The American revolution
and support the government. Jefferson listened to Edmund Burke’s description of the idea of representation that ‘...Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest . . .’ After this, he advised Washington to attempt to integrate more of society into the United States. Many of the states listened; Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, Georgia, New Jersey and Maryland actively lowered suffrage requirements to allow more people to vote. Almost all Christians and some Jews were allowed to vote after removal of some religious restrictions and perhaps more surprisingly, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina some free blacks were allowed to vote. These decisions helped to enfranchise large proportions of the population into supporting the new country as they felt their position was more secure in it. Immediately after the war, ‘loyalty oaths’ were introduced to exclude Tories from being involved in US politics. However, by 1786, many of these had been repealed reflecting a transition in the country that realized it had to include loyalists in American society for it to be a United State. The levels of inter-state travel and trade increased greatly after the war. This was largely due to improvements in transport, especially the turnpike, which allowed commercial centres to do transactions as never before. Before the war, there was some inter-colonial trade; for example, New Hampshire sent fish and lumber to Pennsylvania; however, after the war, the
increase was remarkable with many individual farmers selling their produce in different states. Additionally, the ability to travel easily between the states allowed integration of cultures and people to take place easily. Whilst the American War of Independence did inevitably ‘knit the inhabitants of several regions together’ 118 , much of the integration that took place during the war was lost after 1783. Perhaps it is unsurprising that the Americans were most united when joined together by their hatred of British rule. Once their negative cohesion was gone however, some Americans simply went back to a similar life to what they had before the revolution. This was most notable in the Southern states, which generally had not been as positive towards war in the first place. Moreover, many in the south had a reasonable amount of scepticism and mistrust of the new government. However, after the revolution, the creation of nationwide celebrations and Webster’s dictionary did go some way to promote the burgeoning national identity. After the Revolution, there seemed to be two very separate and diverging cultures. The Northern and Southern states had differing cultural (especially in regard to slavery) and religious values. In this sense, the War of Independence did not succeed in uniting the United States. However, inside the northern (and similarly the southern) states, there were clear signs of common values and shared ideals.
118 The Social Structure of Revolutionary America; J T Main http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_ paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html
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