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The United States faced a variety of problems. One-fifth of its free population openly favored the British. Sentiment among African-Americans tended to support the British in the hope of freedom from slavery. And although the state militias sometimes performed well in guerrilla skirmishes, they lacked the training to fight in the formal fashion that could attract foreign loans and diplomatic recognition. The Americans experienced a number of serious defeats in the war’s early years, but they needed only to prolong the rebellion until Britain’s taxpayers lost patience.
After Continental victories in New Jersey, the turning point of the war came with the defeat of the British at Saratoga in 1777. Seeing the possibility of an ultimate American victory, France formally recognized the United States and declared war on Great Britain. The British were forced to send thousands of soldiers to Ireland and the West Indies to guard against French invasion. Although envisioned by many as a purely American victory, the American Revolution could not have been won without both aid from foreign powers and a variety of global pressures on the armies of Great
Britain. For a further discussion of these global factors, see the feature “Beyond America – Global Interactions: The American Revolution as an International War. ” In 1 778 the war’s focus turned to the South and eventually the Americans pinned the British near Yorktown, Virginia, between themselves and the French fleet. Fighting was also intense in the west and northwest of the colonies as American settlers clashed with Cherokee and Ohio Indians. Lord Cornwallis 1781 surrender drained England’s overtaxed gentry of the will to fight. In the Peace of Paris, Great Britain recognized
American independence and began the evacuation of all royal troops from United States soil. At least 5 percent of all free white males aged sixteen to forty-five had died in the war. Only the Civil War produced a higher casualty ratio relative to population. The Revolution diminished the sense of class differences among white Americans. Ordinary soldiers demanded to be treated with consideration, and they retained their self-esteem on returning to civilian life. The gentry’s sense of social distinction diminished as they met men who rose during the war through ability rather than through advantages f wealth or family.
Virtue and sacrifice defined a citizen’s worth more than position. Yet the overall distribution of wealth in the nation remained unchanged, and for nonwhites the results of the Revolution were ambiguous. About 500,000 black Americans lived in the United States in 1 776, some 20 percent of the total population. In the decade before the Revolution American opposition to slavery had grown. By 1784 five northern states had ended slavery, and even in the South slavery worried the conscience of some of the Whig. No state south of Pennsylvania abolished slavery, but many made manumission easier.
Free blacks, despite the severe disabilities they suffered, gained the right to vote in the North and in a number of southern states, and thus the Revolution did begin the process by which slavery could eventually be ended. However, Revolutionary ideology made no provisions for Indian nations seeking to maintain their own independence, and the Anglo-American hunger for land threatened Native American territory, especially in the trans- Appalachian west. State governments that Americans created during the Revolution magnified the power struggle between more radical democratic elements and elites.
They generally had bicameral legislatures with the majority of officeholders appointed rather than elected, with property qualifications for voting, and with representation apportioned regardless Of population. But state constitutions were written documents that usually required popular ratification, and they contained explicit bills of rights. In most states the governor became a relatively weak elected official, and elections occurred more frequently than today. Americans did not favor a party system that would encourage candidates to state their political beliefs o that voters could decide on policy.
Rather, voters based their choices on the personal merits of the candidates. The elites saw themselves as republicans rather than democrats. The term democracy suggested mob rule or at best implied a concentration of power in the hands of the uneducated masses. The term republicanism suggested a balanced government led by capable leaders elected for their superior talents. The basic law Of national government, the Articles of Confederation, took effect in 1 781. It established a single-chamber national Congress which was elected by the state slaughters and in which each state had only one vote.
Congress could request funds from the states but could enact no tax of its own without every state’s approval, nor could it regulate interstate or foreign commerce. The Articles did not provide for an executive branch, nor was there a judicial system. The fear of an overbearing centralized national government had led to a league of sovereign states. The Congress under the Articles established orderly procedures for the organization and admission of new states in the Northwest Territory, but the government faced great difficulty in dealing with he Indians who lived there and in the Southeast.
The British still maintained a presence in the West, and Spain attempted to deny western settlers permission to ship their crops down the Mississippi to New Orleans. The Confederation also failed to deal with the economy. To pay for the war, the government had borrowed funds from abroad and printed its own paper money, the value of which was almost totally eroded by inflation. By the late sass the states had fallen behind nearly 80 percent in providing the funds requested by Congress. Dissatisfaction with the Articles of Confederation grew.
In 1 786 violence broke out in western Massachusetts as the state’s attempt to deal with its financial crisis provoked Shay’s Rebellion. For some, this was an augury of worse to come. The Philadelphia Convention of 1787 was scheduled to make revisions in the Articles of Confederation. But the delegates shared a “continental” or “nationalist” perspective. Very quickly the fundamental issue became one of balancing the conflicting interests of large and small states in a completely new government. The new Constitution augmented national authority in several ways.
It vested in Congress the authority to lay and collect taxes, to regulate commerce among the states, and to conduct diplomacy. The states could no longer coin money, interfere with contracts and debts, or tax interstate commerce. All acts and treaties of the United States became “the supreme law of the land. ” The power of the new national government was restrained by the creation of three distinct branches and a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch from dominating the other two. The federal system provided for shared power and dual lawmaking by the national and state governments in order to lace limits on central authority.
And the Constitution could be amended by votes of three-fourths of the state legislatures. The citizens, rather than the states, comprised the foundation of the new government, and the Constitution was to be ratified by special state conventions. The supporters of ratification, the Federalists, had wider experience and a broader outlook than the Anti-federalists did. Moreover, in response to the Anti-federalists’ concerns, the new frame of government was to have a bill of rights protecting Americans’ basic freedoms. The framework for a democratic republic had been created.