Life and Soul of the American Revolution
Over the course years after the American Revolution, Americans typically viewed the revolution as American colonies standing up to the "big bad bully" that is Great Britain and rebel for their freedom and rights and that "these years are the most important in American history, indeed in the history of the world". That American colonist wanted to be viewed by Great Britain as an independent country. John Merrell thinks that the revolutionary period deserves to be looked at closer. Merrell insist that "the founding fathers would be surprised by our certainty, for they themselves were confused" confused about what they had started in the revolution. In the article merrell talks about how hard it was for john Adams and his friend, Jefferson, to make sense of their Revolution and that they "knew what generations since have largely forgotten" which is that the independence of America was unheard of and such a unbelievable event.
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Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe, 1766
Haym Solomon, financier of the American RevolutionMerrell suggest that we have to look past the American heroes to find the real reasoning behind it all. We can find the true impact of the revolution by looking deep into the social aspects in pre-Revolutionary and post revolution.
With all the news about a rebellion against Great Britain more social groups started to come into play one of them being white women. In the 1700's women were not considered a person but as a possession males had, but the boycotting of British goods gave women a bigger role. Merrell suggest that woman played a major role in the boycotting of British goods as they would "collect hundreds of signatures from mistresses of families pledging never to drink foreign tea" and that they would also refer to themselves as "daughters of liberty". Women would also take to the...