A.P. UNITED STATES HISTORY
MR. FAEH
HOW REVOLUTIONARY WAS THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION?
Lucky You! As a rising star historian, due to your recent research into the above question, you have
been asked to take part in a debate that will be televised on July 4th, on your favorite channel FNN
(Faeh News Network) centering on the above question. Let the adventure begin.
Assignments:
1. Your job will be to participate in the debate on the question, “How Revolutionary was the
American Revolution?”
 Was it a Radical Revolution? Was it a Conservative Revolution? Was it a Revolution
for everyone? Was it a Revolution politically, socially, and/or economically?
2. Your group will be assigned to take one of the points of view listed below, and prepare an
opening speech outlining your major position and arguments to the question, as well as,
questions to pose to the other panelists in the debate.
3. When the debate is over, you will write a summary of all the major issues raised in the
debate and your conclusion to the question to be used as the closing to the show.
Procedure:
1. Each of you will be put into a group and assigned a reading packet dealing with one of the points
of view on the American Revolution.
2. In your group:
a. Go through your readings and outline your main ideas that you want to make
during the debate.
b. Write an opening speech that explains your position and main arguments to the
question.
c. Write three questions that you want to pose to the other panelists in the debate.
d. Decide on who will be your panelist in the debate, and the rest will work as
reporters during the debate asking the questions (when questions are being
asked that pertain to your group, you can help your panelist answer the
question).
3. During the debate, listen carefully and even take notes of the other group’s arguments. You may
need to adjust your questions or want to bring up particular points based on what is being said.
Plus, you will need to be fully informed on all the aspects to this question in order to complete the
final assignment.
4. After the presentation, each student will write a closing argument to the debate. In this closing
statement you must summarize the different sides of the argument, and choose what point of view
you support and say why you support it, plus say why you don't support the other view. You must
cite information that was provided in the readings and in class by the other groups.
A.P. UNITED STATES HISTORY
MR. FAEH
ROLES AND READINGS
Historian (Radical):
 Gordon Wood Article (from The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Alfred A. Knopf,
1991).
Madaras, Larry and SoRelle, James, editors. “Was the American Revolution a Conservative
Movement?” Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in American History, Vol.
I. McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2005.
 Documents
Historian (Conservative):
 Carl Degler Article (from Out of Our Past: The Forces That Shaped Modern America. Rev.
ed. Harper & Row, 1970).
Madaras, Larry and SoRelle, James, editors. “Was the American Revolution a Conservative
Movement?” Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in American History, Vol.
I. McGraw-Hill/Dushkin, 2005.
 Howard Zinn Article (from A People’s History of the United States. W.W. Norton & Company,
1997).
 Documents
Historian (Women):
 Howard Zinn Article (from A People’s History of the United States. W.W. Norton & Company,
1997).
 Documents
Historian (Native Americans):
 Howard Zinn Article (from A People’s History of the United States. W.W. Norton & Company,
1997).
 Documents
Historian (African Americans):
 Howard Zinn Article (from A People’s History of the United States. W.W. Norton & Company,
1997).
 Documents
A.P. UNITED STATES HISTORY
MR. FAEH
DOCUMENTS
Politics and Changes in Attitude
"The social hierarchy seemed less natural, less ordained by God, and more man-made, more arbitrary. . . The
practice of ranking entering students at Harvard and Yale by their social status had come to seem . . . unfair and
was abolished. Leaders lost some of the aura of mystery and sacredness." (Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of
the American Revolution, p.145.)
"Threats and anger were becoming more common than mutual respect and deference. Servants became more
difficult to maintain, and masters complained of shortages of servants. Everywhere ordinary people were no
longer willing to play their accustomed roles in the hierarchy. . . . They were less dependent, less willing to
walk while gentlemen rode, less willing to doff their caps, less deferential, less passive, less respectful of those
above them." (Wood, pp.145-146)
“Not only were sons and daughters leaving home in greater numbers, but they also claimed a greater say over
their choice of marriage partners. Young people were now more apt to marry someone outside of their
immediate locality, or even their religion, than they had been earlier.” (Wood-147)
“Even the authority of the supreme father of all, God himself, was not immune to challenge. In an enlightened
age God could no longer be absolute and arbitrary. Religion, some now said, had to rest not only on faith and
revelation but also on nature and reason.” (Wood-158)
"In their revolutionary state constitutions and laws the revolutionaries struck out at the power of family and
hereditary privilege. In the decades following the Revolution all the new states abolished the legal devices of
primogeniture and entail." (Wood, pp.182-183)
". . . Even hired servants eventually became hard to come by or to control. White servants refused to call their
employers 'master' or 'mistress'; for many the term 'boss' became a substitute. The servants themselves would
not be called anything but 'help.'" (Wood, p.184)
“Many of the revolutionary state constitutions had promised…to end punishments that were ‘cruel and unusual’
and to make them ‘less sanguinary, and in general more proportionate to the crimes.’ Jefferson and other
leaders drew up plans for liberalizing the harsh penal codes of the colonial period, which had relied on bodily
punishments of whipping, mutilations, and especially execution.” (Wood-193)
"The American people . . . were unwilling to respect the authority of their new elected leaders and were too
deeply involved in trade and moneymaking to think beyond their narrow interests. . . Growing opportunities for
wealth turned social mobility into a scramble. . . The Revolution resembled the breaking of a dam, releasing
thousands upon thousands of pent-up pressures." (Wood, pp.229 & 232)
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed….” (The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. Congress, July 4, 1776.)
Thanks to Eric Rothschild who gets credit for helping to create this document packet.
A.P. UNITED STATES HISTORY
MR. FAEH
The Treatment of Loyalists
"Who were the occasion of this war? The Tories! Who persuaded the tyrant of Britain to prosecute it in a
manner before unknown to civilized nations . . . The Tories! Who have assisted the Indians in taking the scalp
from the aged matron, the blooming fair one, the helpless infant, and the dying hero? The Tories! Who have
always counteracted the endeavors of Congress to secure the liberties of this country? The Tories! . . . . Awake,
Americans, to a sense of your danger. No time to be lost. Instantly banish every Tory from among you. . . .
Never let them return to this happy land." (Pennsylvania Packet, 5 August 1779, in Frank Moore, Diary of the
American Revolution (1859), vol. 2, pp.166-168, in Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, The American
Spirit, vol. 1, pp.159-160.)
“The loyalists may have numbered close to half a million, or 20 percent of white Americans. As many as
80,000 of them are estimated to have left the thirteen colonies during the American Revolution, over six times
as many émigrés per 1,000 of population as fled France during the French Revolution.” (Wood-176)
"It was not how many loyalists who were displaced that was important; it was who they were. A
disproportionate number of them were well-to-do gentry operating at the pinnacles of power and patronageroyal or proprietary officeholders, big overseas dry-goods merchants, and rich landowners." (Wood, p.176)
"The largest estate confiscated was that of the Penn family, proprietaries of Pennsylvania, which they estimated
at nearly a million pounds sterling. The commissions of the state of Maryland who sold confiscated property in
that state took in more than 450,000 pounds sterling." (J. Franklin Jameson, The American Revolution
Considered as a Social Movement, 9th printing, originally published in 1926, pp.34-35.)
“The most intensive study has been centered on the southern counties of New York, where [loyalists such as]
the DeLanceys, the Bayards, the Philipses held sway in colonial times over their vast baronies. When the
revolutionary New York government seized the estates and sold them off, some of the land, to be sure, went to
former tenants and other landless individuals. But the bulk of it was bought up by wealthy patriots and merely
augmented the domains of rival families like the Livingstons, Schuylers, and Roosevelts.” (Billias-65)
"The largest estate to be confiscated in America . . . was that of the Penn family. By the Divesting Act of 1779
the Pennsylvania legislature assumed control of twenty-one and a half million acres. . . Much more significant is
the fact that the private manors . . . of the Penns, amounting to more than 500,000 acres, together with the
quitrents on them, were specifically 'confirmed, ratified and established for ever' in the hands of the Penn
family-and this by the most 'radical' of all the revolutionary legislatures." (Frederick B. Tolles, "The American
Revolution Considered as a Social Movement: A Reevaluation," American Historical Review LX (October
1954): pp.1-12 in George A. Billias, The American Revolution, How Revolutionary Was It?, p.72.)
"A myriad of particularities could play a part in determining the extent of persecution. A well-liked or respected
Tory (and there were a few such) might well escape, as might someone whose skills were especially valued, for
example, a doctor. Influential but quiet Loyalists were more apt to avoid penalties than those of low social
standing or those more vociferous in their beliefs." (Wallace Brown, "The Good Americans," in James Kirby
Martin, ed., The American Revolution, Whose Revolution?, pp.131-132.)
A.P. UNITED STATES HISTORY
MR. FAEH
The Treatment of Women
Abigail Adams to John Adams, May 7, 1776. "I can not say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for
whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an
absolute power over Wives." (Abigail Adams and John Adams in L.H. Butterfield et al., eds., The Book of
Abigail and John, p.127.)
"In general it appears that the American Revolution retarded those societal conditions that had given colonial
women their unique function and status in society . . . By 1800 their economic and legal privileges were
curtailed: their recent revolutionary activity minimized or simply ignored: their future interest in politics
discouraged." (Joan Hoff Wilson, "The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution," in Alfred F.
Young, ed. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, p.430.)
"The war dissolved some of the distinctions between masculine and feminine traits. Women who would
previously have risked criticism if they abandoned their 'natural' female timidity now found themselves praised
for doing just that. The line between male and female behavior . . . became less well defined (Mary Beth
Norton, "Liberties Daughters," in Mary Beth Norton, Major Problems in American Women's History, p.110.)
“Although some states continued the traditional practices, most new post-revolutionary inheritance
laws…recognized greater equality among sons and daughters and gave greater autonomy to widows by granting
them outright ownership of one-third of the estate rather than just the lifetimie use that had been usual in the
past.” (Wood-183)
“In earlier-eighteenth-century family portraits fathers had stood dominantly above their wives and children, now
they were portrayed on the same plane with them—a symbolic leveling.” (Wood-184)
“The problem of female citizenship was solved by endowing domesticity itself with political meaning. The
result was the idea and image of the republican mother. Her patriotic duty to educate her sons to be moral and
virtuous citizens linked her to the state and gave here some degree of power over its future…The responsibility
of raising republican citizens offered women a political role which went well beyond common-law assumptions
subsuming women’s legal identities into those of husbands and fathers.” (Evans-57)
Judith Sargent Murray, March 1790. "Yes, ye lordly, ye haughty sex, our souls are by nature equal to yours; the
same breath of God animates, enlivens, and invigorates us; . . . I dare confidently believe, that from the
commencement of time to the present day, there hath been as many females, as males who by mere force of
natural powers have merited the crown of applause; who thus unassisted, have seized the wreath of fame."
(Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes," Massachusetts Magazine (March 1790), in Ruth Barnes
Moynihan et al. eds. Second to None, vol. 1, pp.188-189)
Friend to the Ladies, October 18, 1802. ". . . It must be owned that the inconvenience attending [women voting]
far outweighs the benefits derived from it. . . Timid and pliant, unskilled in politics, unacquainted with all the
real merits of the several candidates, and almost always placed under the dependence or care of a father, uncle,
or brother &c, they will of course be directed or persuaded by them. And the man who brings his two daughters,
his mother and his aunt to the elections, really gives five votes instead of one." (From True American, 18
October 1802, quoted in Mary Philbrook, "Woman's Suffrage in New Jersey Prior to 1807," Proceedings of the
New Jersey Historical Society 57 (1939): pp. 95-96 in Ruth Barnes Moynihan, et al., Second To None, vol. 1, p.
203.)
A.P. UNITED STATES HISTORY
MR. FAEH
The Treatment of Indians
Message to Congress from the Chickasaw Chiefs, July 1783. "When our great father the King of England called
away his warriors, he told us to take your People by the hand as friends and brothers. . . It makes our hearts
rejoice to find that our great father, and his children the Americans have at length made peace, which we wish
may continue as long as the Sun and Moon, And to find that our Brothers the Americans are inclined to take us
by the hand, and Smoke with us at the great Fire, which we hope will never be extinguished." (Virginia State
Papers, 3:515-17.)
"The theory of the United States commissioners was that the victory over Great Britain had been simultaneously
a conquest of the Indians, and that it made the Indians' lands forfeit to their conquerors." (Francis Jennings,
"The Indians Revolution," in The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism,
Alfred F. Young, ed., p.343.)
Indians leaders to Spanish Governor, 1784. "The Americans, a great deal more ambitious and numerous than
the English, put us out of our lands, forming therein great settlements, extending themselves like a plague of
locusts in the territories of the Ohio River which we inhabit." (Spain in the Mississippi Valley, vol. 3., pt.2,
p.117.)
Speech at the Confederate Council, 1786. "Brethren of the United States of America: It is now more than three
years since peace was made between the King of Great Britain and you, but we, the Indians, were disappointed,
finding ourselves not included in that peace . . . for we thought that its conclusion would have promoted a
friendship between the United States and Indians. . . . You kindled your council fires where you thought proper,
without consulting us, at which you held separate treaties and have entirely neglected our plan of having a
general conference with the different nations of the confederacy." (American State Papers, Class II: 1, p.8-9.)
Corn Tassel, 1787. "I observe in every Treaty we Have had that a bound[ary] is fixt, but we always find that
your people settle much faster shortly after a Treaty than Before. It is well known that you have taken almost all
our Country from us without our consent. . . . Truth is, if we had no Land we should have Fewer Enemies."
(Calendar of Virginia State Papers, p.306.)
A.P. UNITED STATES HISTORY
MR. FAEH
The Treatment of African Americans
American Association, 1774. “That we will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after the first day
of December next, after which we will wholly discontinue the slave trade.” (Billias-63)
“Revolutionary equalitarianism forced large numbers of men and women to question slavery for the first
time…some freed their slaves, and others, taking the ideology of the Revolution to heart, demanded liberty for
all.” (Young-356)
“Almost everywhere, the war widened opportunities for blacks to gain their liberty. When the British left
America at the end of the war, they carried thousands of blacks to freedom in Great britian, the West Indies,
Canada, and, eventually, Africa. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others that were freed by British wartime
policy eluded their masters and remained in the United States.” (Young-355)
“Slavery easily survived the increase of manumissions and runaways, recovered its balance, and in most places
continued to grow.” (Young-359)
"For a century or more the colonists had taken slavery more or less for granted. Rarely had they felt the need
either to criticize black slavery or to defend it. Now, however, [events] compelled Americans to see the deviant
character of slavery and to confront the institution as they never had to before. It was no accident that
Americans in Philadelphia in 1775 formed the first anti-slavery society in the world."(Wood, p.186.)
"Almost everywhere, the war widened opportunities for blacks to gain their liberty. When the British left
America at the end of the war, they carried thousands of blacks to freedom in Great Britain, the West Indies,
Canada, and, eventually, Africa. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others that were freed by British wartime
policy eluded their masters and remained in the United States." (Ira Berlin, "The Revolution in Black Life," in
Alfred F. Young, ed. The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, p.355.)
". . . The State of Pennsylvania, in 1780, made provisions for the gradual abolition of slavery. By 1783 the
courts of Massachusetts had abolished slavery. In 1784 Connecticut and Rhode Island passed acts that abolished
slavery gradually. Manumission acts were passed in New York in 1785 and in New Jersey in 1786." (John Hope
Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, Fifth Edition, p.93.)
Northwest Ordinance, 1787. "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory. . ."
(Leslie H. Fishel, Jr and Benjamin Quarles, eds., The Black American A Documentary History, Third edition,
p.62.)
The United States Constitution, 1787. "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several
States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be
determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons . . . three fifths of all other Persons."
The Unites States Constitution, 1787. “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such
Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or labour may be due.”