The Revolutionary Republic focuses on the political, economic, social and cultural consequences of independence, the establishment of republican institutions, the development of state, regional and national identity, and the ideals of liberty, equality, natural and civil rights and responsible citizenship from the beginning of the Second Continental Congress in May 1775 to the end of George Washington’s first term as president of the United States in March 1793.
At the beginning of this period, the Second Continental Congress assumed much of the authority of a national government, created the Continental Army and a makeshift system of public finance, dispatched diplomatic representatives to Europe and declared the colonies independent of Great Britain. Only after this important work was done did congress propose Articles of Confederation, which provided a legal framework for the kind of limited national government congress had already created.
Separation from Britain, declared in 1776 and secured by military victory and diplomatic success in 1783, freed the people of the United States from restrictions imposed by the empire on American commerce and westward expansion. Liberation from the constraints of colonial rule released the creative and acquisitive energy of Americans, which was reflected in new enterprises, expanding trade and restless movement west, as well as in resistance to taxation and debt collection.
At independence, each of the thirteen colonies became sovereign states and either reformed their existing governments or adopted new republican constitutions, some including declarations asserting and defining natural and civil rights. The states slowly ratified the Articles of Confederation, which regulated relations between the states and empowered congress to provide for the common defense, wage war and make peace, conduct relations with foreign powers and Indian nations and carry out other limited functions of a national government.
Separation from Britain compelled Americans to redefine their ideas about liberty, equality, natural and civil rights and the responsibilities of citizenship. No longer subjects of the British sovereign, they asserted the sovereignty of the people. No longer dependent on the rights of British subjects, they based their idea of rights on universal natural law, applicable to all. They rejected the claims of monarchs and aristocrats to natural superiority and embraced the Enlightenment principle of universal equality.
These changes led to a revolutionary transformation of American life that leveled many social barriers and led Americans to examine existing practices and institutions in the light of universal ideals. The injustice of slavery, the subordination of women, property requirements for voting, government-sponsored religion and traditional legal strategies for preserving great wealth from generation to generation—strategies used to maintain aristocracy in Britain and to protect the status of wealthy planters and merchants in America—all came under scrutiny.
Several states abolished slavery, which was practiced throughout the colonies before the Revolution, and agitation to abolish slavery on a national scale began in earnest. Antislavery sentiment among white colonists had been rare. The Revolution made criticism of slavery common. The first antislavery society in America was founded five days before the Battle of Lexington, and similar groups intent on the abolition of slavery were launched after the war. Several states abolished slavery or provided for its gradual abolition. The convention that drafted the Federal Constitution did not attempt to abolish slavery, which would have sacrificed the support of southern states, which were dependent on slave labor, but the Federal Constitution provided for the abolition of the slave trade in twenty years, a step optimists hoped would lead to the gradual disappearance of slavery. The Second Congress passed an act forbidding American-owned ships from engaging in the slave trade. These first steps to restrict enslavement were consequences of the commitment to equality expressed by the revolutionaries. From the beginning of the Revolution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, the enslavement of human beings was a matter of continuous contention and debate. This was a direct consequence of the Revolution.
So, too, were the demands of many ordinary Americans for the benefits of the liberty and equality long denied to them. These demands were expressed in a wide variety of ways, ranging from formal petitions to popular protests, mob actions and loosely organized armed opposition to taxation and debt collection. Women and free blacks began demanding the opportunities, protections and benefits of citizenship afforded to white men. Enslaved Americans also hoped to benefit from the revolutionary promise of liberty and equality, and though they had few opportunities to express their desire for freedom in other ways, they resisted enslavement through primitive forms of rebellion—feigning illness and ignorance of their orders, avoiding work and running away from their enslavers.
Most of the creative work of applying republican principles to constitutional arrangements and of defining and protecting natural and civil rights was carried out at the state level until nationalists secured a call for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. That convention met in Philadelphia in 1787 and after months of debate, proposed an entirely new Federal Constitution, which the Confederation Congress submitted to the states for ratification. The debates over the ratification of the Constitution included some of the most sophisticated and enduring arguments ever devised about the nature of republican government, the relationship of the states to the federal government and the relationship between individuals and their government. The ratification of the Federal Constitution was the culmination of the most creative period in constitutional thought in world history.
The first federal elections, conducted in 1788, initiated an equally creative period of practical constitutional practice. George Washington, the unanimous choice for president, organized the executive branch and oversaw the settlement of Revolutionary War debts and the establishment of a national financial system, concluded a prolonged Indian war on the northwest frontier and opened the region to settlement, laid the foundation for a grand capitol city and guided the republic through the challenges posed by the French Revolution. Washington set precedents that have guided his successors as president for more than two hundred years.
The First Congress, which took office with Washington, satisfied the demands of many critics of the Federal Constitution by proposing amendments defining fundamental liberties and natural and civil rights. Ratified by the states, the first ten amendments to the Federal Constitution became the federal Bill of Rights, which continues to afford fundamental protections to the rights and liberties of American citizens. The First Congress also created the executive departments, the federal judiciary and a system for collecting federal revenue; adopted laws protecting copyrights and patents, which encouraged writers and inventors; and organized the territory that became Tennessee. The Second Congress, which took office in 1791, created the postal service (which delivered the news and was thus essential to an informed citizenry) and the mint (to provide a regular supply of money to the economy), organized the militia (to provide for national defense), and admitted Vermont and Kentucky as new states (ensuring the benefits of republican institutions to Americans moving west). By 1793 the roles of the president and congress and the relationship between them were well established. Republican government, which had been an imaginary ideal when the American Revolution began, had been established on a national scale.
The achievement of independence and the establishment of stable republican governments formed to promote the liberty, equality and the rights of their citizens, built popular attachment to an American national identity, a sense of belonging to a vast community bound together by shared ideals and experiences, not defined by geography or subjection to a monarch. Republican statecraft made statesmen and politicians into national heroes and generated and shaped enduring symbols of national identity. The Revolution also established and defined American citizenship and shaped the way Americans and the world have imagined America, Americans and the role of the United States in the world. The American Revolution created a new nation, wholly unlike any nation that had ever existed.
The Revolutionary Republic presents a wide range of primary resources—documents, prints, maps, fine and graphic arts, artifacts and other assets—as well as interpretive essays on important People, Events and Ideas involved in this creation of the early American republic. If this is your first visit to The Revolutionary Republic, you might begin with George Mason.
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