Support for Ben Franklin's world and the Doing History to the Revolution series comes from the

Omaha Institute of Early American History and Culture.

I think the American Revolution is certainly a transformative moment in which a place goes from being a colony with

competing empires, indigenous and British, to an independent nation with many competing nations within it?

The American Revolution, well obviously it is the founding moment of the United States

and that's a really important part of it and I think the founding of the United States is

itself revolutionary but the American Revolution also marks a new moment in popular government and

so it's also about allowing new people into the story of how we're going to govern ourselves.

So it's at least two revolutions, maybe more.

I think that the revolution was an opportunity for a lot of different people to make changes in their

lives.

Some of them did it for ideological reasons, but some of them took advantage of a chaotic

situation to change their situation. The American Revolution from Indian

country is the breaking of institutional shackles by colonists and then the creation of new ones for slaves and American Indians.

The American Revolution was on one hand the military conflicts that resulted in the political separation of America from Britain, but on a larger sense,

it was a moment that marked a rupture between certain commercial and political and economic

practices of the 18th century that opened up a bridge towards the economic

development and political developments in the 19th century. That's a hard question.

What do we mean by the American Revolution? How do we define it? Was it a war? Was it a social movement, a political movement or an economic movement?

When did the American Revolution begin?

Was it as John Adams suggested to hisziki and Niles in February 1818 that the revolution was affected before the war commenced?

That the revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.

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