The public discussion of impressment during the Jay Treaty debates, as well as the trumpeting of Jack Tar as the purveyor of commerce and defender of the nation, helped to define sailors as citizens at a time when the idea of citizenship was undergoing rapid change. Regardless of this change, during the 1790s sailors became not just citizens, but “most valuable citizens.” By the end of the decade, the United States government had passed legislation to protect American sailors and pledged the might of the American navy in defense of sailors' rights.

There was a shift during the American Revolution from viewing everyone as the subject of a king to seeing each individual as a citizen of the nation. The transition from subject to citizen, however, was neither smooth nor linear. During the 1760s and 1770s, revolutionary leaders had called upon crowds, many of whose members were waterfront workers and sailors, to express themselves politically. Although local committees might bring the common folk into the political process under the rubric “inhabitants,” ultimately this action awakened a civic consciousness among the people, including sailors and propertyless males as well as some women, minors, and African Americans. Whether the leadership of the revolution liked it or not, more and more individuals came to think of themselves as citizens. Once independence had been won, the exact nature of the political nation remained in dispute. Eventually, women and most African Americans were excluded from the political process, if not from their claim to citizenship. Adult European-American propertyless males, on the other hand, were increasingly awarded the right to vote and included in the political nation.