The American Revolution should be seen as radical because it transformed a monarchial society into a republic and allowed colonists to separate away from the loyalists making America an independent country who could govern themselves. The intolerable acts of Britain led colonists to restore the constitution of English society before the conspiracy that Britain was trying to deny liberty from all English people took place. The revolution was a beginning push towards the abolishment of slavery and elevated women's rights rather than power by tyrannical men but most important, a push toward liberty and equality of all people living in America. .
I find Gary Nash's argument about the revolution more compelling than Gordan Wood's argument because Nash focuses on the "those ordinary people who did most of the protesting, most of the fighting, most of the dying, and most of the dreaming about how a victorious America might satisfy the yearnings of all its peoples" (Nash 122). He discusses more of the problems that colonists faced due to the intolerable acts of Britain and how a revolution was necessary to gain independence. Wood looks at the revolution from more a social aspect and talks about how oppression was a threat to them during the time. Woods claims the revolution was a "full-scale assault on dependency", and because the colonists were so "seemingly aristocratic themselves, it is hard for us today to appreciate the anger and resentment they felt toward hereditary aristocracy" (Wood 119). I understand Wood's point of view, but the examples provided from Nash proved to me that Britain's acts were intolerable making the revolution radical.
In The Radical Revolution from the "Bottom Up" by Gary B. Nash, he said colonists "looked toward a redistribution of political, social, and religious power; the discarding of old institutions and the creation of new ones; the overthrowing of ingrained patterns of conservative, elitist thought; the leveling of society so that top and bottom were not widely separated" and more.
