The Radicalism of the American Revolution

by Gordon S. Wood

Such a change marked a real and radical revolution, a change of society, not just of government. People were to be “changed,” said the South Carolina physician and historian David Ramsay, “from subjects to citizens,” and “the difference is immense. Subject is derived from the latin words, sub and jacio, and means one who is under the power of another; but a citizen is an unit of a mass of free people, who, collectively, possess sovereignty. Subjects look up to a master, but citizens are so far equal, that none have hereditary rights superior to others. Each citizen of a free state contains, within himself, by nature and the constitution, as much of the common sovereignty as another.”