiding American faith was trans-
lated as equality of opportunity and here
dour Federalist Fisher Ames could lock
arms with his Republican opponents
when he averred that "afl cannot be rich,
but all have a right to,make the attempt"
In politics, too, even though the suf"
frage was not broadened very much, the
years of the Revolution and after sawless
deference at the voting place and a rec-
ognition of a broader definition of the
people. ~ citizens now elected
ordinary cidzens to represent them, his-
torian lackson Turner` Main has pointed
out; no longerwere "natural leaders" the
only acceptable candidates A sigrtificant
measure of the new place of the people
in the rural hinterlands was the shift of
state capitals westward. Georgia the two
Carofinu, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New
\or~ and New Hampshire all moved
their capitals away from the established
dties of the coast. The new governments
also reco~d the popular bases of
their legitimacy by opening legislative
sessions to the public for the first time
and publishing the contents of the bills
they were considering. The recording of
votes in the legislature became a com-



mun practice only in the course of the
Revolution. Thus began in the Revolu-
tion a movement toward a greater recog-
nition of the role of the people in
government, a movement that would re
calve a further and more striking impe
tug durfng the Age of Jackson.
Though economic grievances seem to
have played a negligible role in bringing
on the Revolution, this is not to say that
there were no economic consequences.
The economic stimulus afforded by the
war demands and the freedom from En-
glish mercantilistic restrictions which
victory made permanent provided ad-
venturesome American merchants and
entrepreneurs with wide opportunities
for gaining new markets and new sources
of profit. The expansion of the American
economy, which was to be characteristic
all through the nineteenth century was
thus begun.
But even when one has added together
the new constitutions, the enlightened
religious innovations, and the stimulus
to equality it is quickly apparent that the
social consequences of the Revolution
were meager indeed. In both purpose
and implementation they were not to be
equated with the massive social changes
which shook France and Russia in later
years. For the most part, the society of
post-Revolutionary America was but the
working out of social forces which were
already evident in the colonial periocl.
It is significant, for ~pie, that no
new social class came to power through
the door of the American Revolution.
Ihe men who engineered the revolt were
largely members of the colonial ruling
class. Peyton Randolph and Patrick ffcn-
ry were well-to-do members of the Vir-
ginia Assembl~ ~shington, reputed to
be the richest man in America, was an
officer in the Virginia militia. fhe ~w



YorkleadersJohn Morin Scott and Robert
Livingston were judges on the Supreme
Court of the colony, while William Dray-
ton a fire-eating radical of South Caro
lina was a nephew of the lieutenant
governor of the province, and himself a
member of the Governor's Council until
his anti-British activities forced his re-
moval. Certainly Benjamin Franklin citi-
zen of the Empire celebrated scientist,
and long retired, well-to do printer' was
no submerged member of Philadelphia's
sOciety-or London's for that matter.
Moreover Franklin's natural son, Will-
iam was a Royal Governor at the out-
break of the Revolution. Hancock of
Boston and Christopher Gadsden of
Charleston were only two of the many
respected and wealthy merchants who
lent their support to the patriot cause. In
fact, speaking of wealth, the Revolution
in Virginia was made and led by the
great landed dass and ifs members re-
mained to reap the benefits. Farther
down the social scale, in the backwoods
of Massachusetts, it has been shown that
the chief revolutionists in the western
counties were the old leaders, so that no
major shift in leadership took place there
eithe~ as a result of the Revolution.
This emphasis on position and wealth
among the Revolutionary leaders should
not be taken as a denial that many men
of wealth and brains left the colonies in
the exodus of the Loyalists Certainly few
patriots were the peers of Jared Ingersoll
in the law Jonathan Boucher in the
Church, and Thomas Hutchinson and
Joseph Galloway in government. But the
Loyalist departure did not decapitate the
colonial social structure, as some have
suggested-it only removed those most
attached to the mother country A large
part of the governing class remained to
guide the Revolution and reap its favors.



If is true that in the states of Georgia and
Pennsylvania, where the radical demo
crats held sway in the early years of the
Revolution, new men seemed to occupy
positions of power. But these men were
still unknowns on the periphery of gov-
ernment and business, and generally re
mained there; they cannot be compared
with the Robespierres and the Dantons,
the Lenins and the ~s, of the great
continental eruptions.
A convenient gauge of the essential
continuity of the governing class in
America before and after the Revolution
is to be found in an examination of the
careers of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence. surely these fifty-five
men are important patriot leaders and
presumably among the chief benefici-
aries of the Revolution they advocated.
Yet they were by no means a disadvan
taged lot. Fully 40 per cent of them at-
tended coHege or one of the Inns of
Court in England at a time when such a
privilege was a rarity An additional 21
per cent of them came from important
families of their respective colonies, or,
lilce Robert Morris and Joseph Hewes,
were mm of acquired wealth Over 69
per cent of them held office under the
colonial regimes 29 per cent alone hold-
ing some office within the executive
branch; truly these were mt men held at
mm's length from the plums of office
Most strif;ing about the careers of
these men is the fact that so many of
them held office before and after the
dividing line of the Revolution Of those
who held an office under the state gov-
ernments after the Revolution, 75 per
cent had occupied offices before 1774,
proving, if need be, that service in the
colonial governments before the Revolu-
tion was no obstacle to political prefer-
ment for a patriot afterward. If those



who held no office before 1774 are not
counted-and several might be consid-
ered too young to be ~ected to have
held office-then the continuity shows
up even more dearly Eighty-nine per
cent of those who filled an office before
the Revolution also occupied an office
under one of the new state governments.
And if federal office after 1789 is in-
cluded, then the proportion rises to 95
per cent. Add to this the fact that other
leaders, not induded in the group of
signers, had similarly good social back-
grounds-men Eke Washington, Robert
Livingston, Gouverueur Morris, Philip
Schuyler and a dozen moreand the
condusion that the Revolution was a
thoroughly upper-middle dass affair in
leadership and aim is inescapable.
A further and perhaps more important
conclusion should be drawn from this
analysis of the political careers of the
signers after the Revolution. These
conservative, upper-class leaders who
pr .oclaimed the Revolution suffered no
repudiation in the course of the struggle;
no mass from the bottom rose and seized
control of the Revolutionary situation to
direct the struggle into new channels
Rather these men merely shifted, as it
were, from their favored status under the
colonial regimes to comparable, if not
improved positions after the Revolution.
As a colonial revolt against an alien
power, such a development is not sur-
prising. But certainly-for better or for
worsethe continuity brought a degree
of social and political stability to the new
nation rarely associated with the word
"revolution" and serves, once again, to
illustrate the truly conservative nature of
the American revolt.
Similarly, in the redistribution of land
which played such a crucial role in
France and Russia, the American Revolu-



Hon set no example of social motivation
or consequence The Crown's lands, it is
true were confiscated and-of greater
import-so were the lands of the propri-
etors and those of the literally thousands
of Tbries But the disposition of these
lands hardly constitutes a social revolu-
tion of major proportions. One can col-
led, of course, examples of the breakup
of great estates, like the De Lancey
manor in New York, which was sold to
275 individuals, or the 40,(}Uf!-acre estate
in North Carolina which was carved into
scores of plots averaging 200 acres apiece
or the vast 21,00O,(Jt)ft-acre proprietary
lands of the Penns. But the more siguiff"
cant question to be answered is who got
the land. And, from the studies which
have been made, it would appear that
most often the land went to speculators
or men already possessing substantial
acreage, not to the landless or even to the
small holder. To be srue much Tory land
which first fell under the auctioneer's
hammer to a speculator ultimately found
its way into the hands of a yeoman, but
such a procedure is a rather slow and
orderly process of sodal revolution.
Furthermore, it is obvious from the Con-
fiscation Acts in the severa1 states and the
~who operated pursuant to
them that the motive behind the acquisi-
tion of Ibrylands was enhancement of the
state revenues-as indeed, the o~
resolution from Confuess had su~ested
Under such circumstances, pecuniary mo-
tives, mt democratic theories of society,
deterrnined the confi~anon distribu-
tion would take. ~d it is here that we
befm to touch upon the fundamental
reason why the confiscation of the royal,
proprietary and Loyalist lands never as-
sumed crucial social importance. Land
was just too plentiful in ~erica for
these acres to matter. Speculators were



lOaded down with it; most men who
wanted it already possessed it, or were
on the way toward possession. One re-
cent investigator of the confiscations in
New York, for example, has pointed out
that land there could be bought cheaper
from speculators than from a formerTory
estate.
Even the abolition of primogeniture in
all the southern states by 1791 cannot be
taken as a significant example of the
Revolution's economic influence The fact
of the matter is that primogeniture had
never appreciably affected land distribu-
tion, since it came into play only when
the owner died intestate. Considering
the notorious litigiousness of eighteenth
century Americans, it is hardly to be
doubted that partible inheritance was the
practice, if not the theory long before
primogeniture was wiped from the stat-
ute books. Furthermore, in almost half of
the country-New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and all of the New England states-pri
mogeniture never prevailed anyway
As for the abolition of entail, it was
frequently welcomed by owners of en-
tailed estates, as was the case in Jeffer-
son's Virginia, since it would permit the
sale of otherwise frozen assets. These
laws had not created alanded aristocracy
in America and their repeal made no sig-
nificant alteration in the social landscape.
Instead of being an abrupt break, the
Revolution was a natural and even ex-
pected event in the history of a colonial
people who had come of age. It is true
that social and political changes accom-
panied the Revolution, some of which
were destined to work great influence
upon American institutions in the future
but many of them had been implicit in
the preRevolutionary society or had be
come aspirations Of Americans in the
course of developing their republican



ideology in justification of their revolu-
tion.The fundamental outlines of society
and thought were left untouched by the
Revolution: the dass structure, the cap-
italistic orientation of thought, the distri-
bution of property the conception of
good government. Even Gary Nash in
his recent study of the urban classes in
the coming of the Revolution concedes
that "no social revolution occurred in
America in the 1770s," though he adds
that there were social and economic con-
flicts among Americans over the distri-
bution of wealth and power.
The absence of widespread, profound
social and economic change is not sur-
prising. For all their talk, these Ameri-
cans had been largely a contented and
prosperous people under the British
Crown and they were, therefore largely
contented revolutionaries who wanted
no more than to remain undisturbed in
their accustomed ways. They were in no
wise to be compared with the disgrun-
tled lawyers, the frustrated bourgeois,
the tyrannized workers, and the land-
hungry peasants of the old regimes of
France and Russia.
But once these Americans were dis-
turbed, they began to fashion a wncep
tion of the future and of themselves that
would proclaim a new order in the
world, even a new model for mankind.
This proclairuing of a new Age of Revo-
lution was evident not only in the motto
on the Great Seal of the United States: ~
New Order in the World," but also, . .
in a new approach to foreign policy
based upon that selfconception For no
matter how .conservative the origins of
the Revolution may have been, it could
never be forgotten that the United States
was born in Revolution; never before
had a people thrown over their wlonial
rulers. That basic event has become em-



bedded in American folk culture and
sophisticated thought alike. The pride
that Americans took in these origins was
apparent in the self conscious, often naive
enthusiasm displayed by the American
people and their statesmen in support of
the colonial rebellions in South America
and in Greece in the first two decades of
the nineteenth century Revolutionaries
of the middle of the century like Louis
Kossuth [Hungary] and [Giuseppe] Gar-
ibaldi [Italy], garnered moral and materiaf
benefits from this continuing American
friendship for rebellion. European exRes
and revolutionaries of 1848 were enter-
tained at the London residence of United
States Minister James Buchanan. And it
was still apparent in the middle of the
twentieth century ~e declarations of
independence of Ho Chi Mirth's Demo
crane Republic of (North) Vietnam in
1945 and fan Smith's Rhodesia in 1965
both begin with quotations from the
United States Declaration of Indepen-
dence! And [President carnal Abdel} Nas
ser of Egypt at the time of the United
States intervention in Lebanon in July,
1958, taunted Americans with their revo
lutionary tradition. "How can the United
Stafes, which pushed off British colonial-
ism many years ago, forget its hisfory?~
be shouted to a crowd in Damascus
An anticolonial tradition of such weigflt
could not fad to leave its stamp on Amer-
ican policies. The influence is also
evident in the granting of statehood to
the former colonies of Hawaii and Alaska
and in the granting of independence to
the Philippines. Indeed, long before, dur-
ing the era of Revolution itseh American
leaders, profiting from the lessons of Brit-
ain's imperial difficulties, agreed in the
Ordinance of 17S7 and the Gonstitution
that newly acquired territories could at-
tain in the natural course of events,



equal constitutional status with the origi-
nal thirteen states Thus, in a single
stroke, Americans sidestepped the ten-
sions and divisions attendant upon a
colonial empire and laid the enduring
foundations for an e~ding and united
country
~nstituftonal devices, however, no
matter how clever or farsighted, cannot
of themselves create a new people. fhe
forces of economics and geography can
wreak havoc with the best laid plans of
Founding Fathers. ~ether Americans
would retain their independence and be-
come a truly united people was to be
determined only by time and the people
themselves

NOTES

1. This is not to say, however~ that disestablish-
ment of all churches was brought about by the
Revohltion AD of the New England states, with
the exception of Rhode Island-still loyal to

Roger Wmiams in this respect--continued to
support the Congrega6onal Church.
2. Just because the so called conservatives
dominated the Constitutional Convention, such
religious indifference was possff le. Generally
the radials during the Revolutionary era were in
favor of state support or recognition of some
religion. Ibus in the states where the radicals
dominated, religious tests were part of the Con-
stitution: Georgia (all members of the legislature
had to be Protestants); North Carolina (no one
could hold office who denied "God or the truth
of the Protestant religion"); and Pennsylvania
(the test oath dernanded a belief in one God and
his rewarding and punisfnng, and the acknowl-
edgment that the Old and New Testaments were
"given by Divine Inspiration' ). The contrast
with the Constitufional Convention of 1787 is
striking. The Con6nentat Congress, which had
been dominated by the radicafa always opened
its deliberations with chaplain-fed prayers; the
Convenfion of ~87, however, failed to have ef
ther a chaplain or prayers, though Franldm made
an el~eat plea for both. He wrote later that
"ffte Convention except three or four persons
thonght Prayers unnecessary." ~ereas the Dec
lara6on of Independence refers to "God" and
Divine Provfdence," such words are completely
absent from the ~'conservative" Constitution-
much to the myshffcation of modern conserva-
tives.



NO

Gordon S. Wood



THE RADICALISM OF FIIS
AMERICAN ]REVOLUnON

fhis . . . is part of a ~ g in~ into the demo~ of early
America that I have been engaged in during the past several decades. Few
subjects are more important to Americans, and perhaps to the rest of the
world as well. Americans were not born free and democratic in any modem
sense; they became so-and largely as a c~ce of the American
Revolutfon. After eigftteenfft-century Americans threw off their monarchical
allegiance in ~6, they struggled to find new attachments befitting a
republican people. fivmg in a society that was already diverse and plumbs-
tic, Americans ~ that these attachments could mt be the traditional
ethnic, ~ and tribal loyalties of the Old World. Instead, they sought
new enlightened connections to hold their new popular societies togethar.
But when these proved too idealistic and viskmary they eventually found
new democratic adhesives in the actual behavior of plain ordmary people-in
the everyday desire for the freedom to make money and pursue happiness in
the here and now. To base a society on the commonplace behavior of
ordinary people may bo obvious and understandable to us today, but it was
momentously radical in the long sweep of world history up to that time. This
book attempts to ~ this momentous ~ of the American
Revolution. . . .
We Americans like to think of our revolution as not being radical; indeed
most of the time we consider it ~ t conservaHve It certainly does not
appear to resemble the revolutions of other nations m which people were
killed, property was destroyed, and ~ was turned upside down-
fhe American revolutionary leaders do not Rt our conventional image of
revolutionaries-angry passionate, reckless, maybe even bloodthusfy for the
sake of a cause. We can think of Robespierre, fenin and Mao ~ong as
revo~ but not George Washington, themas Jefferson and John
Adams. ~ y seem too stuffy too solemn, too cautious, too much the
gentlemen. We cannot ~ e concefve of revolutionaries in powdered hair
and knee breeches. The American revolutionaries ~~ to ~ ong ~~ g



rooms or legislative hafts, not in cellars or
in the streets. They made specches, not
bombs; they wrote learned pamphlets
not manifestos. They were mt abstract
theorists and they were not social lev-
elers They did not kill one another; they
did not devour themselves. There was no
reign of terror in the American Revo
lution and no resultant dictator-no
Cromwell, no Bonaparte The ~
Revolution does not seem to have the
same kinds of causes-the sociaf wrongs,
the dass conflict, the impoverishment,
the grossly in~ e dis~ of
wealth-that presumably Re behind
other revolutions There were no peasant
uprisings, no jacqueries, no burning of
cluite~ no ~ of prisona
~course, there have been many his-
ted~Progressive or moProgressive
~ as they have been called-
who have sought, as flannah Arendt put
av "to interpret the American Revolution
in the light of the Prench Revolution,"
and to I~ for the same ~ of internal
violence, class conflict and social depri-
vation that presumably lay behind the
Preuch Revolution and other modern
revolutions ~ e the ~ g of the
twentieth century these Progressive his-
torians have formulated various social
interpretations of the American Revolu-
tion essentially designed to show that
the Revolution, in ~I Becher's famous
words was not only about "home rule"
but also about "who was to rule at
home." ~ey have tried to describe the
Revolution essentially as a social struggle
by deprived and underprivileged groups
against entrenched elifce But, it has been
correctly pointed out, despite an ~aor-
dinary amount of research and writing
during a good part of this century the
purposes of these Progressive and neo
Progressive his ~"to portray the



origins and goals of the Revolution as in
some ~ measure ~ of
a pecnflar economic malaise or of the
social protests and aspirations of an irn-
~ or threatened mass popula-
tion-have not been fulfflfed." They have
not been fulffUed because the social con-
ditions that generically are supposed to
Re behind all revolutions-poverty and
economic ~ on-were not present
in colonial America There should no
longer be any doubt about it: the white
American colonists were not an op
pressed people; they had no crushing
imperial dlains to throw off. In fact the
colonists knew they were freer. more
equaf more prosperous' and less bur-
dened with cumbersome feudal and mo
narchfcal restraints than any other part of
manldnd in the e~ century ~
a situation, howevcn does not mean that
colonial society was not susceptible to
revolution.
precisely because the impulses to revo
lution in eifm~ ~erica bear
little or no resemblance to the impulses
that presumably account for modern so
cial protests and revol~ we have
tended to thinh of the ~erican Revolu-
tion as having no social character, as
havmg virtually nothing to do with the
society as having no social causes and
no social c~ces. It has therefore
often been considered to be essentially
an inteUectuaf event a constitutional de
fense of ~erican rights against Urifish
encroachments ("no ~ without rep
~ ), un~en not to change
the ~ g structure of society but to
preserve it per some ~ the Rev-
olution seems to belittle more than a
colonial rebelfion or a war for indepen-
dence. Even when we have "recofmiaed
the radicaRsrn of the Revolution, we ad-
mit only a poRticaf not a social radical-



ism. The revo~ leadera it is said,
were peculiar "ei~ tury radi-
cals concerned, like the eighteenfhcen-
fury British radicals, not with the need to
recast the social order nor with the prob
lems of the economic inequality and the
injustices of stratified societies but with
the need to purify a corm" pt constitution
and fight off the ~ growth of
prerogative powa"" ~s~uently, we
have generally described the Revolution
as an unusually conservaHve affair, con-
cerned almost ~usivefy with politics
and constitutional rights and, in com-
parison with the social radicalism of the
other great revolutions of history hardly
a revolution at all"
If we measure the radicalism of revolu-
tions by the degree of social misery or
economic deprivation suffered, or by the
number of people killed ormanor houses
burned then this co ~ emphasis
on the conservatism of the American
Revolution becomes true enough. But if
we measure the radicaiism by the amount
of social change that actually took place-
by transformations in the relationships
that bound people to each other-then
the ~Revolution was not conser-
vative at all; on the contrary: it was as
radical and as revolutionary as any in
history Of course, the American Revolu-
tion was very different from other revo
lutions. But it was no less radical and no
less social for being different. In fact, it
was one of the greatest revolutions the
world has known, a momentous up-
heaval that not only fundamentally al-
tered the character of American society
but decisively affected the course of sub
~neut history
It was as radical and social as any
revolution in history but it was radical
and social in a very special ~



century sense. No doubt many of the
concerns and much of the language of
that premodern, pre Iviarxian eighteenth
century were almost entirely political.
That was because most people in that
very different distant world could not as
yet conceive of society apart from gov-
ernment. The social distinctions and eco
nomic deprivations that we today think
of as the consequence of class divisions,
business exploitation or various isms'-
capitalism, racism, etc.-were in the
eighteenth century usually thought to be
caused by the abuses of government.
Social honors, social distinctions, per-
quisites of office, business contracts,
privileges and monopolies, even exces-
sive property and wealth of various
sorts-all social evils and social depriva-
tions-in fact seemed to flow from con-
nections to government, in the end from
connections to monarchical authority So
that when Anglo American radicals `talked
in what seems to be only political terms-
~ a corrupt constitution, elim-
inating courtiers, fighting off crown
power, and, most important, becoming
republicans-they nevertheless had a de
cidedly social message. fn our eyes the
American revolutionaries appear to be
absorbed in changing only their govern-
ments, not their society But in destroy-
ing monarchy and establishing republics
they were changing their society as well
as their governments, and they knew it.
Only they did not know-they could
scarcely have imagined-how much of
their society they would change. }.
Franklin Jameson, who more than two
generations ago described the Revolu-
tion as a social movement only to be
roundly critidzed by a succeeding gener-
ation of historians, was at least right
about one thing: "the stream of revolu-
tion, once started, could not be confined



within namw banka but spread abroad
upon the land."
By the time the Revolution had run its
course in the early nineteenth century
American society had been radically and
thoroughly transformed. One class did
not overthrow another; the poor did not
supplant the rich. But social relation-
ships-the way people were connected
one to another-were changed, and de-
cisively sa By the early years of the
nineteenth century the Revolution had
created a society fundamentally different
from the colonial society of the eigh-
teenth century It was in fact a new soci-
ety unhke any that had ever existed
anywhere in the world.
Of course, there were complexities and
variations in early American society and
culture-local, regional, sectional, eth-
nic, and dass differences that historians
are uncovering every day-that me1;:e
difficult any generalizations about Amer-
icans as a whole. This study is written in
spite of these complexities and varia..
Oona. mt in ignorance of them. There is
a time for understanding the particul~
and there is a time for understanding the
whole. Not only is it important that we
periodically attempt to bring the many
monographic studies of eighteenth-cen-
tury America together to see the patterns
they compose, but it is essential that we
do so-if we are to wdend our still mea-
ger understanding of an event as signifi-
cant as the American Revolution.
.fflLat revolution did more than legally
create the United ~ates; it transformed
American society. Because the story of
America has turned out the way it has,
because the United ~ates in the twen-
tieth century has become the great power
that it is, it is difficulr. if not impossible,
to appreciate and recover fully the insig-
nificant and puny origins of the country.



In 1760 .America was only a collection of
disparate colonies huddled along a nar-
row strip of the Atlantic coast-economi-
cally underdeveloped outposts existing
on the very edges of the civilized world.
The less than two million monarchical
subjects who lived in these colonies still
took for granted that society was and
ought to be a hierarchy of ranks and
degrees of dependency and that most
people were bound together by personal
ties of one sort or another. Yet scarcely
fifty years later these insignificant bor-
derland provinces had become a giant,
almost continent-wide republic of nearly
ten million egalitarian-minded bustling
citizens who not only had thrust them-
selves into the vanguard of history but
had fundamentally altered their society
and their social relationships. Far from
remaining monarchical, hierarchy-ridden
subjects on the margin of civilization
Americans had become almost over-
night, the most liberal, the most demo
cratic, the most commercially minded
and the most modern people in the
world.
And this astonishing transformation
took place without industrialization,
without urbanization without railroads
without the aid of any of the great forces
we usually invoke to explain "moderniz
ation." It was the Revolution that was
crucial to this transformation. It was the
Revolution more than any other single
event, that made America into the most
liberal, democratic, and modem nation
in the world.
Of course, some nations of Western
Europe likewise experienced great social
transformations and "democratic revolu-
tions" in these same years. Ihe Ameri-
can Revolution was not unique; it was
only different. Because of this shared
Western-wide experience in democr~



ation, it has been argued by more than
one historian that the broader social
transformation that carried Americans
from one century and one kind of society
to another was "inevitable" and "would
have been completed with or without the
American Revolution" Therefore this
broader social revolution should not be
confused with the American Revolution.
America, it is said would have emerged
into the modem world as aliberal, demo-
cratic, and capitalistic society even with-
out the Revolution. One could, of course,
say the same thing about the relationship
between the French Revolution and the
emergence of France in the nineteenth
century as a hberaf democratic, and cap-
italistic society; and indeed, much of the
current ~ historical writing on
the French Revolution is based on just
such a distincfion hut in ~ no
more than in France, that was not the
way it happened: the American Revolu-
tion and the social transformation of
America between ~~ and the early
years of the nineteenth century were
inc~bly bound together. Perhaps the
social transformation would have hap-
pened "in any case," but we will never
Imow. It was in fact linhed to the Revolu-
tion; they occurred togetha The Ameri-
can Revolution was integral to the
changes occurring in American society
polities, and culture at the end of the
eighteenth century
These changes were radical, and they
were e~ To focus, as we are today
apt to da on what the Revolution did not
accomplish-higbfighttng and lamenting
its failure to abolish slavery and change
fundamentally the lot of women-is to
miss the great significance of what it did
accomplish; indeed, the Revolution made
possible the antislavery and womens'
rights movements of the nineteenth cen-



tury and in fad all our current egalitarian
thinfdng. The Revolution not only radi-
cally changed the personal and social
relationships of people, including the po
sition of women, but also destroyed eris"
tocracy as it had been understood W the
Western world for at least two millennfa.
The Revolution brought respectability
and even dominance to ordinary people
long hdd in contempt and gave dignity ~
to theft menial labor in a manner unprec ~
edented in history and to a degree not
equaled dsewhere in the world. The
Revolution did not just eliminate mon-
archy and create republics; it actually
reconstituted what Americans meant by
public or state power and brought about
an entirely new ldnd of popular politics
and a new Idnd of democratic office
holder. ~e Revolution not only changed
the culture of Americans-maiung over
their art, archffectrue and iconography-
but even altered their understanding of
history Imowledge, and truth. Most im'
portent, it made the interests and pros-
perity of ordinary peopletheir pursuits
~ happiness-the goal of sodety and
government. ~e Revolution did not
merdy create a pohtlcal and legal envi-
ronment conducive to economic ~an"
&ion; it also released powerful popular
entrepreneurial and commerdal energies
that tow re~ed e~fed and trans
formed the economic landscape of the
country In short, the Revolution was thE
most radical end most far-reaching ev~
in American history