By late 1774, George III and his supporters concluded that force was necessary to restore order. Britain expanded its military and restricted colonial commerce. When the Second Continental Congress convened in May 1775, it pursued a dual strategy: approving the Olive Branch Petition professing loyalty to the king while blaming his ministers, and simultaneously issuing a “Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms” that denied any intent to seek independence.

Fighting had already erupted. In April 1775, British troops marched to seize rebel arms at Concord, colonial scouts warned patriot leaders, and shots were exchanged at Lexington and Concord. During the British retreat to Boston, militia harassment resulted in heavy British losses compared to the colonists. In June, British forces assaulted American positions at Bunker Hill, suffering over 1,000 casualties, demonstrating that colonial forces could withstand regular troops.

Congress assumed governmental functions, creating the Continental Army under George Washington, issuing currency, and forming a foreign relations committee. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, which called the king a “Royal Brute” and demanded immediate independence. Using plain language and biblical references, the pamphlet became widely influential and mobilized broader public support for independence.

On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, largely written by Thomas Jefferson. The document blamed George III for every American grievance since 1763. Congress removed passages from Jefferson’s draft, including one condemning the slave trade. Despite this failure to address the contradiction of slavery—which held 500,000 people, one-fifth of the American population—the Declaration forcefully expressed Enlightenment ideals. Its assertion that “all men are created equal” with rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (57) framed the Revolution in universal terms that extended beyond the colonies.

American patriots maintained that they were defending English constitutional principles. They did not view their actions as rebellion. Yet the principles Americans defended had become radical and lay outside mainstream English thought.

American ideology drew heavily on the English “country” opposition tradition, particularly the writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, along with earlier ideas associated with John Locke. Rooted in 17th-century opposition to Stuart kings, this tradition warned that growing executive power was corrupting Parliament and contributing to the rise of a fiscal-military state. These writers advocated reforms that were considered radical in their time, including broader political representation, press freedom, and religious liberty.

Americans embraced these country ideas with particular intensity. After 1763, this body of thought provided a framework through which colonists interpreted British actions. They came to believe that imperial policies formed part of a deliberate effort to reduce them to slavery.

Americans increasingly understood their struggle as part of a wider contest over liberty. Events such as the persecution of English radical John Wilkes and the failure of Pascal Paoli’s Corsican independence movement reinforced the belief that liberty was declining elsewhere. By 1776, they believed America was the only place where a free press existed and representatives truly spoke for their constituents—this belief helped them accept Thomas Paine’s appeal to make America “an asylum for mankind” (62).

In 1776, Americans seized what New Yorker John Jay called the unprecedented opportunity to choose their own government forms. Congress’s May 1776 resolutions advised colonies to adopt governments under the authority of the people. Even before independence, several colonies began drafting constitutions, and by 1777 most states had adopted new governments.

Thomas Jefferson saw forming state governments as central to the controversy, aimed at preventing future tyrannies. Americans created written constitutions as fixed documents that placed fundamental principles above ordinary government. This marked a departure from England’s unwritten constitutional tradition. Their central aim was to prevent governors from exercising powers that could threaten liberty and to secure authority in representative institutions.

The new constitutions dramatically weakened elected governors, stripping powers like vetoing legislation and controlling assemblies. The power of appointment was also transferred from governors to legislatures. This change, justified by Montesquieu’s separation of powers doctrine, aimed to keep legislatures free from executive manipulation and ensured that parliamentary-style cabinet government would not develop in America.

Legislative supremacy marked a radical shift. Former crown prerogatives including foreign alliances and pardons now belonged to popular assemblies. To ensure legislative responsiveness, constitutions implemented principles of representation, including equal electoral districts, annual elections, expanded suffrage, residency requirements, and constituent instruction rights. Backcountry areas gained new representation, which recognized earlier demands from western settlers in the 1760s and 1770s.

Revolutionaries placed great trust in popular legislatures. Most states created bicameral legislatures with upper houses conceived as a natural aristocracy of the wisest, meant to check the more democratic lower houses.

While drafting state constitutions, Revolutionaries created a central government with limited public debate. In 1776, loyalty to individual states far exceeded American nationalism. Though a confederation draft was ready by July 1776 debate delayed its presentation until November 1777, and unanimous state ratification took until March 1781.

The Articles of Confederation created the United States of America, essentially continuing the Second Continental Congress. Congress controlled diplomacy, requisitioned soldiers and money from states, coined currency, regulated “Indian affairs,” and settled interstate disputes. No true executive existed. The Union included significant central powers: States were forbidden independent foreign relations, citizens enjoyed privileges and immunities across state lines, and states were required to recognize each other’s laws and judicial decisions.

Nevertheless, crucial powers—commercial regulation and taxation—remained with states, and congressional resolutions were recommendations rather than binding law. Each state held a single vote, and ratification and amendments required unanimous consent. The Confederation functioned as an alliance of cooperating sovereign states, a structure comparable in some respects to modern supranational unions.

Major disputes involved representation, financial apportionment, and western lands. The western lands controversy was most prolonged: States with charter claims wanted control, while landless states demanded congressional authority. Only after Virginia agreed in 1781 to cede its vast claims, with the understanding that these lands would be organized into new republican states, did other states follow.

Congress drew up land ordinances in 1784 and 1785 for the Northwest Territory. The 1787 Northwest Ordinance was the Confederation’s greatest accomplishment besides winning independence. It established a new framework for governing western territories, guaranteeing settlers basic rights and the unprecedented principle that new western states would enter the union “on an equal footing with the original States” (74), allowing for continued westward expansion.

The War for Independence lasted nearly eight years and developed from a colonial conflict into an international war that left Britain diplomatically isolated. Britain had major military advantages, including a larger population, a powerful navy, and a professional army supplemented by German mercenaries, while Americans began with a much smaller and less experienced force. Yet Britain faced serious difficulties: Fighting across the Atlantic strained supply lines, the terrain limited conventional warfare, and there was no single decisive point to capture. Britain also misjudged the extent of colonial resistance and loyalist support.

Washington adopted a defensive strategy, avoiding large battles. After early defeats in 1776, his victories at Trenton and Princeton restored American morale, and a major turning point came in 1777 when Burgoyne’s army was defeated at Saratoga, leading to his surrender. Saratoga helped bring France openly into the war in 1778, transforming the conflict, while Spain’s entry and wider European involvement further isolated Britain.

After 1778, the war shifted southward, where Britain aimed to restore control through loyalist support and achieved early successes, including the capture of Charleston in 1780. However, it failed to secure lasting control, as local resistance and guerrilla warfare weakened British authority. American forces in the South, under Nathanael Greene, avoided direct confrontation and forced British divisions, contributing to setbacks such as Cowpens and limiting British progress. Cornwallis eventually moved into Virginia, where the war reached its final phase.

At Yorktown in 1781, combined American and French forces, supported by the French navy, surrounded Cornwallis and forced his surrender, effectively ending the war. In the subsequent peace negotiations, American diplomats secured independence along with extensive territorial boundaries in the Treaty of 1783, marking a major diplomatic success.