The%20Revolution-%20How%20did%20it%20Change%20America?

1
The Revolution- How did it Change America?

• 1775. The Second Continental Congress met in
  Philadelphia and declared war on Britain.
• It organized the Continental Army under George
  Washington, authorized a navy, and appointed a
  Committee of Secret Correspondence.

2

• 1775- Ethan Allen captures Fort Ticonderoga.
• 1775-The Battle of Bunker Hill takes place in
  Boston.
• 1776-Congress approves the Declaration of
  Independence and appoints a committee to plan for
  a permanent Constitution.

3

• 1777- General Gates defeats General Burgoyne at
  Saratoga, the turning point of the War.
• Congress approves a draft of the Articles of the
  Confederation.
• 1778-France and the American colonies establish a
  military alliance.

4

• 1779-1781-Spain declares war on Great Britain.
• The theater of the war shifts to the Southern
  Colonies.
• The Colonists win the final victory at Yorktown.
• The Articles of the Confederation are ratified.
• Robert Morse organizes the Bank of North America.

5

• 1783-The Treaty of Paris brings full
  independence.
• The Revolutionary War as a Civil War in the sense
  that it pitted Colonist against Colonist-Loyalist
  vs. Patriot.
• The Revolutionary War created a sense of common
  nationality.
• John Adams, among other moderates, feared that
  the Revolution which had began as a dispute over
  governing the colonies was turning into a social
  revolution.

6

• Was the American war for independence a social
  revolution?
• At the end of the Revolution, about 80,000
  Loyalists fled America, but Loyalists came from
  all classes. They were not just the elite. The
  same was true of Patriots.
• There were only minor differences in social
  standing between those who supported independence
  and stayed in America and those who fought it and
  left.

7

• The departure of the Loyalists and the
  redistribution of some property did little to
  change the social profile of the community or the
  nature of property holding in America.
• But the Revolution did liberalize American life
  in many ways and made America a more democratic
  country.

8

• The Revolution fostered a growing concern for
  equity and social justice. The Revolution even
  weakened slavery.
• Some women expected their gender to benefit from
  the egalitarian spirit of the war. But the
  aftermath of the Revolution produced moral
  mothers and Republican motherhood. Womens
  suffrage lay decades in the future.

9

• At the end of the Revolutionary War, Americans
  had to repair the damage of seven years of war
  and learn how to function as citizens of an
  independent nation.
• The Loyalists who had not fled for good had to be
  reconciled to the new country.
• Several thousand free blacks in the North would
  have to be absorbed into the larger society.

10

• The Revolutionary War itself wasnt a social
  revolution. It just hastened the process of
  moving America toward greater democracy, legal
  equality and religious toleration.
• America did undergo a political revolution. It
  evolved from 13 English colonies into a political
  nation.
• Textbook author and historian Irwin Unger
  believes that the American Revolution was
  primarily a colonial war of independence.

11
The Origins of the ConstitutionBy Popular
Demand?

• 1781-The new United States ratifies the Articles
  of the Confederation.
• 1785-Congress adopts the land Ordinance of 1785
  which is a model for future federal land policy.
• 1787-The Ordinance of 1787 prohibits slavery in
  the Northwest Territory and declares that new
  states carved from the territory will be fully
  equal to the original states.

12

• 1787-The Constitutional Convention meets at
  Philadelphia where state delegations approve the
  completed draft of the Constitution.
• 1788- The Constitution is ratified and Congress
  adopts its first ten amendments as the Bill of
  Rights.
• 1789-George Washington becomes president of the
  United States of America and John Adams vice
  president.

13

• One of the major questions the framers of the
  Constitution had to answer was Were slaves
  property or were they people?
• They answered the question by enacting a fugitive
  slave law and by compromising to define salves as
  three-fifths of all other Persons. With the
  three-fifths compromise, the Founding Fathers
  managed to treat a slave both as property and as
  three-fifths of a person.

14

• Between the battle of Yorktown in 1781 and the
  inauguration of George Washington as president in
  1789, America transformed itself into a
  Constitutional government.
• The end of the Revolution brought peace and
  freedom to Americans, but also declining trade,
  falling prices, and unemployment.
• America was humiliated in foreign affairs and
  many countries felt free to disregard American
  rights.

15

• Thousands of ordinary people and many of the
  patriots turned to constitutional revision as
  their way to more effective government and
  improving Americas position in the world
  community.
• The Constitution that emerged from the convention
  at Philadelphia reflected the feelings of the
  nationalists who blamed weak central government
  for the problems of the new nation.

16

• We dont know for certain whether the majority of
  adults in 1788 supported the Constitution, but
  historian Unger concludes that it is likely that
  the Federal Constitution was written and adopted
  by popular demand.