My context is that I've been reading about the French Revolution, and it seems to me that part of the chaos is due to it being a five-way battle, between the monarchy, the nobility, the middle class, the lower class, and the church. I'm wondering if some part of why the US didn't have such a large internal backlash to its revolution is due to being perhaps a more "classless" society, with the exception of slaves who were completely excluded from the political process.
So: was there really any nobility resident in the 13 colonies? Was there a strong middle class? Was the gap between the middle class and the workers smaller than it was in France? For example, did a greater fraction of the population own their own land? As a comparison, I recall reading that in New Zealand, the requirement that a voter own their own land was a less strict requirement than it was in England, because a greater fraction of New Zealanders owned land - was the situation similar in the 13 colonies around the time of the war for independence?
A huge portion of the population was mainly laborers/farmers. The middle class would be the professionals or artisans, like blacksmiths, lawyers, doctors, merchants (the very wealthy ones would be part of the upper class). There weren't really any nobles, per se, in colonial America, but rather landed gentry. Yes, many like the Fairfaxes held titles in England, but they didn't seem to have the same effect.
This is a bit of a broad question, as the colonies did vary from each other. If I were to give a general estimate, I'd say at least 80% of the pop would have been involved in agriculture. It wouldn't be until later in the 19th century we'd see a great shift. I can only speak for a Pennsylvania, but a good portion of the population did own land. That's why many came over, the land was cheap and plentiful. Now, officially, the Proprietaries owned the land, but many chose to ignore them at first and worked something out with them later. Of course, that would be very different in the south with all the plantations and slavery.
I'm wondering if some part of why the US didn't have such a large internal backlash to its revolution is due to being perhaps a more "classless" society, with the exception of slaves who were completely excluded from the political process.
The US didn't have the same type of ancien regime that the French did. France was an absolute monarchy whilst the British used a constitutional monarchy. The cause was different, which will make any response different. Now, if I'm assuming what you mean by "internal backlash" then I would say there was definitely some stuff going on afterward. Loyalists were told to shove off and many emigrated to Canada, following a lot of mistreatment from the whigs. There were also several "rebellions" such as Shays' and the Whiskey Rebellion. Before the war, you could also see the Regulator movement as well as the Paxton Boys. I don't know what you mean by classless though. The republic was hardly feudalistic, but I don't think classless fit the bill either. Could you clarify?
Demographic data can be gathered from colonial records. My notes were were the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania collection. In book form Ed White's The Backcountry and the City does a great job of explaining some of the conflicts between the rural farmers and the urbanites.
Of the colonies in 1775, generally speaking, farmers and small-time businessmen and merchants (for lack of better word, I'll borrow the term "petite bourgeoisie") comprised the stratified layers of social composition. Capitalism hadn't fully concentrated into large transcontinental businesses at that point, but was rather consistent in small traders, market exchange, and merchanting. There were of course the wealthy and slave-owners, landlords and nobility, etc., but these comprised a smaller percentage of the population than the average-earners and poor.
Politically, the vote was confined to those who owned land. If memory serves me correctly, the ability to vote and to run in elections was granted upon a stratified property basis, with the wealthier being able to climb the ladder higher.