Revolution's Effects on American Society

The Revolution fundamentally changed American society in many ways. It altered life for the colonists politically through the colonists’ different viewpoints of the war, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and various challenges that arose. It also changed life economically through the Articles, and new approaches to the raising and handling of funds. Lastly, the Revolution changed life in the colonies socially with women being more involved in society. Along with the Revolutionary War came conflict among the colonists. About one third of them wanted to remain loyal to the king, thus gaining the name “loyalists”, and those who supported the fight for Independence were called “patriots”. These patriots stole land from the loyalists, or tories in an attempt to drive them out of the area because of their never-dying devotion to their king. The Pennsylvania Packet of 1779 shows that the patriots wanted the loyalists out of the picture (Doc. B). When the war ended in 1783, the Treaty of Paris demanded that the land be given back. As a newly independent nation, the United States floundered because of the amount of debt they had acquired during the war. The Articles of Confederation stated that the federal government was responsible for all national debts, but they lacked the funding needed to pay them and also had no collecting money from the colonists, so the soldiers who had fought in the war were not being paid. Because of this lack of currency, the states began producing their own, which made paper money worthless. In Abigail Adams’ letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787, she talked about how the people were very insistent on having a paper currency (Doc. G). The Connecticut Compromise was passed in 1787, which guaranteed that all states would be represented equally despite their state’s size. This compromise partially defined the representation that states would have as well as the basic legislative structure in the Constitution, which was ratified