ABSTRACT
The British had no plans to destroy liberty in North America and until the winter of 1775/6 very few colonists favoured independence; yet between 1775 and 1781 the Americans, with the help of the French, defeated the greatest military power in the world at that time and achieved their independence. In the years that followed independence there was initially little support for the expansion of central power and the writing of a new constitution. The ‘Founding Fathers’ however, who met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, changed all of that and by the end of 1789 the Constitution had been ratified, and George Washington had been elected the first President of the US. The new Constitution and accompanying Bill of Rights ensured that the American Revolution would be a strictly political event, with the social order remaining firmly intact. It contained compromises on major issues such as slavery, the representation of the large and small states, the extent of federal power, and trade; but they were not all compromises which could be laid to rest, and in the years to come the struggle for the Constitution would almost destroy the Union it had created.
