Description
One of the stories of the aftermath of the American Revolution was of the “inheritors”, as historian Joyce Appleby has so aptly described them. What did the Revolution mean to those whose ancestors or relatives had fought the war, but who they themselves had not? What did they expect the “new” America to look like? What promises and changes of the revolutionary ideology did they think would become a reality for them? What obligations did this new role of an American citizen include?
Read the Readings in American History selections “Estwick Evans: Little Big Man of Portsmouth” and “Daniel Boone and the Struggle for Independence on the Revolutionary Frontier” and answer the questions above. Then identify what the two individuals had in common and what made them different in regard to those questions. Finally, ansewr this last question: Were Evans and Boone “typical” of their American compatriots as “inheritors of the Revolution?