Chapter 6: The Revolution Within

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Ever feel like history is a giant puzzle, and you're just looking at one piece?

Today, we're diving into a crucial period in American history, one that's often overshadowed by, well, the grand narrative of independence.

It's about the revolution within.

On backing chapter six from Eric Foner's Give Me Liberty in American History, this chapter explores how the fight for American independence wasn't just about breaking from Britain.

It was also this really profound internal struggle that reshaped the very meaning of freedom for many Americans.

Exactly.

And what's fascinating is how those principles of liberty, you know, the ones articulated against a distant king, they inevitably turned inward.

They started challenging these long held assumptions about who was truly free and what equality really meant in this new nation.

So we'll explore the main developments, the conflicts, and the turning points focusing on this internal transformation.

Okay, so let's start this deep dive thinking about this radical idea of equality.

Imagine it's March 1776.

Abigail Adams, who was, you know, one of the revolutionary eras, most articulate women, she writes this letter to her husband, Right.

And she asks how strong can the passion for liberty really be among those accustomed to deprive their fellow citizens of theirs,

which is a clear jab at slavery, obviously.

But then here's where it gets really interesting.

She urges Congress when they're drafting new laws to remember the ladies,

and she warns all men would be tyrants if they could.

Pretty strong words.

That letter just perfectly captures the upheaval, doesn't it?

John Adams's response kind of highlights this.

He notes the struggle had loosened the bands of government everywhere.

He saw disobedience from children, apprentices, even enslaved people.

So for him, it was like an affront to the natural order.

Kind of.

But for others, including his wife with her claim, this very upheaval was the essence of the American Revolution.

It was driving this idea of equality forward.

So, okay, the American Revolution was really three things happening at once.

A fight for independence, obviously.

A phase in this global battle among European empires.

And a deep conflict over what kind of nation an independent America should actually be.

And it's really in that context that Jefferson's assertion in the declaration, you know, all men are created equal, was truly radical.

Because before the Revolution, inequality was fundamental.

It was just accepted.

Power flowed down.

Rulers over subjects, husbands over wives,

slaveholders over slaves.

And the ever -linked American freedom with this idea of equality.

Equality before the law, equality in political rights, economic opportunity.

Thomas Paine even declared, the floor of freedom is as level as water.

That's quite an image.

Wow.

And this led to a dramatic expansion of the political nation, right?

Before, political participation was often limited to people who owned property.

Exactly.

Now you have groups like artisans, small farmers, laborers.

They're debating things like universal male suffrage, even the abolition of slavery.

And joining the militia you mentioned became a new way for excluded groups to claim citizenship.

Yes, that was a powerful shift.

Service became a pathway to political belonging.

The Revolution's most radical political potential was maybe most evident in Pennsylvania.

Why, Pennsylvania specifically?

Well, there, nearly the entire pre -war elite opposed independence.

They feared rule by the rabble, as they put it.

So this created a vacuum.

And a new pro -independence group rose up based on artisans and lower -class communities.

Okay.

And in 1776, Pennsylvania adopts this new state constitution that really sought to institutionalize democracy.

It created a one -house legislature, elected annually by all taxpaying men over 21.

It got rid of the governor's office, dispensed with property qualifications for holding office, and guaranteed freedom of speech and religion.

That sounds like huge departure, elevating personal liberty over property.

It was a dramatic departure, but it stood in stark contrast to more conservative voices like John Adams.

Right, Adams.

What was his take?

In his 1776 Thoughts on Government, he argued for balanced governments, two -house legislatures, an upper house for the wealthy, a lower one for ordinary men, plus a powerful governor.

And most days followed his lead on the two houses.

Most did, yes.

But Adams, being conservative on internal affairs, he genuinely believed freedom and equality were opposites.

He feared that men without property lacked judgment of their own.

You can almost picture him or someone like John Dickinson looking at Pennsylvania's constitution and wanting to strike out the parts, allowing all free men to hold office.

So while many states moved towards broader voting rights for free men,

it wasn't universal suffrage yet.

Generally not, no.

Even Pennsylvania kept a taxpaying qualification which barred poppers and domestic servants.

But New Jersey's 1776 constitution is really notable here.

How so?

Initially, it granted suffrage to all inhabitants who met a property qualification.

And until 1807, when they specifically added male and white,

some property -owning women, mainly widows, actually did cast ballots.

No kidding.

Women voting back then.

For a time, yes, in New Jersey.

So by the 1780s, you have a large majority of adult white males who could vote in most states outside of maybe Virginia, Maryland, and New York.

That signifies a real shift in who held political power.

Okay, so beyond politics,

this revolution within also had a huge impact on American religion.

A profound impact.

Before the revolution, religious toleration often just stemmed from, well, practical pluralism.

Lots of different groups.

It wasn't really based on a deep theory of religious liberty.

Meaning most colonies still supported churches with public money.

And discriminated.

Yes, exactly.

They supported religious institutions with public funds, and discriminated in voting and office -holding against Catholics, Jews, even dissenting Protestants.

I mean, right before Independence, Baptists in Massachusetts were still being jailed for not paying taxes to support the local congregational ministers.

So how did the new American ideal of freedom change things for religion?

Well, the War of Independence itself actually weakened American anti -Catholicism.

Remember, the Second Continental Congress invited Catholic Quebec to join the struggle, and then the Crucial Alliance with Catholic France in 1778 really strengthened the idea that Catholics had a place in the new nation.

So attitudes started shifting.

They did.

When America's first Roman Catholic bishop visited Boston in 1791, he got a cordial welcome.

That's a marked change from earlier anti -Catholic feelings.

And the drive to separate church and state.

Who was behind that?

It brought together some interesting groups.

You had Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton,

guys who viewed religion through a more rational, skeptical lens.

And alongside them, you had evangelical sects who wanted to protect religion from the corrupting influence of government.

Jefferson famously hoped to build a wall of separation.

Did states start disestablishing churches then, cutting public funding?

Many did, yes.

They lost public funding and special legal privileges.

And Virginia's bill for establishing religious freedom is a landmark here.

Drafted by Jefferson in 1779, adopted in 86.

What made it so important?

Its preamble declared that God have created the mind free.

It eliminated religious requirements for voting and office holding.

It ended government financial support for churches, and crucially prevented the state from forcing religious views on anyone.

Jefferson himself listed it as one of his three proudest achievements.

But there were limits, right?

You mentioned discrimination earlier.

Yes, important limits to acknowledge.

Every state except New York, which established complete religious liberty pretty early in 1777, kept colonial rules barring Jews from voting and holding public office.

And Massachusetts held onto its congregationalist establishment all the way until 1833.

Still, even with those limits, religious freedom led to more denominations.

An amazing proliferation, yes.

It fundamentally changed the religious landscape of American society.

But it's key to understand this wasn't a hostility to religion.

Oh, so?

Instead, religious and secular language kind of merged into what scholars call Christian republicanism.

The proponents believed that without moral restraint, which they saw coming from both religion and government, human nature would just succumb to corruption.

Samuel Adams even envisioned the new nation as a Christian Sparta.

A Christian Sparta.

Interesting.

And they focused on creating virtuous citizens.

Exactly.

Leaders emphasized creating a virtuous citizenry.

They proposed things like free state -supported public schools.

The idea was to instruct future citizens in, as John Adams put it, the principles of freedom.

There's even an engraving from the time showing virtues radiating from a citizen.

It perfectly captures that ideal.

Okay, let's shift gears a bit.

How did this revolution within redefine economic freedom?

Well, before the revolution, you had many forms of what we'd call unfree labor, slavery, obviously, but also indentured servitude and apprenticeship.

In the generation after independence, indentured servitude and apprenticeship for white men declined rapidly.

And what effect did that have?

It really sharpened the distinction between freedom and slavery and between a northern economy that was starting to rely on free labor.

Meaning working for wages or owning your own farm or shop.

Right.

And a southern economy completely dependent on slavery.

By 1800, indentured servitude was almost gone from the US.

So this concept of free labor really took hold in the north.

And the revolutionary generation was really focused on the social conditions needed for freedom.

Deeply preoccupied with it, Noah Webster declared, equality is the very soul of a republic.

Now, for most free Americans, this meant equal opportunity,

not necessarily equal outcomes.

They believed the New World's vast land and all these independent farmers would naturally produce justice and prevent that European style aristocracy from forming.

Thomas Jefferson seems key here, too.

He thought lacking economic resources meant lacking freedom.

He absolutely did.

In Virginia, he pushed hard for laws abolishing entail and primogeniture.

Can you quickly explain those again?

Sure.

Entail limited inheritance to a specific line of heirs, keeping estates intact within families.

Primogeniture meant the family's land passed entirely to the eldest son.

Jefferson saw these as tools that just perpetuated inherited wealth and power.

He thought they were roadblocks to a republic of independent citizens.

Abolishing them was about preventing a future aristocracy.

Precisely.

But the war itself, of course, brought huge economic challenges.

Right.

Inflation.

Congress printed tons of paper money.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth.

That plus wartime disruption to farming and trade and hoarding by some merchants.

It led to enormous inflation.

You see accounts between 1776 and 1779 of crowds, often women, confronting merchants accused of price gouging.

Taking matters into their own hands.

Yes.

Seizing goods and selling them at what they called the traditional just price.

Abigail Adams described women taking coffee from a merchant she called eminent wealthy stingy.

There's even a cartoon from 1777 showing a soldier complaining about these extortioners.

So this created a real tension, didn't it?

What vision of economic freedom would win out?

A crucial question.

Would community interest take precedence or would individual property rights and the free market dominate?

In 1779, with inflation just out of control, Congress actually urged states to fix wages and prices.

That reflects the older belief that government should promote the public good.

But there was pushback.

For merchants, spirited opposition.

Yes.

From merchants and other advocates of a freer market.

And Adam Smith's big book, The Wealth of Nations, published in England just in 1776, was starting to gain traction in America.

His argument about the invisible hand of the free market.

Exactly.

That the market directed economic life more effectively and fairly than government intervention.

It offered a powerful intellectual justification for less regulation.

So you ended up with these two competing ideas of economic freedom.

Community good versus unregulated markets.

Right.

One based on community interests coming first.

The other insisting that unregulated economic freedom would ultimately produce social harmony and public gain.

After 1779, those state and federal efforts to regulate prices mostly stopped.

But that clash of visions, it continued long after independence.

It really shaped American economic debates for generations.

Okay.

But as you said, not everyone benefited equally from this democratizing impulse.

This revolution within also excluded people.

Let's talk about the loyalists.

Right.

Those who remained loyal to the British crown.

Estimates suggest maybe 20 to 25 % of free Americans stayed loyal.

And nearly 20 ,000 actually fought on the British side.

Who were they, typically?

A real mix.

Many were wealthy lawyers, merchants, Anglican ministers, imperial officials, people who feared chaos if the Americans won.

They were most numerous in places like New York, Pennsylvania, and the back country of Carolinas in Georgia.

Any particular groups?

Some ethnic minorities like Highland Scots and the Carolinas worried that local majorities would trample on their cultural autonomy.

And in the South, you had many back country farmers who resented the wealthy coastal planters.

Also, crucially, many enslaved people hoped for freedom under the British.

So the War of Independence was, in many ways, a civil war among Americans.

Very much so.

There's even a British cartoon from 1780 showing the cruel fate of American loyalists.

Highlighting how bitter that internal conflict was.

And what happened to the loyalists' freedom during and after the war?

Well, the new state governments, and often patriot crowds, suppressed newspapers that were loyal to Britain.

They arrested people, seized property, especially from pacifist groups like the Quakers, Mennonites, and Moravians who refused to fight.

Many states required residents to take oaths of allegiance to the new nation.

And if they refused?

They were often denied voting rights.

In many cases, they were forced into exile.

As many as 60 ,000 loyalists were banished or emigrated voluntarily after the war.

Most went to Britain, Canada, or the West Indies.

Did they ever get their property back?

The Treaty of Paris mentioned that, didn't it?

The 1783 treaty did pledge to end the persecution and restore seized property.

But in reality, confiscated loyalist property was generally not returned.

That was a significant loss of their economic liberty.

What about Native Americans?

American independence wasn't exactly good news for them either.

No.

For most Native Americans, it meant a significant loss of liberty.

In 1790, there were about 200 ,000 Native Americans living east of the Mississippi.

And like white Americans, they were divided in their allegiance during the war.

Some fought with the Americans.

A few tribes, like the Stockbridge in Massachusetts did.

But many tribes tried to stay neutral, only to end up splitting into pro -American and pro -British factions.

Most of the Iroquois nations, for example, sided with the British.

But the Oneida joined the Americans.

This led to Iroquois fighting Iroquois for the first time ever.

That sounds brutal, the fighting on the frontier.

It was incredibly brutal.

Washington dispatched General John Sullivan on an expedition against hostile Iroquois with the explicit aim of the total destruction and devastation of their settlements.

Sullivan reported burning 40 Indian towns, destroying huge amounts of crops.

And the Treaty of Paris, what did that mean for Native Americans?

It was a major blow.

Britain simply abandoned its Indian allies.

They agreed to recognize American sovereignty over the entire region east of the Mississippi River, completely ignoring the Indian presence.

It just set the stage for further displacement.

Jefferson even suggested their only hope was removal beyond the Mississippi.

Which brings us to maybe the most profound contradiction of all.

Absolutely.

When the US declared independence in 1776, the slave population was enormous.

Half a million people.

About one -fifth of the entire new nation.

And the word slavery was constantly used in political language at the time, but as a metaphor, right?

Shorthand for the denial of rights by government.

But the actual institution of chattel slavery created this huge hypocrisy.

Immense hypocrisy.

There's that famous quote from Samuel Johnson, the British writer.

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?

You can even see ads from the time, like one from Savannah in 1774,

advertising newly arrived slaves right alongside colonists championing their own liberty.

It's jarring.

How did the revolution itself start to challenge slavery?

Well, by putting such an absolute value on liberty and defining freedom as this universal entitlement, not just rights for specific people, it inevitably raised questions about slavery's legitimacy.

Before independence, there wasn't much public discussion of abolition, even though enlightened opinion generally saw slavery as morally wrong.

But the ideas were starting to percolate.

The seeds were there, yes.

Back in 1700,

Samuel Sewell, a Boston merchant, published The Selling of Joseph, considered the first anti -slavery tract in America.

He argued all sons of Adam had an equal right unto liberty.

Pennsylvania Quakers were also spreading anti -slavery ideas, and Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia patriot.

What did Rush say?

In 1773, he called on advocates for American liberty to also espouse the cause of general liberty.

He warned that slavery was a national crime that would bring national punishment.

Were African Americans themselves arguing for freedom using the revolution's language?

They were the most insistent advocates, absolutely.

They used the language of liberty and revolution to challenge their own bondage.

The first concrete steps toward emancipation were actually these freedom petitions.

Petitions written by enslaved people.

Yes.

Presented to courts and legislatures in New England in the early 1770s, one powerful petition asked how America could seek release from English tyranny and not seek the same for disadvantaged Africans in her midst.

Lemuel Haynes, a black man who served in the Massachusetts militia and later became a minister,

urged Americans to extend their idea of freedom, insisting even an African had as equally good a right to his liberty.

You also see this in the writings of poets like Phillis Wheatley.

And many enslaved people sought freedom by siding with the British,

right?

Dunmore's Proclamation.

Yes.

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation in 1775 and later General Henry Clinton's Phillipsburg Proclamation in 1779 offered sanctuary to slaves who escaped to British lines, though generally not those owned by loyalists.

Tens of thousands escaped, maybe a quarter of all slaves in South Carolina, a third in Georgia.

What happened to them after the war?

Over 15 ,000 black men, women, and children left with the British fleet at the end of the war.

They settled in places like Nova Scotia, England, or Sierra Leone in West Africa.

You can imagine the mix of hope and uncertainty seeing depictions like watercolors of black loyalists arriving in Nova Scotia to start new lives.

So did the revolution seem like it might actually end slavery for a time?

It briefly looked like the upheaval might threaten its continuation, yes.

Nearly every state either prohibited or discouraged importing more slaves from Africa.

And in the Upper South, especially Virginia and Maryland, quite a few slaveholders voluntarily freed their slaves in the 1780s and 90s.

People like Richard Randolph called slavery an infamous practice.

What about in the North?

Were there abolition laws?

Yes.

In the North, every state from Vermont which banned slavery in its 1777 constitution right down to New Jersey in 1804 took steps toward emancipation.

However, and this is a big however, these laws generally didn't free living slaves immediately.

How did they work then?

Typically, they provided for the liberty of any child born in the future to a slave mother, but only after that child had served the mother's master until adulthood, usually into their 20s.

It was seen as compensation to the owner for their future economic loss.

So abolition was a really slow, drawn -out process in the North?

Very slow.

Thousands remained enslaved in northern states for decades after those initial laws passed.

The first national census in 1790 still counted 21 ,000 slaves in New York and 11 ,000 in New Jersey.

As late as 1830, there were still 3 ,500 slaves in the North.

But this gradual process did create a free black population.

Yes.

For the first time in American history, a sizable population of free blacks emerged.

It grew from maybe 10 ,000 just before independence to nearly 200 ,000 by 1810.

And these free communities, they established their own churches, schools, leaders.

They became a standing challenge to the whole logic of slavery and a haven for fugitive slaves.

Yet despite all that, slavery itself survived the war.

It absolutely survived.

And tragically, the total number of enslaved people in the United States actually grew to 700 ,000 by 1790, mainly due to natural increase despite all those who had gained freedom through various means.

A stark reality.

Okay, finally, let's turn to the status of women.

How did the revolution affect them?

Well, the revolutionary generation included some remarkable women who contributed directly to the struggle.

You have figures like Deborah Sampson.

The woman who disguised herself as a man to fight.

That's her.

Daughter of a poor Massachusetts farmer, disguised herself, enlisted in the Continental Army in 1782,

served honorably.

Her commanding officer found out but kept her secret.

She even got a soldier's pension later.

And beyond that, many other patriotic women were involved in crowd actions against merchants, raising funds, supplying goods to the army, even passing along intelligence.

And were women involved in the political discussions happening?

Oh, yes.

Inside households, women were definitely engaged in the political debates unleashed by independence.

John Adams recalled how it made every fireside a theater of politics.

However, the legal principle of coverture remained largely intact.

Coverture meaning the husband held legal authority over his wife, her person, property, choices.

Exactly.

So politics remained overwhelmingly a male sphere.

Women generally lacked that key qualification for political participation, autonomy based on owning property or controlling one's own person.

But you said earlier there was some improvement in status for many women.

There was through this emerging ideology of Republican motherhood.

The idea was that women played an absolutely indispensable role by training future citizens, their sons primarily.

And this in turn encouraged the expansion of educational opportunities for women.

Why?

So they could teach their sons properly.

Precisely.

Benjamin Rush stressed that women needed a suitable education so they could instruct their sons in the principles of liberty and government.

You can see this reflected in things like a young woman's cipher book from 1781, decorated with patriotic symbols and slogans like liberty or death.

It shows women engaging with the era's culture.

Did this connect to changing ideas about marriage?

It reinforced a trend already happening towards what's called a companionate marriage.

This was conceived as more of a voluntary union held together by affection and mutual dependency rather than just strict male authority.

Like Abigail Adams asking John to be a friend rather than a master.

That letter perfectly captures this emerging ideal, yes.

Give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.

And the structure of family life itself was changing, especially in the North.

With indentured servitude and apprenticeship declining rapidly for whites, the household started looking more like our modern definition.

Parents and their children.

Wow.

What a deep dive we've had.

It's clear the American Revolution wasn't just this single political break.

It really did ignite a profound revolution within.

It really did.

We saw how it expanded the public sphere, expanded voting rights for many white men, led to a dramatic decline in bound labor among whites, and brought significantly greater religious liberty.

And African Americans mounted this powerful challenge to slavery, with many winning their freedom, even if slavery itself tragically persisted and grew.

And women, while still constrained by coverture, saw improvements in their status and educational opportunities through that idea of Republican motherhood.

But connecting this all back, it's so clear that the blessings of liberty were incredibly unevenly distributed.

Painfully clear.

For Native Americans, for many loyalists, and certainly for the majority of enslaved people, American independence actually meant a deprivation of freedom, not an expansion of it.

You know, there's a popular allegory from a 1781 Boston Almanac called America Triumphant.

It depicts this clear, straightforward victory for liberty.

But our deep dive shows the reality on the ground was far, far more complex for so many people within the new nation.

And yet the ideals themselves, equality, liberty, self -governance, they definitely inspired struggles far beyond America's borders, didn't they?

Absolutely.

They echoed in the French Revolution starting in 1789, the incredible uprising that overthrew slavery and Haiti in the 1790s, and the Latin American wars for independence in the early 19th century.

The impact was global.

It really leaves us with a final thought, doesn't it?

In a world that's still wrestling, constantly wrestling, with these fundamental ideas of freedom and equality.

How much of the revolution within that internal struggle over the meaning of liberty are we actually still living through today?

A powerful question to consider.

Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive into Eric Foner's Give Me Liberty.

We really hope this journey through the revolution within has given you a clearer, maybe more nuanced understanding of this pivotal era and its really lasting impact.

Until next time, keep digging into history.