[trisham]

Why do you think that the Founders were levelers?

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Please explain.

[RobbyS]

Levelers were the members of Cromwell’s “New Model Army,” who wanted to eliminate most social distinctions. Not many Americans thought in those terms. Thomas Paine used that sort of rhetoric, and it proved much more popuar in France than in America. Now to the degree that the Revolutionary War was a civil war—Loyalists vs. Tories—there was something in that. Thomas Hutchison, the governor of Massachusetts, and member of an old, well-estab;ished family, was treated roughtly by the mob and eventually had to leave with the British in March. Many other Tories were forced to leave the country for the relative safety of Ontario, and they had to leave most of their property behind.