War of Independence or American Revolution?

Essay assignment for module 8: War of Independence or American Revolution?

The 1783 Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war between Great Britain and the United States made it clear that Britain’s former colonies were now an independent, sovereign, and self-governing nation called the United States. The American War of Independence had been a success, but was the War of Independence also an American Revolution? Did the period of resistance to Parliament (1763-1776) and the war that followed (1776-1783) help create a new society, with different political and social ideas and structures, or was the new United States merely the old British colonies now under a different flag?

The question posed above is an enormous one, and certainly not one that can be answered in a short paper. However, I want you to think about how some of the historical knowledge you have gained from the textbook, essay, and primary source reading can be used as evidence to support a position on the question I posed above: War of Independence, or American Revolution?

Your assignment: In a paper of about 1.5 to 2 double spaced pages, take a position on the above question and provide evidence from two of the following four areas to support that position: Ideas about rights and governance, democratization (the extent of political participation), the rights and roles of women, and the status of African Americans. It may help you to think of this as a question of what changed and what stayed the same. If these things changed significantly in this time period, then it was an American Revolution. If these things largely stayed the same, then it was just a War of Independence.

Your essay should have a thesis clearly stating which side of the big question you are supporting, supported by specific evidence including quotations from relevant primary source documents.

As a refresher of where you can find relevant material:

Ideas about rights and governance: Yawp, James Otis, Declaration of Independence

Democratization (political participation) Yawp, Ebineezer Mackintosh essay, Declaration of Independence

Right and roles of women: Yawp, Adams correspondence, Benjamin Rush

Status of African Americans: Yawp, Declaration of Independence (esp crossed out sections), Prince Hall