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It's easy to think that the
moment the British surrendered
at your town, the United
States of America was born.
But the truth is transforming
the idealistic ex-colonies
into a fully functional nation
was a long, arduous process.
The new country faced
years of economic hardship.
State governments were
widely disorganized.
Insurrections weren't uncommon,
and the Continental Congress
was toothless and ineffective.
Yet somehow, the
founding fathers
were able to get their
act together and form
the country we recognize today.
Today, we're going
to take a look
at what happened directly after
the American Revolution ended.
But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird
History channel and let
us know in the comments
below what other chapters
of American history
you would like to hear about.
OK.
Let's head back to
post-Revolutionary America.
Although I guess we're
post-Revolutionary right now,
so let's head back to
immediately post-Revolutionary
America.
While the revolution was
very popular in the colonies,
the truth is not
everyone was in favor
of rebelling against the crown.
In fact, historians
believe that the number
of American colonists who
remained loyal to the crown
ranged anywhere from 15% to
20% of the entire population.
This fairly large
segment of the community
was obviously unhappy when the
British surrendered at Yorktown
in 1781 and with good reason.
After their surrender,
many of these loyalists
were hunted down at
their homes and beaten
by gangs of so-called patriots
looking to punish them
for backing the wrong side.
If you're wondering, hey, why
didn't you just keep your mouth
shut, the truth is
they probably couldn't.
While a number of
people, mostly wealthy,
had the luxury of being
able to keep silent
about their politics,
circumstances
made it such that
most colonists had
to publicly choose a faction.
So when the British started
pulling out of the states,
many the loyalists
wisely went with them.
The prime minister of
Britain during the revolution
was Frederick North,
second earl of Guilford
or Lord North for short.
As prime minister,
Lord North generously
lowered the bar for his
successors by losing the war
and then resigning in disgrace.
North tried to end the
revolution by diplomatic means.
He offered a
conciliation plan that
promised the British would end
all oppression of the colonies
if the colonists
ended the rebellion.
Spoiler alert.
The colonists did
not take the deal.
By the time the war
ended, North was
exhausted by the tension
between the two countries
and felt badly burned out from
the stress of his position.
It's said that when Lord
Cornwallis surrendered
at Yorktown, Lord North
took the news like a bullet
to the chest, repeatedly
exclaiming, "Oh, god.
It's all over."
The British waved the white
flag at the Battle of Yorktown
on October 17, 1781, but their
withdrawal from the colonies
didn't happen overnight.
In fact, it took quite a while
for them to get everyone out.
As late as July 11, 1782,
British royal governor Sir
James Wright and military
personnel under his command
fled Georgia for South Carolina.
Wright's goal was to escape
the colonies via the Atlantic
Ocean.
Several of his ships
sailed for New York
while others went to
Florida or the West Indies.
As for Wright himself,
he eventually made it
back to London where he
died three years later.
While the British
surrender happened
at the Battle of
Yorktown, the war
itself was technically not over
for quite a while afterwards.
Official peace talks in
Paris commenced a full year
after the surrender in 1782.
The British were represented
at the talks by Richard Oswald
while the Americans
were represented
by luminaries like John Jay,
John Adams, and Benjamin
Franklin.
The two sides hammered out
preliminary articles of peace
which were signed at the Hotel
d'York on November 30, 1782.
This agreement brought
America and Britain
closer to the conclusion
of the conflict
and would become the
basis for a formal treaty
several years later.
In 1783, the
Continental Congress
would ratify a preliminary
version of the treaty.
The agreement was then
fleshed out a bit more,
and the final version was
ratified on January 14, 1784.
The British then ratified
the treaty April 9, 1784.
And on May 12, 1784,
the ratified versions
were exchanged in Paris.
Nothing quite as exciting as
a good ratification exchange.
The final treaty of
Paris was the product
of many months of
negotiation and politics.
Per its terms,
England was required
to recognize the former colonies
as an independent nation.
The British were also required
to give the Americans control
of the territory
between the Allegheny
mountains and the
Mississippi River
and let American fishermen
fish in Canadian waters.
The Americans agreed not to
persecute British loyalists
or block British
creditors from collecting
debts owed by former colonists.
The Americans also
agreed to return
a great deal of the property
taken during the conflict.
In November of 1783, the
last British soldiers
departed from New York.
With them were thousands of
loyalists and former slaves.
The event was celebrated
in the new country
and became a holiday
known as Evacuation Day.
The British understandably
were a tad bitter about it.
As a parting shot
before they left,
they nailed their flag to
a pole and greased it up
so it'd be hard to remove.
The British-- such pranksters.
The flag was eventually removed
by a soldier named John Van
Arsdale who scaled the pole
and replaced the British flag
with an American one.
For years after, celebrations
of evacuation day
would typically
include a re-enactment
of Van Arsdale's daring climb.
Just one month after the
British troops left the country,
General George Washington,
the commander of the US Army,
resigned his post.
Washington's move was seen as a
patriotic act that demonstrated
a commitment to his
country over any desire he
had for personal power.
It made him even more
popular than he already was.
And he was already
trending to begin with.
The former commander
returned to his home
at Mount Vernon, Virginia.
He remained there
until his countrymen
made it clear they wanted him to
enter the forthcoming election
and become the new
country's first president.
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In the 1780s, an economic crisis
swept through Massachusetts,
forcing numerous
farmers deep into debt.
The state refused to forgive the
debts, and many of the farmers
lost their property or
were thrown in jail.
And anger began to foment.
And given that many
of these farmers
were the same revolutionaries
who had fought the British,
they eventually took up
arms against the government.
When the Revolutionary
War first started,
Daniel Shays was
just a farmhand.
But after joining
the Continental Army,
he saw action in
several battles,
including the
battle of Lexington,
the battle of Concord,
the Battle of Bunker Hill,
and the Battle of Saratoga.
By the 1780s, Shays, now a savvy
war vet, retired from the army
and returned home
to Massachusetts
to find himself in trouble
with the law for nonpayment
of debts.
He became active in the
emerging antigovernment movement
and soon found himself
leading 4,000 rebels
in a massive protest
against economic injustice
and widespread abuses
of civil rights.
However, while the revolution
was ultimately a success,
Shays' rebellion was not.
The governor of
Massachusetts, James Bowdoin,
assembled his own militia and
proceeded to crush the rebels.
For what it's worth,
siding against the citizens
of his own state wound
up costing the governor
at the ballot box, and he
was defeated in a landslide
in the following election.
In 1777, representatives
of the original 13 states
drafted the initial
document that
would outline American society,
The Articles of Confederation.
However, after America
actually won its independence
and became a functioning
nation, it quickly
became clear that the
articles were badly
in need of some revision.
For example, the
original articles
didn't give the
federal government
any power to effect change,
regulate the nation,
or tax the people.
A growing consensus emerged
that a constitution was needed.
So on February 21, 1787,
the confederation Congress
called for a
convention to propose
a new form of government.
Delegates were sent
to Philadelphia
to craft the new
governing document.
Over the next several
months, various plans
for the new federal government
were presented and debated.
Eventually, compromises
were reached.
And after a signing ceremony
on September 17, 1787,
the United States
Constitution was completed.
While the Constitution
is considered
the backbone of American
democracy today,
it wasn't an immediate
hit with everyone.
In fact, it took several
years for all of the states
to ratify it.
While there weren't formal
political parties yet,
factions quickly
emerged around those
in favor of the
new constitution,
known as Federalists
or cosmopolitans,
and those who were against
it, known as anti-Federalists
or localists.
The first five states to ratify
were Delaware, Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, Georgia,
and Connecticut.
Several of the other states
had serious misgivings.
The document failed to
protect basic human rights,
such as freedom of
speech and religion.
To rectify the
situation, 10 amendments
known as the Bill of
Rights were quickly
added to the Constitution.
Meanwhile, Alexander Hamilton,
James Madison, and John Jay
undertook a relentless
campaign to convince
New York, then a firmly
anti-Federalist state,
to support the new plan.
The three men wrote
numerous essays
under the pseudonym PUBLIUS.
Today, these commentaries,
famously known
as the Federalist
papers, are often
cited by the US Supreme
Court as evidence
of the framers' own contemporary
understanding of the language
in the Constitution.
By its own terms,
the minimum number
of states required to ratify
the document was nine.
And after much public
debate, that number
was reached on June 21.
By the end of July,
another two signed on,
and the process of starting
up the new government began.
The United States
of America held
its first presidential election
under the new Constitution
in 1789.
The rules of this first election
were extremely different
than the laws governing
elections today.
For example, only white
male property owners
were allowed to cast votes.
Also, the candidate who got the
second highest number of votes
would become vice
president, an arrangement
that didn't work
out too well and was
changed relatively quickly.
In addition to General
George Washington,
there were seven
other candidates
in that first election,
including John Adams, John Jay,
John Rutledge, John Hancock--
hmm, John was a popular name--
Samuel Huntington,
Benjamin Lincoln,
and George Clinton, who was
the governor of New York
and not the guy from
Parliament-Funkadelic.
In what will come as
no surprise to anyone,
the election was won by the
massively popular George
Washington, who
in something that
would be inconceivable
to Americans today
was the unanimous choice of
both factions, Federalists
and anti-Federalists.
He would be sworn into
office on April 30, 1789,
and henceforth be known as
the father of the country.
So what do you think?
How do you think the
founding fathers did?
Let us know in the
comments below.
And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos
from our Weird History.
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