There was of course a real strain of rather new political thought in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. But much of that was coming down from John Locke, and the more ancient conception of government as being by hereditary right had already been severely weakened by the English Revolution and then the Glorious Revolution that followed. A hundred years earlier, Levellers had questioned the need for kings.

As far as what most people thought they were doing, there was quite a diversity. Yes, you can say there were powerful, wealthy aristocratic slave-owning elites leading the push for independence in Virginia- Washington, Jefferson and Madison were not poor. But there were also small farmers ( a very big percentage of the population) who felt the same. The unruly mob swarming around looking for gunpowder taken from the magazine by the British, in Massachusetts' Powder Alarm, were anything but elite. These diverse groups cooperated pretty well to achieve the initial object of achieving independence from Britain.

After that happened, however, there were soon signs of possible conflict. This was perhaps to be expected: Crane Brinton once suggested that revolutions tend to a devolving power structure: first the king goes, but then also the state assembly, and finally whatever government exists tends to become local. That could have happened in the Articles of Confederation period, because the elites that were in charge of the government did not have exactly the same interests as the lower classes. The most commonly cited example of this is Shay's Rebellion, in Massachusetts. The government of Massachusetts, dominated by wealthy merchants, tried to wring hard currency out of farmers by requiring all public debts, like taxes, to be paid in it. They wanted to pay down Massachusetts' international debt, which was hindering their business. The farmers were already hard pressed, and revolted .They revolted half-heartedly, however, and the military reaction was also half-hearted, and the government backed down. But it did spark alarm among people like Washington and Madison, who were quite concerned that such things could spread. There were quite a number of men who had carried guns in the recent war and knew how to fight, and if like Shay, they decided to rise up, the elites knew there could be mob rule.

This discomfort with the possibility of mob rule was one of the reasons for the Constitutional Convention, of course. But it existed along with a very general feeling that the government could do with a few reforms, wasn't working very well. In the 19th c. there was a standard belief among historians that the Colonies were rocked by real emergencies and chaos throughout the 1780's, and then were ultimately rescued by the Convention in 1787. But, like with Shay's rebellion, it's actually hard to find a case where civil unrest - or the suppression of it- really got out of hand, to find real chaos. So, you could be justified in saying the the American Revolution was not really a revolution in the sense of the English French or Russian revolutions- authority did not devolve that far.

And yes , while more representational of elites, that government was reasonably flexible as well in how it dealt with the other classes. A good example of that would be the response to the Whiskey Rebellion, where a tax revolt was met with some negotiations, collapsed in the face of military action, very few of the people responsible were pursued and punished and, ultimately, mostly the taxes continued to not be collected. And, of course, though the elites would continue to dominate the government for some decades ( with either Virginia or Massachusetts always having a President) eventually that government structure they created would allow much more popular participation after 1830, with the advent of Andrew Jackson.