American Revolution

The American Revolution was a political upheaval, 1765–1783, as the Thirteen American Colonies broke from the British Empire and formed the independent nation, the United States of America. Starting in 1765 the Americans rejected the authority of Parliament to tax them without elected representation; protests escalated as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773, and the British imposed punitive laws on Massachusetts in 1774. In 1774 the Patriots suppressed the Loyalists and expelled all royal officials. Each colony now had a new government that took control. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-establish royal control. Through the Second Continental Congress, the Patriots fought the British in the American Revolutionary War 1775–83.

The British sent invasion armies and used their powerful navy to blockade the coast. George Washington became the American commander, working with Congress and the states to raise armies and neutralize the influence of Loyalists. While precise proportions are not known, about 40% of the colonists were Patriots, 20% were Loyalists and the rest were neutral or kept quiet. Claiming British rule was tyrannical and violated the rights of Englishmen, the Patriots used the political philosophy of republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and proclaim that all men are created equal. Congress declared independence in July 1776, when Thomas Jefferson wrote and the Congress unanimously approved the United States Declaration of Independence. The colonies now became states, and Congress rejected British proposals for compromise that would keep them under the king. The British were forced out of Boston in 1776, but then captured and held New York City for the duration of the war, nearly capturing General Washington and his army. The British blockaded the ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but 90% of the people were in rural areas.

In early 1778, after an invading army from Canada was captured by the Americans, the French entered the war as allies of the United States. The naval and military power of the two sides was about equal, and France had allies in the Netherlands and Spain, while Britain had no major allies in this large-scale war. The war turned to the South, where the British captured an American army at South Carolina, but failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilian to take effective control. A combined American–French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in 1781, effectively ending the war in the United States. A peace treaty in 1783 confirmed the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada and Spain taking Florida.

The American Revolution was the result of a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations in American society, government and ways of thinking. Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of a democratically-elected representative government responsible to the will of the people.

The period after the peace treaty came in 1783 involved debates between nationally-minded men like Washington who wanted a strong national government, and local leaders who wanted strong states but a weak national government. The former group won out the ratification of a new United States Constitution in 1788. It replaced the weaker Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The new Constitution established a relatively strong federal national government that included a strong elected president, national courts, a bicameral Congress that represented both states in the Senate and population in the House of representatives. Congress had powers of taxation that were lacking under the old Articles. The United States Bill of Rights of 1791 comprised the first ten amendments to the Constitution, guaranteeing many "natural rights" that were influential in justifying the revolution, and attempted to balance a strong national government with strong state governments and broad personal liberties. The American shift to liberal republicanism, and the gradually increasing democracy, caused an upheaval of traditional social hierarchy and gave birth to the ethic that has formed a core of political values in the United States.