At issue in this report is the question of whether the time period from 1776 to 1787 was truly "revolutionary." A simple answer lies in the fact, reported by historian Eric Foner (17) that for free men, "the democratization of freedom was dramatic, and nowhere more so than in challenges to the traditional limitation of political participation to those who owned property." For these men û largely white, educated, professional or landowning farmers û the American Revolution ushered in an era of dramatic change in which new freedoms were affirmed and guaranteed by common consent and the Constitution ultimately developed by the founding fathers. For other groups, the era from 1776 to 1787 when the Bill of Rights was created, it was less revolutionary on the political, economic, and social fronts.
In the early Republic, the major winners were males, whether they owned property or not. Women, indentured servants, and slaves had few political or economic rights such as the right to vote or hold citizenship or run for electoral office. While free women could own property, they were nevertheless dependent upon their male relatives or husbands and had little voice in public affairs (Norton, Katzman, Escott, Chudacoff, Patterson, Tuttle, and Brophy, 139-141). Citizenship rights were granted to all males and while white women were citizens, slaves, indentured servants, and Native Americans were not citizens and had few constitutionally protected rights at either the national or the state level.
However, as Foner (17) points out, the American Revolution did serve to redefine property itself to include rights and liberties as well as physical possessions. Ideologically, if not practically, all individuals possessed the right to participate in political life. In economic as well as political affairs, the American Revolution "redrew the boundary between the free and the unfree (Foner, 19)." In the generation after independence, th...