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Afterword
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257 Afterword Gregory H. Nobles If J. Franklin Jameson were alive again today, he might well want to revise his metaphor for the American Revolution. It may still be fine to say, as he did in 1925, that the “stream of revolution, once started, could not be confined within narrow banks, but spread abroad upon the land,” but even that image hardly captures the thrust and power of recent research. Instead of an overflowing stream, the description now needs to portray the rapidity and turbulence of the revolutionary waters. Indeed, modern scholarship would suggest that there is not a single stream but a confluence of currents coming from different directions and flowing into —and often against—the “mainstream” narrative of the American Revolution as a unified movement for independence. The result is a roiling mix of people and political issues, with constantly surging struggles in several fast-flowing movements that left almost no one untouched by the tumult. Whose American Revolution was it? It is impossible to assign primary identity, much less possession, to anyone. Certainly, the men who assumed and exercised formal leadership of the patriot movement can no longer hold the sole focus as “Founders” on their own. However much some scholars may still like to see them as members of an elite political brotherhood, these leaders did not by any means form a united front, nor could they act as isolated statesmen making policy in a socially enclosed setting. Rather, as much as they debated and negotiated with each other, which has been the main preoccupation among some of their recent biographers, they also had to engage in different forms of debate and of negotiation about the outcome of the Revolution with different sorts of people—yeomen, artisans , and other white men who worked with their hands; women of all classes; African Americans, both free and enslaved; and Native Americans, 258 Gregory H. Nobles both allies and enemies. Taken together, the multiplicity of political relationships that came into play in a quickly changing, truly revolutionary environment helps us understand what the Revolution meant to people living at the time, and as much as anything else, those political relationships now define the founding. Throughout the Revolutionary era, from before the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to well after the framing of the federal Constitution , political leaders had to consider the recurring pressure coming from what they called the “people out of doors,” Euro-American farmers and artisans whose insistence on greater social and political equality provided an undercurrent to the movement for national independence. The Revolution’s leadership needed these men, who helped propel the antiimperial protest movements before the war and who formed a large part of the American military force that eventually helped defeat the British. But throughout the war and on into the peace, many ordinary folk felt overburdened by the sacrifices required of them and underrepresented by the new political order that governed them. As these disaffected citizens expressed their grievances, political leaders at both the state and federal levels had to do something to address the unrest. In some cases, most notably in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, the initial political response resulted in a show of military power. More often, however, political leaders found it wiser, and certainly safer, to make necessary concessions to people’s demands for more responsive representation, more equitable taxes, and more accessible land. The resurgence of class as a category of analysis has enabled us to see the larger political significance of many such local struggles. At a time when the post-Revolutionary settlement still seemed anything but secure, this process of accommodation seemed most likely to make some measure of social peace possible. At the same time, Revolutionary-era leaders showed little interest in offering similar political concessions to white women, nor, in the absence of an organized women’s movement, did they feel nearly as much pressure to do so. Except for a few farsighted women writers, people in Revolutionary -era America considered the formal participation of women in politics, and certainly voting, all but unthinkable. That is not to say, however, that women had no role in politics. Like many of their male counterparts, they appeared on the political scene as active participants in street demonstrations , riots, and other forms of protest; as providers of critical support services to the army and, in a handful of cases, as combatants; and in other instances , as well-read and articulate contributors to political discourse with [35.175...