The+American+Revolutionary+Era

By Steve 1754-1789: From Early conflicts till the ratification of the US Constitution (no pictures this time)


 * The French and Indian War was the result of Britain and France bickering over land claims in America. The French owned a lot of land in Canada and the US while the British only controlled some Carribean islands and the easter seaboard of the USA. The British however had the benefit of more people in their colonies while the French had fewsettlers and mostly Native American allies, so the British were able to win by sheer number alone. The result was that the French presense in America was limited to some remaining islands in the Carribean and lands west of the Mississippi.
 * That same war however placed Britian in a huge amount of debt, in which the British Parlaiment wouldn't levy on it countrymen. Instead since most of the conflict was fought overseas Parliament began approving new taxes on the colonist, where there had never really been any before. Through a lot of outcry most of the taxes got repealed, but not before American rebels and British troops traded shots at Lexington and Concord; and the war started.
 * At this time the colonies weren't really united until the Declaration of Independence was signed on 7/4/76. Even after that money was hard to come by and the Americans were usually losing to British forces. It wasn't until a year and a half later that that American victories convinced the French to intervene and fund the war. The war effectively ended when a joint French and American force trapped most of the British Army in the Yorktown peninsula in Virginia, and the general surrendered. About two years later British, French and American diplomats signed the Treaty of Paris (1783) that ended the war,
 * The Articles of Confederations was a loose set of rules that defined what Congress could and couldn't do, with a lot of don'ts. The articles ensured that states mostly kept to themselves and that a few times a year representatives would meet to discuss important issues. However Congress could only ask for money, it couldn;t collet taxes nor does it have much control over the states like it does today. These Articles were pretty weak and proved insufficient to stop local rebellions like Shay's (MA) or the Whiskey (VI) one. That job was left to the Constiution.
 * The Constitution was drafted and ratified by 9/17/87. Getting to that was a monument task as the question of representation, slavery, powers of the federal government and the government itself all came up. Slavery was a tricky question as the north didn't support it while the south relied on it, and so delegates decided that the question would be evaded for twenty years and discussed later. Representation was also a problem as different states had different populations, so two houses of about equal power were created. One house depended on how many people were in the state, and the other was even as each state had two representatives. The power of the federal government was decided to be slightly above that of the states since ultimately it was decided that all power came from the people and neither could last long without it. The government itself was seperated into three branches, the Congress, the Presidency and some vague judicial branch that would become the Supreme Court. All three branches supposedly balanced each other out and with these issues resolved the Constituion was passed and Washington elected the first president of the USA.