In 1781 an enslaved Massachusetts man named Quock Walker took an extraordinary step: He took legal action against a white man who had assaulted him.  Given the times, this was a bold step, but Walker believed he had the law on his side.  Massachusetts’s new constitution referred to the “inherent liberty” of all men.  The judge, William Cushing, agreed:

“Our Constitution [of Massachusetts] sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal—and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have guarded by the laws, as well as life and property—and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves.  This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution.”

While the Quock Walker case did not abolish slavery, it demonstrated that the Massachusetts courts would not support the institution.  As a result of this ruling and various antislavery efforts, slavery ceased to exist in Massachusetts by 1790.

—adapted from Founding the Republic

New Political Ideas

When American leaders declared independence and founded the United States of America, they were very much aware that they were creating something new.  By severing their ties to the king, they had established a republic.  A republic is a form of government where power resides with a body of citizens entitled to vote.  Elected representatives who are responsible to the citizens and who must govern according to laws or a constitution exercise power.

While many Europeans viewed a republic as radical and dangerous, Americans believed that a republican society could be better than other societies.  In an ideal republic, all citizens are equal under the law, regardless of their wealth or social class.  Americans also believed that in a republic, the government derives its authority from the people.

Such ideas conflicted with many traditional beliefs, including ideas about slavery, the idea that women should not be allowed to vote or own property, and the idea that wealthy people were “better” than others.  Despite these contradictions, republican ideas helped to change American society and government in the years following the war.

New State Constitutions

Events before the Revolution led many Americans to believe that each state’s constitution should be written down and that it should limit the government’s power over the people.  The Revolutionary War and new republican ideas convinced Americans that the best form of government was a constitutional republic.

At the same time, many American leaders, including John Adams, worried that democracy could endanger a republican government.  Adams argued that government needed “checks and balances” to prevent any group in society from becoming strong enough to take away the rights of the minority.

A true democracy, Adams argued, would lead to a tyranny by the majority.  Minority groups would not have their rights protected.  For example, the poor might vote to take everything away from the rich and undermine the right to property.  Instead, Adams argued, the best government was a “mixed government” with a separation of powers.  The executive, legislative, and judicial branches should be separate.

Adams also argued that the legislature should have two houses: a senate to represent people of property and an assembly to protect the rights of the common people.  Adams’s ideas influenced several state constitutions.  Virginia’s constitution of 1776 and Massachusetts’s constitution of 1780 established an elected governor, senate, and assembly.  By the 1790s, most of the other states had created similar constitutions.  

In addition to writing new constitutions, many new states began to attach a list of rights to their constitutions.  This began in 1776, when George Mason drafted Virginia’s Declaration of Rights.  These rights guaranteed to all Virginians freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, and the right to trial by jury.  The declaration also proclaimed that the state could not search someone’s home without a warrant, nor could it take away property without proper court proceedings.  Other states followed Virginia’s example and incorporated a bill of rights into their constitutions as well.

Voting Rights Expand

The Revolution not only increased support for constitutional government, it also led to an expansion of voting rights.  The experience of fighting side by side with people from every social class and region increased people’s belief in equality, especially for white men.  Everyone was fighting for the same cause and risking death for the same ideas.  If everyone was equal, then everyone deserved the right to vote.

The war also weakened feelings of deference toward people in the upper classes.  The Revolution had showed many farmers and artisans that they were equal to the rich planters and merchants they fought beside.  While sitting in a tavern with farmers who were spitting and pulling off their muddy boots, one wealthy Virginian noted:  “Every one who bore arms esteems himself upon an equal footing with his neighbors. ...  Each of these men considers himself, in every respect, my equal.”

The Revolution enabled the lower classes to demand a greater role in choosing their leaders.  In almost every state, the new constitutions made it easier to gain the right to vote.  Many states allowed any white male who paid taxes to vote, whether or not he owned property.

Although voting rights expanded, people still had to own a certain amount of property to hold elective office, although usually much less than before the Revolution.  The practice of paying veterans with land grants for their services during the war also increased the number of people eligible to hold office.  In the North, before the Revolution, over 80 percent of the people elected were from the upper class.  Ten years after the war, only a little over one-third of officeholders were wealthy.  In the South, higher property qualifications kept the wealthy planters in power.  Before the Revolution, almost 90 percent of people elected to office were wealthy.  Afterward, the figure dropped by about 20 percent, indicating small farmers had gained some ground.

Freedom of Religion

The new concern with rights led to changes in the relationship between the church and the state.  Many of the Revolution’s leaders opposed “ecclesiastical tyranny”—the power of a church, backed by the government, to make people worship in a certain way.  After the war, the idea that government should not aid churches became more accepted.

The new push to end state funding of churches began in Virginia, where Baptists led a movement to abolish taxes collected to support the Anglican Church.  In 1786 Governor Thomas Jefferson pushed the legislature to pass the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.  The statute declared that Virginia no longer had an official church and that the state could not collect taxes for churches.  Written by Jefferson, the statute declared:

“[O]ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; ...  therefore ...  proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence ... unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right.”

The idea of denying tax support to churches spread slowly throughout the newly independent nation.  Massachusetts permitted Quakers and Baptists to assign their tax money to their church instead of to the congregational churches—the successors to the Puritan churches—but it did not abolish religious taxes entirely until 1833.

Examining
Which freedoms did Virginia’s constitution guarantee in its bill of rights?
 

The War and American Society

The postwar notions of greater equality and liberty, as noble as they were, applied mainly to white men.  For most women and African Americans, these ideals were still out of reach.  Both groups participated in the Revolutionary War, and the Revolution’s ideals led to some changes in the status of both women and African Americans in the years following the end of the conflict.

Women at War

Women played a vital role in the Revolutionary War, contributing on both the home front and the battlefront.  With their husbands and sons at war, some women took over running the family farm.  Others traveled with the army—cooking, washing, and nursing the wounded.  Women also served as spies and couriers, and a few even joined the fighting.  Mary Ludwig Hays, known as Molly Pitcher, carried water to Patriot gunners during the Battle of Monmouth.  Margaret Corbin accompanied her husband to battle, and after his death she took his place at his cannon and held the position until the battle ended.

After the war, as Americans began to think about what their revolutionary ideals implied, women made some advances.  They could more easily obtain a divorce, and they gained greater access to education.  In 1779 Judith Sargent Murray wrote an essay entitled “On the Equality of the Sexes.” The essay argued that women were as intelligent as men but lacked the education needed to achieve more in life.  After the Revolution, many schools for girls were founded, and the number of women able to read increased.

African Americans

Thousands of enslaved African Americans obtained their freedom during the Revolution.  In an effort to undermine the colonial economy and hurt the rebellion in the South, the British Army freed thousands of enslaved people.  British officials, however, also seized thousands of African Americans and shipped them to British plantations in the Caribbean.

Many planters promised to free their slaves if the slaves fought against the British.  General Washington, in order to counter the British offer to free enslaved people who joined the British, permitted African Americans to join the Continental Army.  He also urged state militias to admit African Americans and to offer freedom to all who served.  About 5,000 African Americans fought in the militias and the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

After the Revolution, more enslaved Africans gained their freedom.  Many American leaders realized that enslaving people did not fit in with the new language of liberty and equality.  Opposition to slavery had been growing steadily even before the Revolution, especially in the northern and middle states.

After the war began, emancipation, or freedom from enslavement, became a major issue.  Many Northern states took steps to end slavery.  Vermont banned slavery in 1777.  In 1780 Pennsylvania freed all children born enslaved when they reached age 28.  Rhode Island decreed in 1784 that enslaved men born thereafter would be free when they turned 21 and women when they turned 18.  In 1799 New York freed enslaved men born that year or later when they reached age 28 and women when they reached age 25.  The ending of slavery in the North was thus a gradual process that took several decades.

Discrimination did not disappear with the increase in African American freedom.  While enslaved, some African Americans worked in skilled positions, such as blacksmithing.  Northern whites did not want free African Americans taking these jobs from them.  African Americans often were unable to get more than menial jobs—digging, carrying, loading, or sweeping.  Free African Americans also faced voting restrictions, segregation, and possible kidnapping and transportation into the South, where they would again be enslaved.

Despite the hardships, freedom offered choices.  Once free, African Americans typically moved to the cities to find employment.  Some found opportunities in previously barred occupations, such as artists or ministers.  Often, they discarded their former names or worked for several years to purchase the freedom of friends or family members.

A small group of African Americans achieved some wealth and social status.  The discrimination of Northern whites encouraged them to focus on building their own distinct culture.  Religion was a strong element of that emerging culture.  Now free to enter the ministry, African Americans created their own style of worship.  In 1816 African American church leaders formed the first independent African American denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

The story was quite different in the South.  The South relied heavily on enslaved labor to sustain its agricultural economy.  As a result, Southern leaders—most of whom were slaveholders themselves—showed little interest in abolishing slavery.  Only Virginia took steps toward ending the institution.  In 1782 the state passed a law encouraging manumission, or the voluntary freeing of enslaved persons, especially for those who had fought in the Revolution.  Through this law, about 10,000 slaves obtained their freedom, but the vast majority remained in bondage.

The Loyalists Flee

Many women and African Americans found their lives little changed as a result of the Revolution, but for many Loyalists, the end of the war changed everything.  Because of their support for the British, Loyalists often found themselves shunned by former friends, and state governments sometimes seized their property.

Unwilling to live under the new government and often afraid for their lives, approximately 100,000 Loyalists fled the United States after the war.  Some went to England or the British West Indies, but most moved to British North America, particularly to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the region near Niagara Falls.  This region was part of Quebec at the time, but in 1791, Britain made it a separate colony called Upper Canada.  Today it is the province of Ontario.

Americans grappled with what to do with the property and assets of Loyalists.  In North Carolina, Patriots confiscated Loyalist lands outright.  Officials in New York also seized Loyalist lands and goods, claiming the “sovereignty of the people of this state in respect to all property.” Other public officials opposed such actions.  The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, for example, extended the rights of “life, liberty, and property” to Loyalists, and gave much of the land seized from departing Loyalists to their agents or relatives who had remained behind.

Summarizing
How did life change for women, African Americans, and Loyalists after the Revolutionary War?
 
 

Elizabeth Freeman
(Mumbet)
c. 1742–1829

Elizabeth Freeman was born about 1742 to enslaved African American parents.  At the age of six months she was acquired, along with her sister, by John Ashley, a wealthy Massachusetts slaveholder.  She became known as “Mumbet” or “Mum Bett.”

For nearly 40 years Mumbet served the Ashley family.  One day, Ashley’s wife tried to strike Mumbet’s sister with a shovel.  Mumbet intervened and took the blow instead.  Furious, she stormed out of the house and refused to come back.  When the Ashleys tried to make her return, Mumbet contacted a lawyer, Theodore Sedgewick.  With his help, Mumbet sued for her freedom.

While serving the Ashleys, Mumbet had listened to many discussions of the new Massachusetts constitution.  If the constitution said that all people were free and equal, then she thought it should apply to her.  A jury agreed, and Mumbet won her freedom—the first enslaved person in Massachusetts to do so under the new constitution.

Oddly enough, after the trial, the Ashleys asked Mumbet to come back and work for them as a paid employee.  She declined and instead went to work for Sedgewick.  Mumbet died in 1829, but her legacy lived on in her many descendants.  One of her great-grandchildren was W.E.B.  DuBois, one of the founders of the NAACP, and a prominent writer and spokesperson for African American civil rights in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Mumbet’s tombstone still stands in the Massachusetts cemetery where she was buried.  It reads, in part: “She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years.  She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal.”
 
 

An American Culture Emerges

In the United States, victory over the British united Americans and created powerful nationalist feelings.  The Revolutionary War helped this process in two ways.  First, Americans in all of the states had a common enemy.  Soldiers from all over the country fought side by side in each other’s states.  Second, the Revolution gave rise to many patriotic symbols and a common folklore.  Stories of the Revolution and its heroes helped Americans to think of themselves as all belonging to the same group.

American Painters

The Revolution sparked the creativity of American painters, including John 
Trumbull and Charles Willson Peale.  Their work and that of other artists helped to build an American identity.  Both men portrayed the heroic deeds and leaders of the Revolution.  Trumbull served in the Continental Army as an aide to Washington.  He is best known for his depiction of battles and important events in the Revolution.  Peale fought at Trenton and Princeton and survived the winter at Valley Forge.  He is best known for his portraits of Washington and other Patriot leaders.

Changes in Education

As they started a new nation, American leaders considered an educated public to be critical to the republic’s success.  Jefferson called it the “keystone of our arch of government.” Several state constitutions provided for government-funded universities.  In 1795 the University of North Carolina became the first state university in the nation.  At the same time, elementary education began to institute an American-centered style of teaching.  Tossing out British textbooks, schools taught republican ideas and the history of the struggle for independence.

As the American people began to build a national identity, leaders of the United States turned their attention to the creation of a government that could hold the new nation together and promote the ideals and beliefs that the colonists had fought so hard to secure.

Identifying
In what ways did the Revolutionary War help create powerful nationalist feelings in the United States?
 

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