Revolutionary Ideals

Liberty

The classic phrase of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, is amongst the most well-known and frequently quoted lines about the ideals of the American Revolution as well as the new American republic that would be subsequently established. As previously highlighted, expanded views of personal liberties characterized American disagreements and conflicts with the British throughout the later colonial period and through the American Revolution and beyond. While Americans often invoked long-standing British natural rights and legal protections, including the right of habeas corpus, the right to appear in court and be informed of legal charges against a defendant, Americans advocated for greater freedoms of speech, religion, press, and assembly than were then permitted in Great Britain.

Equality

While Americans rejected the establishment of a formal aristocracy with its concomitant differential systems of legal rights and privileges, arguments about equality raged over the continuation, and expansion, of enslaved labor, particularly in the southern and middle states. Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently about how “all men are created equal” while he personally enslaved several hundred people at his plantation in Monticello, Virginia. George Washington and many other Founding Fathers, as these early political leaders came to be known, also owned slaves and argued strongly in favor of maintaining slavery in the United States.

Another important question about the breadth and depth of equality in and after the American Revolution focuses on the status and treatment of women. Women were rarely recognized as having equal rights to own and inherit property, to vote, even in the limited voting of the era, and to hold political office. One of the most frequently cited admonitions of the era was from Abigail Adams to her husband John Adams to “not forget the ladies” during the discussions about declaring independence and claiming the rights of Americans.

Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31, 1776

Tho we felicitate ourselves, we sympathize with those who are trembling least the Lot of Boston should be theirs. But they cannot be in similar circumstances unless pusillanimity and cowardice should take possession of them. They have time and warning given them to see the Evil and shun it. – I long to hear that you have declared an independency – and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to 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.

Questions regarding equality in the American Revolution would necessarily also involve the status of Native Americans. While most indigenous peoples willingly remained outside of American society and governance, questions remained about how those who had converted to Christianity and lived within the established, and often expanding, boundaries of the newly [declared] independent states would be treated and to which rights they were entitled.

Consent of the governed

As American colonists had previously rejected the British Parliament’s declared intentions to impose and enforce laws and taxes to which the colonists had not assented, as newly independent people, Americans insisted that their own Continental Congress and state and local governments honor and abide by the principle that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Opposing tyranny

Americans labeled King George III a tyrant for his refusal to listen to and honor their demands. Given their disdain for his autocratic rule, and to prevent the imposition of future tyranny in the United States, American political leaders established their preliminary framework for an independent government, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, in 1778; while much criticized then and now, the Articles of Confederation served as the governing structure for the United States throughout most of the American Revolution and through the ratification of the Constitution.