In 1754 the people of the thirteen colonies were British subjects who toasted the king, fought the French beside British regulars, and voted, if they were white men with property, for colonial assemblies. In 1800 they lived in a republic with written constitutions, elected a president, and were about to watch power pass peacefully from one party to another. Yet in 1800 most Black Americans were still enslaved, married women still could not own property in their own names, and most states still required property to vote.
What the independence movement changed, and what it left alone
Period 3 has three big stories. Britain won the Seven Years' War (1754-1763) and then tightened control over its colonies to pay for it, which drove colonists from protest to independence and war (Topics 3.2 to 3.5). Americans used revolutionary ideals to build new governments, state and federal, and a national culture beside strong regional ones (Topics 3.6 to 3.11). And migration west, together with the continued presence of Britain and Spain, set Americans against Native nations and European powers (Topics 3.10 and 3.12).
| Theme | Change | Continuity |
|---|---|---|
| Government and politics | Loyalty to the Crown replaced by republicanism; written state constitutions with bills of rights (Virginia's 1776 constitution, adopted by a convention; Massachusetts's 1780 constitution, approved by town meetings); the Articles (1781) and Constitution (1788); the first parties in the 1790s | Most states kept property requirements for voting; government still run mostly by wealthy men; colonial habits of assemblies controlling taxes carried into state legislatures |
| Social hierarchy | About 60,000 Loyalists left, many of them wealthy; Virginia abolished entail (1776) and primogeniture (1785), inheritance rules that kept great estates intact; ordinary men spoke more openly against elites | A planter and merchant elite still dominated; deference to "the better sort" weakened but did not end |
| Slavery and race | Gradual emancipation in the North (Pennsylvania 1780 onward); the Northwest Ordinance ban (1787); manumission in Virginia; free Black churches and societies | The enslaved population grew from about 700,000 in 1790 to about 894,000 in 1800; the Constitution protected the slave trade until 1808 and required the return of fugitives |
| Women | Republican motherhood made women's education a public concern; female academies opened (Philadelphia, 1787); some New Jersey women voted from 1776 until 1807 | Coverture: a married woman's property and legal identity belonged to her husband; no state but New Jersey let women vote |
| Religion | Disestablishment in Virginia (Statute for Religious Freedom, 1786); American denominations independent of England | Protestant majority; New England kept tax-supported churches into the 1800s |
| American Indians | Britain, which had issued the Proclamation of 1763 and was allied with many Native nations during the war, gave up its claim east of the Mississippi in 1783, though it kept forts in the Northwest until 1796; U.S. treaties of the 1780s claimed Native land by conquest | Native nations kept defending land by war and shifting alliances, as they had since the 1600s; land loss continued and sped up |
| Economy and foreign affairs | Free of the Navigation Acts; new trade (the Empress of China reached Canton in 1784); Hamilton's financial system | Dependence on British trade and credit; Britain and Spain still held land and forts on the borders |
Changes cluster in politics and ideas, and continuities cluster in who held power over whom.
Turning a fact into evidence
On the long essay, evidence earns two points, and they are earned differently. One point is for describing at least two specific pieces of evidence relevant to the prompt. The second is for explaining how that evidence supports your argument. Students who list facts earn at most the first.
A specific piece of evidence has a name, a date or place, and enough detail to show you know what it was. "Laws about slavery changed" is a topic. "Pennsylvania's 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery freed children born to enslaved mothers after the law, once they reached age 28" is evidence. The explanation is the sentence that answers "so what?" for your thesis: "This shows the Revolution changed the law of slavery in the North, but slowly, because the act freed no one already enslaved."
Use a three-part test for every piece:
- Name it precisely (person, law, event, document) with a date.
- Describe it in one sentence: what it did or said.
- Connect it: say which part of your thesis it proves and why.
Weighing change against continuity
Prompts on Period 3 usually ask you to evaluate "the extent to which" something changed. A strong answer takes a position on extent ("significantly changed X but left Y largely intact") and then proves both halves. Arguing only change or only continuity is weaker and makes the complexity point hard to earn, since that point rewards showing that the answer depends on which group or which part of society you look at.
Historians have argued this exact question for a century, and their positions give you language for it. J. Franklin Jameson (The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement, 1926) argued that the war set off real social change, including land redistribution from Loyalists and the end of entail and primogeniture. Carl Becker (1909) framed the Revolution as two fights, over home rule and over "who should rule at home." Gordon Wood (The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 1992) argues that the Revolution destroyed a society built on monarchy and deference and made one built on equality among white men. Gary Nash (The Unknown American Revolution, 2005) and Linda Kerber (Women of the Republic, 1980) emphasize the people for whom change was promised and then limited: enslaved people, women, Native nations, poor farmers. Your thesis can place itself between these views.
Worked examples
Claim: "The independence movement weakened the power of established churches."
A student wrote: "After the Revolution, religion became more free." Rewrite it as specific evidence with an explanation.
Show solution
Rewrite: "In 1786 Virginia passed Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, which barred the state from forcing anyone to attend or pay for any church, completing the disestablishment of the Anglican (now Episcopal) church that Virginia had begun by suspending its tax support in 1776. Madison won its passage by defeating Patrick Henry's plan to tax citizens for the support of all Christian churches, arguing that government had no authority over conscience. This shows the movement weakened established churches, because the same natural-rights reasoning used against Parliament was turned against state-supported religion in the largest state. The change was uneven, though: Massachusetts kept its tax-supported Congregational churches until 1833."
Why it works. It names the law, gives its date and what it did (description), and adds a sentence that ties it to the claim (explanation). The last sentence qualifies the claim with a continuity, which is how a paragraph starts to earn the complexity point.
I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, written 1781-1782, published 1785
a. Briefly describe Jefferson's claim about the effect of the Revolution on slavery.
b. Briefly explain ONE piece of evidence from the period 1776 to 1800 that supports Jefferson's claim.
c. Briefly explain ONE piece of evidence from the period 1776 to 1800 that challenges Jefferson's claim.
Show solution
a. Jefferson claimed that the Revolution had begun to soften slavery and that slaveholders' attitudes were changing, so that slavery might end gradually and peacefully with the masters' agreement.
b. In 1781 Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved woman in Massachusetts, sued for her freedom citing the state's new 1780 constitution, which declared all men born free and equal, and won. Her case shows revolutionary principles being used to end slavery, which supports Jefferson's sense that the Revolution had started a change.
c. Slavery grew instead of fading in the South. The number of enslaved people in the United States rose from about 700,000 in 1790 to about 894,000 in 1800, and Kentucky and the Mississippi Territory opened new land to it. Southern masters, including Jefferson himself, did not consent to emancipation, which challenges his prediction.
Sourcing note worth knowing. Jefferson wrote this for a European reader and enslaved more than 100 people while writing it, so the passage shows a Virginia planter's hope more than a description of what masters were actually doing.
Evaluate the extent to which the American independence movement changed American society in the period from 1754 to 1800.
Write a thesis, a context paragraph, and an outline of the body with evidence and explanation.
Show solution
Thesis: The independence movement greatly changed American politics, replacing loyalty to a king with republican self-government and written rights, but it changed social hierarchy far less, because slavery, women's legal subordination and the taking of Native land continued and in some cases grew.
Context: After the Seven Years' War left Britain deeply in debt, Parliament taxed the colonies directly with the Sugar Act (1764) and Stamp Act (1765) and stationed troops in America. Colonists argued from the rights of Englishmen and Enlightenment ideas that only their own assemblies could tax them, and that argument grew into the Declaration of Independence (1776) and a war won at Yorktown (1781) and confirmed in the Treaty of Paris (1783).
Body 1, political change. Evidence: the new state constitutions, such as Virginia's 1776 constitution with its Declaration of Rights, and the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, drafted by a special convention and approved by town meetings; then the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights of 1791. Explanation: sovereignty moved from the Crown to the people, written limits on government became normal, and these were new to the colonial world, so politics changed at the root.
Body 2, partial change for some groups. Evidence: Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) and its abolition of entail and primogeniture; Pennsylvania's 1780 gradual abolition law; republican motherhood and new female academies. Explanation: revolutionary ideas reached religion, inheritance, slavery in the North and women's education, but each reform was limited (gradual, regional, or confined to the home), showing that change spread unevenly.
Body 3, continuity. Evidence: the Constitution's three-fifths clause, protection of the slave trade until 1808 and fugitive slave clause; the growth of the enslaved population to about 894,000 by 1800; coverture; property requirements for voting in most states; the Treaty of Greenville (1795) taking most of Ohio from the Western Confederacy. Explanation: for enslaved people, married women and Native nations, the new republic kept or strengthened colonial structures of power, so the movement's change was largely a change for white men of property.
Why it scores. The thesis states an extent and the reason in one sentence. The context explains how the independence movement began, before the argument starts. Each body paragraph describes specific, dated evidence and then explains how it proves part of the thesis. Contrasting groups (white men versus enslaved people, women and Native nations) shows complex understanding instead of claiming that everything changed or nothing did.
Where students lose points
On the exam
Period 3 counts for 10 to 17 percent of the exam, and long-essay and document-based prompts for the period can be framed as "evaluate the extent" of change. The evidence point requires specific examples, and the analysis point requires using continuity and change to frame the argument, so build every body paragraph as claim, evidence, explanation. Short-answer questions can pair a source with "support" and "challenge" parts, which are the same skill in miniature.
Check yourself
Question 1
A student argues that the independence movement changed American politics more than it changed social hierarchy. Which piece of evidence best supports the SECOND half of that claim?
- A
The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 was approved by the state's town meetings.
- B
Most states kept property requirements for voting, and married women remained under coverture.
- C
Virginia passed the Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.
- D
The Constitution created an elected president in place of a hereditary king.
Show answer
B
Property qualifications and coverture show older hierarchies of wealth and gender surviving the Revolution. A and D are evidence of political change, the first half of the claim. C is a change in religion, so it cuts against the claim of social continuity.
- A
Question 2
Rewrite this sentence so it would earn credit as evidence in an essay on whether the Revolution changed women's lives: 'Women got more education after the war.'
Show answer
In 1787 Benjamin Rush argued in his address 'Thoughts upon Female Education', given at the newly opened Young Ladies' Academy of Philadelphia, that girls should study subjects such as grammar, geography and arithmetic so they could raise sons fit to be citizens of a republic. This shows that the Revolution changed women's lives by making their schooling a public, political concern, but only within limits, because the reason given was their role as mothers at home, not equality in public life.
Credit needs a named, dated piece of evidence, a sentence on what it did, and a sentence tying it to the argument, here both the change and its limit. Any similar answer works if it is specific, accurate, inside 1754-1800 and explained, such as Judith Sargent Murray's essay 'On the Equality of the Sexes' (1790).
Question 3
Which is the strongest thesis for the prompt 'Evaluate the extent to which the American independence movement changed the lives of women from 1754 to 1800'?
- A
The American Revolution was an important event that affected women in many ways.
- B
Women such as Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren played roles in the Revolution.
- C
The independence movement changed women's lives only modestly: republican motherhood expanded their education and gave them a civic role in the home, but coverture and their exclusion from voting (outside New Jersey) kept them legally subordinate.
- D
The Revolution gave women equal rights with men through the new state constitutions.
Show answer
C
C takes a position on extent and gives the reasons on both sides, which sets up a line of reasoning. A is vague and B only names people, so neither makes an arguable claim. D is historically false, and a false claim cannot be supported.
- A
Question 4
Why does the Treaty of Greenville (1795) work as evidence of CONTINUITY in Period 3 rather than only as evidence of change?
Show answer
It shows Native nations losing land to Anglo-American settlers after a war, as they had through the colonial period, from the Proclamation crisis back to the 1600s. Independence replaced the British government with the American one, but the pattern of settlers pressing west and Native nations ceding land under military pressure continued.
The same event can show change (a new government signing the treaty) and continuity (the old pattern of land loss). Saying which you are using it for, and why, is what turns a fact into support for an argument.