The Fathers of the Constitution: A Chronicle of the Establishment of the Union

The course of English history shows that Anglo-Saxon tradition is strongly in favor of observing precedents and of trying to maintain at least the form of law, even in revolutio...

John Fiske summed up the prevailing impression of the government of the Confederation in the title to his volume, The Critical Period of American History. "The period of five ye...

The population of the United States was like a body of water that was being steadily enlarged by internal springs and external tributaries. It was augmented both from within and...

"The United States of America"! It was in the Declaration of Independence that this name was first and formally proclaimed to the world, and to maintain its verity the war of th...

When peace came in 1783 there were in the United States approximately three million people, who were spread over the whole Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia and back into the...

Rutledge and his associates on the committee of detail accomplished so much in such a short time that it seems as if they must have worked day and night. Their efforts marked a...

The body of delegates which met in Philadelphia in 1787 was the most important convention that ever sat in the United States. The Confederation was a failure, and if the new nat...

Though the word revolution implies a violent break with the past, there was nothing in the Revolution that transformed the essential character or the characteristics of the Amer...

Chapter Chapter Title Page I. The Treaty of Peace 1 II. Trade and Industry 22 III. The Confederation 35 IV. The Northwest Ordinance 55 V. Darkness Before Dawn 81 VI. The Federal...