American Revolution

American Revolution - Wikipedia

The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution based on the principles of the American Enlightenment that generally occurred in British America between 1765 and 1789.

It created the environment for the American Revolutionary War, which lasted from 1775 to 1783, whereby the Thirteen Colonies secured their independence from the British Crown and consequently established the United States as the first sovereign nation state founded on Enlightenment principles of the consent of the governed, constitutionalism and liberal democracy.

Among the significant results of the American victory were American independence and the end of British mercantilism in America, opening up worldwide trade for the United States, including a resumption of it with Britain.

Around 60,000 Loyalists migrated to other British territories in Canada and elsewhere, but the great majority remained in the United States.

In 1787, at the Congress of the Confederation in Philadelphia, American delegates authorized, and states then ratified the United States Constitution, which took effect March 4, 1789 and replaced the weaker wartime Articles of Confederation.

It provided for a relatively strong national government structured as a federal republic, including an elected executive, a national judiciary, and an elected bicameral Congress representing states in the Senate and the population in the House of Representatives.

With its victory in the American Revolution, the United States became the first federal democratic republic in world history founded on the consent of the governed.

In 1791, a Bill of Rights was ratified as the first ten amendments, guaranteeing fundamental rights used as justification for the revolution.^[2][3]

Subsequent amendments, including the Reconstruction Amendments, the Nineteenth Amendment, and others, extended those rights to ever greater categories of citizens.