The reasons for which the revolutionary war was fought were faulty. How can you demand your own freedom from those who own you, yet still have slaves that are flogged for misbehaving and woman who you buy and trade as property? I know that we, as a country, wanted freedom from the high taxes that Brittan brought upon us after the fight with the French. However, how can we fight for freedom only to take land from the Indians who live there? I don’t see how you could say this war was fought for freedom and independence, rather I believe it was fought for power.
At the time that the revolutionary war was fought, the colonies were also in a war with the Indians. The colonists wanted to move west and claim the land for themselves, which is rarely read in the history books, and I will always wonder why. Many of the Indians fought alongside the British because Britain had promised to keep the colonists from moving further onto Indian land. Britain restricted the colonists from moving past the Appalachian Mountains. However, every once and a while a colonist would try to move west on his own and he would be attacked and stopped by the Indians who lived there. This inability to expand and grow caused much frustration among the colonists because as the economy grew, so did they as well as the amount of land they needed.
The slave trade started in Africa and eventually reached the colonies for they needed free labor to stay alive and slaves were the way to go. The slave trade in the colonies was still going strong during the revolutionary war because the colonists wanted their freedom; they did not however, want to give it to the slaves that kept the economy thriving. Darwin’s Theory, the belief that the stronger race will survive and the weaker will die out, provided much fuel to put the slave trade in motion. It caused people to begin to believe that blacks were less human and thus inferior to the whites. There were sketches showing a black man’s skull compared to a white man’s skull. These sketches showed where the black men had a more prominent mouth portraying them as if they were monkeys, and the white men with the average human skull. This was meant to show the belief I previously mentioned, in which black men were seen as almost inhuman, thus making them good candidates for slaves. Thomas Jefferson never wanted to give up his slaves because he was too far in debt, and that he would free them if he ever got out of debt. 1 He was best known as the one who rewrote the constitution, he took most of the credit for it. When he wrote “all men equal”, he must not of meant all men, but rather “white” men.
1 Thomas Jefferson died before he got out of debt: It wasn’t till 1870 that black men were able to vote and were deemed mostly equal in society.
It was an even later date when woman were able to vote and were deemed equal in America. 1920 was when they were allowed to vote. Going back to the time of the revolution; women were considered the property of men, whether it was their father, their brother, or their husband that had control over them. During the time that slaves were being shipped in to the colonies, so were women. There was a need for more women in the colonies because the colonies consisted mostly of men. In the beginning the women would agree to wed the colonists as long as they had a boat ride over from Britain, not much later they were brought over as indentured servants and were sometimes treated worse than slaves. A Woman’s role throughout history was to stay at home with the children and do chores, such as washing dishes and tending the house. America was a country that desperately wanted freedom, but for only half of its population.
The revolution was fought to be free and I accept that, but we were only being the greater evil by doing so. We did not want to be oppressed, nor did we want to have no voice or power yet we continued to take away the voice of women, black men, and anyone else that we deemed less than our equals. The founding fathers did not want to stop oppression, they only wanted to stop being the oppressed. That is why I believe the reason behind why the revolutionary war was fought is faulty.
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