What did the American Revolution fight to preserve?

Question

I am working on a PowerPoint presentation for a History Project and this is one of the points I have to discuss. Please help!!!! We learned that the American Revolution wasn't fighting to get anything new, it was fighting to preserve their rights. Can someone help elaborate this?? THANKS!!

Answer 1

Mainly the right to no taxation without representation, but also the general right to "equality" and the "inalienable (human) rights"
mentioned in the Declaration of Independence:

"After the end of the costly French and Indian War (1763), Britain imposed new taxes (see Stamp Act; Sugar Act) and trade restrictions on the colonies, fueling growing resentment and strengthening the colonists' objection to their lack of representation in the British Parliament. Determined to achieve independence, the colonies formed the Continental Army, composed chiefly of minutemen, to challenge Britain's large, organized militia."

"Imperial officials in London, though always uneasy about the assertiveness of the colonial legislatures, had no concerted plan for reform at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. The events that led to revolution in 1776 did not grow out of a British resolve to bring the loosely governed empire under control at last. That came to be a secondary goal of policy, but initially Parliament naively stumbled into the American controversy in pursuit of other ends. They were looking in another direction entirely when in 1765 the colonies exploded in rage at parliamentary taxation."

"It is a little difficult to understand the American reaction to the Tea Act. No new duty had been imposed. Americans were no more obligated to buy the tea than before the act was passed. But at all four major ports where tea shipments arrived--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston--people resisted. They interpreted the act as an attempt to bribe Americans into buying tea and paying the duty, thus opening the door to still more oppressive taxation. In three ports the tea shipments were halted or sent back; in Boston Governor Thomas Hutchinson seemed resolved to land the tea at whatever cost. To stop him, townspeople on December 16, 1773, dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. The Tea Act had brought the resistance movement back to life."

"Was it possible for a revolution that began so conservatively to effect significant changes in society once it reached full flood? What would propel change? What would come under attack? The conservative revolution became radical as conflict with the imperial government compelled the colonists to search to the roots of their allegiance. As the government became increasingly oppressive, the colonists had to ask why they obeyed at all. Jefferson summed up a decade of thought in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote about "equality" and "inalienable rights." When a government fails in its duty to protect those rights, the people may organize a new government. It was a simple line of thought, but unlike the initial protest against parliamentary taxation, the thinking was radical."

"Equality is the most perplexing word in the Declaration of Independence. What could the wealthy planters and slaveholders of the Chesapeake or the rich merchants of the North have meant when they subscribed to the Declaration of Independence with that word in it? They surely could not have meant equality of property when differences in wealth were so blatant. We commonly say the word implied equality before the law or equality of opportunity. Probably in part it meant both. But the most prominent eighteenth-century meaning of equality was stated by John Locke: it meant no one had by nature the right to rule another human being without that person's consent. Creatures of the same species, Locke said, "should also be equal one amongst another without Subordination or Subjection." People might differ in wealth, education, or manners, but no one had the right to govern another because of these advantages. There was to be no separate rank above freeman with special privileges in the state. After the Revolution, for the first time, the word aristocrat became a term of political opprobrium.

That was the radical idea that propelled social change in the aftermath of independence. It made people deeply suspicious of the Society of Cincinnati, the club of military officers that many believed aspired to aristocratic status. It made it difficult to justify an upper house in the legislature, because senates were traditionally assemblages of aristocrats. But most important it made slavery untenable. Following the Revolution, antislavery societies were formed in virtually all the northern states from Massachusetts to Virginia, abetting a movement already strong among the Quakers. By legislation or judicial decision slaves were manumitted in most states from Pennsylvania north before 1800. In 1787 Congress prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. The southern delegates had insisted that the federal Constitution forbid interference with the slave trade for twenty years, and in 1808, when the prohibition expired, Congress stopped the importation of slaves. But there progress halted. Slavery remained an institution in the states from Maryland south and spread into new states in the Southwest. The revolutionary idea had run up against the vested interests of planters whose economy and way of life were founded on slavery."

Answer 2

The American Revolution was far more pragmatic than patriotic. Colonists were getting taxed to death, and told that they had to buy their staples from the Crown or not at all. They came to the Colonies to make money, not lose it, and they didn't think it was fair that they become the Monarchy's cash cow. England needed more and more money to support the wars it was fighting, and it is far easier to tax the subjects you can't see, than to tax the subjects who can be heard when they complain. Royalty tried to keep a lid on the rising upper middle class, and the rising upper middle class began to realize that they didn't really need the Royal class at all. Add in a King with occasional fits of dementia, a Revolution in France that promoted the concept of Democracy, and you've got the American Revolution well in hand!

Answer 3

READ the Declaration of Independence. It's all right there for you. Not hard to read OR understand. All the colonists' grievances against George the Third are carefully listed and spelled out for all to see.

Chow!!

Answer 4

read the text you received in school. It will have all the answer. or go to your local library and browse through books on the Revolutionary war

Answer 5

It is all contained in the "Declaration of Independence." Just extrapolate the points contained therein.

Answer 6

See below.