ABSTRACT
The first years of independence were taken up with attempts to solve the many problems of peaceful reconstruction under a federal government which was one of the weakest ever devised by hand of man. Both Federalists and Republicans were anti-monarchical. Both accepted the idea of self-government as it had been practised in Colonies, and both accepted the Revolution as having forever put an end to hereditary kings and hereditary nobility in America. The future of the American experiment in democracy depended upon its being freed from the entanglements of European politics and the danger of European intervention. The dominant party in America, which desired the war, is aiming at a complete revolution in the relations of the New World with the Old, by the destruction of all European interests in the American continent. For a quarter of a century the tremendous upheaval in the Old World had disturbed the peace and threatened the very existence of the United States.
