The Statesian Revolution was a bourgeois revolution[1] by North American colonists against the Kingdom of Great Britain to establish the United States of America. It culminated in the Statesian Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783. US founder John Adams estimated that a third of the settler population opposed the revolution, a third supported it, and another third were neutral.[2]
Revolutionary War
The rebels lost the first battles of the Revolutionary War, including Bunker Hill, Brooklyn Heights, and Harlem Heights. The war changed course when the rebels won a battle at Saratoga, New York in 1777. Benjamin Franklin negotiated an alliance with France, which blockaded the British and prevented them from receiving supplies and reinforcements. The Continental Army defeated the British at Yorktown, Virginia in 1781.
British commander John Murray of Dunmore offered to free slaves in Virginia who joined the British forces.[2] The British formed alliances with the Cherokee and Shawnee nations, and the Iroquois Confederacy split with the Mohawks and Senecas siding with the British, the Cayuga, Onondaga, and Tuscarora staying neutral, and the Christian Oneidas siding with the rebels.[3]
Mutinies
On January 1, 1781, troops from Pennsylvania near Morristown, New Jersey, killed their captain and began marching toward the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. George Washington told General Anthony Wayne not to use force and negotiated a peace in which half of the mutineers were discharged and the other half were given paid leave. Soon after, another mutiny of 200 men began in the New Jersey Line. This mutiny was quickly defeated and two of its leaders were executed.[2]
Results
Each of the U.S. states created new constitutions between 1776 and 1780. Some states reduced property requirements for voting and holding office, but Massachusetts increased them. After the British were defeated, the colonial elite replaced the wealthy British loyalists.[2]
References
- ↑ John Peterson (2011-12-14). "Class Struggle and the American Revolution" In Defense of Marxism.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Howard Zinn (1980). A People's History of the United States: 'A Kind of Revolution' (pp. 80–84). [PDF] HarperCollins. ISBN 0060194480
- ↑ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014). An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: 'Bloody Footprints' (pp. 72–78). ReVisioning American History. [PDF] Boston: Beacon Press Books.