Revolutionary War Social Changes

With confidence and victory in the air the Americans had ended the Revolutionary War. They had hope for freedom, economic independence, proper representation, equality, and an independent government free from tyranny. As years passed, citizens would find that their new independent country would not become the one promised by the outcome of the American Revolution. Although there were many political, economic, and social changes, both good and bad, from the 1820s to 1876 American would not see improvement towards the country they had hoped for until the Civil War era.
Some political goals of the American Revolution were self-governance and a government free from corruption and oppression, like the one they believed England had. Americans would

However, not all of these changes would reflect positively on the goals the Americans hoped to achieve during this time. The American’s had fought for taxation only with the proper representation, and although they would get to elect certain government officials, often times the citizens would not agree with the way and how much they would be taxed. In 1828 the government imposed a tariff meant to protect the new domestic manufacturers from established foreign manufacturers. The South labeled this as the Tariff of Abominations because the largely agricultural area, who relied on the imported goods, now had to pay the costly taxes. The northern industrialized region of the country, where they manufactured their own goods, was not affected by the tariff nearly as much, so the people in the South felt as if the North was being favored by the government. Even though the young country found some issues with tariffs, technical advances would help them to secure economic independence. Inventions such as the mechanical reaper, steel plow, and the sewing machine helped America to rely less on imported goods and focus on harvesting land for better economic opportunity. This opportunity, however, was not afforded to everybody. The poor and the freed slaves found it extremely difficult to rise out of poverty. After the war, lands were not redistributed and many people were forced into sharecropping. This meant that workers had to buy seeds and equipment to farm on the owner’s land on credit, which was then subtracted from the profit made off of the crop. Workers using the sharecropping system almost never made enough money to buy their own land or become debt free from the land owner. During the 19th century American had achieved the goals of proper taxation and becoming an economically independent country, but I believe that Americans were far from the economy they had been promised by the