Wood argues that the American Revolution intensified pressures toward greater equality, and also marked a political break with Great Britain. War and republican ideas disrupted the deferential, hierarchical patterns that had shaped colonial life and helped produce a more fluid, market-oriented, and individualistic society. These changes reshaped economic relationships, challenged established social authority, and altered religious life.

The war drove much of this change. Supplying three armies created heavy demand for goods and services, which drew farmers and artisans into a wider commercial world. Wood, citing Thomas Paine, notes that “the necessities of an army create a new trade” (115). Government contracts and the inflation caused by nearly $400 million in paper money unsettled older commercial ties and opened new paths to wealth. Some provincial families rose into elite circles. This economic turmoil encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit, broke down localized barter economies, and, in Wood’s words, released “latent economic energies that set America on a course of rapid commercial development” (116-17).

These social and economic changes transformed social relations as republican ideas of equality pushed against patterns of deference. Many people grew irritated with assumed superiors, and protests against the hereditary Society of the Cincinnati showed that many viewed the group as an attempt to build a “Military Nobility” (120). Social leveling appeared in everyday language, as commoners adopted titles like “Mr.” and “Mrs.” Indentured servitude faded, and domestic servants began to call themselves “help”, rejecting a fixed status of inferiority. The colonial workshop’s paternalistic structure gave way to more distant ties between employers and employees, and workers carried out the first organized strike in American history in 1786. These changes weakened a culture held together by personal dependency and strengthened one increasingly shaped by contract and ambition.

Religious life also shifted. The Revolution weakened the authority of the Anglican and Congregational churches. Evangelical groups surged and reflected the broader egalitarian spirit. Baptists and Methodists, once small sects, “grew by leaps and bounds” (132) and became the nation’s largest denominations by 1790. These groups rejected older hierarchies and “genteel learning” and emphasized emotional experience. They expanded opportunities for participation among lay preachers, women, and Black people. Wood describes this ferment as the foundation for the competitive religious culture that later defined the United States, which grew directly out of the social pressures the Revolution set loose.