The Struggle to Create the American Republic: Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton (2009)

• published: 12 Mar 2015
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John E. Ferling is a professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia. John Ferling was born in 1940 in Charleston, West Virginia. He grew up in Texas City, Texas. He attended Sam Houston State University. He later received a Masters degree in history from Baylor University. He taught for 39 years, mostly at the University of West Georgia. He retired from teaching to spend more time writing. Publications The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon[4] Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence[5][6] The Loyalist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution [7] A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America [8] The First of Men: A Life of George Washington[9] Struggle for a Continent: The Wars of Early America [10] John Adams: A Life [11] Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution [12] A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free (published June 21, 2011) Jefferson and Hamilton: "The Rivalry That Forged A Nation" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Ferling The American Revolution was a political upheaval that took place between 1765 and 1783 during which rebel colonists in the Thirteen American Colonies rejected the British monarchy and aristocracy, overthrew the authority of Great Britain, and founded the United States of America. Starting in 1765, members of American colonial society rejected the authority of the British Parliament to tax them. During the following decade protests by rebellious colonists - known as patriots - continued to escalate, as in the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and the British responded by imposing punitive laws—the Coercive Acts—on Massachusetts in 1774. Patriots in the other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts and in late 1774 they set up a Congress to better coordinate their resistance efforts against Britain, while other colonists, known as loyalists preferred to remain subjects of the British Crown. The Patriots fought the British and loyalists in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Formal acts of rebellion against British authority began in 1774 when the Patriot Suffolk Resolves effectively replaced the royal government of Massachusetts, and confined British control to the city of Boston. Tensions escalated to the outbreak of fighting between Patriot militia and British regulars at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. As the conflict evolved into a civil war, Patriots in each of the thirteen colonies formed a Provincial Congress that usurped power from the old colonial governments and suppressed loyalism. Claiming King George III's rule was tyrannical and violated the rights of Englishmen, the Continental Congress declared the colonies free and independent states in July 1776. These thirteen states became known as the United States of America, a loose confederacy under the 1777 Articles of Confederation. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, and proclaimed that all men are created equal. Congress rejected British proposals for compromise that would keep them under the king. The British were forced out of Boston in 1776, but then captured and held New York City for the duration of the war, nearly capturing General Washington and his army. The British blockaded the ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but failed to defeat Washington's forces. In early 1778, following a failed patriot invasion of Canada, a British army was captured by a patriot army at the Battle of Saratoga, following which the French entered the war as allies of the United States. The naval and military power of the two sides were about equal, and France had allies in the Netherlands and Spain, while Britain had no major allies in this large-scale war. The war later turned to the American South, where the British captured an army at South Carolina, but failed to enlist enough volunteers from Loyalist civilians to take effective control. A combined American–French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in 1781, effectively ending the war in the United States. A peace treaty in 1783 confirmed the new nation's complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada and Spain taking Florida. Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of a democratically-elected representative government responsible to the will of the people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution