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Creating a New Nation, 1775-1788
Overview
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By the end of 1774 conflict between the colonies and Great Britain seemed inevitable but no one anticipated the war would take eight years to conclude. During that time the British government plunged deeper into debt and the colonies were forged in a single nation under a centralized government. Great Britain’s military forces were superior to the colonists' but Britain had a flawed premise about how the war would be won. Britain assumed the colonists could be made to submit by swift and effective application of force and that Americans loyal to the crown would rally around the British troops. Having defeated the British and won independence, the Americans faced a more daunting challenge: living up to its revolutionary rhetoric of liberty and equality. Even though the revolution had forced an alliance between American political radicals and moderates there was no guarantee the alliance would continue after the war and peace brought out their philosophical and practical differences. Could Americans fashion a political structure that could contain these differences and what would they do with the notion of human equality? The first significant challenge to the new republic came in the west because it was unwilling to create a colonial status for its western lands. As there was no model to follow, American leaders struggled to integrate the western frontier into the democratic tradition. Following the war the compromises of radicals and moderates began to crumble. Moderates became nationalists while many radicals retained a local perspective. The divisions which had existed all along became permanent in the battle over the Constitution. Nationalists wanted a strong central or national government; the localists feared that a strong central government would do nothing but steal their liberty. The division reflected a difference of opinion about the future of America’s political economy. As the first nation created by revolution, the United States was entering uncharted territory. The revolutionaries, despite some philosophical differences of opinion, were united in their vision of what they did not want. As they matured, they began to envision the kind of society and nation they hoped to create.
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