Unit 3 · A New Nation

In 1763, Britain won the French and Indian War. France gave up its lands in North America. British colonists were proud. Many hoped to move west into the rich lands of the Ohio River valley. But those lands were not empty. Native nations such as the Shawnee, Delaware and Odawa lived there.

Native nations did not want settlers pouring onto their lands. In 1763, an Odawa leader named Pontiac led many nations in a war against British forts around the Great Lakes. The fighting was costly for everyone. British leaders wanted to avoid another expensive war.

So King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763. It drew a line along the Appalachian Mountains. Colonists were not allowed to settle west of that line. Settlers who were already there were told to leave. Many colonists were angry. They felt they had fought the war to win those lands. Now their own government was blocking them. The line was hard to enforce, and many settlers crossed it anyway.

The French and Indian War left Britain with a huge debt. Britain also planned to keep about 10,000 soldiers in North America to guard the frontier. Someone had to pay for all this. Leaders in Parliament, Britain’s lawmaking body, decided the colonists should pay a share. After all, the war had protected them.

In 1764, Parliament passed the Sugar Act. It actually lowered the tax on molasses, a sweet syrup used to make rum. But this time Britain meant to collect the tax. For years, colonial merchants had avoided such taxes by smuggling. Now smugglers could be tried in special courts without a jury.

In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. It taxed printed paper. Newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents and even playing cards needed an official stamp to show the tax was paid. This tax touched almost everyone, from lawyers to printers to ordinary shoppers. It was also the first direct tax Parliament placed on the colonies. Many colonists thought it crossed a line.

Colonists did not object to every law from Britain. They objected to being taxed by a body they did not elect. Colonists had no members in Parliament. They believed that, as British subjects, they had the right to be taxed only by their own representatives, such as the elected assemblies in each colony. Their slogan became “No taxation without representation.”

In October 1765, delegates from nine colonies met in New York at the Stamp Act Congress. They sent a respectful message to the king and Parliament. It said the colonists were loyal subjects, but that only their own assemblies could tax them. It was one of the first times several colonies acted together.

Protest also filled the streets. Groups called the Sons of Liberty scared stamp collectors into quitting. Merchants joined a boycott, refusing to buy British goods. British merchants lost money and begged Parliament for help. In 1766, Parliament repealed, or canceled, the Stamp Act. But on the same day it passed the Declaratory Act. That law said Parliament had full power to make laws for the colonies. The argument was not over.

In 1767, Parliament tried again. The Townshend Acts taxed goods the colonies imported from Britain, including glass, lead, paint, paper and tea. Some of the money would pay the salaries of royal governors and judges. That worried colonists. If Britain paid these officials, colonial assemblies would lose power over them.

Colonists returned to boycotts. Merchants in many towns signed agreements not to import British goods. Women played a big part, because they bought much of what families used. Groups called the Daughters of Liberty held spinning bees, where women spun thread together to make homespun cloth. Wearing homemade cloth instead of British fabric became a sign of patriotism.

In 1768, Britain sent soldiers to Boston to keep order and protect tax collectors. Many Bostonians resented having armed troops in their streets. Soldiers and townspeople often insulted each other. Some off-duty soldiers took part-time jobs, which made local workers angry. Tension grew. In 1770, Parliament canceled most of the Townshend taxes. It kept one, the tax on tea, to show it still had the right to tax.

On the cold night of March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered around a British guard on King Street in Boston. People shouted insults and threw snowballs and chunks of ice. More soldiers arrived. In the confusion, the soldiers fired into the crowd. Five colonists died. One of them was Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Native American ancestry. He is often remembered as one of the first people to die in the struggle for American independence.

Patriots called the shooting the Boston Massacre. A massacre is the killing of people who cannot defend themselves. Paul Revere made an engraving of the event. It showed soldiers calmly firing on peaceful townspeople. That was not exactly what happened, but the picture spread quickly. It was propaganda, information shaped to persuade people to take a side.

The soldiers were put on trial. Their lawyer was John Adams, a Patriot. He believed every person deserved a fair trial, even an unpopular one. Adams argued that the soldiers had feared for their lives. Most of them were found not guilty. Two were convicted of a lesser crime. The trial showed that colonists valued the rule of law, even when they were angry.

Patriots knew they were stronger together. In 1772, Samuel Adams helped start a Committee of Correspondence in Boston. These committees wrote letters to share news and plan protests. Soon committees spread through many towns and colonies. Before phones or the internet, this letter network helped the colonies think and act as one.

In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act. It was meant to help the British East India Company, which had too much tea and was losing money. The law let the company sell tea directly to the colonies. The tea was actually cheaper, but it still carried the tax. Patriots saw a trick. If colonists bought the cheap tea, they would be accepting Parliament’s right to tax them.

Colonists in several ports refused to let the tea be unloaded. In Boston, the governor insisted the tea come ashore. On the night of December 16, 1773, a group of men, some dressed as Mohawk people, boarded three ships. They broke open 342 chests of tea and dumped them into Boston Harbor. This protest became known as the Boston Tea Party. Some colonists cheered. Others thought destroying property went too far.

Britain’s leaders were furious about the tea. In 1774, Parliament passed laws to punish Boston and Massachusetts. Colonists called them the Intolerable Acts, meaning laws that could not be put up with. One law closed Boston’s port until the tea was paid for. Another cut the power of the Massachusetts assembly and limited town meetings. Another let royal officials be tried in Britain instead of in the colony. A new Quartering Act allowed troops to be housed in colonial buildings.

General Thomas Gage, commander of British forces in North America, became governor of Massachusetts. With the port closed, Boston’s trade stopped and many people lost work. Other colonies sent food and supplies to help. Britain had hoped to isolate Boston. Instead, the punishment pulled the colonies closer together.

In September 1774, delegates from 12 colonies met in Philadelphia. Only Georgia did not send anyone. This meeting was the First Continental Congress. Delegates included George Washington, John Adams and Samuel Adams. They agreed to stop trade with Britain. They urged colonies to train their militias. They also agreed to meet again in May 1775 if Britain did not change course.

By 1775, many Massachusetts towns had trained minutemen. These were militia members ready to fight at a minute’s notice. They stored guns and gunpowder in towns such as Concord. General Gage decided to seize those supplies. On the night of April 18, about 700 British soldiers set out from Boston.

Riders spread the alarm. At dawn on April 19, the soldiers reached Lexington. About 70 militiamen stood on the town green. Someone fired a shot. No one knows who fired first. The British soldiers then fired, and eight militiamen were killed. The British marched on to Concord.

At Concord, the soldiers found only a few supplies. At the North Bridge, they clashed with hundreds of militiamen, who forced them back. On the long march back to Boston, the British were attacked from behind trees, walls and houses. By the end of the day, the British had lost many more men than the colonists. Thousands of militiamen then surrounded Boston. The American Revolution, the war for independence, had begun.

In May 1775, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. The fighting had already started. Congress now had to act like a government. It created the Continental Army and chose George Washington of Virginia to lead it. Washington had fought in the French and Indian War and was widely respected.

Around the same time, colonial forces led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga in New York. Its cannons would later help the Americans. Still, many delegates did not want to break away from Britain. They hoped the king would take their side against Parliament.

In July 1775, Congress sent the king the Olive Branch Petition. An olive branch is a symbol of peace. The petition said the colonists were loyal and asked the king to help end the fighting. King George III refused to read it. Instead, he declared that the colonies were in rebellion. For many colonists, the king’s answer showed that peace on fair terms was not possible.

Even after a year of fighting, many colonists hoped to stay part of the British Empire. Then, in January 1776, a writer named Thomas Paine published a pamphlet, a short booklet, called Common Sense. Paine had come to Philadelphia from England only about a year before.

Paine wrote in plain, bold language that ordinary people could understand. He attacked the idea of kings. He said it made no sense for a small island to rule a whole continent across an ocean. He argued that the colonies would be better off as an independent republic, a nation where people choose their leaders.

Common Sense sold widely and was read aloud in homes, taverns and army camps. People who could not read heard its arguments. It did not change every mind, but it helped turn many colonists toward independence. Within months, colony after colony told its delegates in Congress to support a break with Britain.

In June 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia asked Congress to declare the colonies independent. Congress chose a committee of five to write a statement explaining the decision. The group included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Jefferson, a 33-year-old Virginian, wrote the first draft. The others suggested changes.

On July 2, 1776, Congress voted for independence. On July 4, it approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence. The document has four main parts. It opens by explaining why a statement is needed. Next it describes people’s natural rights. Then it lists many complaints, or grievances, against the king. Finally, it declares the colonies free and independent states.

The most famous part is about rights. It says all people have unalienable rights, rights that cannot be taken away, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It says governments get their power from the consent of the governed. If a government destroys people’s rights, the people may change it or replace it. These ideas came partly from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke.

The Declaration’s words were bold, but they did not match life in 1776. About one in five people in the colonies was enslaved. Jefferson himself enslaved hundreds of people over his lifetime. His first draft blamed the king for the slave trade, but Congress removed that section. Some delegates’ home colonies depended on slavery.

Women were not mentioned. They could not vote, and married women usually could not own property in their own names. Native Americans appear in the Declaration only in a complaint that the king had turned them against the colonists. Native nations were fighting to protect their own lands and freedom.

Still, the Declaration’s promise lasted. Over time, many groups used its words to demand their rights. Enslaved people in Massachusetts cited the ideas of liberty when they asked for freedom. Later, abolitionists, women’s rights leaders and civil rights leaders quoted it. The gap between the Declaration’s ideals and reality became a challenge that Americans have worked on ever since.

After Lexington and Concord, thousands of militiamen surrounded British troops in Boston. In June 1775, colonists built earthworks, walls of dirt, on Breed’s Hill, near Bunker Hill, overlooking the city. On June 17, British soldiers marched up the hill in tight lines to drive them off.

Twice the colonists pushed the British back. On the third attack, the colonists ran low on gunpowder and had to retreat. The British won the hill, but more than 1,000 of their soldiers were killed or wounded. The colonists lost far fewer. The fight became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Black soldiers, including Peter Salem and Salem Poor, fought bravely there.

In July 1775, George Washington arrived to take command of the new Continental Army. He needed heavy guns. That winter, a bookseller turned officer named Henry Knox led a team that dragged dozens of heavy cannons hundreds of miles over snow from Fort Ticonderoga. In March 1776, the cannons appeared on hills above Boston. The British saw they could not hold the city. They sailed away.

Not every colonist wanted independence. Patriots supported the war against Britain. Loyalists, sometimes called Tories, stayed loyal to the king. Historians estimate that perhaps one in five white colonists was a Loyalist. Many others tried to stay neutral, not taking either side. Families and neighbors were sometimes split.

People became Loyalists for many reasons. Some worked for the British government or depended on trade with Britain. Some feared chaos without a king. Others belonged to groups that hoped Britain would protect them. Patriots often treated Loyalists harshly, taking their property or driving them out. By the war’s end, tens of thousands of Loyalists had left, many for Canada or Britain.

Most Native nations saw the Americans, who wanted their lands, as the bigger threat. Many sided with Britain. The Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, split apart. The Mohawk leader Joseph Brant led warriors on the British side. The Oneida and Tuscarora mostly helped the Americans. In 1779, American troops burned dozens of Haudenosaunee towns and crops in New York. The war was a disaster for many Native communities, no matter which side they chose.

In the summer of 1776, Britain sent a huge force of ships and soldiers to New York. In August, the British beat Washington’s army on Long Island. Washington’s troops escaped across the East River at night. But the British captured New York City, and they held it for the rest of the war. The Americans retreated across New Jersey into Pennsylvania.

By December, the army was shrinking. Many soldiers’ terms of service would end on December 31. Some had already gone home. Thomas Paine, now traveling with the army, wrote a new essay called The American Crisis to lift people’s spirits. Washington knew he needed a victory, fast.

On Christmas night, 1776, Washington led about 2,400 men across the icy Delaware River in boats. In the early morning, they attacked Hessians at Trenton, New Jersey. Hessians were German soldiers hired by Britain. The surprise attack worked, and the Americans captured most of the Hessian force. A few days later, on January 3, 1777, Washington won again at Princeton. These small wins gave Americans new hope and convinced many soldiers to reenlist.

In 1777, the British made a plan to cut the colonies in two. General John Burgoyne would march south from Canada into New York. Other British forces were supposed to meet him. If the plan worked, New England would be cut off from the other colonies.

The plan fell apart. Burgoyne’s army moved slowly through thick forests. Americans chopped down trees to block roads. The main British army, under General William Howe, went to capture Philadelphia instead of helping Burgoyne. Meanwhile, American militias kept gathering to fight.

Near Saratoga, New York, American forces under General Horatio Gates fought Burgoyne’s army in two battles. Benedict Arnold, then an American officer, led bold attacks and was badly wounded. On October 17, 1777, Burgoyne surrendered his entire army of about 6,000 men. The Battle of Saratoga was a turning point. It proved to Europe that the Americans could win.

In February 1778, France signed an alliance, a formal agreement, with the United States. France was Britain’s old rival and wanted revenge for losing the French and Indian War. France sent money, weapons, soldiers and, most important, a navy. Britain now had to fight a larger war around the world.

Spain joined the war against Britain in 1779 as an ally of France. Bernardo de Gálvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, led troops against British posts along the Gulf of Mexico. He captured Baton Rouge, Mobile and Pensacola. His army included soldiers from Spain, Mexico and the Caribbean, as well as free Black and Native fighters. These attacks kept British forces busy in the South.

Individual volunteers came too. The Marquis de Lafayette, a wealthy young Frenchman, arrived in 1777 at age 19. He served without pay and became like a son to Washington. Friedrich von Steuben trained the army at Valley Forge. Thaddeus Kosciuszko, an engineer from Poland, designed defenses at Saratoga and West Point. Each brought skills the young army lacked.

Britain had the strongest navy in the world. The Continental Navy was tiny. Congress also allowed privateers, privately owned ships given permission to attack enemy merchant ships. Privateers captured many British ships and their cargo.

The most famous American naval captain was John Paul Jones. In 1779, off the coast of Britain, his ship the Bonhomme Richard fought the British warship Serapis. Jones’s ship was badly damaged and sinking, but he refused to give up. In the end, the British captain surrendered. Years later, Jones was reported to have said, “I have not yet begun to fight,” though no one can be sure of his exact words.

The war also reached the land that would become Illinois. British forts in the West supplied Native allies who raided American settlements. George Rogers Clark, a young officer from Virginia, led a small force down the Ohio River. On July 4, 1778, he captured the British post at Kaskaskia without firing a shot. Soon after, Cahokia joined him. In February 1779, Clark’s men marched through icy, flooded land to capture Vincennes in present-day Indiana. His victories helped the United States later claim this territory.

When men went to war, women took on new work. They ran farms, shops and businesses. They raised money, sewed clothing for soldiers and kept boycotts going. Some women traveled with the army as camp followers. They cooked, washed clothes and nursed the sick and wounded. Martha Washington spent winters with her husband at army camps.

A few women fought. At the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, Mary Ludwig Hays carried water to soldiers and helped fire a cannon after her husband fell. Her story became part of the legend of “Molly Pitcher.” Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtleff and joined the Continental Army in 1782. She served until an illness revealed her secret. Years later, she received a soldier’s pension, payments given to veterans.

Abigail Adams managed the family farm in Massachusetts while her husband, John, served in Congress. Her letters show a sharp mind. In 1776, she urged him to think about women’s rights in the new government. John Adams did not take her request seriously. But her words show that the Revolution’s ideas about liberty made some women question their own lack of rights.

For African Americans, the key question was which side offered freedom. In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, made an offer. Enslaved people who escaped from Patriot enslavers and fought for the British would be freed. Hundreds joined him quickly. Later in the war, thousands more escaped to British lines.

At first, Washington did not want Black men in the Continental Army. Soon, the army needed more soldiers, and that changed. About 5,000 African Americans served on the American side. Some were free. Others were enslaved men promised freedom for their service. The 1st Rhode Island Regiment included many Black soldiers.

James Armistead was an enslaved man in Virginia. In 1781, with his enslaver’s permission, he joined the Marquis de Lafayette as a spy. He pretended to be a runaway working for the British and sent back valuable information before the Battle of Yorktown. After the war, he was not automatically freed. In 1787, with Lafayette’s support, Virginia’s lawmakers granted him his freedom. He took the name James Armistead Lafayette.

After Saratoga, British leaders turned south. They believed many Loyalists lived there and would help them. British troops captured Savannah, Georgia, in 1778. In 1780, they took Charleston, South Carolina, and captured thousands of American soldiers. It was one of the worst American defeats of the war. Later that year, the British crushed another American army at Camden, South Carolina.

The South became a bitter fight between Patriots and Loyalists, often neighbors. Small bands of Patriots used guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run attacks by small groups. Francis Marion of South Carolina struck British supply lines and then disappeared into the swamps. He became known as the “Swamp Fox.”

The tide slowly turned. In October 1780, Patriot militia defeated a Loyalist force at Kings Mountain. General Nathanael Greene took command of the southern army. In January 1781, Daniel Morgan won a clever victory at Cowpens, South Carolina. Greene lost some battles, but he wore down the British army led by General Charles Cornwallis. Cornwallis moved his tired army north into Virginia, to a town called Yorktown.

In 1781, Washington saw a chance. Cornwallis’s army was camped at Yorktown, on a peninsula in Virginia with water on three sides. A French fleet under Admiral de Grasse sailed into Chesapeake Bay and drove off British ships. Now Cornwallis could not escape by sea. Washington and the French general Rochambeau rushed their armies south from New York.

American and French troops surrounded Yorktown and bombarded the British with cannons. On October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered more than 7,000 soldiers. The Battle of Yorktown was the last major battle of the war. In London, leaders realized that winning would cost too much. Parliament voted to stop the offensive war in America.

Peace talks took place in Paris. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay represented the United States. The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783. Britain recognized the United States as independent. The new nation’s land stretched west to the Mississippi River. Native nations were not part of the talks. Britain handed over lands that Native peoples still lived on and claimed.

How did the Americans win? They fought on home ground and knew the land. Britain had to send soldiers and supplies across 3,000 miles of ocean. Washington kept his army together through terrible times. France and Spain added money, troops and ships. And many Americans believed deeply in their cause and refused to give up.

The Revolution’s ideas about liberty and equality began to change society. States wrote new constitutions. Some began ending slavery. Vermont’s constitution of 1777 banned adult slavery. Pennsylvania passed a law in 1780 to end slavery gradually, over many years. In Massachusetts, court cases in the 1780s, brought partly by enslaved people such as Elizabeth Freeman, led to slavery’s end there.

But change was uneven. In the South, slavery grew stronger after the war. Women still could not vote in most places. Native nations faced more settlers pressing west. The Revolution created a nation based on the idea of equal rights. It would take a long time, and much struggle, for that idea to reach everyone. This was the Revolution’s legacy, what it handed down to later generations.

Once the colonies declared independence, they needed new governments. Each state wrote a constitution, a written plan that sets out how a government works. Americans wanted their rules in writing, so leaders could not simply change them. Britain had no single written constitution, and colonists felt that had allowed Parliament to ignore their rights.

Most state constitutions kept governors weak and gave most power to elected legislatures. Americans remembered how royal governors had used their power. Many states added a bill of rights, a list of freedoms the government could not take away. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, written mainly by George Mason in 1776, protected freedom of the press and trial by jury.

Who could vote? In most states, only white men who owned a certain amount of property. New Jersey’s 1776 constitution was unusual. It allowed property-owning women and free Black men to vote. Some did, until the state took that right away in 1807. The new states were more democratic than the colonies had been, but most people still had no voice in government.

The Continental Congress also wrote a plan for a national government. It was called the Articles of Confederation. A confederation is a loose union of independent states. Congress approved the Articles in 1777, but they did not take effect until 1781. Maryland refused to approve them until states such as Virginia gave up their claims to western lands.

Under the Articles, the national government was just one body: Congress. Each state had one vote, no matter how many people lived there. There was no president to carry out laws and no national courts to settle disputes. Congress could declare war, make treaties, borrow money and run a post office.

But Congress had very little power. It could not collect taxes. It could only ask the states for money, and the states often said no. It could not control trade between states. Important laws needed the votes of 9 of the 13 states. Changing the Articles required all 13 to agree. Americans had designed a weak government on purpose. They did not want to replace one tyranny with another.

The Articles government did have one big success: it planned for the West. The United States now owned land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. North of the Ohio River lay a region called the Northwest Territory. It would one day become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota.

The Land Ordinance of 1785 set up a system to survey, or measure, the land. It was divided into squares called townships, each six miles on a side. Each township had 36 sections of one square mile. One section in every township was set aside to support public schools. You can still see this grid today in the square roads and farm fields of Illinois.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 set rules for governing the region. When an area had 60,000 free people, it could apply to become a state, equal to the original 13. Settlers were promised freedom of religion and trial by jury. The law also banned slavery in the territory, although in practice some people in Illinois were held in slavery or forced service for years afterward. The ordinance promised good faith toward Native nations, but settlers kept pushing onto their lands.

The war left the nation deeply in debt. Congress owed money to soldiers, to citizens and to countries such as France. But Congress could not tax. When it asked the states for money, they sent only a small part of what was needed. Many soldiers went home without the pay they were promised.

During the war, Congress had printed paper money called Continentals. So much was printed that it lost almost all its value. People began saying something useless was “not worth a Continental.” States printed their own money, too. Some states taxed goods from other states. Trade became confusing and unfair.

Other nations saw the weakness. Britain kept soldiers in forts in the Northwest Territory, even though the peace treaty said it would leave. In 1784, Spain closed the port of New Orleans to American trade. Western farmers needed that port to ship their crops down the Mississippi River. Congress had no army or money to push back. Many leaders began to fear the new nation might fall apart.

In the 1780s, many farmers in western Massachusetts were in trouble. They owed money but had little cash. The state raised taxes to pay its war debts and demanded payment in hard money, such as gold or silver. Courts began taking farms from people who could not pay. Some farmers were even sent to jail for debt.

In 1786, angry farmers, many of them war veterans, took action. They gathered in armed groups and shut down courts so judges could not take their farms. One of their leaders was Daniel Shays, a former captain in the Continental Army. In January 1787, rebels marched on the federal arsenal, a storehouse for weapons, in Springfield. The state militia fired on them, and several rebels were killed. The uprising, called Shays's Rebellion, soon ended.

The rebellion shocked leaders across the country. Congress had no army to help Massachusetts. George Washington worried that the nation was falling into disorder. The year before, delegates from five states had met in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss trade problems. They had called for a larger meeting in Philadelphia. After Shays’s Rebellion, more states agreed to send delegates.

Soon after the Constitutional Convention began, delegates made a bold decision. Instead of fixing the Articles, they would write a new plan. Not everyone agreed, but the idea moved forward.

The first plan came from Virginia. It was mostly the work of James Madison. The Virginia Plan called for three branches of government: one to make laws, one to carry them out and one to judge them. Congress would have two houses. In both, the number of representatives would depend on a state’s population. That meant large states such as Virginia would have much more power.

Small states objected. They feared the big states would outvote them on everything. William Paterson of New Jersey offered another plan. The New Jersey Plan kept a Congress with one house, where each state had one equal vote, as under the Articles. It gave Congress some new powers, such as taxing trade. For weeks, the two sides argued, and neither would give in.

By early July 1787, the convention was stuck. Large and small states would not budge. Some delegates feared the meeting would fail. Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut helped push a middle path.

Under their plan, Congress would have two houses. In the House of Representatives, each state’s number of seats would depend on its population. In the Senate, every state would have two senators, no matter its size. Bills about raising money would have to start in the House. On July 16, the delegates narrowly approved this plan. It became known as the Great Compromise, or the Connecticut Compromise.

Each side got something it wanted, and each gave something up. That is what a compromise is. The Great Compromise saved the convention. Today, Congress still works this way. Illinois has 2 senators, the same as every other state, but its number of House members depends on its population.

Slavery divided the delegates. Southern states had large numbers of enslaved people. They wanted them counted when deciding how many House seats a state got, even though enslaved people could not vote. Many northern delegates objected. The convention agreed that three of every five enslaved people would be counted. This was the Three-Fifths Compromise. It gave southern states extra power in Congress and in choosing presidents.

Delegates also argued about the slave trade, the business of bringing captured Africans to America to be sold. Some delegates wanted to end it. Delegates from Georgia and South Carolina threatened to leave. The compromise said Congress could not ban the trade until 1808. Congress did ban it starting in 1808, but slavery itself continued inside the country.

Another clause required that people who escaped slavery into another state be returned. The Constitution never uses the word slavery. It speaks instead of “other persons” and people “held to service.” Many delegates knew slavery clashed with the ideals of the Revolution. They chose union over ending slavery, a choice that would shape the nation’s future.

The Articles had no leader to carry out laws. The delegates decided to create one: a president. The president would enforce laws, command the military and deal with other nations. But how much power should one person have? After a war against a king, the delegates did not want to create another one.

They argued about how to choose the president. Some wanted Congress to pick. Others feared that would make the president too dependent on Congress. A few wanted the people to vote directly. Others worried that voters in a huge country would not know candidates from far-off states. There was also a slavery question. The South had many people who could not vote.

The answer was the Electoral College. Each state chooses electors equal to its number of senators plus representatives. The electors vote for president. The president serves a four-year term. Everyone expected George Washington to be the first president. His honesty and his willingness to give up power after the war made many delegates comfortable creating the office.

The Constitution begins with the Preamble, which explains its goals. Then it sets up three branches. Congress, the legislative branch, makes laws. The president leads the executive branch, which carries out laws. The Supreme Court and other courts form the judicial branch, which decides what laws mean. Splitting government this way is called separation of powers.

Each branch can limit the others. This is called checks and balances. The president can veto, or reject, a bill passed by Congress. Congress can override a veto with a two-thirds vote in both houses. The Senate must approve the president’s choices for judges and top officials. Congress can impeach, or charge, and remove a president for serious wrongdoing.

The Constitution also divides power between the national government and the states. This system is called federalism. Only the national government can print money, declare war or make treaties. States run elections and set up schools and local governments. Both can collect taxes. The Constitution can also be changed through amendments, but the process is hard on purpose.

The Constitution would take effect only after 9 of the 13 states approved it. To ratify means to approve officially. Each state held a special convention to decide. A great debate broke out in newspapers, taverns and meeting halls.

Supporters were called Federalists. They argued that the Articles had failed and that the nation needed a stronger government to survive. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote 85 essays in New York newspapers explaining the Constitution. They signed them with the pen name Publius. Today these essays are known as The Federalist Papers.

Opponents were called Antifederalists. They included Patrick Henry and George Mason of Virginia. They feared a strong national government would crush the states and threaten liberty. Their biggest complaint was that the Constitution had no bill of rights. Delaware ratified first, in December 1787. In June 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state. Votes in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York were close. Federalists won support partly by promising to add a bill of rights.

The new government began in 1789, with George Washington as the first president. Congress met in New York City, the first capital. James Madison, now a member of the House of Representatives, kept the Federalists’ promise. He drafted a list of amendments to protect people’s rights.

Congress sent 12 amendments to the states. By December 1791, enough states had ratified 10 of them. These first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, the press and assembly, and the right to petition the government. Other amendments protect the right to a fair and speedy trial, protect against unreasonable searches, and ban cruel and unusual punishments.

The Tenth Amendment says that powers not given to the national government are kept by the states or the people. At first, the Bill of Rights limited only the national government, and it did not protect everyone equally. Enslaved people, for example, did not enjoy these rights. Over time, Americans have used the Bill of Rights to demand fair treatment for more and more people.