With the help of an alliance with France, the United States (US) were eventually able to win the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain, settled by the Treaty of Paris, which endowed the new country with a great wilderness empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River, and including the southern Great Lakes region.

             In the aftermath of war, economic depression and the weakness of political institutions troubled the young country. The Second Continental Congress continued to act as a federal government, formalizing its own status by the Articles of Confederation, proposed and put into effect in 1778, but not fully ratified until 1781. The Articles of Confederation outlined the governance of a permanent federation of States, without fully clarifying whether the United States was to be a nation-state or a mere league of States, acting in cooperation.

             The perceived need for a more powerful and complete federal government led, in 1787, to the calling of a convention, to consider revising the Articles. That Convention, meeting in Philadelphia, chose, instead, to write a Constitution, which was ratified by eleven States in 1788. .

             In 1789, the Constitution of the United States was put into operation, and George Washington was elected the first President of the United States.

             Centralization proved difficult for many people to accept. America had been settled in large part by Europeans who had left their homelands to escape religious or political oppression, as well as the rigid economic patterns of the Old World that locked individuals into a particular station in life regardless of their skill or energy. These settlers highly prized personal freedom, and they were wary of any power especially that of government that might curtail individual liberties.

             The diversity of the new nation was also a formidable obstacle to unity. The people who were empowered by the Constitution in the 18th century to elect and control their central government represented different origins, beliefs, and interests.