Main Claim
The American Revolution was not revolutionary, because the Revolution continued the many
injustices and inequalities we see today regarding race and gender.
Subclaim #1
The American Revolution
weas rooted in the need and
contiuation of slavery.
Subclaim #2
The American Revolution
only solidified the inequality
that was happening in the US.
Subclaim #3
The rights of those oppressed
during the Revolution were
not granted those rights until
decades later.
Documents
AA/LHUS
“Baltimore’s proximity to
Northern cities that were
heavily invested in slavery’s
infrastructure of credit,
insureance, ship building, and
land speculation in the South
made the Maryland port a key
junction point for providing
slave labor and comodities to
New Orleans and other
Souther ports.” (23)
Documents
Document F
“...Central proposition was
that, ‘all men are created
equal...’”
“...It combined majority rule
with effective protection of
minority rights...Far from
excluding the poor…”
“...The Founders who
defended a property
requirement for voting did so,
not in opposition to, but on
the basis of the equality
principle of the Declaration of
Independence…”
Document B
“...Equality was in fact the
most radicals and most
powerful ideological force let
loose in the Revolution....”
(talk about how this was true,
but it was the freedom and
equality of the white male,
and leaves out the population
of black people enslaved.)
Documents
Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs achieved
her PhD in 1940 and went to
Chicago to get a job in the
philosophy library. She came
across people protesting rat
infested home. She had never
been in contact with black
people before that time. Now
she had become aware of the
people who were suffering
and decided to mobilize a
mass action change to
happen.
“Given the role that pantaion
owners and merchant
capitalists la in the American
Revolution it is not surprising
that a war of independance
became a war to preserve
slavery.” (14)
“In this same period, a cohort
of properitied elites in Great
Britian’s thirteen North
American colonies organized
a revoluion to safeguard
slavery, property, and political
power. Thomas Jefferson and
his peers sought to preserve
as much as they looked to
overthrow.” (12)
The documentary created
about her was based on
changing the stereotypes of
Asian American women.
When she published her
works, she would put her
name under “Ria Stone”,
because of the stereotypes put
around her name.
Document C
“...The ‘Spirit of Equality’
“...Remember the Ladies, and
did not merely cull the
by more generous and
selectest champions from the favorable to them than your
kingly commons,’ ut is spread ancestors. Do not put such
‘one royal mantle of
unlimited power into the
Document E
“...great number of blacks
detained in a state of
slavery… apprehend that they
have in common with all
other men a natural and
unalienable right to that
freedom…”
humanity’ overall Americans
and brought ‘democratic
dignity’ to ‘the arm that
wields a pick or drives a
spike...’”
“...by the hand of cruel power
from their dearest friends and
some of them even torn from
the embraces of their tender
parents… comdemned to
slavery for life…”
“...Within decades following
the Declaration of
Independence, the United
States became the most
egalitarian nation in the
history of the world, and it
remains so today, regardless
of its great disparities of
wealth...”
“...act of legislation to be
passed whereby they make
restored to the enjoyments
that which is the natural right
of all men…”
Document H
“...The rich, it turned out,
could avoid the draft by
paying for substitutes; the
poor had to serve...”
“...The inferior position of
blacks, the exclusion of
Indians from the new society,
the establishment of
supremacy for the rich and
powerful in the new nation all this was already settled in
the new colonies by the time
of the Revolution...”
“With the English out of the
way, it could now be put on
paper, solidified, regularized,
made legitimate, by the
Constitution of the United
States.”
hands of the Husbands.
Remember all Men would be
tyrants if they could…”
“...the Ladies we are
determined to foment a
Rebellion, and will not hold
ourselves bound by any laws
in which we have no voice, or
Representation…”
“Men of Sense in all Ages
abhor those customs which
treat as vassals of your
Sex…”
In the note underneath the
document, it states that
“Women did not receive the
vote in federal elections until
1920, 144 years after the
Declaration of Independence
was signed.”
Document D
“Women were understood by
everyone to be included in the
quote ‘all men’ (all human
beings) who are created
equal…”
“...that women and men have
equal importance, but
different roles in the family
and society…”
“...The best protection of
women’s rights, in the minds
of both men and women of
the founding era, was the core
private association of a free
civilized society: life-long
marriage and the family.”