Help on history dbq......please* suggestions on what to talk about?

Question

How radical was the american revolution...Consider the poor, women, native american, and african american.

Answer 1

Argue that it was NOT radical. Show that economic relationshps in America remained the same--unequal. Yankee merchants were rich up north, and Southern planters down south, and they were fighting to keep/preserve their power after centuries of what was basically neglect from England--hence, the revolution is reactionary rather than revolutionary.

Women had some opportunities to show their patriotism (helping at battlefields, supporting soldiers covertly, joining radical groups, etc.) but their roles were very much limited to the domestic, and they could not vote. Despite suffering alongside white Americans from the earliest days in struggles for freedom (see the Boston Massacre), blacks remained alienated, prejudiced-against, and enslaved throughout the south. Native Americans continued to be driven from their lands, unable to effectively win the long-lasting support of anyone in the war.

Use the documents to support these points of view, but point out their limitations too, also using the documents. The major thesis should be that the revolution was more reactionary than socially revolutionary, but that important new social opportunities nonetheless were seen.

Answer 2

"that in order to insure these rights governments are instituted amongst men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

are the most radical and blood soaked words in history as tens of millions have died since 1776 to achieve or hold those goals......that the purpose of the government is to ensure the peoples rights and that a government is only just if the people agree to it.........

the rights of the people come not from the king or the pope or the local lord but right from God

and that governments have to have the consent of the governed.....not just be lucky by matter of birth.......in order to be just....and if they arent, then out they go....

compare that to the ideas and ideals that were running England and France in 1775......