For civilians who lived through the American Revolution, war, politics, and family life were inextricably linked. As the continent descended into civil war, violence seeped into daily life, with profound implications for the varied inhabitants of colonial North America, including Black, white, and Indigenous families; free and enslaved people; Loyalists and Revolutionaries; men and women. Civilians, even those who sought to avoid the war, inhabited a precarious position, subject to widespread violence, household invasion, and new, occasionally coercive, authorities and conflicting allegiances. These circumstances unsettled the power relations and hierarchies that governed daily life, disrupting political authorities, social interactions, labor arrangements, and economic exchanges. Rippling throughout Revolutionary society, military conflict and political shifts exposed deeply rooted societal fissures, particularly regarding race, class, and gender. Recognizing this, poor white men, white women, the enslaved, and free Black colonists advocated for a more expansive, inclusive definition of liberty – a fight that has persisted beyond the war.
