Date:
Who "Won" the War for Independence?
The following article. "Unruly Americans in the Revolution," was written by historian Woody Holton and published
by the Lehrman Institute of American History.
In their own way (and sometimes inadvertently), Native Americans, enslaved blacks, and ordinary whites all helped
propel men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams down the road to independence. In turn,
the ensuing years of political upheaval and war powerfully influenced each of these groups.
The Americans who suffered the most were, ironically enough, those who had enjoyed the most success in battle:
American Indians. Despite their military successes, the American Indians lost out where it mattered most at the
bargaining table in Paris, where of course they were not represented.
Although British officials had never purchased or conquered the region between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers,
they nonetheless ceded this region to their former colonists in the Treaty of Paris in 1783. It would be another
decade before the U.S. military conquered the Native American coalition striving to defend this land, but the end of
the line and the peace-drawn by the Proclamation of 1763 had begun on July 4, 1776.
For African Americans, the outcome of the Revolutionary War was more complex. Now that white settlers claimed
the Mississippi River as their western border, slavery had plenty of room into which to expand which it did after
the invention of the cotton gin, with disastrous results for African Americans. On the other hand, the Revolutionary
War permitted thousands of black Americans to claim their freedom. Two northern states, Massachusetts and the
new state of Vermont, abolished slavery, and most of the others put it on the road to extinction (although in some
cases this would prove to be a very long road). But many more slaves-perhaps 10,000 or more obtained their
freedom by fighting on the British side. After the war, the British settled the bulk of them in Nova Scotia, Canada,
but continuing discrimination persuaded many of these refugees to accept Parliament's offer to move to the new
British colony of Sierra Leone in West Africa.
Historians of the American Revolution have never been able to reach an agreement about what it did for or
to-free women. Most recently, women's historians have argued that free women did benefit at least temporarily.
They had become more political during the 1760s and 1770s, as their activities took on meaning during the boycotts
of British goods. Moreover, when men left home to become soldiers and statesmen, women took over their farms
and businesses. As they mastered activities such as hiring farmworkers and selling crops, their self-confidence grew.
More than one wife who corresponded with her absent husband went from describing the family farm as "yours"
early in the war to declaring it "ours" (and in some cases "mine") several years later.
Free women benefited in another way as well. Americans feared that their new form of government would fail
unless ordinary men practiced political virtue or the willingness to sacrifice for their country. After the Revolution,
reformers turned to women to instill this patriotism in their sons and daughters. Mothering became a civic [citizen
responsibility] act and "Republican Motherhood" became a new belief system for women. With it came the
realization that women could not properly educate their children if they themselves did not receive a proper
education. "If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers," Abigail Adams told her husband in August
1776, "we should have learned women."
Yet if these were gains for women, they were offset by the fact that full citizenship, including suffrage [the right to
vote], was denied them. And, in many new states, women's economic situation worsened as inheritance laws
changed and put them at a disadvantage.
what's is the main idea?