Revolution of the Mind – Creating the United States | Exhibitions – Library of Congress

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The American Revolution emerged out of the intellectual and political turmoil following Great Britain’s victory in the French and Indian War. Freed from the threat of hostile French and Indian forces, American colonists were emboldened to resist new British colonial policies that raised issues of inequalities of power, political rights, and individual freedoms. People such as John Adams and Mercy Otis Warren believed that the British policies stimulated the minds of Americans to demand independence and expanded individual rights.

This revolution of the mind had physical consequences as Americans openly and sometimes violently opposed Great Britain’s new assertions of control. The right to representation, political independence, separation of church and state, nationalism, slavery, the closure of the Western frontier, increased taxation, commercial restrictions, use of the military in civil unrest, individual freedoms, and judicial review were some of the salient issues that boiled up in the revolutionary cauldron of Britain’s American colonies.

“The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”

John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815