All Created Equal

Even though the Declaration of Independence began by saying “... all men are created equal,” at that time in history, not everyone had the same rights in practice or by law.. Black people were not considered equal, and neither were women. Both Blacks and women were thought to be owned by others. Even in the newly independent America, they did not have all of the rights that had been declared in this important document. Native Americans didn’t either.

After the war, many Loyalists were punished. Thousands of others moved back to England, or went to Canada. Thousands of Blacks also left, moving to Canada, England, the West Indies, and even back to Africa. Some Native American villages were burned or destroyed in punishment for their support of the British, and their land given away.

Now that there was no longer anything to fight about, the Americans had to figure out what kind of laws and government they were going to have. They had not yet established the United States of America--they were still just a group of colonies that had won independence from Britain, without a particular plan for their new relationship with one another.

What did the future hold? How would they truly become a nation?