For many, it can be said that the American Revolutionary War was evidence of a clear turning point in the quest for liberty: The contraction of liberty, beginning during the period of European colonization, had ceased, and a new period of manumission had dawned. A closer analysis, however—one which considers the impact pressed upon both the minority and majority groups of Americans involved separately—brings into question the common historiographical depiction of American liberty. It can be made clear that the concept of “liberty” has a much more ambiguous nature than is popularly realized today. When evidenced through historical documentation, it is apparent that, while liberty had expanded for some, liberty had simultaneously contracted for others between the time of the foundation of colonial America and its subsequent revolution.
Liberty, by definition, is a state of “freedom from arbitrary or despotic control (Merriam-Webster).” The connotations associated with meaning of the term, however, had changed over time for the various groups of Americans involved within the conflict leading up to the American Revolutionary War.
Slavery was an obvious reality for many blacks during the eighteenth-century, but the term was also used metaphorically amongst white colonists to refer to their own situations as subjects of the Kingdom of Great Britain (Foner, 239). The situation, of course, now appears to be blatantly contradictory, considering the beliefs of the white American population—and, as Eric Foner puts it, “many British observers could not resist pointing out the colonists’ apparent hypocrisy (Foner, 239).” Such patriotic sentiments were echoed from states like Virginia, where over 40 percent of the population consisted of slaves, with even higher proportions within the American south (Foner, 239).
The concept of liberty, as it was seen by many Native Americans, was spoken by the Master of Life, through Neolin, the Delaware “prophet”: it was the complete rejection of European values—including those of alcoholism and of polygamy. It included “[making] war” to “drive [the colonists] out”; it meant sending the colonists “back to the country” made for them by their Master (Michigan Historical Commission, 271). The new “pan-Indian movement” was thus described here; individual tribes would soon come to unite under one common identity with the goal of achieving this end, provided they could come to garner additional help from French soldiers (Foner, 173).
For many of the (predominantly white) American colonists, the way to liberty was contrary to any consideration of the values of the Native Americans: It was to be achieved through a necessary and morally justifiable revolution—cementing their settlements in North America, which were to exist separately from the Kingdom of Great Britain. The settlements, then, could be seen as a blatant impingement upon the liberties of the populated tribes of Native Americans.
From the viewpoint of the revolutionists, arguably no document could be better associated with the concept of liberty than the United States Declaration of Independence. For this group of Americans, liberty was “endowed by their Creator [as a] certain unalienable [right] (Maier, 236).” To this end, to ensure the right to liberty, the structure of power within any society must “[derive its] just powers from the consent of the governed; [and] that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [this end], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it (Maier, 236).” As determined by the authors of the Declaration, “the [then] king of Great Britain” had come to ensure the creation of a government begging “alteration” amidst a “patient sufferance of [the] colonies (Maier 236).”
The American Revolution would later come to raise a further debate over slavery. Foner states the viewpoint of an average slaveholder well: “Some patriots, in fact, argued that slavery for blacks made freedom possible for whites (Foner, 240).” Such was not an uncommon view of the time. The economic machine of the American south was largely based upon chattel slavery, and this system generally pit the citizens of the liberated north against those of the enslaved south. To force a change to this structure of “liberty” upon slaveholders would, in the view of many slaveholders, itself constitute an action of forcible enslavement (Foner, 240). The disparate views between Americans would further increase the discontent of slaveholders, serving as a chief cause of the later American Civil War.
It is apparent that liberty was not strictly an expansion in colonial and revolutionary American history, as it is commonly believed. White colonists had retained the freedom of movement and of self-determination as they had before the Revolution; the same colonists had, however, also been guaranteed a sense of liberation through their new self-governance.
Other Americans, including the minority slave population, had mostly gained no new freedoms. Such liberation would not be overwhelmingly achieved until the age of Abraham Lincoln.