The Revolution and the Constitution
Thirteen colonies break from Britain, declare that "all men are created equal", win a war of independence and write a Constitution that still governs the country.
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood, Alfred A. Knopf (1992)
- Give Me Liberty! An American History — Eric Foner, W. W. Norton (2004)
- Declaration of Independence: A Transcription — U.S. National Archives
- American Colonies: The Settling of North America — Alan Taylor, Viking Penguin (2001)
After Britain’s victory over France in 1763, Parliament tried to make the colonies pay for their defence and to slow settlement west of the Appalachians. Taxes like the Stamp Act (1765) and the tea tax met the cry “no taxation without representation”, boycotts, and, in Boston in 1773, a “tea party” in the harbour. Fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood, Alfred A. Knopf (1992)
- American Colonies: The Settling of North America — Alan Taylor, Viking Penguin (2001)
“We hold these truths to be self-evident”
On 4 July 1776 the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson. Its second paragraph, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, became the founding creed of the nation, and later of abolitionists, suffragists and the civil rights movement, who demanded it be applied to them.
- Declaration of Independence: A Transcription — U.S. National Archives
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood, Alfred A. Knopf (1992)
The war lasted eight years. George Washington’s Continental Army lost more battles than it won but survived; victory at Saratoga in 1777 brought France into the war, and the surrender of a British army at Yorktown in 1781 effectively ended it. The Treaty of Paris (1783) recognised independence and gave the new country land to the Mississippi.
- Give Me Liberty! An American History — Eric Foner, W. W. Norton (2004)
- American Colonies: The Settling of North America — Alan Taylor, Viking Penguin (2001)
A government that lasts
The first national government, under the Articles of Confederation, was too weak to tax or keep order. In Philadelphia in 1787 delegates wrote a new Constitution: a federal system that divided power between the states and a national government, and within it among Congress, a president and the courts, with “checks and balances”. Small and large states compromised on a Senate with two seats per state and a House by population; North and South compromised over slavery, counting enslaved people as three-fifths of a person.
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood, Alfred A. Knopf (1992)
- Give Me Liberty! An American History — Eric Foner, W. W. Norton (2004)
The Constitution was ratified in 1788 after fierce debate. Opponents, the Anti-Federalists, won a promise of a Bill of Rights: ten amendments, ratified in 1791, protecting free speech and religion, the right “to keep and bear Arms”, jury trials and more. It remains the world’s oldest written national constitution still in use, amended only 27 times.
- Give Me Liberty! An American History — Eric Foner, W. W. Norton (2004)
- United States — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Who it was for
The new republic was revolutionary for its time, but voting was largely limited to white men with property, slavery was protected, and Native land was the prize of independence. The story of the next two centuries would be, in large part, the struggle of those left out to claim the Declaration’s promise for themselves.
- Give Me Liberty! An American History — Eric Foner, W. W. Norton (2004)
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood, Alfred A. Knopf (1992)
Ordinary people rose against a distant monarchy and built the world's first large modern republic, based on popular sovereignty and written limits on power. Its ideals, as Gordon Wood argues, were radical enough to unsettle hierarchy everywhere, including eventually slavery.
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood, Alfred A. Knopf (1992)
For enslaved people, women and Native nations, the new republic offered little. Tens of thousands of enslaved people fled to the British, who promised freedom, and most Native nations sided with Britain because they feared settler expansion, which independence unleashed.
- Give Me Liberty! An American History — Eric Foner, W. W. Norton (2004)
- Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America — Pekka Hämäläinen, Liveright (2022)
Perhaps a fifth of white colonists stayed loyal to the Crown; tens of thousands left for Canada, Britain and the Caribbean, seeing the rebellion as mob rule by a self-interested elite.
- American Colonies: The Settling of North America — Alan Taylor, Viking Penguin (2001)
- The Radicalism of the American Revolution — Gordon S. Wood, Alfred A. Knopf (1992)
Why it matters today
The Revolution is the creation story Americans tell about themselves, and the Declaration and the Constitution are close to sacred texts. Today's fiercest arguments, over guns, abortion, free speech, the Electoral College and the powers of the president, are fought in the language of the founders and over what they "really meant".