> > it had little effect on who was on top in American society
> I'm not sure what this means
Rich, politically-influential leaders before the war were largely still rich, politically-influential leaders afterward. The colonies became independent, but, aside from those who resisted independence (and hell, even some of those), colonial leaders stayed on top. The Constitution itself [edit: and, even more so, the Articles before it] was structured in support of preserving that order, even. The injustice the war sought to remedy was remote rule by fiat, not, to a substantial degree, the social or political order of the colonies themselves.
This is not, however, to say that the development of a large, democratic nation-state was not significant—but a revolution of social & political power structures in the Americas, it was not.
It'd be like if the French Revolution had skipped the beheadings and property-seizures and rolled directly into having a governing body comprising almost entirely high-level aristocrats, based on a constitution protecting aristocratic interests, with the king continuing to enjoy all his land and maybe a couple of his sons serving at the highest level of government a few years later—we'd scratch our heads in puzzlement at anyone calling that a revolution, unless maybe a failed one. A re-organization or, if you like, evolution, of government, sure, but not much of a revolution.