How Did The American Revolution Affect Society

The Revolutionary War was fought on what is now U.S. soil between the British and its North American colonies from 1775 to 1781, because of differing views on how the people should be governed (Norton, 158). The Treaty of Paris was signed in the year of 1783, and the British finally recognized America as an independent nation (Norton, 159). After freedom, America needed a new form of government and a couple years later, the constitution would fulfill that role. As the U.S created new forms for which the new country would base its values on, other changes were occurring as well. The Revolution not only affected how America would change physically as a country, but also how it would change internally. Aspects such as the political change from
America shifted politically from a nation governed by a monarch to a republic. With this change, political power shifted from the few to the many, in order to be completely different than Great Britain. Pre-revolution, the top ten percent governed the nation and after the revolution, the top third governed the nation. This top third was referred to as the plural elite, and they were elected to reflect the ideas of the common person more accurately. William Manning, who sought for power of the many rather than the few, said “the sole foundation on which the Few build all their schemes to destroy free government is the ignorance and superstition of, or the want of knowledge among, the many” (Manning, 3). These ideas influenced Americans and kept in power popular consent, the notion that people have to give ideas to the government in order to be governed. Voting in America was a way to
After the Revolution, the ideas of religious disestablishment, separation of church and state, spread. This movement took lead in the South and spread northward. Eventually Americans had freedom to choose their religious beliefs, and they were no longer forced to pay a tax for another form of religion that wasn’t their own. Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason declared that “Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe” (Paine, 2). Paine believed that people should not be forced to believe something that didn’t coincide with their true beliefs, and others had similar views on this matter as well. Madison believed in religious freedom as well, and he stated that “the Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man… This right is in its nature an unalienable right” (Madison, 1). As these views spread among the common people throughout the country, state governments began to change the law and eventually there was religious freedom in every