The Rebels as Victors

Six major reasons for victory

• 1. The Americans were fighting for their own soil, homes and freedom.

• 2. The Americans were superior wilderness fighters.

• 3. Superior leadership: Washington, George Rogers Clark, Nathanael Greene, John Paul Jones.

• 4. Notable foreign volunteers: Marquis de Lafayette, Baron de Kalb, Baron von Steuban, Count Pulaski, and Thaddeus Kosciusko.

• 5. France, Spain and Holland enter the struggle against Great Britain.

• 6. Within England, public opinion was divided. ( William Pitt and Edmund Burke)

Results of Revolution

Winds of change              

Movement toward democracy

• Lessening of some voting restrictions.• Elimination of primogeniture.• Virginia Declaration of Rights. (1776)• Gains in the fight for separation of

church and state.• Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom

(1786).• Movement against slavery.

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• Women’s gains.• “Civic virtue”. Who taught the

children?• “Republican motherhood”

Elevated women as the keepers of the nation’s conscience.

State constitutions

• Became the models for later documents.

• Followed the ideas of Montesquieu.• Legislative branch usually had

sweeping powers.