For two hundred years, historians have debated the consequences of the American Revolution. It certainly created a new nation — the United States of America. But how significantly did it change American culture and society? For the people living in Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, or South Carolina in the years after the Revolution, was life in the United States really very different from life in the British Empire?
This module explores one aspect of that larger question. White, Christian men of property in America — the Founding Fathers — clearly enjoyed new political freedom as a result of the Revolution. They no longer had to defer to the wishes of Parliament or the King. But what about the larger section of the American population, those neither white nor Christian, male nor propertied? What did the Revolution bring them?
