Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:07:50.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The American Revolution as a Social Movement Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Colin Bonwick
Colin Bonwick
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in the Department of American Studies, University of Keele, Keele, Staffordshire ST5 5BG.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Discussion of the American Revolution began at the beginning. Contemporaries identified two interactive, though not interlocked, major elements by boasting of the attainment of independence and the founding of a new republic; as Enos Hitchcock insisted in 1788, “A revolution can never be considered as complete till government is firmly established — and without this independency would be a curse instead of a blessing. — These jointly were the great object of the American Revolution.” A third component of the Revolutionary experience was a network of social changes that affected many aspects of American life. Some processes — demographic growth, economic expansion, and western settlement, all of which contributed materially to the context of Revolutionary change — were essentially secular and developmental in effect. Others, such as the emancipation of blacks and women, had barely begun during the Revolutionary era; a few, for example, the disestablishment of religion, were largely complete by the end of the century. Among these many social processes was one that interacted with both other components of the Revolution, was central in function, and had both immediate and long-term effects. Elites were forced to share their power.

By 1800 a critical change had taken place in the fabric of American society. The Revolution had transformed ideological expectations, behaviour patterns and social relationships as well as institutions, and had drastically altered the basis on which social and political authority could be exercised in a manner that transcended the departure of British officials and Loyalist exiles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , December 1986 , pp. 355 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Enos Hitchcock, quoted in Albanese, Catherine E., Sons of the Fathers: The Civil Religion of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976), pp. 210–11Google Scholar.

2 Jameson, J. Franklin, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1926)Google Scholar remains an elegant introduction to the theme.

3 Beeman, Richard, “The New Social History and the Search for ‘Community’ in Colonial America,” American Quarterly, 29 (1977), 422, 438–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Bender, Thomas, Community and Social Change in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1978), p. 8Google Scholar.

5 Isaac, Rhys, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1982), pp. 113–14Google Scholar.

6 Cotton Mather, quoted in Fischer, David Hackett, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 4Google Scholar.

7 Noah Hobart, quoted in Bushman, Richard L., From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 269Google Scholar.

8 George Micklejohn, quoted in Labaree, Leonard Woods, Conservatism in Early American History (New York: New York University Press, 1948), pp. 74–75Google Scholar.

9 Robert Asheton, quoted in Levy, Leonard W., Emergence of a Free Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 49Google Scholar.

10 Charles Chauncy, quoted in Dinkin, Robert J., Voting in Provincial America; A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies, 1689–1776 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977), p. 55Google Scholar.

11 A. V. Dicey, quoted in Clark, J. C. D., English Society, 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 7Google Scholar.

12 Jones, Alice Hanson, Wealth of a Nation to Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 302–03, 265Google Scholar.

13 Evans, Eric J., The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–1870 (London: Longmans, 1983), p. 8Google Scholar; Jones, pp. 170, 369–74.

14 Breen, Timothy, “Horses and Gentlemen: The Cultural Significance of Gambling among the Gentry of Virginia,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 34 (1971), 243–45Google Scholar; 256–57; Isaac, pp. 18–114.

15 Talcott Parsons, quoted in Greene, Jack P. and Pole, J. R., eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), p. 295Google Scholar.

16 Bender, , Community, pp. 77–78Google ScholarPubMed.

17 Bailyn, Bernard, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 56Google Scholar. For the function of English role models in colonial psychology, see Greene, Jack P., “Search for Identity: An Interpretation of the Meaning of Selected Patterns of Social Response in Eighteenth-century America,” Journal of Social History, 3 (1970), 189–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Weir, Robert M., “Who Shall Rule at Home? The American Revolution as a Crisis of Legitimacy for the Colonial Elite,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1976), 679–700CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Pierson, William H. Jr, American Buildings and Their Architects: The Colonial and Neoclassical Styles (Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976), pp. 73–78, 105, 137–40Google Scholar; Smith, Billy G., “Inequality in Late Colonial Philadelphia: A Note on its Nature and Growth,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 41 (1984), 643CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Richard L. Bushman in Greene and Pole, p. 359.

20 Lockridge, Kenneth A., Settlement and Unsettlement in Early America: The Crisis of Political Legitimacy before the Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 94Google Scholar.

21 Buel, Richard, “Democracy and the American Revolution: A Frame of Reference,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 21 (1964), 179–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Wood, Gordon S., Representation in the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the Jamestown Foundation, 1969), pp. 36–38Google Scholar.

23 Jeremy Belknap, quoted in Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

24 Alexander Hanson, quoted in Wood, p. 38.

25 Alexander Hamilton to John Jay, 1775, Syrett, Harold C. and Cooke, Jacob E., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 176–77Google Scholar.

26 Nash, Gary B., The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), pt. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Gouverneur Morris to (John) Penn, 20 May, 1774, quoted in Jensen, Merrill, ed., English Historical Documents: American Colonial Documents to 1776 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1955), p. 861Google Scholar.

28 Pennsylvania Evening Post (14 Mar. 1776), quoted in Foner, Philip S., Labor and the American Revolution (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1776), p. 165Google Scholar.

29 Maryland Gazette (15 Aug. 1776), quoted in Skaggs, David Curtis, Roots of Maryland Democracy: 1753–1776 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973), pp. 182–83Google Scholar.

30 Bushman, , From Puritan to Yankee, p. 271Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., pp. 283–84; Pennsylvania Evening Post (30 July 1776), quoted in Foner, p. 175.

32 Shy, John in Gerlach, Larry, ed., Legacies of the American Revolution ([Provo]: Utah State University, 1978), pp. 45–48Google Scholar; Royster, Charles, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and the American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1979), p. 86Google Scholar.

33 Maier, Pauline, “The Charleston Mob and the Evolution of Popular Politics in Revolutionary South Carolina: 1765–1784,” Perspectives in American History, 4 (1970), 193–94Google Scholar.

34 Nelson, William E., Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760–1830 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 90–91Google Scholar.

35 Main, Jackson Turner, The Upper House in Revolutionary America: 1763–1788 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), pp. 235–41Google Scholar.

36 The “Essex Result” in Oscar and Handlin, Mary, eds., The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 330Google Scholar.

37 McLoughlin, William G., “The Role of Religion in the Revolution,” in Kurtz, Stephen G. and Hutson, James H., eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1973), p. 200Google Scholar.