Module 4 The Revolution

The American people and in particular the upper class needed a revolution. The British were enforcing too many new taxes and limiting Americans too much. Americans got their revolution and made great changes, but the rest of the Indians, Blacks and low class whites were in the same situation that they started in. So how did the upper class convince the lower class that they needed to revolt. Patrick Henry contributed a great deal with his ability to make the British the bad guys. Another and probably the greatest contributor was Common Sense, an article by Thomas Paine. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now.” (Thomas Paine) even tough the lower classes did not get anything out of the revolution at the time, they did get opportunity. Opportunity to grow and get away from the old past that previously they were stuck at, with barley an room for growth. Zinn agrees that “what the revolution did was to create space and opportunity for blacks to begin making demands of white society.”
So who benefited from the revolution and the newly created documents? The upper class got their money. The lower class got their “freedom,” and the opportunity for growth because of the newly freed and money hungry upper class. And almost everyone got what they really wanted, a strong central government. As agreed by Zinn on pg 55.
All but the Indians got what really benefited from the revolution. The new laws set forth by the congress completely left out the Indian nation. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 which authorized President Andrew Jackson to move Indians residing east of the Mississippi to lands in the West. The Indian Removal Act set the stage for the Trail of Tears.(Locke) this was just one of the many different times the Americans pushed the Indians further west.
The revolution allowed us to grow and for the big businesses of America to start getting really big and compete against other big companies, which is the backbone of America.
Source of the Locke reader: Leslie H. Fishel and Benjamin Quarles, The Negro American: A Documentary History, (Glenview, Ill., 1967), p. 207.
Zinn, H. A People’s History of the United States. 1980.