American Revolution: A conservative, successful Revolution of the haves against those who had more We usually think of revolutions, particularly colonial revolutions, in radical terms. Perhaps as a result of Marxist influence upon cotemporary historical analysis, the word revolution summons up in historian's minds and imaginations the blazing red flags and blazing anger of the lower classes, rising in revolt. Yet this image is not only overly idealistic and unrealistic, but neglects to take into consideration the fact that our own, American revolution was founded by men who were propertied landowners, once-respected generals (in the case of George Washington) of the regime they were fighting, and that many decided to go to war for economic reasons regarding taxation and a decreasing influence in the parliament...

Thomas Paine's radicalism of Common Sense was the ideological exception rather than the rule.
The American Revolution was a colonial revolution, true, but of the haves rather than the have-nots. British attempts to tax goods for the colonialists and threaten the privileges of untaxed goods and lax supervision of the mother country was met with anger. Perhaps the most obviously conservative attitude of the colonialists was when, in an attempt to, King George III of England issued "The Proclamation of 1763," prohibiting any English settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains and requiring those colonialists already settled in those regions to return east in an attempt to reduce the potential colonial conflagrations with Native Americans. The…