American revolution Essay Example for Free

American revolution Essay Title The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which rebel colonists in the Thirteen American Colonies rejected the British monarchy and aristocracy, overthrew the authority of Great Britain, and founded the United States of America. This was the first time a colony had rebelled and successfully asserted its rights to self-government and nationhood. This inspired many European nations and colonies to revolt. For the longest time, I have been led to believe that the American Revolution was the most glorious war of all American time period. However, at the consummation of American Revolution unit, my perception of the war had drastically altered. Not everyone wanted to fight; in fact, it was mostly the upper class trying to persuade the lower class to fight while the elite could buy their way out. According to Give me liberty book charpter 5, historian Foner thought Americna Revolution is a revolution about independence and freedom for maybe all of the races and classes of America. Most Americans understand the history of their freedom in an uncomplicated way: the Founding Fathers laid down principles of American liberty that their descendants have been applying ever since, steadily augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere, as Abraham Lincoln said. Eric Foner disagrees. The story of American freedom, he says, is not simply a saga of a fixed set of rights to which one group after another has gained access, but a tale of debates, disagreements and struggles with lots of bumps and wrong turns along the way. Moreover, American freedom itself is not a single idea but a complex of values that have changed over time, taking on meanings unknown to Jefferson and his contemporaries. Yet freedom, he says, provides a unifying thread for our national experience. Also Foner explains some of the ways in which the Revolution was a turning point for American slavery: The war created new opportunities for slaves to become free. American revolution definitely a representative event of seeking freedom and independence in all period of American history. But other historian or  people might question it, is that a truly revolution for all of Amerian? In other word, is this celebrated revolution considered entirely the right and profit as it claimed? Compares to Foners i dea of American revolution, historian Howard Zinn published article The untold truths about American Revolution , which he thinks American Revolution is not truly revolutionary and â€Å"This is a good cause† to independence from England and let people immediately jump to deserves a war.† He thinks that the revolution it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich. So over all of his tendentious opinion in this article, he thinks ths revolution is not benifit for all of races or classes. As he said when you look at the American Revolution, there’s a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians—no, Indians didn’t benefit. , Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution? Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it. All of this opinion pointed out the one conclusion The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution. And he also quotes a Carl Degler in the â€Å"A Kind of Revolution† of his book A People’s History of the United States: No new social class came to power through the door of the American Revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely m embers of the colonial ruling class. George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on. According his article and his opinion so we can say it that the American Revolution is not truly revolutionary at least for me because there is not everyone was benfited from the war and the result of the revolution didnt consider all races and classes as they claimed. Following the conclusion of the Revolution, no new social classes were formed: not even the smallest fraction of the poor became wealthy, and there was not even the slightest bit of social reform—the conditions that existed prior to the war were reinstated after the war. After all this is what the wealthy wanted. The members of the upper class threw around words like â€Å"liberty and equality† in order to excite the lower class just enough so that they would fight in a war. Furthermore, according to Zinn, the members of the upper class wanted to accomplish this  Ã¢â‚¬Å"without ending either slavery or inequality† because if either of those two things ceased to exist, then the upper class would lose its wealth and its power—two things that were very much valued by the establishment and elite. Moreover, both before and after the said â€Å"American Revolution,† the wealthy—the top five percent or so of the nation—ruled the other ninety percent of the people. Edmund S. Morgan states in his book The Birth of the Republic that â€Å"The Constitution†¦represented a reaction†¦engineered by the rich and well-born,† Not only the upper class people ruled the war, but also the non-power class didnt have any change after the revolution comparesto what they thought before. After studying the American Revolution I have recognized the significant evidence supporting the view that the American Revolution was not a truly revolution at all because the rich remained rich, the poor remained poor, the government remained in favor of those with more wealth, and those in power remained in power.