Several panorama of the American Revolution could qualify it as revolutionary . First , guerilla warfare played a major role in the warfare for independency , replacing the cant over battle of former period . Second , the revolution took seat outside the edge of its parent nation , which have the American Revolution remarkable compare to something like theFrench Revolution .
But what really made the American Revolution so rotatory was that it did n’t end in a regime change only , but in the initiation of an all new country establish on popular principle .
Does that mean that the United States was the world ’s first majority rule ? No . In fact , the U.S. government is n’t a verbatim commonwealth , in which the people themselves vote on the body politic ’s policies and outgo budgets , but a representative democracy . In a representative majority rule , also known as a republic , the people elect congresswoman who carry the nation ’s business .
The Grecian city - res publica of Athens was one of the worldly concern ’s first direct democracies , and the Roman Republic was the first representative democracy in history , go steady from 509 B.C.E. to 27 B.C.E. [ sources : Hauer , National Geographic Society ] . Even though it was n’t the first democratic experiment in story , the American Revolution was still considered revolutionary ( even basal ) in its prison term , peculiarly when compared to the most potent European nations of the sidereal day , which continued to be ruled by old - earth monarchs and affluent aristocrats .
Historians have vigorously debated how the American Revolution give emanation to democracy . Some see the revolution as a struggle for ego - government ; others see it as a form struggle that extravasate in violence [ beginning : McManus ] . Whatever its origins – and a number of competing and cooperative factors created it – the American Revolution in fact did make a young , democratic body politic .
Certainly , the concepts that Thomas Jefferson admit in theDeclaration Independence – that " all men are make adequate , " and that government derives its index from the " consent of the govern " – were revolutionarily democratic ideals [ source : National Archives ] . Yet it was n’t until the ratification of the Constitution more than a decade by and by in 1789 that the popular principles of the new nation were put into practice . Without the Constitution , the document that guaranteed the auspices of civil rights and the restraints put on the province , the commonwealth have by the Declaration would have existed only in rhetoric .
Other historians have argued that American majority rule was n’t truly born until 1796 , when George Washington voluntarily step down after two term as America ’s first prexy [ rootage : Stromberg ] . It marked the first passive transfer of power in the new nation and fix a precedent that American United States President were n’t leadership for life , but regularly elect by the will of the people .
A strong caseful can also be made that the most revolutionary facial expression of the American Revolution — rarefied democratic ideals of equality and full mental representation — were obtained through a slow evolution rather than a one - time revolution . American democracy may have been bear in the eighteenth century , but that was a " commonwealth " in which only white men had the right hand the vote . Only after the eradication of slavery , the lengthiness of voting rights to African - American man and all women , and the passing of Civil Rights legislating banish discriminatory poll parrot taxes and citizenship test , could America rightfully call itself a democracy .
