“It was radical. “
I suppose it depends on how you define it. Russell Kirk describes the American War of Independence as anything but revolutionary. It was waged to retain rights that the colonials believed that they already had and which George III was trampling upon.
The colonials had already been governing themselves and would have happily remained British subjects if George III had butted out.
“America’s War of Independence was “a revolution not made, but prevented,” Kirk explains. Britain’s American colonies had grown accustomed to and rather liked that the mother country had permitted them to govern themselves. Our Founders sought to conserve the societal order that had bestowed the blessings of liberty on the fledgling commonwealths. It was King George, the Founders felt, who was infringing on the “chartered rights of Englishmen.” When our Framers mustered in Philadelphia, they constructed little that was innovative but rather conserved the best of the constitutional bequest from our British heritage. An independent judiciary empowered with a check on the executive and legislative branches was certainly a new creation, but Americans were not caught up in the radical philosophies which were catching fire in and burning down France. Instead of desiring to create some new sentimental egalitarianism, Americans were concerned with preserving the existing order and restating long observed principles of law.”