Equality did although begin to spread to many of the white men. America’s “very structure permitted and encouraged people to define themselves and their interests and to pursue those interests, even against the greatest odds and at the risk of their own lives, fortunes, and honors.” Equality of promising opportunity became a precisely followed ideal. As citizens started rejecting the class-based society of England, more people began to consider themselves in the middle, not rich and not poor. Americans carried a sense of liberty with them in their new country. From the Battles of Lexington and Concord through the Battle of Yorktown, the Patriots then fought for their right to have a say in how their country should be run. In their old age,